Leader Strategies for Navigating a Politically Divided Workplace This Election Season

The highly polarized 2024 election climate challenges business leaders and communicators facing the enormous task of communicating to a divided group of employees, customers, and other stakeholders wanting to feel respected and heard.
Given just how intense the political environment has become, leaders surely have their hands full. That was abundantly clear at a recent meeting of the Communication Leaders of Chicago , a group of senior communications and public relations professionals focused on addressing strategic approaches to emerging challenges in our field.
Many of the veteran leaders at our recent meeting said the 2024 election season is the most fraught political and communications environment they’ve ever seen.
“It’s truly a hyper intense time,” said Eric Sedler, managing partner of Avoq and interim CEO of World Business Chicago. Sedler said that because the country is essentially equally divided along party lines, every day leaders and communicators have the potential to offend nearly half the population on many social and political issues.
Many other leaders said the tone and tenor of everything that’s discussed is much more dialed up than in the past, fueled in part by the growing prevalence of social media.
“People have less and less trust in institutions. … In many cases, their primary source of information is social media,” said Michael Spikes, a Northwestern University instructor and director of Medill's Teach for Chicago Journalism program.
Importance of Being Thoughtful When Communicating on Political Topics
Leaders cautioned communicators to be especially thoughtful when they decide to communicate on emerging political or social conflicts, given the high stakes that come with offending any particular group. Yet in other cases, particularly when issues are directly related to a company’s core values, employers should feel compelled to weigh in or consider taking a more active role or stance.Given that it’s a delicate balancing act to make these calls, planning ahead and thinking through which types of issues would prompt a particular response is often helpful.
There’s also the difficult matter of how to manage potentially divisive speech inside the workplace, when an employee shares a political view that’s offensive to colleagues. While there’s a right to free speech, a fine line is crossed when that speech becomes hurtful in a work environment, and that’s where employers can help set the right tone.
The following are some of the key points I believe all communicators and leaders should keep top of mind as they work through this challenging political time: