Let’s Talk About: Political Discourse in the Workplace
In a recent NY Times article, the chief executive of Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) Tim Ryan said: "If we can’t come together… [I]t wouldn’t be good for business.”
In the same article, the chief executive at JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, adds: “Companies don’t want to take partisan points of view. I don’t want to tell my employees what to think.”
While instability might be bad for business, stability is not necessarily good for change. At Bonavox, we’re in the business of change management and see today’s partisanship as an important opportunity to bring up complex questions related to political discourse and company culture – especially when it comes to diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Wallace (KW): After the events at the capitol on January 6, the CEO at a company where I consult shared a statement with employees strongly speaking out against the violence and the people who perpetuated it. In the comments on this post, however, employees started calling out the political donations the company was making, as well as the donations the CEO was making personally.
In response, the leadership stopped all political donations in order to rethink and realign their priorities. I thought it was really good that staff felt comfortable calling out what they thought was wrong, and I also thought that the leadership had the right response. But the question remains, should companies be political?
I think a helpful starting point for this conversation is framing it around values. While we may not want our companies to be political, we do want them to be true to their stated values.
Daniela Peltekova (DP): I agree. If a company is giving money, then it should be in line with their values. I also think we have to find a certain neutrality in the business setting. Unification isn’t necessarily the goal, nor is it even productive in the workplace.
Ron Kraft (RK): I’m a bit concerned about any kind of thinking that says there's only one way to perceive the world or events around you. There’s an aphorism that I find incredibly wise: Individual liberty means I have the right to swing my arms and fist in any direction up until the point that it comes into contact with someone else's face.
KW: Yes, similar to the wisdom that says I can be tolerant of your beliefs until your beliefs tell you that it's okay for you to kill me.
Samantha Curley (SC): The idea that we’re not going to be political at work, though, is a bit of a fallacy. Politics is already in the workplace and I don’t think we can go back to the past (where it wasn’t). I like the values-based framework. It’s nuanced enough to adapt and adjust. Our values are also aspirational and give a company a kind of bullseye to aim for.
RK: When I started work, you would never talk about politics in the workplace. There is something about that mentality that appeals to me. I don't think political talk should be forbidden, but I also don't think that the workplace is necessarily where we should be having political discussions. Maybe we should be talking about work.
“It’s always going to hard to have these conversations after they’ve already erupted, as opposed to having had them slowly over time; building a culture in which we understand how to embed differences within our workplace and how to create transparency and consistency.”
KW: Politics is so closely related to identity here in the U.S., which gives us another framework for this conversation within diversity, inclusion, and belonging. You might not have political discussions about what’s right or who’s the best candidate, but you can find space for the conversation as a way of understanding where someone comes from, what their background is, etc.
RK: If you're truly going to give people a sense of belonging, you have to allow the minority to think differently than the majority. Otherwise, it's tyranny.
DP: Absolutely. I like an approach that isn’t about excluding any opinions but is about allowing differences of opinion to stimulate something better or more productive. It requires looking through our differences for the middle ground.
I consult with a life sciences company so let’s take vaccinations as an example. If someone is against vaccination, it likely means they are very concerned about safety. So safety can become the common ground for dialogue instead of focusing on vaccines. This requires people to be dialogue-minded and to value people above their opinions. Like Katherine mentioned, these opinions become closely tied to our identities, so this is, of course, easier said than done.
SC: I think it’s important to remember in the original example Katherine gave that it’s not only that the company was giving political money. It was that they were making statements saying one thing and giving money that said something different. So, even more than politics being in or out of the workplace, what we don’t want in the workplace is contradiction or inconsistency from leadership.
DP: Integrity is definitely a value I would look for in the CEO of my company.
“Individual liberty means I have the right to swing my arms and fist in any direction up until the point that it comes into contact with someone else’s face.”
KW: I was at a talk once where the speaker assumed the entire audience was of a certain political persuasion. If she could have just spoken from her own point of view, it would have been fine. But I felt unsafe even though I completely agreed with everything she said, because of the tone she took. What she was saying to me is ‘you're not safe here, unless you agree with me.’
When it comes to political discourse in the workplace, we want everyone to feel safe, even if they disagree with the majority opinion. But we also have to hold everyone accountable to the same standards based on the company’s values.
RK: If we're saying, ‘come as you are,’ then we have to mean that. Not just for people who are like-minded.
SC: This is a really strong case for the work that we do at Bonavox. There are the external values that drive your company. But I think more companies need to have internal values for the workplace. It's always going to be hard to have these conversations after they've already erupted, as opposed to having had them organically over time; building a culture in which we understand how to embed differences within our workplace and how to create transparency and consistency. That's actually a long and slow process that a lot of companies we're seeing now have not invested the time and resources to do well (if at all).
KW: What if a company was able to say, ‘Hey, sometimes we disagree. Let's get a few people who are really good mediators and go have a conversation to help work it out.’ An internal value could be acknowledging that sometimes we get to impasses and there are resources provided by the company to work it out.
RK: It’s also okay to put the conversation down and come back to it. If something elevates to a degree where it starts to feel uncomfortable, where you can feel your blood pressure rise, there’s the ability to say, ‘You know this is a really interesting conversation. Can we come back to it? I need a moment.’ Time is always a really good technique for reducing tension. Just be careful because a pause is really different than silence.