How to quickly identify a professional?

The first magical recipe is that a professional is not interested in the tools. Or rather, yes, he is interested, but not to the degree an amateur is. Shall we go and look at some examples?

Everyone, except for accountants, thinks that accountants love numbers. It seems that every accountant dreams of spending their life pressing buttons on a calculator and generating figures to record in spreadsheet cells. However, accountants actually love their work not for the numbers, but for the responsibility that comes with it, for the fact that accounting is a crucial component of any business. Just look at the joy on their faces when they balance the books. Observe the seriousness with which they approach the company’s expenses and revenues, and you’ll understand that the numbers are just a superficial layer of a deeper commitment to their work. To amateurs, it may seem that the numbers are what matters most.

Another example? Photography. Everyone who starts getting into photography faces the question of which camera to buy. It’s a very pressing question. With this question in mind, beginner photographers dive into all sorts of forums and blogs. Eventually, they seek advice from professionals and… often hear an answer they don’t expect. They are not advised to get a Canon 5D Mark II; instead, they are recommended… a compact point-and-shoot camera. The tool doesn’t really matter, in fact. Moreover, limiting oneself to a specific tool can actually open up new avenues for creativity. Lomography As an example. If you have been into photography, you will remember that dpreview.com It was only at the beginning of your photography “career” that it was a popular site for you. A professional has everything. They don’t need to compare anything with anything else. Everything they need, they have bought and/or have an understanding of. Professional photographers don’t talk about cameras.

And this is true in all areas of human activity. A professional football player is no longer concerned about their boots, a salesperson is not focused on sales techniques, a recruiter doesn’t worry about questionnaires and tests, a farmer isn’t preoccupied with shovels and forks, a chef doesn’t think about frying pans, and an IT specialist isn’t focused on operating systems, while a tennis player doesn’t care about the types of grass for the court, and so on. Professionals have seen it all, know it all, understand the value of everything, and the tools for them are not a decisive or recognizable factor in achieving quality results.

The second magical recipeis about what guides a person when making decisions. An amateur is guided by the principle of “will I be criticized or not.” A professional thinks: “is it right or not.”

In practice this comes out as the amateur constantly looking over his shoulder at how others rate the decisions he has taken, while in fact he never takes a decision himself. Even when he thinks he has taken one, what he has really done is check whether he will be criticised for taking this or that decision with these particular inputs. It is impossible to rule out the chance of being criticised altogether, so such people take decisions slowly, warily, or better still don’t take them at all. If you do nothing, you certainly don’t make mistakes. Shall we go and look at some examples?

A marketer makes decisions about the effectiveness of various marketing activities. For example, deciding on the design of new packaging. How would a professional approach this? They would point to what they believe is right. How would an amateur handle it? The amateur would conduct research with focus groups. And then, it’s not their decision; it’s the focus group that made the selection. What a brilliant way to cover one’s own behind! There’s nothing to criticize, nothing to fault. It’s not me — it’s the focus group. However, amidst all this, a reasonable question seems to disappear: “What are you doing here with such a nice diploma and a decent salary?” Even a secretary could gather a focus group.

The recruiter makes a hiring decision, for example, whether to hire someone or not. How would a professional approach this? A professional will delve into the person’s soul, which means that the candidate will also need to open up. The professional won’t hesitate to reveal themselves. This is their job; it’s essentially a mental intimacy—mutual penetration into each other’s thoughts with trust in the partner. As a result, the recruiter ends up with a fully “dissected” individual, with clear, genuine values and motivations that the recruiter understands, rather than just adapted ones, leading to informed decisions. How would an amateur handle it? First of all, they would look at the resume and recommendations. Those who have hired people know that there are often candidates with excellent resumes and references, but in practice, they turn out to be unsuitable employees. However, resumes and recommendations—justifying document! Look, see! Was I wrong when I chose this person from the list of candidates? Another magical tool for building a cover for the task is all sorts of “psychological” tests, assessments of personal qualities, and other nonsense. No, it’s fine to use such tools, but for the purpose of confirming a decision made, not for justifying it.

For the upper echelons of management, there are business plans with various SWOT analyses and a series of figures. Shareholders make decisions based on these.justifiedsolutions. For accountants, there are instructions from the tax authorities that they will try to apply with paranoid zeal, even if the instruction does not directly relate to the specific activities of the company. For salespeople, there are ready-made “lead databases” or “client interaction algorithms.” For PR specialists, there are five signatures on every piece of material that goes “on air,” and even better if all materials consist of a set of “verified” paragraphs. In some companies, even these paragraphs are distributed among local offices.

Don’t confuse professions and posts where creative decisions have to be made with professions and posts where they don’t, where instead you have to know every current instruction and rule inside out. If your job is to follow instructions, then the right decision is to follow them, and the “won’t get told off” decision will ALWAYS be the wrong one. An amateur acts not “correctly” but “won’t get told off.”

A driver’s professionalism lies not in avoiding getting caught by the police, but in not getting into accidents, which is achieved by following instructions. Officials are of the same ilk. Their job is to know and adhere to the rules, and therein lies correctness. This is professionalism. Amateurism is trying to break the rules when it seems that “won’t scold“or trying to avoid responsibility just because you are unfamiliar with all the instructions or their correct meaning, and you are afraid that…”they will scold“If we take an example of ‘avoiding responsibility’ from the traffic rules, a novice driver would never drive onto the tram tracks, while a professional would pay attention to the signs and the condition of the road, making decisions in accordance with the traffic regulations and safe driving practices.”

The thought process of a professional differs from that of an amateur precisely because the amateur lacks confidence in themselves and their abilities. An amateur has a smaller set of obvious solutions that do not require approval from above. An amateur thinks like a child, who compares every action with the possibility of “Will they scold me?“He will, of course, do the right things; however, he will also do the wrong ones simply because he will think that…”won’t scold“He won’t be able to independently determine whether a new action is correct, and just in case, he won’t take it or will go to his superiors for inquiries and cover.”

A professional will always be thinking about whether he is doing the right thing, and will pay no attention whatever to whether he will “get told off.” He is a professional precisely because he can learn and likes learning, because he has the experience that is “the son of difficult mistakes.” You cannot learn to ride a bicycle without skinning your knees. You must not fixate on your mistakes. Got told off? Fine, understood, it will not happen again, let’s move on. And it does not happen again! And, unlike the amateur, he does not do the wrong thing more than once, because his motive lies not in “getting told off” but in something else. On the other hand, the professional will have a better idea of how to behave in new situations and will therefore achieve more than the rest. After all, as long as he acts like everybody else, his result will be “the same as everybody else’s.” And to achieve something outstanding you have to do something differently from everybody else. But do it right.

In defense of the amateurs, it should be noted that the behavior of “will be scolded” — “won’t be scolded,” which is essentially a manifestation of infantilism, can be developed through role-playing games, which are commonly referred to as management style

Sorry for the long post 🙂 To wrap up, I’ll give an example from dog training. Proper training for prohibited behaviors should be structured in a way that the dog is not tied to the reflex of “getting scolded.” If the dog is not allowed to pick up meat from the ground or sleep on the owner’s couch, then it should never do these things, not just when the owner is present. A poorly trained dog will sleep on the couch when no one is home and will rummage through trash if it thinks no one is watching at that moment.