Politics, Protests, and an Opportunity for Civil Communication

Whether you like it or not - every single individual protesting the stay at home orders in OH, MI, UT, and wherever else they may be protesting, all have reasons to be protesting. 

And whether you like it or not - the people who strongly disagree with the protestors also have their own reasons. 

And each tweet, each protest sign, and each person fighting to be heard all have their reasons based on their values and culture.

While political protests are not common in the workplace, and I am not set out to resolve the world's conflict, I do find it important to look at these current events through a lens of communication. 

In this instance, I am particularly interested in understanding cultural intelligence. Because without understanding what another person believes in, why they find value in life and how they show their humanity to others, we lose the ability to really communicate. 

“Cultural differences can create substantial obstacles to effective teamwork” (Earley, Mosakowski, pg. 18, 2004). 

While we are not talking about teams in the workplace, I believe that using current events to extrapolate the power of communication is important. 

“Managers may create more problems than they resolve by intervening. The challenge in managing multicultural teams effectively is to recognize underlying cultural causes of conflict, and to intervene in ways that both get the team back on track and empower its members to deal with future challenges themselves” (Earley, Mosakowski, pg. 18, 2004). 

WOW. 

What if we traded managers with ‘politicians’, team with ‘society’  and members with ‘citizens’? 

What do people value? What do Americans value? Who is the human behind the megaphone or behind the angry tweet? 

“One critical element that cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence so share is, in psychologist Daniel Goleman’s words, ‘a propensity to suspend judgment - to think before acting” (Earley, Mosakowski, pg. 2, 2004).

Suspend the judgement. Find the commons values. We are all human here. If you find that reason, that value, you are one step closer to communicating productively. 

References - 

Earley, P. C., & Mosakowski, E. (2004). Cultural intelligence. Harvard business review, 82(10), 139-146.