The Art of Political Small Talk at Work
Three strategies for talking politics at work so you can do more than survive the journey to November 5
This work-culture newsletter often focuses on stuff within your job. But today, a month out from the election, let’s look at stuff coming at your job.
The election cycle and all its attendant craziness, I mean.
Like usual, I’ll be identifying a trend, a study, a story, and a switch. But this week, they’re all about the same thing: the art of political small talk.
Strategy Number One - Playing Dumb
Let’s start with the trend of TikTok influencers advising exhausted workers to play dumb. Naomi Salazar scripts it out for the rest of us: “I have no idea. That’s not my area of expertise. I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”Gabrielle Judge of the Lazy Girl Job says if it’s hard for you to play dumb “just cos-play.” Some people (like Emily the Recruiter below) advise playing dumb to cope with cubicle in-fighting.
But the practice helps with beyond-the-cubicle politics, too. Playing dumb is a transferrable skill in election season.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Strategy Two: Listening In
I’m an organizational researcher, so I like to include an academic study each week to ground the discussion. So, here’s a study about another approach to workplace politics: eavesdropping. Say you hear a pair of politickers talking Trump-n-Harris stuff a few cubicles over, you don’t have to join ‘em. You can also listen in but leave ‘em be. Will the strategy keep your blood pressure low? Not so much. A recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology notes that “ambient” politics can be bad for your health. Simply overhearing others talking about the election can give you bad feelings.
Strategy Three: Taking the Leap
Here’s this week’s story. Monday a week back, I watched Nicholas Ma’s documentary, Leap of Faith, at a Celebration Cinema in Grand Rapids NE. The camera lens in this stunning film looks directly at the impossibility of talking about politics in our moment, but it urges us to adopt a practice of taking the leap anyway.
The film centers on a dozen Grand Rapids pastors of very diverse political persuasions who attend a series of retreats (led by The Colossian Forum) to see if they can do what their church members cannot: stay together through difference.
Reader, the film wrecked me. As the characters tried to talk about sexuality, in particular, it was impossible not to feel implicated. That’s what I would say, I kept thinking, that’s what I would do.
Which then made me feel party to the breakdown the film depicts.
Even when Ma’s movie points towards healing, it doesn’t eliminate difference. Instead, as one character, Michael Gulker says, “You be who you are, I’ll be who I am, and we’ll find a way through together.”
I can’t type that line without feeling a lump in my throat. That’s what workplaces need. It’s not a strategy of avoidance or mere tolerance. It’s a turning-towards others in the name of love.
That probably sounds naive. And for some of you, exhausted by organized religion, it might even sound delusional. I can’t make those feelings go away. But I don’t see another way through the polarization that makes our work culture so dehumanizing.
A Mode Switch Worth Making
Earlier this year, you read about companies like Google banning political speech at work—in that case, conversations around Israel and Gaza. But after working through three approaches to politics at work—the trend of playing dumb, the academic study of eavesdropping, and the documentary on taking the leap—I’m thinking that politics at work doesn’t need banning. It needs bettering.
Obviously, I recommend the third strategy above. But even if you find yourself adopting one of the first two approaches, you might make political small talk better:
Playing dumb’s a good strategy when it means relinquishing the need to appear strong. Research on persuasion suggests that you cannot change people’s minds by out-arguing them. But you can help people change their mind simply by getting them to say their thoughts aloud. Sometimes “playing dumb” and asking simple questions compels your coworkers to ask, “Yeah, why do I think that?”
Eavesdropping’s good when you can convert avoidance into engagement simply by letting your coworkers know that you’re listening to them. Something magical happens when people see that you’re genuinely hearing them.
What this week’s newsletter recommends—taking the leap to love even your political opponents—will take some grace and courage. But isn’t that what we the people of every persuasion need in the next thirty days?
Maybe the most important thing to remember about the art of political small talk at work is Nicholas Ma’s synopsis of his film: Love is hard, hope is real.
From My Mixed-up Files
What I’m Reading - Just finished Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Not a gamer, people, but I loved this book for its depiction of work and friendship.
What I’m Hearing - The best podcast of my week (well, apart from the Mode/Switch Pod) is Critics at Large. Their recent discussion of representations of the finance bro was pure gold.
What I’m Skimming - Each week, I learn about British workplace culture from Bruce Daisley’s Substack Make Work Better.
What I’m Watching - Kristin DuMez’s documentary For Our Daughters, a difficult exploration of sex abuse scandals in the evangelical church. If Nicholas Ma depicts religious leaders doing the best they can, this film offers a needed counter-narrative. DuMez’s work is a historically careful, deeply humane, and utterly indispensable. Watch this film without popcorn.
LWYW
This week’s newsletter advises you to do the hard stuff when it comes to political talk in the workplace. But look: sometimes you just need to put in your headphones and listen to something while you work. Hannah, the M/S communications coordinator, has your back with this playlist: