Coping with “Cancel Culture”

Build a culture which allows people to hold differing perspectives.

Teams where members respect others’ perspectives while being strongly aligned to a group mission or vision are the most powerful performers.

What

Cancel culture inhibits people from fully ‘joining in’ the team endeavour for fear of exclusion or intolerance. 

There is an oft-heard mantra: bring your whole self to work. But, for many people, they know that their ‘whole selves’ are not acceptable within their workplace, or amongst their colleagues. They may have strongly-held, and legally-protected beliefs; they may hold a different political stance from their peers, managers or organisations. As a result, they may feel, or fear, isolation and exclusion if their perspectives become known. 

This (often tacit) silencing of people within teams and organisations impedes their abilities to fully commit to the work in which they are engaged. When people continually self-censor, they expend huge amounts of energy in hiding parts of themselves. When individuals, teams and organisations are unable to tolerate perspectives which differ from their own, even while legal, they limit the ability of that organisation to thrive. 

Why

Teams where people can be themselves, where differing views and perspectives are respected and encouraged, have greater psychological safety and strength. It’s long been known that diverse teams produce better results, when that diversity is managed. Diversity of thought and perspective – driven by experience, age (younger and older), culture, social exposure, and so on – matter. 

Yet, despite this focus, we live in a world which is increasingly intolerant of differing views and positions. Our perspectives are narrowing, driven by social media algorithms and a human tendency to seek out ‘like-minded folk’ which create echo chambers, reinforcing our own ‘rightness’ and therefore others’ ‘wrongness’. 

We are losing the ability to agree to disagree. And when we lose that, we stifle creativity, silencing ideas before they’re spoken, and fomenting dissent and dissatisfaction instead of creating a melting pot to generate new and better ways of being and working. 

How

We work with teams to build empathy alongside resilience. We explore the reality that people have more in common than divides them, and that working towards shared goals enhances that ‘in this togetherness’.

We encourage the move from judgment to curiosity that enables the building of dignity in difference and respect for what we don’t understand, value, or know. We help our clients understand that it’s ok to think what they think, and for others to think what they think, and that that difference neither threatens nor diminishes them.

Recent Engagement

Emotional Intelligence skills development to build tolerance for difference and differing perspectives - Global SaaS platform

Curiosity and compassion in place of judgment, anger and fear

Because cancel culture is simply what happens when an intolerant culture meets excessive anxiety and fear, we worked with senior leaders to develop their emotional intelligence as the best and only tool to understand what goes on for those around them at an emotional rather than surface or logical level.

Through training, coaching and team working we gave them the frameworks to recognise and interpret their own inner states so they could better manage difficult emotions - effectively naming their emotions to tame their emotions. They came to understand the vital importance of doing this work to allow them to be less threatening to those around them - be recognising and defusing their own difficult emotions instead of living them out, people become more understandable and predictable to others, and therefore they feel safer to be around and are less likely to trigger defensive emotional states (fear or affront leading to anger or aggression) in the other.

At the same time, we worked to build their skills to understand the words and actions (or silence and inaction) of their colleagues as information and communications about what is going on for the other: to reframe aggression as a cover for confusion or even fear, so that they were better able to offer support for their colleagues who are feeling under threat, rather than to be triggered by them and respond in kind with defensiveness and aggression.

Colleagues reported an increased sense of feeling understood and supported, an increased tolerance for different perspectives, and a greater sense of shared understanding and being ‘in it together’.