Hi Joe,
I’m wondering if you can give some insights to a dilemma I have at work. I’m the supervisor of a team that is made up of people who have different views about politics and other issues. Over the last couple of years, things have gotten worse. We are all trying our best to work together but it’s getting harder. We are losing trust and it seems so tense. We used to laugh with each other and get along. I’ve tried so many things. I don’t know what to do any more. You have any ideas? Thanks,
Hopeless Leader
Hey, Leader.
Sorry to hear it’s been tough. This is a core reason I put my ideas and practices together in my upcoming book, “Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace.” I explore the possible cause of that internal journey we’ve all taken from once being friends, or at least collegial, to now viewing each other as threats.
This is certainly a societal issue but, for your struggles, I’d like to offer perspectives on leadership and management. When I train leaders, I emphasize the importance of creating a work dynamic of safety and trust. This sets up the conditions for a work culture that is both inclusive and also functions with a strong structure of holding each other accountable with respect and compassion. This leads to mutual empowerment, where we can honor our differences and also choose to see each person at their best.
You say that there is a lack of trust. That may not be your fault, but what can you do to shift that? How can you model an empowered vulnerability and transparency that is not weak, but that encourages others to show up in a more authentic way. How can you inspire others to take more responsibility for fostering this kind of work culture? It starts with one person.
If we are not feeling safe, we inadvertently perceive any change, things that are different or unknowns as a threat. We close our hearts and focus on our differences and imperfections. I find that some of the core causes of what makes someone angry, oppositional or closing their heart comes from a core feeling or belief that they are feeling powerless, or not heard, seen or understood. Could this be what is happening with your team?
I would like to offer you an exercise I use in my Resilient Power Leadership program – a human-centered approach to leadership and management that increases productivity and minimizes burn-out. You would need to make the time for everyone in their busy schedules to be present and not rushed for this:
- Clarify each person’s core values: Instead of focusing on the more outward characteristics of a person (political affiliation, religion, whom they choose to love), focus on what resides in the heart of each person. Ask them to all write down their top 10 values – for instance, efficiency, compassion, family, truth, joy, accountability. (If you’d like to explore this concept of values, there are many examples online, or check out my book, “Mastering Respectful Confrontation.”)
- From the 10, ask them to choose the top five; then three. This can bring up emotions and surprises. Give the space for this.
- Next, have each person share their top three with the group, and then ask the rest of the group to reflect back on how they have seen this person operate from this value.
- After everyone has had a turn, write down on a flip chart or white board all of the top three values of each member of the team. Acknowledge where there is overlap and also acknowledge the diversity of what each person brings to create this unique team.
- You may then ask the group if they are willing to commit to treat one another from these highest values moving forward, and also find a respectful way to hold each other accountable when they slip and forget.
There are many tips I can offer, but I feel this one addresses your question. By recognizing and celebrating the highest core values of each person, you transcend the things that cause separation, and then reorient with each other from a place of commonality. You help each other remember who they are at their best. Since I believe our values reside in the core of our hearts, we reveal more of who we are, setting up the conditions for more empowered vulnerability, safety and trust, cutting through the confusion and suspicion.
This may inspire you, Leader, to approach the situation from a place of hope and possibility. Instead of focusing exclusively on what separates and creates mistrust, use your creativity to get everyone back to what unites you and inspires you.
Trust your courageous heart,
Joe
Learn more about Joe Weston and his work here. Make sure to c heck out Joe’s bestselling book Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace, published March 2023.
To Ask Joe, please submit questions to: AskJoe@Fulcrum.us.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.