Professional Development 2.0

An article by Latoya J. Williams    1 Comment

Those family, friends, and colleagues, that know me well, would probably agree that I am persistent about finding answers to difficult questions. I love learning and if I am exploring a topic, I will find books, people, or other resources that can help me develop a new perspective or generate solutions. When I encountered career challenges in the early years of my professional life, I reacted in a very uncharacteristic way. I do not recall trying to consult any books and for some reason I did not think that anyone could help me with my dilemma. Instead, I felt severely blocked and focused my attention on other areas of my life besides work.

Lately, I have been conducting a literature review of the books available to help young professionals navigate the transition between college life and work. What is significant to me is that all of the books that I have found have original publication dates of no earlier than 2005. When I graduated in 1999, none of these books would have existed. Many professionals know about Richard Bolle’s bestselling book for job-hunters and career changers, What Color is Your Parachute?, originally published in 1970. Until 2006, I had no direct exposure to this book and felt no desire to read it in detail. Because this book is considered a “definitive” resource, I plan on going through each chapter in detail in the next few months. I believe that finally investing attention and time, where my paralyzed past professional self could not, will help me further shift from being overly influenced by external sources in to being a mature creative force in my own development.

One important phenomenon sweeping the career development field right now, is the concept of personal branding. In fact, a presentation on social media and personal branding, offered by Gary Alan Miller at the North Carolina Career Development Association’s 2009 annual conference, helped give me the final push I needed to share my ideas, insights, and tips about professional development and being a first generation professional. In the last couple of days, I have been reading Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success written by personal branding expert for Gen-Y, Dan Schawbel. In this book, published earlier this year, Dan writes that “personal branding is about unearthing what is true and unique about you and letting everyone know about it” (p. 1). He uses the term Me 2.0 in an analogous fashion to the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies that have revolutionized our ability to interact and collaborate online (e.g., social-networking sites, blogs, wikis). Me 2.0 represents the leap from the Me 1.0 paradigm where “individuals conformed to corporate policy and had few networking tools….so that the opportunities for most individuals to broaden and control their careers was limited” (p. 18).

I greatly appreciate the fact that Dan emphasizes the importance of authenticity in creating one’s personal brand and that the proliferation of easily accessible and free or inexpensive online technologies provides the opportunity for anyone to differentiate themselves in their profession. In my opinion, exploring and understanding how my unique qualities can benefit the world is an essential aspect of evolving my professional sense of self. Consequently, I plan to continue investigating and applying personal branding strategies. I see the professional self as representing a union among those distinctive characteristics about who I am and my experience, those more general characteristics that I may have in common with others (e.g., being a good listener), and those aspects such as my values, ethics, personal conduct, self-image, and work and organization related cultural preferences.

Now, I am enamored with the concept of professional development. However, I feel like “professional development” as a practice has had too much of a heavy leaning toward meeting the needs or expectations of external sources, similar to my experience of external forces dictating my career path. For example, hoards of people have pursued an MBA or have become certified in areas such as project management (e.g., a PMP), due to expectations of making more money or believing in a certain level of prestige associated with those credentials. One could say that colleges and universities offering MBAs, as well as those organizations offering PMP certification, have managed to market their brands very well to corporations and individuals! I was on the MBA track myself, until life and my emerging professional sense of self demanded a different path. Reflecting on my journey reminds me that the cover on my current journal reads “Sometimes on the way to a dream, you get lost and find a better one” (unknown source). I plan to consider professional development in a more balanced way,  by first checking in with myself to ensure that my inclination originates from internal knowledge of my developing self and where I have true passion, then considering the exterior opinions on where I should invest my time and energy: my emerging version of Professional Development 2.0.