Social Class Leaves a Mark. Your Professional Development Isn't Accounting For It
July 8, 2026
Jane had been teaching in higher education for years. She knew how to read a room. She understood curriculum design, institutional politics, how to navigate a department. She was good at her job. Then she moved to an elite private university. And within weeks, something started happening that she couldn't explain.
Students were arguing with her. Trying to negotiate their grades. Going around her to the dean, to other faculty, to anyone above her in the hierarchy. She'd navigated gender dynamics her entire career — her authority had never been what a male professor's was, and she knew that. But it had never been questioned like this.
And then she saw me pop up on her TikTok FYP and realized, "Oh...so that's what's going on!"
It was a class difference.
So she joined my weekly Skool group coaching call with a very specific question - how could she navigate this new class environment?
What imprinting actually means
There's a concept in psychology called imprinting. During vulnerable periods in our lives — childhood being the primary one — our environments leave marks on our behavior that persist across time and across changes to our circumstances. We're not doomed to them. But to change them, they usually have to be witnessed and addressed first.
In my published research on class as a stigmatized workplace identity, this is one of the core mechanisms I examine. Class leaves a social imprint during childhood — the period when children learn how to be part of their social group. That imprint travels with them into every workplace they enter as an adult.
If you grew up in a middle or upper-middle class household, certain things were imprinted early. That your needs matter. That authority figures can be questioned. That negotiation is a normal and expected part of getting what you want. Those aren't personality traits. They're class norms — handed to you implicitly and constantly before you were old enough to know you were being taught anything.
If you grew up working class, a different set of things was imprinted. Compliance kept you safe. Authority wasn't questioned — not because you were passive, but because in environments with less financial cushion and fewer social connections, the cost of getting it wrong was too high. Just say yes, do the work, and leave. Don't give them a reason to let you go.
These are rational adaptations to real circumstances. They become invisible problems when the circumstances change and the adaptation doesn't.
The assumption underneath the advice
Most professional development operates on an unstated premise: that there is one right way to communicate, one right way to hold authority, one right way to advocate for yourself in a room.
Learn the rules. Take up space. Stop shrinking. Negotiate.
That advice isn't wrong. But it skips something. It assumes everyone is starting from the same imprint — that the primary obstacle is simply not knowing the rule, rather than having been actively shaped, for years, to do the opposite.
When someone has been imprinted to defer — because deference was what kept them employed, kept them safe, kept them from standing out in ways that cost them — telling them to just advocate for themselves is a bit like handing someone a map to a city they've been told their whole life they're not allowed to enter.
The map isn't the problem. The imprint is.
And this is where organizations consistently leave performance on the table. The unwritten rules of most workplaces were written by someone. They reflect a particular class background, a particular communication style, a particular set of assumptions about how authority works and who holds it legitimately. Almost everyone in the room is navigating the cost of those assumptions — including, often, the people enforcing them without realizing they inherited them.
What changed for Jane
Back to Jane. When she arrived at the elite institution, her instinct was to defer. Comply. Smooth it over. That instinct had served her everywhere else. In this room, it gave the students more ground. It raised hell in her classroom, and was a time drain for her senior leaders (who note, did NOT offer help or support and let the condition continue to spiral...which is why I also provide leadership workshops).
What Jane and I worked on together wasn't changing who she was. It was giving her language for what she was actually navigating — and a different toolkit for that specific dynamic.
These were students imprinted from childhood to negotiate, to escalate, to use social connections as leverage. That's not bad character. That's a class norm. Once Jane could see it clearly — once she understood that their behavior was also an imprint, not a personal verdict on her authority — she could respond to it differently.
She built social capital within the institution. She learned how to assert her authority in ways that didn't give the escalation more oxygen. She stopped trying to solve a class dynamic with a gender toolkit, and stopped trying to solve a gender dynamic with a class toolkit.
In her words: once she knew what the game was, it didn't change who she was. It was a different toolkit for approaching those relationships.
That's what this work makes possible. Not assimilation. Not abandoning who you are or where you came from. Clarity about what you're actually navigating — so you can choose how to respond to it.
How did Jane feel about it?
"I participate in Dr. K’s weekly group sessions, and I consistently find valuable insights for my professional life. Recently, I transitioned to a private upper-middle-class university after working at a predominantly working-class institution. This change has highlighted a distinct difference in communication styles related to class. For instance, I shared experiences illustrating how students at my current university tend to be more indirect and occasionally passive-aggressive. Instead of addressing issues directly and transparently, they often navigate around and above you.
As I prepare to teach a new course, Dr. K recommended that I collaborate with my university’s curriculum designer to thoroughly review the course content and mitigate any potential issues that could lead to student complaints. Following this advice, I met with the curriculum designer, who offered invaluable feedback. We discovered common ground through our shared working-class and immigrant backgrounds, which helped establish rapport and foster a potential alliance.
I am truly grateful for our weekly group sessions and was pleasantly surprised by the positive outcome of implementing Dr. K’s guidance."
What this means for your organization
When your people can name what they're navigating, performance changes. Retention changes. The exhausting invisible labor of decoding a room that wasn't designed with you in mind becomes something that can actually be addressed — rather than something people quietly burn out trying to manage alone.
The professional development gap most organizations have isn't skills. It's this: the assumption that everyone arrived at your culture with the same starting point. They didn't. And the gap between where they started and where your unwritten rules assume they began is costing you every quarter it goes unaddressed.
Solidarity — real organizational cohesion — isn't built by pretending those differences don't exist. It's built by understanding them clearly enough to actually see each other.
Wondering whether this gap is showing up in your own pipeline? Take the 2-minute quiz → to find out where.