Are you managing your professional image? If you're not, it's likely that someone else is going to, says Harvard Business school Professor Laura Morgan Roberts.  She is the author of a new study called "Changing Faces: Professional image construction in diverse organizational settings." She says it is only wise to frame up the image that others are inevitably forming of you in the workplace.  Robert says that most people want to be thought of as being technically competent, owning social skills, having a strong character and being a committed person.  She says that research shows that the most valued traits are trustworthiness, humility, caring and capability. If you want to know what your potentially negative professional image is then ask yourself what you think key people in your organization say about you behind closed doors when you're not in the room. This will represent your perceived professional image—or more simply, your best guess of what important people at work think about you. Roberts says you must manage your image and you can do this by:

• Identifying the qualities that you want others to associate with you.
• Knowing what traits about yourself you want to emphasize or minimize.
• Analyzing how you are currently perceived.
• Assessing whether you are capable of changing your image.
• Balancing your image by increasing your credibility and authenticity in the workplace.
• Monitoring your behavior.
• Monitoring your self-disclosure.
• Proving your worth and legitimacy.

-adapted from an interview of Laura Morgan Roberts, by Mallory Stark, in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge for business leaders newsletter.