There are going to be plenty of times in our professional (and personal) lives where people are really going to annoy us, and royally infuriate us. Sometimes, it’s enough to make you quit your job, and other times you just dig in your heels and stay. You may be on your way out of a job, and wanting to leave a parting gift for HR and management, so that they get the message that they’re really screwing things up. Resist the urge. Stay professional no matter what, and keep your professional reputation intact.
Remember — it’s not just a cliché that the world is a very small place. It doesn’t matter if you live in a city with 10 million residents, or that we live in a global economy. Your reputation will follow you wherever you go. It will either be positive or negative, and everything that you’ve done to that point will build on that reputation, and image of who you are as a professional. Everything you do builds your reputation and your personal brand. Think about that for a minute. To me, that’s enormously humbling, a bit scary, and the magnitude is a bit overwhelming as well. I do mean everything you do, good and bad. Every negotiation. Every job you’ve done, and even your personal life affect your personal brand.
That’s not to say that you can’t do damage control, that you can’t change, or become a reformed person. But it does make it a whole lot trickier, because people have long memories, especially for negative things.
That means that when you are interacting with people, you need to stay professional no matter what happens. Think about your negotiation style. Is it super hardball? Is that what you want to be known for? How do you achieve resolutions to conflicts? Are you a leader or a follower? Do you come up with new and novel ways to solve problems? Do you drop assignments? Chances are, if you’ve ever dropped an assignment, you are perceived as at least somewhat unreliable. I’ve had situations where I’ve had to totally resist the urge to stomp on someone because they really deserved it. Truly they did. But that would break with the professional, kind persona that I choose to portray instead.
I’ve been in situations that have tested me pretty mightily. I’m sure that you have too. We all have. It’s how you handle the tough situations that shows how professional you are, and how well you are going to manage professional minefields. Navigating the easy stuff is no test at all.
What this costs, and why it’s still worth it
There is an honest caveat to all of this, and it is worth saying rather than pretending otherwise.
“Stay professional” is advice that falls unevenly. A woman who pushes back hard in a negotiation is far more likely to be described as difficult than a man doing exactly the same thing, and the reputational cost of an outburst is not the same for everyone in the room. So this is not a level playing field, and treating it as one is its own kind of unhelpful.
Knowing that changes what the advice is for. It isn’t about being agreeable. It’s about not handing anyone the story. The version of you that people repeat afterwards is the one they will use to decide whether to hire you, refer you, or partner with you — and what gets said about you when you aren’t there is the part of your reputation you have the least direct control over and the most to lose from.
Which is the real argument. Not that you should swallow everything. That the moment of satisfaction is almost never worth what it buys you.
