How to disagree at work in a polarised world

Kristen: Nat, you know me. A little bit of drama, I love the drama. However, I also get all hot and bothered by drama and conflict. And in an increasingly polarized world, this can be quite a stressful time for someone who just wants to sit in the middle with no conflict.

Nat: Maybe we need to do a poll. Is it perimenopause, or is it conflict that’s making you have a hot flush?

Kristen: Probably both. Actually, I’ve never had a hot flush. I’ve avoided a ton of symptoms. When I hear about other people’s symptoms I’m like, oh my gosh, I literally just have brain fog and an itchy scalp.

Nat: No hot flushes for me either. Very much the brain fog.

Kristen: I’m the big brain fog, as anyone who’s listened to our podcast over the last couple of years will have noticed.

Nat: I think we cover it very well.

Kristen: Where I’m getting at with this is that I love the “where do you stand on this topic or that topic?” conversation. At a dinner party a couple of weeks ago I was like, who’s everyone voting for?

Nat: Let’s break all the social rules.

Kristen: Yeah. And I’m all for it when the mood is light, to be fair, and maybe after another couple of drinks. But it is an increasingly polarized world, and I thought it would be fun to go through a few relatively recent flash points, as examples of where people can fall on two sides of the spectrum. Then we’ll look at how people behave in the workplace, and then what to do. I’ve titled this episode “Can We Still Disagree? Navigating a Polarized World at Work.”

Nat: Okay, throw the first flash point to me, because I think it relates quite nicely to work.

Kristen: There are so many, it makes me feel hot just saying them. The first two recent flash points are Ed Sheeran and Sydney Sweeney.

Nat: I’m going to start with Ed Sheeran, because I’ve been thinking a lot about him. I like Ed Sheeran. I think he’s a nice guy who’s been put in an impossible situation, who has very clearly decided, much like Dolly Parton, to leave politics out of his performances. There are lots of good reasons why people do that. This is going to put me right in the middle of the conflict, but to anyone who has come down really strongly on the side of canceling Ed Sheeran, I’d say, firstly, do you actually understand how the entertainment industry works and how tours are funded? There’s some stuff you don’t know when you’ve made this very strong decision. And secondly, have you looked at your own organization, and the other organizations you buy from and support, and made any sacrifices in your own life over their policies on Palestine? To me it’s such a classic case of coming down really hard on a nice person who may not have handled a very high-pressure, fast-moving situation well. I find that a real shame. I was talking about this in the pub the other day, and I think we as the general public have a lot of blame to take here. Twenty years ago we were canceling the Dixie Chicks for having a strong opinion, and now we’re canceling someone for not having one. Let’s stop being so hypocritical.

Kristen: I have some thoughts on this, but I’m going to save them for a later point.

Nat: Is that to avoid conflict?

Kristen: No, it’s to point out something I tend towards, which I’m going to question, so I’ll come back to it. I’ll just name a few more flash points. Sydney Sweeney. I’m disappointed as a woman, but whatever.

Nat: And going back to my disappointment in all of us in the general population, how on earth would I know what this gambling company is called? Why is everyone who’s outraged promoting the gambling company?

Kristen: I know, but we’re clearly not the target market anyway. Okay, JK Rowling, that’s another one.

Nat: Do you agree with this, Kristen?

Kristen: I don’t know. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. I know I have strong reactions, and everyone listening probably does too. Meghan Markle, anyone? You’ll fall on one side or the other. I’ve heard Nat’s views. Jacinda Ardern. I was reminded of this when I was in Auckland at dinner, where people are angry, and these are people in our circles. We also have an upcoming election and everyone has political views.

Nat: I feel like in New Zealand we’ve got an election coming and everyone’s pretty united in going, ugh, they’re all equally bad.

Kristen: Fair call.

Nat: We’ve been brought together by bad options.

Kristen: Then there’s return to work. I travel in different circles that have very different and strong views on return-to-work policies. And parenting is a classic: private school, public school, stay at home, working. That’s another one where people land on a side. And I don’t know if you’re in this algorithm, Nat, but there’s the whole Oreo cookie thing, with the mum in the WhatsApp group who was like, hey—

Nat: Nowadays if I see something, I need to see it five times and then Google it before I believe it. I saw it once and thought, if I don’t see this five more times and confirm it on a reputable news channel, I’m not going to believe it.

Kristen: Well, it blew up. She asked the school mums’ WhatsApp group if we could please not pack Oreos in our kids’ lunches. People have fallen down hard on both sides, and the internet’s divided over that one as well.

Nat: Is there a split in these, though? The reason we have strong views is that they say something about us. With Ed Sheeran, we like to think we would all have given up the tour. But the last two you mentioned, returning to work and parenting, are more personal. They feel like someone else’s choices are a comment on yours. A stay-at-home parent can feel almost personally attacked by someone who chooses to go to work, especially when the person going to work says, “I’d be so bored at home, I need to exercise my brain.” The person at home hears, “what, you’re saying I don’t need to, that I’m dumb?” And it’s the same with schools. Are you saying my kid going to a non-private school is a lesser choice? Those two feel really personal. We interpret someone having a different view as a personal attack.

Kristen: Let me disagree with you first, with some evidence that public figures are now flash points because they form part of our identity. It’s been shown that celebrities work as symbols of race, class and gender. Back to Sydney Sweeney, there’s a line of thinking that if she were Black, or not MAGA, there wouldn’t be the pushback, in fact we’d be celebrating. So she’s a symbol of MAGA, as it stands. Then there’s the pedestal effect. People deeply admire Ed Sheeran, and if they see him trashed there’s cognitive dissonance: hang on, I really align with his values, I’ve formed part of my identity around him. So it becomes a threat to someone’s own values and choices when public figures we strongly identify with are attacked.

Nat: What do we call them, parasocial relationships? Probably a slightly more dotted line, but you’re right, they do say something about us. I would question whether we’d feel differently about Sydney Sweeney if she voted differently, only because I’d challenge whether she would have done that ad if she had different values. I haven’t seen many women who’d back women’s sports put their hand up to do that. Though we don’t know.

Kristen: It’s a thread that’s out there, and it’s quite interesting. I know I feel personally affronted when someone I admire, like Jacinda Ardern, is absolutely trashed, because she symbolizes a leader I admire who went through crisis after crisis. But people who had a different experience during COVID lockdown, or whose business failed, have incredibly strong views there.

Nat: Gosh, I want to argue back at them immediately. My take on Jacinda and Ed is slightly different. My fear, and the reason I respond so strongly to people pulling Ed Sheeran and Jacinda down, is this: if they’re fundamentally good people who’ve made a mistake, and then they get absolutely brutalized for it. And is it even a mistake, or is it making the best decision you can with the information and time available? A good fifty percent of those decisions won’t turn out to be ideal. Doesn’t that create a really scary world where, if any of us puts one foot wrong, no other context or experience matters anymore, and we’re forever defined by one thing? That’s not a society I want to live in. I want to go back to the world where people could make a stumble or a misstep, and we could see it in a wider context. You could like his music or not, but I’d never heard anyone dislike Ed Sheeran as a person, so for him to be so brutalized by one thing, granted it’s a very big flash point, it just felt wrong.

Kristen: Thanks for the segue into the next point, which is: is this real, or is this just noise? Conflict platforms, otherwise known as social media platforms, deprioritize anything that doesn’t get a strong emotional reaction. Neutrality used to cost you nothing, and now it costs you reach. That’s why we see the rise of the manosphere and outrageous people saying outrageous things, Tucker Carlson and a lot of MAGA people as well. They used to be quite measured. I don’t think they believe it, but they realize they’re running a business and they’re after clicks. So extreme views are increasingly being normalized. New Zealand’s polarization has risen, you can see it with the upcoming election and the stances parties take, but it’s less than in most comparable countries. The US is in a quagmire of polarization at the moment, we know that. Looking at Europe, far-right parties are rising in prominence again, in Germany for example, not since World War Two. That is fascinating to watch. We’re seeing it with Meloni in Italy and Le Pen in France. It’s largely attributed to wealth inequality. So it’s back, and it isn’t going anywhere. Bring back Obama! My algorithm is just Obama and Eminem.

Nat: The other thing is my inner rebel. If anyone believes Sydney Sweeney didn’t do that ad with very clear intention, she and the team behind it knew exactly what kind of result they were going to get. We’re absolutely playing into their hands, and my inner rebel gets so frustrated at us being silly enough to fall for the same thing. If you’ve watched Louis Theroux’s documentary on the manosphere, which I really liked, it uncovered the idea that they really don’t care whether you like them or not. If you’re aggravated or you love them, either way the purpose is clout. Clout is the eyeballs, and the eyeballs get you the money. This world has become sophisticated enough that it’s not “love someone, they make money,” it’s “see someone, they make money.” I feel like we’re being manipulated, we’re sheeple. And this is why I hate outrage culture. She did a semi-naked ad, which in some people’s opinion was in poor taste and did a disservice to women athletes. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Why don’t we roll our eyes and let it fade into obscurity? Instead we’ve probably made it the most viral ad of 2026. Everyone in that demographic knows about this gambling platform now, thanks to us.

Kristen: I know. But I do like taking a stand for things. I was thinking about the feminist, one of the OGs of the second wave, and the same week Dolly Parton said her piece, I wondered why that feminist hadn’t put her name to anything. What is her name?

Nat: Gloria Steinem.

Kristen: Steinem, thank you very much. She would have said something, she would have been loud about it, as she has been her whole life.

Nat: That was a different world, where media was contained and saying something made a positive impact. We’ve now entered an era where saying something just amplifies the message they want amplified. There’s a nuance there. A lot of female athletes posted pictures and videos saying, this is what women in sport look like, and left it there. You don’t need to mention her or link to the gambling ad. You can use the moment to promote a different message without giving them the eyeballs they want. Twenty years ago you could play a different game, and that game doesn’t work anymore.

Kristen: Let’s move on. We could dissect each of these flash points, but the fact is we’re navigating the workplace with people who hold very different views from us, as evidenced by where people land on these things. Outside of work we can mute, which I’ve done on Facebook with some older friends and colleagues, or choose not to hang out with people. But in the workplace the project is due in a couple of weeks, so we have to collaborate. I wouldn’t suggest we’ve dropped into incivility in New Zealand, I don’t think it’s a massive issue. But what I’ve noticed is that the way people state where they stand assumes everyone should feel the same way. I remember a conversation about something as innocuous as return to work, where someone made the obvious statement that everyone should be back in for culture and collaboration and so on. I thought, weird that you assumed I’d feel the same. Now you’ve put me in an awkward position. Do I question it? Speak up? Stay silent? Do the Homer in the bushes, as I said on LinkedIn? That’s a pretty nothing one, but some can be a lot more provocative. So I thought it would be interesting to chat about how we navigate these tricky conversations. In our usual Monday LinkedIn poll, which got a decent thirty votes, I asked what people do at work when flash points come up. Sixty percent said they ask questions instead, and we’ll go through a few of these tactics. Twenty-four percent say what they think and are comfortable doing that. Eight percent change the subject, and eight percent, maybe like me in some cases, do a Homer into the bushes. If you don’t know that meme, it’s Homer Simpson creeping backwards into a hedge.

Nat: Does that reflect your experience? It doesn’t match mine. I find it very rare for people to ask questions. Normally they change the subject or shut down.

Kristen: Fair. You’re the one challenging what people say.

Nat: Yes. The world would be a very different place if sixty percent of us got curious when someone said something we disagreed with.

Kristen: I love it. It doesn’t reflect my experience either. People make a statement wherever they stand, and then you’re kind of backed into a corner. That’s the original problem. Someone says, “oh, that Meghan Markle, she’s such a so-and-so,” and I think, where do I go with that?

Nat: You’re forced into a very difficult social situation, because you have to either agree or disagree, versus a more nuanced approach where you could maybe have a conversation.

Kristen: Exactly. I based this section on a woman called Jessica Tarlov, who I’m a fangirl of. She’s an American liberal who sits on Fox’s The Five. Think of the most conservative news channel in the US, basically Donald Trump’s news agency, and she’s the lone liberal on a panel of five. She’s just launched a book, which I listened to her talk about over the weekend, called I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. It’s the classic Thanksgiving debate, where things start to get heated. I grew up in a debating family, and therefore I married someone who is not a debater, because I’m left with so much trauma from family arguments and stressful Thanksgiving dinners. But here we are. We need to learn how to navigate these situations.

Nat: When you say you grew up in a debating family, I don’t know your answer to this. There are two types. There’s the personal-attack kind, where it goes crazy and everyone ends up in a fight. And there are families who are really comfortable having more intellectual conversations where no one’s left feeling high tension.

Kristen: Probably the latter. It was a healthy form of debate about a lot of stuff, but I’m a sensitive person, so I always left feeling it personally, and I can see it in my daughter. Last night she was putting out a personal statement on who she is as a designer, and she had a beautifully written thing. I thought it might be missing something in terms of structure, but it was ten at night and my brain wasn’t working. I asked very gently, have you asked AI for its opinion, based on the outcome you’re looking for? You could see right away the sensitivity, the “I don’t want to give it any personal information.” I thought, oh, here we go, that’s how I was at that age. You have a strong stance, it relates to your personal identity, and you leave those big conversations bruised or unsettled.

Nat: In any debate, official or otherwise, if someone’s very good at it they tend to “win,” in quotation marks, and it’s easy to walk away feeling like you didn’t get your point across.

Kristen: Or feel heard.

Nat: Or heard. And when we’re younger and haven’t tested our ideas much, it feels really scary to have them challenged. I very much resonate with a nineteen-year-old going, I don’t want my ideas challenged, that might be a failure.

Kristen: Totally. Nat, I’m putting you on the spot, but if you want to scan through the list from Jessica Tarlov’s book and see if any resonate, I’m happy to kick off first.

Nat: You go first, I’ll have a look.

Kristen: I’ll start with the one that relates to your Ed Sheeran point, and then give the counterargument. This one is “leave space for people who choose differently.” She’s saying chill out about one another. It’s about refusing purity tests, not needing someone to agree with you on everything before you’ll work with them on anything. At work you don’t get to pick, and if every disagreement is a character assessment, you’ll run out of people to work with pretty quickly. But I’ve been thinking about this for myself. I can see both sides of a number of these flash points, so I might call myself a centrist. Then I heard a term last week, “the tyranny of the centrist.” The idea is that those who choose not to engage or take a side, which is where Ed Sheeran got into a pickle, are normalizing bad behavior, and the extremes see silence as agreement. I want to clarify that this has nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine flash point. It has to do with a friend of Epstein’s, a billionaire, dictating what’s said in free speech on a stage. If that isn’t called out, that’s the tyranny of the centrist, where you just let these billionaires run around and run the world down. So it’s an interesting tension.

Nat: I’m pretty similar. I can generally see both sides of a debate quickly, but I’ll also quickly pick which one I’m on. And I think there’s something more important these days about saying it’s not okay to have no opinion at all, as we see with Ed Sheeran. We’ve done this quite well in work contexts, where we’ll say, I’m going to die on this hill, or, I don’t care as much about this one, so I don’t hold the opinion tightly. I think Ed Sheeran was a bit of a victim of mismatching the strength of his feelings with where he felt comfortable sharing. My tip, having read through the list, is that the goal isn’t to win, it’s to open the door. We too often go into conversations trying to prove our point rather than trying to learn. Even from a biological viewpoint, if we all had the same beliefs, humanity would die out very quickly. We need diversity to succeed. We know at work that more varied experiences and perspectives lead to better results, so it’s a strength that we have different opinions, and it’s really useful to learn about them rather than shut them down. I also wrote a note under this list, because someone did exactly what’s probably your worst nightmare to me recently, and mine too. They came out with something so opinionated and so counter to what I believe, and I was left stuck. So I wonder if my first line from now on will be, are you open to changing your mind on this or not? Because if you’re not, that’s cool, let’s not talk about it. But if you are, let’s have a conversation.

Kristen: Love it. I heard her say that she’s never going to change someone’s mind in the moment, but she’s introducing an alternative view to the people listening. It might not be this person’s mind she changes, but eventually, over time, it might be someone’s. It’s an open door to further conversations, with that person and with their followers. We’ve each got one left. Mine is being calm under fire, which is probably what I lacked in my family debates growing up. Being calm under fire is its own credibility. Composure comes from prep, and we have a negotiating mini masterclass inside Powrsuit about prepping for your next big ask, which covers this. It’s about going through scenarios in your head, knowing your material well, and when things get hot, breathing and reminding yourself it’s hopefully not life or death. As an aside, she says that when she’s interrupted, it’s often a sign she’s winning. For those who hate being interrupted, which for me is more about not feeling listened to, that’s a useful thing to know. If you’re constantly being talked over, you’ve probably landed your point, and that helps her stay composed.

Nat: Although the goal is not to win.

Kristen: Well, the book is called how to win arguments and not lose friends.

Nat: True. My last one is empathy before education: understanding how painful it is for people to have their ideas pulled apart. When you come with facts, your body reacts before your brain does. I think this plays out in any disagreement. You see it a lot in romantic relationships, where someone says, “oh gosh, why did you leave your shoes out again?” and the other person doesn’t respond to the shoes, they respond to how abruptly it was said. The conversation changes very quickly from what you’re talking about to how you spoke about it. I wonder if it’s the same here, that the way we come at people has much more impact than the evidence we bring. So it’s worth building a safe environment. A tactic I use a lot these days is to find common ground. We were having this big debate in the pub, and our agenda had Ed Sheeran, Sydney Sweeney and three or four other items. What works nicely is finding something the other person says that you agree with and saying, I really agree with that, and there’s also this other thing. You’re constantly finding common ground and adding to it, so it feels like you’re on the same team trying to figure something out rather than on different sides trying to win.

Kristen: I like that you don’t have to like the person. If they hold really different views and you’re aghast, you don’t have to like the people you work with, but you can appreciate their uniqueness and respect that they’re individual humans navigating the world. That’s the empathy part too, recognizing they’ve had a completely different experience and upbringing, so of course they have a different perspective. I think that flows nicely with the likability point. Amazing. And I think we kept ourselves out of being canceled.

Nat: Maybe I got canceled with my comments about Ed Sheeran. I just felt so sorry for him crying on stage, and then of course everyone responds with “white tears,” and you think, oh, I don’t know.

Kristen: As soon as I saw it, I thought, oh no, he’ll be sick. It’s a lose-lose.

Nat: I think that rolls back to this: if we put ourselves in his shoes, your whole life is falling apart because you made one bad choice. Is that the world we’re going to live in? I don’t know. Sydney Sweeney is slightly different, because I think she’s actually winning in her own world on this. Poor Meghan Markle is sloshing around in the mud in the UK, but I think some of them are doing fine. Macklemore’s having a great time.

Kristen: Mark Ruffalo’s having a great time. And on my algorithm, Obama and Eminem are having a great time.

Nat: And Jacinda’s having a great time. I saw an interview with her this afternoon where she said that when she quit politics, she was really conscious not to say “I can’t do it all,” because she knew she was the second woman ever to give birth while in office. She made it really clear it was the rest of the job that made it untenable, not having a family. And I thought, she’s having a great time. She’s off at Harvard, doing interviews. That’s great.

Kristen: Hundred percent. Sydney’s in the sunshine too, I think. Thanks, everyone. Check out