Professionalism - Please Explain?

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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C40
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by C40 »

I'd say the main thing you need to remember is that when you're at work**, you are a worker bee. Your individuality is tied more to your style of work, how you're contributing, etc. At work, you're no longer "Olaz the cool, poly, ERE, hipster, whatever, etc. etc."... you are "Olaz, the junior account manager that has good ideas in meetings, inspires and motivates others, and doesn't ever lose his cool". Something like that. For everything happening at work, you have to view and respond to them through the lens of "Olaz, employee of XYZ". You will establish a sort of 'work Personality'. You have to develop your own working/leadership style. Having a specific style helps you to stand out, helps people remember you, etc.

*and even when you're outside of work in certain situations, including how you talk to (certain) people about work

The components of your work personality are truly you, but it pretty much only contains components of your personality that are related to work. This doesn't mean you become a generic person. Your work individuality/personality can also include "the guy who bicycles a lot" or those kind of things, but they need to be ad-ons at the end. In most work environments, it should not include any political, religious, or sexual components. DO NOT BE "Olaz the slut" or "Olaz the liberal" or "Olaz the partier".

This 'work personality' would also include your career aspirations. And your behaviors should fit them. If the career aspirations part of your work personality is "wants to get promoted a bunch of times", then you don't wear sneakers with your dress pants. Ever.

It's important that you observe the atmosphere at work. They are very different at different places. Err on the side of socially prudish/conservative early on, and you can open up more down the road if it is obviously appropriate.

For some good examples of thinking through the lens of "Olaz, employee of..." read the book "Question Before the Quesion". It's one of those short little 50-80 page books that you can read in a couple hours. Stoicism will help also.

plantingourpennies
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by plantingourpennies »

C40 wrote:I'd say the main thing you need to remember is that when you're at work**, you are a worker bee...For everything happening at work, you have to view and respond to them through the lens of "Olaz, employee of XYZ". You will establish a sort of 'work Personality'. You have to develop your own working/leadership style. Having a specific style helps you to stand out, helps people remember you, etc.

*and even when you're outside of work in certain situations, including how you talk to (certain) people about work
Agree with the above-I wish somebody had given me these instructions 7 years ago!

You don't have to give up who you are outside of work, you just have to develop another persona/personality for the office.

This is worth doing-cushy office work is how my wife and I have built our wealth, and pretty soon I'll shed this office persona and never look back...

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Scott 2
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by Scott 2 »

No wonder everyone wants to leave work!

These rules vary wildly by industry, business, and role. Often they only apply when customer facing.

It's possible to find an environment that suits your personality.

In my experience, on small teams, with an IT focus, the rules are much much less rigid than described here.

I've also observed that as you go higher in an organization, many of the conduct rules go out the window.

cmonkey
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by cmonkey »

In addition to the above, I'd also add that 'professionalism' can be different within just a single organization. Many large companies have multiple offices/buildings. One office might be suit & tie, the next level would be 'church clothes', and finally another might be jeans and polo shirts. That's how my org is. I purposely targeted the jeans and polo office because that's what kind of person I am and I'm much happier for the decision to find a position where I'm at. Work culture tends to correlate with dress code, at least as far as my work experience goes so things are pretty relaxed here.

Fish
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by Fish »

Professionalism is form and competence is function.

The relative importance for a particular job depends on how much overall performance is influenced by each factor. For example, professionalism is essential for sales and customer-facing positions while competence is more highly valued in technical fields where it has a bigger impact on outcomes. This is why the cable guy and plumber get away with showing up 2 hours late and smelling like last week, as long as problems are resolved with a single service call.

Where outcomes are less differentiated based on competence, form dominates; this explains the obsession of managers and executives with professionalism. In most environments, if in doubt about how to dress or behave, just look up the chain of command. An implicit role of a superior is to model expected behavior.

Having at least one or the other is essential if stable employment is a goal. Both might be necessary depending on the field (amount of competition). If you're really lucky (high demand growth field, low labor supply) you might even get away with having neither... for a while anyway, until the market catches up to you.

Professionalism benefits from good discipline while competence is more like a developed skill. If you're going to emphasize function over form, make sure 1) your competence is enhanced by experience (i.e. you won't be supplanted in 5 years' time by a recent college grad at 50% of your salary), and 2) there is long-term demand for your competence. The time to choose a technical career is when entering college, not when leaving it.

Conversely, if you are going to pursue a career where form dominates, understand that good discipline is essential to maintain "professionalism", and be prepared that competence might not be rewarded or even acknowledged as it is in the other path.

This post is light on the specifics, which @brute summarized quite well for office environments. I mainly wanted to improve on the framework @classical_Liberal started. Before you rationals completely dismiss the importance of professionalism, realize that your employer thinks of you like a commodity. They just want someone to plug into the profit machine. If you want the easy path to career success, first solve that problem for them. You're not a snowflake. People are differentiated by their job titles, not personality, and most employers would prefer an average somebody who fits right in over a more talented weirdo who skews the carefully cultivated office culture in undesired directions. It's like buying apples at the supermarket. The blemished, misshapen, and discolored ones never get a chance.

Lucky C
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by Lucky C »

1. Do your job in the manner prescribed by management.
2. Treat customers and colleagues with the utmost respect.
3. Do not make anyone uncomfortable through your words or actions.
4. Resolve all conflicts through the appropriate channels, which should not be a problem if you stick to #1-3.

dropoutretire
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by dropoutretire »

Olaz wrote:Someone please explain what "professionalism" means? Can be in your own words, or in those of our office overlords, or a mix of both.
Why do so many people care to be sooooooo professional. Sometimes I get idiots that call me and annoy me when I'm selling a car for my sons carlot and if they ask a stupid question I give them a stupid response, then they say that wasn't very professional. I respond I do this for fun and your not making it fun and why do I need to be what you perceive as being professional ? For I am retired. lol

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fiby41
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by fiby41 »

I did not know what professionalism was until subject courses started coming with a start date and a finish date. :?

There are vacation, regular, midterm KT and crash course batches. This pamphlet does not have it but all other prospectus have the line: Fees once paid will not be refunded or adjusted under any circumstances. The professors teach at a stretch without referring to any notes, books, written material, ppt. They only have a question set which is also given to students from which to solve numerical problems.

Here is a pamphlet of a midterm batch to show what I'm saying. :roll:

ellipsis_has_expired
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by ellipsis_has_expired »

What a fantastic thread! Makes me want to change the way I interact at work.

I work on a team of 4, and we've been in the same bullpen for 3 years now. It's kind of impossible not to talk about your personal lives, I think we all feel work would be intensely boring if we didn't share some personal goings ons and get to know each other better. I consider myself one of the most professional of the group, although one other guy perhaps has me beat. We can rarely squeeze much personal info out of him. but let me tell you about the most unprofessional, for your entertainment if nothing more. We'll call him "Phil."

Phil is typically at work on time or a couple minutes late, he's intelligent, and he performs his duties. That's where his professionalism ends.
1. He often asks people for their opinion, but already has his mind made, and anyone else with an idea is made to feel stupid.
2. He takes care of his taxes or drawn out issues with his rental property at his desk. Or other personal calls which often include him telling off the person on the line.
3. He's arrogant. Any boss we have above us is a clueless idiot who does nothing all day according to him.
4. He's unpatriotic and certain that our economy will totally collapse soon. He's always down talking America and grilling the others about their political views. If someone tries to escape the convo by saying they aren't interested in politics he will beat them down for being complacent. (As an aside; He's been stocking up on physical silver bars, and is mostly invested in gold mining stocks.)
5. He swears often. He's called me and others "faggots" in the chat box. Just last week he noted the market had fallen a full %1 in a day. He asked me what I thought it meant. I told him it doesn't matter to me and isn't an indication of much, since it's only one day. That I'm investing for 30 years out, not today. His reply was "god you are so fucking boring." I replied, well that's how you know you're investing right, it's supposed to be boring.
6. He talks back to the boss, not so blatantly, but enough to show disrespect, or if he feels something stupid was said, he will make a remark calling them out on it.
7. He gossips and talks bad about the other employees outside our team.
8. He wears jeans on weekdays other than Friday. His shoes are skuffed and he wears short sleeve button ups, usually black. Meanwhile I'm in standard long sleeve work shirts and wool or cotton slacks. Fridays are casual.
9. He's basically unapproachable until he's been at work about 2 hours and had time to wake up/get in a better mood.
10. His phone calls often end with him SLAMMING the phone down.

ducknalddon
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by ducknalddon »

Lucky C wrote:1. Do your job in the manner prescribed by management.
2. Treat customers and colleagues with the utmost respect.
3. Do not make anyone uncomfortable through your words or actions.
4. Resolve all conflicts through the appropriate channels, which should not be a problem if you stick to #1-3.
Might be good advice for your career but it can be pretty soul destroying as well. I've had managers that have told me they don't pay me to think but my job requires exactly that. Some people need to be made uncomfortable before they will do the right thing. Although I try and treat all customers with respect some are just abusive and need to be fired. Also remember those appropriate channels are there to protect the organisation, not you.

Lucky C
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by Lucky C »

It becomes less soul crushing if you are able to think of it like a game. Not a fun game, but a game nonetheless. None of this professionalism stuff really matters except in terms of playing by the rules of the game so that both you and the company don't lose. Other employees don't see it as a game and so they get stressed out and burnt out when presented with the challenges that are present to some extent in every job.

Expect personality conflicts, people not doing their job properly, and things going wrong on a daily basis. These are the expected challenges of the game, otherwise if they were not present there would be no point or reward - anyone could do your job if it was easy and went smoothly every day - and so it wouldn't really be a game. In your game you will face enemies, from the slacking coworker to the dick boss to the HR team looking to protect the company first. You employ strategy to address these challenges while following the rules of the game. Otherwise you will eventually lose the game, either giving up since you can't beat the game or being booted from the game from breaking the rules.

What I am saying here is that you can have a successful and low-stress career if you appear to take your job very seriously, doing the best you can while following protocol, when secretly you don't really care. Mastering this psychological challenge reduces the negative effects of all other challenges.

halfmoon
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Re: Professionalism - Please Explain?

Post by halfmoon »

I have the old-fashioned view that your employer has the right (within reason) to set the behavior expected of you. If you find it enraging, idiotic, soul-sucking, trivial or demeaning...find someone else to provide a paycheck without requiring this behavior. In most jobs, you're not being paid for your unique snowflake attributes; you're being paid to further the goals of the employer in the manner that the employer has defined as desirable. That includes catering to annoying customers, because they -- not you -- are keeping the business afloat. Sadly, it also includes dealing with lousy managers who have worked hard at fitting the employer's definition of desirable.

It's good motivation for ERE or self-employment, though I would caution that being self-employed doesn't really mean being your own boss; it just means you have more people to please, some of whom can be enraging, idiotic, soul-sucking... :roll:

Bottom line: if you want someone's money, you'll probably need to fit somewhat in their mold. Professional behavior in my mind is akin to good manners. There are certain social graces generally required if you want to pick someone up in a bar, no matter how awesome in bed you may be. Same goes for the workplace or dealing with clients.

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