The republic of uzbekistan chirchik state pedagogical institute of tashkent region independent work

Growing outwards

There are many ways that you can, of your own volition, hone your existing skills whilst doing your existing job. These will require self-motivation and an entrepreneurial attitude towards your own development, but they are rewarding. If you have been previously feeling stuck, you may actually find that you have more autonomy in your role than you first thought.

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  Mentoring others: One of the best ways to become more knowledgable and to more deeply understand what you currently do is to teach others. It gives you the opportunity to train a more junior member of staff, hence improving the overall output of the department, but, at the same time, it allows you to reflect on the way that you solve problems yourself. Mentoring can be done in a number of different ways. You could seek out a more junior colleague and introduce yourself, or you could regularly encourage pairing up on tasks with those on your team. Another strategy is to advertise “office hours” in your schedule where anyone can drop in with a problem that you can help solve together.
  
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  Giving talks: Whether you are a fan of it or not, getting better at public speaking is a life skill rather than just a career skill. What better opportunity to practice than to speak on subjects that you know a great deal about in front of friendly people from a similar skill set? You can start small by encouraging an informal talk slot at regular intervals within your team, or you could give a department-wide talk if you’re feeling brave. Even better still, submitting abstracts to conferences and then getting accepted is a great way of forcing yourself to dedicate time to doing a great talk. Once written and done once, you can take that talk and do it again and again at different meet-ups and gatherings. Similar to running a marathon, you don’t become an expert by default. Public speaking requires practice, practice, practice.
  
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