What does it mean to be “professional”?  I can be A professional, meaning I have all the credentials I need to be defined as a professional, but even then, I may or may not ACT in a professional manner.  As you know I love to look at things from a grammatical standpoint, let’s look at the word as a noun.

I, for instance, am a professional.  I have worked to achieve all of the hours I needed to become certified in my particular profession.  Despite the fact that I may be referred to as many other things, a specialist, support staff, etc., I am a degreed professional educator with an emphasis in vocal music.  Anyone who works with children in a classroom has to fit this definition of professional.  It’s pretty black and white.

However, the adjective “professional” has a lot of gray areas because it comes from someone else’s perspective.  It depends on that person’s age, culture, background, upbringing, personal experience, etc., and with that can come many different opinions of what being or behaving professionally looks like.  I personally believe that part of being a professional is having leadership skills.  We’ll address that in a little bit.  Let’s begin with personal attributes of a professional.

I’ve always thought of a professional as a person who considers every aspect of themselves, from the way they look to the way they act to how they speak and treat others.  This is a person who does their job to the best of their ability, is a team player and someone who speaks kindly to and about those he or she works with.  A professional is someone who dresses the part, who comes to the job dressed appropriately for the type of work they do but always aware of what and who they represent.  This is where it gets really gray because it totally depends on what you do as a professional.  As a professional painter, you might wear something with paint on it as it makes sense.  As a professional teacher, unless you’re the art teacher, not so much.

The generation you were brought up in makes a difference.  My dad was adamant that professionals did not have tattoos.  People who had them were either grunts in the Army or from the wrong side of the tracks.  Not judging, just sharing a point of view.  Because of what he believed and taught me, it is hard for me to look at someone in another profession with a tattoo and not think that way.  Is it appropriate for a teacher for instance to have tattoos or multiple piercings and still be taken seriously as a professional?  Is it more accepted at the secondary level than the elementary level?  More acceptable for a man than a woman?

How about language?  Is it appropriate for a professional to use “salty” language in the workplace?  Is it appropriate to tell jokes that are a little on the “blue” side?  What if it’s just among friends at the water cooler or in the teacher’s lounge?  Is it considered professional at a meeting?  Is it less professional for a woman to say these things than it is a man?

What about ethics?  A professional does what they say they are going to do.  They try to find solutions and work with others.  For them, there really is no “I” in TEAM. It’s very easy to say your workplace is full of team players, but is it really a team or only until it inconveniences someone?  How does a professional treat their team members?  Is it really collaborative or are you only going to do what it says you have to do in your contract?  I’m not making judgements, just making the point of just how complicated being what others believe professional should and can be.

I mentioned leadership as a part of professionalism.  It’s doing the difficult or hard things, being honest in a kind way, speaking truth to help others and make things better.  It’s speaking face to face with someone when you have a problem or an issue so that you can work things out together and ask questions about the other person’s point of view.  It’s knowing that these kinds of encounters, though difficult, can actually build relationships, actually creating the team you strive to be.  Keeping these things to ourselves and speaking of it behind other’s backs only speaks of unprofessionalism and stifles the team building process.  Teams don’t have to be perfect, they just need to be kind, honest and not afraid to speak our thoughts in a professional manner.

Maybe we’re not teaching our young people what a professional is and how to act in a professional manner.  It’s hard – I know I’m certainly still learning. When we work so hard today to make everyone such a unique individual, sometimes we forget how to work together, which is so necessary within a professional community, as a professional.