The silent career killer - are you affected?

It’s not easy. For most of us, work is where we spend the majority of our waking hours. The people we share our cubicles and offices with begin, over time, to blur our understanding of the lines between colleagues and friends. In this environment, a silent killer has emerged.

Most of the lines we know not to cross are clear. Everyone with a brain in their head knows that there is no role in the workplace for sex, violence, religious proselytizing or racial language. These we simply recognize as universally accepted conventions of modern life.

In one of life’s minor ironies, what ‘political correctness’ fails to address is the only thing we could really use some clarity on – to what extent is it correct to be political?

Is bringing political views into the workplace, including visible support for causes of all kinds, acceptable? Or is it no better than bringing in pornography or handing out copies of the Book of Mormon? Both of these can be defended with first amendment arguments.

LeBron James and the Miami Heat in hoodies last Thursday

Emotive issues can arise overnight and garner widespread public support. Trayvon Martin’s shooting in Florida a month ago has drawn substantial attention across the United States . The symbol of the growing awareness movement is a hoodie, worn with the hood up. In Atlanta on Sunday, Pastor Raphael Warncock preached in a hoodie to a congregation clad in hoodies. LeBron James and the Miami Heat appeared in a team photo on Thursday, all hooded. But does this mean you can or should wear a hoodie to work? 

Where does politics sit on the spectrum of acceptable workplace behavior? Should you support or highlight any political cause in a professional environment? What are the benefits of supporting a cause at work?

The answers are: Nowhere, No and None.

The best advice anyone who works in the field of employment can give you is that you leave your politics at home. At the end of the day, the philosophical arguments around your right to express your views are far less relevant than the practical considerations that make these expressions extremely unwise. Here are six reasons to keep your job and career politics free.

It’s not what you’re there for

Above all other things, there is an overriding principal that cannot be ignored. Our behavior at work must be governed by the fact that someone is paying us to be here, and probably not to have political conversations, or inspire others to have them.

Even if we’re not ethically required to keep our personal opinions away from the work place, we are obliged to limit our activities to those for which we take the pay check.

It is far more likely to do you harm than good

People are offended far more easily than they are impressed. For example, on your way in to work tomorrow morning when you pass the front desk security person, at whom you normally smile politely, wave boisterously and call out ‘Hi John! How are you doing?’ Then tomorrow morning, at exactly the same moment, shout an expletive at him. A year from now, ask him which one he remembers.  When you offend someone, knowingly or unknowingly, it lingers. One positive interaction with you does not cancel out one negative one. It’s called politics for a reason: it divides people. However safe your issue, someone somewhere will be offended. How will that affect their professional interactions with you?

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Politics has filled more cardboard boxes
than many people realize. 

A colleague of mine who often wore an NRA baseball cap on dress down Fridays couldn’t understand why I thought it was a bad idea for him to wear it to work. ‘When people ask about it, I tell them it’s a civil liberties issue,’ he said. He went on to explain that this instantly put them at ease that he wasn’t some nutcase stock piling weapons in his garage to unload at the ethnic minority of his choice. Problem solved as far as he was concerned. ‘What about the people who don’t ask?’ I said. Blank stare. What he had failed to take into account was that not everyone who raised an eyebrow, or more, gave him the opportunity to express his view. All around the workplace were people who had made their judgments already, without any thought of giving him the opportunity to put his views in context. You may well start some interesting conversations, but it’s the conversations you won’t get to have that could hurt you most.   

It’s not scalable.

Plugging your cause, whether it’s political or charitable simply isn’t realistic if everyone does it. Seven hundred people with one cause a year means two causes every day. You’ve just destroyed the business you work for.

Who died and made you emperor?

What matters to us almost certainly doesn’t matter nearly as much to others and we should have the humility to realize this. Who made you the office’s moral guardian? You can’t choose your colleagues and they didn’t choose you, they certainly didn’t elect you to tell them what they should care about. You have no mandate.

What if the story changes?

Attaching yourself to an uninvestigated cause could lead you to look foolish later when a different narrative emerges. Your ‘John Smith is innocent’ t-shirt will get you the most attention when John Smith pleads guilty to ten murders. If you jump on the bandwagon, you may fall off. Your fortunes in the perception of your colleagues will rise and fall with whoever you’re supporting. (How’s that John Edwards for President poster in your office looking now?)

Stay focused on what you’re at work to accomplish. It’s not a question of ethics, or your rights – it’s a simple practical thing.

Whatever your professional aspirations – career progression, promotion, more contracts, more money, freedom and flexibility – espousing your political views will not help you achieve them.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.

Planning a spectacular resignation? Be prepared to live with it.

The internet has a very, very long memory. We would all do well to remember that.

This last week has been shark week for the disgruntled employee. On Wednesday, mild mannered mid-level executive Greg Smith dropped a bomb on Goldman Sachs, when his resignation letter was printed as an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.

Just a day earlier, senior engineer James Whittaker posted a blog to Google’s intranet explaining the reasons behind his decision to quit the internet giant.

Greg Smith's resignation letter 
appeared in the New York Times

Both employees came off as genuinely concerned, likeable and – most importantly – never surrendered the moral high ground. Goldman Sachs, said Smith's letter, lacked integrity in its dealings with customers. Google, said Whitaker, had sold the company’s soul to advertisers and destroyed the culture of innovation. There were no insults, no personal finger pointing and no sarcastic tone. Both men will be criticized for going public, but both can defend their actions as necessary and ultimately dignified. 

Of course, not everyone takes this approach when it comes to resignation.

A personal favorite of mine will always be Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater who, after being pushed too far one too many times by an obnoxious passenger, grabbed a beer from the trolley, popped the lever of the emergency exit shoot and slid to freedom like a child in a play park – his resignation, called over his shoulder, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’

Joey DeFrancesco of Providence, Rhode Island can be found on YouTube resigning with the enthusiastic support of a brass band. Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Micro bowed out with a haiku via twitter (Financial crisis / Stalled too many customers / CEO no more.)

There are a lot of ways to quit a job. And the original approaches, while cathartic and enormous fun for your colleagues at the water cooler, will surely do the quitters little good in the long term. In the social media age, the things we do will stay with us, and recruiters are more and more thorough when it comes to web-vetting job applicants. Steven Slater’s CNN piece on YouTube has a quarter of a million hits. (As an employer would you really take the risk on it happening to you?)

Social Media has changed the culture 

of Spring Break

A report in the Times on the same day as Greg Smith's letter suggests that college students on spring break are becoming less wild and carefree. With cellphone cameras, Twitter and Facebook just a click away, party-goers are aware of what the consequences of their drunken antics might be.  They have simply changed their behavior. The same thinking should influence our workplaces. Anything you do could go viral at any minute, and there is no putting the toothpaste back in the YouTube. 

The end of employment is a natural part of the employment cycle, whether you quit or you’re let go. Hopefully most of the time it will be your decision, so when your time comes, remember that you’ll have to live with your actions for the rest of your career.

Even if your big statement doesn't attract national attention, you could easily develop a very unwelcome fifteen minutes of fame at an industry level. That will be enough to seriously affect your career prospects later on.