Entering Work 101: The Debrief

Photo credit (above): Valerie Everett | Flickr

You have reached the end of your show, savoured your last moment on stage, and have received your deserved applause. As all shows usually do, yours has come to an end too. Now, what?

This scene may not be as applicable if you have entered the workforce as a full-time employee. However, if you were a temporary part-timer or intern, a little after show debriefing is usually necessary to improve yourself for future plays.

Now is usually the time you start preparing yourself for a new onslaught of classes, if you’re studying (you should have sent in application forms a month or so before!) – be it your first year in college, or going back to university. You’re off to new beginnings! New adventures! I wish you all the best as your embark onto the next chapter of your life with confidence , determination, and your set expectations.

However, just before you leave for bigger things, there is usually some evaluation necessary. There usually are areas in which you wished that you did better in. These realisations aren’t ‘too late’, as you may think. Of course, you can’t repeat the whole play in front of the same audience under the exact same circumstances again, but you can bring your newly found advice to your next performance.

Recently, two of my colleagues decided to give the interns of the office a career aptitude test and talk, in order to help us improve our core skills and further develop our weaker skills. In this talk, we were acquainted with an important Venn diagram:

(Above: Drawn exclusively by yours truly)

According to this diagram, knowledge, experience, and people are the three things we need to build on to develop our aptitudes.

There must, of course, be the foundation of knowledge – things we learn in high school, college, university, or trainings. To enhance this knowledge, it should be built on with experience – in our workplace, extracurricular activities, and other miscellaneous areas. Lastly, we should leverage on the people around us – colleagues, teachers, or clients, even.

In our temporary (or permanent) workplace, there are tonnes of people you can learn from. Just like my colleague said, sometimes we see the people in the office and know that they’re talented, smart and capable, yet we don’t approach them and ask about their stories, their advice, or the difficulties they have gone through. Personally, this made me wonder to myself: Am I really building in depth relationships with my colleagues? How am I leveraging their strengths?

Curtain call

It has been an honour to be able to write this series. Thank you to those who have read it; I hope it has been beneficial to you. So long, farewell!

If you’re new to this mini-series, hello! And also goodbye, for now. You can read my previous articles here, here, and here.

Sarah is 16 going on 17 , and one of the loudest people in the office. Email her at editor@leaderonomics.com if you have any other advice that is ‘too late’ to share!