7 Tips on trying something new

Weigh the pros and cons of your new initiatives in the light of your target beneficiaries. Without them, implementing your plans will not be possible. They deserve the best.

– dhepro –

Trying out something new can be demanding especially, if the process and outcome requires public attention. Can you relate with this? I was contacted about the possibility of delivering a talk 24 hours to a programme. I have the opportunity of choosing a topic which I communicated to the lead of the team for approval. My suggestion was approved but I wanted to try something new. Unlike other talks I have had when I prepared presentation slides, I decided not to do so this time. 

Added to this, I do not want to make any written preparation. My concepts are in my head except for checking up some facts in relevant sources. I was serious about this. I planned to tell the audience that I want to be as disorganized as possible. The aim of this is to ensure full concentration of participants. I believe if I don’t tell them the title at the introduction, nor organize my points, they will be forced to follow closely. To crown it up, I intend asking one or two persons to write a report thereafter. The initiatives were products of my mental processes. I never read or heard from it from anybody.

Does it end well? I can’t really say, my audience should be in the best position to evaluate the delivery, but I didn’t tell them my intention. From personal evaluation, I didn’t do well. Hours and a week after, I have not recovered from the ‘you never do well’ feeling. Come and see me fighting with myself and even talking out loud when I am alone. I recorded the session but I am afraid of replaying to avoid self-crucifixion. It isn’t a bad idea though. I might still checkup when I am in the right frame of mind.

Let’s me highlight seven factors I didn’t consider before talking that step.

1. Duration consideration

I should have remember that I have just few minutes for delivery. It’s like I was at the heart of my talk when the moderator brought a note to notify that I have just 2 minutes to conclude. I should have highlighted some important point that will leave the participant with some indelible marks. Hence, the downside of not having written preparations.

2. Continuous improvement

Many things to implement. I included too many new details in my plan. I felt I should have one or two ideas in my outing and prepare others for the future. Focusing on continuous improvement is not a bad idea. It will prevent being overwhelmed with pressure to achieve everything.

3. One thing


My audience and I were new to the initiatives. I should have focused on them rather than including myself or focus on myself rather than including them. I was overwhelmed by many details. It doesn’t mean the two objectives cannot be implemented. Other factors like duration, experience in doing similar things, type of audience among others might be relevant in taking such decision.

4. Engaging senses

Having a paper work would have made a difference. I would have engaged most of my senses by penning down my ideas during the planning, then disengage them during implementation. That would have improved the situations. We need our senses at the conception stage to have better delivery using limited senses.

5. Observing milestones

These is very important.  I had a good starting point intention but the delivery plan was not properly managed. I had good ingredients for closing but delivery not organized having been served time warning card. This is awkward, I think.

6. Righting priorities

There are several options for achieving my ideas. It was good trying out new initiatives but it is also relevant to consider the above factors and other important details next time. 

7. Preferential advice

Weigh the pros and cons of your plans in the light of your target benficiaries. Without them, implementing your plans will not be possible. They deserve the best. If you’re fortunate to serve them another meal, you may be able to redeem your image after the first flaw. What if this is not possible? Will they recommend you? If you even have the opportunity for another delivery, will they be available body, soul and spirit to take in what you bring newly no matter how well you have improved. They deserve the best. ‘Customers are kings’. Put yourself in their shoes. See you again but before then, please evaluate this delivery.

I didn’t prepare well for this, I just noted down my experience and wanted to share with you. I believe that our ORDINARY daily experiences can be ‘big D’s’ while trying out something bigger to achieve the EXTRAORDINARY. You think so?

Personal Style Inventory

What you might not be doing right

What’s your uniqueness?

Do you have any? You will need to make some decisions because you want a change in who you are, what you are doing, or what your results have been. You may also be interested in improving yourself. Whatever your reason, every individual is uniquely woven as the distinction in our fingerprints. Your uniqueness has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, and they sometimes define the opportunities you have and threats to achieving your dream. Taking deliberate steps to assess yourself is an activity that must be incorporated into your plan to avoid wasting the resources of time, energy and other consumables. When this is not done, you may get little or nothing from the efforts put into daily life. Hence, the need for proper self-assessment.

What’s worth doing?

It is simple. Start today and now. Conduct an assessment. It is not a difficult task if you are thinking of the complexity. There are standards you can follow to achieve this, like the Briggs Personal Style Inventory, one of the most popular. Although it involves some calculations because figures are required, there are online self-helps to speedup up the process. Do a search. 

What’s it?

The personal assessment is an inventory of yourself in certain areas that make you think about your personality shape and become known to yourself and how to deal with others, challenge some of the things you do and reflect on your own personal and professional development. 

You need to know how you react to people and situations under certain conditions, how you form an opinion, your value for quality, and how to manage yourself in success and failure situations. Since experiences cannot be the same forever, the assessment will make you proactively address them. For example, if you find out it is always hard to make a quick decision, you may need to tell your team members to always inform you early to have enough time to process and arrive at a final decision. 

What’s the benefit?

Personal assessment should include your level of introversion, extroversion, intuition, thinking ability, perception, sensing, feeling and judging. Generally, there are pairs of questions on which you are expected to rate yourself on some qualities based on your preferences. In the end, you get some values for each of the qualities that explain your uniqueness. Depending on a scale, you can determine the dominance of quality in your personality. There are also clear explanations of the traits of people with those qualities. Alongside this, there are explanations of their positive and negative sides. Thus, those attributes you feel are odd or supposed negative dimensions of you may be relevant in some situations and not totally a disadvantage. However, you can improve yourself such that when you do not need them, they are suppressed to get your results.

What’s the essence?

I came across a sample manuscript on a personal statement, which I downloaded some time ago. As I read through, I found the author referring to Personal Style Inventory. Fortunately, before writing this post, I needed a self-assessment to recommit myself to some values, one of which is writing this post and other contents of this blog. I won’t look back on this. I see the need to move on positively in my profession. I will be adding more initiatives in the future to keep moving with the vision in my first post on this blog. You can join me by appending your commitment in the comment section. Also, remember to share.

By the way, are you aware I started a video channel a few years ago? Those times I am not dropping a post here, I might be up to something on my channel. 

Networking for Growth

Thinking about a possible collaboration, and engagement in the team.

I appreciated the place of networking for growth when I paid a courtesy call at the office of a director in an educational institution. The professor placed a call across to me for an appointment. He told me he was calling me concerning a research project my team was undertaking for which a mail was sent to the generality of staff of his institution of affiliation. I didn’t think twice to see him in his office after confirming a training for some international participants I was to serve as an assistant convener that day is no longer taking place. I was already thinking about a possible collaboration, and maybe engagement in his team. Although he mentioned that during the one-hour discussion, I gained much more. I enjoyed the conversation. I am sharing with you in the next paragraphs some sidenotes on networking for growth which I derived from the discussion. The salient tips center around communication issues to gain the best from similar opportunities for growth in any profession. Here we go!

Prepare ahead if you have an appointment. He asked me about the projects and keeps narrowing his questions down to gain more insight into what I am doing. Finally, he began to raise some issues on the subject matter. The tail end of the discussion provided an answer to a suggestion that an expert on the area raise in an email communication before I met with the director. Here, I can’t place less emphasis on the importance of consistently acquiring credible knowledge and skills no matter what it will cost you. It does not need to be on the job alone. Enrolment in a professional program can place you in the same class with participants from different industries or lecture delivery can be from experts who have gained decades of experience. So, you have a pool of knowledge to grow the niche you have created for yourself. In my case, I received about one hour of a lecture from seasoned academia. During the unofficial session, another faculty also intercepted the discussion. It was indeed a pool of experience.

What makes your idea novel is the demand to acquire or use the knowledge by others who want to adopt it to meet a new requirement not necessarily the ‘newness’. Your reward is the credit attributed to you.

dhepro

Don’t claim you know everything in what you are doing no matter the novelty. Knowledge does not start with you and it is not likely to end with you. The idea you are using presently come from different sources. Don’t hide what you have. What makes it novel is the demand to acquire or use the knowledge by others who want to adopt it to meet a new requirement. Your reward is the credit attributed to you. It can’t be forgotten in history like the popular law of gravity by Galileo.

Learn through experience, but also through mastery of what you do.

Learning. It is a continuous process that comes from formal and informal means. News documentary is an important source of information. The director cited a recent news update which I was not privy to. It is that serious! Explore your industry information from the relevant sources, maybe from development organizations like United Nations, and devour the necessary ingredients. I marveled some of the facts I got from him were not known to me. Sure, he was addressing another aspect of the central theme different from mine. I took an important point – he has not only learned through experience, but he also learned through mastery of what he does. He seems to be releasing the information effortlessly but I noted he has taken his time to gain facts from different sources. Little wonder, he emphasized the need for me to go for more facts in my study.

Listen yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That’s active listening -every time, not just when a superior is sharing knowledge with you but with anybody. I blamed myself when I interrupted him at certain points to make a few clarifications. He was not right completely, but I was not right to have interrupted his view. Listen attentively and note your questions, comments, and reservations to be raised after he’s. These later points are also means for learning. Seek for clarifications when necessary and let answers provided to your questions increase your knowledge base. You also share knowledge by providing a better explanation of what you’re doing that was not properly judged by your assessor, mentor, or superior.

Ask questions. You may feel embarrassed when your question is answered when you later realized you know the answer. Have you experienced this before? The memory of one of the experiences I had is still very fresh. I asked my Chemistry teacher: why is it that Hydrogen can be placed in groups one or seven? He gave a simple answer: it needs one electron to fill its outer shell. Come and see how I felt. The idea may lie fallow if you don’t ask the question. You would have remained on the same project for a long time without progress for that hidden idea. Another shortcoming is the likelihood of promoting a shallow idea when you could have promoted a novel one when the key of knowledge is not in your hand. No idea is irrelevant. If it is not relevant to what you are doing now or your area of specialty, it could be useful in other decision areas. Stay glued to it. Keep it safe and use it when relevant.

Keep in touch. Don’t wait until you need a favour. He may also need you in the future. Shouldn’t that be one of the reasons for networking? Inform him of what you are doing presently in your profession. When it is necessary, request input to your work that relates to what he is doing. For instance, if you are an academic, express that your wish they mentor you and collaborate on a specific project. Don’t be perturbed if there is no timely response. Remember they have their schedule which may not include communicating with you.

Appreciate the time spent with you. Courtesy demands that you reciprocate the kind gesture with a simple voiced thank you sound. Can I send a feedback text? Why not? It keeps you in his list of contacts. All he needs to do is to search for a keyword in his messaging app if he needs to get in touch another time if he got to save your contact.

Be sure the communication line is opened every time. Be sure to check your email, LinkedIn account, and other networking apps for timely responses to messages to keep communications going.

It should keep getting better with you as you grow along this path. Be ready to adjust to new demands or requirements for networking for improved results.

dhepro

Don’t ignore being of help to an amateur. Remember you were at the same level before if you are not currently a starter. Ideas can come from both the mentee and the mentor. The list is inexhaustible. It should keep getting better with you as you grow along this path. Be ready to adjust to new demands or requirements for networking for improved results. Remember that’s the essence of the post on this page. I will be waiting at the other end to receive your suggestions, comments, and clarification on this post.

Un-planned

The best is not the highest possible.

ThePro

When you never planned to be the best, you just settle for anything worthwhile and not necessarily the best. I have heard someone saying, he was motivated by the outcome of his first of ten levels journey. It was the best among about fifty starters – that was why he strived to remain at the top until the end of the programme.
While this is possible for a few persons, deliberate effort is needed to achieve sustainable success in any endeavour. The next paragraphs highlight some tips in your pursuit of life-longed best (in no particular order).


Create/invent your style of achieving a specific goal: Creating your way of doing things make you trust in your abilities to succeed in any venture. It is natural to you. Note that you will need to change this style as the situation demands – you are not in control of certain things or events like the economic variables being controlled by the forces of the market.


Find your location/environment: This is where things work best for you – where you get inspired on ideas. With this knowledge, you do not waste your time where things will not work for you.


Go at your own pace: As an undergraduate, I know a classmate who only get serious with his studies at the tail end of the semester and still made good results, whereas there is another who start very early because he needs repetitive reading to get a firm grasp of class notes/materials. They both did well. Others do the same thing the first person did but with lower performance. That law operates in anything.


Leverage on the strength of others: When we were learning to walk as toddlers, we try to lean on support – maybe our mother or an elderly person or things around the house. Later we can stand on our own and even walk. At some points, we are amateur, beginners – learning from others. Later, when we are masters ourselves, we would start teaching others.

Learn how to leverage on the strength of others by taking Baby Steps


Help others: This may be a great task. If you call it a risk, it is worth taking. Its benefits include prevention of forgetfulness, means of networking with people, an enterprise with pecuniary benefits, and means of meeting your needs – exchange of skill for another person’s skill.


Avoid being a distractor master: Life comes with activities that divert our attention to something else. You must always be conscious of them and avoid/divert them. There are positive ones – that add value to you, but at the same time eat up the time for what you are supposed to be doing at a point in time. There must be deliberate efforts to level up the gap created by them.


Dare to exceed the best: The best is not the highest possible. Plan to exceed your planned success so that even if that is not possible, it will be possible to achieve your planned best.


Conclusively, adjust to what your present situation brings across your way. As you travel along, things will be clearer and you can adjust accordingly. Seek advice when necessary and include the G-factor in your success equation.

Dare to exceed the best! Prepare a delicious life.