From the Latin for ‘beginning’, initiative is a great quality to possess and valued by all businesses and relationships, formal or romantic. It means quickly assessing all available options in a current situation and acting on it without delay in a cautious manner, with haste and diligence and seeming as if you are a desirable team player. Motivation is key to initiative, as is acting sensibly without prior instruction while asking pertinent questions and staying on the move. The rewards of taking initiative are great: You'll gain skills and knowledge about your company, making you a more valuable employee and better equipped to survive a downturn in personnel by rising up the ranks. You'll achieve more independence when you demonstrate that you have the organization’s interests in mind and that they can trust your judgment. Working without supervision in a proactive way is key to taking initiative, relaying what has been done back to those in charge and taking the strain off them while not overstepping the boundaries of the job. It is a level of confidence that one gains by learning his or her job, looking around to see what needs to be done next and taking care of it, especially when it is in the realm of your authority and when it makes you part of a large team where something needs to be done more rapidly and got out of the way. People will often forgive you for acting incorrectly, though ask your supervisor if it would be okay if you went ahead and completed the next steps. This way, the supervisor knows you are thinking the job through; at the same time, by taking on an additional task, will your boss think you don't have enough work to do and are looking for more? If this is a possibility, make sure your boss understands that the lull in your work is only temporary, or that you're taking on the extra task to avoid boredom and learn something new. If you're not careful, the extra task could become part of your job.
