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Wednesday 1 June 2011

What Personal Qualities Make A Good Professional?

There's been some interesting research into the personal qualities of professionals in various spheres of work in recent years. 

Emotional intelligence (sometimes called EI, or EIQ) refers to the set of skills which allow you to recognise and appropriately manage your behaviour, moods, and impulses. The recent ITI Conference had a paper on this.

The theory is that EI has an impact on how well you communicate in general (pretty important for those of us in the business of communicating), and more specifically, with your clients, colleagues, and peers. But how much of an impact does this really have on our working lives?

The UK's Institute of Translating and Interpreting (ITI) says that professional development isn't just about work. It also includes the “development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional duties throughout your working life”. 

So what are some of these personal qualities, and how can we work on improving and maintaining them in a systematic way? Good stress management springs to mind, for one.

Feel free to leave a comment below or email us with your ideas.

1 comment:

  1. I think patience scores pretty high on the EI scale. Closely followed by that unique ability we seem to have to get into the "mind" of the author of a text, often with a minimum of background information.
    And Sarah's point about stress management leads neatly on to my other suggesteion - time management.

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