Steve  0:08  
The HR Happy Hour Network is proudly sponsored by Workhuman. The role of HR is changing fast—and the leaders who move beyond administration into true business leadership will have the edge. Workhuman Live is where that shift becomes real. Four transformative days in Orlando built around the challenges HR leaders are facing now. With 65-plus standout speakers, you’ll get practical, research-backed insights you can use immediately, honest conversations with leaders under the same pressure, and a human-first experience designed to energize – not exhaust.  It’s why 93% of past attendees left inspired—and why you need to be there this April 27-30. Register now at WorkhumanLive.com and use code HRHAPPYHOUR before March 31st to save 20%. That’s HRHAPPYHOUR, all one word. 

Steve  0:58  
Welcome back to the AtWwork in America show. My name is Steve Boese. Man, I am super thrilled today to talk about this topic, which is one we haven't hit on the show in maybe forever, and it's probably more timely than ever. We're going to be talking about navigating the workplace in a time of I mean, political, I don't wanna say crisis, certainly political tension with a lot of strong opinions being held by almost everybody these days. Our guest to help us talk about some of these topics, and hopefully help you figure out the best way to navigate them in your workplace, is Kevin Rockmann. Kevin is the Assistant Dean for Research. He's a professor of management and the CGI corporate partner Faculty Fellow at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University. Kevin, welcome or professor, I'll call you. Hey. How are you great to see you?

Kevin Rockmann  1:54  
Kevin, of course, is just fine. It's great to meet you, Steve. It's a pleasure to be here.

Steve  1:58  
Yeah, thanks for being here, man. First of all, I feel like everything is political, you know, these days, and I'm not a super political person, but I feel like, over time, I've it's hard not to be. And certainly these political opinions, feelings, passions, even concerns, are in our workplaces. So we want to talk about that today and just what's happening in workplaces around these conversations. And let's start with that. I mean, I think the default for most managers who are probably just, I just want to get my stuff done, get the keep the team focused, is let's not bring that stuff into our workplace at all. Right, let's just ban it. If you if we can focus on the job at hand, you know, ask people hey, you know, how was your weekend, whatever. But then get to work. Is, is that fair to say that most workplaces, most managers, especially, just want to avoid this stuff at work. Yes.

Kevin Rockmann  3:02  
Mainly because it's hard to know what to do with it. It's hard to know managers have a have a hard enough job anyway, trying to motivate different people, incentivize people that are that are motivated by different types of rewards. They're dealing with teams, they're dealing with task forces, they're dealing with budgets. They're dealing with bosses. They're dealing with turnover and retention and return to work and remote work and hybrid and all of these needs amongst the workforce, right? The last thing you probably want to deal with, you know, is how to deal with political quagmires. You know that that are going to be going on in the in the lunchroom, or in the teams chats, or in the in the Zoom conferences,

Steve  3:41  
yeah, I got to believe that we don't, we don't want to talk about these things. Many times at work, we feel like, you know, maybe we're being dragged into them, but, but dealing with conflict, right? And work and you know, this is we have a lot of HR people listening to this, who a big part of their jobs day to day is sort of helping managers and helping employees navigate through interpersonal and workplace conflicts and strife. And just to think like, oh, you know, Mary Jo's got a certain sign up in her cubicle, you know, for a political, you know, particular candidate or particular issue or something, and so, you know, another person is going to be angry about that, just to say, ah, we cannot have that here. And are you? Do you find, as you work on this issue and talk to employers or research this, that that is what many employers just try to do, just try to cut this out completely, or as best they can,

Kevin Rockmann  4:37  
they they try. And many do try, but the problem comes when we think about the word political. Like, okay, so you might say politics right? And politics makes you think about government and political parties and these sorts of things. But one of the first things you said in your intro, which I think is is apropos, is a lot of things are political, yeah, a lot of issues. People have very strong opinions about and when we think about what people hear from social media, what they talk about with their friends and their networks, a lot of issues become politicized. And then when you think about what's politicized, and how do we deal with issues that are politicized, it's way more complicated than just having Mary take down that poster. Yeah, and a great example is AI, yeah, right? AI is a technology, right? It's a tool. And many organizations are, are struggling with, with how to integrate that and teach that and so forth. But AI is also a politicized issue, right? AI is now, you know, becoming, you know, one of these issues where people have very strong feelings about it, like, how do you even navigate conflict around that issue, you know, let alone all the other issues that that veer closer to more traditional politics?

Steve  5:50  
Yeah, I totally agree with you, Kevin, that may just this week, really, as we record this, it seems like to me, and I follow the AI stuff pretty closely, as imagine you do as well, and many listeners too. Like, all of a sudden, if you're, if you're using one tool versus another, you're sending out some sort of a signal or not, and it's, yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to avoid it. And the other thing, I guess, it's just part of the, you know, the cultural discourse in the last few years, and maybe longer than that. And I don't want to have like that recency bias here, but that, that, you know, it's we're not talking about, you know, I don't know zoning codes, or, you know, whether or not we're going to have funding for the local park, or, you know, things like that, which would have been very, especially at the local level, very those political, quote, unquote kinds of discussions. These are often very significant, almost fundamental discussions about identity and belief and core values and ethics, right? It's to the point where people are really the amount of vitriol is remarkable. Is it more now than in the past? Or we just like to think that, because we're living in it, I wonder.

Kevin Rockmann  7:03  
I don't think there's, I don't think there's one metric that shows us that it's more, you know, obviously, you know, when we look at social media and we look at how we communicate, we even look at how we work, you know, it draws us more towards conversations and people that are similar to us, rather than different than us, right? That's gonna, that's gonna make it feel like more, even if it's not actually more, yeah, you know, I study relationships. I mean, this is what I'm passionate about, and, and I think a lot about relationships. I teach a lot around navigating relationships, not only for managers, but for individuals that have to solve conflict, that have to negotiate with with one another. And, you know, one of the things you said about identity, I think is really telling here. And when we talk about what gets in the way of relationships, what gets in the way of solving conflict and navigating these difficult situations, it's that experience of threat, like when you feel threatened, that's when it's going to be difficult for you to have a conversation with that person, because when we feel threat, we put up walls, or we run away, or we fight right. Like these are sort of our, our, you know, our normal responses to when we feel threatened. And we've heard this ever since we were kids, right, right, you fight or you fly right. And when we think about this in the workplace, when organizations and managers don't help people not only deal with their own threat, but don't put other people into threatening responses, that's when it's a bit of the Wild Wild West, right? Because you never know what you might say, what you might post, what issue might be triggering, you know, for somebody else, and again, that that could obviously be traditional political issues, and it could be, you know, some of these other issues where people you know are threatened because it might threaten their job.

Steve  8:54  
Yeah, for sure. And I think that that that uncertainty around if organizations don't try to approach these challenges intentionally, I think it makes it worse, probably right, because either it's the Wild Wild West, like you said, or people are afraid they don't know what they can say, what they can't say, or they'll see someone else engaging in a certain behavior pattern, activity or certain conversation, and feel like, well, if they can do this, why? Why am I not able to do it? I feel like it's a morass of just confusion you could get into. And what would be some? What are some of the problems like, if it's left unchecked and without any like, I guess what I'm saying is this, problems don't typically get better if we ignore them. And so in just in life, I guess, if managers and organizations just don't even really address this, what's, what's your sense of what sort of ends up developing.

Kevin Rockmann  9:57  
You know, I, I was thinking about this. And. Really like the word you used, you know, intentionality. When we don't pay attention to this, we get things like hurt feelings, we get impaired relationships, we get worse communication. And I'll give you, you know, give you an example. You know, there's a reason people joke about the Thanksgiving table, and the joke around the Thanksgiving table is that you get all these people together that don't have dinner very frequently from different parts of the family, maybe live in different regions of the country, or maybe work in different industries, or maybe have different levels of education or whatever. Right? We have differences, and one, once a year, or maybe twice a year, we get these people around the table, and what happens? Chaos, right? Chaos happens because we haven't managed that situation. We haven't talked about those underlying issues. In fact, in most cases, we know that they exist, but we've avoided it. You know, to your point, this is the organization or the family not paying attention or not being intentional about navigating, you know, those different opinions and beliefs. And so we end up with, you know, with with some uncomfortable situations and and how do families get through it? Well, they a couple of different ways. You know, maybe it's, you know, several bottles of wine or or something else around the table.

Steve  11:24  
But what they sit down, they take uncle Jerry before dinner, and they say, Hey, we're not talking about politics or religion or the Denver Broncos, right?

Kevin Rockmann  11:35  
Or, even better, they take uncle Jerry and they say, Hey, Uncle Jerry, can you come help fry the turkey outside, right? So now we're not sitting down at the table with nothing else to do trying to discuss politics or discuss the news or anything like that. We actually have something in common. We're trying to figure out how to fry this turkey without, you know, burning down the house. Yeah.

Steve  12:00  
And I think the analogy is a really good one, Kevin, because at the organization now, right? You know, at the Thanksgiving dinner, getting that Turkey cooked properly and getting the meal on the table is a shared endeavor, shared goals, right? We can all work together towards it. Have a great outcome. That's what we do at work, right? We're working together, collaborating on projects, right? Have a shared outcome. We're hopefully all rowing in the same direction, Cetera, Cetera, whatever terrible analogy you want to use, but we're there for a reason, right? And it's not to argue about politics, certainly, right? That's not a reason we've gone to work, but I think that's a really good analogy about how you've got to navigate through it regardless. And because I think when people feel like they I mean, I guess this gets to some bigger kinds of conversations around and I'm not sure how I feel about this personally, but the term anyway, but this idea we've heard for a while certainly about bring yourself your whole self to work right, that I need that, that that safety, that psychological safety, that emotional safety, whatever it is, and I believe in safety. Believe in safety. Big believer in it. I've not always believed it, personally, in my own life, at organizations I've worked in that I want my whole self at work. I like to have a little bit of a separation, you know, between my life and my work, right? But I think this is part of it, right? It may be. Again, we talked about identity a moment ago. For many people, these conversations, these issues, what's going on, and certainly in this country right now, it's fundamental to their navigating their their lives right now, it's they think about it all the time or often, and it's and I guess the danger is feeling like you're going to be suppressed. You can't be your true self at work. And what's the fall off of that? Or is there one? I think there could be. 

Kevin Rockmann  13:49  
I think there's. There's a danger in that. What we've actually done some research on loneliness and isolation, and that's what happens, right? When somebody doesn't feel safe, when they don't feel accepted or welcome, or, let's say other people are saying things openly that offend them in some way, or that negate who they are and their value system. They're going to retreat. Most of the time, they're going to retreat, and when they retreat, it's because they don't feel comfortable speaking up. They don't feel comfortable going to that person. They don't feel comfortable going to their boss. They don't feel comfortable going to HR. They don't really have an outlet in order to speak openly about what that interaction was, what that conversation was, what the issue was, that that person brought up, that whether it was intentional or not, in many cases, these are microaggressions, right? These are unintentional behaviors that end up, you know, offending or hurting or harming somebody that they're going to retreat, and when they retreat, it means we're not getting their ideas all the time. We're not getting, in many cases, their best effort or their motivation. We're not getting. Um, them being honest with with others, about not just about those issues, but about the product, right, and the things that we're trying to build. So that's a huge problem. And from a managerial perspective, or an HR perspective, one of the traps we fall into is we talk to the people that we know, we talk to the people we're friends with, and we ask them, Hey, how are things going? Well? They're already in our group, right? They're already in our click. And they say, oh, things are going great. So we assume that everybody is doing well, because the people that we talk to are doing well. And so this is one of the things that HR professionals, managers can do, is don't just pay attention to the people who are talking to you or the people that you are comfortable talking with. The real work of the manager is to talk to the people who aren't talking to you and and that's how you even learn about which of these issues you know might be minds you know, or traps you know that other people are falling into without even know that they're they're falling into them.

Steve  16:00  
Yeah, I think that's great advice, Kevin, and it's right. We can get so caught up in just, you know, that's the whole, you know, we're talking about politics a little bit here, political discourse anyway, like the whole, I don't know how this person won the election, right? Nobody I know voted for him, right? That trap, right? That we've heard over the years, the we've talked a little bit about, or guess a lot about, sort of some of the downsides of this and the traps that organizations get into and managers get into. Let's spin it a little bit more sort of positively in terms of what would be some ways, if you're a manager, if you're an organization, maybe you're a small business owner, or whatever it is, someone with some level of authority or influence, say in an organization, who wants to foster, you know, respectful workplace, one where people can feel free have that safe, that level of safety, but also realize that, hey, there are some things people are just not going to agree on. What are some proactive steps or guidelines for those folks that they could either explicitly or just implicitly, kind of used to maneuver through these issues and have a better outcome. 

Kevin Rockmann  17:06  
So two things, the first is creating experiences around the work and around the mission of the company or the organization or the nonprofit, you know, whatever sort of situation you're in that really involve everybody, that everybody really has an equal footing, and that we're learning together. We're ideating together, we're brainstorming together, and we're really creating something together, where something is at stake. So and I say that last part about being at stake, because a lot of companies think, well, I'll just take everybody to an escape room, or maybe we'll do a ropes course, or, you know, we'll do some other team building and and the problem is those things, those things can be fun, but they tend to be much more fun for the people who are already friends, right? The people who already have relationships, and it tends to be exclusionary for the people who are, who are those isolates who feel marginalized, and so that's why we want people on an equal footing. And that can be a hackathon, right? That can be like an intense period of work where, hey, let's get together. We're going to do a bunch of sessions. We're going to be in different groups. It's all going to be assigned. So you're working with different people. Everybody's going to get a chance to work with each other, and again, that's part of the equal footing. The second thing is, when we do that, the manager needs to have a balcony view. And by balcony view, meaning not looking just at the products that are being created, but looking at how people are relating to one another, right? Who is shutting down? Who? Or who is asking questions of whom, who's starting conversations ending conversations, who's taking care of each other versus taking credit from others. It's the balcony view that really separates the good managers from the, I would say, less effective managers in this regard, because that's again, where you're going to see, oh, I can see what's happening here. This person has good ideas, but they're not really being included. Or this person really wants to talk about something that's important to them, which could be kind of an important issue or a politicized issue, and nobody else is really validating them, and then you can come up with one on one interventions to coach and help those folks through that.

Steve  19:28  
Yeah, thanks Kevin for those suggestions. I think they're great, and I think they could go a long way to solving lots of potential kinds of conflicts or tensions in the workplace, not just these that are around political issues or political differences. I do think that you know, organizations, every organization, probably of a certain size, certainly has that kind of standard, you know, set of default rules, if not explicit language, right, in things like their handbook about respecting others. And non harassment and things like that. Is, I wonder if you think, or if you're seeing organizations explicitly call this stuff out, in fact, those kinds of, you know, manuals, or you know, documented codes of conduct. 

Kevin Rockmann  20:18  
So the problem is, we see it a lot in employee codes of conduct. We see it a lot in mission statements. We see it a lot on websites, value statements, these sorts of things, but we don't see it in the performance evaluation process. We don't see it in rewards we don't see it in recognition systems. We don't see it in promotion systems. So all of these other systems that really drive, you know, those incentives and rewards for individuals don't necessarily reflect this, right? So it's this classic, you know, you reward a while hoping for B, yeah, like, we reward individual performance and individual metrics. We hope people are respectful, we hope that they take care of others. We hope that they, you know, that they are, you know, sensitive and take care of, you know, and bring out those isolates, yeah? But we don't really reward that, yeah?

Steve  21:13  
And that's a great example, Kevin, because what people are not dumb, right? People in the organization, they figured that out fairly quickly, right? That, you know, that's, you know, the the example we've had forever in the workplace around performance is, oh, the salesperson who hits all their numbers but is an absolute jerk to, you know, everybody in the office and is mean to the client, or whatever the case may be, right? But they somehow are top producing sales person, so therefore we ignore right, how they're carrying on, right? And it's a problem we talked about forever.

Kevin Rockmann  21:46  
But we have a great system. We have a great program here at Mason, and it's called Mason chooses kindness. It's actually a grassroots program started by employees, staff and faculty, to really bring this idea of kindness into the workforce. And they run different sessions on kindness. They they have stories about kindness. They have kindness stickers all over campus. You can send kindness grams and nominate folks for their acts of kindness. It's really, it's really represents what what we what we want to be as an institution. But when you look at how much money is devoted to this, when you look at job descriptions, when you look at, you know, promotion and tenure, when you look at these, you know, all of the other systems I have yet to see, one that says, you know, you should be involved in. Mason chooses kindness, right? So we're hoping that people do it. We would love for people to do it. But what happens is it draws in the people who are already doing those things, which is great. I mean, it's not bad work to do. And unfortunately, this is where the HR professionals sometimes, you know, have to navigate this right, because they have these ideas around how to support the workforce, and you can put into into place these programs and systems, but if it's not carried into the job descriptions, if it's not carried into The Performance Evaluation Form, into the supervisor evaluation form, and so forth. How much is it really changing? That's where the problem is.

Steve  23:28  
Yeah, that's a super question Kevin is to sort of ponder a little bit, and we do a lot of work. In fact, the sponsor of this podcast is a company that does recognition technology, and they're a great company, and they they've done wonderful things, had great, great results with many of the customers that they work with. And I think they'll tell us, and they have told me, that the most success they see with efforts like that is when it's really deeply woven into the fabric of that, that manager and employee experience, and the interactions, the one on one meetings that managers have with their teams, their team members to talk about, to look back through, you know, these recognition moments and these thank yous and the various ways they manifest in the organization to really make more of a fabric of the conversation. I think what you're saying, though, or at least you're you're sort of alluding to in an or a broader kind of thing, I think, is in an organization where, like at Mason, it's the Mason chooses kindness, or whatever it is in your organization that in cultures like that and organizations like that, you've got a much better chance to work through these tense political times, if a fair way to say it right, If you've kind of invested in that kind of key almost, I guess, relationship building. As you said, you study relationships, and I think you're ahead of the game if you've invested in those, right? And, but it's not too late, right? Like, right because, because the reality is, we're going to be dealing with these tough conversations. Patients for quite a while, maybe forever. Maybe that's just how it's going to be forever here in workplaces. And so the time is now to really start thinking about them.

Kevin Rockmann  25:07  
Yeah, I was, I was talking with, actually, some HR professionals not long ago, and teaching a session on relationships and relationship management and how to lead from a more relational point of view, you know, rather than a more individual point of view. You know, we're sort of taught a job as a manager is to is to help individuals, right individuals be more motivated and help them up and, and, but a relational view really takes a more network or system approach, and, and we talked, we were talking about systems of what we call relational indifference. Where you have it's not that the company hates relationships. They like relationships. They just don't do a lot in the structures and systems to support that. And this HR professional who, who was at a government agency, said, no, no, we we do a great job. We have this program where folks can nominate others, and if they nominate somebody for like, a kindness, I don't remember what it was. It was, it was like a kindness Act, or, I think it was a supportive act or a Citizenship Act, but it was about helping somebody else. They not only get a gift card, something, some nominal amount, but they also get recognized, you know, in the monthly newsletter. And I'm like, this is this is great, you know, can you, can you tell me more, like, how many were recognized last month. Oh, well, well, nobody was recognized last month. Well, what about the month before? Well, well, nobody's really done it for like, four months. It's like, like this. This is the exact problem, right? Somebody had a great idea to put that program into place, but unless you tell everybody up and down the chain, this is your job now to make sure that people are getting rewarded and recognized, then it just becomes another program that that falls to the wayside.

Steve  26:47  
Yeah, super point. Kevin, I think that's really funny, that one's been recognized over the last two months. But, but very indicative of right, the challenges that we have creating these environments where people are showing up, obviously, to do their work, you know, take care of their selves, take care of their lives, take care of their families. But I do, I firmly believe people want and deserve, probably more than that, right from from their work, we spend so much time, invest so much of our energy and our effort and ourselves right into into work. It should. It should. It should be a place where we can, we can feel safe, we can, we can thrive and support each other, right? And I guess that's really the challenge, right? Is creating environments where, yeah, we know things are tough, we know people are going to disagree about this kind of stuff, and how do we, how do we just help through it, get, help them, get through it in in the most positive way possible. And I think it's great that you're talking about these issues, yeah, and I think that the positive end of this is we all know folks that we we know have different views from us, whether that's on a political issue or a politicized issue or some other issue.

Kevin Rockmann  27:48  
And my guess is you probably know somebody that not only has those different views, but that you love or cherish deeply. And if you think about why, it's probably because you shared something else. Either you're a family member with them, you went to school with them. You served in the military with them. You've built a product with them, like, yeah, and once you go through that, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what those differences are, because you've learned to respect them. You've probably also learned to avoid certain topics, which is fine. I mean, that's actually indicative of of a healthy relationship where you know what you can talk about and what you can't, but in many ways, organizations are not set up to have those types of experiences. And you know, to the degree that we can, we can overcome, whether it's our physical differences, you know, not being in the same location, you know, as one another, or other challenges simply the amount of work we get overwhelmed. We don't have time to sort of learn about each other, yeah, but anything we can do to, you know, learn about each other and respect others for those differences, and focus on what we're building together, a lot of these problems are solved.

Steve  29:19  
Kevin, I like that. And I think that's a great way to kind of wrap, wrap the talk on this. There's, you know, you could go for for days, probably on topics like this. And I'm happy we were able to spend a little bit of time talking about it, and hopefully offering folks some some ideas, some positive ways to approach it, to not be, you know, totally tied up in, oh, don't talk about this, or, you know, don't wear that T shirt. No, the t shirt thing, maybe I'd agree with maybe don't wear the t shirt, but that's for maybe another set of reasons. But, and Kevin, I love the conversation, and I've hopefully folks listening have to, are there any, like, just cool, like, anything we want to tell? People about point to share with them, like, either about this topic or other work you're doing at George Mason and elsewhere?

Kevin Rockmann  30:08  
Yeah, I guess on this topic, I think most people are afraid of asking deep questions to others. You know, we're afraid of what those responses might be maybe we don't know how to ask deeper questions, and there's really some great research and great resources that show the benefits of asking deeper questions, because I think it does lead, in many ways, to more commonalities than these differences. Because I think a lot of the problems we have with with with political discord, is because we don't really know each other. And when we don't really know each other, we take any little bit of information and then we end up making assumptions about who those people are, you know, based on that little, that little bit of information, rather than actually doing the work. And one of the things I talked to managers constantly about is, you know, where are you spending your attention? Like do you actually spend your attention talking to your people about how they are getting to know each other, how they are becoming intentional about the relationships in the workplace, interesting that they are being not only watched, but you were there to coach them through their conflicts and their negotiations. Because what we want is if things are right, but more importantly, if things go wrong in the organization, anybody can go to, you know, anybody has a network that they can go to for ideas, for for help, and obviously that's that's going to help the individuals, that's going to help the groups. To help the groups, the teams, and ultimately, the organization.

Steve  31:46  
Yeah, great, Kevin, great, great stuff. I really appreciate the time today. It's been fascinating conversation, and hopefully folks can get through this stuff as best they can and work to make workplaces better for everybody, which is what we're here for, here at the HRHappyHour show. And Kevin, I so appreciate you sharing your insight and expertise with us today.

Kevin Rockmann  32:06  
Well, it's, it's a pleasure to be here. 

Steve  32:11  
Thanks again, Kevin. Thank you so much. That's Kevin Rockmann from George Mason University in Virginia, the great state of Virginia and Commonwealth. Yeah, absolutely. And we're excited to a lot of things really going on in the HR Happy Hour network these days. So check hrhappyhour.net for all the shows, all the archives, subscribe, tell a friend and all the things. Thanks to our friends at Workhuman of course, and thanks to you for listening. My name is Steed Boese. Thanks for listening to the show. We'll see you next time, and bye for now. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai