What Can A Senior Colleague Teach You At Your First Job?

Colleagues play a major role in acclimatising you to your new work. Whether it is a new software introduced in the company or a change in the company policy, colleagues adapt everything if there is camaraderie. Careers360 lists a few skills that new hires can learn from experienced colleagues.

Communication and Persuasion

Corporates flourish in communication and relationship building. This important aspect of growing can be best learned through human interaction. Senior colleagues guide the new joiners with effective communication through their conversations. They help the newcomer to express their ideas effectively.

Overall, interactions with colleagues create a rich learning environment where the new joiner can develop and refine communication and persuasion skills through observation, feedback, and practice.

Also Read-Why Must You Master Your Communication and Persuasion Skills?

Create and Maintain Healthy Boundaries

Learning to say ‘no’ is very important in life even in terms of the workplace. Learning to create and maintain healthy boundaries with colleagues is an essential skill for a harmonious work environment. The new employees can observe how their colleagues maintain healthy boundaries. This teaches them to prioritise their work while avoiding burnout. An employee with a healthy boundary is always more productive than an overburdened one. Colleagues can teach the new joiners how to gracefully manage work and delegate responsibilities if they are unreasonable demands. The colleague also guides them in managing the conflicts that arise due to boundary violations by addressing the issue professionally and assertively.

Decision-Making

Colleagues play a crucial role in teaching decision-making skills. Most of the job roles involve working in a team or delegating responsibilities. While working on a single project there are high chances of disagreements. Every teammate may have a different perspective. Healthy discussions and coming to a common consensus is an important part of decision-making the employee learns while working together.

In the end, working together and having the power to decide things at work can make an employee a more skilled decision-maker. This is important for career and personal growth.

Also Read:Decision-Making: Common Challenges Faced, Tips To Make Good Decisions

Managerial Skills

Colleagues can be excellent resources for advice when learning managerial techniques. They often share their experience in fields like project management, team management, and leadership. New joinees gain a lot of insight by observing their colleagues who are at the upper management level. They can observe how their senior leads a team, assigns tasks, sets objectives and gives feedback. The coworkers can also suggest useful training courses, publications, or other materials to assist you in honing your managerial abilities.

Basic Etiquettes (hard to learn)

The environment at the workplace makes a holistic development of an individual. Fresh out of college an employee is unaware of the major ethics of the workplace. Studying for an exam and working for a firm demands different levels of focus and commitment. Through shared experiences and support, colleagues can help the employee focus on his work. Colleagues who show consistency in work are the role models for the new employees. They encourage individuals to stick to commitments and routines, emphasising the importance of discipline and reliability in both personal and professional life. Colleagues can reinforce the importance of punctuality by setting examples and promoting respect for time. Learning from punctual colleagues helps build a reliable persona at the workplace. self-discipline in the workplace.

Also Read-6 Skills That Are Difficult Acquire But Are Essential For Your Success

Feedback Mechanism

Working on a task without feedback is the same as running in a race without an assigned task. It is the reason the office culture promotes feedback at all levels. Valuable insights can be drawn from feedback given by colleagues that are kind, specific, and useful to new team members. Experienced colleagues can be like teachers. They can show employees how to give and take feedback in a good way. These colleagues teach the new employees how to take the feedback constructively and work on their improvement.

Colleagues play an important role in assisting new employees in navigating their professional pathways and making educated decisions for long-term success by building a friendly and collaborative atmosphere.