What is Professionalism?
Jenny Morse, PhD
Author and CEO
I recently saw a journalist propose an article for Forbes that asked, “Can you wear jeans to a job interview?” Many of us would immediately think “No” because jeans are not considered professional. But, what if you were interviewing to work on a ranch? What if you were interviewing at Facebook where the CEO regularly wears hooded sweatshirts? What if you were interviewing for a fashion job and your jeans were stylin’?
Certainly, there are situations in our current professional landscape where jeans would be acceptable and even make sense for a job interview. In these situations, jeans would be professional.
That’s because what is professional depends. It depends on what the situation is (context) and who the audience is because every audience will have their own set of expectations.
Want a more in-depth refresher on professional writing?
Try our Better Business Writing: On Demand course. This self-paced, virtual course will teach you strategies to become a more efficient and effective writer, and provide you with expert feedback
Knowing how to be professional for a particular audience in a particular context is what allows us to build, create, or maintain credibility. So, dressing up for an interview is generally considered “professional” because most companies for the last century have expected people to dress-up for work. Wearing a suit to an interview shows that you understand the cultural norms of working in an office. Wearing jeans in these situations would be seen as suspicious or uncultured because it doesn’t meet the socially crafted standards of what is acceptable in the workplace.
Professionalism linked to suits in the workplace is one example of the ways we generalize “professionalism”, even though suits in the workplace aren’t professional for every situation and every audience. Professionalism really depends on the context rather than a fixed set of rules.
Generalizing professionalism demonstrates our tendency to categorize information into binaries. Human brains like categories because categories allow us to use shortcuts (assumptions, biases) to navigate the world more quickly: black/white, tall/short, cat/dog, public/private, etc. But we are aware that the world is not so easily divided into these clean categories. Between black and white, we have gray. Between tall and short we have average. Between cat and dog, we have chihuahuas and sphynxes. We have foyers in our private homes and cubicles in our public offices. What fits in the category depends on what is around it, on how people are defining it, on who gets to determine the definition.
Professionalism is one of these complicated concepts. While it seems like a pretty straightforward category–what is professional is absolutely distinct from personal–professional looks different depending on the context and audience. So it matters who is in charge.
What textbooks and business schools and offices in the U.S. mean by professional is a certain standard of public performance that has been determined, for the most part, by the people who have dominated that space for the last century: mostly men of European descent. As a result, our current professional culture expects particularly clothing, particularly grooming, particularly vocabulary and sentence structure based on the traditions of that historical workplace culture. As a result, the difference between personal and professional will be a much smaller distinction for a man or a white person or a native English speaker than the difference between personal and professional is for people who are not men or not white or non-native speakers of English.
It’s uncomfortable to think of “professional culture” as being something that changes. We prefer to think of professional culture as a set of eternal rules. But what was professional in Shakespeare’s time is certainly not the same as what is professional now. Change is always happening. Definitions of what is acceptable in the workplace change. And the goal should be not to hold fast to the rule because “it’s a rule,” but to figure out what purpose the rule is serving, who it is serving, and what is gained when we apply that rule. It’s also important to remember that the rules don’t apply to everyone all the time, equally, and there are different rules for different situations.
So, can you wear jeans to an interview? Of course. You can wear whatever you want. But whether wearing jeans helps you get the job or eliminates you as a contender will depend on the circumstances and the audience’s expectations. The same goes with your emails and interactions. “Professional” communication, first and foremost, considers the context and meets audience expectations.
The goal of thinking about what is “professional” is to think about the other person–what do they want from you, what are their expectations–and if you can meet their goals, they will consider you professional. If you don’t meet their expectations, they won’t. Knowing how to determine what is professional in a given situation for various audiences can help you successively communicate and establish credibility, so you can consciously decide whether you want to be part of their professional culture or not.
