A Geek's Guide to Professionalism

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A Geek’s Guide to Workplace Professionalism

* This post was originally featured on the Nerd for a Living blog.

Finding your professional voice, attitude, demeanor, and style can be difficult – especially when you want to be authentic to yourself. The conventional notions of professionalism often feel stifling, and may tend to turn a lot of nerdy people off. It doesn’t help matters that, if you’re just starting out with a new job search or career, you may have to invest in clothes you might not feel comfortable in – attempting to exist in a professional world that is foreign to you.

Even if you’re someone who has worked professionally for a long time, these things often aren’t talked about head-on. You have to try to figure it all out on your own. This can lead to frustrating results, such as not being well-integrated into a team because you don’t know the dress code expectations or communication preferences.

I hope to convey a few simple concepts that will help you be the proud geek (or nerd) you are while still being professional in your workplace.

Style

How people dress actually carries a good deal of impact in the workplace. It embodies the culture of the office, and (for better or worse) is how you make a first impression on people. How you dress reflects on your work priorities. It may be advisable to follow your colleagues’ lead, at least at first. Adapting your professional wardrobe to fit the general appearance of your peers can help you avoid attention for the wrong reasons.

You might like to showcase your geeky interests with your wardrobe, letting your nerd flag fly and expressing your personality. That’s awesome, but be careful not to go overboard, particularly in a new environment. Sometimes a subtle touch is best, with something like a lapel pin or necklace, or incorporation of an understated tie, socks, or tights into your outfit. Depending on your workplace, you may be able to get away with more casual clothing. Just make sure you look clean, presentable, and wear clothes which make you feel confident – it sends a message that you have put in the effort to look professional when you come into work.

As time goes and you’ve established your workplace persona and reputation, you can evolve your look and personal presentation to closer reflect your personality and taste.

Attitude & Demeanor

How you deal with people is a crucial part of your professional identity. Whether with customers or colleagues, you need to be able to speak to people in a respectful way that properly conveys your intended message. Some people may believe that being “authentic” means having “no filter”, but you can be yourself and still have the self-awareness of what you should and shouldn’t say to people.

Your nonverbal gestures add emphasis and nuance to what you do say. Be mindful of your posture, facial responses, and just generally behave positively towards other people. Remember to treat co-workers and patrons as you would like to be treated, and try to exhibit the enthusiasm you bring to your favorite geekdom to your interactions at your workplace.

Office Decoration

We end up spending a lot of time in our offices, and I love seeing how people decorate and personalize their working spaces. It’s important to me to have a comfortable space that can foster genuine connections with those who come in. I have a bunch of geeky stuff adorning my walls, and have had numerous people come by who see something they recognize. A moment of mutual adoration for that shared passion can help create connections that may later facilitate our working relationship. Rather than having to try to form connections with no context, we instantly know a bit about each other whenever someone comes into my office.

This seems like the most natural pathway for us to bring our geeky interests into our workplace in a professional way. Empty cubical walls and shelf space are a blank canvas for fun toys, posters, and trinkets that allow for authentic bonds to be created everyday. Most supervisors won’t have a problem with people bringing in some fun personal items to spruce up their workspaces, but if you don’t see anyone else with personal items in their workspaces, it may be wise to ask just in case.

Ultimately, while it may seem like a buzzkill for many geeks and nerds to exist in a “stiff” professional workplace, I submit that you can bring your genuine enthusiasm into your work in a positive way each day – and make a world of difference for you, your colleagues, and your customers.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Geek's Guide to Productivity and Motivation

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* This post was originally featured on The Student Affairs Hub.

Productivity is a fickle thing. It's objectively different for all of us (and our students) and what works best in terms of our personality (morning or night, at home or a coffee shop, etc.). Nevertheless, there are some general tips that can be beneficial to anyone as we all work towards getting the most we can out of each day.

1. Celebrate Each Little Milestone

A personal habit of mine is to have a little internal celebration for each of the small achievements I reach with any project. It could be a particular metric (views, downloads, etc.) or a specific first in my life (first guest post on my blog, or my first eBook). They don't have to be the best or the biggest, they just have to be important to you. Making sure to appreciate how far you've come, even when you're first starting, helps to motivate you when the going gets tough. I know that some of my projects have grown a lot over time, and it is nice to value all of the benchmarks along the way so that I don't forget where I came from.

2. Fall in Love with the Process

Something that can be difficult for a lot of people is the hard work that goes into all the details in something as simple as a blog post. It's awesome being able to share ideas with people, but before you get it out into the world as a blog post, you have to actually write, edit, choose a title, choose a header photo, format, pick categories and tags, and then you can push it out. Even then, you'll probably need to continue to promote the content to get it out to everyone you want to check it out. If you're not prone to wanting to put in the detailed work, you're most likely going to eventually give up since you don't want to do all the work that goes into whatever it is you're doing. You have to see how all the pieces come together and fall in love with the process to fully commit to any project you're undertaking.

3. Go Big (or Go Small)

When it comes to our to-do lists, there are the simple things we need to get done which may be incremental steps in a project, and then there are those big, ugly, hairy to-do list items that we'll do anything else possible to avoid. I totally can attest to these feelings and after reading some other articles on productivity (read my original thoughts here), I've found some helpful ways to combat never getting around to those pesky tasks we don't want to do, but should get to. On a given day, either commit to doing a bunch of little things (in order of priority) and have the momentum carry you through the get as many done as you can, or commit to just getting that one big task out of the way, and if you accomplish nothing else, at least you can feel satisfied in getting that one thing done.

Hopefully by following these general ideas you (or your students) can hack your productivity and crush whatever projects you're working on, big or small.

Thanks for stopping by!

Geeky Office Décor Series: Kristen Abell

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This week we're featuring the awesome office of Kristen Abell, Web Coordinator at University of Missouri - Kansas City.

Here's what Kristen had to say about her space:

"Over the course of my career, I have moved offices several times and managed to accumulate my fair share of decorations. Admittedly, if you had come by one of my first couple of offices, you would have seen mostly bare walls with a few things here and there on the desk. My current cube is easily the most decorated one in our office.

One of the things I keep at work is my Wonder Woman collection. I do this for two reasons. The first is that I find it gives me personality. I’m an introvert by nature, so I am sometimes not the most talkative office mate. This gives my co-workers a glimpse into something I love and a topic we can easily discuss. I have a few Doctor Who items thrown in here, as well as some trinkets I’ve collected at previous universities or in my work with organizations. The second reason I keep this collection at work is because I simply have no idea where I would put it at home.

This cabinet and wall are a mishmash of geekery and family. You’ll see some of my son’s artwork and pictures of him and my husband, but you’ll also see Wonder Woman featured prominently there, as well as my Rosie the Riveter poster - because what feminist doesn’t need one of these? I also have the front of the book I edited - Committed - front and center because it is such an important piece of who I am. Finally, just in case you weren’t sure if I was into tech or anything as a web developer, I have an award presented to me by my NASPA regional advisory board claiming me as a “Techno Goddess.” One of the best awards, ever.

A lot of people neglect the space that is behind them when they decorate, but I find this to be almost as important as the space in front of me. When I do hangouts or video meetings, this is my backdrop. And without fail, it tends to impress people. I mean, who wouldn’t want Buffy fighting a demon behind them? Or Wonder Woman in many artistic forms? (By the way, if you look closely at the Wonder Woman image with the blue sky, you’ll recognize it from my blog header). There’s also a couple more pieces of art from my son in here proclaiming that his mom loves salad (he is so wrong about that) and is as pretty as a butterfly.

So welcome to my little corner of geekdom. I hope you've enjoyed your visit."

What I really enjoy about this space is that even with a cubicle, Kristen really fully decorates what she has and makes it her own. A lot of people might get discouraged by the lack of an actual office, but a cubicle can work just as well! Another neat point of interest is how Kristen intentionally covers her back wall since it is always going to be showcased during video calls (smart move!). I'm also a big fan of her plethora of Wonder Woman stuff. She is such a great, iconic character and I appreciate all the different little trinkets Kristen has embodying and representing the character.

Many thanks to Kristen for sharing her story and space with us!

Stay tuned for more awesome offices in the coming weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

What I'm Geeking Out About This Week - 10/16/15

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Geek-and-proud

Greetings!

Here's what is going on in my world this week:

Over my long weekend break back in NJ (the reason for no posts on this past Monday or Friday), I sat with my partner and watched the entire first season (only six episodes) of Fear the Walking Dead (FTWD), the new companion series to hit show, The Walking Dead (TWD). My partner and I are big fans of TWD so we wanted to check out FTWD to see how it holds up. The answer is that FTWD is both similar and different to it's counterpart, in good ways and bad (I'm a very relative person). It's slower moving and smaller scale but also leads nicely to a different focus than our badass survivors in TWD. These people are still figuring everything out and aren't as hardened yet but are becoming acquainted with their new normal in terms of what kind of things they'll have to do to get by. I'm intrigued to see where the show goes, and I hope it doesn't just become The Walking Dead: Los Angeles since they have an opportunity here to tell a very different kind of story with FTWD.

After what many deemed (myself included) to be a rocky third season, this new season of Arrow is hopefully going to right the ship a bit. I like the bit of a lighter tone the show has been taking, as well as getting deeper into the relationship Oliver has with his team. I'm still a big fan of this show and have been for a while since I think it has some of the best action sequences on TV and builds up in its own way to the expanded, shared universe with The Flash. I look forward to it helping to expand the universe even further as it works to set up the new mid-season series, Legends of Tomorrow.

The first two episodes of season 2 have aired so far and this show is keeping the positive momentum going from their debut season. They're still going all in on pulling from their awesome comic book lore, introducing the multi-verse, the original Flash Jay Garrick, and continuing to maintain the expanded, shared universe of the show. I can't wait to see threads from season 1 picked back up as well as fun uses of the multiverse such as seeing different versions of our core cast in Earth 2 for example. If you haven't watched this show yet, get on Netflix and watch the whole first season, you'll be glad you did!

Thanks for stopping by!