Work Requires Compromises; Integrity Should Not Be One of Them
Working requires compromises. We can’t sleep late, spend as much time as we want baking a cake, or take calls from mom all day long and meet company requirements. Take the job, dress the part, and a basic set of workplace standards comes with the territory. Adjustments in behavior to function in the world of work should not, however, include compromising one's principles and integrity at work.
Healthy vs unhealthy compromise
In her book The Compromise Trap; How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul, Elizabeth Doty differentiates between the healthy compromises that are a fact of organizational life and decisions that betray your integrity at work. It’s the nagging concessions, double binds and contradictions that can occur in organizations that affect morale and productivity. According to Doty the trap occurs when we "fall into exaggerations and experience discomfort with confrontation in the moment." This can lead to incremental decisions where each one is not terrible but taken together they become damaging.
Always saying yes does not automatically engender respect. There are times when it can even look like it is costly, but when integrity is at stake profits will undoubtedly suffer. A few years ago I was pleased when a client wanted in-person training on preventing harassment at work for more than 250 people. I recommended a session to meet these needs. The company thought the content was great but asked to cut the program to 1 hour for attendees in positions below assistant department manager. I knew that 60 minutes would not provide enough time to present information and respond to questions so I said no, ready to lose the business rather than present an inappropriate product. In the end, I delivered the full program to all participants.
More articles from AllBusiness.com:
- How to Choose a Business Partner: 13 Key Qualities to Look for
- Why Compromising Can be Bad for Business – How to Say “No” and Get Ahead
- How to Be a Great Leader: The 3 Keys to Managing Yourself
Striking a balance to maintain integrity at work
Doty describes a series of strategies to strike the right balance. It takes humility to realize that integrity is a life goal. Doty creates a road map to adjust behavior through six personal foundations; Reconnect to Your Strengths, See the Larger Playing Field, Define a Worthy Enough Win, Find Your Real Team, Make Positive Plays, and Keep Your Own Score.
"Leaders help the right thing happen by making things visible, when something is not visible it is not vivid," says Doty. She notes that this doesn’t mean you have to be an undercover boss but leadership does have to communicate more by actions than words that they are interested in the whole story. Doty reports that 60% of employees find it difficult to be intellectually honest with the boss. This type of negative relationship can also lead to a bump in turnover as the economy improves and jobs open up. A Deloitte study on Trust in the Workplace noted that 48% of respondents cited loss of trust as a reason to seek a new job. The same study found that trust significantly impacts morale--no surprise here.
We are faced with decisions that potentially require compromise every day. Agreeing to hire the candidate that was not my first choice is one thing, authorizing a termination because an employee is "getting on in years" is a place I won’t go. Take the time to think about ways to control these decisions and avoid the little discomforts that will add up and create negative outcomes or that will harm your integrity at work.
RELATED: Why Integrity Matters at Work
