Oh yes. What Seth said, about detachment and commitment. This, and more:
Emotional detachment helps us remember that we are not our work,
and that feedback is useful, not an attack.
Commitment permits us to keep going
(especially when we’re asked to provide more effort than we planned).
For every proposal team member who has ever held back their section because it “wasn’t ready” for review . . .
You are not your work.
Feedback is useful, not an attack.
For every proposal team member who has ever resented the seemingly endless “asks” but carried on regardless . . .
Some see your professionalism
and those few sometimes remember to honour it.
(But mostly not.)
And with those two categories I expect I’ve covered every proposal team member ever.
Twice over.
About that undefined term “professionalism”… May years ago, the Freelance Editors’ Association of Canada (now Editors Canada) hosted a discussion on the editor’s role. If we had been given Mein Kampf to edit, should we have
a) refused to touch it at all
b) sabotaged it
c) made it more acceptable
d) made it as powerful as possible, using all of our editorial skills.
As you might expect, we did not reach consensus.
Jim T
Jim T – 🙂 Yes, I can see that might cause some variety of opinion and you don’t need to posit Hitler to see it happen. Once, on a proposal for a defence services contract I was working on (nothing to do with combat or weapons systems), a production temp quit after the first day when she realized there was a military connection.