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“Professionalism” encompasses the broad set of shared beliefs and expectations about how people within an industry or workplace should interact with one another: Think communication style, punctuality, or meeting etiquette. But opinions differ: Cameras on? Cameras off? Do meetings start precisely on the hour? Is arriving a few minutes late acceptable or offensive?
Our conversations about professionalism tend to proceed like a garden that has been allowed to grow without controlling for weeds or pests and is then subject to endless debate over whether the result is “good” or “bad.” But that has never been the right conversation, because context matters: Are your organization’s professional norms good or bad for your particular workplace?
While some norms are common to many workplaces — such as following through on commitments, treating colleagues with respect, and communicating appropriately — professionalism has no single definition. It varies across regions, cultures, sectors, and industries. But as a set of norms for differentiating wanted (“professional”) from unwanted (“unprofessional”) behaviors, professionalism is inherently about excluding some for the benefit of the whole. When defined well and fairly, professional standards can effectively guard against harmful behavior while creating a shared sense of identity among people from a range of backgrounds, compounding their individual efforts into collective impact. But, defined poorly, professionalism can divide and distract teams, systematize active discrimination, and discount — or even incentivize — detrimental behavior.
As an organizational consultant, a leadership adviser, and an analyst of workplace systems, I’ve learned that the key to establishing a professionalism that works is to actively define norms and standards for your particular organization. Far too many leaders ignore their own agency to shape what professionalism means, defaulting to “how we’ve always done it” rather than questioning which norms would, in fact, serve their people best. As a result, workplace professionalism is often a mixed bag: norms that signal competence and skills alongside outdated norms that can unintentionally disadvantage some team members. For example, norms that discourage discussion of caretaking at work can exclude caretakers and parents; expectations of “normal” appearance and body language can hinder neurodivergent or LGBTQ+ people’s self-expression; and dress codes defining “acceptable” hairstyles can stigmatize people with natural, Afro-textured hair.
Contextually Defined Norms
Every leader has the responsibility to create a version of professionalism designed for their unique workplace context. By incentivizing helpful behaviors that bring the best out of every person and disincentivizing harmful behaviors that impede performance, leaders can design a bespoke code of professionalism that serves people rather than functioning as an obstacle. Here’s how to lead a collaborative process of rethinking their workplace’s approach to professionalism, regardless of geographic region, sector, or industry.
1. Define success for your unique context. Take a step back to see the bigger picture. Ask your workers and key partners to share with you what they believe success looks like for your workplace. More products sold? Satisfied customers? Highly engaged workers? Trusting relationships with key community leaders? A succession plan for solid leadership over the next decade? Defining the outcomes that matter most to your organization grounds everything you do in a “why” that goes deeper than “because a leader said so.”
2. Identify deal-breaker behaviors. Imagine an employee who is highly effective at delivering results — but the way they do it is egregious enough that it compromises their own, or possibly their entire team’s, success.
Clear deal-breakers are physical violence, harassment or intimidation, verbal abuse, or discrimination — even on the part of your top performer. Defining more subtle offenses is trickier. What if their workstation is messy? Not ideal, but perhaps excusable. What if their lack of personal hygiene causes their colleagues to avoid them? More troubling. What if they cause important clients to feel disrespected or belittled after meetings? That might be a deal-breaker.
But deal-breaker behaviors aren’t universal and may vary across cultures or industries. The practice of identifying your organization’s particular deal-breakers is powerful precisely because it can reveal cultural norms or shared beliefs so deeply held that they’re practically invisible. Discuss this as a group to identify where your key partners might agree or disagree about what behaviors constitute deal-breakers.
3. Identify the minimal expectations required for success. This is the most uncomfortable step. If professionalism is up to us to define, we might want to define it aspirationally, as the highest expectations we can set to be the best version of ourselves. Always saying please and thank-you, always following every cultural norm to the letter, embodying perfection in all workplace interactions — that’s the ideal. But no person is perfect in any setting, to say nothing of the workplace. As a pragmatic tool, professionalism is best used to define the minimum standards of behavior that we expect from our colleagues, one step above our deal-breakers.
For example, it may not be feasible to expect our colleagues to wear a uniform, but we might define success in our workplace as having a strong sense of shared group identity and attention to detail. Those criteria may be reflected in a dress code that sets the expectations that clothing will not have visible dirt or stains but will include an accessory with the company logo.
Ideally, everyone in the workplace would be gracious and warm in every interaction, but human nature makes that infeasible. However, we can define success in our workplace as requiring effective communication and good teamwork. A respectful conduct policy might set the expectation that the way we communicate will make our colleagues feel safe and respected, and that if we miss the mark, we will swiftly make amends.
Similarly, it may not be feasible to expect our colleagues to always have their video on during virtual calls. But we might define success during important discussions as requiring deep human connection — and so our leadership team might set the expectation that webcams will be on during retreats, culture-building events, and teamwide discussions.
4. Understand the gap between expectations and reality. Ask your key partners what behaviors are really rewarded or punished in practice. You may find that aspirational norms have unintended consequences. Leaders may, for example, officially encourage workers to respond to emails within 24 hours — but in practice, managers may penalize workers who don’t respond quickly, even outside of traditional working hours. Leaders may communicate that deliverables and results matter more than busywork — but in practice, they may still extend promotions to workers who seem to always be working rather than to their more efficient colleagues, simply because the busier workers seem “more committed.”
Each of these gaps has a real cost, not just to people but in terms of your ability to align your actions with how you defined success in Step 1. If these gaps represent behavioral shortcomings of your starting point of “passive professionalism,” closing them will help you establish a far more functional and beneficial definition of professionalism, tailor-made for your context and directly linked to your organization’s success.
5. Incentivize what you want, and discourage what you don’t. Professional norms are not rigid policy but a means to an end. Your particular definition of professionalism can help ensure that everyone in your workplace is rowing in the same direction, is protected from abusive and harmful behaviors, and can expect the same standard of mutual respect throughout the workplace.
If old norms are no longer contributing to success, or new norms are needed to reach success — or both — it’s not enough to simply declare a policy change in an email or during a team meeting. Leadership has to align their behaviors — particularly their informal rewards and rebukes — with the professional norms they’ve defined. To support a norm of punctuality, for example, managers can praise and acknowledge those who best embody that norm while confronting any deal-breaking behavior. (For example, an employee who routinely joins meetings halfway through should be addressed directly to correct the behavior.)
Be on the lookout for any existing behaviors that contradict the norms you’re trying to build. For example, the new norm of punctuality might clash with an unspoken norm that seniority grants flexibility, with certain employees held to a far looser standard than others. To truly ensure that timeliness becomes prioritized across the workplace, you may need to clarify that senior leaders must now show up on time as well, with no exceptions, even if they have been excused for not doing so in the past. Focusing on changing one high-impact behavior or practice at a time, and clarifying what is and is not expected, can make this shift feel more tangible.
Professionalism will always be a potential source of debate as times change and work evolves. Critiques of professionalism — that it may not meaningfully align with success, that it may be biased in its application, or that it may result in harm — reflect the real possibility that the norms you have today may not be the norms that your organization needs. Especially during contentious times, be open to revisiting what you consider professional behavior and asking yourself whether your norms are most effectively serving their purpose: empowering your people. When in doubt, return to these steps to design a strategically aligned set of professional norms that enables everyone to bring their best.