Taking Sides Politically: Wrong For Your Company and For You as a Manager of People…
I’ll start this post by saying this: I’ve been on the corner of “no politics at work” way before 2020 happened. I’ve been on this corner so long that I questioned the wisdom of many small business owners pressuring their employees to vote GOP in the 2016 election for reduced taxation and concerns about Obamacare.
Ah, 2016. Ah, Obamacare. So long ago, such a simpler, innocent time.
When you choose political sides at work, you’re alienating and decaying trust with close to 50% of your workforce. Go back historically and look at the vote splits. We’re a 50/50 nation. To choose either side politically is a bad look for any leader. You shouldn’t do it. The great ones don’t choose, because they know it’s a suckers game from a leadership perspective.
“But, KD,” you say, “times have changed! There’s right and wrong!” I hear you, so let’s dig into the topic a bit on 3 levels:
–The post 2020 escalation of what politics at work means
–The trap of picking any political side as a company—big or small
–Managing diverse sets of employees as a manager of people
Ready? Let’s discuss.
The Post 2020 Escalation of What Politics at Work Means
It used to be that talking politics at work meant comparing, discussing, and arguing simple GOP vs Democratic platforms. You know the issues: taxes, government, social programs, etc. Those days are gone. Discussing politics at work has exploded into nuclear identity politics and more. Regardless of what you believe, endorsing a political view as a company or a leader polarizes people more than it ever has and forces people to take sides.
In addition, allowing politics to be discussed in the workplace or taking a position as a company invites future employee activism that detracts from your goal—to serve customers/clients and be great at what you do. We’ll talk more about that in the company section of this post.
Finally, if you have people in your company who aren’t for opportunity for all, a world without racism, and other issues being discussed these days, you should get rid of those people. But that’s not really the issue we’re facing inside our companies when we talk politics and social issues identified with political platforms. Both major political parties weaponize the issues, which decreases meaningful conversations inside our companies, because the weaponization makes the issues (DEI, BLM, etc.) too hot to debate.
That loss of meaningful conversation means many view company positions as one of two things: 1) a call to make a portion of the business and their time about the political/social issues, or 2) empty virtual signaling. Neither outcome is great.
The Trap of Picking a Side or Allowing Politics/Causes to Be Discussed as a Company
Do Black Lives Matter? Of course, they do. Is BLM as an organization the carrier of the message we want to get behind? Uhhhh….
No one I know (including my GOP friends) argues with the fact that we need opportunity for all, a world without hate, and reasonable approaches to all the social issues on the table. Be about that 100% as a leader.
But the world, organizational life, and humanity gets in the way the more you try and formalize and activate your support of a platform. Are you in the business of focusing all your energy on your clients, or are you ready to channel 10-20% of your time talking about social/political issues (increasingly the same thing these days) whether you want to or not?
You’ll have a cross section of employees in any company who want you to formalize this support of social/political issues. The last year has shown us that formalizing your support for any political platform or cause creates activism inside your company.
Case in point: you’re a US-based global company, and you promote Pride Month in the USA (good) complete with a logo change for the month, only to be reminded by a small section of your employee base that you didn’t change the logo for all of your other country-based social accounts. Turns out, there are parts of the world that don’t want anything to do with Pride month or what it stands for, and from a business perspective it’s problematic to push this promotion in those parts of the world. Your employees on the left are disappointed in you and active in telling you about it, and your employees on the right think the whole show is PR. It’s complicated.
As you wade into the political waters, a small percentage of your employees will become vocal activists, wanting to spend a percentage of their time at work active on politics. This has become a big enough issue that two companies with liberal, left leaning founders—Shopify and Basecamp—recently reversed course and sought to put firm limits/eliminate time spent at work on political/social issues, reminding employees that the company mission to serve clients was what work was about. While the Basecamp communication was bungled in many ways (link to outcomes here), the bigger of the two companies, Shopify, locked down the politics at work discussion hard. See the entire note from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke here.
Summary of this note to employees from Tobi Lütke:
We’re not a family, we’re a team. You came to Shopify to work with great people. Our record on liberal values and equality of opportunity. Sometimes we see opportunities to help nudge these causes forward. We do this because this directly helps our business and our merchants and not because of some moralistic overreach. Slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero sum thinking must be seen for the threat they are: they break teams. Teams survive and thrive on the actions of the collective, and the cohesiveness of the whole. Poor performance and divisiveness cannot be tolerated.
How do I insert 1,000 handclap emojis? Magnificent. Get back to work and stop wasting time on things that aren’t in support of our business goals.
Managing Diverse Sets of Employees as a Manager of People
It’s simple for best results as a manager of people. You don’t routinely share your political views or hot takes on things that could be considered to be political with direct reports.
The reasons are pretty simple. As a manager of people, you’re responsible for shepherding a group of direct reports through a given week, quarter or year.
If you’ve done a good job of hiring, you’re leading a diverse team – which broadly defined, means your people don’t all look, sound or think like you. You’re in a position of power, so the more you broadcast polarizing information like political views, the more you risk alienating good people who aren’t a carbon copy of you.
I’m not saying you can’t be you. And note I’m 100% saying you should be clear that you’re against racism an a supporter of other ideas of note. You can and should share those views, and it’s an important part of leading on issues.
I’m saying that the stronger/hotter you are on a polarizing take – whether you come from the hard left or hard right – the more you risk shutting someone down on your team from talking to you, which almost always results in lower engagement and one foot out the door.
Managers from both the hard right and the hard left struggle with this. For best results, remember that in competitive election years, the country is split pretty much evenly between two political parties.
Some of you will email me and say, “But Kris, how do I find the line?” Well, if you’re manager of people, that’s what the money is for.
Your job is to keep all the good people on the bus. The team that successfully navigates 2021 and arrives at 2022 at a different place with the highest percentage of talented employees retained and rowing in the right direction wins.
Leadership is art. I’m sorry I’m saying you shouldn’t share that op/ed you loved from The New York Times or Fox News with the team.
Listen more than you talk. Connect with everyone on your team on a 1/1 level. Show empathy to all.
