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Professional behaviour

  
 
Saturn's nod
09:24 / 27.09.07
What is professional behaviour? Are there standards across all kinds of workplaces? Does it necessarily involve dressing in uncomfortable clothes? What's the aim of it - what does it mean?

Is professional behaviour one of those things I'm expected to know or derive from first principles? How do you know the standards - do you ever have relaxed conversations about what it means with work colleagues, or does that conversation only surface when something's gone awry?

How compatible is 'professional' behaviour with various kinds of lifestyle activism? If you're trying to change the culture where you work and hence breaking the norms, is that compatible with professional behaviour?
 
 
Lurid Archive
11:47 / 27.09.07
Just some thoughts off the top of my head, to get started.

Professional behaviour is surely a social construct, and therefore partly dependent on the profession we are talking about. So you can't really expect to derive it from first principles. That said, there may well (in fact, I'd venture that there usually are) actual principles involved in the construction of acceptable professional behaviour which allow one to deduce the parameters of this behaviour or even challenge it internally, on its own terms. These may be implicit or explicit, and may be maintained unevenly or rigidly, informally or formally. Also, as with all social norms, the standards of professional behaviour change over time and through concerted effort.

So I'd say that the answer to whether uncomfortable clothes are part of the professional package is "it depends", though in practice that is likely to mean, "yes, probably". Professional behaviour isn't incompatible with activism necessarily, though again it rather depends on the profession and the type of activism we are talking about.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
12:43 / 27.09.07
I associate the phrase "professional behavior" with some HR fuckheads sending out emails nagging me about how if I don't dress and cut my hair as though I am a wealthy white businessman from the year 1900 I am obviously a stupid, lazy thief and do not deserve a job. There are, of course, different standards for women, and no standards whatsoever for someone who is, say, Trans, because those people don't really exist. This is not because we are a racist, sexist organization, of course, but because everyone else is and that's "just the way it is" so we have to fit in.

Most of these people really do seem to expect that you know these rules a priori and should not need to be told what they are - I have had conversations to that effect. Generally there is the assumption that everyone has the exact same set of Professional ideals regardless of where they've been before, despite the fact that every single workplace is at least slightly, if not very, different.

I suppose I would like the phrase (say, if this were some magical reality where I owned a company) to mean not being a racist sexist fuckhead at work and trying to be polite with people you are working with regardless of which holidays they observe or who they're having sex with outside of the office.

And, I suppose, not having sex in the office. That seems a bit unprofessional to me.

Maybe that makes me a fuckhead.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
14:07 / 27.09.07
At the risk of stating the obvious:

While I think "professional behaviour" can be a codified way of saying "suppress individuality," there is a pretty simple idea behind it: standardized behaviour leads to more efficient transactions.

If I, Businessperson X, want to sell my grappelgrommets to Businessperson Y, then it helps us both if we know that we are expected to be on time for the meeting, conduct financial dealings following good accounting practices, be polite and forthright, and speak a language that the other understands (or have interpreters on hand to help with this).

If Businessperson Y shows up fifteen minutes late dressed in a gorilla costume, shouts "I am king of the vampire people!" and urinates on my shoes, there's a problem -- not only in terms of me not wanting to do business with Businessperson Y, but in terms of the stress this puts on the whole system. If I have no idea whether or not I can even communicate with Businessperson Y, sight unseen, then so much time and energy is spent on establishing a code of behaviour for each individual meeting with each person or company that everything grinds to a halt.

Knowing that your dealings will be held in a way that eliminates as many extraneous factors in the goods-and-services-for-remuneration equation is, well, good business. So as an employee, you're expected to conform to an internal idea of "professional behaviour" -- trading your services for remuneration using behaviour that is codified to the point that the company doesn't have to spend time micro-managing you as an individual.

And that's what "professional behaviour" breaks down to, for me: it's a set of sociocultural/corporate standards that are meant to guarantee the efficient pursuit of individual and group tasks.

A smart organization will know where those boundaries have to be set and try to ensure maximum freedom for employees with minimal restrictions.

A less-smart organization will get so caught up in managerial thinking and slippery-slope logic that it will create strictures and pointless regulations to the point that policing and enforcing those regulations becomes more of a drain than the efficiency benefits warrant. See RED's post above.

In a perfect world, this would mean that we'd all be in perfectly non-racist non-sexist gender-neutral trans-friendly workspaces, because any environment that forces different expectations and standards on different people is obviously less efficient than a perfectly egalitarian workspace.

Unfortunately, fuckwittery is so entrenched in some segments of society that the path of least resistance is the easier route, and that becomes "professional behaviour" because it's more efficient, businesswise, to put up with the fuckwittery than it is to enact sweeping change.

And it falls on the non-fuckwits to put the time and effort into proving that things really do run better when everyone is treated equally. But that takes a lot of time and energy and swimming upstream.
 
 
HCE
16:46 / 27.09.07
I think there are some very general principles for professional behavior that include A) wanting to maintain a reputation as somebody reliable and diligent, somebody who does good-quality work, and B) the assumption that everybody else hates their job and wouldn't be there if they didn't have to. Given B) it seems unfair to impose on others one's personal political, religious, or sartorial quirks.

While A) is probably true across the board, it's also not obviously or directly related to appearance and speech. I personally tend to like it when people I work with are a little offbeat, it humanizes things. I'm aware that not everybody feels that way, though, so I try to tailor my demeanor to the workplace a bit.

What kinds of changes are you trying to institute?
 
 
*
17:46 / 27.09.07
I'm having a time with this in my workplace because one of my coworkers couldn't be arsed to come in if ze doesn't feel like it and when I try to talk to hir about what we generally need from hir to keep the office running, ze complains that the previous management wasn't so "strict". I feel like I'm hir babysitter. I could care less what ze wears, ze can play any kind of music in the office so long as it's not thumpingly loud, and we can be totally groovy hangout buddies. Smoking out with the facilities manager is fine so long as it's after work. Just have a modicum of dedication to doing the work that needs to be done, and answer the phones with basic courtesy or don't answer them, and don't make me feel like I'm babysitting. I don't quite know how to ask for that without going on a tearing rant.
 
 
*
17:47 / 27.09.07
For which, sorry for cluttering up the thread.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
18:28 / 27.09.07
not at all.

I can totally see Professionalism being important if it's well defined, and I'm liking these posts.

With everything, as has been said, it depends on the specific job. If you work in a job agency and you're trying to demonstrate what people commonly wear to job interviews so that the people who come in have a good example to go by, then it makes more sense to have a dress code.

If you're doing computery stuff or something else that's highly autonomous and people only need to check in every once in a while, what hours they work becomes less important than their ability to get the work done before whatever deadline there is. If the job is all about coordinating projects between people and communication is essential, you've got to have more overlapping office hours so people can meet up. etc.

the problem comes when fuckheads drag rules from one workplace into another where they don't work.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
23:02 / 27.09.07
gourami: the assumption that everybody else hates their job and wouldn't be there if they didn't have to

To this I'd add - the assumption that most of these people are not your friends in the sense that you are not at work because it provides a really awesome opportunity to hang out. Consequently, responding to a dimwitted (or inconvenient) suggestion by yelling "why will you PERSIST in seeing the world through the goggles of your OWN INSANITY" in a meeting is obviously unprofessional behaviour; the relationship is bounded not by the trust and respect that it would ideally be bounded by in a friendship, but by the fact that you are working towards (it is hoped) the same ends as defined by the company that employs you both.

Again like gourami, I'd like to know what kind of changes you are looking to make. That said, though, I think that changing things about the culture of your workplace is completely within the bounds of professional behaviour; if the employer is setting expectations properly, you shouldn't have to test limits. Basically, if your employer tells you that you need to meet your sales targets for this year and do so while wearing a suit, it would be unprofessional to turn up to a client meeting wearing a suit and also a pair of Converse trainers (never said anything about footwear, did they? Ha!). If your employer tells you to meet your targets for the year however you see fit, that would be entirely appropriate if you deem it so, even if it's not been done before.

That's a really simplistic example - I imagine that you're not working in Sales and that the cultural changes that you speak about run deeper than an inalienable right to wear All-Stars whenever you fancy - but I hope it makes some sense as a model for interacting with a corporate entity (whether or not a corporation). If you feel that the expectations set run expressly counter to deeply held beliefs, it's clearly time to have an actual conversation with someone - but within the parameters of those expectations, effecting cultural change is entirely consistent with behaving professionally.
 
 
Saturn's nod
06:36 / 28.09.07
Thanks to everyone who's posted so far, this is really interesting and I love that people have all kinds of different takes on it.

Nice definition of the ideal, RED

Sympathy to you Zippy: it sounds really frustrating, I hope you get some communication established soon.

My own activism within professional culture has a number of aspects. I guess the most pressing one is to do with allowances for my disability: I can't always be present in body, and if present in body, can't always do the expected standing up, standing around, and so on. But my disability's hidden, it's tedious to explain, and sometimes it crosses over into another kind of activism which is about whether I have the right to make my body comfortable. I don't know about other people but my own youthful conditioning did not allow me to expect that as a right, and I sometimes suspect that working cultures especially in male-dominated workplaces have been shaped around what the bodies of people socialised as men find comfortable.

Or perhaps it's the opposite: the workplace culture built by people who are not aware of having a body? Perhaps male socialisation enforces dissociation from the body and despises those Other who are associated with the body and willing to care for it? If we are going to break the patriarchy I guess pioneers will have to build cultures that suit human bodies, in order to build a future maleness which is allowed to know and inhabit its body?

Sometimes it doesn't come across well if I need to sit on the floor, or walk around, or can't be present when I'm expected: I think it can come across as if I am not paying attention or as if I don't take my work seriously. It might be I just need some training/encouragement/courage in communicating about my disability-related needs, or some reprogramming or something. I think gets easier anyway when I have a longterm association with a group of people rather than moving from lab to lab every few months and other short-term contexts - conferences etc - to learn more things.

I love trying to make cultural stuff explicit, and some of the specific expectations that people have written here are great for that.

gourami's point B, also taken up by Vincennes is a really interesting one to me. I've noticed that I bond with and learn from people by getting emotionally attached to them, whenever possible. I put love and devotion into my relationships with colleagues and that helps me to trust and pay attention to them and deliver my stuff. But it does feel as if that's a little socially unacceptable, possibly unprofessional. Perhaps just because we're scientists! I guess I have hacked my brain that way because as far as I understand it, emotional attachment multiplies the efficiency of learning and communication, in a sense it would be illogical and inefficient of me not to form these attachments.

I wonder though given the absence of explicit reinforcement of my views, whether it's a kink I should get looked at. But work for me is an awesome opportunity to hang out with other people who are interested in the stuff I'm interested in - how could I not love and cherish them? I appreciate not everyone works this way - I wonder if there is room for me to?
 
 
Jack Vincennes
07:53 / 28.09.07
apt plutology: work for me is an awesome opportunity to hang out with other people who are interested in the stuff I'm interested in - how could I not love and cherish them?

I think you are very lucky to have had that as your experience of work! And I'd like to make something else clear about what I said - the fact that the basic assumption is that you are not all there because you're all friends doesn't close off the possibility of that kind of love or respect developing, it just means that it's not the default option. If you've ever worked in a thoroughly dysfunctional team or workplace, you'll know that sometimes that's not a viable option. Where a corporate culture is based on mistrust and / or competition (and there are still quite a lot of people who think that that's the best or healthiest way to get results), that works incredibly effectively as a means of degrading the trust and affection that you can build up for people around you.

do you ever have relaxed conversations about what it means with work colleagues, or does that conversation only surface when something's gone awry?

In my experience, it happens as a result of the edge cases - when I or one of my team have had a really good professional interaction with someone, or a really bad one. Then again, I think that our working atmosphere fosters talking about these kinds of issues. I work for a business school, and part of the project of business education is making explicit these implicit assumptions about how we should act at work, and considering whether or not this newly-explicit assumption makes sense.

Again, there's a degree of trust required to have these conversations with your colleagues at all; defining the standards that you like or expect from other people is very likely to call into question the standards that you apply to your own interactions. At the very least, to have that conversation you and the other person need to be able to agree that you are both fallible, that neither of you always live up to these standards. Where the corporate culture is based on competition, it's probably going to be best for you (in the short term) to keep on making like you are, in fact, completely infallible.
 
 
Saturn's nod
08:02 / 28.09.07
Those are good points. I didn't mean to give the impression that I have always had easy relationships in work environments: I think my way of attaching makes it more painful when people betray. But I have been really lucky lately. I find competition a bit disturbing, to be honest: probably the legacy of my Quaker upbringing. I don't find it easy to conform to the behaviour that's expected in an environment where competition is the main flavour, so I guess I frame my inability to blend in as a kind of activism.

It's certainly through those 'edge cases' that I have learned a lot about what I consider to be appropriate conduct at work. It's like Erving Goffman writing that we can be grateful to the insane for illuminating what sane behaviour involves. This may come across as a bit Pollyanna of me, but I've been able to find a lot of value in some painful setbacks and bad treatment by colleagues because of the way those have illuminated my own values and standards in ways I was not able to articulate before that.
 
 
Olulabelle
12:34 / 30.09.07
I think the sort of business professionalism referred to here is different to the kind of professionalism necessary in a job where you deal with the public. I work part-time as a duty manager at a regional arts centre and for me professionalism is vital to my job. It's not professional for me to wear ridiculous shoes at work for example because sometimes I have to move quickly to help people who are hurt or injured. Tottering around in the wrong footwear would be very unprofessional. I also have to be together and with it at work because I have to think quickly. Our building is a public space and anyone can access it so we have lots of people who may need evacuating quickly, we have incidents and people who need escorting off the premises, I have to deal with the police and the emergency services on a regular basis. Turning up to work with a raging hangover would be hugely unprofessional because I would not be able to work to my full capacity and I might make a critical mistake.

I suppose when your job holds some specific responsibility for the health and well being of other people, like doctors or scientists who invent new drugs, or any of the services, professionalism means a whole different thing; it's not just a thing to be aspired to, it can literally be a matter of life or death.
 
 
astrojax69
20:03 / 05.10.07
mattshepard wrote:
If Businessperson Y shows up fifteen minutes late dressed in a gorilla costume, shouts "I am king of the vampire people!" and urinates on my shoes, there's a problem -- not only in terms of me not wanting to do business with Businessperson Y, but in terms of the stress this puts on the whole system.

and in terms of you now having to clean your shoes!


but on topic, i immediatley thought of the word 'probity' reading the top of this thread.

it comes down, for me, to the manner of your actions and their suitability to the situation. a 'professional' is someone skilled in the nature of the business and able to enact that skill in a manner that allows the business to be shown in a positive light while acheiving the aims of the interested parties.

a professional golfer will probably have different skills and notions to a professional brain surgeon [howeverso many surgeons share some of the pro-golfer's skills!] or professional mechanical engineer - but each will share a sense of responsibility to the continuance of their profession, their community standing and that of their profession, and their own standing within their profession.
 
 
Sjaak at the Shoe Shop
08:08 / 10.10.07
So behaving professionally really comes down to acting in such a way as to do your job right.

Part of this is say the 'technical' part, the surgeon should do a check if he hasn't left any scissors or anything in somebody's body before sowing hir back up, or as Olulabelle rightly says, part of her job is to wear good footware.

I think what most people do not realise is that 90% of most jobs is communication. This would be with clients, costumers, your boss, or colleagues.
So what constitutes professional (or effective) communication?
Active listening is one. If you're talking to your boss and meanwhile he is checking his email he is being very unprofessional. (part of his job is to listen to and motivate his employees)

People also communicate through their actions and also through their clothes. If the local butcher looks like a unwashed vagabond he can still sell the best meat in the world, but most people will avoid him because he communicates a different image. I think that is where professional attire comes in, as what people expect from a certain profession, and therefore provides confidence/reassurance (and vice versa)

In Day of the Zipper's case this person who doesn't feel like coming to work is clearly communicating with hir actions that ze doesn't give a thing about work or hir co-workers. (IMO ze should be reprimanded.
A very simple but effective way is to nail her on a principle:
'wouldn't you concur that it is important that people stick with their agreement?' if yes, continue with something like: well, we have a couple of agreements here, and that is that people come to work normally etc etc, I have observed that you are not sticking to this (as discussed etc, so what are you going to do about it? (If ze doesn't want to do anything about it, then too bad but the consequences are hirs) )

In my opinion there is not really a principal difference between professional communication and social communication. In all cases you should treat your counterpart decently and with respect. No reason why being attentive should be limited to a work environment, right?
 
 
Lurid Archive
11:33 / 10.10.07
In my opinion there is not really a principal difference between professional communication and social communication. In all cases you should treat your counterpart decently and with respect. No reason why being attentive should be limited to a work environment, right?

Only that doesn't entirely work for me. I don't expect friends to wear suits when they visit me, and I don't feel it a sign of respect if they do, nor do I find it really facilitates communication. Yet professionally, one is often expected to wear something like a suit.

Thinking more about this, I think we'd all agree that the standard of dress for accountants is usually higher for accountants than for programmers. Some of this is path dependence perhaps, since programming somehow arose as an amateur pursuit, and so retains more of an informal element. And part of this may be contact with the public - though I suspect that in contacting the public, the professions would converge on standards of dress much more than otherwise, which still leaves one to explain why they diverge in other cases.

I'm guessing here, so feel free to poke holes in this, but I think that part of the function of professional dress is to indicate an adherence to convention. For an accountant, this is an absolutely crucial part of the job. For a programmer, less so. For academia, which I know quite well, it is pretty relaxed too. While there are important parts of each profession which is standardised, the relative importance this has is what changes.

Thats why I'm finding the whole "gorilla suit" point of view a bit misleading, because while extremes of behaviour can impact on performance, the actual standards often applied are much, much stricter than would be reasonable to exclude these extremes. Rather, wearing a job uniform can be (though won't always be) a sign that you are willing to conform. This is often important, but is quite far from common sense in some cases and can reflect power structures rather than the necessities of a job. In much the same way that being seen to work long hours can be more about the sacrifice involved, than any productivity or efficiency gains. I don't think you can really understand professional behaviour without *some* reference to power structures.
 
 
Sjaak at the Shoe Shop
12:17 / 10.10.07
Lurid, your post is actually very close to I am trying to say. People communicate by their appearance and actions as much as by their words.

I would agree that a lot of the suit wearing is convention and peer pressure.
In the case of the accountant there is also a functional reason to wear a suit: he communicates conservatism, reliability, attention to detail, etc. which are all traits that the observer is looking for in an accountant, and therefore comforting.
In the case of i.e. an art director the results would be opposite: he would be classed as unimaginative, uncreative etc.
The background as to why the observer would draw these conclusions probably comes back to social convention/expectation. In other professions this visual communication can be less relevant, such as the academia you mention, or people may be a bit more flexible in their social conventions, and pay less attention to the outside image.
Interesting is that this also varies per country/culture.

In that sense, there would be no reason for your friends to dress up when visiting your house, on the contrary you would probably feel uncomfortable, and therefore you could even say that in the role as friend they are acting unprofessional by dressing in a suit.

What I was trying to say is that IMO behaving professionally is something completely different than wearing a suit. A monkey can wear a suit, but he'll still be a monkey. Now if he knows how to decently answer the phone it becomes a different story.

Hope I made some sense here.
 
  
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