Tony Ewing Contributor Leadership Strategy FORBES
Hundreds of behavioral science studies show other people rarely understand us. Indeed, miscommunication happens at home, even when our loved ones know our true intentions. So at work—where colleagues only see the surfaces of our personalities—a simple misunderstanding could mean trouble for our jobs and our careers.
For most of us, that’s intuitive—some topics just shouldn’t be discussed at work or online. Yet, science helps us understand how it works and what landmines we should avoid.
For example, the mechanism is neural. Whenever you say something, do something, wear something—or even do nothing, yet catch the gaze of others by your appearance—the brains of your observers process that information in their own, typically biased, ways.
Unfortunately, those biases result, in part, from our brain’s efficiency. They’re also hard-coded and hard-worn from years of reinforcement or lack of challenge. As a result, they can’t be eliminated unless others first recognize them. After that, they must consciously work to uproot them.
Most people don’t do that. So, as a result, our professional behavior, to a large extent, must account for others’s biases by our attempting to avoid aggravating them.
One way to do this is by avoiding hot-button, emotionally disruptive topics. Thus, here are 9 such topics you should avoid discussing at work—whether in your office, over remote, teleconference channels or on social media—based on science. These include:
- The Presidential Election, Party Politics and Religion:
This should be a no-brainer (pun intended). For as the old saying goes, “Friends and family should never discuss politics and religion.” At work we should apply the same rule. One reason for doing so is that people take hard positions on politics and religion. As a result, they will never agree to disagree with you, nor soften their positions based upon the strengths of your argument. For example, researchers from University College London have found showing one’s political convictions in discourse does little more than solidify the convictions of opponents. In other words, the harder we push, the more others push back, even if the data undermine our opponents’s positions. Furthermore, other behavioral research suggests debates—especially debates about politics and religion—lead to passing judgement on others. But judging gives rise to what behavioral scientists call the bias blind spot. In other words, discussing politics and religion only makes us irrational and increasingly blind to our own irrational thinking. That’s hardly something we’re being paid to allow happen to us at work.
- Race, Ethnicity and Gender. If political and religious discussions are poor topic choices, then race, ethnicity and gender are even more so—since the latter tend to drive political and religious debates. What’s worse, these taboo topics bring emotional biases into the picture, which further deplete rationality. Yet, as a practical matter, if race, ethnicity or gender are clear problems at your workplace, there’s evidence intervention by professionals to facilitate discussion can help. At the same time, that all depends upon the facilitators unbiasedness and professional knowledge of behavioral science methods. If they come into the discussion with a ‘normative,’ casual view that force-feeds open-mindedness, their approach could do more harm than good. To the contrary, evidence suggests, the best approach to discussing race and gender is professional facilitation based upon unbiased selection of historical facts and science, not opinions.
- Immigration. Inevitably polarization around immigration conjures up job-security related arguments. This leads to stress for anyone who feels their job is threatened and, as we’ve written elsewhere, stress creates a myriad of other problems—including depleted performance. Thus, unless your company deals with immigration (or any of the above topics) as part of its business model—e.g., you process immigration applications—it’s a topic best avoided.
- Protests. Protests around the world have now erupted over voting rights, political discontent, racial and even religious divides. Obviously, all these motivations carry an emotional charge. But, as we have said already, emotional topics lead to the potential for emotional biases and that hurts performance.
- Sex. Unless you work in a clinic that deals with sexual disorders—or your company sells products and services based upon sexual activity—this is a truly hot-button topic to be avoided. The science shows that men and women almost never understand each other’s sexual intentions in the same way. For example, researchers in Norway have found that men almost always misinterpret a relationship as sexual when women interpret it as friendly. Thus, discussions of sex open the doorway to crossing the line and dropping innuendo. That’s not only a misunderstanding waiting to happen, it’s a surefire way to get fired.
- Your Medical Problems. People judge us on our physical adequacy, and behavioral research shows, this extends to how they view our competency. Leaders are seen as more ‘leader like’ when they are viewed as strong and physically healthy. Thus, by induction, over-sharing your medical challenges could potentially have colleagues or superiors viewing you as incompetent and unsuitable for promotion. Of course, the caveat here is when you’re a leader with a strong and long track record of successfully guiding the organization or the team through difficulty. In that case, your physical health is a concern because others rely upon you—and perhaps even fiduciary duties require you to disclose it. Nonetheless, that’s not something to discuss with colleagues over Zoom.
- Your Financial Problems. Similar to discussing your medical problems, discussing your financial problems reflects poorly on your competency. In a plain vanilla sense, sharing your financial problems with co-workers—who might make the same or similar salaries as you—makes you the prime suspect whenever something of value goes missing. Indeed, in one survey of American workers, 52 percent admitted to stealing something from the office—and that’s the number who admitted it. Yet, on a deeper level, discussing your financial problems with colleagues suggests you’re bad at managing money. And that, in turn, suggests a certain degree of incompetence.
- Co—Workers, the Boss, Superiors, Senior Management. It should go without saying that the office place is no place to (informally) discuss other people. Yet, we say it because people still do it. Of course, if a situation arises that requires evaluating or questioning someone’s performance or behavior, you should insist discussing it formally and in accordance with the company’s policy. Moreover, don’t be curt about it when stopping the mouths of colleagues who bring up such topics. Rather, try to change the subject. And if your colleague fails to get the hint, gently remind them by saying, “we have a lot of work to do.”
- How Co-Workers Responded to the Pandemic. Fear is problem these days. And if COVID-19 brought little else, it brought fear to the hearts of millions or perhaps billions of people. Moreover, medical experts at the CDC and elsewhere maintain fear and anxiety—which lead to depressive disorders—could represent a more dangerous epidemic than COVID-19 itself. Understanding this, you must understand not everyone reacts to fear in the same way. For many, fear creates irrationality. It leads them to either freeze or do erratic things or a combination of both. In most cases, a person has does not fully understand their own behavior—even when it resulted in creating major problems. For all those reasons and more, highlighting strange or panic behavior in the office place, among colleagues or even in the neighborhood, is a surefire way to increase tension, stress and create problems.
Of course, because the above list of topics reflects what’s typically covered on the landing pages of most news outlets, you might ask: “What then, can I discuss around the water-cooler (or on breaks during my video calls)?”
Lots of things—but especially topics that are not emotionally charged or, if emotional, have common, sympathetic markers. Good discussion topics include, for example:
- Work/ and The Task at Hand. After all, that’s what you’re paid to discuss.
- Your animals—unless you manage them in gross ways.
- Topics related to children, but not your own. In general, people don’t like discussions focusing on other people’s children. Yet, topics about school or general effects on children are okay.
- Sports, unrelated to politics, and not with Eagles fans. The latter is self-explanatory to anyone who has ever lived near Philly.
- Science—but not hot-button topics, like global warming, abortion, trans-humanism, etc.
- Music and Art—as long as you don’t draw it back to why you think MoMa now has stupid things that look like finger paintings on display.
- Technology, but not complaining about video-conferencing or the office requirement to use it.
- Food and Clothing—but not always complaining about eating or not eating and not about obese people. Of course, never whip out a beer or some other alcoholic beverage.
- Anything un-emotional.
At the end of the day, few of us are paid to discuss hot-button, taboo topics at work. Yet, most of us should understand the extreme risk of doing so.
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