Enhance Your Professional Status with CPD Badges
You put in a solid day’s work for a full day’s pay. While that’s something to be proud of, it doesn’t help you stand out much from the crowd. In a specialised technical professional field, it pays to distinguish yourself from the rest. Most everybody in the industry has a university degree under their belts,…
Read MoreUse Storytelling to build your Professional Practice
We follow brands for many different reasons. We share their values, we like their products, we find their content helpful. The main reason is that we resonate with the story behind the brand. As part of your professional branding, you need to craft and tell a good story. If you look at the companies you…
Read MoreHow to be a better professional
You are a professional if you are a member of a vocation or occupation that has specialised knowledge, skills, education or experience. For example, an engineer or planner with a degree and three to five years experience can be considered a professional. You are a professional if you are: highly educated in a specific field,…
Read MoreDefining Problems: a most important skill you should have been taught
Einstein’s quote may sound extreme, but it highlights the importance of defining problems. By defining a problem well, we make them easier to solve, which means saving time and effort. Every professional needs to master the ability to define problems or challenges: “What is the specific problem are we trying to solve?” but few education…
Read MoreHow to Write an Executive Summary for your Business Case
Being asked to write an executive summary for a business case proposal may be a daunting prospect if you’ve never done it before. It is much more straightforward when you keep some simple concepts in mind as outlined below. Intended Audience Firstly, it is very important to know your audience. The intended audience for an…
Read MoreTrait four of a super-professional: CLARITY
Clarity is the fourth in the series of key characteristics of a ‘super’ professional. In previous articles, I described resilience, autonomy, and agility. Let us explore clarity. Clarity means clearness of purpose and primarily results from simplicity, that is, simple rules, processes and solutions. Complexity may result from well-intentioned, incremental additions to rules and processes, but end up over time…
Read MoreHow agile a professional are you?
A previous article referred to the four traits of a ‘super’ professional: resilience, autonomy, agility and clarity. In the previous two articles, I described the characteristics of resilience and autonomy. In this article, three of four in the series, let us explore agility. This is the ability to move quickly and easily and changing direction if needed. Like a…
Read MoreAs a professional do you have autonomy?
In the previous article on resilience I referred to the four traits of a ‘super’ professional: resilience, autonomy, agility and clarity. This article explores what autonomy means for professionals — you want more autonomy and control of your professional practice, your work and your career. Autonomy means being able to make decisions independently, without having to refer to someone…
Read MoreAre you a resilient professional?
There are four traits of a ‘super’ professional: resilience, autonomy, agility and clarity. So let us start with resilience, which means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulty, or adversity or setbacks – or in one word ‘toughness’. Dean Becker from Adaptiv Learning Systems found that the level of resilience a person exhibits determines their success, far more…
Read MoreHow to avoid overwhelm and complete projects
Whenever you have a deadline, somehow, you’re able to get the job done working right up to the deadline. But other projects never seem to get done. We need to complete projects that are urgent, but projects that are very important but not so urgent often gets left for tomorrow (and maybe never!). How do…
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