If you want a true measure of a man’s character take a long long look at how he treats his servants not his superiors
– Sirius Black
I’ve said it many many times in the past, but it remains completely and totally true: being a professional has nothing to do with how much you are getting paid, or even if you are getting paid at all.
Professionalism…is an attitude. And it has to do with how you treat the people around you, how much you respect your actors, your musicians, your raw material. How much you care about the structure of your people; your ability to see when you’ve pushed them too far. When you’ve crossed the line. And to respect them when they try to tell you that.
I was raised a professional, so were most of the people around me. The training I received just gave me more of that, but it was born and bred into me long before I took my first class or did my first show. And I know it when I see it. And I know when I am not seeing it.
If you are in a position of authority and someone comes to you with a problem, or a concern or a legitimate complaint, don’t laugh it off, don’t roll your eyes. Take it in stride, acknowledge it, and roll with it, and fix it. An amateur will demand help, or order it, a professional requests it kindly.
Be honest with your team, be careful with your resources. And if you are offered the chance to give someone a boost, take it, even if you don’t feel like it.
Professionalism is showing up to a gig you didn’t expect to have to perform, when you would really rather be anywhere else, and doing it anyway – because that’s what you do, and the audience shouldn’t suffer as a result of backstage politics. Professionalism, is taking charge of a line of people threatening to spin totally out of control and knowing exactly the right words to say to each group of them without turning into an exercise is painful dictatorship.
It’s really not that difficult, a small matter of respect. A chance to not be petty.
And yet..
And yet sometimes it seems that people simply do not get it.
I’ll just go be exhausted now…