You know everyone in your organization or department is a top professional, but how are they perceived by others? Do your employee's actions, attitudes, dress, and communication skills really "sell" your image to the public, upper management, or others in your industry?

Here are four questions to ask yourself.

1. COMMUNICATION

Do you offer advice and even formal training sessions in effective communication? A pleasant, confident telephone voice or the ability to impress people face to face can be invaluable skills for your staff. Here are some strategies that I present when I speak about "Selling Yourself and Your Ideas."

• Take the initiative to introduce yourself at all social and company events. If that's scary for you, practice on "safe" people. (When someone asks, "And what do you do?" never answer, "I work for the XYZ company" or "I work in Accounts Payable." Respond with the big picture, maybe something like: "Our company has helped reduce shipping costs 25% for 12 major corporations" or "Our department is in charge of the company's finances. We keep the company running by paying vendors in a timely manner."
  
  
• If you're nervous, ask questions. The key to connection is conversation, and the secret of good conversation is to ask interesting questions. You can even prepare some good ones ahead of time.
  
  
• Build your self-confidence in business/social situations by focusing on your past successes. I suggest that people encourage friends and associates to share their successes regularly. This helps them to sell themselves and their organizations to strangers. For example, in a recent corporate session I presented, called "Building Self-Confidence to Sell Yourself to Upper Management," I offered a prize to the attendees who could come up with the longest list in two minutes of everything they would like upper management to know about them. The winner had 30 items. Then I asked volunteers to pretend I was their manager and to tell me the items on their list, things like: "I hold a leadership position in my professional association" or "I'm going to night school for a degree." I urged them to practice like this with their friends. Even the winner praised the exercise. She was trying for a promotion and realized that management didn't yet know several of her most important accomplishment." If you don't toot your own horn," I told them, "there is no music."
  
  
• An ideal way to build poise and presence is by taking on leadership positions in your local professional or civic associations.
  
  
• An international organization called Toastmasters is excellent for improving speaking skills in a supportive, non-threatening environment. (Your company could even start its own club.)
  

Do your associates look like top professionals? How many people do your staff can come in contact with each day? Your company image is talking, even when your staff is not. Consider offering professional group or individual wardrobe and grooming sessions. Here are some tips from top image consultant Diane Parente.

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• Image should reflect the culture of the organization as well as personal style. Inappropriate clothes or grooming can invalidate the individual and even the entire department or company. At the very least, an unsuitable image creates a barrier to immediate communication.
  
  
• Clothes don't have to be expensive, but they must fit. Be sure to figure the cost of appropriate alterations when shopping. Ill-fitting clothing, no matter how costly or stylish, is unprofessional. Men often wear clothes too small, women too large. Men buy clothes, expecting them to last forever. Then they (and the clothes) change shape. What worked five years ago doesn't fit now. Men end up with belts looped below the belly, pants and sleeves too short, jacket buttons too high above the stomach. Womens' skirt lengths shouldn't hit an unattractive part of the leg, and pants shouldn't bag or pull.
  
  
• Go easy on accessories. Avoid oversized earrings and necklaces for women, earrings or too many rings on men, exotic shoes, and visible tattoos. Jaunty neckties may be fun and fashionable, but don't upstage yourself, especially if you work in a job where people see you from the waist up.

• Look clean, neat, and healthy. Unpolished or worn out shoes announce that you don't care. Hands should be well manicured, hair and skin well cared for, and clothing clean and pressed, with no dangling threads or loose buttons. Bad teeth are a huge turnoff because people look at your mouth when you talk. Take care of your teeth!
  
  
• Avoid fashion and grooming extremes. Ultra-short skirts or chest hair peaking out of unbuttoned shirts can send the wrong message. Odd hairstyles, too much makeup or cologne, oddly styled beards or mustaches -- all suggest you are out of touch with how you look and act. Keep hair in a complimentary and current style, any length, but not dangling over the face. (Men, please don't comb your hair over the thin spot on top. Bald can be beautiful.)
  

Is everybody excited and highly motivated about the work they do? Every single member of your staff, no matter what the job description, is a Public Relations representative. Just one unhappy worker or one with a bad attitude at any level can do terrible things to your department's image.

Do you have strategies for maintaining high morale? Do you regularly encourage feedback and validate all ideas, implementing as many as possible? When you can do this, you give your staff "ownership" of the organization, so they are excited about coming to work each day.

Another way to encourage people is by putting the right person in the right job. Do you ask the right hiring questions? After you've asked the usual "resume" questions -- job history, education, salary expectations, etc. -- prospects can be probed with questions that will illuminate their hopes, goals, inclinations, and reservations.

• "Tell me about yourself. All the exciting and interesting things."
  
  People offer revealing replies to that question. So many people, even some top executives, say, "Oh, there's nothing exciting about me." You learn a lot about people's self-esteem when they answer that question.
  
  
• "If you could wave a magic wand and create a perfect environment to work in, what would it be like?"

  Suppose the potential employee answers, "I don't like to have someone breathing down my neck. I like to be left on my own, to make up my mind how to do things." You know immediately that this is the wrong person for a job that's heavily supervised. (Choose, instead, someone who says, "I enjoy a lot of feedback.")

  Consider both the demands of the job and the working environment. If a quiet, personable individual replies, "I love working with people, but I'd like to have my own space," be sure that's possible. Work areas quickly become private domains, and rightly so or people wouldn't take pride in them. But if the job requires a lot of space s haring, this employee may not last or do the job well.

• "Describe the best boss you ever had. What made him or her so special? Describe the worst boss."

  If the description of the worst boss sounds anything like the person they'd be working under, you know that person won't be happy.

• "What's your hobby?"

  There are many questions the law does not allow an employer to ask -- whether a person is married for instance. But you may want to know something about a person's private life to determine if the hours or job demands are going to be stressful. For instance, if you need an employee who is bright and alert at an early hour and his hobby will keep him up late on week nights, you both may have a problem. Or if her hobby requires occasional time off to participate, the time to discuss the appropriateness of this is now.
  

Do you provide opportunities and incentives for learning all the latest developments and innovations in your business? This would seem like a fundamental, but sometimes it can slip through the cracks when budgets are tight and the pressure is on.

Make training a regular item in your budget, and follow through.

When your team looks good, you look good! With just a little help from you, each and every employee can "sell" your organization by presenting a polished, highly professional image to the world.

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Patricia Fripp CSP, CPAE is a San Francisco-based executive speech coach and professional speaker on Change, Customer Service, Promoting Business, and Communication Skills. She is the author of Get What You Want! and Past-President of the National Speakers Association.

We offer this article on a nonexclusive basis. You may reprint or repost this material as long as Patricia Fripp's name and contact information is included. PFripp@Fripp.com, 1-800-634-3035, http://www.fripp.com If you enjoyed this article check out Fripp's learning materials http://www.fripp.com/publicspeakingresources/