Get out of your comfort zone to see what you did not even know existed!
Changes have always scared people in life. Most people prefer staying in their comfort zone because it is easier and less scary than new possible experiences. Experiencing the unknown is often nerve-racking. It is scary to swim in water if we do not know its depth, or it is unsettling to climb a high mountain, it is perceived as risky to change jobs or positions as a new challenge rather than staying with what you already have and gotten used to. Nevertheless, these are the experiences which differentiate us from other people in life. Most people swim at the beach, but few people swim in deep oceans, and it is those few who stand out in a crowd with such a different experience. I think this mentality applies to the business life too. Companies want people with different experiences. Even for a junior position, they expect some internships, extracurricular activities, different courses, or certificates during their studies. When such standards are expected for a junior position, it is normal for the qualifications required for higher positions to be even more.
There are two main ways to gain different experiences for a worker; one of them is change of working role and/or responsibilities within the same company and second one is to take on another adventure in a different company or even industry.
Job changing process almost always takes a lot of time and effort. It is important to note that changing jobs frequently is not a good sign for companies to hire a person. In general, a person should not change his/her job every year or in a shorter period. This shows lack of loyalty to a job or a company. Yet, a person should not be stuck in company within the same role for a long time either. Time period to change jobs should be evaluated carefully to avoid such reputation and, the new job should be offering new experiences to the worker to improve and get ahead in work life.
Another way to gain different experience is the role and/or responsibility changes within companies but the possibility of role changing is low if you are an insource worker in a company. The main reason behind this is to keep the know-how at a good level but losing that person would create a gap in the company. Instead of that, transferring the knowledge to more than one person would create more options for the company to keep the knowledge. That means a circulation within the company would create more knowledge and sharing that knowledge could create new ideas for progress. Different people look at problems from different perspectives and that prevents problems about a process beforehand and if a person can look at a process from multiple perspectives, this could create a better outcome. For instance, a worker who worked in 5 different roles in a company during a three-year period can look a new task from 5 different perspectives because he/she would have seen how a certain department looks at a new task and what are the needs for that specific department. This would enable the person to analyze the task from a general point of view and create the optimal outcome in the task. Remember that teams are built from people with different talents so that different ideas can come for a task. Then you can look at a problem from different perspectives and come up with many ideas about a task, that makes you a unique person both in the team and in the company.
That is why a worker should not be afraid of moving out of his/her comfort zone and should be open to new roles and responsibilities in the company. New qualifications and experiences open new windows to people that they did not even know existed. Those people will be one step ahead of their competitors and differentiated in a crowd. It is exactly as Andre Gide when he famously claimed, “the length of the unopened wings cannot be known.” People should open their wings to discover the miracles of flying!
