Can “cultural intelligence” help companies navigate a divided workplace in the run-up to the election?
Can “cultural intelligence” help companies navigate a divided workplace in the run-up to the election?
With only a handful of weeks away until the 2024 election, we’re examining political polarization in America at the company level as part of our Office Politics series.
Today, we’re focusing on the tools corporate leaders can use to ensure that political conversations that take place in the workplace are more civil than acrimonious.
David Livermore is founder of the Cultural Intelligence Center and a professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. He spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio about how companies can navigate a fraught and tense political environment. The following is an edited trasncript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: What’s your definition of cultural intelligence, and how could it help bridge divides in a divided community? Even a divided workplace?
David Livermore: So, cultural intelligence is quite simply the capability to relate and work effectively with people who are different than you. And traditionally, we’ve looked at that in terms of differences across international domains — an American to a Chinese or German — and also within the domestic region, across different ethnicities or generations. But increasingly, cultural intelligence also predicts how well somebody can work across ideological divides or political divides that seem to be showing up everywhere, even in the workplace.
Brancaccio: Because you know why I’m asking, right, here in 2024: Conversations with people can get very intense, sometimes ugly, perhaps exacerbated by national political trends.
Livermore: Yeah, exactly. And, in point of fact, most of my work throughout the 20 years we’ve been researching this has been more focused on how you need to seek to understand someone on the other side of the world. And to your point — particularly over the last four to eight years — it seems that we need a passport sometimes to talk to our next door neighbor or the person in the cubicle next to us. So, we began to look at, “Can cultural intelligence actually predict how well you can interact at work about some of these very heated topics?” Whether it’s reproductive rights, climate change, immigration, and on and on the list goes.
Brancaccio: And what does your research show, that the model that you developed to talk about international divides, can it help inform what we’re seeing sometimes just at the office?
Livermore: Yeah, and if I’m honest, sometimes it’s actually easier to do it across the international divides. “Oh, you know, I can be forgiving that they have a very different perspective.” But yes, in point of fact, we know that cultural intelligence consists of four different capabilities, and you can apply those in the workplace as well. For example, the first capability that we measure in a culturally intelligent leader is the motivational piece — the drive, the curiosity, the openness.
And you know, it’s one thing for me to go to India or to go to the Olympics and say, “Huh, OK. I wonder why they do that this way here.” It’s another thing when I have someone who maybe looks just like me, has the same passport, but makes some passing comment in a meeting where I don’t necessarily want to exercise curiosity. So one of the things that we found is just starting with a simple question to somebody like, “Hey, would you be open to considering a different perspective on that?” And just that kind of question starts to prime people for, “Well, OK, I’m open to at least hearing your different perspective,” and then sort of picking it up from there.
Brancaccio: I mean, some people will already be concerned, because if you’re trying to persuade a coworker or someone you’re trying to talk to at a heated community meeting, that’s a tall order. I mean, we need to start with at least hearing the person out who you might object to.
Livermore: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I would caution any of us against thinking we’re going to proselytize others to see our point of view. And in the workplace, I think it’s appropriate for us to set some kind of boundaries and parameters, and think about, “How do we link this back to the work setting?” I will say to your point, rather than trying to get us to convince one another, another piece that we found in the research, you know, when we’re looking at international differences that applies here as well, is, “Hey, this is less about convincing one another and more about, ‘Have you actually understood the different perspective?'”
And so an exercise we’ve sometimes tested out in the research is, “Can you describe the opposing viewpoint’s perspective without using pejorative terms?” You’re not allowed to say, “well, these sheeple” or “these clueless idiots,” but just like, “OK, so in your view, immigrants, XYZ, etc.” And to catch each other back and forth, like, “Wait, wait, wait. No, that’s not exactly what I’m saying.” Can we actually at least describe one another’s perspective in a way that’s somewhat neutral, rather than trying to convince one another that we need to believe the same thing in order to find a way to coexist together in the workplace?
Brancaccio: But you’re saying that could go a long way just having the ability to have understood the other person enough to be able to describe the other person’s point of view in a way that’s not jerky?
Livermore: Yeah, at least in the work setting. I will be the first to admit that when you’re suddenly talking about friendships and extended family, there’s a whole different level of issues there. But at the workplace, it’s, “Hey, we’re here because we’re trying to get a job done.” And one of the things that we find in the research that’s key is, if this is going to go a long way, it really requires a leader — and, in particular, a midlevel manager — with the cultural intelligence to know how to navigate this. And so we’ll often find in the research that the most effective midlevel managers have found ways to minimize the interpersonal differences that emerge from these kind of conversations and sort of amplify the perspective differences, and say, “OK, so what could we actually learn from this very different view on how we’re doing it?”
Brancaccio: Does your team sometimes get called in by companies to help address some of these issues?
Livermore: Most often, what our team has been called in to do is to address the more salient issues that people think about related to culture. You know, how are you going to deal with your offshore team in India or a very global team that might have people from all over the world, or even as it relates to things related to diversity, equity and inclusion? What often happens is, as we get engaged in some of those workshops or seminars and that, is that we find what people are more amped up to talk about are these political issues. And we really talk about the fact that you have to find this fine line to not stifle it and forbid people from discussing those, create a safe place, but on the other hand, ensure that it doesn’t so derail you that suddenly now productivity shuts down because they feel the strife between a coworker that they’re supposed to work on a project together with.
Brancaccio: Companies may try to approach this with “Don’t talk about politics at work, and certainly don’t talk about it with other stakeholders and customers.” But that may not work over time.
Livermore: Right? And you may recall, we have an example of that from two or three years ago. I think it was ’21 actually, when Basecamp, the tech company, did that very thing. They forbid employees from talking about sensitive issues, and within 48 hours, a third of their employees resigned. I’m sympathetic, but increasingly, we can’t say that these are irrelevant to the workplace, when you’re talking about some of these issues, like reproductive rights or immigration. Or, you know, a lot of companies that I’m talking with are saying, “I’ve got people in the Middle East who report into Israel or vice versa.” Like, how do we actually deal with that? These are no longer just “don’t talk about politics and religion at work.” These are very germane issues. And so that’s where we get involved with companies, is saying you have to develop this overall capability where there isn’t a script to follow, but you have to actually develop this capability of cultural intelligence to help a leader know how to navigate the landmines that exist in addressing them.
Brancaccio: And at the point that you get called in and your team, that would imply that leadership is already sensitive and must have a certain helping of cultural intelligence on board already.
Livermore: Sometimes the question I get asked when I walk into a room is like, how did they decide who had to be here today, or if we had a lawsuit, or something like that. But I think your point is actually right: More often, senior leadership has said, “Hey, this is a critical capability, particularly for our leaders to have.” So I think that challenge for me with that, is I start to get relatively biased and think, “Ah, most senior executives are on board with the importance of having this sort of capability get in.” But to your point, it’s that usually they’re already sort of on board with the priority, if they’ve called us in or if they’ve collaborated with us on some research, etc.
Brancaccio: And then there are companies that take a strong position publicly, part of their brands, on important issues of our time. They might be very focused on climate change. They might have a very high-profile position on reproductive rights. Then, there could be employees who disagree. That is an awkward situation.
Livermore: It is, and I often talk with people on both sides of that equation. If it’s, you know, senior leadership and board, like, hey, you have every right to do that — especially if it’s a privately held company. Just understand that you may exclude some potential customers, employees, etc. And vice versa to employees — like, make sure you understand and, hey, the company has a right to do this, but so do you have a right to opt out of taking a job there. But if they already do take a stand on this, don’t expect that you’re going to come in and change their mind on it. So for me, it’s about if you are going to really put a stake in the ground on some of these issues, then you need to be very upfront about that to save yourself and others a whole lot of hassle.
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