Socialization is powerful force to influencing behavior. That's a grown-up term to mean that adults also face "peer pressure" in the workplace. This force can be for good or evil.

Sometimes socialization does help to influence behavior toward positive outcomes.

I remember a time when I was mentally sold on wanting to bring clarity to my own communication style, especially via email, but I was hesitant to drastically change as no one else was showing any inclination to better the process. Would this be interpreted as not being a "team player"? The average PM was proud of his pulling weekends and evenings to accomplish work that could have been executed in dramatically less time.

Different communications methods would make all such grunt work obsolete, but would change existing PM roles and structure.

Enter an old colleague for whom I had a lot of respect. I had not been in touch with him for some time and when we caught up again with each other's professional life, he shared with me his updated signature line. Wow! It was a signature line that now systematically included the link to the "5 Sentences" principle. The principle states:

" five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less."

And he was already applying it and not just thinking about it. That's all I needed to push me to change my communication method. That is the power of positive socialization.

Go ye and socialize likewise!