Being A Professional: Dale Atkins at TEDxYouth@EHS

I'm going to talk about professional and that's a word we hear all the time we hear it we see it we read it it's it's everywhere we use it so often I wonder if we really even know what does it mean it may be more importantly what does being professional mean to you we can look in a dictionary and generally we'd find oh three definitions and the first is a is professional pertains to a profession it kind of makes me scratch my head but the second definition adds a little bit more professional is someone who's

paid for their occupation makes sense and the third typical definition is a professional is someone who's achieved a high level of knowledge and skill okay but when I look out in the audience this evening and I apply those definitions I think it applies to just about everybody so why is it in a community full of knowledgeable and skilled and and and paid workers that that label professional is given to so few people well I think it has to do likely with the value of the service that's delivered so what differentiates a professional say from a

technician the technician is very skilled and savvy knowledgeable person but the difference between the two the professional delivers judgment yeah that considered decision that valued judgment in fact the more uncertainties we face the more important judgment becomes and more important the role of the professional but professional it's an odd word I mean it's not just a label or a title it also can be used to describe or mean attitudes behaviors and actions think about it for a minute if we combine those three the the effect of those three has some pretty profound implications and the

reason is that attitudes drive behaviors and behaviors drive actions and then actions reinforce attitudes and what those three things mean is their what they're describing is literally us as individuals so that tells me that being professional that can be applied by anyone and everyone that's a good thing the process of being a professional it's not an event or maybe I should have said that a little more clearly the whole way of becoming a professional it's not an event it's a process it's a journey and it takes some real internal Drive and motivation but it's often

sparked with interest and desire that process for me started long ago when I was able to become a member of Mountain Rescue team when I was in junior high school and very early on I realized and learned the value of being a professional because in mountain rescue uncertainty just abounds and judgment is mission critical to what we do in mountain rescue and over the years I learned more about professionalism and what I see is a framework to being a professional and that framework well it consists of four different aspects and here's sort of the short

version of my talk but those four aspects to being a professional or simply knowing doing helping and learning you might be think we'll wait a minute Dale uh is that is that really something or is that just the world according to Dale well it actually is some real meat to this substance those first three knowing doing and helping that was those were identified by psychologists and sociologists more than 25 years ago but they missed the boat it wasn't complete because being a professional is a process so I've added learning to that because that keeps that

process going and the beauty of being a professional what I've learned is sure it applies to me in work but it also applies at home it applies in school it applies in the mountains and certainly it worked in my journey to that as I said start it with mountain rescue more than 50 years ago here in evergreen Alpine rescue team was formed and you gotta remember that far back evergreen was really a small place and they had a real challenge to have enough members that could drop everything and just head off into the mountains to

help people and so within a few years the leadership realized that young people teenagers could actually do that hard work of the of adults and plus we had time so back in the day we could become a member of Alpine rescue team when we were 14 and some of us even got on a little bit earlier but what was really cool and I think a very unique feature of Alpine was that we were not junior members and yeah and I did join after color photography came out I will point that out but we were not

junior members because once that we demonstrated that we could do the job we were expected to do the job whenever needed and that's really an important thing when you're a young person and certainly there are some limitations to that or some limiting factors I mean I've got to admit when you're a fourteen fifteen-year-old a teenager boy really is yes size matters we were not the biggest animal in the woods at 14 15 even some of his 13 or 12 we also we had to keep good grades so that we could be let out of school

when we recalls on missions I've got to admit that was one of the coolest things of being on Alpine in junior high in high school was when the message came over the PA attention all Alpine rescue team members please come to the office now we always thought we were so cool didn't happen enough but it was pretty cool but most important we had to keep our parents happy and pleased with what we were doing because they're the ones that answer the phone in the middle of the night they're the ones that had to wake us

up and often drive us to some staging area at 4 o'clock in the morning and it became really a big deal when we could drive because we didn't have to rely as much on her parents we didn't have to ride our bikes sometimes to get to missions and trainings and they didn't have to mooch ride so we had that independence which we all know is a great thing but the key thing is that we were not treated as juniors we were treated as equals because we worked really hard and we worked right alongside those adults

by the time we were in high school at least some of us were actually starting to lead or direct significant portions of search-and-rescues and even directing the entire operations this is high schoolers doing this and it also being at that age there were times when maybe the biggest things when my voice stopped changing because it was really hard to call up and order up a helicopter when you call the military and you wake up a captain or a major in the middle of the night who's now grumpy and your voice starts cracking you know just

didn't go over very well so we learned very early on to be to speak with confidence and authority and an even tone to our voice but we learned a lot well and I've got to say I'm still at it 40 years later enjoying it and join all of my colleagues on the team and learning a lot so with that I bring a challenge to you guys and think of an everything that you're doing or will do that you do it within this framework or this context of being a professional and remember those four aspects of

being a professional first one professional being professional is knowing and I mean learn everything that you can and as much as you can and you need to know more than just having an awareness you need to understand and take that knowledge and apply it start doing something with it because when you're doing something with it you're practicing and that's where you develop skills and when you take knowledge and you combine it with skill you're going to start to realize that there's many options many solutions to solving problems that third aspect of being a professional is

helping and we've heard that term given in several different ways tonight giving helping being there for people helping professionals help people because you remember I said at that highest level what the professional offers is judgment and a mountain rescue that judgment comes with a lot of hard work no doubt about it but that helping is where you make a difference and professionals make a difference in people's lives and the last is to make a commitment to learning make a commitment to lifelong learning his learning keeps you current keeps your skills and knowledge current and up-to-date

but more importantly learning back up more importantly is because yesterday's knowledge and skills aren't always going to be good enough to solve tomorrow's problems so everything that you do be professional in what you do it's going to make you better and being professional is going to probably help you make your community a better place to thank you you