INTRODUCTION TO WORK HARD AND SERVE OTHERS​

I have spent my life working in aviation, mostly in air-traffic control. A few years ago, I was at a meeting at the airport where I worked when someone introduced me as the manager of the Control Tower, saying, “He has an important job.” I was embarrassed by the introduction. As I looked around the room, I saw pilots, airport and airline managers, business people, technologists, and many other talented people. I thought, Whose job isn’t important? Is there someone who has an unimportant job? The people in the room were all skilled, experienced, and highly regarded. They all had important jobs.

The introduction bothered me for the entire meeting, so as I walked through the airport back to my office, I watched all the people working, and I thought about their work. There were baggage handlers, and we all know how important their work is. There were customer service specialists, whose skills are needed on every flight. As I continued walking, I saw flight crews, food-service workers, ramp employees, technicians, airport employees, custodians, taxi drivers, and hundreds of other people, and I did not see one “nonessential” worker, to use a contemporary but misguided term. The airport could not function if these people were not on the job, because passengers need their help.

I suppose my job was important, but it was no more important than any other. Every person working that day had skills that were needed to help the sixty million passengers who flew through our airport each year. In the same manner, we need the skills of everyone in every industry to make our world work. Whether you are a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, we need you, we need your talent, and we need your help.

As I thought more about it, I realized we sometimes confuse our tasks at work with the purpose of our work. We tend to think we are merely performing duties, and we forget the real purpose of our work, which is helping others. That is the thing everyone working at the airport that day had in common: they were all helping others.

I researched a few job descriptions on the internet to see if they discussed the purpose of a job or if they merely described the tasks involved, and I gained some interesting insights. For example, on one website I read that the job of a college faculty member is to teach a subject, deliver lectures, give examinations, conduct research, and serve on committees. The job description never discussed helping anyone, though, and in fact, it didn’t mention students. It did not discuss preparing them to enter the workforce, mentoring and motivating them, or helping them. But if the job of a college faculty member is just to deliver lectures and examinations, we could do that with computers. But do faculty member teach subjects or teach students? Teaching the material is part of the job, but that is not the purpose. The purpose is to help students. We would be wise to remember that.

According to another career-planning website, the first two duties listed for a childcare worker are to observe and monitor children’s play activities and to keep records on individual children about activities, meals, and medications. When the job is described like that, it sounds sinister. Would you hire someone to observe and monitor your children’s activities and keep records on them? That sounds ominous, but we know that’s not the purpose of a childcare worker. The purpose of a childcare worker is to help people by ensuring the well-being and safety of children.

Our work has been diminished by boiling it down to our duties because that overlooks the most important point, which is that our duties do not define the purpose of our work. Duties differ from job to job, but we have jobs because people need our help. Why else would we work? Just to deliver lectures or monitor children’s activities and keep records on them? It doesn’t matter what kind of work we do; the function is always the same. There is no point to work if it is not helping someone.

Our work is one of the most important parts of our lives, and the world needs our skills. We have big problems that can only be solved by good people doing their jobs well every day. People are counting on us, and we owe it to them to be the best teachers and childcare workers we can be. We need people in every line of work who will not just do their jobs, but who will devote themselves to helping others. People who do that are called professionals. They are great at their work because they are focused on serving people.

This book is about understanding what kind of people professionals are and how they do their work. In this book, the word professional does not just describe someone who works for profit or someone working in a particular field. It describes a unique person. It speaks to someone who is highly effective, not just in practical matters but in the human side of things as well. It describes a person who is well rounded technically and interpersonally. While there is no single formula for improving one’s professionalism, I have learned that most professionals operate similarly, and they have similar motivations, habits, and guiding principles, and I wish to share them with you.

In this book I use some real-world examples when I discuss professionalism, and due to my background, some of them are aviation related. But this is not a book about aviation professionalism; it is a book about professionalism everywhere. People have many different jobs with different responsibilities, but the purpose of every job is helping people. And just as all our jobs have the same purpose, all professionals seem to function similarly.

A lack of professionalism is at the heart of many of the problems we have, so to improve the state of the world, we need to improve ourselves. We need to understand how we can become more professional if we are going to make things better, so why don’t we take a look at how professionals think and work? Maybe we can learn a few things together.

Before we begin, though, I would first like to plant a thought with you. There is an old piece of advice that we have all heard: “Go out and change the world.” I would ask you to forget about that. Few of us will ever have the opportunity to change the world, but we all have the opportunity to change our world and someone else’s world through how we live and work. That is the goal of this book: to demonstrate how we can make things better by living and working differently, and by becoming better people. We aren’t going to change the world in one fell swoop; we can only improve one person at a time. And when we as individuals improve, it tends to spread. If we can improve ourselves and positively influence those around us, we can change our world and someone else’s world, and maybe it will grow from there.