Making of A Professional

"‘Professional’ – You might have heard this term aplenty in your career but have you truly earned it?"

‘You have hardly spent a year in your present job, which you got just after completing your engineering degree. Why do you want to change your job so soon?’ I asked a candidate who had walked in for an interview. ‘I would like to work for a professional company,’ he replied. When I asked further as to why he thought his present employer was not one, he was quick to say ‘I am the only professional in my department, no other person, not even my boss has a professional degree’. To him, professionalism does not mean anything beyond having a professional qualification. Though my immediate reaction was one of pity for the kind of professionals our colleges are turning out, I quickly realised that my own definition of professional was far from perfect and needed refinement. If I were to educate the candidate at that point of time what it meant to be a professional, I could have only said more about what being a professional was not: it is not merely having a professional degree; it’s not about just gaining expertise in one’s subject; it’s just not about the ability to flaunt jargons in one’s talk. Then what was it about? I was not happy with what I knew and I felt ignorant. Education, as someone said, is a progressive realisation of ignorance and this kind of disturbance help me focus my learning.

When I was scanning the bookshelves at Landmark, I immediately pulled out the book with a red jacket that carried on its spine the silvery letters THE PROFESSIONAL. While the title caught my attention, the author enamoured me to start reading it immediately. Although I have not read the earlier books of Subroto Bagchi, The High Performance Entrepreneur and Go Kiss the World, I have always been captivated by his columns that used to appear in the Times of India. His writings have the simplicity of words, clarity of thoughts and more importantly, a profound authenticity of expression, which make them touching and inspiring.

Unlettered Professional

As is my wont, I started reading the book page by page rather than skimming through. Bagchi opens with the chapter ‘Burial of the dead’. He very succinctly brings out the idea of who a true professional is in the first four pages of the book itself. He narrates the story of a real-life character Mahadeva, whose life revolves around unclaimed dead bodies. This is not someone who is conventionally associated with the term ‘Professional’. As he grew up uncared for in the vicinity of a hospital, one day it so happened that the police asked him to bury an unclaimed corpse for a meagre fee and from then on, he became the go-to guy for burying the city’s unclaimed corpses.

Every time the police picked up a corpse that had no claimants, Mahadeva was summoned. Whenever he got a call to reach the morgue, day or night, hail or high water, he arrived there. Most of the time, it was a gruesome experience dealing with a body; there was no telling what had been the cause of death or state of decomposition. He did not choose his clients; he accepted them in whatever size, shape or state they came in; he treated them with respect and care, with due dignity. He was not an employee of the hospital, nor did the cops supervise what he did with the corpses. He did not have a boss who wrote his appraisal or gave feedback. He did his work with such dedication, focus, care and concern that he was soon in demand. Mahadeva had buried more than 42,000 corpses in his lifetime and his dedication has earned him phenomenal public recognition.

Differentiating qualities:

From the story of Mahadeva, Bagchi brings out the two qualities that differentiate a professional from someone who is simply professionally qualified: one is the ability to work unsupervised and, two, the ability to certify the completion of one’s work. If you have to get the complete sense of what I have tried to comprehend, there is no better way than to read the book. The story was so moving that tears welled up in my eyes as I was reading. I am sure that the story of Mahadeva, a professional in the truest sense of the word, will always remain in the heart of every professional who reads the book.

Integrity the hallmark of a true Professional:

I find the master storyteller in Bagchi as he spins the real life incidences of his rich and multi-faceted experience into enthralling stories, and there cannot be subtler ways in driving the lessons for the making of a professional.

When he shares his personal experiences that imbued in him the quality of integrity, I, as a trainer, wonder as to how I would be able help my learners imbibe this quality – what does integrity mean in actionable terms. He comes out with help: In the professional context, it means the following:

•We follow rules.

•Where rules do not exist, we use fair judgement.

•When in doubt, we do not go ahead and do what suits us; we seek counsel.

•Finally, faced with a dilemma, we ask ourselves: can my act stand public scrutiny without causing embarrassment to me and my family?

He says that if these four tenets are applied, our professional conduct will always meet the highest standards of integrity.

Professional Qualities

In writing this book, Bagchi has done his own research to find out from eminent men and women from different walks of life, whom he came across in the course of his work, as to what qualities they admired in a professional and what they considered unprofessional. From what he has collated from their feedback, here are the top ten attributes of a professional:

1. Integrity

2. Commitment and ownership

3. Action orientation and goal seeking

4. Continuous learning

5. Professional knowledge

6. Communication

7. Planning, organising and punctuality

8. Quality of work

9. A positive attitude, approachability, responsiveness

10. Being an inspiring reference to others; thought leadership

While referring to the last attribute of ‘being an inspiring reference to others’, he says that tomorrow’s professional must have a beacon-like presence in a world, and being ordinary will no longer be considered professional. He has also presented the ten markers of unprofessional conduct in the subsequent chapter.

Building a Professional Culture:

Bagchi has presented The Professional in a sequentially arranged manner under seven broad parts, namely, Integrity, Self-awareness, Professional qualities, Managing volume, Managing complexity, New world imperatives and The professional’s professional.

The development of a professional is a life-long learning curve and there is no beginning or end in this pursuit. Reading the book alone cannot make one a professional. But it is about being one. And as Bagchi concludes, being a professional is a matter of personal choice and the values one opts to live by.

But, if you want to build a professional culture in your organisation, you have to engage in a collective conversation on the various aspects of being professional so as to imbibe the understanding. That’s how the organisation can learn to be professional.