The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul

A detailed and inspiring strategy for staying true to yourself at work while contributing to your organization’s effectiveness and integrity

• Based on over fifty candid interviews with businesspeople at all levels, including vivid firsthand accounts of compromise and courage

• Eminently practical and constructive, with exercises and strategies you can apply wherever you work

Healthy compromise is a fact of organizational life, part of accomplishing any meaningful goal with other people. But when it involves betraying your word, your principles, or other important commitments, it takes a bite out of your passion and vitality, trapping you in a web of nagging doubts and regrets or even dread and remorse. Sadly, certain common misconceptions about compromise mean we can fall into this trap unknowingly, making a sort of “devil’s bargain by degrees.” Even worse, this can happen while working for companies and leaders we otherwise respect and admire.

So what can you do, short of sacrificing your career?

In this unflinching but consistently constructive and timely look at concessions, double-binds, and contradictions of organizational life, Doty suggests the antidote is to “redefine the game” – expand your ability to be a positive force regardless of the setting. At the core of this strategy are six personal foundations that she illuminates with practical exercises and examples, including Reconnect to Your Strengths, See the Larger Playing Field, Define a Worthy Enough Win, Find Your Real Team, Make Positive Plays, and Keep Your Own Score.

Full of candid firsthand stories from Doty’s interviews with over fifty businesspeople as well as her own experiences as a consultant and manager, The Compromise Trap offers sympathetic guidance for individuals striving to live with greater integrity, courage, and purpose at work, as well as the executives, coaches, consultants, and loved ones who support them and senior leaders who want to expand what it means for organizations to act with integrity in the world.

© 2025 Berrett-Koehler Publishers (Ebook): 9781605095813

Release date

Ebook: 7 January 2025