“Cognitive dissonance is so painful when you realize that you’ve done something against your ethics, your values, your principles or even your personal priorities, that you have a strong unconscious incentive to tune it out,” says Elizabeth Doty, consultant and educator in the field of organizational learning, and author of The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul. One seemingly small ill-advised compromise to meet a department’s needs, a supervisor’s order or to satisfy a company leader’s demand can lead to another and another, she explains.

“You adjust [your perceptions] to make yourself feel like you’re doing the right thing when you’re copping out to get short term payoffs [i.e. making your boss happy] as opposed to taking on larger concerns such as ‘How do we keep the customers happy?’.” When you’re making such compromises, you’re not “being true to your values and helping the organization make the right choices for the overall good of the organization,” she explains.

It’s Not Just About Being Right

Doty explains some of the costs to yourself and your staff when you engage in unhealthy compromise. One cost is self-depleting stress, since it makes you feel conflicted to support actions that are not true to your values and convictions. In turn, your employees, peers and even your superiors, the people who trust you to make the right decisions, will lose faith in you if let yourself be bullied into making a decision that is not good for customers, your team, or the overall organization, notes Doty.

“First, speak up, but shift from being right to helping the right thing happen,” advises Doty. “Ask yourself why you are reluctant to compromise in the situation, what impact or risk that you see. From your vantage point in the organization, you may see some value or risk that a leader doesn’t see. You are uniquely situated to connect certain dots. Don’t assume that others know about the problem and don’t care.

“As a leader or manager, the biggest key is to show that you really want to know the truth of a situation. You may have to convey it over and over in a variety of ways for other staff to believe you. Get creative about making the issue visible and set your limits in non-antagonistic ways” according to your unique role in the organization, Doty says, then make a counteroffer, offering an alternative solution. “Focus on what you are arguing for, not what you’re arguing against.”

“Help the system to learn by surfacing the information that’s needed so others in the organization see what you see,” she explains. “Present information in a way that brings in all the factors and makes them vivid and compelling.”

A Real Life Example

To illustrate her points, Doty provides an example of a junior loan officer at a major financial organization who turned down a real estate loan for a business to purchase an apartment building. There were several reasons to turn down the loan, including the fact that based on his analysis, he thought the business was undercapitalized. A senior executive was angry that the loan had been turned down since it was a pet project of his and demanded to know who made the decision, explains Doty.

“The loan officer said, ‘I can’t make a loan that will hurt the company, but I am happy to walk through the analysis and have your committees go through it to determine whether I missed something,’ ” Doty explains. The loan officer’s analysis and decision went through three committees and they agreed it was a bad loan.

This example shows that standing up for your convictions in the best interests of the organization often becomes the best choice you can make. When you stand behind your values and your knowledge for the good of the organization and can communicate your decisions, company leadership will usually appreciate it.

Doty’s last thought is an opportunity for you to practice her concepts: “Go to your boss and ask in a lighthearted way, ‘How do you want me to disagree with you?’ Disagreement is a starting point for breakthroughs and new ideas.” For more information about the book and its author, visit www.worklore.com.