Business Professionalism Are You Measuring Up to Your Goals?
By Bruce Strom, Ph.D.
How many times in the course of a week do you ask yourself: “How professional was that person” when they conducted business with you? Many of us do. Business professionalism, particularly when providing a service, cannot be overlooked.
Professionalism can apply to a formal or informal group that has the following characteristics:
A special body of knowledge/ability
Standards
Image of competence
Self-regulation
Some professions that have formally organized along those lines are law, medicine and engineering. Business, as a broad field, is not professionalized. I will attempt, however, to construct an informal operational definition with some areas for consideration.
An operational definition of a business professional is a person in an organization (or a self-employed person) who exhibits high standards of performance in self-management and interpersonal behavior. Business professionals are lifelong learners who reflect on (monitor and evaluate) their performance (knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors) to improve it.
There are four major pillars in business professionalism:
Professional formation (development and reflective practice)
Presence/image
Communications
Self-management
Professional formation is about lifelong learning and professional development. As people gain work experience, they should informally and formally practice professional development. Some examples are education, training, coaching, mentoring (as the mentor and/or protégée) and certification activities.
Presence/image is about appearance, attitudes and behaviors. It is about how people judge others. It is about how you project yourself and how people perceive you.
Communications is about personal and group interactions, verbal and non-verbal. How well does a person communicate one-on-one, as well as in a group? It also concerns about relationships, people skills, negotiating and case building.
And finally, there is self-management. Self-management is about self-control. It is about business acumen, decision-making, behavior, assertiveness, judgment and political skills. Self-management is personal and interpersonal.
Impact on the bottom line
There is the impersonal side of business. Areas like finance, materials and sometimes operations. But, most of the time, business is about people and relationships. These require time and effort in terms of professional conduct. What are some major gaffes business people make when dealing with people or relationships? I will offer three.
The first is becoming overbearing and aggressive due to stress and other pressures. Successful people are able to use professional formation techniques to cope and learn.
The second is an overdeveloped sense of a business mindset – the idea that successful business professionals are powerful, tough, calculating, overbearing, results-oriented people. Confidence and assertiveness, in balance, are good qualities. But, they should be balanced by self-management in terms of appropriate behavior.
Third is an out-of-control work ethic. The idea that a business professional needs to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on tasks or projects. An out-of-balance work ethic can not only hurt the person doing it personally, but can damage relationships with other people.
And what are some best practices of effective business professionals? Again, here are three options.
First, effective business professionals balance business acumen with good people skills. They have a good business mindset, but understand that, on many levels, business is about people and relationships.
Second, effective business professionals know their limits. They practice self-discipline in terms of priorities and understand their strengths and weaknesses.
Third, effective business professionals develop reflective practice. They take the time to do self-assessments in terms of goals and monitoring their practice.
Being a business professional requires balance between doing and thinking. It is about being assertive and decisive, yet appropriate. And it is about discernment and judgment in terms of lifelong learning and continuous process improvement. Those characteristics are the hallmark of a business professional.
The next time you have an outburst against someone for being unprofessional, I hope you will take some down time to reflect on your own professional conduct. Are you measuring up to your ideals? Is your professional conduct appropriate? Being an appropriate business professional can affect your bottom line in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.
Author: Bruce Strom, Ph.D., is an associate professor of organizational leadership at the George Fox University Boise Center. He is a former faculty member at the University of Indianapolis School of Business. He can be contacted at bstrom@georgefox.edu
Business Professionalism