Why is professionalism important?
The ability to maintain a professional persona is skill that great managers, supervisors, and other leaders exercise. Not only does keeping a balance between work expectations and outside-work life keep us feeling balanced, it also manifests a consistency in the workplace behavioral expectations.
Good relationships ? Good results.
According to Sarri Gilman’s TED Talk on personal boundaries, people who are overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed have trouble making the right decisions for themselves because their judgment is blurred. On the other hand, people who trust themselves, are decisive, and are committed to healthy relationships succeed in both their work and personal life.
Sarri acknowledges that challenges naturally come our way in life, and she suggests that high levels of stress cause need for high amounts of self-care. It can be tempting to neglect the self, and ironically stressful to set personal boundaries; but when you consider the benefits of knowing yourself and knowing the values behind the decisions you make, it makes the little periods of transition simply feel like natural results of working hard. Sarri, in fact, calls the process of communicating boundaries merely “sweating”. Sarri elaborates that she, herself, “sweats” regularly working with others.
Moral of the story: Effective professionalism takes hard work at first, and diligence to maintain, but reaps great rewards in creating positive, productive professional and personal relationships.
*Tips and Tools for strengthening boundaries, as presented by Sarri Gilman, are as follows:
- The most essential boundary tool that everyone has – the personal compass.
- Visual a compass in your hand with two words on it – yes and no.
- Use the compass to decide where your boundaries are, what you say yes and no to, particularly where you need it the most.
- Sometimes your compass is clouded over, and you can’t see if something is a yes or a no for you. This is happens if you’ve been ignoring your compass or arguing with it because you don’t like what it’s saying.
- Although our compass does not give us the details, you can trust it, because its only purpose is to take care of you. And if you let the compass and boundaries take care of you, it’ll mitigate stress, and stress is a very serious issue.
- According to the American Psychological Association, 50-58% of us are suffering from high stress. Big number.
- Boundary skills reduce the stress so you can see your compass.
- Problem: Setting boundaries is stressful, ironically. But it’s brief stress,or “sweating”.
- Remember, the key for recognizing boundaries where you need them the most is “tolerating stormy emotions”. Communicating your boundaries or making decisions based on them can have negative effects on people, especially when emotions are involved.
- When functioning under a lot of stress, the key is to ask yourself: Are there ways that you can improve your self-care? The more stress you have, the more you need to do self-care.
- We’re all in the middle of a life story, and your story is based on what you’re saying yes and no to. If you shut out the noise and listen, you’re going to find yourself going through life with less stress and profoundly in-tune with your purpose.
Link to TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtsHUeKnkC8