Aiming for the top

Jappreet Sethi

Top performing employees not only meet but exceed standards set by their companies. As a high achiever, they move beyond what is expected. They tend to set personal standards that are higher than the external standards set by others. They take on additional responsibilities and are persistent as well as resourceful.

The first step to become a high performer is to stretch yourself, go beyond your limits, for limits are set by the human mind and can be reset easily. By setting higher standards, you would place a challenge for yourself and strive hard to achieve it.

Results-oriented approach

In order to do this, it is best to use a results-oriented approach. By doing this, you can align your goals with measurable outcomes. By aligning your work to end results, you are thinking from the user’s or your client’s perspective, this approach makes it a win-win situation for both the parties. Your efforts lead to tangible results and others gain from your actions or initiatives, there could be no better way of building your name in an organisation.

Go beyond the call of duty

The second step to becoming a high performer is to take additional responsibilities. In many organisations, it is routinely expected that people will increase their scope of activities and responsibilities as necessary to ensure that work is completed.

At times, you may be avoiding taking additional responsibilities because the highly structured roles in your organisation may dissuade anyone from going beyond their scope. Older organisations suffer from this malaise, as it’s a coping mechanism for them to ensure that they continue repeating the set process. 

The strategy of hard bounded specialisations worked very well till the industrial 4.0 kicked in, the organisations now need people who can collaborate and work effectively across domains. This will be a cherished skill set in the times to come, so if you start developing it now, you can reap the harvest soon. More and more companies would get off their rigid structures to keep themselves floating.

Step-by-step progress

One of the best ways to take additional responsibilities is to start with incremental change, plan one small action, demonstrate the results and then broaden the horizon.  Don’t go for the cake immediately, take it easy, because your organisation may need time to adjust, agree and see the potential benefits.

These two small changes can catapult you to be the high performers’league in your company. With the rise of machine learning and   technological advances in artificial intelligence domain, sooner than later, organisations would go for top grading. Thus, only the best would survive and make the cut. Your actions will decide which side you end up in, get started today.

— The writer is an HR andstrategy 

consultant  

www.humanresourcesblog.in

Align work with goals

Here are some questions that you can use to stimulate your thinking in this area.

• Would any changes in my results, make it more useful to others?
• Are there other results/outcomes which will be more beneficial to the organisation?
• Are you delivering results to others in time and at the best time?
• Are you providing results to others in the best possible way?
• Can upgrading your knowledge lead to better results?