How to Be a Good Public Servant: 6 Expert Tips 

Starting a career as a public servant is an exciting new journey! When you start your new career, you will likely want to know everything you can about how to succeed and do well once you begin your new job responsibilities. To help you get set up on the right path for your new or growing career, we have put together our top six expert tips that will help set you apart and help you become a great public servant. 

The 6 expert tips to be a good public servant include being willing to learn consistently, striving to improve communication with orders, developing a passion to make a difference, being willing to accept feedback given to you, keeping your mind and eyes open, and taking the time to make your community a priority. Following these 6 tips will help you stand out in a positive way and will help you advance in your career. 

 

Be Willing to Consistently Learn 

No matter where you may be in your career as a public servant, you can become an excellent public servant by being willing to consistently learn. Learning new skills isn’t something you only do at the beginning of your new career. To set yourself apart and to be a great public servant, you should regularly look for ways to learn new skills and gain new knowledge that will help you in your career. 

By adding new skills to your resume, you will also increase your chances of being able to advance in your career as a public servant. When new job opportunities come up, you will have an advantage over others who may lack the amount of knowledge or skills you’ve gained in certain areas. It makes a positive impression on your supervisors and with anyone who may be considering you for a more advanced role. 

By learning regularly, you will increase your level of creativity, come up with new ideas that you may not have come up with previously, and will broaden your overall ability to succeed in your job responsibilities. With an increased amount of knowledge, you will also be more prepared to serve your community in a new way and solve more problems. Excellent public servants seek to solve as many problems for their community as possible, which becomes easier when you have more overall knowledge. 

 

Strive to Improve Communication with Others 

Communication is a vital part to be a great public servant. When you are serving your community, you need to be able to openly and professionally communicate with those that you come into contact with. With excellent communication skills, you will be able to gain the trust and respect of the members of your community that you serve. If you have poor communication and have trouble communicating clearly to others, you may experience a more difficult time building trust and working with the public. 

If you feel like you lack excellent communication skills, there are many ways you can work on improving your skills. Even if you do have decent communication skills, it can only help you to regularly work on continually improving these skills as well.  

Some ways to start improving your communication skills is by paying attention to how intently you listen to those you communicate with. When someone is speaking to you, are you only waiting to be able to talk and internally thinking about how you’re going to respond? Or are you closely and intently listening to what the person is saying, by really taking in what they are telling you?  

In order to improve your communication skills, it is essential for you to improve the way you listen to others first. If you don’t fully understand what others are telling you, you’ll have a hard time being able to respond properly. Becoming an excellent listener is the most important step when it comes to improving your overall communication skills. 

 

Develop a Passion to Make a Difference 

When it comes to doing your job as a public servant, the main purpose of your role is to help your community and do what you can to make a positive difference. This is accurate no matter what specific job role you may have in the public servant area. To really set yourself a part as a public servant you should strive to develop a passion to make a difference. 

When you have a passion to make a difference, you regularly look for ways that you can help or make a difference in your community. This means you use your creativity to come up with new ideas and you think outside of the box. Instead of only following what’s been done before, you take the time to think of new possibilities that could help out your community. 

Having a passion to make a difference is another way to help you solve more problems for your community, similar to regularly increasing your level of knowledge. When you truly have a passion to make a difference, you may also notice that you are often more kind and patient with members of your community. This is another way that your passion to make a difference can help you be a good public servant. 

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Be Willing to Accept Feedback

To set yourself apart in any career field, including working as a public servant, it is highly encouraged that you are willing and able to positively accept feedback. In your career, you will be given feedback throughout the years, regarding how you are doing at your job and how you can do better. This feedback will likely be given regularly by supervisors. To set yourself apart, it is crucial to being able to take in the feedback and use it to improve. 

If you regularly get defensive and don’t take feedback well, it is highly unlikely that your supervisors will consider you for more advanced roles in your career. In order to be considered for higher-level positions, it is important you listen to feedback with a good attitude, analyze the information you’ve been given, and then use the information to help you develop and improve in your overall job responsibilities.  

When you work as a public servant, you may also regularly receive feedback from the community regarding how your department or government agency is doing, depending on your role. This is another type of feedback that it will be crucial for you to be great at accepting. If you react badly to feedback that the community gives you, this can cause the community members to distrust you and make it more difficult to build a relationship with them. They will likely also be less likely to give you more feedback in the future. 

 

Keep Your Mind and Eyes Open 

You will likely have a difficult time being an excellent public servant if you are not paying attention to your surroundings on a consistent basis. Part of being a good public servant is staying curious and paying close attention. This includes both while performing your job responsibilities and while spending time in your community. 

When it comes to keeping your mind open, you want to stay open to receiving and implementing new ideas. You don’t want to close yourself off to potential new opportunities or ways that could make improvements to your community. By being closed off, you may miss out on noticing a way that could make your job easier or make a positive difference in your community or the specific department that you work in. 

For keeping your eyes open, this means you want to pay attention to both your job role and things you may notice when you’re spending time in your community. For example, You might notice a dangerous hole in the street you’re driving on that could cause an accident. By keeping your eyes open, you might notice this and then report it to someone in your department or branch of government that could put in the word to get the hole fixed. 

Keeping both your mind and eyes open and staying alert not only helps you help your community, but it also helps you make a great impression in your department. This will come in handy if you decide you want to advance in your career. By staying alert, you will be able to suggest improvements to benefit your department, which will catch the eye of supervisors or recruiters who are hiring for other positions. 

 

Take Time to Make Your Community a Priority 

When you start a career as a public servant, you are making a commitment to your community. To really be an excellent public servant, you need to take the time to show that your community is a priority in your life. This shows that you are genuine about what you do, and it also shows that you take your job seriously. 

There are multiple ways that you can show that your community is a priority to you. For example, You could volunteer your time for a non-profit organization in your community that is related to a cause close to your heart. You could volunteer at schools in your community. In most areas, there are countless areas that you can volunteer in your community.  

By providing your time to help your community and making your community a priority, you will be making a positive impact on those around you and you will also help your community build trust in you when it comes to serving them as a public servant. This is a great way to build a relationship with the members of your community. 

Another way to show that your community is a priority is you can make a commitment to doing your job the best that you can. When you commit to being the best public servant you can be, it also the level of dedication that you have for both your job and also for the community that you help serve. It helps show everyone that you are serious about what you do and it shows that you are an excellent public servant.  

Starting a new career or even progressing your career as a public servant is an exciting adventure. It can be a life-changing career move to become a public servant. To take your career to the next level and really become an excellent public servant, we encourage you to follow the 6 expert tips we’ve mentioned above on how to be a good public servant. These tips are easy to apply and will help set you apart in your career. 

 

Related Questions

What are the benefits of being a public servant? 

There are multiple benefits to becoming a public servant! First, you get the privilege of knowing that you are making a positive difference in your community. Without our public servants, our communities wouldn’t be able to function and run properly on a regular basis. Since public servants are so essential to our communities, another benefit is enjoying a sense of job security. Public servants will always be a needed job role. 

Other benefits that many public servant job roles have include paid time off, sick leave, and quality insurance packages. Many public servant jobs are employed by government agencies, which means the health and dental packages are often excellent. Depending on the position, many public servant jobs also have competitive wages. 

 

How do I become a public servant if I have no experience? 

When it comes to starting a career as a public servant, there are many specific job roles that fall under this category. There are various public servant job titles that won’t require large amounts of experience to get started. Some public servant jobs also won’t require any education other than a high school diploma. 

The first way to become a public servant without experience is to find specific public servant roles that you are interested in. Then you will want to locate available job openings on your local government’s website and look for jobs that require a little experience. Once you’ve found potential roles, you’ll start the application process! 

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Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.