Moving up in a career can be characterized by a myriad of challenges. Sometimes you can feel like you are on the right track but before long a challenge comes your way and you almost get totally discouraged. A wise person must work hard to overcome setbacks. Everyone faces serious challenges in their careers. Workplace injury is one of the most common setbacks. The few who eventually emerge as winners are those who don’t allow setbacks to stop them from moving on with their plans. Here are a few important ways you can deal with setbacks at work.
Own Up but Remain Positive
When setbacks occur, it’s natural to want to assume nothing happened or feel like you won’t be able to realize all your dreams. Don’t pretend there’s no problem or allow the negative feeling to settle inside you. Instead, accept the situation and remember it is temporary. Also, keep in mind that no setback can make you a total failure. Regardless of what happened, there are high chances that it won’t have a long-lasting negative impact on you as long as you remain focused.
Get a Reliable Support System
Don’t walk alone during such hard moments. You need people who can help you to make the best decisions and advise you accordingly. Go out of your way and ask for help from your trusted friends who understand the situation.
While your friends and colleagues can give you a fresh perspective, you need to consider if you need someone who can offer professional support. If need be, have a mentor and a professional coach on on-board. As you look for a mentor, however, keep in mind that it’s useful to get one who has a good record and has been in your line of work for a long time. Such a person has most likely had several opportunities to deal with similar setbacks.
Protect the Rights of Injured Workers
Workplace injuries are the most common type of setback at work. Some injuries simply cost more money to treat and recover from than others. The most expensive ones include overexertion, falls from height, transportation accidents, slips without falls, entanglements and crushing, blunt force trauma, and repetitive force such as filing or processing food. Ensure your workers who have been injured in these types of accidents recover the compensation they need with ease.
Take the Right Action
At this point, you have taken some time to process your emotions and gathered a lot of information from your friends, mentors, and consultants. You are now ready to move on and continue developing your career. Move on with the implementation of your strategic plans as you measure progress along the way.
As you do this, you will begin to feel better and energized to work hard again. This step will remove the negative emotions associated with the challenge and give you a better reason to continue working hard. Based on the new positive emotions, you will find new insights that you can share with others and help them to grow after encountering a problem.
Learn Your Lessons
Once you are back on track and everything seems going on in the right way, don’t ignore the past negative experience. It offers you a lot of useful information. Also, don’t rush to try to teach others using the experience before you learn from it. Remember honest learning is devoid of blaming and judging others. Ask yourself what led you to the situation, what valuable information you gained in the entire process, and what things you need to put in place to prevent the problem from happening again.
Consider keeping a learning journal where you record everything you learn from all the small and major setbacks you encounter on a daily basis. Learning journals and other similar valuable tools can serve to remind you of the temporary nature of setbacks. They can also remind you of your ability to keep pushing through challenges.
Irrespective of your level of seniority at your company, provided you have chosen to work, you will inevitably experience some form of setbacks. Your project may be canceled or you may be asked to leave a company after doing your very best. But in all, you will almost certainly make a comeback if you deal with the setbacks properly.