 This video is the first in a series on professional presence and professionalism in the workplace. So we really want to start off in this one just by laying a foundation and talking about what we mean by those terms and And what things are going to be related to the items we're going to be talking about in this series So first of all, what is professionalism? Well professionalism is according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the conduct aims or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a Professional person that's pretty generic right but but really I mean what we're taking what we're looking at there the conduct The aims and the qualities that make a person a professional in whatever field you're in so professionalism is just being And basically upholding the part that you're that you're there to play as a professional in that arena So why is this important at work as you can see here there are a variety of reasons it creates boundaries at work It creates an atmosphere of improvement when you're in the workplace it provides a sense of responsibility it mitigates conflicts by by having a shared understanding of what roles are and and what the expectations are there it leads to increased job satisfaction in general and and can lead to personal growth as well So the things that make us good professionals can also often times help us outside of the workplace as well So, okay, let's get a little more specific and talk about the qualities of Professionalism what is it that makes a professional one of the qualities of characteristics of a professional and so first is competence I mean you need to know your field You need to really have some expertise in that field and and be competent in your job be able to fulfill those job responsibilities yes at a minimum level and then beyond that really have some expertise and some ability to do something special with That job that's ideally part of being a professional You need to have ethics need to be you know an ethical person you need to be honest You need to be trustworthy you need to be somebody that people can depend on and and whose word is solid So ethics are a part of professionalism. You also need to have good communication skills This this is important in all aspects of communication certainly Presentational skills you need to be able to talk to people Individually as well one-on-one have decent social skills You need to have good verbal communication skills as well as written communication skills written communication skills in terms of drafting reports and technical skills like that But also drafting emails and and just being a professional when you're no matter how you're communicating So communication extends in all of these areas of work professionalism is going to be measured in your communication Your reliability you need to be able to show up to work on time at a minimum show up to work on time Work the the a lot of amount of hours be where you where you need to be where you're supposed to be be They'd be there on time and and have things done Reliably be able to keep up with your work and and have the work completed in a reliable way So you need to have that sense of reliability You also need to be concerned with your appearance and that's going to vary from job to job That doesn't always mean wearing a three-piece suit and and looking, you know Really snazzy depending on your job your appearance what the expectations are for that appearance could be different But we need to understand what those expectations are and then strive to meet them at a minimum And then finally mentioned this before but social skills You need to be able to not everybody's going to be your best friend at work but you need to be able to comfortably have conversations with people and and really Just be able to interact and engage with people around the office and in the workplace and as well as your customers and clients if you Have those as well in your workplace So just basic social skills and those are things that are going to come up in later videos as well It's more specifically what we mean by social skills and how can we improve them? So moving on from just professionalism in general. What is professional presence? And Karen Gray had a great article in 2018 that we're going to borrow from here and talk about she wrote about What is professional presence and how can I achieve it and she pointed out a definition of professional presence that had to do with this combination of? gravitas communication and appearance gravitas is sort of this Signaling that you have this confidence and the credibility to get your point across and create buy-in Among the audience or among whoever you're speaking to Communication has to do with your bearing and your speaking skills that will help establish confidence and credibility for you And then finally appearance is not just how you look But it's how you present yourself and and not just your clothes and things like that But how you present yourself from your personal appearance to the appearance of your workspace and all kinds of things that will factor into this so Professional presence really is a combination of gravitas Communication and appearance that all will lead to how people view you in terms of trustworthiness competence and office authenticity All of which goes into presence That's we it's kind of this process when we develop our gravitas our communication skills our appearance We become more trustworthy. We become viewed as more competent We be we will be seen as as more authentic and that will help us generate a more desirable and positive professional presence So how do we go about doing that? How do we develop this professional presence? Well, the first is we need is to focus on gravitas and we need to cultivate confidence Confidence in ourselves first of all we need to have confidence in ourselves and our abilities and our skills and and what we can accomplish and then also Cultivate that competent and confidence within others and help them be more confident in us We also need to be able to communicate well talked about communication as an important skill So we need to be able to communicate well across all of those platforms and all of those channels and venues of communication, right? Presentational communication verbal communication written communication everything from texts to emails to reports to to just you know Saying hello to people in the hallway. That's all really important that we'd be able to communicate well That will help us develop that professional presence And then we need to dress and act the part we need to dress As though we we should for that position, right? We don't want to show up, you know disheveled and Unhygienics and people are holding their nose and wondering how we you know got do we get dressed in the dark this morning? And not really see what we were doing We want to dress the part and we want to act the part, right? And again, that's gonna vary from job to job You may have a job where you've got more sort of uniform that you're wearing But you should still as much as possible within reason have that uniform looking good and be able to represent your organization Well when you're wearing that uniform, right? And then again acting the part acting the part of a professional just acting the part of you know I know what I'm doing. I belong here And so giving those aspects of appearance as well that that we are a part of this and and we are engaged And that we want to be here, right? So all of those things will help us develop professional presence, which we're going to talk about again in this whole series of videos Which is why this section is so short. This is something that we'll be working on throughout this entire series here Well, I need to understand the difference between a person and a persona We have this private self, right? We have who we are as human being We have this just this person, right? That we are that we live within that we inhabit that we are Then we have this persona the public self that we put out there and that persona may be different depending on the situation Right depending on the circumstances that persona could change but for example, you know, there's Bruce Wayne the person There's Bruce Wayne the the billionaire, you know, whatever Industrial tycoon Bruce Wayne and then that's the person, right? That's who he is. That's his person But then there's also this persona of Batman Now people most people don't know the connection there and in his world don't know the connection But he has this other persona which has a very specific purpose and a very specific identity And the same idea in a more realistic sense. We have the person of Stephen Colbert, right? The person of Stephen Colbert This is a man who has a wife and children and has a home and Responsibilities and things like that and we see a little of that shine through even in the late show where he has sort of a personality There but not nearly the same personality had when he was doing the Colbert rapport, right? He had this persona there of this kind of Savant idiot almost right he was just kind of a goofy Personality on that show and we see that transition between the Colbert rapport and even his personality on on The late show and certainly I'm sure that's even different than the personality that he has at home When he was just with his family and his friends So we have this person of Stephen Colbert and we have this persona of you know Host of the Colbert rapport for example, right? And we all have that though It's not just famous people not just superheroes or whatever There's us right just the person that we are on any given day. There's who we are everything that makes us who We are there's that person, right? But then when we're around Certain people hopefully won't work we put on this persona, right? We put on the person We dress a certain way we dress professionally We use a certain vocabulary that we might not use otherwise and we probably don't use it other places, right? The certain language that we use we we adapt ourselves and this is us It's not saying that we're lying or being deceitful really but we have this certain persona So we need to understand the difference between the person and the persona We need this work persona and we build this work persona so that we can develop our professional presence One other aspect we need to think in modern times and think about in modern times here, especially is our digital presence Which is simply how we appear in the digital world now There's how we appear in the digital world at work and that's important How do we come across in emails and texts and you know, whatever we're doing digitally there and working electronically at work? There's also though our personal digital presence, which certainly the job search arena is important and potential employers are gonna Look you up. They're gonna look at your social media They're gonna look at these things and say how what can we find out about you on the web? Basically, what is your digital presence like and even after your employed employers will pay attention to your digital presence as well? In whether we think that's fair or not. We represent the company We represent this organization and so they're gonna be concerned about how we're doing that and what we're doing as a result Right, so our digital presence is how we appear in the digital world So some things we need to keep in mind in terms of digital presence certainly email The when we're sending email that they're professional that we're not sending email as though it's a text message We need to use you know professional language and and and professional imagery and different things like that Then there's also text messages if you use that as a part of your work We need to be sure that there's a difference probably between the text messages that we send to our friends and the text messages that we send to our co-workers and bosses and things just even not using things like text language not using probably some of the you know Not not shortening up You're to you are the letters you and are and not using LOL and all these text abbreviations and things like that We need to have a more professional presence even in our text messages. I certainly social media. I've mentioned we need to be Aware of what we're doing and putting on social media Whether or not it's any direct connection to the organization We are connected to that organization and they do have some right to be concerned about how we represent ourselves and Therefore how we represent their organization So our social media is part of our digital presence, you know, certainly and then more and more we're seeing different kinds of collaborative software as well People using organizations using Google Drive and Microsoft Teams and OneDrive and Slack and things So we're communicating more and collaborating more using the electronic tools We need to be thoughtful and mindful of how we're doing that and how we're presenting ourselves There that we're presenting ourselves in a professional manner in those regards as well on those avenues as well So in general, we need to consider and want to consider all of these things that go into making up our professional presence And making up our the image that we present in the workplace because we want to develop and specifically cultivate a positive professional presence It's easier to build it from the start than it is to rebuild something that's that's been damaged over time or you know So we need to consider these things from the get-go So for the videos we'll we'll explore different aspects of professional presence and things to go into that as well This was just an overview of what we're talking about and what we're gonna get into if you have questions about professional presence or Professionalism anything else that we've talked about here. Feel free to email me I'm always happy to respond to emails and do so as quickly as I can in the meantime Start thinking about the professional presence that you want to provide and that you want to put out there in the world