Preparing Your Team for a Year of Intense Political Polarization

How to encourage people to productively disagree while maintaining mutual respect.

February 2src, 2024

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To be sure, the year ahead is going to bring even greater levels of social and political conflict than 2023. Shaping an environment that allows people to productively exchange opposing views and maintain mutual respect in the face of deeply personal differences is no small task. Further, some of those delicate viewpoints may be your own. Figuring out how much you can personally share without tipping the team’s dynamics can be even trickier. Keeping your team unified when external forces are trying to polarize you is possible, but it takes advance preparation and managerial courage. The authors share six strategies they’ve seen organizations employ for building conflict-resilient cultures.

In the wake of 2023’s turbulent social and political landscape that has spilled over into 2024, business leaders face a compounding challenge as the U.S. presidential election approaches. The campaign vitriol has already begun, and many leaders are dreading what this is going to bring into their workplaces and onto their teams.

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Caroline Mehl is cofounder and executive director of the Constructive Dialogue Institute, a nonprofit that helps workplaces and institutions of higher education improve dialogue across lines of difference. Connect with her on LinkedIn and sign up for the Constructive Dialogue Institute’s newsletter for new research on the science and practice of constructive dialogue.