“A Bad Person Will Never Be A Good Professional”
“A bad person will never be a good professional,” said the father of multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.
This interview brought very interesting reflections and, with it, gave us the possibility of maturing an idea that is the reflection of a devastating truth. Only good people can become excellent professionals. Bad people, on the other hand, will never achieve this, even though it is true that they can achieve great technical expertise.
This leads us to think about the possibility of classifying people into good and bad. Indeed, this differentiation seems fictitious, since human beings are not a dichotomy, but an amalgamation of qualities.
Kindness and balance, the basis of our professionalism
There must be a balance between commitment, ethics and excellence to become a good professional. Let’s say that to “be really good” it is necessary to put the soul, emotions, feelings and determination to the work itself. In this sense, this excerpt from Howard Gardner’s interview is not wasteful, as it reflects the tremendous wisdom with which he fits his words:
-Interviewer: Why are there excellent professionals who are bad people?
-Howard: We found out that these people don’t exist. In fact, bad people cannot be excellent professionals. They never get to be. Maybe they might have technical expertise, but they’re not great.
-E: I have some exceptions in mind…
-H: What we prove is that the best professionals are always ECE: excellent, committed and ethical.
-E: You can’t be an excellent professional, but a bad person as a person?
-H: No, because you don’t achieve excellence if you don’t go beyond satisfying your ego, your ambition or your greed. If you don’t, therefore, commit yourself to goals that go beyond your needs to serve everyone’s needs. And that requires ethics.
-E: To become rich, it often bothers.
-H: Without ethical principles you can become rich, yes, or technically good, but not excellent.
-E: It’s comforting to know that.
-H: Nowadays not so much, because we also find that young people accept the need for ethics, but not at the beginning of their career, because they think that without elbowing they won’t succeed. They see ethics as the luxury of those who have already achieved success.
The importance of being, above all, a human soul
“Know all the theories. Master all the techniques, but when you touch a human soul, be just another human soul.” These are the words of the emblematic psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, words that hide an accurate reality.
It is important that before being professionals, we are people. This is what brings balance to the development of our professional qualities. We cannot disconnect from ourselves; that is, somehow we cannot dissociate our inner lives from our professional lives.
We speak of essence, of those qualities that help us not to get lost among people, to know and not know ourselves, to transform ourselves through the lessons, to have a beautiful heart, to improve each day and to contemplate ourselves like a bow. iris.
Because, besides, if there’s one thing you have to keep in mind, it’s that people are sometimes white, sometimes black, and sometimes a thousand colors. By balancing the scales towards what is positive, we will be able to achieve excellence in our professions, as well as in different areas of our lives.
