MM205 - Be Professional, But How?

People tell you all the time to “be professional” or at in a professional manner. However, what does that truly mean? The mere word “professional” is not a magic fix it.

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello and welcome back to Morning Mindset podcast. I am your host Paul Markel and I hope that you are ready. Are you mentally ready? Are you psyched up for today's episode, and if not get yourself there real quick. Maybe take a moment, pour yourself a cup of coffee. Do whatever it is you need to do to psych yourself up and get ready for today's show. Alright, keeping in in line with the productive and positive, want to lead positive and productive lives, don't we?

-

Whether it's personally or whether it's in a business aspect or career field or whatever it is. We're endeavoring to do you will hear, and you probably have heard, throughout your life the admonition, the advice, to be professional. At work or you know, you may have been doing something, you may have been engaged in some behavior and a supervisor or a manager or somebody came over and said: “Hey, guys, be professional you need to be professional”.

-

Or you're in a seminar or a training session or something and then the guy up front or the girl up front was advising you and how to deal with customers or contacts or what have you, and they said: “Be professional, always be professional.”How many of you work in an office environment, or have worked in an environment? Where they had some type of one of those posters, you know, the motivational posters or what have you and it advises you to be professional. But how? It doesn't do us any good to just throw those words out say be professional.

-

Okay, that's like telling someone to. Play hard, you know do a good job. We can't just say to do something people need to understand how and sadly I do not believe that the adults of this world have done a very good job of preparing the Utes of America the Utes of this world to be professional. Let me tell you why, when you are a professional, you treat the situation not with levity or as a joke, you treat it as a serious job as something that needs to be done a task that is required something that needs to be completed needs to be done in order to achieve a goal.

-

If you're acting professionally, if you're behaving in a professional manner. You probably have an end goal in mind or you should have some type of a goal in mind right? You say well, I don't know maybe yes, no. Be professional one of the ways to be professional is to leave your personal feelings out of decision-making processes or proceeds. Leave your personal feelings at home leave your personal biases and I know that's difficult extremely difficult.

-

But when you're making decisions, are you making decisions based upon facts based upon Real World experience or are you making decisions based upon your feelings or your emotions, and ladies and gentlemen what we have done I would know. I don't know I guess since the mid-1990s. We have slowly moved away from facts and moved more toward feelings and emotions. We have taught the current generation, the generation that's entering the workplace is early 20-somethings.

-

We've been teaching them for 20 years that. When it comes down to it, the most important thing to them is how they feel. How do you feel about that? How does that make you feel? Is that make you feel? Okay? How do you feel? Well, if you feel like you tried hard will give you a ribbon. You didn't really do anything. You didn't actually accomplish anything. You didn't really put forth any actual effort, but you were there. So here's your Ribbon. Here's your trophy, and why do we give ribbons and trophies to people that don't actually accomplish anything?

-

Well because it's the nice thing to do because we're trying to make everyone feel good. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot behave in a professional environment. You cannot behave professionally. If you make all of your decisions based upon feelings and emotions, but what if we taught people what if we taught these young people that feelings and emotions are the most important thing in the whole widest world.

-

You wonder why you're in a business environment that is not professional. Maybe it's because of instead of dealing with facts and realistic goals basing our decisions on experience. We're basing them instead upon feelings and emotion. You don't want to do that leadership here on the Morning Mindset podcast. We've gone over the 14 United States Marine Corps leadership traits and what they mean and why they're there. If you looked at "professionalism" and you applied that to the leadership traits, you probably would see that they go hand in hand. Punctuality being where you're supposed to be when you are supposed to be there.

-

That is the sign of a professional fairness and Equity making decisions not based on your own personal feelings, but on actual fact and reality that is being professional treating others with respect and equally treating them based upon. Their Merit and their performance not on whether or not you want to be their buddy or whether or not you want them to like you or whether you like them that is being professional judging people not by their skin color or their sex or what have you but judging people and evaluating them based upon how they actually perform in the workplace and what they do not what they said they were going to do.

-

Not their feelings about a certain thing, but what they've actually accomplished that is being professional. It's not enough folks for us to just say the words be professional because just telling people putting up a poster on the wall that says be professional doesn't do us any good doesn't help us how and if you see a poster that says be professional. There should be the word how question mark but how. Not joking when it's not appropriate now sometimes jokes and levity are appropriate.

-

I don't think I could get through my day. If I didn't make at least a few jokes or smart-alecky comments but understanding when that is appropriate that is the key. Yes indeed. Ladies and. So I think we've nailed on our we've hit on a few Nails here that we can hang our hats on “Be Professional”, how? Jokes, levity, only when it's appropriate to treat people not based on their skin color or their sex or whatever, treat them based on their performance. They either perform very well and did their job correctly or they didn't base their evaluations on that.

-

Base your business decisions, not upon your feelings and emotions, but base your business decisions on fact and experience. What are your goals? What do you hope to accomplish examine those first then make decisions? That's how we act professional, and it's very difficult in this world that we live in because everyone wants to give all their weight. To their emotions, they want to put everything behind their feelings. when we do that. We are not acting in a professional manner.

-

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining me today for this episode of Morning mindset. I truly appreciate it. If you have a friend or a family member that you believe would benefit from this podcast. Please share it with them. Let them know that it is out there Christmas is coming up and is not too late for you to order the book Morning Mindset: a 30 Day Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life. You can get that by going to Morning Mindset podcast.com and ordering a signed copy, or you can just pop over to Amazon and you can order one there. It's as easy as that. I am your host Paul Markel. I'll talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.