The document provides advice for becoming a true professional. It discusses the importance of integrity, self-awareness, authenticity, seeking help, not making false comparisons, having a reasonable view of the future, not seeing work only as a means of earning money, being a good listener, controlling reactions, welcoming feedback, resisting false attractions, continuing to do some basic tasks yourself even as your career advances, being proactive, taking charge in difficult situations, managing time well, maintaining health, doing more by doing less, setting limits, committing fully to tasks, focusing on adding real value, having a clear vision for the future, and continually striving to improve.

1. MAKING OF A PROFESSIONAL – 2

2. Quick recap from first session
“Professional is someone who have the ability to work unsupervised and the ability to certify the completion of one's work .”
• Truth : There is no god higher than the truth
• Integrity : Integrity precedes professional competence. Leaders in every profession need to demonstrate high personal
integrity and then personally deliver the message to their organizations.
• Self-Awareness : Always remain aware of where you have come from and where you have reached today. Being rooted is the
key requirement for carrying success on your shoulders without being burdened by it.
• Being Authentic : A true professional has no need for add-ons off experience, mentioning connections, or being plain fake.
Being authentic might sometimes get us to a ‘no’, but that is better than a situation that causes shame of
being unmasked. A professional does not need to hog the limelight. If you cannot add true value, then you
must not add to the problem with your false reasons or explanations. The more you pretend, the more naked
you become.
• Seeking Help : Seeking help from someone – a peer , a mentor , your supervisor , even a junior is not a sign of the weak.
Don’t be ashamed in signing up for the help – in matters of work , or in matters of mental and physical well-being.
• Not suffering false comparisons : Every professionally qualified person makes comparisons with colleagues , peers , seniors , even juniors some
time or the other. It is futile to make such comparisons. They cause unnecessary pain based on superficial
knowledge and vague understanding of the there person’s journey to reach that position.
• Having a reasonable view of the future : Professionals seem to know where they are going; they acknowledge ground reality , they are in command of
the situation even as they face the indeterminate challenges of the future.

3. LOOKING BEYOND MONEY
A professional who sees his work primarily as a means of earning money runs
out of meaning very soon. Beyond base comforts, after a while, the quest for
material success actually erodes self-worth. It becomes most pronounced in
the later part of one’s life. Many among us begin to suffer from a sense of
emptiness that becomes difficult to decode. Story of
http://www.imleemahuaa.org/
The greatest satisfaction, and the more enduring one for a professional,
is the admiration from people with whom we do business. As there is no
motivation bigger than the power to build an intellectual and emotional
inheritance and leaving a profound legacy.

4. INTENT LISTENING
Listening not only with your ears but also your eyes. Our eyes are trained to
notice the smallest sign of pain , impatience , lack of confidence , worry and
detachment.
Great professionals are invariably good listeners. The interesting thing
about listening is that the other person gets to “feel” instantaneously that
he/she is being listened to. As a result , a very positive energy starts
flowing between the two people who are in conversation.

5. REINING IN REACTIONS
The capacity to watch your own actions and utterances is the starting point of
being self-observant. This can take one to a state where one can observe
thoughts, feelings and actions.
In extremely high pressure situations, often the best emotion to express
is control. And a true professional has a calibrated thermostat which
prompts the degree of reaction and control required in any given
situation.

6. WELCOMING FEEDBACK
Every customer complaint presents scope for improvement, people are taught. Yet,
scores of organizations house employees who would rather not hear it as it is from
an irate customer. How often do people read customer feedback in the raw and not
in the aggregated form? How often do we read between the lines of a summary?
How often do we travel to the customer’s location and discuss negative feedback?
A good professional craves real feedback. The ability to freely seek feedback,
more importantly take feedback and act on it, is something that can only be
learnt over time. And it requires constant effort to master. But without
developing this ability you cannot become a true professional.

7. NOT SUFFERING FALSE ATTRACTIONS
The fact of the matter is that you have not paid back your organization for
taking a risk in hiring you just three months ago. The fact is that to the head
hunter you are just another head to hunt, to make his cut and bonus. Flirting
with false attractions makes us lose affection for what is on hand. If you do not
have a serious need for the offered job or assignment, do the professional thing
and resist the temptation.
Once you have landed your new job, make sure that you set it up for
success. Try to blend in and not blend out in the initial days. Build value
before seeking recognition.

8. DOING SOME THINGS FOR YOURSELF
As we professionally advance in our organizations, we lose touch with the real work. As I start
dictating notes, I lose my keyboard skills. As the head of a business division, I become so big that
someone has to change my slides while I make my presentations. I no longer do my own research;
I cannot design my PowerPoint presentations. I stop making cold calls because I am now VP,
sales. These are all signs of decay.
A professional does not let go of the basic ability to work because it is like losing your
fingers. There are some things you must continue to do at any stage of your career. Doing
the small things in life yourself is very important. These have greater significance than you
know. Sometimes, the most profound ideas come not when you are in the boardroom but
when you are washing dishes. So, do not stop walking when you have a car. Do not stop
driving yourself because you can be driven.

9. BEING PROACTIVE
‘Proaction’ is an amazingly wonderful attitude and a behavior that gets us memorable
relationships in both life and business. Everyone loves to deal with a proactive
individual. It is every boss’s prayer to have such a person in his/her team.
Proactive professionals are not worried about creating work for themselves as an
unwanted consequence of reaching out. Why fix something that isn’t broken? In
the world of business and professional dealings, people do not like to be taken by
surprise. Anything that may cause grief if discovered must be brought to light by
you, voluntarily, ahead of time and put in front of all the stakeholders who could
be affected by it. It is uncomfortable while you do it but it builds lasting
relationships.

10. TAKING CHARGE
Faced with a potentially dangerous situation, people freeze. They justify their inaction by
thinking that not being in the front, not taking charge of a dangerous situation is the
wiser (and safer) thing to do. Three small stories …
Developing the power within, to have the confidence to take charge in the most
difficult and dangerous of situations, is the hallmark of a true professional.

11. OF TIME, BODY AND SOUL
One cannot be a great professional unless one masters time. My experience of meeting many such
people and working with them tells me the primary quality they all have is self-discipline. If
someone does not have basic self-discipline, you will soon find that poor time management is just
one of their many problems.
Second most important is the status of your health. Keeping good health is critical to productivity.
Poor personal health impacts concentration and leads to a feeling of exhaustion.
Begin to pace yourself, slow down. Use techniques like yoga and meditation to sharpen the ability
to do more by doing less. In other words, you need to know how to burn less energy to deliver the
same level of productive work. Sometimes prayer, or a quiet period for reflection early in the
morning or before you sleep, is just as helpful.

12. DOING MORE BY DOING LESS
As young managers, people tend to be all over the place. You have no time to pause
and think. We thrive on being multitaskers in our job, constantly checking e-mails and
working clients.
Doing more, being engaged 24x7 does not mean you are achieving more. As a
professional, the trick is to do more by doing less. To do this, you have to
disengage from doing too many things at the same time and prioritize based on
where you can make a larger impact.

13. THE TO-DO LIST
Goals have a powerful ability to shape our behavior, motivate us, create energy. Once
you build goals, you enter the virtuous cycle by which when you are close to achieving a
goal, newer goals appear, and this process keeps you going.

14. SAYING NO
I would advise two things: do not do what you do not like to do and learn to say no to additional
chores or requests outside of work. If the senior is a real professional, he will respect you for
your openness. As a professional you must set the limits, and when you do, people will respect
you for it.

15. A LONG VIEW OF TIME
I believe that one must take a long view of time in building any professional relationship.
It goes well beyond the work one produces at one’s job.
Every professional’s footprint must be larger than his daytime job. Our
professional identity goes well beyond the employment badge we wear at work.
So, while dealing with suppliers, customers, industry associates and other
stakeholders, one must build a long view of time and treat every small
engagement with all seriousness, as if life depends on it.

16. BE PREPARED
You must arrive before you arrive. When you work really hard and spend time thinking in
preparation for a meeting , the message reaches even before you arrive for the meeting.
Professionals are always prepared – for conversations , meetings , presentations.
Prepared individuals projects a good image of the company and of themselves –
that’s first step towards making a client feel important. Imagine going to a doctor
and he begins by saying – The last time we spoke about a change in diet , your
exercise regime and shift from antibiotics to vitamins …. “ you already know that
you are in good hands.

17. COMMITMENT
This quality to do what you have said you will do , in the time you have committed to
must be applied to the smallest of tasks in your life. Without it , you not only disrespect
others , you disrespect yourself.
In our professional lives, without commitment we cannot achieve even small
successes , not to speak about large ones. Without commitment , we can not give
our best to our organization. And without commitment , we cannot turn our vision
into reality. Create your brand value by committing to commitment.

18. WHAT IS YOUR TOUCH-TIME?
In a manufacture factory, amidst the activities that keep a manufacturing person busy,
all that truly matters is when the raw material physically touches the machinery. It is only
at that stage that there is value addition as the raw material converts itself into the next
higher stage in production. While a factory head may feel proud of the state-of-the-art
machinery in his factory, what truly matters is not its capacity but the touch-time the
factory is able to achieve.
As true Professionals we must know the equivalent of touch-time in his/her field.
We are all doing things which fill up our work day , but these do not necessarily
add-up to touch-time. To improve touch-time one must focus on four things , to
be well informed , seeking help , self-observant and take periodical breaks.

19. THE POWER OF VISION
A personal vision is an inherently powerful thing. The word vision has its origin in the
Latin word videre that means ‘to see’. But at a deeper level it refers to an ‘unusual
competence in discernment or perception, intelligent foresight, it is the manner in which
one sees or conceives of something'. Vision is not about the past. Vision is not about
the present. Vision is almost invariably a distant image.
Vision is future backward. It is the result of a mental process that telescopes a
person into an image that simply does not exist in current reality. Vision is what
vision does. It is not enough to have a dream. You have to act on that vision.

20. “I am in competition with no one. I have no desire to play the game of being better than
anyone. I m simply trying to be better than the person I was yesterday”
THANK YOU