Did you know that Indonesia got first place as the most generous country? The country has the highest levels of civil and social participation in the world, based on The Legatum Prosperity Index 2019. The report highlighted that Indonesia boasts the highest level of volunteering rather than in other countries.
Through all this time, volunteering has always been associated with philanthropy, but if you dig deeper, you can also gain other benefits. For instance, you will learn new skills and gain new perspectives about empathetic life in our surroundings. It will determine your ability to connect with society and train us to face global challenges. Here are 3 top skills that you can learn from volunteering activities:
1.You’ll be able to meet new people and improve your communication skill
Study results from Gordon and Gordon (2017) stated that volunteering activities are able to help you improve your communication skills. The study said that becoming a volunteer has allowed them to interact with a wide variety of people’s traits from all age groups and backgrounds. Volunteer activities also provide them an opportunity to learn how to display an idea that might seem impossible to a whole group. To some extent, volunteering can define your skill when facing some retention in a team.
2. Volunteering means sharpen your leadership intuition
Gaining proficiency in performing tasks can be challenging. Being involved in volunteer activities can give you an opportunity to practice newly acquired skills about leadership and hone techniques in using current skills such as decision making. Participants’ responses from the research indicated that volunteer activities help them to practice risk-taking skills and give them insights about how to perceive and handle work situations (Gordon & Gordon, 2017).
3. Volunteering Activities Train Your Emotional Stability At Work
It’s like killing two stones with one bird. Through volunteering activities, you are not just delivering your good intentions, It will train our emotional stability such as managing our anger and gaining our self-esteem for better professional prospects. In the workplace, some people may have some difficulties competing with others and feel inferior among their colleagues. That feeling causes some difficulties to manage their emotions and could affect their mental health. So, by doing volunteering activities, they can learn by sharing experiences without any competitions to be the best.
Furthermore, one of the participants’ research study conducted by Gordon and Gordon (2017) mentioned how they garnered leadership techniques from their duties in the volunteer organization with hopes of building a skilled portfolio to use when seeking promotions or new jobs in the workplace. It happens because by improving self-resiliency, they would be able to get some trust to manage a team and deliver some business objectives with a high level of pressure.
There are still plenty of skills that can be learned through volunteering activities. Volunteering offers space for you to grow and give back to communities. Imagine when you can gain the skill proficiencies that you need in a workplace through volunteering. Moreover, you will be more prepared for your future career ahead. If you are curious about which platform you can use to join volunteer activities, find out at www.indorelawan.org and sign up to be a volunteer. We encourage you to be the agent of change and now is the right time.
Follow our journey at Instagram @indorelawan to get to know more about volunteering: instagram.com/indorelawan
Reference: Gordon, P. A., & Gordon, B. A. (2017). The role of volunteer organizations in leadership skill development. Journal of Management Development, 36(5), 712–723. doi:10.1108/jmd-06-2016-0099
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/unexpected-benefits-of-volunteering-4132453
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