What does professionalism mean to me?

Since I started at BCS, two years ago, I’ve been continually asked, “what does professionalism mean?” Does it mean qualifications to do the job? Does it mean I’m professional in my manner?

Well, the definition of professionalism is, according to Merriam-Webster[1], ‘the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person’. But in actual English, what does this even mean? Professionalism to me is competence. Are you competent in what you’re doing and are able to show or prove this? A lot of organisations I’ve spoken to, worked at or worked with automatically jump to ‘to be competent in your role, I recommend you take the following training course.’ But why do organisations jump to this? Instead of jumping to qualifications and training, why aren’t they jumping to looking at the individual’s skills; both current and latent?

Well, over the past two years I’ve been pondering over that exact question, ‘why do organisations jump to training rather than jump to skill?’, and I know think I’ve managed to come to some sort of answer. Individuals. Ok, before you jump down my throat and say I’m blaming the individual for this, (which I am in some sort of way), let me explain.

Throughout my career, I’ve completed many staff surveys and have always paid attention to the results. Every single one of them explains how the staff feel they need more training. Now, if you take that as it is, you could say the organisation hasn’t gone into detail, or taken the point very literally, , but I disagree. I’ve not once been in an organisation when an individual has benchmarked themselves and turned around to their manager and said ‘looking at where I currently am, and where I want to be, I need to be able to learn more about finances and how we build a business proposal to ensure we’re granted the best equipment’ (pretty average example, but you know what I mean). But again, why is this?

I think the simple answer is, everyone has been programmed to think being competent in their role, and to progress their career, means they need to continue on their qualification path and ultimately pick up every qualification to be in with a chance of progression. Now, for example, I know for a fact when I took the Policy role, many of my connections looked at my profile and thought, ‘how has he got that role when he’s not been to University or been in a similar role before’. Well, firstly, I completely agree with those people, but more importantly it’s because I looked at what I needed to do to work well in that role, and I knew what skills I had.

I benchmarked myself, looked at what I’ve done before, and critically, I communicated. I spoke to the hiring manager and asked what they were looking for, what they expected from me and what the expectations were within the role. Now, I could’ve quite easily ignored the job role as I didn’t have the qualifications to match, but my skills are what was needed more, and fortunately it played out.

Now, this isn’t some diary entry where I’m explaining how it all comes to communication, but it’s more about the way I went about my progression. I didn’t feel I couldn’t do the role because I didn’t have a certain qualification, but I felt confident I could do a good job because of the skills I had.

So, the lesson I’m trying to convey is; organisations, push back on your staff to look at their skill. Explain how it’s not always about qualifications. Staff, be a little different with how you answer staff surveys, but also to look at yourself first, and where your skills are (both relevant and latent) and embrace change. If you feel you need to develop in certain areas, ask.

?[1] https://graduate.auburn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/What-is-PROFESSIONALISM.pdf