Navigating Political Conversations at Work

Mitigating the Rift Between Employees

by

Ted Sun, Brian Wieber, Thomas Grisham

As the 2024 election race intensifies, political conversations are becoming increasingly prevalent, both in private and in the workplace. A recent Gallup poll found that 45% of the employees had a political conversation with a coworker this past month. For those working on-site, this number increases to 54%. This number is likely to increase as we are bombarded with marketing and news across various channels (e.g., social media, news, mail, and text messages).?

Are your leaders and managers prepared to navigate these challenging political conversations?

To make matters worse, employee engagement levels hit an 11-year low in the first quarter of 2024, with limited improvements in the second quarter. Employee perceptions of being cared for have also declined significantly since 2020. The combination of low employee engagement and the risks posed by political conversations presents a significant challenge for organizational leaders, who rely on collaborative teams to maintain productivity and innovation. How can leaders address the potential division and disengagement resulting from the negative fallout of political conversations? While in a perfect workplace, conversations about politics and religion are minimal and employees focus their conversations on the abundant work that needs to be done. The data suggests otherwise, which is why your managers and leaders must be ready. This article intends to provide strategic perspectives and practical actions on guiding political conversations at work. It takes a humanistic approach to the challenging reality of political conversations from three different perspectives.

1. Belief Systems: Whose logic is better?

What happens to your mind when someone challenges your deeply held beliefs? For most people, the warrior mindset is activated. This mindset is adept at finding every possible reason why your position is correct and dismissing anything outside of it as wrong. Physically, your breath becomes more abrupt, and your blood pressure increases. In this state, your ability to think strategically is diminished, closing off opportunities for learning and growth. This happens often during a political conversation when the views don’t align. The human mind is greatly incapacitated from having respectful conversations in the primal state where fear, flight, and freeze are the natural reactions. In this state, don’t we tend to believe our logic is superior to others?

Strategic perspectives

The 2024 election is proving to be as polarizing and more importantly, divisive, if not more so, than the previous one. Diverse views often surface immediately when people engage in political conversations. If those involved agree, their positions are solidified. If they don’t, the likelihood of judgment increases, creating a significant rift between employees. In most of these conversations, specific values and beliefs create a certain perception and thought process for one’s political views. What if we explored those values and beliefs instead of the political perspectives? For example, many people hold family as a core value. Approaches to how to protect one’s family, how to raise a family, and how to grow the family may vary, but they don’t often result in warrior conversations.

What if, instead of focusing on political perspectives, we explored the underlying values and beliefs? Ask questions like: What are we afraid of? and how does it impact our families?

Such questions would help people explore common fears and build a deeper understanding of each other. Imagine if people were equipped with the tools to see the common values and beliefs behind a political topic, these conversations can yield a greater understanding and trust while enabling a stronger bond between people.

Practical Actions

Understanding how the human mind functions in different mental states is only the starting point. Applying the first dimension of emotional intelligence—awareness—requires recognizing this mindset and its heightened emotions. As soon as you notice your heart racing, focus on slowing your breathing for at least a minute. Inhale slowly for at least four seconds or more, then expand the full capacity of your lungs and slowly exhale in the same duration of the inhale. Repeating this action will slow your heart rate, allowing your mind to think more strategically and exit the warrior mentality. With a slower heart rate, your strategic mind can begin to dig deeper into understanding one’s core values and beliefs, instead of fighting diverse political perspectives.

2. Establish an Intention to Learn

Conversations happen with a specific intention. Whether it’s to build trust and respect or to accomplish a task, communication carries specific intentions. What if you set the intention of challenging conversations up front? Unlike card games, showing your intentions in conversations builds trust and ensures that the conversation’s goals are met—a tactic employed by many effective leaders. Applying this principle to political conversations demonstrates honesty and fosters integrity. What if we set the goal to learn for any conversation? To eliminate the possible interpretation of a hostile change in political perspectives, stating an intention to learn from one another can lead to deeper dialogue for all people. Listening is tantamount as you illustrate the desire to learn.

Strategic perspectives

A common communication skill with abundant attention in the last few years is active listening. Most approach this skill from a behaviorist perspective where people are supposed to behave in certain ways to reflect active listening. What is often missing is the initial expectation and belief about others. To practice active listening, one must believe that the other person(s) has intrinsic value to offer. Without this healthy belief, someone with solid active listening skills will not consistently apply it.? With most communication, people with different perspectives offer an opportunity to learn. Whether that’s learning about a common topic of interest or learning about the other person’s interests, effective communication is what others learn and remember. Practicing this can be challenging, especially with political conversations that have high-emotional content. Leaders who are proactive in developing this skill see significantly fewer conflicts.

Let’s apply this by hosting political conversations for everyone to practice setting an intention of learning in these conversations with a highly emotionally intelligent and visible leader. Yes, host political conversations over lunch and learn for example! These conversations are inevitable, regardless of your personal preferences or company policies. If there are no solid examples to practice respectful conversations or safe spaces to share perspectives, the negative outcomes can be devastating to collaboration and employee engagement. As a strategic leader, creating some level of control and developing your people with better skills is much more effective and proactive than reacting to a major conflict from a political conversation. A hosted event requires a structured forum where employees can respectfully express their perspectives. It is a moderated environment that focuses on fostering understanding with specific ground rules to maximize learning. The leader hosting such an event needs to be highly emotionally intelligent as well as possess the courage to hold people accountable to ground rules (discussed in part 3 of this article). You can always start with easier topics and move into complex political topics to develop solid leaders while providing respectful conversation examples to the employees. These events would show employees how to engage constructively around hot topics, not just political conversations. Skills development of the host leaders ahead of such events may be needed depending on the skill levels of your leaders.

Practical Actions

Before starting a political conversation or any conversation with high emotional content, share your intent for the conversation. Start with phrases like – “My intention in this conversation is to learn about your perspectives on …” or “I intend to understand your rationale for …”, or “help me understand your perspective of …”.? Clearly stating what you hope to achieve in challenging conversations sets the tone for what people will look for during the conversation. It’s like placing a pair of blinders on one’s focal point. Too often, people begin by focusing on what to avoid, which leads the other side to anticipate a negative outcome such as “I don’t mean to interrupt” or “I don’t mean to be disrespectful”.? Set the focus on something positive that builds respect and trust, and the rest of the conversation will be more likely to go smoothly. In the worst case where ‘off the rail’ opinions are shared, ask questions to understand how they arrived at this opinion. Explore the core values that support this perspective. You can use those values to build common ground and avoid a difference in the approach. This can be applied in the workplace as well as in one’s personal life.

3. Management Intervention: Respect in Practice

Political conversations for leaders and managers can be quite scary. Although most have received some training in diversity and inclusion, the emotional intensity of these conversations should drive a deeper commitment to learning. What kinds of learning or support have you structured for your managers and leaders? When we speak of learning, this is not just some course with great content that you push at leaders with minimal recall. Learning must exist within a system where there is the constant practice of new skills and timely feedback that creates long term memory as well as mastery of skills. In political conversations, one of the most crucial skills for guiding discussions and their outcomes is respectful communication. Most organizations have respect as one of their foundation values listed on their website as well as throughout their facilities. A manager’s ability to facilitate respectful conversations is crucial for guiding political discussions. First, let’s debunk the common myth of the golden rule of respect – treating others the way you want to be treated yourself. Consider this question in all situations involving other people: How many people are exactly like you? Explore the definition of respect by listening to this short podcast (click here).

Strategic perspectives

A strategic leader is proactive, while most managers are reactive. For example, consider the countless programs on problem-solving skills compared with the limited programs on problem prevention. Problem-solving is reactive, stressful, and very costly.? Problem prevention is much more strategic and proactive. Proactively managing political conversations requires leaders to consistently uphold the organization’s values, especially respect. A clear and effective definition of respect is the essential starting point. A consistent accountability structure for respect is often missing. What happens after organizational values are shared? What metrics are in place to determine if values like respect are being practiced? Our work with leaders across local and global organizations shows that metrics focused on practicing core values foster collaborative and trusting cultures. For political conversations, consider this question to guide a conversation - How do your actions reflect respect for another’s views? This requires the practice of Socratic methods (the art of asking the right questions). Open-ended questions seek to understand others and stimulate deeper thought. Both are highly needed in political conversations.

When we do workshops with executives, we often play the game of open-ended questions. It always amazes many that learning to ask open-ended questions is a lot harder than it sounds. In some organizations, we’ve helped them establish a leadership metric tracking the number of open-ended questions asked each day. This becomes a fun competition for managers to develop their skills while keeping track of open-ended vs closed-ended questions they pose to their team members. Imagine if your managers possess this skill and can lead a conversation in a collaborative direction regardless of the emotional content. What emotions would political conversations among team members create for your managers then?

Another strategic and proactive intervention is to maximize a focus on collaboration and mutual respect with team-building activities. These activities are designed with disagreement on approaches so employees learn how to navigate complex emotions and learn from each other. The more practice employees have, the better skills they will have in political conversations.

Practical Actions

Effectively guiding respectful political conversations requires a set of ground rules. Below are some considerations:

• Avoid specific words that elicit the warrior mind

-?The word “you” in a sentence tends to carry blame. The only time when the word “you” is used can only be in an open-ended question.

-?The word “why” tends to place the other person on the defense. Instead, use more open-ended words like what and how.

-?The word 'but' tends to negate the preceding phrase. Many people use it with phrases like “I can see your point, but…”.? The word tends to create a simple duality of perspectives where one is right and the other is wrong. Instead, simply offer another perspective. Reality encompasses multiple perspectives; it's not about right or wrong.

-?Avoid negative prepositional phrases such as? “I don’t mean to interrupt” or “I don’t mean to be rude”. These phrases focus the listener on the last emotionally charged word. Instead, state the positive intention first.

• Set time limits for each perspective with no interruptions. This tactic ensures that people don’t just show up and vomit their thoughts without deeper consideration. A time limit for one’s perspective guides people to be more strategic and concise in how they share their perspective.
• No personal attacks are allowed at any time. Avoiding the “you” word is helpful in this ground rule.
• Always seek understanding—only open-ended questions are allowed as follow-up feedback for each perspective.
• Immediately address unacceptable behavior. This calls for a level of courage as well as emotional intelligence to inspire people to be their best. Calling out an unacceptable behavior should be done using open-ended questions. Reflecting respect when calling out unacceptable behavior can be challenging.

While we can have these ground rules in place to help facilitate respectful political conversations in the workplace, you can always expect some people who will not follow them which will lead to conflict. Preparing for potential conflicts from these conversations requires organizations to establish a process for handling them before they escalate into major issues. Below is a high-level overview of one that’s proven to work:

1. Have your managers review the tools in this article and complete our course on Navigating political conversations in the workplace.
2. Address it immediately with individual dialogue with those involved. This includes those having the conversation as well as others who heard the conversation. Get an understanding of individual perspectives while challenging each person to reflect respect in their thought process
3. Create a safe space for group dialogue by moderating a conversation between those involved, whether directly or indirectly
4. Bond employees with deeper common values such as family, trust, and respect. Help people understand that their positions stem from different approaches to shared values, such as protecting our families.
5. Recognize positive behavior the minute it occurs to show appreciation for people who take the higher road. This doesn’t have to happen when a conflict occurs, but also weekly to highlight what’s important to the organization. Effective metrics need to be in place for this to occur.
6. Provide continuous support to those involved. Especially after what happened during the last presidential election, these political conversations will not likely end after the election. These issues may continue into the following year. Be prepared to address it proactively, viewing it as an opportunity to better understand your employees' values and beliefs.

Truth, fairness, inclusion, growth, respect, and compassion for others are the bedrock of core values. Living by these core values can help us move away from the simplicity of the I win, you lose mentality. A healthy conversation on any topic is never about winning or losing. It should be about learning where relationships of deeper understanding grow. As leaders of organizations, you will grow significantly when you learn to move toward disputes not away, and see them as opportunities to engage with the raw emotions of their colleagues. ?It is messy, difficult, and educational. Will you take on this challenge and be the leader your team needs you to be?

To learn more about our navigating political conversations in the workplace workshop (1/2 day) and coaching support for leaders, Email us @ [email protected]