Values
How to Hold Conservative Values in a Modern Workplace Without Apology
You do not need permission to hold a conviction. You need clarity, composure, and a record of results that is hard to dismiss.
By Lisa Copeland · · 2 min read
Plenty of experienced women hold traditional convictions about family, faith, personal responsibility, and enterprise, and have quietly concluded that saying so at work is professionally unwise.
That instinct is understandable. It is also a slow erosion, and the erosion has a cost.
Separate three different things
- Your convictions, which are yours and require no one's approval.
- Your professional conduct, which must be fair, lawful, and respectful to every person you work with.
- Your public commentary, which is a strategic choice about time, place, and audience.
Conflating these is what gets people into trouble. Keeping them distinct is what lets you be principled and effective at the same time.
Build the platform that makes conviction survivable
Results buy you the right to be unusual. Excellence is the cheapest insurance policy a principled woman can carry.
The woman who is the top producer, the most reliable operator, or the one who fixes what nobody else can fix has considerably more room to hold an unpopular view than the woman who is merely adequate.
How to disagree well
- Be specific. Argue with a policy, a number, or a decision, never with a person's worth.
- Stay calm. The person who raises their voice loses the room regardless of who is right.
- Concede real points. It costs nothing and buys enormous credibility.
- Do not litigate everything. Choose the two issues that actually matter to you and let the rest go.
Treat people better than the caricature
The most effective answer to the assumption that conviction means contempt is to be visibly, consistently decent to people who disagree with you. That is not a tactic. It is the point.
Hold the line, do the work, keep the tone. That combination is very difficult to argue with.