100 Things You Need to Know: Professionalism: For Students and New Professionals

By Mary Crane

If you need to position yourself as a successful new professional, you’ve come to the right resource. Mary Crane has developed a list of the 100 most important things you need to know in easy-to-absorb, almost tweetable chunks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780989066495

Book preview

Stress

Introduction

Now and then, a particular word captures the imagination of employers across all fields, and almost instantaneously, that term enters the business zeitgeist. Most recently this has happened with the word professionalism.

Most employers report that today’s colleges and universities graduate some of the smartest students this country has ever seen. Unfortunately those same employers complain that many new hires lack a series of critically important professional skills. I can teach a junior associate how to draft an iron-clad contract, senior law partners have told me, but I can’t teach a new hire how to think through a problem or behave in front of a client.

Professionalism has become such a hot topic that Pennsylvania’s York College has created its own Center for Professional Excellence (CPE). Each year since its inception, the Center has conducted an annual survey on professionalism, and that survey has yielded some important insights, including:

   HR professionals and managers believe that about 50 percent of new graduates lack professionalism, and that number seems to grow yearly.

   Employers expect new employees to conform to their standards of professionalism, and new hires make a big mistake when they assume the workplace will adjust to them.

   When asked what professionalism means, managers and HR professionals list the following: interpersonal skills; communication skills; time management; confidence; ethics; and knowledge.

   Employers are particularly critical about so-called IT abuses among new hires, including: excessive social media use; inappropriate use of the Internet; texting during meetings, phone calls, and training seminars; and the use of smartphones for what appears to be constant nonemergency personal calls.

About the time that York College’s CPE emerged, I started to receive program delivery requests from employers who wanted me to address a variety of professionalism issues. Each time I received such a request, I asked the prospective client one question: What does ‘professionalism’ mean to you? The responses I received and continue to receive have been fairly consistent:

   Interpersonal skills, including knowing the assets and liabilities each person brings to the workplace and how to maximize those assets while minimizing liabilities;

   Communication skills, including knowing how to sound confident without sounding arrogant; and

   Workplace attitudes, including showing a positive attitude, taking initiative, responding to feedback, and adopting an attitude of gratitude.

I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve heard, Our newest employees need to look like professionals, especially when they meet with clients.

I designed the 100 Things You Need to Know book series with the following goal in mind: I want to ensure that everyone with whom you work automatically and consistently associates your name with the word professionalism. Other books in the series address professionalism issues like what to wear to an interview and on the job, how to manage time and projects, and how to create a network that will help you succeed. A separate book addresses a plethora of topics that fall under the rubric of business etiquette.

In this book, we’ll tackle the 100 Things You Need to Know about professionalism with a special focus on interpersonal skills, communication skills, and attitude.

Chapter 1

Develop Self-Awareness

You know that you need a certain amount of smarts to succeed at work. Your GPA and all that it proves helped you land your first job. Once you start work, however, a series of interpersonal skills quickly become key predictors of your future success.

Developing interpersonal skills starts with acquiring an understanding of your unique talents and strengths. People who possess self-awareness understand that their personality impacts how well they work with others. True professionals refect on how they can best modify their own behaviors to facilitate relationships with internal and external clients.

Learn to value every piece of feedback that you receive. Constructive feedback, in particular, allows you to develop a more thorough understanding of your unique capabilities and shortcomings. Once you accurately understand your mindset and skill sets, you can help others appreciate your capabilities.

1. Develop self-awareness of technical and people skills

Self-aware new professionals recognize that their formal education has provided them with a baseline of knowledge. They also acknowledge that they still have much to learn. The most self-aware new professionals admit what they don’t yet know, and they commit to filling in knowledge gaps. When they make a mistake—and inevitably everyone does—self-aware new professionals admit the error and swiftly rectify it.

So, take a deep breath. When you’re asked to perform a task that exceeds your ability, let others know that the task will stretch the limits of your knowledge and indicate your eagerness to do just that. Doing so highlights your willingness to learn.

In addition to acquiring new technical skills, demonstrate an ongoing willingness to acquire new knowledge about your personality, the manner in which you process information, and your preferred method for working with others. Know what motivates and drives you. Clarify your personal and professional values. Identify hot-button issues that may impact your interactions with others.

2. Understand self-awareness’s import

Self-awareness is not some New Age, feel good issue. It can be critical to the bottom-line of an organization.

This is especially true when it comes to junior employees knowing the limitations of their technical knowledge. Some research now indicates that employees who don’t fully understand their jobs cost business entities billions of dollars yearly. If you happen to be a junior employee working in the medical or pharmaceutical industries, your technical mistake could have life-or-death consequences. When you communicate that you don’t know how to perform some task, others trust that you will not act in a manner that might place a person, project, or business at risk.

Self-awareness of interpersonal skills is equally important to your success. Employers consistently report that how well junior employees work with others contributes to a perception of professionalism. In the absence of self-awareness, you can’t possibly develop critically important interpersonal skills. Make it a top priority to understand your interpersonal capabilities and limitations.

3. Start with feedback

If you’re uncertain what strengths and weaknesses you bring to the workplace, start with feedback.

Employers are increasingly conscious of the importance of providing real-time feedback. In fact, one leading global consulting firm