What is Being initiative?

Being initiative is the ability to be resourceful and to introduce a new course of action. It requires tenacity, resilience, and determination. You should be able to show your capacity to think for yourself and act when necessary.

Researchers Michael Frese and Doris Fay define initiative as “work behaviour characterised by its self-starting nature, its proactive approach, and by being persistent in overcoming difficulties that arise in pursuit of a goal.”

Being initiative is an important aspect of developing your young professional talents and part of your self-management mindset. Taking the initiative involves looking at the big picture and identifying the tasks that can be completed to move things forward.

When you show initiative, you do things without being told; you find out what you need to know; you keep going when things get tough, and spot and take advantage of opportunities that others pass by. You act instead of reacting at work.

Why Being initiative is so important?

The capacity to be resourceful and work without being told what to do is known as initiative. It needs persistence and determination. People who take the initiative show that they are capable of thinking for themselves and acting when necessary. It involves using your mind and being motivated to succeed.

Initiative is a self-management skill, and self-management is one of the key life and work skills for Young Professionals. When you are initiative, you accomplish things without being asked, solve problems others may not have noticed, and go above and beyond to keep learning and improving. If necessary, you conduct further research, ask questions, and seek assistance. 

Being initiative makes you an attractive candidate for jobs and chances since it demonstrates your ability to think for yourself and your willingness to learn and improve in your current position. 

How to enhance your Being initiative

It will need a little courage and self-belief to use your initiative talents, and you will need to push yourself a little bit farther. Simply waking up and completing the things that other people haven’t gotten around to isn’t the best method to demonstrate initiative. To truly have initiative, you should go over and over. Here are four strategies to begin developing and enhancing your initiative abilities.

1. Don’t hesitate to ask questions: Understanding how and why things operate the way they do or why things are done the way they are, helps you to consider how they may be improved. Also, the more you know about a subject, the better you’ll be able to predict what will happen next. Be interested and ask questions about procedures, and consider the big picture. You’ll probably just be responsible for one piece of a process, but learning what happens before and after you perform your job can help you develop new methods to make the next person’s work a little simpler. Never be afraid to think outside the box; seek out others with different responsibilities and interests than you and ask them how they handle problems.
2. Don’t be shy to speak up more: Make sure you’re presenting fresh ideas. Well-thought-out ideas provided at a convenient moment show initiative. You don’t want to interrupt the team management in the middle of a conversation, but if you have a new suggestion for how your sports team might score more goals or defend better, there will undoubtedly be a moment to share it! Take an interest in the issues you’re working on, and discuss new articles you’ve read and fascinating current events. If you’re helping a project with social media, talk about previous campaigns that went well and stay up with new applications and channels being developed. Speak out when you have a challenge and inspire others to do the same, take an interest in initiatives and stimulate conversation about how challenges might be handled.
3. Try always to be organised: Being initiative might be about pushing yourself to think differently about how things operate and how things are done. You’ll be putting yourself forward for new duties and forcing yourself to think differently about how things work and how things are done. To take on new projects or expand your workload, you’ll need to be organised. You’ll need to double-check that your tasks are in order and that you have the time and ability to accomplish that little bit more or work differently.
4. Be ready to act!: The key to initiative is action; you should ask questions, speak up more, and be organised and prepared, but if you do all of that and still don’t take action, you’ve failed at the last hurdle of the initiative. Seeing what needs to be done and then informing everyone about it without taking action might make you appear like a whiner rather than a doer! In teamwork circumstances, there will be one thing you are excellent at and learn faster than others; why not organise a training session for your team on your main talent, share what you know, and encourage other team members to train on their finest skill as well. If you haven’t yet entered the workforce, organising a training session where the goalkeeper or defenders discuss their talents and training might help the entire team operate better together.

The MILC project and Being initiative

The main objective of the MILC project is to create a learning approach that will equip the Millennials with 21st Century skills to practice leadership based on their way of thinking and behaviour. The MILC project will facilitate innovation support activities to ensure Millennials understand and take advantage of the opportunities offered by new innovative concepts, methodologies and approaches. 

As you may have already guessed, Being initiative is one of the 21st Century skills and developing it could be highly beneficial for any field of work. Discover more about it in the articles below and explore the MILC project’s website.