Differentiated, Yet Integrated.
‘To be one’s self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.’ — Irving Wallace
Conformity is a more powerful and more common force than moral courage.
Workplace conformity makes us refrain from speaking what we believe to be true, right, or wrong to someone in authority who might take it as criticism or be offended. And who has the power to reward or punish us in some way.
Even if our sense of integrity ultimately prevails and makes us give it a try, we often act so clumsily that our internal status goes down the drain in the process. We get ostracized, isolated, ridiculed, and may even end up losing our job in the process.
But usually, it does not get to that. We simply learn at the double who we are not allowed to criticize. Erring on this side feels more comfortable.
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You will always be proud that you stood up for something you believe in. Yet you will always regret waiting too long or not being more skillful in how you did it.
It pays to pick your battles carefully. Think through your fallback options if things go poorly. Manage the timing, content, and emotions around your messaging. Lay the groundwork of establishing some goodwill first, but don’t count on it too much at the moment of confrontation. Courage means you understand and accept that there might be negative consequences. That, as Rousseau said, ‘truth is no road to fortune.’ And do it anyway.
Just remember that — as scarce as stating the obviously visible, or speaking the truth everyone knows, may be — the supply has always exceeded the demand. The emperor may well be naked. But if you’re going to say so, you’d better be a good tailor.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, of the well-deserved ‘flow’ fame, offered a helpful mental model to regulate our preferred location on the courage-conformity continuum. It goes as follows.
‘A self that is only differentiated — not integrated — may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.’
Wallace himself is a case in point. This best-selling author is known for writing heavily researched, bold, often controversial novels that tackle taboo subjects. He lived by the idea that expressing one’s true self — through art or opinion — even at the risk of being ‘wrong’ in the eyes of society, is more courageous than blending in. But he also embraced spectacle and blunt showmanship to promote his work commercially. Individualistic in his work; savvy in the marketplace.
Differentiated, yet integrated.
