Professionalism & Self-Awareness
Soft skills are interpersonal, management, and problem-solving skills that help us to successfully navigate our lives, jobs, and relationships. This includes interactions with ourselves, other people, and groups of people. Examples of soft skills are:
- Effective Communication
- Developing Self-Awareness
- Professionalism
- Having Integrity (Doing the right thing when no one is looking)
- Being Responsible
- Being Accountable
- Expecting the Best for and from yourself
- Being Reliable
- Meeting Deadlines
- Problem-Solving
- Having a Positive Attitude
- Able to get along well with many different types of people
- Having a Growth Mindset
- Having the grit to persevere through tough times (resiliency)
Hard skills are a bit different. Examples are knowing how to design a brochure or packaging, being skilled in Adobe software apps, coding a website with HTML and CSS, choosing a certain typeface to match the style of your design, and choosing colors for a painting.
The Best Advice You May Ever Receive
The best advice you may ever receive is to study the world and figure out how you fit into it. Learn what you like and don’t like, where you fit and where you don’t, where you are happy and where you’re not, what you can be and what you can’t, and become keenly aware of your strengths, weaknesses, talents, and gifts. Lastly, be prepared to reevaluate all of this every few years.
Being Self-Aware
Developing self-awareness is a valuable characteristic that will help you throughout your life. It will help you see how you fit into the world. Self-awareness means becoming aware, through self-reflection, of your own passions, motivations, beliefs, emotions, stories, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. This will allow you to develop positive self-esteem and value yourself. The confidence you build from knowing yourself will come through in your interactions with the world. You will also grow to see and appreciate these characteristics in others, making you a more caring, compassionate, and helpful person.
You are Probably Already Becoming Self-Aware
- A few years ago, you thought about your strengths and weaknesses. You thought about your passions and interests.
- Out of all the careers out there, you chose to be a graphic designer.
- Following your passion, you are now in college, learning how to become a professional graphic designer.
- In college, you learn about design and practice the skills needed to become a professional designer.
- Next, you begin to be respected by your peers by demonstrating your talents on your class projects.
- As your talents grow, you begin to surprise yourself with how good you are becoming.
- This process builds self-esteem, and you begin to value yourself as a designer.
- Self-esteem leads to self-confidence.
- Self-confidence shows through in your job interview.
- They see you as confident that you can do the job, which helps you get hired.
- Being self-confident allows you to examine other parts of your life more comfortably.
- You ask yourself, “Where else can I change or improve?”
- You know that high self-esteem reduces the risk of unhealthy codependency and negative peer relationships. You expect and feel you deserve the best for yourself.
- You begin the self-aware process again in a new area of your life.
- You are now more self-aware of yourself and of others around you, and you’re better for it.
Applying Self-Awareness to Your Design Work
A famous coach once said, “The only discipline that sticks is self-discipline.” Take responsibility for your own self-awareness, and you’ll be able to apply it to every aspect of your life. If you have children, you’ll be able to teach them as well. Trust the process, and both of you will live richer and happier lives.
It’s good to think about why you create the design work you do. What motivates and influences you and your work? What you’ve been through in life? Your past and upbringing? The people in your life who shaped who you are now? The marketing message and target audience are important, but it’s good to dive deeper into your motivations. Once you begin to uncover your motivations, there’s a good chance you’ll begin to better understand your audience better, too. That will help you see life through their eyes and point of view. You will be a better visual communicator, too.
Ask yourself as you begin, work on, and complete a design project:
- Were you passionate about your project?
- When you began, did you expect the best of yourself? Were you positive?
- What were you feeling as you worked on this project?
- How have your beliefs, values, and history as a person influenced your design work?
- Do you feel proud of the designs you create?
- In what areas did you grow the most during this project?
- What parts of your design project show your strengths?
- What parts need improvement?
- Did you surprise yourself and really impress others?
Professionalism
Professionalism means integrity, responsibility, accountability, and expecting the best for and from yourself. It also means honesty and respect for others. Professional people care for other people and help where they can and when it’s safe to do so.
- It means taking pride in the work you do and always doing your best.
- It means being prepared and respecting the fact that others are counting on you.
- It means keeping yourself competent and knowledgeable in the areas others depend on you for.
- It means being appropriate for each situation you find yourself in.
- It means taking the lead when no one else does. It means helping others who have a difficult time helping themselves.
- It means going against the crowd if the crowd is wrong. It means sticking to your principles even when it makes things harder.
- It means not laughing at something or someone if it’s wrong, even if your friends or the group is.
- It means being your own person and having the confidence to do the right thing even when it’s not popular.
- It means seeing things from others’ points of view and knowing when to compromise.
- It means allowing yourself to change when you know, deep down, it’s for the best.
A few things to remember about being professional:
- Professional people can still be funny and lighthearted and show their personality when the situation calls for it.
- Not everyone conducts themselves professionally. Sometimes, you have to take the lead or be the “bigger person.”
- Sometimes, no matter how professional you try to be, you will not be able to communicate effectively with every person. People are different and act differently, and communication is seldom perfect.
- Sometimes, you have to agree to disagree and go your own way.
- I always balance the world’s expectations with my right to be who I am. Empower yourself not to give up your entire self and be a professional bore without any unique personality traits. Trust me; your unique personality traits add flavor to the professional world, where conformity and allegiance can become the norm. Not many new ideas come from conformity. A LOT of new ideas can come from you being your own person and seeing things with your own fresh eyes. Be appropriate, be respectful, be courteous, but for goodness sake be yourself and let your own uniqueness shine through. Billions of beams of unique light make the world a glowing and energetic place.