Dana Cetojevic

Reflecting on my career as a young professional. I have had the pleasure of having experience Within a few industries. Such as hospitality, retail, fashion and even the meat industry. I believe that over time I have had the ability to experience several disruptions within the workplace, and notable challenges that I have had to face as a young professional. 

Through my experience of challenging disruptions at work, I think it’s important for me to express how much I value disruption and these challenges. I believe that these occurrences within the workplace Create valuable lessons, they bring about a team and ultimately a resolution.

Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity states: “In these moments, like it or not, what we do reveals who we are: the values we uphold and how well we hold them up are evident to ourselves and to others”.

I think a really big thing I’ve noticed whilst being a worker is the constant search for solutions. How can we fix issues within the workplace so that the work can operate thoroughly according to the structure.  I believe challenges ultimately create relationships as well with either colleagues, customers or third-party agencies in which the business supplies from. 

The way we go about resolving issues and challenges within a workplace I believe really stems from your personal values as a human being. Ultimately if you naturally put yourself first above anyone else, then I don’t see a successful solution is applicable. But what I’ve learnt through my experience is that the notion of “there is no ‘I’ in a team” really  predominantly paints a healthy picture of what leadership and solution finding is. I believe teamwork is key to success in any workplace. However I am aware that reliability on individuals can impose complications..I 

Dr. Richard Hackman, one of the foremost researchers in the recent decades on workplace teams, “I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary, but don’t count on it,” 

A very recent occurrence that happened at my job recently, really changed my perspective as a worker and laser. And it was probably the most challenging experience that I’ve ever encountered in a professional workplace. I believe the actions I took after the constructive criticism that I received from my boss on the 23/06/22 was a huge professional turn around for me. 

I am currently working for a beautiful fashion accessories company called MON. Essentially my role at this company is an e-commerce coordinator and monogrammer. Monogramming is a very interesting skill that I’ve picked up now from working at MON. The purpose of monogramming is two and bass characters on the two leather accessories that customers have chosen and personalised. This was a very new Lee implemented feature that was brought into the company. Because the brand is still developing and growing, throughout its growth and expansion my boss had decided to implement monogramming into the business as another form of luxury service to customers.  

As you can imagine this was a major change that was implemented. Monogramming is an extremely beautiful and old-fashioned form of personalisation. Because of its old-fashioned manner it is an extremely manual machine, so you can imagine the amount of a Struggles we had whilst starting to learn how to monogram. Because you only have one shot of stamping the product in its correct position in format because once it’s been stamped it can’t be unstamped from the leather. 

This new skill that we were instructed to learn is extremely challenging to me. I found it rather difficult to actually do. And this was something that we had to do for customers as well, so we had to do this service on products that we are actually going to customers. Sso the expectation of quality had to be immaculate.

Without having to explain too much, I ruined several products and was not taking myself  accountable for the errors I had made. I would hide the products I screwed up, in fear so my boss would not find out how many mistakes I had made and how much stock I had wasted. Eventually like in any circumstance I was called out. He began to notice missing products from the engine tree and had found the small stash of errors I made.

II don’t believe I have ever received the biggest slap on the wrist that I did on that day from my boss. I was ashamed and I felt very very dishonourable and quite awful. However I had made the decision to look past my sour view on having to learn something so difficult in such a quick matter of time and reasoned with myself. I decided to take a much more Headstrong and fierce approach to this. I had to find a solution to better myself. The following week came and I was extremely attentive to detail. I made sure that I would practise on old products that we didn’t sell before I did them on the single item that was going to be sent to customers.  That whole week my boss was super impressed with my efforts and I too was extremely proud of myself because of not doing it correctly ultimately. I was more proud of myself because I took initiative to find a solution to the problem that I was facing and to show pride and integrity in my work ethic. 

Dana

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity states: “In these moments, like it or not, what we do reveals who we are: the values we uphold and how well we hold them up are evident to ourselves and to others”.

 J Hackman, R., 2002. Leading Teams. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation: “I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary, but don’t count on it,”