About this talk
This talk addresses the issue of workplace polarization, where societal and political tensions infiltrate organizations, leading to conflicts and a hostile work environment. The speaker shares insights from over a decade of experience working with organizations to improve teamwork and communication. They observe that conflicts are increasingly personal and emotionally charged, causing employees to take sides instead of collaborating. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding the roots of this polarization and its impact on creativity, team dynamics, and overall business success. The speaker offers strategies for leaders to recognize symptoms of polarization and implement practices that foster psychological safety, empathy, and constructive dialogue within teams.
Full transcript
So, every lecture she gave to us is like a PhD to the point of starvation, but translated into an accessible language, because after all, scientific circles have different norms that must be followed. Whenever Ivana and I are preparing a lecture, she's like, I talked to this guy, I talked to that guy, I gathered feedback from this ex- boss of mine, from this coach of mine, from my
professor at the university, and she's always so energetic about doing the best thing to synthesize it and present it on stage. Before I give her the stage, I want to express my admiration for her choice of topic, because it's not easy to talk about what she chose in these times, because there are certainly some things that are slightly uncomfortable, but she chose it. I'm not her, I
'm not like that, okay, I pushed her a little, maybe , but now we'll see what she says. So I give the floor to Ivana. I hope the lecture will leave just as many interesting discussions as the previous lectures and that we will have something new to think about. Ivana, the stage is yours. Hello. A development team, in which we have two senior developers, Petar and Georgi.
Oh, they usually get along great. Peter likes to plan, to plan, to analyze when to do what. And Georgi is more of a go-go guy. Ah, a new deadline appears for the team and Peter says, "Now we have to think, do the math." George says, "No, go ahead." And suddenly the conversation turns into a very heated debate, a sharp conflict, it ends very quickly, after which Peter
goes and writes very negative feedback about Georgi in the internal HR system, which is quite unusual for them as a way of behaving. A year and a half earlier, these two people would have spent two or three more minutes and gotten along very well and everyone would have been happy in the end, rather than just acting out and ending the relationship this way And for 13 years
I have been collaborating with organizations for their improvement. And what has impressed me in the last few years is that these are mainly organizations that deal with products, services, that is, creative work, where there is teamwork, in which we have to create something together, of course it is normal to have arguments, and conflicts that create, right, a clash of ideas. Ah, but what has struck me conflicts
have begun to emerge that are inexplicably uncharacteristic of humans. People start to take things very personally, and fighting is pointless with stronger negative energy. And there are even cases where some people simply isolate themselves from the debate and the argument. And my job is usually to know why these things happen, but there have been rare cases where I don't understand why. And besides, they may have differences
on some topics in life. And the other interesting thing is that it didn't depend on the level in the hierarchy, it didn't depend on the generation, whether it was baby, boomer, millennial, genzi. And my suspect, my culprit ultimately, is called workplace polarization . This is how polarization from society successfully enters the work. And what does she look like? It looks like a division between two sharply opposing
groups or sets of ideas, of opinions. Opinions clash, things get very serious. It can take different forms from purely political topics to social ones. It could be sensitive topics at work, or it could simply be related to a disagreement about something about the product, the project we're working on. And why are political, ideological discussions so polarizing? The keywords are identity and morality. What's happening? The moral aspect.
And I am right. I am moral. Since I am right and moral in my ideas, I am my idea, my position is normal. I am good. You're not, because you support us. The next step. We form groups of moral tribes in which we are right, we are better than the others, and at some point we simply lose the common bond and it becomes I am what you
are not or us against them. Total separation. Just for information, just to share for pure transparency. Where do my observations come from? Well, mainly the companies I work with are in Europe. And this is also the honor that I have been looking at more intensely from the world for my sharing on this topic. And my experience is mostly in global complex companies, that is, in large complex
structures. Ah, but with quite intensive work together with high-level leaders, teams and so on. That is, very intensive observations. yes, in the direction of how to develop as an organizational strategy Leadership development. So, through this prism, I noticed it, and in recent years, to my delight, more and more data on this issue has appeared. Oh, that is, not just personal observation. Most likely all of you have
already felt it. And this is one of the statistics that unfortunately there aren't many statistics. No studies have been conducted yet for IT companies. And it's a pretty global question for the industry, but for example, this European report showed that 86% of employers are already starting to share that they have difficulties with social, societal beliefs, political divisions that are entering the work and changing the way people
work. So in short, what's the problem? The problem we have is that polarization is creeping into our organizations. She has already successfully entered some . Why is this happening? Because we already bring society with us into work, with hybrid work there is no longer the division that existed before. Our differences become part of our identity, our morality, as we said. And organizational stress is also increasing, and
it also reinforces division. What do I mean? We have all kinds of restructuring, economically things are changing around us. Weaker norms for dialogue and low psychological safety. If our company has weaker norms for dialogue, weaker skills and rules for how we conduct debates, conversations and dialogues, then naturally it will come in much easier. It's a two-way influence, and just as we bring it from home to work,
it comes back to work and it becomes a cycle that revolves. And what is the impact? We said what the problem is, what the impact is, what follows from this. Eh, we fight a little more , we take it a little easier. But the problem is that when we have group work, teamwork, it becomes quite difficult at all levels. And we begin to have lower trust, psychological
safety, and accordingly, when we have to make decisions, the quality of dialogue and argument is lower and they are weaker. And accordingly, let alone when we have to create something, let alone if we are tech-savvy or specifically focused on finding innovation. And accordingly, as a result, the quality of our products and services is lowered, as is the satisfaction and growth of people, which is actually the whole
point of a business existing, for it to have business success and for the people in it to develop well. And accordingly, the flexibility and adaptability of companies and organizations decreases over time. Why now, on the one hand, for me personally it's even a little late to talk about this topic, but as Mitko said, I really wanted it, because for me this is something that is already quite
intense and I think we need to talk more. I think we should pay more attention to it now, even though it's a little late. Am polarization is nothing new. It has always existed, but the problem is that the way it successfully enters companies and not only in its pure form of debates in disputes and problems in society, but is starting to replace the way we generally conduct
dialogues and disputes. And we are now including our entire personality, and besides, I'm repeating myself a bit, maybe, but digital life, the hybrid way of working, all of this is now so mixed that there is no longer any, no, no brake, nothing to protect. And what is the solution? What can we change? And my suggestion to you is obvious, I don't know if Alex mentioned this in
the assessment, but give me four days to talk and I'll give you solutions. Ah, but what I'm going to try to give you is first how you can recognize it. If you suspect that this is happening to you or you don't think it is to a large enough extent. And I want to show you some symptoms by which you can recognize it, and also some sketchy ideas
about what we can do to address it. And one such example is when we have more conflicts. Maybe I should clarify here, I mean in your role as a leader. And since we're talking about a trend, we're talking about something that's increasing. If you can look, if you've been in the company for two years, for example, if you can look at the last two years what the
change is, that is, we look for symptoms that are of a change in the way of communication. That is, things are not different from yesterday to today, but they are happening and changing very slowly and gloriously . We have more conflicts. Personalizing the conflict. And we start to take things personally, us against them, regardless of whether it happens as internal groups in your team or our team
against them, against others, this language, this form of communication is always a symptom that something is wrong in the direction of taking an extreme position. People only discuss their own country. You've probably noticed this when in an argument the person only sits on their own position, has no interest, no questions about the other position, no empathy, so to speak, in any way. Simplifying complex topics into slogans
and clichés. And this is when we are actually discussing some very complex, very complicated case, a very complicated task, but when the problem starts to escalate, we start to present our country with two or three words , as if it were some kind of strong political battle. Oh, and this shows how we actually move away from the discussion about the idea itself and the topic itself, and
rather focus on the simplifying a pitched battle between two extreme mutually exclusive options. What do I mean? This is probably pretty clear. Black and white, that is, when it's either this or that, there's no other, there's no place for new ideas to come to the table, and only two things are fighting. Categorizing nicknames for one or another colleague because of an expressed opinion. This is a symptom
that things are not going well. It's not even necessary for these nicknames to be very ironic, sarcastic, but simply when we start labeling someone because of their opinion on a given topic. This is exactly an example of He is from that different group. This is exactly this type of division. and even fewer, a few more symptoms that are less noticeable, namely when we have very few conflicts.
That is, over time we notice that the team is experiencing conflicts here, understand more serious disputes, right, it doesn't always have to be a final conflict, but the team simply reduces its disputes. Things quiet down without so gently and imperceptibly. When we have group think, this is generally not good. In general, all the symptoms are obviously not a good idea, but here we're talking about when you
have a cluster, when you have several of them. Group thinking, when we have nonconformism, we want harmony at all costs. We all need to understand each other, even at the risk of losing our idea as a form of isolation from debate and potential polarization. Excessive need for clarification in speech. What do I mean? And, for example, I'm telling you, and you know how men, well, men and
women, work, that is, the need to clarify, to clarify, lest I, how should I say, touch on someone else's moral value and identity and I might end up where I shouldn't. In general, this type of precision is very useful, very good. Many times it is a symptom of empathy, of concern for others. But when you see that this is happening too much, that is, excessively, and quite
often, there is some form of fear and protection. Fear and discomfort of publicly sharing opinions on hot topics. And I don't want to, I don't dare to say that everyone should have to tell everyone everything. But when you feel that there is visible, and especially through body language, you can easily recognize it, visible discomfort and fear of speaking out on a topic. And if this starts happening
frequently, it could be a symptom for you. So these are the symptoms so far. And, of course, the list is much longer, but I suppose you as a leader, or rather the idea is to recognize a few and see how things are for you. It is possible that your company is protected, and this is related to one of the topics that was also mentioned this morning, namely
organizational culture. If you have very solid, strong foundations and deep values in the organization, such as, excuse the language, no [ __ ], no [ __ ] behavior allowed, that is, you cannot behave, we cannot behave in certain ways. This could be a very good shield for your organization. if everything is fine with us, if everything else is fine with us, that is, except that polarization may
be a problem for us, if all other things are fine, why am I specifying this, if everything is fine with us? Please, don't look for a loophole with this topic . And the fact that this is a problem that is happening, it is not good to displace and cover up other problems that may exist in the organization, especially in terms of organizational culture, the way in which
power is exercised, and whether we organize our teams well, how we have hired people, whether we have a common mission and so on, right? There are just so many things that can lead to less than civilized communication. So I'm saying, if everything else is fine, if most other things are fine, what can we do? What can we do to address things? First of all, I suggest you
gather information. Namely, if you are a team leader, this will be quite easy for you. You have direct observations. We talked this morning about how a leader must constantly be watching and knowing what is happening. You can just imagine how things happen over time, what the changes are in the behavior of people in the team. If you are a higher-level leader, then it is a little more
difficult. A lot of times in my work with an executive level they don't have that much visibility. Even if their office is not on the top floor, but when it is, then the situation is much more difficult indeed. Then, if you need some form of research, you can do it. You just need to invest time in Trust, psychological safety. I'm guessing that everyone here in the room
is probably familiar with the topic. It is already quite far ahead in our consciousness. I added both to remind you of the difference between them. the difference between I believe in you or I believe my leader will support me and we feel comfortable sharing. That is, we are in a group where we can take interpersonal risk. That is, we can risk being ourselves, making a mistake, and
doing something wrong without being judged. And what can we do, things that you can start doing tomorrow, and some ideas. And lead by example. In my experience with any organization, regardless of size, when a team leader puts even a little more energy into setting an example of how they can talk to others and argue with more empathy, listening, asking questions, respectful confrontation, that example that you can
set, inevitably within weeks has a positive effect on many aspects of the team's health, as well as its success. So I wouldn't stop repeating this advice on any topic. Compassion as the meaning of empathy with a desire to help, but also courage, humility, presence, really being there, and not just having conversations happen in between Devil's advocate. And this is a very simple exercise that you can do
as a team leader or rotational basis if you have someone on your team. You can do it for a while, it doesn't have to be like this forever. Aa is the so-called appointed devil's advocate and this is the person who, for every idea that is being discussed, looks for its weak side. and it tells where it can break. In this way, we show that every idea is
an idea, every idea is fragile, and in this way, we separate people from ideas. That is, they become just ideas. And this doesn't mean that we lose the authorship of the people who came up with the ideas, but we manage to say all ideas can be good, all ideas can have weaknesses. This exercise is quite useful. Use models and artifacts when discussing complex topics or sensitive sensitive
topics. And surely you all did. I'm just reminding you of it as something you can do. Will these be specific exercises with LEGO Series Play? And a former colleague also mentioned event storming, which is of course for specific exercises, for specific tasks, but if you want to even have message boards and whatever , a way that online boards, a way that you can bring a level of
abstraction and make the problem more visible and discuss and argue about the thing, and not so much between us. It generally helps with clarification and being on the same page, as they say, but especially in the case of polarization it would be very, very effective. Knowledge and skills. It's a bit like there's no expert leader and there's no expert parent. And what we have decided to do,
namely leading people, is something we will study endlessly. And books, those talks, podcasts, conferences like this one. Beautiful. Let's thank Nitko again. Well, we just have to constantly learn. And if you can ask for help in this direction, if you can't find any, if you don't have the resources for external help, whether it's training or whatever, just get a model that you can use. Something like this
one , for example, which shows the different steps. I don't know why it's so pixelated, but I hope it's readable. And, for example, you can even do a postmortem of an argument you had, and see how far you've come, possibly how you can go back down the steps. Oh, I'm not saying they have to use this one, but take whatever exercises they can and just start somewhere
talking and in the work trying to experiment, doing things. Principles, norms, values, not slogans. And it's very important, like many others in my work over the years, and my work with companies focuses on the different new waves that are happening right now, for example, it's very much AI strategy. And there will always be things that will come up that will be highly influential on your culture and
ultimately your team, department, division, whatever you are responsible for. And it is very important to focus on the deep and valuable things. And how can we improve the state of the organization so that it can better deal with the problem in the long term , rather than just temporarily inventing some restrictions that will simply stop it. And for example, and I just took this from the rules
of if any of you have read Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules. Don't let your children do things that make you dislike them. And maybe you have something like this as a principle, as an agreement to make in your environment. It's very similar to behave all, which is not to wait for things to get really bad, but right at the very beginning, right when we start, the dialogue starts
going in a not-so-good direction, so that we can stop it, so that we can raise our hand, agree that it's okay, yes, I'll scrub the floor with this, so that we can agree that it's okay, yes, let's say stop, wait a minute, yes, encourage behavior over achievement. And this morning Alex had mentioned carrots, he had mentioned empowering people, as well as almost everything in the organization, including
this problem. This is a very, very good approach, namely, not to be in the style of our conversation, our conflict this time was only 2 minutes, not 16, right, the metric itself should be important, the achievement, but rather what we can encourage and celebrate together, the idea should be, well, I felt like I was starting to blame him and we stopped and started a new beginning. That
is, these small changes in behavior that begin to liberate us, encourage behaviors above achievements as leaders and in the team. Achievements, of course, should also be encouraged, but in this case for deeper things. And we touch on my favorite topic of organizational culture. Ah, for some reason, many places say that our organizational culture needs to be better and that we should work to make it better. And
such an exercise in itself would be empty. It is usually useful when it happens through some purpose, an organizational purpose, a business purpose. And this topic is perfect for that purpose. How can we make our organizational culture, if it isn't, stronger and more sustainable? This is my people who know me know that this is my favorite model. I can't understand why it's coming out so pixelated. I
promise that's not the case with me. It looks beautiful even there. I do n't know why. I'm very sorry. Um, I think we can distribute the slides if anyone wants to pick them up afterwards. But the idea of this model is that it helps us very quickly imagine the organization at different levels. Why do I love him so much? Just because it's useful to me. You know,
the expression all models are wrong, some are useful. And this one is very useful to me. And it also helps us distinguish between the things we see in behavior at the top, the things we actually believe in, and those that are underline cues. These are usually the ones that no one tells you, no one writes about them anywhere. If you enter the company, you won't even know
about them, but the moment you cross their border, everyone else gives you feedback. Like what we said with No ass behavior Allу. If any of you, right now, I don't know, turns around and starts beating someone else, we will all react. That is, but it doesn't say it anywhere, nowhere do we have a code of a boat, which is basic, so to speak. So why am I
giving this model and reminding you of this topic? Namely because my message to you is the things you are trying to do to address and even reverse the polarization by taking that energy from these arguments into constructive ones. Well, how can you give examples that will trickle down into the organizational system and become so-called myths and legends. This is one of the greatest powers of organizational culture,
namely the myths and legends that are told, which we believe define what exactly our company is. And last but not least, something that is always useful to do periodically, namely to recall or redefine what our common mission is, what our shared goal is, why we work together, what we do, what unites us. In general, the best antidote to polarization is the search for common ground, for a
common common sense between us. Ah, that would always be useful. We looked at what the problem is, what the impacts are, what we can do, and the next step is what comes next. What follows is follow-up and maintenance. This is not something that we will do two or three exercises and the problem will disappear. For now, the polarization of its trend in the global public sphere is
only growing upwards. Maybe something will change. God grant that we may connect, come together, and change this direction. Ah, but aah, the fact that we will have to continue working in this direction, and if we have done things well, we will have improvements in both business results, job satisfaction, what we said, flexibility, adaptability of the business and not just satisfaction, but being able to grow at work,
and possibly renegotiated or new principles and deep values. And besides, I sincerely hope that what we would also have is exactly this cycle in which things revolve between work and what is happening in society. In the same way, may we succeed, by improving the organizations in which we work, in improving our small part of society. And thank you in advance for the improvement you will make for
all of us in your field. Thank you very much. Ivano, thank you for sharing your experience. Literally caught up with the entire program. He nailed it for 30 minutes, as we had agreed. Thank you once again from the Def.bg team. We have a 30-minute break. At 15 there is perhaps the lecture that is most mystical for you. She is like that, I won't lie to you. There
will be no IT people on stage , there will be musicians, but that's in half an hour. I would be happy to have you in the hall.
