The Power of Political Discussion in The Workplace

This Spring, the management software company Basecamp made headlines after Jason Fried, their CEO, banned “societal and political discussions” from internal work communications.

“Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant,” wrote Fried in a blog post. “You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places.”

After the ban was announced, roughly a third of Basecamp’s 60 employees quit and took buyouts.

Similarly, at the Cryptocurrency company Coinbase last fall, when CEO Brian Armstrong announced that employees should not take political stances at work, roughly 60 employees walked out.

Alongside the growing demand for purpose, meaning, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, these events raise some fundamental questions.

Is it possible to be an inclusive leader without listening to diverse perspectives and navigating hard conversations at work?

Can organizations truly promote societal good without being willing to talk about the issues facing society?

Corporate Social Responsibility

Recently, we’ve seen an uptick in demands from consumers and stakeholders that companies not only be transparent about their values, but also take responsibility for how those values inform the allocation of their time, money, and attention.

Over the past year:

• The fast-food chain Chick-fil-A was prompted to change its policies after being called out for contributing to anti-LGBTQ charities
• The craft chain Hobby Lobby was sued for refusing, on religious grounds, to allow employees to receive birth control through their corporate health insurance plan
• Film companies stopped filming in states with severe abortion restrictions
• And college sports leagues stopped playing in states with “bathroom bills” that exclude transgender athletes and fans.

These organizations navigated the divisive political landscape, with often dire consequences. But what happens to businesses that won’t?

Adam Fetcher ?(Former Global Communication Director at Patagonia and the former Head of Brand Advocacy at Lyft)?recently put it ?like this:

“In an era where the vast majority of consumers are demanding that companies step up and address critical public issues — and where 9 out of 10 Americans say they’d rather work for a company that shares their values than one that pays better — proactively giving the world a resounding “Nah” is a fatal brand mistake.”

The belief that corporations have a responsibility to society isn’t new. Business publications began discussing the role of executives and organizations in promoting social good as early as the 1930s, and in 1971, the concept of a ‘social contract’ between businesses and society was introduced by the Committee for Economic Development.

By the 90s, the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was part of the organizational lexicon; in 1991, University of Pittsburgh professor Donna J. Wood published?Corporate Social Performance Revisited,?in which she expanded upon early CSR models, providing a framework for measuring whether or not CSR programs were actually having an impact.

As the demand that companies integrate social, environmental, and economic concerns into their culture and decision-making grew, more and more organizations adopted especially responsible practices.

Take Starbucks. In 2000, Fair Trade certification appeared in the coffee behemoth’s brand marketing and identity, guaranteeing the company paid coffee producers an above-world-market price for their products.

Environmental degradation, systemic inequity, education, hunger, poverty, homelessness, human rights — these issues have been at the core of many CSR initiatives. These social issues prompt organizations to engage employees and consumers in everything from donation drives to park clean-ups to entire weeks of giving.

Are these issues political?

They sure are.

As long as policy dictates the allocation of money and power — therefore informing how societies and individuals relate and operate — it’s impossible for these issues to exist separate from political charge.

Policy and political buy-in are at the heart of a society’s ability to make large-scale change.

Being What We Value, Valuing Who We Are

In a company that bans political discussions, do people just leave a part of themselves at the door?

The average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime. Our values just can’t be extracted from us the moment we step into the office (or the Zoom room), no matter how hard we try.

Biases come to work with us every day and our identities remain a part of us even if someone deems them socially or politically charged.

At the same time Fried banned societal and political discussions, he also announced the eradication of “paternalistic benefits,” including a fitness benefit, wellness allowance, farmer’s market share, and continuing education allowances. While instituting these benefits “felt good at the time,” executives “had a change of heart,” Fried wrote, arguing that the company should not influence anyone’s activities outside of work.

“Employees are free to take up whatever cause they want, support whatever movements they’d like and speak out on whatever horrible injustices are being perpetrated on this group or that (and, unfortunately, there are far too many to choose from). But that’s their business, not ours,” proclaimed Fried. “We’re in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge. We’re responsible for ourselves. That’s more than enough for us.”

On one hand, Fried is advocating for freedom — the freedom of employees to choose the causes and extracurriculars that matter to them. The company will pay employees the cash value of their old benefits in 2021 and then cancel them in 2022. The loss may be offset by Basecamp’s new ten percent profit sharing plan — extra money in people’s pockets to spend in the ways that matter to them.

In Teal terms (the organizational theory that advocates for enabling workers to self-manage, adapt, connect to purpose, and show up as full humans in the workplace) Basecamp’s “you do you” shift could be seen as a step toward the beneficial principle of?wholism.

One of the core Teal principles, wholism advocates for a workplace where employees can be all of who they are, instead of bifurcating their “work self” from their “real self.”

But wait. If there’s a sure-fire way to undermine wholism, it’s a ban on political and social discussions. This choice erases the identities of employees as?people, reducing them to robotic?workers?whose sole purpose is to make software.

Fried’s intention is confusing. It’s like he’s saying, “You’re free to be who you are… except here.”

What’s more, the ban fosters an environment where people who are being discriminated against are likely to feel prohibited from speaking up.

What happens to people for whom “political and social issues” represent a threat to their safety, productivity, or ability to advance?

Is pointing to systemic inequities in compensation too “political”?

What about asking leaders to explain why the top ranks of the organization are so homogenous?

This might be what prompted so many of the employees at Basecamp, including their head of design, head of marketing, and head of customer support, to leave.

Not only does divorcing ourselves from our values and our identities cause pain, but it is in direct contrast to everything we know about creating a meaningful and purposeful work culture.

Emotional Intelligence

What is the role of emotional intelligence (EI) here?

Is the problem, as Fried suggests, that political and social conversations are too “distracting”?

Or is the problem that most of us don’t have productive ways of engaging with them, perhaps due to a deficit of skills and information?

EI offers important tools for engaging critically, honestly, and productively with things that feel emotional, meaningful, hard, and contentious.

Self-Awareness, Emotional Balance, Empathy, Organizational Awareness, Influence — these are just some of the EI competencies that make “bridging the divide” feel more approachable and worthwhile. In fact, just about every competency in Daniel Goleman’s framework of EI relates, in one way or another, to our ability to have hard conversations and grapple with complex, unsettling, and even paradoxical realities.

When it comes to values, politics, social justice, societal change, and the role of all of this in the future of the workplace, we begin to notice just how critical emotional intelligence is.

EI embraces our humanity. On the most basic level, it asks us to attune: acknowledge what we feel, how we behave, and how we impact others. But it also helps us understand our surroundings, make sense of our values, and strategize ways to be of service.

Beyond helping us navigate hard conversations and feelings, perhaps more relevant is that EI can make us better consumers of media and information.

One study ?found that people with high levels of emotional intelligence were less likely to be susceptible to false information.

“Fake news on social media is now a matter of considerable public and governmental concern,” says Dr. Tony Anderson, Senior Teaching Fellow in Psychology at Strathclyde and partner in the research. “People can be trained to enhance their own EQ levels. This should help them to discern with a greater degree of accuracy which news is reliable and which is misleading.”

What does the future look like if people with power aren’t willing to engage critically with what’s happening in the world? If they aren’t able to sit with big emotions, diverse viewpoints?

As my esteemed colleague, Dot Proux, puts it: “If you are going to be an inclusive leader, you can’t say no to politics…You can only role model how to talk about them.”

Leaders are also in a position to role model how they source, consume and report on things that matter.

What’s possible when?leaders can see the big picture, acknowledging that Black Lives Matter isn’t a “distraction” from the core mission of an organization, but an inevitable part of coming to terms with the reality of systemic racism?

What’s possible when we cultivate empathy and get more adept at understanding one another’s experiences and points of view?

What’s possible when we cultivate a healthy relationship with anger, learning to acknowledge it, process it, and use it for something constructive?

Our Age of Corporate Social Justice

We have already entered what some have called?The Age of Corporate Social Justice ?— the evolution of CSR as we’ve known it. Organizations are being called not only to define their vision for a just society but to engage in learning and self-examination, so they can best leverage their influence and power.

As challenging as it may be to engage with social issues in the workplace, it’s imperative. As history will prove, ignoring the impact of social issues comes at a cost.

The cost here?

An organization that bans political discussions hinders our collective evolution.

Because inaction is a form of action.

And silence is a way of maintaining the status quo.

It seems like Basecamp wishes that business would just stay a profit machine. But I trust people will continue to speak out, demanding that organizations cultivate the emotional intelligence to be more, do more, respect values and identities, and have the conversations that matter.

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For more on the emotion of anger, listen to Season 1: Episode 8 of First Person Plural,?Constructive Anger ?where Lama Rod Owens (Author and Activist), Shayna Renee Hammond and Lauryn Henley (Racial Justice Coaches and Advocates), and Asli Ali (Student and Poet) each share how anger fuels them to take action on issues that matter.

For more on the politics of climate change, listen to Season 1: Episode 6 of First Person Plural,?The Other EI: Ecological Intelligence ?featuring supply chain expert Scott Kling, regenerative farmer Jake Takiff and indigenous ecophysiologist, Danielle Ignace.

To continue the conversation around Emotional Intelligence, follow me here or?sign up for my newsletter .