# 10 Good Examples of Showing Initiative at Work Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/good-examples-of-showing-initiative/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/good-examples-of-showing-initiative.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving influence at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Ten good examples of showing initiative at work - what each one looks like, when it's yours to do without asking, and how to spot the ones you already do. ## Key facts - Title: 10 Good Examples of Showing Initiative at Work - Category: Influence - Primary skill: Influence - Related skills: Working with Your Manager, Building Confidence - Primary keyword: good examples of showing initiative - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/good-examples-of-showing-initiative/ ## What this page covers - Ten good examples of showing initiative at work - what each one looks like, when it's yours to do without asking, and how to spot the ones you already do. - Practical guidance for good examples of showing initiative - How this topic connects to Influence ## Detailed explanation Being told to show more initiative is an awkward piece of feedback to receive. It names something you are apparently not doing, without naming one thing you could do differently tomorrow. Good examples of showing initiative are usually small and concrete: proposing a fix for a problem that keeps recurring, helping a colleague who is visibly stuck, writing down something nobody had documented, volunteering to prepare the material, or starting a piece of work early enough to leave room for revision. What most lists leave out is the part that actually stops people — knowing which of these are yours to do without asking first. ## Ten good examples of showing initiative at work Career sites tend to define initiative the way Zippia and BetterUp do: independently assessing a situation and starting on a solution instead of waiting to be assigned one. That is easy to agree with and hard to act on, so the examples below stay small. Each includes the judgment it requires, because the real question is rarely whether an act is impressive — it is whether it sits inside your own work. ### 1. You spotted a small recurring problem and brought a suggested fix This is the closest thing to a textbook case. Salary.com and Cake draw the same line: reporting a problem is neutral, and arriving with a proposed fix is what reads as initiative. A colleague who names friction three times a month becomes the person who complains; the same colleague who names it once with a workable suggestion becomes the person who improves things. The judgment here is scope. Propose fixes inside work you actually touch, and offer them as a suggestion rather than a decision you have already made. ### 2. You helped a colleague who was struggling, before anyone asked According to Indeed UK, this is the most repeated example in the genre, and it opens most lists. It needs no budget, [no authority](/knowledge/influence/leading-without-authority/), and nobody's permission, which makes it the safest available entry point if you have been hesitating. Indeed frames it as signaling that you are committed to what the team is trying to achieve, not only to your own task list. The only real judgment is [capacity](/knowledge/time-management/how-to-say-no-at-work-without-feeling-guilty/): help that causes you to miss your own deadline is not initiative, it is a trade you did not mean to make. ### 3. You wrote down something everyone knew but nobody had recorded Most teams run on knowledge that lives in people's heads. Extern's interview guide describes a retail sales associate who noticed that new hires floundered through their first month, and wrote an unofficial orientation guide covering the customer questions, store policies, and product details the formal training left out. Nobody asked. Nothing was approved. It cost an afternoon and it outlasted the person who wrote it. A checklist, a short FAQ, or a page of notes on the thing colleagues keep asking about all work the same way. ### 4. You brought back what you learned and taught it to the team ThriveYard describes this as the brown-bag pattern: after a training course or a conference, you run a short informal session to pass on what is useful to colleagues who did not attend. It works especially well early in a career because it is almost impossible to read as self-promotion. You are converting something the employer already paid for into value for people around you. The related version costs even less — when you work out how to do something awkward, tell the next person instead of letting them rediscover it. ### 5. You volunteered to take the notes or build the deck Volunteering for the visible project is what everyone pictures. Volunteering for the unglamorous preparation is what tends to work better when you are junior. Whoever writes the agenda decides what gets discussed; whoever builds the deck decides which numbers appear on it. This is quiet influence rather than a bid for the spotlight, and it is available in almost any meeting you already attend. It also carries almost no risk of overstepping: you are offering work nobody was competing for. ### 6. You asked for the information instead of waiting for it Indeed UK and Zippia both list proactive inquiry as initiative in its own right: going and finding what you are missing rather than waiting for it to be handed to you. Many people already do this and file it under not knowing enough. It is the opposite. Chasing down a specification, a decision, or a missing approval so your work can continue is initiative that happens to be invisible — which is why it rarely reaches anyone's review or interview answer. ### 7. You started early enough that there was time to fix things Indeed UK's example is beginning a quarterly report two weeks before it is due, so there is room for revision and checking. What makes this initiative rather than good time management is that the scheduling decision was yours and nobody asked for it. It is also the entry most likely to go unnoticed, since the only visible evidence is that your work has fewer errors in it than it might have. If you already work this way, say so out loud when the quality is remarked on. ### 8. You asked for feedback and were visibly seen acting on it [Asking for feedback](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-ask-for-feedback/) is common enough that it barely registers on its own. The initiative sits in what happens afterward — the visible change, and closing the loop with the person who gave it. Sources across the genre frame this as evidence you can take criticism and adapt. The practical version is narrow rather than broad: ask about one specific thing you are working on, change one thing in response, and mention that you did. ### 9. You kept things moving while the person in charge was away A gap in coverage creates a genuine opening. Indeed UK's version is finishing a project while your manager is on vacation and then starting the next one, framed as evidence that you adapt when the environment changes. This is also the entry that most needs a caveat. Keeping agreed work moving is initiative; making decisions someone else would have made is overreach, and the difference is not always obvious from the inside. Before a manager's absence, ask what you are [free to decide](/knowledge/decision-making/decision-making-authority/) without them. ### 10. You organized something outside work entirely If none of the above has happened to you yet, the interview guides are unanimous that non-work evidence counts: coursework, volunteering, internships, extracurriculars, personal projects, sport. Big Brothers Vancouver names organizing a fundraiser, mentoring younger students, and coordinating a food drive as legitimate instances. An example cited by Extern involves a student club losing its event venue two weeks out — seven alternative locations called, a reduced rate negotiated, all the promotion reworked inside 48 hours. That is initiative, whether or not anyone was paying for it. ## What separates a good example of initiative from a story about extra work There is a reframe hiding in the interview-side sources that the workplace lists mostly miss. Revarta and Indeed both make the point that interviewers are not looking for a time you accepted more work. They are looking for evidence that you noticed something missing, unclear, or inefficient, judged it worth addressing, and acted. Extra hours are effort. Noticing is initiative, and it is the harder half. The second correction is about how you tell it. Both sources warn against the lone-wolf impression: acting entirely alone reads as a risk rather than a strength, so show where you checked with someone or gathered input. That is quietly reassuring if your hesitation has been about overstepping — the instinct is not wrong, it is a real criterion evaluators apply, and it is managed by looping people in rather than by staying quiet. And be specific about what changed: what you called, what you wrote, what was different afterward. Reading a list like this, most people recognize two or three things they already do and had never counted. If that is happening, the useful next move is finding out which underlying skill is the weak link, and a free read on [where your skills stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) will tell you more than another list of examples. ## The skills that make initiative feel less like a risk Look at what the ten examples have in common and it is not personality. Each one asks you to judge whether something is yours to act on, then to act before anyone confirms it. Those are habits, and three in particular do most of the work. **Influence** is where initiative actually lives, in the sense of getting and applying it. Being willing to ask when the worst answer is no, setting the agenda by volunteering to prepare or organize, seizing an opening when one appears — that is entries one, five, and nine almost exactly. The point is not any single act. It is that a pattern of them is how someone junior builds credibility before they have any authority to draw on. **Working with Your Manager** supplies the guardrails the example lists skip. Agreeing where your decision-making authority ends tells you what you may start without checking; bringing solutions rather than problems is the difference in entry one; making your results visible is what stops entries six and seven from disappearing entirely. It also reframes the feedback itself. Being told to show more initiative is usually a manager signaling they want more from you, not a complaint. **Building Confidence** covers the gap between reading this list and doing anything on it. Confidence gets built by acting first and feeling capable afterward, not the other way around, and the practical trick against putting it off is deciding in advance exactly where and when you will act. Pick one entry, name the meeting, and the discomfort of speaking up unasked stops being a reason not to. None of these is a temperament you either have or lack. They are behaviors, and they are three of twelve that the framework treats as learnable — so if you want to know which one is quietly holding your initiative back, [your results across twelve skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) from the free Job Skills Test beat guessing. ## Recognizing the initiative you already take Some of the ten probably felt familiar as you read them. That recognition is worth taking seriously, because the common mistake here is not a shortage of initiative but a failure to notice the initiative you already show. People conclude they simply are not proactive when what happened is that nobody, including them, kept track. Wherever the gaps are, they are gaps in practice rather than in who you are. You do not have to become louder, pushier, or more comfortable with attention to close them — the ten examples above include several that are almost entirely quiet. And this tends to count for more, not less, as your responsibilities grow, since more of what you are expected to do stops arriving as instructions. You have already done the part most people skip, which is working out what initiative concretely looks like instead of accepting the feedback and hoping. The remaining question is a narrower one: which of these skills is furthest along for you right now, and which one is worth a bit of attention. ## See where your work skills stand That is a question you can answer today rather than guess at. The Job Skills Test is a free self-assessment of your work skills that takes about 7 minutes: you go through all twelve skills, see where each of yours currently stands, and get a sense of which ones would make the biggest difference to how you work. There is nothing to prepare and nothing riding on it — it is a look at your starting point, and you can come back whenever you like. **Take the skills test** Free, and your results appear the moment you finish. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Ten good examples of showing initiative at work - what each one looks like, when it's yours to do without asking, and how to spot the ones you already do. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Influence. It also relates to Working with Your Manager, Building Confidence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/good-examples-of-showing-initiative/ Preferred summary: "Ten good examples of showing initiative at work - what each one looks like, when it's yours to do without asking, and how to spot the ones you already do." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.