My journey to design the training program “High-Performing Professionals” and to create this playbook starts with one simple question: Who is professional? I asked this question during my seminars and training sessions to an audience in which I have participants working at entry level and participants who are sitting at executive level with over three decades of work behind them. Most of them get shocked by this simple realization that they had never thought about this before. They claim to be professional but they never think about it thoroughly. We have clear and widely acceptable definitions when it comes to students, cricketers, musicians etc. But we don’t have a clear definition of a professional. Most organizations struggled with building happy, productive teams. It is not because they don’t have enough resources or they don’t have experienced managers. Theystruggle because they have a bunch of people from whom they are demanding “professionalism” and they all are measuring themselves against their own definition of “professionalism”. Management is angry that they are doing everything they can but these lazy and ungrateful people are not doing their best. Employees are unsatisfied and disengaged because they think they are performing at their best but still can’t get enough appreciation.