What Is Developing the Professional?

What is developing the professional?

Professional disposition can be defined as the values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence a person’s professional behavior, while the Oxford living dictionary defines Emotional intelligence as “the capacity to be aware of, control and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”.

When you add the five minds into the mix you can safely say- Developing the professional explains how we express and handle our emotions and relationships, while being influenced by our values, commitments and ethics through our Disciplined, Synthesising, Creative, Respectful and Ethical minds or Mindsets.

The first time I saw the course title “Developing the professional”, my first thought was not too dramatic. I had assumed the course would simply enhance my current professional behaviors, instead what I have learnt is an in-depth analysis of my behaviors, emotions and actions.

Prior to this course if I had been asked to assess my emotions with or without the tools given I.e. emotional intelligence, Rubic and Shape definer, and Future minds I would have said I was in good place professionally with a lot of room for improvement. This course has however forced me to analyze and reflect on my dispositions and how it’s affecting me not just as an individual but also affecting my professional behavior and ultimately my contribution to my organization as a whole.

This makes me wonder how many professionals go about their daily jobs without understanding the concept of professional development and how the tools can explain their emotional and mental state of mind while influencing their behaviors as professionals.

Disposition in children and young adults

New educational and scientific studies are now proving that early emotional assessments for children and students can positively affect the mental and emotional outcome of the child. This means when children are properly assessed in school, their professional disposition can be positively influenced.

These studies show that Children can make decisions and create habits using an inner moral compass or in this case emotional intelligence.

But how can one assess emotional intelligence in a child? What standards do we use and who determines them? When these assessments are completed how do we know the correct answers and what's the yardstick to measure these indexes? I've had the opportunity to have worked with a young man who was slightly dyslexic, and when I examine the tools in this course and how early testing in children can be used to improve development professionally and mentally I'm left with a few unanswered questions.

In the society we live in, people with special needs are not put into consideration when standardized testings’ are done. These assessments do not consider the developmental pace of these special group of people, so how can we judge their professional development in their adult years based on assessments that were created without thought to special needs?

My research shed more clarity on this, the College of Education and Human Development studies states that emotional intelligence can also be viewed as moral intelligence. So when a child shares their lunch or compares his chocolate size to another child’s chocolate, it points to the fact that children are aware of their behaviors, and emotions or morals play a big role in influencing their attitudes.

The same theory applies to youth and young adults in various levels of education, these youth then become the young professionals we base our mindset theories on and how they behave at their work place may or may not have a direct link to their behavior as a child.

Here and Now

This brings me to the present here and now. How has my childhood influenced my professional disposition? What are my biggest influencers? What is my mindset and my self-awareness level? What is my emotional intelligence level? And finally how have all these mindsets and influencers affected my career and work life balance? 

During the assessments of this course I've come to a better understanding of my emotional state and my professional awareness.

I’ve learnt that I’m not just a square or a circle but in a perfect world I would probably be a “squacle” a cross between both a square and a circle. I’m sympathetic and empathize with people which some days means my team gets away with a whole lot.

On the days I’m a square, I’m motivated, determined and driven. Work gets done and targets are met. On other days the world is my canvass, I’m creative, I feel with others and while I won’t say I don’t meet targets there’s a clear difference in my days approach.

Personally I can say my “squacle” behavior was influenced by both of my parents. My father the square, straight laced and very by the books and my mother the circle a journalist and a free spirited soul. My parents as my childhood influencers also affected my educational choices which ties into the research done in assessing children and youth. I strongly believe that while people can determine and form habits on their own, the basis of most of our behaviors emotional and mental, stem from the influencers in our childhood.

The professional development course opened my mind to how much of an impact my behaviors and work ethics affect and impact my organization as a whole. I believe one of the reasons I was not aware of this is because of the nature of my job.  I currently work as a manager in the enterprise sales unit. My team manages the key business accounts for my organization. It's a sales and revenue driven position so my team’s impact is mostly felt through our sales and revenue figures.

My realization over the past few weeks awakened an awareness to how my professional shape affected my relationship with my customers, my communication to them and responses and resolutions to them.  This also applies to my team, our relationship, our communication, my responses to them and most importantly my appraisal of them. 

After every section of the course outline, we've been asked to document a reflective journal which encompasses lessons learnt from the section and any personal feelings we may have. In every journal I have admitted my surprise at the results the course assignments have led me to.

Am I professionally disposed?

During the professional dispositions session I realized that I not only had a strong moral compass but my background as a lawyer meant I went out of my way to support the voiceless. I believe in fairness, justice and equity and I feel people should be given room to express themselves. I was always reminded as a child that “there were no stupid questions only silly mistakes”. I’m a firm believer of diversity and coming from Nigeria where we have over 521 language I sincerely appreciate diversity.

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