It’s Time to discount pedigree infavour of character

In the professional world there is an inordinate weightage given to a person's educational pedigree and title. The better the school and/or more lofty the title greater the respect he/she commands as we expect the person to be commensurately successful.

Yet time and time again my experience has been that there is at best a thin correlation between the educational pedigree and title of a person vs. how they behave ie. how respectful and ethical they are, whether the circle back when they promised to, how they deal with and treat their teams, how they respond to their stakeholders, etc.

I have seen people with great pedigree be extremely well behaved, generous and professional. But equally, I have seen them be crass, unethical and unprofessional. I have worked with equally awesome leaders and team members who didn't have the educational pedigree but they made a significant difference to their teams and stakeholders.

Maybe it's time to start discounting pedigree and titles as a surrogate to determine fitment, respect and a likelihood of who we want in our teams (or whose team we want to be a part of). Maybe how a person behaves, their character, is lot more important in determining how much they can contribute to the firm and the team.

The challenge remains that this aspect of interpersonal dynamics is often not so easy to glean in intial conversations. Getting references and speaking to those who may have worked/ done business with the individual can be a useful start though.

Let's respect and treat people based on their actions and not their titles and pedigree.