14.2 Five Qualities of a Successful Professional
A persistent idea within the field of psychology is that there are five basic personality traits, often known as the “Big Five” or by the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. Each trait contains within it a sliding scale that describes how we behave in certain situations. The five are as follows:
- Openness to experience: curious and innovative vs. cautious and consistent
- Conscientiousness: goal-driven and detail-oriented vs. casual and careless
- Extraversion: outgoing and enthusiastic vs. solitary and guarded
- Agreeableness: cooperative and flexible vs. defiant and stubborn
- Neuroticism: anxious and volatile vs. confident and stable
Except for neuroticism, most of the traits as named correlate with professional success. Researchers have found that successful people are generally organized, innovative, outgoing, cooperative, and stable, although extraverts don’t do as well as introverts on individual tasks and agreeableness doesn’t necessarily lead to a high salary (Spurk & Abele, 2010; Neal et al., 2011).
Blending these with Guffey, Loewy, and Almonte’s six dimensions of professional behaviour in Essentials of Business Communication (2016) Activity 14.1 below presents a guide for how generally to be successful in your job, how to be well-liked, and how to be happy.
Activity 14.1 | Five Qualities of a Successful Professional (Source: Guffey, Loewy, & Almonte 2016, p. 309)
Civility
Civility simply means behaving respectfully towards everyone you interact with. Being civilized means following the golden rule: treat others as you expect to be treated yourself. The opposite of civility is being rude and aggressive, which creates conflict and negatively affects productivity in the workplace because it creates a so-called chilly climate or a toxic work environment. Such a workplace makes people uncomfortable, miserable, or angry—not emotions normally conducive to people doing their best work.
Social Intelligence
Having social intelligence means following social rules to cooperate and get along with others, especially in conversation. This includes reading nonverbal cues to determine:
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- How and when to initiate conversation
- When it’s your turn to speak and when to listen in order to keep a conversation going
- What to say and what not say
- How to say what you mean in a manner that will be understood by your audience
- When and how to use humour effectively and when not to
- How and when to end conversation gracefully
People who lack social intelligence, perhaps because they missed opportunities to develop conversational skills in their formative school years, appear awkward in face-to-face conversation. They typically fail to interpret correctly nonverbal cues that say “Now it’s your turn to speak” or “Okay, I’m done with this conversation; let’s wrap it up.” It’s difficult to interact with such people either because they make you do all the work keeping the conversation going or don’t let you speak and keep going long after you wanted it to stop, forcing you to be slightly rude in ending it abruptly. Like any other type of intelligence, however, social intelligence can be developed through an understanding of the principles of good conversation and practice.
Emotional Intelligence
Like social intelligence, emotional intelligence (EI) involves being a good reader of people in social contexts, being able to distinguish different emotions, and knowing what to do about them with regard to others and yourself. Strong EI means knowing how a person is likely to react to what you’re about to say and adjusting your message accordingly, and then adjusting again according to how they actually react. Though we often hide our inner emotional state—smiling and looking happy when we’re feeling down, or wearing a neutral “poker face” to mask our excitement—in professional situations, EI enables us to get a sense of what others are actually feeling despite how they appear. It involves reading subtle nonverbal signals such as eye movements, facial expressions and fleeting micro-expressions (Ekman, 2017), posture, hands, and body movements for how they betray inner feelings different from the outward show. Beyond merely reading people, however, EI also requires knowing how to act, such as empathizing when someone is upset—even if they’re trying to hide it and show strength—because you recognize that you would be upset yourself if you were in their position.
Every interaction you have is coloured by emotion—both yours and the person or people you interact with. Though most routine interactions in the workplace are on the neutral-to-positive end of the emotional spectrum, some are negative—anywhere from being slightly upset and a little sad to downright furious. Whether those emotions are kept below the surface or allowed expression depends on self-control and the situation. Expressing such emotions in the workplace requires the good judgment represented by the 3 T’s:
- Tact: Recognizing that what you say has a meaningful impact, tact involves the careful choice of words to achieve intended effects. In a sensitive situation where your audience is likely to be upset, for instance, tact requires that you use calming and positive words to reduce your message’s harmful impact. When you’re upset, tact likewise involves self-restraint so that you don’t express anger or frustration if it would be inappropriate. In emotionally charged professional situations, it’s important to take additional time to process information when you’re in a different emotional state before communicating about it.
- Timing: There’s a time and place for expressing your emotions. Expressing anger when you’re extremely upset might not be a wise decision if it moves you to say things you’ll later regret. Waiting to cool down so that you can tactfully express your disappointment will get the best results if it’s an important matter. If it’s a trivial matter, however, waiting to realize that it’s not worth the effort can save you the trouble of dealing with the fallout of a strong and regrettable reaction.
- Trust: You must trust that the person you share your feelings with will respect your privacy and keep whatever you say confidential or at least not use it against you.
By considering these 3 T’s, you can better manage the expression of your own emotions and those of the people you work with and for in the workplace. Like those who lack social intelligence, those who lack emotional intelligence can often be difficult to work with and offensive, often without meaning to be. Low emotional intelligence can be a sign of immaturity because it takes years to develop EI through extensive socialization in school years and beyond, including learning how and why people take offence. Someone who jokes openly about another’s appearance in front of them and an audience, for instance, either fails to understand the hurt feelings of the person who is the butt of the joke or doesn’t care. Either way, people like this are a liability in the workplace because their offence establishes an environment dominated by insecurity and fear.
Social Graces
Social graces include all the subtle behavioural niceties that enable you to behave respectfully in social situations. They include manners such as being polite, etiquette (e.g., dining etiquette), and your style of dress and accessories. Some of the behaviours associated with social graces include:
- Saying please when asking someone to do something
- Saying thank you when given something you accept
- Saying no, thank you, but thanks for the offer when offered something you refuse
- Complimenting someone for something they’ve done well
- Speaking positively about others and refraining from negative comments
- Smiling often
- Being a good listener
Business Etiquette
Business etiquette is a set of guidelines that determine how you interact with colleagues, upper management, customers and other stakeholders. Business etiquette includes possessing good table manners, showing up for meetings on time, dressing appropriately for the office and communicating respectfully. Adherence to these rules and guidelines help to create a comfortable work environment.