Political tension at work isn’t going away

I’m in In.Comms today talking about what leaders should do about it.

Last week, the CIPR State of the Profession report found that 54% of PR professionals say polarisation is making their job harder.

52% say their organisations are more cautious about taking public positions.

Those numbers tell us something important. But I work with what happens behind them. The conversation everybody has rehearsed privately but nobody wants to start publicly. The Board worrying about risk. Comms worrying about what happens outside the building. HR absorbing the fallout. People with genuinely different beliefs trying to work alongside each other. Leaders knowing that saying nothing is a decision too.

This is my territory.

For more than 20 years I have walked into difficult rooms and high-stakes systems and helped people deal with what is going on, not the sanitised version of it. I can hold competing truths without fudging them. Challenge powerful people without turning the room into a fight. Tell the difference between discomfort and harm. Spot what isn’t being said. And say the thing everybody else has been tiptoeing around.

That is why organisations hire me. Not for another workshop telling people to communicate better. They hire me when the stakes are high. When trust is shaky. When there are competing interests, legal or reputational risks, strong personalities, or fundamentally different views around the table. When the conversation matters too much to get wrong.

I work with Boards, executive teams and senior leaders across government, the NHS, regulators, charities and business to get underneath what is really happening and help them decide what they are going to do about it.

So, if there is an elephant sitting in the middle of your Board, executive team or organisation – political tension, cultural conflict, damaged trust, a contentious decision or something important everybody is avoiding – bring me into the room.

I do the difficult stuff.

That’s why you hire me.

My In.Comms piece on handling political tensions in the workplace is here:

‘How should we handle political tensions in our workplace?’ | In.Comms