Workplace environments can put individuals in conflict with their own standards, where speaking up or acting on principle carries personal and professional consequences. Assessing whether those decisions were justified is often unclear, particularly where their impact extends beyond immediate outcomes and into longer-term cultural or institutional change.
For people who make a choice in a workplace to stand up for their beliefs and values and pay a price for it, it can be difficult to put the experience into words. Whether and how it can be discussed will depend on the seriousness of the issues and the nature of the personal and professional price that has been paid.
In some cases, the price is lower and the person recovers relatively quickly from the negative personal impact, particularly if there is good support.
In other cases, the price is high and the personal impact is long-lasting.
In certain cases, particularly in professional fields that carry risk of serious moral injury, the personal cost is so distressingly high it almost defies any analysis. There is almost nothing to say other than to express the conviction that the person has been let down terribly and to despair at a system and individuals within it that have treated a human being with such callousness.
Everyone’s experience is unique.
However, I would suggest that across less serious (but still troubling) matters there are two general questions which may be perplexing to the person for a long time afterwards.
The first question is whether the cost of the action was worth the return.
I believe this is an impossible question to answer fully because we do not have access to all the information about the impact of an action. Sometimes the impact is visible and immediate, but often it is not.
Even if the immediate issue is practically addressed to some extent, that doesn’t tell us about how our actions might have impacted others on a human level. We don’t really know how our deeds may or may not have moved others to think and act differently. We don’t know if, in five or ten years’ time, a team member who witnessed our actions will do the same because they saw us act and it stayed in their memory as an example. Or, if we will eventually see new standards, requirements, or protections because the choice we made sparked a fresh idea in someone else.
So, perhaps one useful answer to this question is to trust that the ‘goodness’ of the action will, in time, generate its own further ‘goodness’ in terms of its impact, even if not apparent now.
The second question is whether being the ‘odd one out’ and speaking up was in fact the wrong thing to do, and everyone else had it right by not saying anything.
This might also be an impossible question to some degree.
There is enormous psychological literature and extensive commentary on issues like moral courage and organisational culture. But this literature is complex and, in some respects, too conflicting to properly apply to a personal situation.
And, again, we do not have access to all the information to determine whether someone else should have spoken up or not. We don’t know, for example, what their mental health was like or whether they lacked support to come forward.
I did recently come across a quote from Sophie Scholl, the WWII German Resistance heroine, which perhaps provides a part-answer. Sophie was a gentle, caring, and intelligent young woman who stood up for what she believed in, despite knowing there would be a terrible cost. Sophie speaks of those who didn’t join her, highlighting:
Those who don’t like to make waves, or enemies. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
We are fortunate to live in a free, democratic, and open society and, therefore, do not necessarily have to consider Sophie’s assessment of others failing to rise to the challenges of the day. However, this quote is both insightful and reassuring because it suggests that we should not second-guess our decision to do the right thing.
If we follow the reasoning in the quote, a decision to do the right thing usually isn’t an isolated choice.
Instead, it is a logical extension of bigger choices earlier in life.
In a professional context, those choices might include to strive for high standards in our chosen field, to direct our gifts and talents to where we judge we can do the most good, to actively care for our teams, and to be, to quote Sophie, a ‘torch’, rather than a candle.
Approaching it from this angle may allow for more peace with the decision to speak out and pay a price, because we then recognise the wheels were set in motion a long time earlier, in terms of committing to our personal values.
First published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/doing-right-thing-work-questions-afterwards-margaret-joseph-udaac/?trackingId=sKQhW%2BZTSL2M%2FNmp0zFM8g%3D%3D
