Professional Pride

It’s pretty confronting to be challenged about one’s professional pride, so I’ll tread carefully :). I guess it’s because we would all want to be seen – by ourselves and others – as being prideful about something as important as our profession. Especially at the level of seniority of this readership.

In my mind, there are two levels of pride: Practical Professional Pride and Evolved Professional Pride.

Practical professional pride includes:

But it’s in the Evolved professional pride where it gets interesting, and potentially confronting. 

Does your Evolved professional pride:

Morals are easy to hold until they get tested: self-righteousness is for the unexposed. The Evolved professional pride asks questions of you that are uncomfortable because they are asking you to decide where your ambitions are pegged and where your boundaries are drawn. Both are exacting conversations to have with oneself. 

But they are also important ‘bottom-line’ questions that often lead to bold choices being made. The kinds of choices that, one day many years down the line, you look back on with personal pride and satisfaction – the kind of choices that really matter. 

Imagine the collective impact of millions of people in the workforce enforcing their professional pride? The knock-on effect would be remarkable. 

(PS. Watch the post-rationalisation that this missive might bring up. That’s your pride being compromised. It’s acceptable to make the odd deal with the devil as life is neither perfect nor predictable, and compromises are sometimes called for. But do yourself the service of being clear and honest with yourself so that you aren’t buying into your own untruth).