Throughout my educational and professional experiences, my preferences have always been working on projects and jobs with a team, rather than individually. In many different ways I have found that collaborating with others can truly provide benefits in accomplishing the task at hand. Being a newcomer to the BBD staff, I was afforded the opportunity to work on, not one, but two different teams. This has allowed me to rapidly gain valuable insight that I might not have been exposed to otherwise if I was limited to working on only one team.
Quite honestly, I was nervous at first about having to report to multiple managers, working on twice as many jobs and finding a way to balance my time between the two teams. These issues, however, are no longer a concern and, in fact, all three of these “concerns” have actually served as a growing experience for me. Reporting to different managers has allowed me to become familiar with and adapt to different management styles, which is critical to success when working under people. Working on more jobs has also been helpful in that I have become familiar with certain auditing procedures that apply when particular circumstances exist. Every audit that I work on follows the same general framework, but what I find most interesting and learn the most from are the scenarios that are unique to each job. As far as balancing my time between these jobs though, I have learned three important things need to happen to do it well: frequent communication with managers, efficiency, and prioritizing work.
Like I originally said, what I like the most about teamwork is that it allows for collaboration. This has continued to prove true in my experiences at BBD. I have found that if youhave a desire to learn, most people want to teach you what they know. Through working with different people on different teams, I have been able to receive insight through multiple perspectives which has allowed me to craft the knowledge into a way that I best understand it. No two managers will ever explain something the same way, and by hearing different explanations with the same meaning, I find the parts in each that I best identify with and form that into an explanation that makes the most sense to me. I couldn’t think of a better environment to be in to grow and advance in my career!
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