5 Ways to Know You’re Unprofessional

Have you ever been accused of being “unprofessional”? Many times we have a hard time defining what this means, but we know it when we see it. This week I am taking the suggestion of one of my readers to address this important topic.  What does it mean to be professional?

Happy   reading,

Diane

P.S.    Please share your thoughts about this email or send future topic ideas to diane@dianeamundson.com

 

5 Ways to Know You’re Unprofessional

 ”Professionalism is not about adherence to the policies of a bureaucracy. Professionalism is about having the integrity, honesty, and sincere regard for the personhood of the customer, in the context of always doing what is best for the business. Those two things do not need to be in conflict.”

Eric   Lippert

Bob was continually late for appointments that he set with co-workers in his department. Brenda was busy selling cosmetics on the phone, her side-line business, while working for someone else. Brian routinely talked about his poor performing subordinates with his high performing subordinates making everyone uncomfortable. Carrie was known as someone who would not take full responsibility for mistakes she made. She would find a way to make someone else the reason for a failure in her area. Nancy would quickly invite the new hires to lunch so they would join her clique that gossips about the other cliques at work. If any of these sound like you, or someone you know at work, this is the time to put a stop to these unprofessional behaviors that are impacting how others see you.

We often hear the phrase “be professional” when referring to a way of   acting at work. But what does it really mean? According to businessdictionary.com being a professional means showing a level of excellence or competence that is expected of a professional.   I thought I would create a list of five ways to know you are unprofessional:

  • When you steal time or materials from the company, i.e., using social media, long personal phone calls, borrowing tools, etc.
  • When you promote another business of yours while working for someone else
  • When you bad mouth fellow workers or your boss in front of customers
  • As a boss, you talk about subordinate’s faults with other subordinates
  • When you use your company’s computer, fax, etc. to look for another job

So, what does professional behavior look like?

  • Showing up on time- be available when you say you will be available
  • Being competent which means being accurate and doing what you say you will do….even when you don’t feel like it
  • Dressing for the importance of your job so as to gain credibility- if you would wear it to a carnival, don’t wear it to work, i.e., flip flops, cutoff jeans, spaghetti strap tops, t-shirts, sandals, etc.
  • Keeping confidential matters confidential
  • Taking responsibility for failures if you own them….don’t pass the blame

A client of mine who owns a company mentioned that he would like his employees to think like an owner. If they owned his company, would they still choose these unprofessional behaviors? Now there will always be    exceptions, but I bet a few unprofessional employees, if given ownership, would think and act differently.

Question for You:

Do you find yourself acting with more of the unprofessional   behaviors listed above? Do you notice your co-workers or even boss   exhibiting more of these unprofessional behaviors?

Action for You:

Immediately stop the unprofessional behaviors as they impact how others see you and these behaviors may get you terminated. Begin finding friends and co-workers at work that exemplify the do’s of being a professional. Stop and ask yourself what you would do differently if you owned the company. Often we get swept up in a culture that lives and breathes unprofessionalism. It takes a strong person to remove themselves from people who support unprofessional behaviors.

Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.’”

Julius Irving

How to Deliver a Great Presentation: Five Tips for Speakers That Want to Be Invited Back.

It was the perfect setting for a timely conversation on health care reform. The audience, a group of fifty seasoned human resource managers, was eagerly awaiting the speaker’s tips and strategies that would help them make sense of the new health care reform bill. Each manager had their PowerPoint handout in front of them and was poised to take notes when the following tragic words were spoken by the presenter, “I don’t know how to get my PowerPoint presentation to show on the screen!”

The audience was dumbfounded to learn that the speaker had waited until her start time to discover that she could not get her computer to connect with the room’s projector. The room fell silent as the speaker and meeting planner struggled to get her presentation visible to an audience that was growing restless. Needless to say, this first mishap set the stage for a number of presentation blunders that would be made throughout the rest of the workshop. It quickly became evident that the speaker did not know some of the basic fundamentals of a great presentation and that audience would experience a less than exciting presentation.

While there are hundreds of ideas for delivering a great presentation, here are a few tips that you can implement immediately:

1. Know Your audience: This is the most important step before accepting to speak in front of a group of people. Simply stated, if you do not know what your audience wants to hear, how will you meet their needs? Having a topic that is relevant to your audience’s needs and is a topic that you are knowledgeable in, is the magic equation that will add to the likeliness of being invited back. This was not the case with the speaker mentioned above. This speaker asked questions of the audience that should have been addressed to the event planner in the form of a pre-conference questionnaire. Instead, the presenter asked for a show of hands as to how many audience members were employees of companies with less than fifty employees. When half of the audience raised their hands, she realized that the remaining companies had no use for her employee health benefits software system because it could not protect the identities of companies with fewer than fifty employees. She essentially wasted the time of twenty five very busy Human Resource managers. During your presentation is not the time to find out that half of your audience does not pertain to your topic.

2. Know Your Equipment: Knowing how to operate your audio and video equipment can make or break a successful presentation. This includes your microphone, your PowerPoint slides, your handouts and any other extras needed. It is so frustrating for the audience when a presenter is not familiar with the technology that they supposedly work with every day. This amateur speaker was relying on the words on the screen to guide her in the order of discussion points, but not only that, she read each slide word- for- word to the audience that could read these same words in their handout. In addition, her handouts were in a font size that could not be read by an audience in their 40’s and 50’s. The rule of thumb here is to anticipate the age of the oldest member of your audience and use a font size that is half that person’s age. For example, if you know there will be people in the audience in their 60’s you will need to have your presentation font in size 32.) The speaker then chose to speak away from the microphone every time she glanced at her PowerPoint to read her slides. When possible, ask for a lavaliere or hand-held microphone so your voice does not weave in and out based on the direction of your head. The audience wants to feel connected to you and you must give them eye contact ninety percent of the time you are talking to them. Ditch the podium as it creates a barrier between you and your audience which keeps you from connecting with them.

3. Become an Expert of PowerPoint: This is absolutely essential if you are planning on using PowerPoint in any of your presentations. Nothing wastes more of the audience’s time than a speaker who does not know how to use their own PowerPoint presentation. It shows the speaker’s lack of competence, preparedness and professionalism. After ten long minutes the hostess of the meeting found a way to help the speaker find her PowerPoint presentation on the laptop that the speaker uses every day. It is okay and smart to have a tech support person stand by to help with any projector or sound issues, but if the laptop is yours, but you need to be able to operate it better than the person hosting the event!

4. Know Your Time Allotment: In the world of business, time is everything. Your audience has decided to take precious time away from their urgent tasks in order to hear your message. This speaker ended her presentation forty-five minutes before she was scheduled to finish because she had a topic that half of her audience did not care about. Because most of the audience was uninterested in her topic, she did not receive any questions from them when prompted, and therefore, finished early. While this speaker was not being paid, it still left a poor impression on the company that she represented. If she had been paid, her client would not seen much return on their investment. While it is unprofessional as a speaker to go over your allotted time, finishing a presentation a few minutes early is usually appreciated by audiences as they have a chance to visit at their tables or with partners before leaving the meeting or conference.

5. Get Feedback to Continually Improve: Last, but certainly not least, is having a process for audience feedback. What is most frustrating about not having an evaluation process is the uncertainty by the speaker and meeting planner as to how the audience reacted to the presentation. So, the uninformed speaker will likely repeat the same mistakes again with a different audience. Evaluation responses can be brutal to read as a speaker but they are absolutely essential for improvement. A speaker must make sure that a paper or online evaluation will be used for quick feedback. This speaker had a sense that her presentation was not well received but she will never know the specific reasons because there was no evaluation process.

There are hundreds of other tips for delivering a successful presentation but if you start with these five easily applied steps, you will find yourself making a difference with your audience and ultimately being invited back which is really the best indicator of success.

Coasting is for Cars and Boats, Not Your Employee’s Work Performance: How to Re-engage Your Low Performing Workers (Part III)

3. Keep it Fresh: Another reason for an employees apathy towards their job may be boredom. Have they mastered the key components of their job and desire the opportunity to learn something new and challenge themselves? The theory goes that you do not grow in your comfort zone. These highly competent and committed employees need the opportunity to coach or train other employees that are new or struggling in that given task.

4. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: As Jim Collins wrote in his best selling business book Good to Great, you need to make sure the right employees are on the right bus in the right seat. Could it be that a fairly new employee is not in the right seat? While you may not have the right seat, it is a benefit for the employer to try and match the strengths of the employee with the position for maximum results. There are many tools available to help discover the employee’s strengths. One way would be to have them read and complete the “Strengthsfinders 2.0” survey found at the back of this book. It will identify the top five strengths of an individual and how to best manage that type of strength. According to Marcus Buckingham in his book Now Discover Your Strengths, fifty four percent of workers are in the wrong job. I would also recommend using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument or HBDI that identifies the preferred thinking style of workers and the type of work that would best be suited for that thinking style.

So what happens if you have set clear expectations, given proper frequent feedback, offered more challenging work to your competent workers and they still choose to coast? Now is your opportunity to help them coast to a different job. You will need to begin the proper documentation process that will help you successfully terminate their employment with you. This would include having copies of their performance evaluations showing the improvements needed, ways in which you coached and offered training to improve their performance and any “fair but firm” letters stating that their behaviors must change or termination of the position may follow.While these activities are not a manager’s favorite thing to do, you are doing a disservice to your organization and employee when you keep them in a position for which they are no longer suited to do. You need to set the stage by writing clear expectations of their job performance so they can choose to conform or exit themselves. Follow your organizations policies and procedures and make sure you have given that employee the chance to correct the behavior that is keeping them from being successful.