Work, Reconsidered: When Did Conformity Become Professionalism?

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Early in my leadership career, I worked for a company that had a dress code. Jeans were allowed on Fridays. Only Fridays. And I enforced it. At the time, I didn’t really question it. It was the policy. I was a leader. Part of my job was making sure people followed the rules, so when Friday rolled around, jeans were fine. Monday through Thursday? Apparently denim had the power to interfere with your ability to sit at a desk and do your job.

Looking back now, it seems ridiculous. I wish I could say I recognized that at the time, pushed back, and refused to enforce a rule that had nothing to do with anyone’s performance. I didn’t. I was earlier in my career, learning what leadership was supposed to look like, and like a lot of people, I absorbed some of the workplace rules I inherited without stopping to ask why they existed in the first place. I ask why a lot more now.

What does wearing dress pants instead of jeans actually tell me about someone’s ability to do their job? What does eye contact tell me? What does having a camera on during every virtual meeting tell me? What does sitting a certain way, speaking a certain way, or interacting with coworkers in a particular style tell me? And when did asking questions become a sign that someone isn’t professional?

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That last one isn’t hypothetical for me. I’ve had a boss tell me that asking too many questions was disrespectful and unprofessional. Not inappropriate questions. Not questions asked rudely. Too many questions. For me, questions are how I understand things. They’re how I identify gaps, connect information, solve problems, and make sure I understand what someone is actually asking me to do. They’re also a huge part of how I’ve done my job successfully for more than a decade. But in that environment, a behavior that was fundamental to how I process information was interpreted as a character problem (I wrote about asking questions earlier in this series here.).

And this is where we need to question what we’re actually calling professionalism. Because there are absolutely behaviors that don’t belong at work. Bullying isn’t professional. Name-calling isn’t professional. Harassment isn’t professional. Belittling people, intentionally causing harm, discriminating against someone, or demeaning and mistreating people isn’t professional. Those are behaviors with consequences for other people. But jeans? Eye contact? Whether someone’s camera is on for every meeting? Whether someone is naturally quiet? Whether someone asks more questions than you do? Whether their communication style looks exactly like yours? We’ve lumped a lot of things under “professionalism” that have very little to do with someone’s ability to perform their job or treat other people well.

And those expectations aren’t experienced equally. Eye contact is an easy example. For some people, eye contact feels natural. For others, including many neurodivergent people, maintaining it can require significant conscious effort or be genuinely uncomfortable. Yet we’ve spent generations teaching people that looking someone in the eye demonstrates confidence, honesty, attention, and respect. Does it? Someone can look directly into your eyes while completely ignoring what you’re saying. Someone else can look away while listening to every single word. Which person is being more respectful?

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We do something similar with cameras in virtual workplaces. Somewhere along the way, “camera on” became shorthand for engaged. Camera off became disengaged. But engagement is a behavior, not a little green light next to a webcam. If someone is participating, contributing, meeting expectations, communicating with their team, and doing excellent work, I genuinely do not care whether I can see their face in a square on my screen for the entirety of a meeting.

I've been thinking a lot about why we care so much about these things in the first place. Some of it comes down to familiarity. We tend to label behaviors that match what we’ve been taught to expect as professional, and behaviors that deviate from those expectations as something else. Difficult. Disengaged. Not executive enough. Not polished. Not a culture fit. Unprofessional. Those words can sound objective when they’re anything but.

And the consequences of those expectations don’t land evenly. They can be especially costly for neurodivergent and disabled people, people from different cultural backgrounds, and anyone whose communication style, appearance, or way of interacting doesn’t match the person deciding what “professional” is supposed to look like in any said moment. When the definition of professionalism is built around one narrow idea of how a successful employee should dress, communicate, socialize, make eye contact, participate in meetings, or interact with authority, we’re not necessarily measuring professionalism at all. Sometimes we’re measuring how well someone conforms to what we’re already comfortable with. Only the best performer wins the performative contest that many people aren't even playing.

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That doesn’t mean expectations disappear. It means we should probably be much more intentional about which expectations actually matter. Can you do the work? Can people depend on you? Do you communicate what others need to know? Do you treat people with dignity and respect? Do you take accountability when you get something wrong? Can you disagree without demeaning someone? Can you work with people who think, communicate, dress, and operate differently than you do? Those expectations matter to me. Whether you’re wearing jeans while doing it doesn’t.

And yes, I’ve changed my thinking about this over the years. I think that’s important to say. I enforced rules earlier in my career that I wouldn’t enforce today. I accepted workplace norms without questioning them that I would absolutely question now. I probably judged behaviors through a definition of professionalism that I hadn’t examined closely enough yet. In the same breath, I am not going to lose a client or job over it all if I can help it. Nor a colleague if possible,

That’s part of reconsidering work. It isn’t just looking around at everything everyone else is doing wrong. Sometimes it’s looking back at the things we participated in ourselves and asking whether we’d make the same choice today. I wouldn’t. That said, not conforming is a privledge not everyone has. Those who can, should absolutely speak up and question what others cannot afford to risk.

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Instead of asking whether someone “looks professional,” “sounds professional,” or behaves the way we’ve historically been taught a professional person should behave, we should ask a better question.

Is this behavior actually affecting the work or another person, or is it simply different from what I’m used to?

We should spend less time asking people to conform to outdated ideas of professionalism and more time questioning why we still use those ideas to judge people in the first place.

This is a topic I can't solve in blog series. Together, we can do our best to keep questioning performative bias and policy in the workplace.