You’ve taken the trainings and learned the programs, but how confident do you feel about your overall career outlook this year? Your soft skills—particularly your professional presence—can make or break your chances of success as much as (if not more than) your hard skills. The goods news? You can shape an intentional professional presence. And you can start by checking for these small but critical mistakes that could be hurting your career advancement!

1. Arriving late. Consistently arriving late shows a lack of time management, organization, and respect for others’ time. So don’t be the person who keeps everyone waiting. Keep a detailed calendar with as many reminders as you need to keep your commitments. Be sure to plan for travel time and meetings that regularly run long. Plus it never hurts to plan to arrive early and build in a buffer for the unexpected delay.
2. Dressing down. “Dress for the job you want”? Still appropriate, even if the job you want means wearing a bedazzled hoodie instead of a plain cotton one. If you dress sloppily or too casually for your position and your company’s culture, your work team won’t take you seriously, and you don’t want a pair of ripped jeans standing between you and that promotion. So if you’re not sure what’s appropriate for your workplace, take a cue from the people around you. What do your supervisors wear? How about that person whose work you really admire? And if you have to ask whether that outfit is office appropriate, it isn’t.
3. Writing overly casual email or texts. Emojis! Slang! Exclamations galore!!! Wait, are you talking to your college roommate or to your boss? …because while a smiley face here or there is probably fine in an established working relationship, don’t assume you know your audience. Personality—and more carefully, tone—can still come across in work email or texts, without abusing the punctuation, emoji, and emoticons you might use in personal correspondence. If your message has more than one or two well-emphasized exclamation points, ask yourself where you might tone things down.
4. Making excuses. Few things say “self-aware, confident leader” better than taking accountability for screw-ups. Even if that flub wasn’t directly your fault, you’d do best to search for solutions instead of team members to take the blame. Remember, people like and respect people who get things done, and excuses are never a step toward productivity.
5. Fibbing. Hand-in-hand with accountability comes integrity: the strength of your character and work ethic. That email that “didn’t go through” or that contact you “followed up with” last week may help you save face in the moment, but truth will out (with a vengeance). That’s when even the smallest white lie can ruin your reputation, because who wants to put their trust in a liar? If you find yourself habitually fibbing, take notice when you do it. Do you see a pattern? How can you change your habits to avoid the lies altogether?

This year, commit to intentionally shaping your professional presence, and to becoming the professional you’ve always wanted to be! You may be surprised by where these small changes take you.