In an industry where there has never been a single blueprint for success, expertise has naturally carried more weight than optics.
After nearly two decades working across traditional corporate environments, and now the cannabis industry, I’ve found myself questioning many of the assumptions I once accepted about work. The best lessons haven’t come from having all the answers, but from paying attention to what surprised me. This is one of those observations.
For the first fifteen years of my career, I did everything I was supposed to do.
I built my career at Macy’s, Coach, Ralph Lauren, and Conagra Brands, managing multimillion-dollar marketing budgets, launching products, leading cross-functional teams, and helping grow some of the world’s most recognizable brands. I earned my MBA, climbed the corporate ladder, and genuinely loved solving business problems.
But somewhere along the way, I realized I was spending almost as much energy navigating the unwritten rules of corporate life as I was driving business results.
There were expectations about how to communicate, how to present myself, how much personality to show, and what “executive presence” was supposed to look like. None of those things appeared in my job description, yet they often felt just as important as my ability to lead a team or grow a brand.
It became exhausting, and in 2017, I left Corporate America and set out to travel the world. When I returned a year and a half later, I found myself working in cannabis.
What I didn’t expect was that this industry would make me rethink one of the biggest assumptions I’d carried throughout my career: what it actually means to be professional.
What is professionalism
Ask someone to describe a professional, and you’ll probably hear words like polished, articulate, or well put together. We instinctively picture someone who looks and sounds a certain way before we think about what they actually do.
The dictionary offers a much simpler definition.
Professionalism is the competence and skill expected of someone in a particular profession. It’s about expertise, sound judgment, integrity, reliability, and consistently doing your job well.
Somewhere along the way, though, we blurred the line between being good at your job and looking like someone who’s good at their job.
That distinction matters because organizations don’t hire appearances—they hire performance.
The unwritten rules of professionalism
Yet many of the signals we’ve come to associate with professionalism have little to do with whether someone can solve problems, build trust, lead a team, or deliver results. Instead, we often evaluate how someone dresses, how they wear their hair, how formal they sound in an email, or whether they project so-called “executive presence.”
I learned those unwritten rules early in my career. I remember rereading perfectly normal emails before hitting send because I worried that sounding too friendly might be mistaken for lacking executive presence. I wasn’t improving my communication—I was managing someone else’s perception of it. Looking back, I’m amazed by how much mental energy went toward performing professionalism instead of simply doing exceptional work.
I’m sure many people can relate. Whether it’s editing your natural communication style, code-switching, masking neurodivergence, covering tattoos, or wondering if your appearance feels “professional enough,” countless professionals spend energy managing perception instead of maximizing contribution.
That raises an important question:
What could people accomplish if they didn’t have to spend so much energy proving they belonged?
Workplace strategist Sandhya Sudhakar, founder of Self At Work, has spent years helping organizations unlock stronger performance by helping people connect to their authentic strengths rather than conform to someone else’s expectations.
The idea is simple: when employees spend less energy masking who they are, they have more to invest in creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving. Authenticity isn’t just good for people, it can also be good for business.
We’ve seen glimpses of this shift already.
The pandemic challenged many of our assumptions about work. Overnight, conference rooms became kitchen tables. Meetings included barking dogs, cats strolling on keyboards, toddlers, and unstable Wi-Fi. Professionalism became less about perfectly pressed clothing and more about adaptability, communication, and outcomes.
If COVID challenged where professionalism happens, and tech companies challenged what professionalism looks like, I believe the cannabis industry is challenging who gets to define it.
How cannabis is challenging professionalism
Unlike many established industries, cannabis didn’t inherit the antiquated corporate blueprint. It brought together cultivators, legacy operators, entrepreneurs, marketers, financiers, and advocates—all trying to build something entirely new. There wasn’t one accepted mold for what a leader looked like because everyone was figuring it out together.
Success wasn’t determined by who looked the most corporate. It depended on who could adapt, solve problems, navigate ambiguity, and build trust. People who could keep moving, despite constantly changing regulations and an industry that seemed to reinvent itself every year. Those are the qualities that actually build companies. They’re also qualities you can’t evaluate by looking at someone’s wardrobe, hairstyle, tattoos, or communication style.
That’s one of the things I’ve come to admire most about cannabis.
In an industry where there has never been a single blueprint for success, expertise has naturally carried more weight than optics. Former CPG executives work alongside legacy operators. Lab technicians collaborate with retailers, marketers, cultivators, and finance leaders. Their backgrounds couldn’t be more different, but they’re united by one question: Can you help move this industry forward?
As cannabis continues to mature, we’ll inevitably borrow ideas from more established industries. Better systems, stronger governance, and experienced leadership will all help the industry grow. But I hope we don’t unintentionally import outdated assumptions about professionalism along with them.
The future of professionalism
Professionalism should absolutely include integrity, preparation, accountability, and respect. Those qualities directly influence how people work together. But perhaps it’s time to stop confusing those qualities with a particular image or communication style.
The next time someone doesn’t fit your mental picture of “professional,” pause before making the judgment and ask yourself:
- Would this characteristic actually limit their ability to perform the job?
- Am I evaluating competence or familiarity?
- Am I rewarding expertise or conformity?
The answers matter because the signals we reward become the culture we build. If we reward conformity, people will spend their energy fitting in. If we reward expertise, curiosity, judgment, and results, they’ll spend that energy creating value.
Working in cannabis has reminded me that professionalism was never supposed to be a performance. At its best, professionalism is about bringing your expertise, integrity, and judgment to meaningful work.
My hope is that as this industry continues to evolve, we preserve one of its greatest strengths: the willingness to judge people by what they contribute, not by how closely they resemble someone else’s idea of what a professional should look like.
About the Author:
Tekisha Harvey is Managing Partner, Marketing at FlowerHire, where she leads the company’s marketing, content strategy, and industry events. Over the course of her career spanning luxury retail, consumer packaged goods, consulting, and cannabis, she has built brands, launched products, and helped organizations grow. She writes about leadership, identity, and the experiences that shape how we live and work. Read more at tekishaharvey.com.