Build Your Professional Persona

Build An Unbeatable Professional Persona

By Ross Bonander | AskMen

 

"One of the hardest-won lessons of being a professional is that work is, ultimately, a form of theater."

You've heard that perception is reality, right? Well, that's especially true when it comes to the workplace. One of the hardest-won lessons of being a professional is that work is, ultimately, a form of theater. Yes, you have to actually do the work. You have to bring about change, results, progress, whatever it is that you're mandated to do. But you also have to act out the role of a person who does your job, and if you don't act that role with panache, you won't be fulfilling your true potential.

The way people will perceive you in the workplace is as much a product of your appearance, presentation, attitude, and communication skills as it is of your performance.

When you’re new to the workforce, you have the unique opportunity to build your professional persona from the ground up, allowing you to correct your flaws and present to the professional world the man you would like to be. By building your professional persona, you give others a reason to believe in you and to have confidence in your abilities; as a result, they’ll be more willing to go to you with new opportunities.

To that end, we offer you the following tips in an effort to help you build your professional persona -- a persona that is effective in giving others a positive perception of you and your abilities.
 

Clean up your e-persona

Don’t allow your Twitter and Facebook personae to tarnish your image. On the one hand, your real-life interests and passions can be a valuable asset. On the other hand, your tone-deaf rantings about politics can be a liability. Make wise use of privacy settings on Facebook, and carefully consider your audience before you Tweet.

Granted, your life outside work is your own. Unless you signed some legally binding contract that prohibits your behavior beyond office walls, nobody can tell you how to act or how to think. However, if negative judgments are made based on your blog or whatever else you have going on in cyberspace, you’ll never know it. Nobody would deny you a promotion and justify it based on your Facebook posts; instead, they’ll simply deny you the promotion without saying a word.

The point is that you have no idea how that material might hurt you, so you’re better off cleaning it up a bit just in case.  
 

Pay your dues

Few office attitudes earn disdain quicker than the presumptuous young guy who thinks his college degree entitles him to a quick sprint up the company ladder, allowing him to bypass all the hurdles faced by others in the office. In its own way, the office is a fraternity with various rites of passage. Enduring them is necessary for the wider shared experience; sidestepping them is considered unacceptable.

In other words: Earn everything you get. In an attempt to build your professional persona, respect the traditions of the company and show both willingness and gratitude for every opportunity, regardless of how small or trivial some of them may seem.  
 

Have an elevator pitch prepared

An “elevator pitch” is a short expression that encompass who you are and succinctly outlines your goals, and will prove helpful in trying to build your professional persona. In reality, your elevator pitch should be anything but off-the-cuff and casual, yet this is precisely how it should sound.

The point of having an elevator pitch is simple: When you suddenly find yourself in the presence of someone higher up, someone who can benefit your career down the road, and you engage in casual conversation, such a speech gives you a tight response to the question of what you’re all about -- a response not full of tentative “ums” and “uhs.” 

It is an opportunity that rarely comes along, but when it does, you should be ready for it.
 

Rub the right shoulders

Through our perceptions, we often grant people credit through the company they keep. Like most perceptions, this one can happen on a subconscious level without fully realizing the conclusions being drawn or the consequences of them.

This doesn’t matter -- these perceptions can still shape your professional persona. So, be mindful of who you spend time with at work and who you’re around when great things happen or when they hit the fan. Make a point of getting in with the leaders -- the people who matter -- so you can score that credit by association.

Make yourself available

Often, most people have no idea how unapproachable they appear until someone points it out to them. You may walk in a cerebral manner, leading with your forehead, and mean nothing by it. Yet, doing so means you aren’t actively greeting others in passing with a smile or a hello. As a result, it has the tendency to make you seem angry or moody -- in a word: unapproachable. Simply lifting your chin a tad and making eye contact with people you don’t know can break down some of the barriers between people and create unforeseeable opportunities for you down the road.

To that end, build your professional persona by being fearless about approaching others, regardless of your initial perception of them. Doing so can foster your reputation as an agreeable, accessible person -- someone people want to go to when they have an opening or need something done.  

Keep personal info personal

Some guys don’t need this tip; they naturally divulge very little information to people they are not close to or don’t know terribly well. But this isn’t so with other guys.

Keeping your personal life to yourself means withholding the events from your wild weekend of sex and booze. It means suppressing details of how screwed up your family is and how crazy your girlfriend can be. If you believe that these stories will help develop your persona as a stud or a storyteller, think again; if anything, you will be perceived as someone without discretion, someone who can’t be trusted with important company information. 

Ultimately, by keeping your personal information personal, you build your professional persona into something that is both trustworthy and discerning -- just the kind of person most will turn to with big opportunities.  

Dress your ideas in strong terms

People will develop faith in you if you’re willing and able to dress your ideas and your input in positive, self-assured language. Doing so projects confidence, and you appear to others as someone who isn’t afraid to assert themselves even at the risk of being wrong.

Thus, strive to eliminate the kinds of qualifiers from your language that sink anything you say before you even say it, such as  “this is probably a dumb idea, but...” or “I doubt this will work, but…”  Instead, say “why don’t we...” or “one idea is to…”   

The changes you make to how you phrase ideas won’t make a tremendous impact, but it will be far more effective than continuing to use the types of frightened, weakening qualifiers that inspire no one.  

It is naive to think that all that will matter at this stage in your career is performance, and it’s potentially harmful to operate accordingly. The sooner you lose this illusion and accept the office as a place where perception can be as important as results, the quicker you’ll see success.