What Defines A Professional

We all have different yardsticks to measure the qualitative aspects of what ought to make an individual a ‘professional’ but there’s isn’t any clear binaries.

- Rajesh Nair

The other day amidst some casual banter with my twelve year old daughter, she asked me a question out of the blue, “Papa, who is a professional? What does he do? “. While I am usually alert of the regular barrage of precocious questions, this was not an easy one. While I summoned my faculty and patched up an answer connecting a lot of phrases like accountable , diligent , hardworking , responsible, honest et.al. , it did set me thinking. I closed my eyes and glanced through my careers across a little more than two decades. A lot of those sentences popped into my mind which I imagined my career as a tapestry sewn with many words of advice, experience and anecdotes, these are some of the pieces which came together...

Through all my schooling and college, there was one aphorism which stuck to me from my parents. While they have perhaps never articulated it so, it sort of formed an overarching idea – ‘Focus on your education and work hard – it will bring you happiness and satisfaction’. This philosophy has in short being a guiding light and has provided clarity whenever I would stray away. As a professional, one of the prima facie objectives is to keep learning, applying and diligently trying to always do ‘better’.