In your firm there are partners and managers who do things that irritate you, grate on you and otherwise make life unpleasant for you. They make promises they don’t keep. They agree to do things they don’t do. They don’t communicate with you or others. Their quality of work is sometimes lacking. They over-commit and underperform.

Who are these people? What makes them tick? Why don’t they do something about their inadequacies and deficits?

All good questions. But not the most important question. The most important question is not about them—it’s about you. What are you doing or not doing that gets under their skin? To them, in some way you are an irritant, a grater; someone who makes life unpleasant for them. But you become so preoccupied with their inadequacies that you overlook your own.

Let’s face it. Unless you have obtained excellence in all aspects of professionalism, you have work to do. What keeps you from looking inward and working on yourself rather than looking over at your colleagues?

A common thought you may use to delude yourself is that you’re not that bad. That is, you’ve become accustomed to your ways and you’ve learned to live with and work around them. That’s why you don’t categorize your “not so bad” deficiencies as unprofessional. You likely think of them as minor quirks that make up who you are.

Unfortunately, your colleagues don’t agree. They consider your deficiencies as unprofessional.  And so they are. Just because you give yourself a pass doesn’t change the reality.

Here’s your task this week. First, select only one (you have several, you know) area to increase your professionalism. Focus on this one thing and make an effort to change it. Second, every time you begin to think of the failings of your colleagues, refuse to go down that path. Instead, direct your focus back to how you are overcoming your own deficit.