How Leaders Can Navigate Election 2024 Anxiety With Respect and Intentionality

Workplace leaders face a critical challenge in an era of increasing polarization: maintaining team cohesion and productive dialogue when social and political divisions run deep.

According to recent surveys, over half of workers say they never or rarely discuss politics at work, while 45% have regretted political discussions when they do occur.

Perhaps most concerningly, a quarter of employees have considered leaving their jobs due to their boss’s political beliefs.

Yet as social institutions have weakened and traditional venues for civic discourse have eroded, the workplace has inherited many of society’s most challenging conversations.

Leaders must now navigate this complicated terrain with intention and wisdom.

Election 2024 Anxiety is Sky High

Complicating this issue is the increasing stress and anxiety Americans report feeling about the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

A new survey from the American Psychological Association reported that 77% of adults cited the future of the United States as a significant source of stress in their lives, 73% reported being stressed by economic issues, and 69% said the election was their main source of stress.

Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, told UC Berkeley News that two main factors exist during elections that create an ideal breeding ground for anxiety.

“One thing we know from psychology is that people really hate uncertainty and also hate a lack of control. Elections have both. You only have one vote. So there is a lot of anxiety.”

In addition, the APA reported, “Compared with the previous two presidential elections, stress related to the 2024 election was slightly higher than in 2020 (69% vs. 68%) but significantly higher than in 2016 (52%). Stress related to the current election appeared to be driven, in part, by the potential consequences from the election results.”

• 72% expressed concerns the election results could lead to violence.
• 56% said they believe the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election could lead to the end of democracy in the U.S.

Despite this, 3 in 5 adults also reported feeling hopeful the election will lead to positive change.

“Findings also suggest that the current political climate has motivated positive change through individual actions,” the survey found.

“More than three-quarters of adults (77%) said they intend to vote in the presidential election, and half of adults (51%) said they feel more compelled to volunteer or support causes they value as a result of the state of our nation—significantly higher than the 45% who said so in 2019 prior to the 2020 presidential election.”

The Foundation of Respect

However, Denise Hamilton, an author, speaker, and consultant with 25 years of executive experience with Fortune 500 organizations, explains, “One mistake we have made in our quest for tolerance is centering our understanding of someone else’s experience as a precursor for offering them our respect.”

She notes that if we stop talking to those who have different values and opinions then we’re all basically siloed in our own echo chambers, stating: “If we decide we’re going to stop talking to the Flat Earthers, the only people they have left to talk to are other Flat Earthers. And that superimposes and reinforces the concepts in a circle, and you’re never going to penetrate or get any kind of connection or reconnection with that person. We have to stay in relationship.”

Kim Scott, Radical Candor author and co-founder explains in her new book Radical Respect, that the word respect has two very different meanings.

“The first has to do with admiration for someone’s abilities, qualities, or achievements. That kind of admiration has to be earned.” But that’s not what Kim is talking about in Radical Respect.

The definition of respect she uses is a regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, and traditions of others. This kind of respect is something we owe to everyone; it is not something that needs to be “earned.”

The kind of respect that is the birthright of every human being is crucial to a healthy culture. We don’t have to respect a person’s opinion on a particular topic—we can disagree, vehemently.

We don’t have to respect a particular action a person took—we can still disapprove and hold them accountable.

But we do have to respect that person as a human being if we want to be able to live and work together productively while also leaving space to disagree and hold each other accountable when necessary.

Kim and Hamilton agree that respect should come first as it creates the foundation that allows for genuine understanding to develop.

All human beings deserve baseline respect, regardless of their views or background. Only by starting from this position of fundamental respect can we create the psychological safety needed for authentic dialogue and mutual comprehension.

The Leader’s Role: Being Intentional

In polarized times, leaders cannot take a passive approach and hope divisions will naturally heal. “This is not a passive time,” Hamilton emphasizes. “Leaders have to actively have a plan.” This includes:

• Being thoughtful about timing and workload around potentially triggering events like elections.
• Creating appropriate space for processing emotions and grief.
• Facilitating intentional reconnection across team differences.
• Counteracting the forces of division that employees face outside work.

Leaders must recognize that their teams are being bombarded with content designed to inflame division and hostility. It takes active effort to create workplace cultures that foster connection instead.

Moving Beyond Surface Engagement

One of the challenges in addressing workplace polarization is the tendency toward superficial engagement with different perspectives. Social media and modern communication often reduce complex issues to soundbites and oversimplified positions.

To this end, the APA survey also found that 82% of people are worried that people are basing their opinions and values on false or inaccurate information.

Leaders need to encourage deeper dialogue that:

• Moves beyond binary positions to explore nuance.
• Verifies shared facts and information sources.
• Focuses on relationship-building rather than “winning” arguments.
• Creates space for longer, more thoughtful discussions.

As Hamilton notes, “Brevity can be the enemy” when it comes to meaningful dialogue across differences. Complex issues require time and space to explore properly.

“I don’t know that you’re supposed to wax philosophical about the deepest beliefs of your heart in 140 characters. I think you need a few more characters to accurately communicate. And I think there’s so many super important conversations that we’re having in ways that are too short and are really absent of relationship, right? I do think difficult conversations require a little bit of skin in the game,” Hamilton says.

“Let’s get offline and into the real world and have real conversations with real people.”

From Passion to Progress

Kim says, “I think it is actually important to feel free to talk about politics at work because I think so many of us have so many emotions. If something is happening that is upsetting to me, I need to process it with the people who  I’m around.”

While intense disagreement can feel threatening to workplace harmony, Hamilton suggests there’s potential in properly channeled passion: “I kind of secretly love it, because I hope that people care.”

The key is redirecting that energy from abstract arguing to concrete positive action.

Leaders should encourage employees to:

• Focus on impact in their immediate sphere of influence.
• Transform passionate opinions into practical local engagement.
• Build authentic relationships with colleagues as whole people.
• Take ownership of making positive change rather than just critiquing.

Hamilton has advice for folks to consider prior to engaging in a potentially divisive discussion.

“I have a four-question rubric. Does it have to be said? Does it have to be said by me? Does it have to be said right now? Does it have to be said this way? And I can tell you, I get pulled into a lot of conflicts within organizations, and if people had gone through those four steps before they spoke, I think 90% of them wouldn’t have happened.”

Creating a Sustainable Future

The ultimate goal isn’t to eliminate disagreement but to build organizational cultures that can engage with difference productively. This requires:

• Maintaining baseline respect for all team members.
• Being intentional about creating space for authentic dialogue.
• Encouraging deeper engagement beyond surface-level debate.
• Channeling passion into positive action.
• Focusing on relationship-building across differences.

The leader’s task is to help teams remember and act on this truth, even in polarized times. Through respectful engagement and intentional culture-building, organizations can contribute to healing societal divisions rather than amplifying them.

The path forward isn’t about enforcing agreement — it’s about creating workplaces where people can disagree while maintaining their humanity and connection to each other. This may be challenging, but it’s essential for leaders who want to build truly sustainable and cohesive organizations in our complex modern world.

Hamilton encourages leaders to adopt an “ownership” mentality, viewing themselves as stewards of a shared legacy. She contrasted this with a “renter” mindset, which prioritizes short-term gains over long-term investment. This analogy underscores the importance of leaders taking responsibility for the well-being of their organizations and fostering a sense of shared purpose among their teams.