The New Professionalism
Professionalism refers to workplace standards relating to dress code, speech, behavior, work style, and timeliness. The issue with professionalism, as Aysa Gray details in her article, is the inherent bias within professionalism -- a construct largely centered on whiteness and aimed at promoting white favoritism in professional environments.
Racial bias can be coded as professionalism in hiring metrics, day-to-day operations, and promotions. Gray notes this example: “Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted to management positions despite being the most highly educated demographic” (Gray, 2019), because they are stereotyped as being passive.
Critical and ongoing self-reflection is important in dismantling power structures within professional environments and relationships. Additionally, learning about the work already being done to change workplace standards can inspire ideas for our own workplaces and relationships (Gray, 2019).
Author Resmaa Menakem notes the importance of critical self-reflection as a central part in decentering whiteness in different spaces and dissolving white supremacy.
In My Grandmother’s Hands, Menakem states: “Efforts to dissolve white-body supremacy . . . focus on extending white Americans’ rights, privileges, and opportunities to people of all colors, so that all Americans get to enjoy them in equal measure” (2017).
These efforts require personal responsibility and actively seeking out ways to be more inclusive in white-centered spaces (Menakem, 2017). This can include evaluating how the spaces we inhabit further these biases.
For example, the idea of “authenticity” has become popular – bringing and being your whole self wherever you go – from workspaces, to social media. We are encouraged, and sometimes expected, to bring more of ourselves as individuals into different spaces.
The issue with this is that being “authentic’ carries social and professional expectations and consequences. The idea of professionalism was first created using Eurocentric values – straight hair, business suits, and formal speech. While changing, the structures that exist were created with these values and that is difficult to step away from without active, ongoing self-reflection and structural change (Opie & Freeman, 2017).
By creating an environment based on curiosity and collaboration, healing practitioners can challenge the power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. Questioning the traditional “one-down” power dynamic between therapist and client is an important part of dismantling professionalism biases (Opie & Freeman, 2017).
Research shows meaningful change occurs when a clinician comes from a perspective of collaboration and multicultural understanding. This means actively considering the power dynamics that exist within this space through self-reflection, open dialogues with clients and colleagues, and approaching each individual with an attitude based in curiosity and compassion (Asnaani & Hofmann, 2012).
“This overall attitude of curiosity and respect towards clients, across treatment orientations, establishes a strong working alliance between the therapist and patient. Our primary aim should be to use such resources/guidelines to systematically provide the most comprehensive care, and to meet the needs of these individuals who, regardless of culture, gender, or sexual orientation, are coming to practitioners for help in their times of distress” (Asnaani & Hofmann, 2012). Within this collaborative environment, clients can practice empowerment, autonomy, and decision-making that relates to their identities and individual therapy goals.
Our clinicians at GCFT make a conscious effort to approach relationships with our clients with collaboration, compassion, and curiosity. We know that striving to better understand ourselves and each other can create meaningful change. Through continuous efforts to open our hearts and minds to one another, we can critically examine the structures and spaces that we inhabit and contribute to, and work together to make them more inclusive!
References
Asnaani, A., & Hofmann, S. G. (2012). Collaboration in multicultural therapy: establishing a strong therapeutic alliance across cultural lines. Journal of clinical psychology, 68(2), 187–197. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.21829
Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press.
Opie, T., & Freeman, R. (2017). Our biases undermine our colleagues' attempts to be authentic. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved n.d., from https://hbr.org/2017/07/our-biases-undermine-our-colleagues-attempts-to-be-authentic