How do I assess if I am making a good contribution to my team?

What a great question, it’s valuable to sit back and assess how we are tracking personally and professionally and all too often we tell ourselves that we are too busy to make the time to do this. Well that’s the excuse we often use. Taking time to evaluate and assess will give rich rewards.

Knowing what you know about yourself, your career and what you contribute, how would you assess this? Before engaging others in helping you find the answers you are looking for, take time to search for the answers yourself. How you feel about your contribution is important. Trust that you know yourself better than anyone else does, be honest with yourself and make a list of how you contribute, where you know you could be doing more, identify what you could be doing to add more value and define what value is (to you and the business/team).

And remember to acknowledge where your contribution makes a difference, taking note of the times that you have felt great about what you have contributed.

I am curious about what prompted this question. How do you feel about the contributions you make? What are the results that you are getting? Are they the results that you want? How do you define contribution? You may wish to break it down to different categories, for example: ideas/strategy; revenue/sales: support/mentoring of colleagues; fun; research, what I contribute that is unique? Add your own categories relevant to your work/team.

Look at areas where you are contributing that may not be productive. Some people contribute office politics, bullying, gossip and game playing. In service of your growth and development, what are some of the things that you contribute that detract from the team/value that you bring?

Take the list above and circle the ways you contribute to your team. How does this stack up against your KPI’s and what’s expected of you in your role? And importantly, what you expect from yourself.

Once you have explored this yourself, you may then wish to pose the question to colleagues and your manager, asking for areas of development/improvement. Are you meeting the organisations expectations of your role/duties? Are you exceeding expectations?

Good luck and remember to have fun with this.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). In this blog Pollyanna answers questions from our readers on issues they are experiencing leading or being part of a team.  She offers insights on teams and team dynamics. For support and information on team days run by Perspectives Coaching see here. Her previous Blog for SmartCompany, 2nd Time Around was about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round.

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