I've been on a quest this year to try to talk about "professionals". All of us have an idea of what we consider a professional to be, and I'm not talking about sports. Basically a professional as anyone who take their jobs seriously, while making sure to take the time to treat others who are in business seriously as well. Everybody deserves to be treated as a professional until they prove that they're not worthy. But sometimes things just don't work out that way, or at least seem like it'll work out that way.

Let me show you how I have touched on the subject this year:

Do You Treat People As Professionals?

Do You Act Like A Professional?

When You're Not Respected As A Professional

Are You Representing Your Business Professionally?

Based on all of that, one would think I have covered the subject enough this year. But I don't think so; it seems like there's something missing. I started to think about it again last week, and it finally came to me. There needs to be a list to help bring all of this together. I can come up with a time of things, but I think I'm going to limit it to 10.

Before I begin I want to add something here. I want people to see this as something that should only occur between business professionals. There's a couple of things I'm going to mention here that should apply to dealing with customers as well. Something a lot of people don't think of is that customers for the most part are professionals. They all have jobs of some kind, otherwise they wouldn't have the money to pay you. Respect knows no boundaries if it's applied correctly; at least that's how I see it. Now, onto the list:

1. Be on time. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves. If you say you're going to be somewhere at a certain time to be there at that time. If you say to call someone at a certain time call him at that time. All of us will make a leeway for about five minutes because we know that people have their clocks set on different times. That's not a big deal, at least to me. But if you say you're gonna call me at 10 AM and I'll hear from you till 5 PM, that's a problem. If I never hear from you that's an even bigger problem.

2. Don't make commitments you can't keep. Earlier this year I was meeting with a guy who basically told me he'd never tells anyone he talks to that he can't solve their problem. His belief was that he can always find someone else who could do the work to get a project done. In my mind that's somewhat an ethical because what happens if you can't find someone who can do that work. You could've wasted a lot of time someone who's a potential client, and lost their trust as well. Glitches happen sometimes when you work on a project; that's to be expected. But if you commit to a time frame, stick to it if nothing out of the ordinary occurs.

3. Pay people on time. This is the second big peeve of mine, because obviously it has happened to me. People tend to think that just because you're doing work for them they can pretty much pay you whatever they want to. If things are explained up front in their terms of their agreed to that allow you to make payments on time, then that's a good thing. But it's never good to have someone do the work for you and then suddenly you decide to change the terms.

4. Don't think that because you're paying someone you have carte blanche to say anything you want to to that person. I've seen people get really demanding after you signed a contract with them, sometimes even before you sign the contract with them, for what they want. If terms of the deal have been discussed already, then the deal is a deal. If someone does substandard work for you that's one thing; if they did good work for you but you decided that's not exactly what she wanted, then that's on you and that's another thing to discuss. It's hard communicating the vision sometimes, but if you're not part of the entire process and as someone who just wants to come in at the end and see what happened, that's your fault for not being proactive.

5. Return phone calls. This was somewhat controversial, but go with me on. If you have a business and someone calls you with the potential for work, no matter what it is, call them back. If you're already working for somebody and they're trying to reach you, call them back. Nobody likes the feeling of being ducked by someone because it makes you think something is wrong. Quite often something is wrong, and the contractor is afraid to own up to it. But nothing can be solved if you don't talk things out with each other. By the way, the same goes for email.

6. Don't wait until the last minute to try to get things done. This is an elementary school where you're waiting until you're on the bus heading to school to get your homework done. Something that makes everybody look like they're on top of their game is actually completing projects ahead of time. That also gives you an opportunity to be making more money for the time you're putting into a project and allows you to move onto your next project. The only time I know of anybody being upset when you're done with the project early is if part of the deal is they have to pay you at the end of the project and they were expected it to be done that soon. However, if that was a possibility of occurring you should make that clear to someone before you do it.

7. Be fair in your assessments of others. There's nothing wrong with saying to somebody "that guy does great work, but it takes him forever." There is something wrong with saying "they guide the worst contractor I've ever seen because he'd never to get anything done" if the guy actually got the work done and did a good job. We all know that negative comments stay around longer than positive comments, and why would you be out to ruin someone's reputation for the wrong reason?

8. Treat others the way you want to be treated. One would think this is just common sense, but it's something that doesn't happen all that often. I find it ironic when people say that someone yelled at them for something when they tend to do the same thing when they're not pleased. I've also seen people complain about stuff that they do all the time to others. That's just being hypocritical, not honest.

9. Remember why you hired someone in the first place. There's usually only two reasons you hire someone to do something for you. One, because you don't know how to do it; too, because you have the time to do it. If it's the first one being wary but let the professionals do their job. Asking questions is fine, but deciding to totally change something around when you don't have any experience or knowledge about it is idiocy, and only complicates things on the back end. Knowing how to do something but not having the time definitely give you a step up to make sure you're not being taken advantage of, but it also means you are better equipped at telling someone exactly what is you need.

10. When all else fails, treat people with respect. Something that happened to me earlier this year is that I received a call from a client who didn't like a blog post I wrote. When I got into the thing he actually had to tell me he hadn't read the post but that someone else had read it and mentioned it to him. When I read the post to him, at least a portion of it, he said "there's nothing wrong with that but please don't do it again." I said "don't ever try to change anything I do unless you investigate it first." Respect was lost from that time on because this person didn't treat me with respect, and I felt why should I treat him with respect. That usually leads to trouble, and it did.

And there's the 10 points. Because the post was so long I have interspersed some images in here to help break up the space. Of course these are my 10 items, so if you have anything you'd like to add please add it by commenting on the post. I will respect you greatly if you do. 🙂