Being Professional: a Manifesto

Integrating the concept of professionalism into your working life.

if I wish to be a Professional,
I must behave in a Professional way:

• towards my work discipline, 

• towards my colleagues and competitors, 

• within my community,

• in my social and family circle.

It's all encompassing, because it comes down to the values and the behaviours we exhibit towards our Professional Aspirations. So below I offer you two things:

• A set of four Aspirational Values to live your life by and briefly what that means (see part 1 and part 2 for elaboration)

• A complimentary set of Behaviours to practice which align to the values.

It's stated as a Manifesto, a Manifesto of Professionalism, if you will.

 

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I am a Professional if

1. I make a Life Time Commitment to Learning (a personal undertaking to the discipline I work in and a commitment to continually keep myself up to standard independently of my employers)
2. I encourage and work towards Professional Autonomy in my discipline (Belonging to a community that sets and maintains the standards that encourages the community we serve to place its trust in us - including codes of conduct, process and framework standards, etc.)
3. I am driven by a Personal Ethic and Morality (Work is driven by Personal behaviour towards our stakeholders internal and external, acting out the ethic in an unbiased way)
4. I Have Goals that are Distinctive and close coupled to my roles in the Services I am a part of (For all of us, there must be a clear understanding of our role in the process, how we add value, how we lose value and what we must do to maintain and improve it)

As a Professional, I undertake always to:

• Keep pushing the boundaries of knowledge in my disciplines (value 1);

• Set, challenge and conform to the standards by which the community judges the work done in the work place and discipline (value 2);

• Behave in a manner that ensures everyone who works with them and with me is in a safe space (value 3); and

• Always know and can articulate how Value arises out of our actual work, thus incorporating the first 3 steps into a valuable working life (value 4)

This is part 3 of the series.
the image is in the public domain & taken from the Wikimedia Commons page "Oath of the Horatii "