Are you a new employee in an architecture office? Do you want to impress your employers and that way guarantee yourself a prosperous career? Here are some advises on how to be the best architect in the office. Follow them.
Become irreplaceable
If you are only “one in a million”, believe us, no one will notice you, no matter the effort you make. Being invisible on your job won’t give you any progress. So, avoid being invisible, and make your employers understand that you are completely essential to your workplace. The best to do is to specialize in one concrete area, and become the best in it. First, pick one area that you are most interested in, such as sustainable building, or pillars and gravity distribution, for example. Study hard, read a lot, in-deep explore the concrete area, and become the one in the office that knows absolutely everything about the specific area of architecture.
Commit to your interests and work on becoming even better every single day. May being a generalist and knowing something about any area be your pros, especially if you are in early stages of work, but quirky specialist are always on biggest demand. Specialize yourself in what you think you could do the best, and do it even better. They say ”Jack of all trades, Master of none ”, and believe us, it is so applicable in real life.
Never stick with just one mentor
The best resource of anything you can learn are not the libraries and the online databases, people are. Always try to remember this. Having one single mentor may have worked in the past, but it is not practical anymore. Instead of learning from only one mentor, try to learn something from everyone. Identify the skills you need to learn in any person of the organization, and start to learn from him/her. You should know clearly the positions that you aspire to reach. Once you have that clearly in your mind, you can start the learning process. Ask your more experienced colleagues for a drink or for coffee, ask them to share some advice and experience with you. Then listen attentively what they are sharing with you. You can get so many benefits from such meet ups with more experienced architects from the company. They can help you boost your personal development and achieve higher goals in your career.
Remember to be a teacher
You can learn a lot from others, but always keep the two-ways side of the learning process. You can learn, as mentioned above, but if you are skillful in some area more than the others, you can teach too. The teacher-student relationship is essential for bigger prosperity. If you are good in something, hold in-house conferences or make some study session groups for your team and share your knowledge with them. That way you will have the chance to stand out as a great leader and a good team player, which is essential for achieving the company’s goals.
Directly request the things you want
Always make polite requests on anything you need to know or when you need some help in something you are doing. Being interested in the job and the projects of your company is always a positive characteristic. Proactive workers always get some bonuses on their reputation, so be one of them. Don’t be afraid to ask for the things you want.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
Leave your comfort zone. No one get any higher progress from being stuck in their comfort zone. Face all the challenges that you face to, and the next time you need to give a speech or propose a new design, don’t be afraid to do it. Be braver and more innovative. Overcome the anxiety and build up resilience that will keep you safe in future stressed situations.
Failure is your friend
Failure is not the opposite of success, it is part of it. If you fail once, it is important to not give up, because failure is a lesson you have so much to learn from. The most risk those who don’t even take risk, right? So if you never failed, you never tried. And if you failed, you are having the chance to identify the weaknesses that lead to the failure, and try to improve them. Always remember, failure is your friend, not your enemy.
