How important is it for others to view you as a professional?

I believe you are never too old to be reminded of certain things. One of the things that I strive for in my career, is to be professional in my appearance and my manner. This has a goal that every time I am involved in a project, people I'm working with will expect a professional product from me. Being professional involves a few elements brought together in a cohesive way. In my humble opinion one of the most important elements to professionalism is how you receive feedback. Even if the person giving criticism is directing it at you, assign as much negativity as you can towards the product - you can improve the product! Feelings are typically not hurt on purpose, even if it seems that way. A professional tempers their attitude with the wisdom of the learning from the situation - you can quote me on that!  Excellence is perceived in the pursuit of it, not as a final destination.  With that in mind, constructive feedback should be invited by anyone in that pursuit.

Some links on professionalism

Click here to see how to be professional at work.

Click here to see some of the negative personalities in the workplace.

Click here for professionalism in the medical field.

The perception of your competence matters

I thought it would be interesting to show you how you could build an enthusiastic team of supporters, and then spend a lot of money and time putting together a product and still really miss the mark.  This link is to a amateur video called, "Safety Starts With Me."  I truly can not think of one venue that this was designed to be played in. This movie product is in the vein of training that makes some students quickly get turned off by what we do. If your training product is not precise and misses the mark, your professional credibility going forward will be affected and your management team, as well as your students, will have poor expectations of you in the future.

Give your chosen work field a good name

I have found that one of the most difficult things to do in the Human Performance field is to create brand new training content based on scholarly articles and solid research.  It is the most rewarding, but it is very hard to do with typical constraints put on by your employer - maybe they want a product for just one group of students, or for the entire workforce, and they want it in an unrealistic duration. For this, it really helps to have an established network of peers to send you content to help you get rolling faster.  Never forget that there is a lot of room in this field to make big mistakes within your organization (some times resulting in more problems than you currently have), so make sure to use your peers as a sounding board and as a resource, because together we all make each other more professional. Time-permitting, I have never met someone in this field not willing to help someone out.