46. How to Be Professional: Top Habits and Behaviors You Need Now
Episode 46
Professionalism is more than experience and expertise; it’s a series of behaviors and habits that indicate we take our work seriously.
In this episode, we talk all about the subtle (and not-so-subtle) things we can do to exude professionalism at work so that we are taken seriously and become successful
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Episode 05 → Secrets of a Good Task Management System
Episode 09 → 3 Most Important Areas to Organize
Episode 25 → 5 Time Management Mistakes You’re Likely Making
Episode 37 → How to Accept Feedback
Episode 38 → How to Be Resourceful
✏️ FREE DOWNLOADS:
-
The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
46 How to be Professional===
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode 46 of the learning work smarter podcast. We have. What I think is an interesting episode today. And based on the title, you might think that it's just for working professionals, but not quite. So students, especially those in college or graduate school, this episode is definitely for you too.
Today we're talking about how to be professional. Notice, I'm not saying how to be a professional. But how to be professional.
Being a professional is a result of experience and education and time. We can't rush that. But being professional is more of a behavior, a series of actions, and a code for how we present ourselves in the context of our work.
We can certainly have people who are professionals in their field based on qualifications and experience, but they lack the behaviors that one would call professional. Okay, [00:01:00] and the reverse is true as well. We can have someone who is brand new to an industry or new to a job or new to the workforce in general and so they're not yet a professional, but they absolutely can be professional in how they conduct themselves and interact with their work and others.
So I hope that distinction is clear today because we are talking about what behaviors and mannerisms and habits that you can adopt that are professional in nature.
Now. Why does this matter? Oh, it just, it just does okay?
But when we present ourselves professionally, we are giving the message that we are dependable and reliable, and we know what we're doing and can get the job done.
And we're going to talk about this a little bit later in the episode, but reliability is essential if you want to be known as professional. Okay.
So we have a lot to cover today. If you're listening to this on the go, either in a podcast app, or maybe you're watching the video version on YouTube, you can find links to [00:02:00] everything we talk about today as well as a full transcript as always on learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/46.
That link will be listed in the show notes of the podcast and in the description box on YouTube. If you're unable to take notes as you listen or watch this episode, you may find the transcript helpful.
And with that, we are ready to begin.All right.
So I'm going to start with what I think is the most important behavior that's connected to professionalism. And that is to be reliable.
Reliability is so darn important in the [00:03:00] academic and professional space, because it is directly connected to our reputation into what per, uh, people perceive of our work and our contact conduct.
Okay. The number one way to be taken seriously is to do what you say you're going to do by the time that you say you're going to do it. If you tell somebody like a boss or a professor that you're going to turn something in at a certain time, you turn that in on time.
If you tell somebody that you're going to meet them somewhere at a certain time, meet them somewhere at that time.
If you tell somebody that you're going to follow up with them in an email, you guessed it, you follow up with them in an email. Now when we do what we say we're going to do by the time that we say we're going to do it, other people begin to trust us. And they view us as somebody who works with integrity. Nobody could ever be professional and not operate from [00:04:00] integrity. Sure, there's plenty of professionals out there who do not operate from integrity, but again, I'm not talking about being a professional, but about being professional.
Now let's dig a little deeper with this tip for a second and talk about what happens if something changes. And we can't do what we say we're going to do by the time that we're going to change it because sometimes life happens and we have to pivot. And that's just, you know, what happens and it happens occasionally, no big deal.
As long as we communicate clearly, what the other person or people involved.
All right. So let me give you an example.
Let's say that you're working on a, with three other people on a project. I don't know, maybe for school or work either one, the principles are the exact same. So you're working with three other people on a project, and you told them that you would, um, be responsible for creating slides one through 15, by the end of the week. So first things first, you're going to do everything in your power to get slides one through 15 completed by the end of the week, because [00:05:00] that is what you said you were going to do.
You're going to put this in your task management system and you're going to manage your time and prioritize this project and make it happen so that you become dependable. All right, but let's say that you get sick or your teacher or your boss put something else on your plate and getting this project done by Friday is just like, literally not possible.
What do you do then? Well, A professional would not wait until Friday night to let the team know that you didn't get done what you said you were going to get done. No way.
The moment you realize that those slides are not going to happen on time, that needs to be communicated to the other people involved.
Can this be uncomfortable?
Yeah. Maybe, but we get over it and we do it anyway because it is not as bad as becoming unreliable and becoming known as the person who doesn't deliver. That's a tough one to come back from.
Clear and simple communication in this case is absolutely best as always. It always is. [00:06:00] And it could look something like the following.
Okay. Maybe a quick email that says, Hey, so-and-so I know we agreed I would complete slides one through 15 by Friday. Unfortunately I've gotten sick. I will not be able to complete those slides until Monday. And you would communicate this, um, sort of like change of plans as early as possible, despite how uncomfortable it makes us.
I know a common scenario would be, let's say Wednesday night is coming around and you realize, oh, I don't think this is going to happen.
I don't think this is going to get done by Friday, but you know, maybe with like a hope and a prayer and some fairy dust it'll magically get done. And so I'm just going to keep working. I'm going to stay silent. I'm not going to email anybody. And I'm going to pretend this isn't an issue, right. And then Friday afternoon comes along and the thing isn't done. And now we're letting our team know on the day that something's due that it's not going to happen. This is just like, no. This is not good.
In reality, someone who's professional would recognize on Wednesday [00:07:00] the unlikelihood of meeting Friday's deadline. And would own up to that and communicate it to someone else or whoever's involved. This is what it means to be professional: taking responsibility for things that we're in charge of and doing what we said we were going to do when we said we were going to do it.
Now one final note on this tip before I move on to the next one is that this rule applies no matter how big or small the task is.
So if you tell somebody you're going to send them the. Like name of a song, okay, something super trivial by the end of the day, do that. I know that's a really small and inconsequential example compared to creating a giant like proposal, but we want to avoid the death by a thousand paper cuts here.
If you are regularly not delivering as promised, unseemingly seemingly I'm air quoting this in consequential things, then we are slowly developing the reputation of someone who is not reliable and not professional.
All right, moving on to the second important pillar of being professional. [00:08:00] This one can not be a surprise. But it's to communicate well.
Communication is such a broad topic. And when I use the term I'm air quoting again, if you're, you know, we're not watching this on YouTube, but. I'm using the term good communication in air quotes.
But when I use that term, good communication. With my clients. I always take the time to ensure that they truly, truly understand what this means, because throughout a single day. There are a variety of different touch points when we communicate with others. And each of these touch points sometimes requires a different type of communication.
So for example, we have email communication, phone, slack, or instant messaging, face-to-face and there's body language. Right. Let's not forget that listening is also under the category of communication, right?
So what does it look like to communicate professionally? It means speaking and writing clearly and concisely.
If you don't know how to write concisely [00:09:00] weather. Emails or whatever. Uh, whatever else it is that you're writing, you can learn to do that. Writing like anything is a skill. And if it matters to you, you could work on that. I have one client, and actually writing concise and professional emails is something that we've been working on, and one strategy that I gave her was to say, she's actually a really good writer. Like a really good writer. But emails and brevity was just not something -she was okay, honestly, from my professional assessment, she was okay at it, but this was one of her personal goals. Right. So one strategy I gave her was to save any work emails that she received that were concise and she liked them.
And too. You know, study them to save them. She would bring them to our zoom sessions and say, okay, I got this email. I want to learn how to do this. Okay. And then from this, we learned that the most effective emails that she was receiving that resonated personally with her were really, almost never more than five sentences. All right.
So she learned to emulate those emails until she got the hang of [00:10:00] it. And honestly, now she's good. So you said. I honestly thought she was pretty good in the beginning, but I said that already, but this was her goals. Okay. That's how we do it- we work on your goals. It's a skill she wanted to learn and so she worked at it and she got there.
She became professional.
A few other tips about professional communications, sticking with email for a second. I'm not at all saying that your emails have to be dry and lack personality. If you want to use exclamation points. Go ahead. Do that I do. Okay, but I will limit it to one or two and it usually depends on who I'm emailing. Emojis in email? Fine. Do that.
I do. That's not necessarily unprofessional unless you're emailing somebody far up the hierarchy and you can sort of like read the digital room and say, okay, well maybe now it's not the time for an emoji. All right.
So being professional does not translate at all into being robotic. It doesn't mean you can't be you. [00:11:00]
Okay. I just want to make that clear.
Good communication also means avoiding speaking or writing with passive aggressive tones. We all feel the urge to do that sometimes I am not alone in this. I know that. We have all thought of that perfect thing to say to somebody. But we don't. All right. We need to remain emotionally regulated at all times. In episode 37, which is called how to accept feedback at work and school, I talk about the importance of emotional regulation.
And that is super important when we communicate others and we want to present ourselves professionally.
And finally to wrap up the communication piece, although there is so much more that I'm not covering here because the topic of good communication could be its own podcast episode. I will do that. Okay, but being professional involves communication behaviors like speaking loud enough for people to hear us, but not too loud that we become noxious, making eye contact in [00:12:00] conversation and facing our bodies to the person that we're talking to. Sitting upright in our chair at meetings and not slouching. It's speaking clearly into a phone and knowing how to read the pauses in a conversation so that we don't keep speaking over the person. It's communicating clearly when we don't know something and not leaving people hanging.
So in a conversation, right, or maybe in an email response, that could be something like, oh, that's a great question. I don't actually know the answer, but I will get back to you. And then actually getting back to that person.
Honestly, the list could go on, but I'm going to move to the next element of professionalism, which I think many people will have different perspectives on. You may agree with me or not, but I'm just sharing my perspective from someone who's worked in the private sector, a public school system and corporate America. And I also pay to belong to a group of 2000 business owners.
And occasionally I poll them with these kinds of questions. All right. So I'm [00:13:00] collecting data here. What am I talking about?
I'm talking about how we present ourselves, how we present ourselves physically, externally, to those we are working wit. or working for.
Like it or not, how we present ourselves contributes to others' perceptions of us and our abilities.
This is just the way the world works. Now, let me pause here to say that this is where some people may disagree with me. And that is okay. All right, but I have never. Ever subscribed to the belief that tattoos or piercings or hair color or anything like that creates a bad impression. I've had my share of piercings. I still do. Okay. And I have tattoos and never once in my life have any of them been held against me. Mom, you were wrong. So you'll never hear me say that, you know, you can't express yourself creatively and personally, because I think there is [00:14:00] absolutely room for that and professionalism to exist in the same space.
Right. But here's the thing, here's the caveat. And if you show up to the office wearing crinkled clothing or messy hair or dirty shoes, Like it or not, that gives off an impression that is the opposite of professionalism. That gives the impression to somebody that, you know, I don't care enough about my appearance, which means that I have an attitude of, I can't be bothered, which means there's a chance that I can't be bothered to do my job either.
Again, this is just the way it is. Many of us have heard the expression to dress for the job that we want.
And I firmly believe that. You know, to be honest, now that I work for myself and things are a little bit different, I do show up to my office each day to work with clients dressed casually. I am always wearing sneakers. Okay. Cause my feet hurt.
But I make sure they're clean. And they are tidy. I wear [00:15:00] jeans every single day. If you know me and you know, that's true. Okay, but they fit and they aren't too long that I'm stepping on the backs of them and they're getting dirty and ragged. I will occasionally wear a sweatshirt, although it's not your typical sports hoodie, it might be a solid color or have something weird on it, like a banana.
Actually. I dress this way because it's comfortable and it's a reflection of the quirky me. But if I were to go into a school system or an enterprise, maybe to do a training or like a SchoolHabits University implementation, then I would dress differently. When we are trying to exude professionalism, the whole idea is that we want to give the impression that we take our jobs seriously. And that we do good work. And if we are giving even subtle signs at all, that we don't take ourselves seriously enough to be neat and tidy and dress appropriately, then it does not matter how good our work is because we have already made a negative impression on those [00:16:00] around us.
Okay.
So there are two more elements to professionalism that I want to share in this episode. There’re, of course, way more than that, but I'm going to finish with just two more.
So the next one is to care about attention to detail. It does not matter what job or industry you're in, attention to detail is a sign of professionalism.
Now some examples of how this might show up in day to day across various industries is an email communication, right?
And making sure that we don't have sloppy grammar errors that have no business being there.
Attention to detail means reviewing your written work before sending it off to somebody.
You know, this gives the impression that you care about your dog and you're going to do a good job. on what you're hired to do.
Attention to detail also includes remembering things about people.
If you have a conversation with a prospective client or a colleague or a boss or a manager, and they share something with you. Attention to detail means from membering, that nugget of information, and maybe bringing it up the next time you see [00:17:00] them. And if you're hearing me say this advice right now, and you're like, yeah, but I never remember it.
Write it down. That's the habit that you have control over. All right. If you want to become more professional and you're listening to this. The suggestions and you're thinking, okay, well maybe that's an area that I can improve on. Well, then the next question is, well, how am I going to improve on that? And if you're like Well, I never remember details about people.
Okay. So the habit wouldn't be just to remember details about people. Okay. Cause that's like memory and we can't just like, turn that off and turn that on, but you can implement a habit to increase your chances of remembering something about somebody. So after a phone call, after, you know, an in-person exchange. Open up your notes app, have a dedicated location where you're just like writing down little tidbits of notes about people. Right.
And then, and then you consult that the next time you have an engagement with that person. And you might be thinking, do people really do this? Yes, they do. Yes, they do for people who want to improve on this area, this is what we do.
Attention to detail also means being resourceful and reading your email thoroughly, you know, for [00:18:00] information before asking somebody else for it. It is not a good look at all if we receive an email at some point with information in it, and then, you know, we go and ask somebody for that information later on, when all we had to do was check our email. So annoying.
We talk about resourcefulness and episode. 38 and it's absolutely critical to being a professional and to being a professional.
Alright. Attention to detail also includes reviewing presentations and reports and whatever it is that we are completing for our job. It's dotting our I's and crossing our T's. It's checking technology connections before making a presentation at a meeting.
It's making sure that we have gas in our car before leaving for a site visit to meet a client so that we're not late because we have to stop for gas.
It's not hitting reply all on email chains, where it would be more appropriate to just hit reply.
Attention to detail is caring about the quality [00:19:00] of our work at a granular level. Attention to detail is being proud of our work and never doing the absolute bare minimum.
It is not being complacent.
It's under promising and over delivering every single time.
You know, I'm going to tell you a quick story where I was impressed by somebody's attention to detail, and it led to me doing more business with them.
So we have a KitchenAid refrigerator and I love it. I really do.
Okay. I'm not going to bash the KitchenAid. I love it, but we have needed to call a refrigerator repair person a few times now for various reasons. Whatever, beside the point. So the first time we call a person, he pulls out the fridge. He fixes the issue. He obviously charges us $1 million. And he goes on his way. All right, but he fixed the issue.
Now about a year later, we had a different problem and we ended up calling somebody else. I don't know why we just did. He comes over. He pulls out the fridge, he fixes the problem. But then get this. He goes into his van. He gets a vacuum, his own vacuum. And he vacuums and cleans behind our refrigerator. [00:20:00] Attention to detail. He was just as effective as the first person in fixing the issue, but he went that extra step.
And because of that, that is absolutely the person that we're going to call next time. That is professionalism.
Now, I'm not saying that we have to be perfect in all of the areas all of the time. That's not what I'm saying at all, but this is just what we strive for. Right? We're here to learn and work smarter. Right? To learn and work better. So it's just, we're just looking for progress, not perfection.
And, you know, I can't move on to the last tip before I touch on the systems that make attention to detail possible in the first place.
So that would be what? Yes. Time management and task management. Without a good time management system, we are going to be rushing to complete the things in the last minute, which doesn't give us the bandwidth to even notice the details that need noticing.
Without a good task management system, we are going to lose track of project details and expectations, and we're going to end up delivering the bare [00:21:00] minimum every time.
We talk about task management and time management in so many episodes, specifically episode five, that is secrets of a good task management system. Episode nine, the three most important areas to organize and 25, which are five time five time management mistakes you might be making or you're making. Something like that episode 25. I'm going to leave all of those links below. Alright.
Finally last one. Being professional includes being confident.
Not arrogant or domineering, but confident. There's a few different ways to assert confidence. I'm going to run through several of those in just a minute, but here is why this is such an important element of professionalism.
If we don't exude confidence in ourselves and in our work, others won't have confidence in us and in our work. If we speak inaudibly in conversations or in meetings, if we assume a physical [00:22:00] posture of defensiveness or slouching, if we're not making eye contact, if we're fidgety or aloof if we, if we do any of those behaviors, which are so subtle, we appear, not confident in ourself and therefore in our abilities.
If we don't prepare for meetings and therefore we speak timidly, or maybe we don't participate, all signs of poor confidence, we will not be taken seriously.
Even if you're the most experienced an educated person in that room, if you don't exude confidence, it can cloud others' perceptions of our abilities.
Here's the thing though. Confidence. Isn't something that we can just flip on and off like a switch.
It takes time and experience and even mistakes along the way to truly build up our confidence.
Now, let's address imposter syndrome here because it's something that we all encounter at some point, especially in the early stages of our career. You might feel like you are faking it or not qualified enough to [00:23:00] belong.
Right? I have had my fair share of imposter syndrome for sure. But a key part of being professional is understanding that even when we feel these doubts, we can still project confidence by focusing on our body language, by speaking clearly and preparing ourselves as much as possible to do the best Darby. Darn job that we can't.
You know, I have honestly had really interesting experiences with this confidence piece. To be honest, I'm really confident in my work now because I've been doing it for 20 years and I have so much experience and education and qualifications to back up what I teach here. All right.
But I have been in many situations where somebody doesn't know me or my work and they judge me based on what I look like. And somehow they reached the conclusion that I must not know what I'm talking about. You know, honestly, As I was sort of preparing for this episode, I debated whether sharing this or not, because I'm like, does it make me look like... I don't know. I think I was [00:24:00] just worried that how you guys hearing this. I might interpret what I'm saying, but I just, I'm going to share here.
Okay. You know, to be honest, I'm quite small. I have really, really long red curly hair. I'm told I look young, even though I'm 41. I have a lot of energy. So I'm what many people would call bubbly.
Right? I D I do. I'm. I'm I'm bubbly. And this is just who I am. And it's often before I open my mouth and speak confidently that I'm judged as somebody who's young and inexperienced.
And early on this bothered me so much. It actually impacted my confidence. It's almost like other people's lack of confidence in me based on just my appearance made me lack of confidence in myself. Right. I would put a hard stop to that whenever I would open my mouth and speak professionally. And expertly and do the job like a boss, but until I learned to ignore other people's patronizing attitudes based on who they thought I was [00:25:00] based on what I looked like, I struggled with confidence.
I actually remember in my first week. This is kind of a weird story, as a special education teacher at the high school that I worked at, I didn't know many of the teachers there.
And one of my fellow colleagues, she was lovely, and she made a snide comment about like, well, wait 'til, you have kids. And then you'll know. I forgot what we were talking about, but it was like, just wait until you have kids. And I was like, dude, I have a teenager and a preteen and I'm older than you and I have more kids than you.
And you know, she had a toddler at the time. Okay. I didn't say any of this. I didn't, but it was this presumption that I had to deal with a lot. And I still deal with. And it's honestly so annoying. So annoying. But I have learned that none of that is my problem. I am going to continue to wear my earrings and my extra piercings and my Velcro sneakers because my feet are too small that I don't fit into adult shoes with adult shoelaces. True story. I am going to keep being me.
The more we practice showing up confidently and authentically the more [00:26:00] natural it'll feel. Confidence will grow as our experience and our skills grow. But the good news is that we can still exude a confidence even when we're still learning the ropes.
The bottom line is a competence is essential for professionalism.
It shows others that we believe in ourselves and our abilities. And when we believe in ourselves, others are more likely to believe in us too.
Confidence in a professional setting does not mean having all the answers, but it does mean being comfortable enough to acknowledge what we don't know. And honest enough to admit when we don't know something. Right?
So how do we exude this confidence without crossing in to arrogance? I kind of already trickled some sort of strategies and body language and, you know, audibility and things like that already, but I'll just sort of like condense them.
Start by maintaining eye contact in conversations. It's subtle, but it's a powerful indicator of self-assurance. Speak clearly and avoiding fillers, like uh and um as much as possible. This creates the impression of clarity and authority.
Also accepting [00:27:00] compliments graciously rather than deflecting them. A simple, thank you is often all that's needed.
Another important aspect is preparing for situations that require confidence in the first place.
When you know that you're going to be presenting at an, you know, an idea at a meeting, right with a professor, a boss, a team. Take some time to prepare what you want to say.
Practicing or, you know, writing down your key points can help you deliver your message with ease, competence and poise.And finally, one of the best ways to develop confidence is through small successes. Over time, these moments add up, reinforcing a sense of capability and self-trust. Embrace feedback along the way we covered that back in episode 37. Okay.
That can be a huge tool for building genuine confidence.
All right my friends. That's where I'm going to leave it today. All right. Professionalism is so much more than just showing up to do a job. It is a set of values and behaviors that can open doors, build trust, help us [00:28:00] create a reputation as someone others want to work with.
Remember the way we present ourselves, the attention that we give to detail our reliability and dependability, our communication and our confidence all add up to define how professional we appear.
So, whether you're starting in a new role, maybe leading a team or just wanting to put your best foot forward in academia, these principles can help you show up as the best version of you.
Thank you for tuning in to the learn and work smarter podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, sharing it with a friend who might find these tips helpful.
And as always, you can find more resources and links to episodes mentioned at learnandworksmarter.com, and until next time, never stop learning.
