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Polarisation is intensifying in workplaces; what can we do?

By Matt Dean Co-Founder, Director. This is a guest article by one of Ben's partners, Byrne Dean, workplace behaviour and culture experts. This article is part of a series of content from Ben's partners.

Recent events in America have intensified the discussion around polarisation. There’s no doubt that this increasing polarisation of wider society is impacting how people work together.

Workplaces, for many of us, are probably the one place left where we might interact with people holding different views.

Of course, I’d like to think that most people, most of the time, want to work well together in a mutually respectful way; that it would be overstating it to say that external political polarisation is toxifying all workplaces.

That said, some people seem increasingly to have less tolerance for others’ views; less willingness to accept that situations contain any shades of grey; and little interest in understanding different perspectives. In their lives and in their workplaces.

This type of intolerance can create an increasing sense of conflict and we’re certainly seeing that in some work environments – whether people are debating a work issue (like remote vs office working), or when a sensitive societal issue enters a digital forum like Slack and people apparently forget they’re at work (and pile in as they might in a debate on X).

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