Joining the “Public” World: Confessions of a Private Professional

The process of creating a LinkedIn profile was both informative and personally challenging.  Prior to starting English 301, I had neither a Facebook nor a LinkedIn account.  Yes – we really do exist!  As a business owner in a very small community, word of mouth dictates whether your business will succeed or fail and so the business value of LinkedIn was too low for me to invest time in creating and maintaining a profile.  ENG 301 pushed me, as a private professional, to dip my toes into the public world.  So I decided to just jump in and constantly challenged my emotional “who needs to know that!?” gut feeling and instead focused on what I believe and what I’ve accomplished because that is what is important.  When I focused on these two things, the process became much easier and maybe one day, maybe, I’ll ease up on my security settings as well.

A second piece required for Unit 2 was a research proposal.  I am very excited to work through the research and writing of the final proposal given the topic is real world and I believe there will be some strong recommendations that could be implemented.  I have found it difficult with the layout of the course, which at times has interfered with the organic process real world research can take.  For example, my original proposal suggested reallocating some of the HR functions to administration team members, however, when I met with the Owner he felt these employees lacked the behavioural competencies to take on these roles.  This process reflects the public versus private lessons I’ve learnt as a result of the ENG 301 curriculum.  While privately my brain peculated on the possibilities of unlocking existing talent, the public reality was that none of the employees were ready yet.  Bringing the two worlds of my brain together and adjusting my private thoughts to better reflect the real world reality, an even better idea came forward.  You’ll have to read the Formal Report to see what that looks like!