Part 6 - Why understanding your professional standing is important?

This post is based on a course lesson from How to incrementally improve your Team.

Introduction

Teams are encouraged to consider themselves as a group of professionals in their chosen field. This means, amongst other things that they are people who are proud of what they contribute to their profession and who live up to be considered as role models for others.

Building a great team is all about developing a team of professionals with the right skills and behaviours. That is, building a professional team against just improving an ordinary team. Both yourself and your team members need to decide if you want to become or be considered professionals in your chosen field.

Being high on the Team maturity Scale (Great Team or High-Performance Team) requires team members to not only act as a professional but also be able to provide evidence of that professionalism. Teams that actively work to achieve this form closer bonds enjoy higher job satisfaction levels, view training in a different light and are far more likely to be better mentors and managers.

What is professionalism?

Consider these examples:

Imagine you are at a job interview and I ask you “do you consider yourself to be a professional?”. You answer, “absolutely, I do”. Next, I ask you “and what evidence do you have to support that position?” How do you answer this question, what evidence do you have?
A medical student has obtained his or her medical degree and has started practice as a GP. Are they a professional? They have a degree, no experience and perhaps little else, but are they a professional?
You need to have major surgery; the suggested surgeon only has one year of surgical experience, is this surgeon professional enough for you?
An IT Manager has 20 years of IT experience and has held many IT management and technical positions, is this person an IT professional? Are years of experience sufficient evidence?

Now consider your own situation, are you a professional and if you say ‘yes’ where is your evidence? Do you want to be regarded as a professional or perhaps you don’t care?

Professionalism attributes

It means that personal biases and prejudices, for example, cannot be part of a professional persona, it does not allow personal issues to play a role in a team as they can cause a team to fail. Even though team members should be concerned and caring about each other, this does not extend to displays of personal emotions or blackmail. To be considered as a professional means that you and your fellow team members need to demonstrate most, but not all of the following.

Years of management or industry experience. (Generally greater than 10).
Appropriate positions held. (Evidence of broad industry experience).
Development of specialised knowledge. (Evidence of technical knowledge, acquisition of specific industry skills and techniques).
Having a theoretical foundation. (Appropriate industry, college, university, certificate level training).
Intellectual development. (Professional reading habits, training, association memberships, social media memberships).
Professional development. (Management, leadership, people management training).
Use of techniques and knowledge. (Acquisition and use of management and technical industry techniques).
Competence, honesty, integrity and respect. (Progressive, transformational management style).
Accountability. (Understand and accept accountability for one’s own actions).
Self-regulation. (Self-assured, able to control emotions and behaviours, training).
Having a professional attitude. Being outwardly supportive. Not participating in secret or negative conversations. Arriving at work on time and staying until the day’s work is complete. Putting in extra time when required.
Demonstrating professional maturity. Producing quality work. Acknowledging mistakes without shifting blame. Owning up to issues and presenting solutions. Being predictive about problems, acting before they occur to avoid them.
Managing time and workspace. Maintaining a diary for appointments and deadlines, regularly checking to stay on schedule with meetings and tasks. Using smart management techniques. Organising your workspace so that it is clean and that files are organised.
Practising leadership skills. Making presentations, chairing meetings, joining a professional society. Being up to date with industry changes by attending seminars and reading professional publications.
Communicating professionally. Being aware of body language, eye contact and your handshake. Speaking clearly and matching the tone and speed of your voice to match the other persons. Practising active listening.

Exercise

Manager and team members

If you are doing the course, refer to your Course Workbook.
Create a two-column table, list the professionalism attributes in the left-hand column.
In the right-hand column, add what evidence you have today that satisfies the attribute.
Add the table to your CV copy.
Make a diary note to review the table again at the end of the course and in 6 and 12 months.

Attributes Table

Name: Date:

Professionalism attribute Evidence

Attribute Evidence today

Other benefits

Team/staff member Evaluation and Recruitment

You can use the list of professionalism attributes as a guide to assessing someone’s professionalism both on the job and at a job interview.

Performance Management

A technique that will be covered in a later post but mentioned here is that a good technique for working with a troublesome or non-performing team/staff member is to:

Tell them that you are only interested in people who are or want to become a professional.
Explain what being a professional means.
Ask them if they consider themselves to be a professional or explain that their actions are contrary to this.
Explain what your expectations are.

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