BUILDING SUCCESSFUL WORK HABITS (CONTINUED)
The
way to overcome obstacles to your work are to prevent them
from happening. Here is
how to avoid these common pitfalls.
Common
Excuse # 1.
No
one trained me how to do that.
Learn everything about your job you can. Try to learn what
other people in the company or agency are doing as well.
Any time there is a new form, a new computer program, a new
program, try to learn about it. Some of it will be boring.
There are people who are interested in filling out forms
for federal grants. However, I know how to do it and if it
is absolutely necessary, I can. When training is offered on
the reservation, ask your supervisor for permission to
attend. Often, you can get your regular salary for going to
training. We are all familiar with those people who take
every travel opportunity presented by the school board,
tribe, casino or other organization with which they are
working. There is a lot of skepticism about those people
always going to Arizona in the winter for 'training'. There
is nothing wrong at all with going to a conference or a
training class for a week, as long as you go to class.
How
not to do things ... another true story
Myrna frequently told her supervisor and
co-workers how much she really wanted to help the people
with disabilities that were to be served by her project but
that she just did not have the training. She sounded very
sincere about her desire to do a good job. Her department
sent her to a lot of training classes, but her students
still were not very successful in meeting their goals. One
week, I happened to be in Arizona at the same hotel as
Myrna, who was sent to a course on teaching basic reading
to adults. The first morning, as I was going to my meeting,
Myrna was leaving to go shopping. The next day, when I was
coming back from my meeting, I ran into Myrna again, coming
back from a sight-seeing tour of the Grand Canyon. I think
she must have noticed the way I looked at her because she
said, "How many chances is someone from our reservation
going to get to see the Grand Canyon?" A few weeks later,
in a school meeting, it was brought up that many of the
people leaving the program could not get jobs. Myrna
defended herself by saying, "It's not my fault. A lot of
them can't read and it is hard to find a job when you can't
read. No one ever trained me on teaching people with
disabilities to read." Before that meeting, whenever Myrna
said she did not know how to do something, I would spend
time working with her one on one, explaining the
information on an IEP or what services were available to
help the students in her program. After that, I just didn't
bother because it was clear to me that she didn't want to
learn, she just wanted an excuse.
Click here for more advice on overcoming common excuses and
building good work habits