All professionals aim for success, right? Whatever success is to their profession, everyone wishes to arrive at a certain place and experience the feeling of having done so. Conversely, nobody wishes to find themselves arriving at professional failure.
Although errors, failures, and slumps are bound to occur in the course of a career, they should not be the usual thing. To be sure, it is possible to recognize a string of behaviors that could be stunting your growth and, in the process, placing you at risk of failure.
But how do you know what these patterns are? How can you determine whether you’re copying unwanted patterns and how can you turn this situation around as soon as possible?
To assist you on this path and help you not get caught in the failure trap, we have prepared the below list. It contains some of the most critical behaviors, which are usually evident in professionals that fail in their quest to succeed. So, have a look at the content and begin making changes in your work habits immediately.
Professional Failure: 6 Behaviors That May Be Hindering Your Career
1 – Underestimating the importance of soft skills.
A classic story about failure involves the so-called soft skills , which are behavioral skills. They are often underestimated and neglected, treated as an unnecessary perk for professional development. However, the reality is quite different.
The job market has already understood that how you approach work is as important as your technical skills, which are your hard skills . Therefore, you can be a highly qualified professional, but if you lack communication skills, resilience, and organization, among many other competencies, you’ll fall behind.
2 – Ignoring the importance of having a network of contacts
Another aspect that professionals often underestimate is networking. Because it’s an old recommendation that has weathered all the changes in the job market, professionals often don’t believe in its power. And they couldn’t be more wrong.
Having a robust network of contacts, and constantly cultivating it, is extremely valuable for achieving success. These are the people who will help you grow, whether through important discussions, job opportunities, events, opportunities for improvement, or technical learning.
So, stop thinking networking is nonsense or fake, and start dusting off your LinkedIn right now. Reconnect with your contacts, send connection requests to professionals you admire, start attending events, conferences, and courses, and watch the change happen.
3 – Not accepting your mistakes and negative feedback
Nobody likes making mistakes and receiving negative feedback, right? However, both situations are inevitable. Professionals in the job market will make blunders; this is undeniable. While the severity and frequency of “missteps” can’t be the norm, problems will happen.
So, if you can make the most of the lessons learned from these situations, you’ll turn a lemon into lemonade. Using challenging moments to learn will keep you safe from failure, as it often affects rigid professionals who can’t accept their mistakes and learn from them.
4 – Being too competitive
In corporate environments, many professionals still treat their teammates competitively. They try to do everything themselves, strive to highlight only their own results, are uncooperative, and can even be dishonest, “pulling the rug” out from under other employees.
At face value, this may seem like a good idea for standing out and advancing in your career. However, we cannot overlook ethical considerations or forget the importance of relationships.
Closing doors and fostering hatred will only make things worse. After all, employers want collaborative staff, and networking is far more beneficial than any competition you may encounter.
After all, being honest, ethical, collaborative, and able to deliver great results, even as part of a team, is what will truly catch the attention of managers and help you grow.
5 – Letting procrastination take over your daily life
Who has not procrastinated a bit? Delaying tasks and requirements, usually at the expense of deadlines, is a professional classic per se. Procrastination, while harmless on occasion, should not become a habit of yours.
It is rather negative and detrimental to your career, both by defacing your image and by disturbing the whole chain of actions and tasks in the workplace.
6 – Avoid keeping yourself updated and acquiring new knowledge
Finally, having started this writing with a mention of soft skills, let us end by mentioning hard skills. Proactively updating yourself, continuing to learn, specializing, and becoming a technically better professional is the key to avoiding failure.
After all, the world is changing every day, and if you cease studying, you lag behind, applying old knowledge and methods to work. So, why not begin your specialization at once and eliminate professional failure forever?
