The subtle signs of professionalism

It used to get on my nerves…

I'd spend days gathering data. Then, 50 hours putting it together in a model. Then 5 hours more on PowerPoint.

The output? Three slides with beautiful charts showing exactly what the client had to do.

The partner would take a look at it.

Their feedback?

"Hey Bruno, when you go from one slide to the next, the charts jiggle a bit. Please align them so the transition is smooth."

AAARRRGGHH!!!!

Nevertheless, all partners did that. And so did all my friends' bosses, especially those that worked in professional services – consulting, banking, etc.

Maybe they knew something I didn't?

They did, indeed.

And when fellow reader Gabriela sent me this career tip, I got reminded of that:

It's so simple it sounds silly…

Does it actually make any difference to have your slides in perfect alignment? Isn't the information the same?

Actually, isn't it a waste of resources? I mean, you could spend an hour or two aligning a presentation… Isn't that time better spent elsewhere?

Absolutely not.

Professionalism as the art of maximizing trust

If you ask a hundred people what makes for a great professional, you're gonna get a hundred different answers.

Here's one that I like, though: it is the person who does everything to be trustworthy to their client.

You only hire a professional when you don't know what to do. Or worse, when you don't know what you don't know about your situation.

Because of this, trust is a must.

Take my 50-hour model that I turned into 3 insightful charts, for example…

No one knows how much time I spent on the model. No one knows how much care I put into it being correct. And no one's gonna go into every cell of my model and fully check my work. Certainly not the client.

So, when I present my recommendations to them, I need to convey two key messages:

• My findings and recommendations

• That they can trust my findings and recommendations

We usually take the second one for granted, but it's at least as important as the first.

One way to show others they can trust your work is to make it impeccable.

I mean, if the thing you show your client is full of faults and wrinkles and whatnot, imagine how the Excel model is.

That's the kind of thought you want to avoid.

Aligning slides is just one example of that. Depending on your task, it might be having a well-formated, easy-to-read spreadsheet. It might be having a nicer package for your product. It might be "wordsmithing" your pitch or presentation.

It's all about maximizing the trust others can put in you.

It's about raising no doubts.

It's about showing that you care.

I could've sent this email to you as a full block of text, with no breaks or paragraphs. The message would still be the same, but you wouldn't read it, or think the ideas in it might be any good.

It would've made the hour or so that I spent writing it useless. So I spent a few minutes at the end breaking it up so it reads nicely.

As with anything, there's a time and place to polish your work. Sometimes we just need a sketch to show a colleague. Sometimes there's absolutely no time to ship a perfect presentation.

But whenever you need someone to trust you, you've got to polish your work.

Keep working smarter.