As I get older, I have come to have more respect for the word “Professional”. A professional entertainer, for example, knows the ’show must go on’. A professional football or hockey player knows that they have to play some of the time with injury.
I knew the words but I really didn’t get their meaning in terms of the context of what it means in my working life. If I don’t feel well, I feel sorry for myself. If I am not 100%, I’ll say that to a client and expect some sympathy. A true professional would say: ‘to heck with that!”
If you want to be a professional (architect, engineer, constructor, teacher, lawyer, doctor, electrician, what have you), here is what I think you have to do:
1. Get up every day, day after day, and produce consistently excellent work.
2. Don’t do anything, like drink too much, take drugs, not get enough exercise, eat too much, not get enough sleep, etc. that would take away from your ability to do 1. You need discipline and focus.
3. Don’t wing it; if someone asks for your professional opinion, you know they are asking for a carefully thought out view based on years of education, training, focus and collected wisdom. If you are going into a meeting where your professional knowledge is needed, prepare beforehand. Think through the possibilities.
4. To be a professional is to be able to resist the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. If you think you know everything, you are not open to new ideas and you don’t engage in lifetime learning, then you are old before your time (you start getting old the day you think you know everything) and a fool. If you are getting divorced every few years, you won’t have time for anything else. If you’re greedy and lazy, no will want to do business with you; if you are envious, you will be small minded and if you tend to lose your temper a lot, you will act against your own best interests (which people do surprisingly often). None of this is the behaviour of a professional.
5. You must be able to shut out problems in other areas of your life and deliver great results even when everything else feels like it is falling apart.
6. You need to be able to learn from your mistakes and those of others. You need to be able to admit when you are wrong and fix it. If someone else is doing something better than you, stop doing what you are doing and adopt the new way of doing things. Don’t let yourself suffer from the NOT-INVENTED-HERE syndrome.
7. You need the ability to accept crticsm and the wisdom to know when not to accept criticsm because in your professional opinion, you are right.
8. You need to deliver a consistent high level of care for your clients and put their interests truly first.
9. You need to understand that you will be held to a higher standard of behaviour and knowledge than an amateur. This is true in both legal terms and in society as a whole. There is no use whining that you didn’t know such and such if, within your industry, you, as a professional, should have known.
10. Everything changes and you must be able to adapt. The US Marine Corps unofficial motto is “Show some adaptability” and you should too.
Dr. Bruce
Jan. 20, 2007