Importance of Identifying Your Work Style

A part of managing your career is the importance of identifying your work style, which is how you approach tasks and problems. These can include:

• action oriented
• process oriented
• task oriented
• problem solver
• solution focused
• creative

The advantage of determining your work style helps you to focus on finding specific positions where you get to use them so you are more involved in your work and have more job satisfaction. The result: job happiness. This knowledge will also help you to have better conversations with your manager so he can assign work geared to your strength which can lead to more challenging and rewarding work, as well a future promotional opportunities.

How do you know? Sit and look at how you approach a task – any will work (work task, financial decision, housework, etc.):

When approached with a task, do you:

• dive in and start or do you plan and prepare?
• get all the tools and resources first before you start?
• write a pro/con list?
• look at any and all ideas for how you can handle the situation?
• like to do the work itself?

These are some questions to start assessing your work style; look also at past situations or how you are in your current role/work team; you can also ask your coworkers or family/friends for that outside view.

If you want more career success, self-awareness is key and knowing your preferred way of working will set the tone for the types of positions you want to do as well as the type of organizational structure you want to do them in.