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Calm Beats Clickbait: Leading Through Polarization
11 Plays2 months ago
Outrage sells—but it destroys clarity. Manny explains why attention is currency, how our tribal wiring gets hijacked, and the Stoic operating system (wisdom, courage, justice, temperance) that helps leaders stay open-minded across politics, friendships, and business. Includes a 7-step Open-Mind Protocol and three guardrails to keep your culture sane and your company moving.
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Transcript
Introduction to Voice of Growth
00:00:04
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The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
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People saying radical left, people saying fascism. Outrage is profitable. Is it easy? Absolutely not.
00:00:22
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You needed to belong to a tribe to survive.
00:00:27
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Questioning your government is literally the most American thing that you can do. The panic that is seized on a few sheep will soon extend to the whole flock.
Challenges of Polarization in Business
00:00:44
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Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Minded Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host. As a CEO, as a business leader, as an executive, as an entrepreneur, you have a duty You have a duty to yourself, to your family, to your employees, to your community, and to all of those who depend on you for your product or service.
00:01:12
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You have a duty to succeed. You have a duty to grow your business and move your value forward. But there are certain things that will push back against us.
00:01:24
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We all know about market drivers, market conditions. We all know about competition. We know about business. business regulations from the government. But one thing we don't talk about very often is polarization.
00:01:37
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Polarization or division is becoming more difficult to do business in. It's creating sides and those sides are getting further and further away from one another.
00:01:51
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The conversations we used to have where we could ah agree to disagree with somebody are beginning to become fragile and the very fabric of our culture and how we exist, how we operate is beginning to show where and and and is beginning to really become two pieces rather than one.
00:02:14
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Now, I'm not gonna talk about politics very much, although I will talk a little. But these elements are becoming difficult as a business leader to navigate through. And is it it's your duty to do these things and create a culture in your organization and make decisions as an executive that will create more unity, create more respect, and really just open up the conversation so that we can go back to agreeing to disagree.
Media's Role in Division
00:02:46
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Let's get a little deeper. Why is this happening? Well, algorithms are hungry and outrage is profitable.
00:02:57
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These elements that divide us are beginning to control us more and more. Now, attention has been a currency for a long time, but it has become more valuable today than any other time in history.
00:03:11
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Your attention is what drives your decision-making. It drives your money and your time. Those are all resources where your attention is being swung from one side to the other.
00:03:25
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And social media is only part of that conversation. It really happens and starts with you and what you decide to do when you see something that is um explosive.
00:03:39
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Do you react to it? Or do you respond to it with calm? Do you divide and begin to ah create enemies of those that disagree with you?
00:03:51
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Or do you pause and instead agree to disagree and go on your day?
Leadership in Managing Anger and Division
00:03:56
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Now, I'm not saying that you should necessarily be quiet you're things are against your values.
00:04:03
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What I'm saying is that there's no place for the level of anger and disrespect and even violence and even murder that occurs today because of these ideas that one side holds more strongly than the other, and then they're explosive.
00:04:19
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I've seen this play out on social media. I've seen friends drop in some, whatever it is, an image, a news article, you have video And then you see people on one side begin to attack and then you see the other side and it becomes easy to do so because we're just doing it from the comfort of own home, right? We're just sitting here on our phones or laptops or whatever and we're adding to this fire.
00:04:44
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But now it's becoming more prevalent out in the quote, real world. And now there's more violence, political violence, which I've done a podcast on before. And it's becoming to not only happen somewhere were out there, but literally in your neighborhood, in your community. And these things, in my opinion, have no place.
00:05:05
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Now, as a business leader, you've got to deal with this. You've got to set the culture in your organization that Please pay attention. I'm going to give you some tools you can use to really self-reflect and decide on how you you affect when these things occur in your life.
Psychology and Media Influence
00:05:23
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Now, why does this happen? Our brains, our 200,000-year-old operating system is hardwired to prioritize threats and belonging to a tribe.
00:05:38
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It's just hardwired. Threats are obviously easy to understand, but belonging to a tribe, that's when it becomes more difficult. So belonging to a tribe, if you were in the caves back 100,000 years ago, you needed to belong to a tribe to survive.
00:05:57
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You needed that tribe to provide for water, food, shelter, protection. And if you were thrown out of the tribe, you would likely die.
00:06:09
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That's exactly why we as human beings are so afraid of public speaking, because we believe that somewhere deep in our operating system, that if we say something wrong or misspeak, that the tribe or whomever we're speaking with or to is gonna throw us out and it really taps into that old school 200,000 year old mentality.
00:06:32
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That's why it happens. So what the media is doing today with these dividing factors, and I'm not just talking about the media, there's so many things that are happening today, but the media and social media is the conduit, right?
00:06:47
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The media is not something we just consume. The media is actually consuming us. the level of issue and people being glued to their phones.
00:06:59
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There are literally situations and psychological things that occur today that didn't occur ever before. You know, people talk about addiction to social media, although I'm not psychologist, from what I understand, it's not a true addiction, like a physical addiction, in the same way as nicotine or meth.
00:07:20
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but it does form some bonds in the dopamine loop, the dopamine cycle, which you can YouTube or Google, it and you'll find a lot of resources in that domain.
00:07:33
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So what it does is in politics, it creates these citizens that push the other the other side. In friendships, it makes disagreements existential.
00:07:44
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And in business, it replaces strategy and ah with ideology and crowds out the customer voice. I've seen it play out. I've seen companies that take a stand in one way or the other, and they lose customers.
00:07:59
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I've seen business leaders argue at certain events. And that really is to the detriment of the entire market. I think that there's a better way to go through this.
Stoic Virtues for Leadership
00:08:13
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On September 10th, we had the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Now, I know a lot of folks already fatigued by this conversation, but I believe it's still worth discussion. What happened that day created ah cycle of grief, anger, recrimination.
00:08:31
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You get one side ah talking about and celebrating it. You get the other side going against it. And you have this whole madness that is really tearing to shreds some of the basic liberties that we've enjoyed for 250 years now.
00:08:46
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And I firmly believe in freedom of speech. um But there's things happening right now where it leads up to more violence and vitriol that I believe there's no place in in our in our society today.
00:08:59
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And so what do we do as leaders when this happens? What do we do when there are these events that occur in life and we have employees that are that are watching this and being part of this? Or maybe we have some very strong opinions.
00:09:11
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And so we always, especially as Stoics, lean upon the virtues. And before I speak the virtues, I'm going to read some very interesting ah impactful quotes. I think these are timeless.
00:09:25
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These are were spoken 2,000 years ago, give or take, but they really helped to to really help us understand how to deal with these things as they occur.
00:09:38
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This one is from Epictetus. It is not events that disturb us, but our judgments about them. And the second one is from Marcus Aurelius.
00:09:49
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You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. So these Stoics were dealing with this 2000 years ago.
00:10:04
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These are elements that we deal with today more than ever. And if you think about politics, it's all upside down. I won't go through the specifics, but 25 years ago, 20 years ago, 15, five, even two years ago, politics was way different than it is today.
00:10:23
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And, you know, we used to have um Republicans that would be considered, they would self-describe it being liberal. Do you know that it was a time when there was conservative Democrats?
00:10:37
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Now these lines are so firmly drawn that there's no Democrat that would consider themselves conservative and there's no Republican that would ever consider themselves a liberal.
00:10:51
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And so in my firm belief, questioning your government is literally the most American thing that you can do. This is what this nation was founded on.
00:11:01
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And there's nothing wrong with questioning what happens in the media or what happens with these situations at large, but it's how we react to them. I won't go too much into the deep state conspiracy theories, but I will say that there was a book written 1895 called Crowd Gustave Bon.
00:11:23
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called the crowd by gustavve lebbon where he basically detailed that the action of crowds are not rational. They are a mass of uncoordinated and largely unconscious behaviors that essentially are, we see today.
00:11:41
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He said, there's three things that are to be used to control a crowd affirmations. So the rhetoric must be simple and clear. We see this today.
00:11:52
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People saying radical left, people saying fascism, people saying right-wing extremism. You see this all the time, play out day in, day out. The second of which is repetition.
00:12:04
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It's to be said over and over and over again. Turn on Fox News. What are you going to hear? Turn on MSNBC. What are you going to hear These elements are becoming more repetitive all the time at all levels, at all channels.
00:12:19
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The last one is contagion. So when these ideas and sentiments take belief, they spread like wildfire. And there's a quote here by Le Bon that is ah really eye-opening.
00:12:34
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A panic that is seized on a few sheep will soon extend to the whole flock. I read that and I was like, wow. So as business leaders, remember your duty.
00:12:47
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Remember your your charge, your mission to grow your business. And as Stoics, we need to remember to use your virtues as a lighthouse. So let's go through them right now.
00:13:01
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So when big events happen, slow down. Seek to understand. Seek clearly. Act justly. So there's four Stoic virtues, the first of which is wisdom.
00:13:12
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So in in wisdom, If it is not right, if it is not true, don't say it. That's actually by Marcus Aurelius. And these places in life where wisdom comes to play is all the time.
00:13:32
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I fire up this phone right now and my wisdom in this framework, what I just said, if it's not right, don't do it. If it's not true, don't say it. You see it play out.
00:13:43
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Those with the loudest voice, people on podcasts, people that have shows on television, micro-influencers, you see them all the time. If they say it loudly and if they repeat it, people believe it.
00:13:58
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Now with the advent of deepfakes and all these other things that can be put into play, it's drawing lots of questions regarding what is the truth?
00:14:09
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On today's podcast, we're not going to talk about the truth, although I will talk about that on a future podcast. But I will say that ask lots of questions. Think about all the elements at play that are stacked against you finding the truth.
00:14:24
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The second virtue is courage. Courage is in this framework of And when we see this, an event happens and you see the the sides begin to divide, courage is standing up and looking across that person that you disagree with and not painting them as a monster, humanizing them.
00:14:46
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Remember that they essentially want the same thing. We all want to be healthy, happy. We want to contribute to society. We want to help other people.
00:14:58
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We want to make some money. We want to have a legacy. These are all elements that make us more human than not. When we begin to dehumanize the other side that we disagree with, we're making them into somebody we can just discard.
00:15:15
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There is an FBI negotiator, Chris Boss, that I listened to and I actually read a lot of his content. He talks about in a hostage situation that if you humanize yourself and and you make yourself a person rather than just a body, that you have a higher chance of surviving that situation.
00:15:36
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And it's very true in this context we're talking about. If you look across the aisle to somebody who you disagree with and remember their name and remember that they have their own opinion and their own goals in life,
00:15:49
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you actually begin to build a bridge across that you can ah lay respect and some level of let's just agree to disagree. Third one is justice.
00:16:02
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This is where if you think about what happens in the world, judge people by facts and conduct, not by labels.
00:16:13
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Labels are thrown around today like they're going out of style. And these labels paint a picture that is not true at all sometimes. Maybe there's an element of truth, but when you paint with a broad brush stroke, you're going to dehumanize the other person and you're going to create more distance between you and them.
00:16:33
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So apply the same standard that you'd want applied to you. Apply the same standard that you apply to your friends and your family, to these people that disagree with you. Is it easy? Absolutely not.
00:16:45
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It is extremely difficult to do that. Extremely difficult to have that level of justice when there's something that really cuts across the grain of what you believe in.
00:16:56
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It's like the chalkboard situation with your nails. It is difficult, but in my opinion, has to be done in order to build that bridge of respect and consideration.
00:17:08
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The last one is temperance. Temperance or self-command is where you create a gap between the trigger and the response. This is where you begin to make some significant inroads.
00:17:21
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In my situation, that's where I've been working on the most. Something happens, I pause. I take a breath. I take a walk around the block. I breathe. I meditate. I do whatever it takes to create distance between the the trigger and the response.
00:17:39
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Marcus Reyes said this, choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. So this idea of you're offended um for whatever reason, now you're going to take it out in whatever form you want.
00:17:54
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There's no room for that. Violence is everywhere because people get offended, they get triggered, they react, and then the other side does the same thing. This gap is your edge. That pause is your edge, especially as a business leader.
00:18:07
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You pause, you will reap the benefits of the rest of the stoic principles. So I've taken a couple of the principles and i expanded out some other elements to really think about.
Mindfulness and Leadership Clarity
00:18:21
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And the first of which is you're not obligated to react to everything. Something happens, you know, as business leaders, we're looked upon by our community, by our employees, by our vendors and customers and all the ecosystem.
00:18:35
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We're looked upon for our leadership. Something comes up. We're not obligated to react to it. We're obligated to move the mission of our company forward. That should be your central obligation.
00:18:48
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And there are some guardrails here that I'm going to discuss that I believe are very important. There's three of them in order to really create some space between um what's happening in the world and what's happening inside your mind.
00:19:03
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The first of which is stay centered. Go through an inputs diet. That's where you reduce how much you ascribe to social media. That means that you create the the space so that you can actually live a life without getting all of this um external stimuli ah dragging you down.
00:19:26
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You can also do a value check-in. Think about what values you ascribe to your family and talk about them with your spouse, with your partner, with whomever, with your friends, those that are closest to you.
00:19:38
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And also um meditation. Meditation is a very powerful tool that I use Not enough, actually, but I use quite a bit. Ray Dalio, who is ah extremely successful entrepreneur and business leader, he started the world's largest hedge fund.
00:19:55
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I was listening to a podcast with him the other day and he talked about how meditation for him was life-changing. And to me, it's been the same. I've really leaned upon meditation as a way to bring myself down from the ledge.
00:20:11
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I mentioned earlier that trigger response gap. It's been able to create more space in that situation and made me a better better person, a better partner, a better father, a better friend, a better CEO.
00:20:24
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Really powerful. If you don't use it, definitely figure out how to use it. There's tons of YouTube material out there and just do a Google search um and you can do it all on your own. It's easy to do.
00:20:36
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Second thing after stay centered, second thing is stay focused.
Focus on Business, Not Politics
00:20:41
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Create, build, ship, spend time on running your business and less time on being affected by these events that happen in the world.
00:20:52
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Now, if you focus on your habits, you focus on, then they become behaviors and then it becomes your identity. I talked about this in podcasts before, but it goes back to the atomic habits framework where you basically create an identity of a person who is calm, a person who makes decisions based on their values and their company mission,
00:21:14
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And that is where you ascribe to be rather than being triggered and blown off course by whatever new thing comes out in the news and creates more distraction in your day. Number three, stay nimble.
00:21:28
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Stay nimble means that you actually put intent in keeping an open mind. You have those tough conversations, but you walk away still respecting the other person and agreeing to disagree.
00:21:41
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This also means being nimble. It means you open up your circle. We've talked about bias and how important it is to understand what it is, but bias is one element that needs to be really, really focused on.
00:21:54
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And by being unbiased, by creating a framework around you that prevents bias, you stay nimble and ultimately it's better for your business. There are some other thoughts that I'll come to to talk about today is that in light of these political things that occur, remember your citizen you're human first,
00:22:14
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which means you're a father, you're mother, you're sister, you're brother, you're whatever you might be, you're human first.
Human Connections Over Politics
00:22:20
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Then you're a citizen of your community, of your nation. Then you're partisan.
00:22:27
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we oftentimes get these things all flipped around. You become, your identity becomes a Democrat, your your identity becomes Republican, your identity becomes whatever this political inclination is, and then everything else is secondary and tertiary. I mean, these are things that are fundamental, but we need to remember these things.
00:22:45
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And that also means you don't dehumanize the other side. They're also human beings. They also have their own struggles, their own goals, and there's things that make them happy and so forth. The other thing is, this concept of the straw man.
00:22:58
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Now, a straw man situation is when you take somebody's views and beliefs and you build, that you find some elements in what they're arguing and you take that you build it up so you can very easily tear them down.
00:23:15
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If say, for instance, you're for um evs Your straw man attack might be, what are you talking about? You want me to drive an EV? You want me to be against all things that are oil-based or whatever?
00:23:29
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So you make this thing about a very simplistic version of whatever they're arguing about so you can just bring them down. The real thing to do is to build a steel man. ah steel man is when you take their argument and actually spend time to build it up, even in conversation.
00:23:47
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If they say that all cars should be abolished or all electric i sorry all all gasoline and petrol engines should be abolished. And if you used a steel man argument rather than immediately say, how is that possible with, you know, with um You know, semis aren't going to run correctly. And, you know, the petrochemical industry serves us in so many ways besides automobiles, whatever.
00:24:09
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You can actually take some time and understand, well, why do you feel so? What makes it um so compelling for you to to argue this way? I see that electric vehicles, if everybody drove electric vehicles, it could be useful for the environment. It could be this or could be that.
00:24:26
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So you begin with the strongest point in mind, and then you work backwards. And ultimately you can disagree. You can agree to disagree. For instance, I believe that EVs have a place in our society, but I don't believe that EVs are should be everybody's vehicles.
00:24:44
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I believe in, again, again personal freedom. I believe that there's a lot of of myths associated with EVs. Say, for instance, the amount of mining and resources required to um excavate and pull out the minerals to create the batteries.
00:24:59
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Anyway, it's a different topic, but that's just an example of the straw man versus the steel man. As far as friendships, choose relationships over rhetoric. If the conversation degrades into contempt, pause and reflect.
00:25:14
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Take a moment to understand that the friendship or relationship is worth more than whatever rhetoric's been being thrown around. And if it gets to the point where the um the situation gets very tense, decide to walk away.
00:25:29
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Say, I value your your opinion. I'm going to take a step back and leave it at that. And then as far as your business strategy over ideology, go back to focusing in on your customer, obsess over your customer,
00:25:46
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Go back and study and follow trends, find out how to implement them in your value chain, um and and focus on that rather than focus on whatever hyperbole is happening in the world, whatever elements are pushing your employees and your your ecosystem in one direction or another.
Customer Needs vs. Political Ideologies
00:26:07
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Go back and focus on your own business. Be open-minded. And really, if you're open-minded, you're going to find more opportunities that you might miss if you close off certain people in your life.
00:26:20
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You'll be able to hear weak signals. We talked about this when I was part of Spark Partners, the idea of recognizing weak signals, which is a very powerful thing in trend casting and being able to set the direction of your company.
00:26:36
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It definitely will be in another podcast of recognizing these these weak signals and what that really means. And then you build a culture and you build some identity inside your business so that your employees can also be part of that conversation.
00:26:52
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And you can compete without being attacked. And that is your unfair advantage. So with that, I'll summarize saying that as leaders, the world needs your calm.
00:27:04
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As leaders, there's moments that occur where tragedy that happens, where tensions rise, where um this whole division becomes further and further away where you need to stop, introspect, apply the virtues, and use that as an opportunity to lead so that your employees, your community, your customers, and that ecosystem at large realizes and kind of looks towards you for your leadership.
00:27:39
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And that's how we're going to get these two sides to begin to turn the other direction and actually begin to work together. That divide becomes smaller. The polarization becomes less effective.
00:27:54
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And we begin to go back to an era where we can agree to disagree. And in business, go back to the original duty I mentioned before and move our company or values forward.
Encouragement to Share the Podcast
00:28:09
Speaker
If this helped, please share it with your community, um especially to a leader that needs to hear this, somebody who's struggling with some something that's happening in the world, share this with them.
00:28:20
Speaker
I think it's important for us to, as we find context and content out there that serves us, share it with folks. It's important for not only the other person, but yourself in being a human.
00:28:33
Speaker
And of course, this podcast and taking the message to more people, And with that, I am signing off for today. Thank you for your time and attention. Cheers.