Some words have too much ambition...

Words can wear different grammatical hats. They are clever like that.

Sometimes NOUNS act like VERBS or ADJECTIVES.

Verbs, you'll remember, are 'doing words'... like 'race' – as in, "Should we race?" But of course the word 'race' is also a noun – as in, "Jack won the race!" 

But many nouns can also rock a modifying adjective hat – describing other nouns. Again, the word 'race' is a good example of this. By the way, did I mention Jack was a horse? – quite a fast one, as it turns out. He is not a CART HORSE, or a PLOUGH HORSE – he is a RACEHORSE. The word 'race' can be a noun, or an adjective, or a verb.

As I said, words are quite clever like that. 

But some words are VERY clever. Clever and dishonest ... to the point of deceit. Some really smart words are able to escape their class. They can deceive us – disguise themselves in hats they shouldn't be wearing. 

There's an adjective that we use quite often (especially on LinkedIn) that has somehow pulled the grammatical wool over our eyes, convincing us it should actually be understood first as a noun.

That word is ... PROFESSIONAL

Look it up ... every dictionary I've found classes professional first as an ADJECTIVE. But we tend to think of it first as a NOUN. Why?

In our working life we pride ourselves that we ARE professionals? We don't first think of "professional" as a word that describes the nature of our work, or how we behave between 8 and 5. We think of it as what we ARE from 8 to 5. Which, for many, easily becomes 7 to 6, or 5 to 8.

(No wonder so many of us try to figure out our identities through our careers – we've forgotten who and what we are.)

You are not a professional. You are a HUMAN.

Yes you work, yes you have a career, but you are a PERSON FIRST.

The word PROFESSIONAL serves humanity best when we put an adjective's hat on it. But when we allow it to convince us it is a noun, and we are that noun, then it leads us by the nose into difficult terrain. Places we aren't built for.

PROFESSIONAL is really good at describing the nature of the work we do (well, for some of us) – our work can be described as professional. Ironically, 'work' is another example of a word that switches hats. And when 'work' puts the verb hat on, then the hat that fits PROFESSIONAL very nicely is the adverb hat – "We work professionally."

A few years ago, while filming an advert for Mygrow, my son Ryler (unprompted) offered this poignant nugget of wisdom in response to a question....

I couldn't be prouder of this kid.

At Mygrow we care about language, but we care about people more.

In the products we sell, and in our work practices and company character, we try to keep our categories in order – remembering that staff are people first. This applies to our own team, and the Mygrow customer and end user, the employees of the companies we service.

Now of course at Mygrow we do want our work to be recognised as professional, and of course we care about doing things professionally. But those are secondary categories to the primary one ... Human.

The story we believe at Mygrow, and the story we are persuading our clients is true (though our online Emotional Intelligence platform) is the story where each person is seen as a person first.