Management is the easy stuff.  You know, put people where they are supposed to be working today, check time cards, write annual performance reviews.  You get the picture.
            Leadership, on the other hand, is the tough stuff.  Leaders change attitudes, managers change schedules.  Both management and leadership are essential in any  workplace, but leadership is the keystone that makes organizations succeed or fail.
And, I am convinced there is one attitude that guarantees success:  professionalism.
            It works this way.  If you are my boss and keep reminding me I should be thanking the Almighty every day I have this “job,” I will act and think like a “job person” who is transient, expendable, temporary and highly undesirable.  On the other hand, if you continually remind me I have the best career in the world as a professional, I will give you extra-ordinary effort.
            William James, the noted Harvard psychology educator said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings, by changing the inner beliefs of their minds, can change the external aspects of their lives.”
            If  William James is correct, leaders get back the attitudes they send to their employees.  Think about it.  Like organizational sonar, leaders “ping” staff with non-verbal attitudes that the staff just bounces back.  In other words, the leader, positively or negatively, crafts the culture of any workplace.
So, working on this assumption, what are the messages leadership is sending their support staff? 
I am suggesting the mantra heard throughout each work day should be, “We are professionals.”
            Here are four characteristics of a “professional” in any workplace.
            First, you can tell you are working with a professional by his/her appearance.  How do your staff “appear” to your consumers?  Is their personal hygiene, clothing and grooming a billboard that screams, “You can trust us”? 
            Would you get on an airplane if the pilot met you at the door sporting a four-day growth of facial stubble, an unwashed T-shirt smeared with grease from changing a transmission in his driveway while cleaning his left ear with a trunk key?
            What are the non-verbal messages that spill down to your customers, both internal and external, when they look at your employees?
            Second, professionals know how to verbally represent themselves.  Specifically, does the staff  know how to represent themselves as the assertive adult?  Have they been taught how to use “I” instead of “you” statements?  Do they know how to quickly resolve conflicts without constantly going back for another “pound of flesh”?  Can they accurately verbalize what they are thinking and feeling without victimizing others around them?

            If your staff mumbles and grunts their way through conversations, they need professional skills on how to put into words what is going on between their ears.
Third, any professional knows that “losing it” equals losing credibility.  Controlling one’s emotions, at either end of the spectrum (wildly happy and wildly angry) is the mark of a mature person.
I am specifically recommending the leadership in pupil transportation provide emotional intelligence training and accountability.  Dr. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, reminds us that I.Q. is not the mark of a professional.  If your I.Q. is 160 (which is in the ionosphere of intelligence) but you act like Hannibal Lecter having a bad day, no one cares about your I.Q.  Your E.Q., emotional intelligence, will determine how successful you will be as a professional.
Fourth, professionals know what is wrong with their workplace but, because they are committed to a mission, choose to be positive.  They are the “loyal critic.”
The loyal critic is someone who can see the warts on your workplace but constantly responds with, “What do we need to do right now to take care of this problem?” 
Here is a good question, “What percentage of your day do you spend trying to pacify the most negative among your staff?”  I’ll bet a very few people are sucking you dry.  Build professionalism by teaching your staff  how to move quickly from identifying what is wrong to identifying how you will fix the problem.
As you can see, I take a position that the language we use crafts the attitudes of people who work with us.  Therefore, as a leader, you would want to lead  “professionalism” before leading your organization.