I’m Pulled to a Political Side and It’s Crept into My Work Brain
I have the desire to work only with people with whom my politics mesh, and that is very new and uncomfortable territory for me.
Let me start by saying that politics are irrelevant to what I do for a living, which is executive coaching and strategic-plan development. If a gig is to help a CEO encourage his executive team to row more in the same direction, or to craft a 3-year dynamic plan, it doesn’t matter if I’m a conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between.
In fact, I’m a centrist. I don’t have real ideology when it comes to public policy. I tend to believe that good policy results from arguing every angle, in good faith. To this day my voter registration lists me as an Independent. When you can find something to agree on with just about anybody, it’s easy to find a way out when politics sneak into your work by surprise.
These days, my centrism feels quaint. Earlier this week, my friend and former colleague DJ Hodge, a CEO in the radio industry, lamented, “We’re all being pulled to one side or the other. It’s like we can no longer talk about the things we agree upon, which I believe is most things.”
My former colleage Jason Altmire, also a former member of the U.S. Congress, wrote a book on this subject. In Dead Center: How Political Polarization Divided America and What We Can Do About It, he explains that moderates from both political parties have been “drummed out of Washington.”
I just want both sides to get together and figure stuff out. In my opinion, elected officials need to debate, make decisions, and move on to what’s next. I hate the posturing, and I really hate hyper-partisanship. When the heat turns up, I shut up. And in my work life, I stay shut up. That’s been my way.
Yet here I am, not only pulled to a side but feeling an obligation to be vocal about it, even in the channels through which I market my business. It entirely flies in the face of my predisposition against mixing politics and career. The last thing I want is to miss an opportunity with a new client because of how I see the world personally. Or, is it? I’m questioning.
I watch my close friends Jamie Hampton and Karim Bouris. They own and run public-relations agency in California called Mixte Communications. Their firm is successful precisely because of their politics — they are known and respected social-justice advocates, as are their clients. They don’t get clients from the other side, but they don’t want them. Their work and their souls are in synch.
They are not the only ones. I spent my early career in public affairs in Washington, DC. In that field, you commonly get hired because you are a Democrat or a Republican, not in spite of it. That wasn’t me, but there’s an entire industry of it.
Yet here today, in partisan times, my innate centrism is compromised. I’m on a side. Not only that, I feel like I’d prefer to spend my days working working with people who see a few key topics the same way that I do. Among those:
> Many systems in our country have racism baked into them in a manner that’s undetectable to our White eye.
> It’s a bad idea to hire a U.S. President who assaults the norms, institutions, and rule of law that keep our democracy stable.
> We’ve got to respond to what climate science telling us.
> LGBTQ people, and every other minority, deserve the same rights as everyone else if indeed we believe “all men are created equal.”
I have a caveat, lest you think me suddenly virtuous. If someone read this piece, disagreed with me on the above topics, and still wanted to work with me, I would do so if they were nice, if they paid well, and if we kept politics out of it. I’m just being honest — I work to make money. But at this point, as bewildered as I’ve become, I’m owning that I’d prefer not to. That’s new.
Yesterday I talked to a friend who’s trying to figure out what to do about the racist comments that his company’s pro-Trump CEO is posting on LinkedIn. (Yes, you read that correctly.) The way my friend sees it, if his firm’s blue-chip clients discover his CEO’s comments, the business will be at risk. He feels compelled to do something but doesn’t know what. I don’t care to find myself in such a situation.
I’m an adult who works just fine with people who don’t see things the same as me. Until lately, all I’ve really cared about is that clients are respectful, reasonably smart, courteous, ethical, and pay on time.
Today, I care about more. While saying so breaks a longstanding career rule of mine, I prefer to work with people who share my values and whose prevailing sense of decency is as troubled as mine right now.
