Checklist for Professional Communication: A Path to a Healthy Personality, Reflective Mindfulness, and Self-Development Management

Abstract

Have you ever had multiple goals and aspirations at once? Psychologically, planning a written list and working through the plan is likely to lead to more productivity than simply dreaming about achievements. Professionals in many disciplines use written checklists to ensure productivity and safety in the workplace. For example, Dr. Atul Gawande’s checklists for the healthcare industry have improved healthcare outcomes for many patients by reducing errors and getting things done more efficiently. We can all use similar checklists as touchstones or reminders to increase our efficiency and engagement in pursuing our own goals and thus to improve our own personal outcomes through greater sensemaking and mindfulness. In this article, we undertake a literature review identifying and synthesizing key concepts from various areas of organizational and leadership theories to provide a broadly valuable basis for constructing a professional and personal development checklist. Professional communication is about representing yourself in the best sense of your character, image, and abilities through sensemaking, collaboration, storytelling, listening, and effective conflict management practices. Having a professional checklist works best when it is aligned with your true inner character as well as outward personality and social identity. Professional communication is about being sincere, principled, deliberate, meaningful, and authentic in all circumstances. The key is to balance your life’s important values-based priorities and be yourself, instead of acting as someone you are not. In other words, focus on the deontological view of ethical decision-making, as opposed to always leaning toward the teleological or consequentialism perspective. People often attribute their own moral or amoral decisions and behaviors to situational factors. The reality is that the human mind is a complex biological machine that is programmed and reprogrammed from the time of one’s conception until the day we die. The complexity of genetic and environmental factors, socialization under different circumstances, and lived experience across culture and opportunity mean people have varied capacities to make choices and attributions. As professionals, we all play the cards we are dealt and the more effectively and strategically we use these “cards,” the better will be the future outcomes. Human behavior is often influenced and driven by factors that we might not fully understand, but we must make the best use of what we do comprehend at any given time before the opportunity is gone. Science has proven that the use of an appropriate checklist for personal development can lead to productivity, professional career success, better work-life balance, and personal happiness.