Are we in a civility crisis? This week, Van Jones, host of The Van Jones Show and Co-Founder of Rapport, explores how encouraging civility in the workplace is key to maintaining a functioning society. Jones discusses how technology is fueling societal division, and how he believes we can instead foster better communication and understanding.
Are we in a civility crisis? This week, Van Jones, host of The Van Jones Show and Co-Founder of Rapport, explores how encouraging civility in the workplace is key to maintaining a functioning society. Jones discusses how technology is fueling societal division, and how he believes we can instead foster better communication and understanding.
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Justin Brady:
Business leaders know the future is already here. Distraction, threatens productivity. Technocrats are taking over. Civility is sliding. Memes control the stock market and non-humans are entering the workforce. I'm Justin Brady, equipped with 12 workplace trends derived from SHRM, analyzing 7,000 pages of reports, you and I are going to hear from psychologists, off-the-beaten-path experts, CEOs, scientists, entrepreneurs, and analysts to make sense of it all. You don't need to be a futurist. You need actionable insights now. You need to be a Tomorrowist.
I'm Justin Brady, and joining me today is Van Jones, author, host of the Van Jones Show on CNN and co-founder of Rapport. A lot to get into today, but first of all, thank you for coming on Tomorrowist. I really appreciate it.
Van Jones:
I'm glad to be here. And I think especially nowadays in any conversation that's about civility, bridge building, I want to be in it. I want to be in that conversation, bro.
Justin Brady:
Yeah, and that's what we're talking about. I was watching a bunch of your videos and I was watching the videos and I'm like, "Something tells me that this guy has a lot of enemies just for trying to heal and just for trying to build bridges." And so that all came to a head when I was watching a daytime talk show that will not be mentioned. And the hosts came at you.
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
It was not pretty. It was not kind.
Van Jones:
No.
Justin Brady:
And they came at you furious that you would have the audacity to try to build these bridges.
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
Are we living in a civility crisis?
Van Jones:
I think we're living in a civility crisis. I don't know if it's new in the human heart. I think it's just new because technology now allows and amplifies it. So, if you say something nice about somebody, you might get two clicks, two likes, two shares. If you say, "Hey, let me tell you why I'm pissed off at this person," suddenly it can be shared and it does get shared. And so there's something going on where technology is being used to distract and divide people. And I think we need to start using technology in a different way, which is why I'm a part of this new company called Rapport and we'll get you that. But I also think that people are mostly sheeple, people just kind of follow the trend.
Right now it's just trendy to be crappy. I think we can make it trendy to be the opposite of that. And I think that's what leadership is. Leadership is going first, against this current. This current of everybody crapping on everybody, and that being the cool thing to do, I think that's a sick fad and I think we need to make a better fad in the other direction.
Justin Brady:
It feels good that you say it's a fad.
Van Jones:
I think it's a fad.
Justin Brady:
Honestly, it feels great.
Van Jones:
Yeah.
Justin Brady:
I hope it is.
Van Jones:
Well, it is up to us. It's up to us.
Justin Brady:
That's true.
Van Jones:
The people who made these technology companies, these social media companies, et cetera, they're just people just like me and you. They probably had no idea they were going to destroy Western civilization by creating a monetary incentive for hatred and nonsense. They just thought, "Hey, here's a cool little thing. Let's put a like button here, put a share a button there." But now we know.
Now we know that if you just empower people to share mean stuff, that they will. And what we've got to do is figure out how can we use technology to bring people together? What are the things we can do that can actually use AI, for instance, to make the workplace more human? How can we hack people's desire to share good things? How can we hack people's desire to be supported and supportive and supercharge that? That's the next step. You can't blame individual people for responding to the incentive structure that's right in their hand and in the palm of their hand every day. You just got to change what's in the palm of their hand every day.
Justin Brady:
I mean, I want to ask how leaders encourage that in a corporate culture?
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
But it's no surprise you're from CNN.
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
And you've actually talked about this. You can see that media can stir outrage. It's pretty good at doing that.
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
So, do the people at CNN do, the people at Fox News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, do they play a role in this civility crisis?
Van Jones:
Absolutely. Look, first of all as news fragments, we're all chasing a smaller and smaller pie of people who even want to look at television. I mean, when's the last time you looked at television? You probably are mostly looking at Netflix on your laptop. You're probably looking at your phone most of the time. When's the last time you actually touched a physical newspaper? I mean, it might not have been the past two years.
So, those of us who are in these legacy industries, whether you're talking about television, even radio. People listen to podcasts way more than radio now. We're chasing the smaller and smaller pie. And the initial incentives are be a little bit more sensational, be a little bit hotter on the microphone, be a little bit more dramatic. Well, those little tiny incentives add up to a really hot culture, a really divisive culture. And then it also chases people away who don't want that. So, now the people left are the lava people. They really want it hot. It's like McDonald's coffee, like scalding your skin off your leg, and they want it even hotter.
So, that's the dying game. Well, there's only so far you can take that before you don't have a civilization. Civility is not optional. Civility is key to civilization. And civilization is what makes it possible for us to get up in the morning and not have to go grab a shotgun and go check our mail because you've got a functioning society. And guess what? A lot of places, they don't have that.
And so I am passionate about bringing people together. Not because I think people should agree on everything, because we're not going to agree on everything. Assume that. Assume that. So, if you're not going to agree, how do you talk about it? If you're not going to agree, how do you at least understand? If you got a neighbor who you don't agree with, that's not a problem if you understand her. If you understand, "Oh, you know what? She just lost her son three years ago to cancer." If you understand her, most of the stuff she does, you may not agree with it, it may annoy you, but you can be neighbors.
Justin Brady:
But it starts to make sense.
Van Jones:
It starts to make sense. But if you don't even understand where this woman's even coming from, you can't even have a neighborhood like that.
Justin Brady:
Correct.
Van Jones:
Let alone a nation. And that's where I think the workplace becomes so important. Everybody now is self-selecting out of community that forces interaction across difference, which is where you begin to develop the skills of civilization. Empathy, listening, learning, understanding, knowing how to disagree without being disagreeable. All that comes when you have to deal with people who are different from you. Guess what? People now on social media, they only follow the people they like. They move to a neighborhood or a city where it's people who vote the same way as them. Everybody is self-selecting out.
The last place where people have to deal with people who are different is work. Which means in the workplace, if we can figure out how to get civility there, how to get empathy there, how to get people respecting each other there, that can have positive ripple effects of rest of society. That's why the people who are part of SHRM, the people who are talking about... We got the box right here, civility at work. That's not a throwaway slogan. If you have civility at work, the country can work. If you don't have civility at work, that country won't work, and that's why it's so important.
Justin Brady:
You have two ideas here, two core ideas that I think these can be brought into the workplace. Partnership over pity. I like that. And you also have call up, not call out.
Van Jones:
Yes.
Justin Brady:
And whenever I have this conversation with individuals, I really like call up, not call out a lot. And I want you to expand on that.
Van Jones:
I don't know where this got started, but this idea that I can insult you into being a better person turns out to not be well-backed by science. It turns out that if I say to you, "You're a dumb person, you're a mean person, you're an ignorant person, you're in a cult, you're an unworthy person. Now, do what I say." You're a lot less likely to do what I say. So, the idea is to begin to develop a discipline. To look for points of agreement first. To look for where you can admire someone first. To call someone up and to call someone in.
So for instance, and I'll talk about how this is in our technology for Rapport, but look at it from this point of view. If you have a disagreement with somebody, I'll make it personal. I'm a progressive, you may not know this, but I'm a progressive. I vote for Democrats. So, the easy thing for me to do is to tell somebody who's a Republican all the things about Republicans I don't like. All things about Republicans I disagree with. Surprisingly when I do that, the Republican I'm talking to actually digs in even further and you wind up in this whole thing.
So, what I found is because of stuff I care about is so much more important than who you voted for. Stuff I care about is poor kids who don't have a chance. Stuff I care about is actually having a functioning country. I've got two little kids in diapers. I don't want them to grow up in a civil war. The stuff I care about is way more important than who you voted for. And so I found if I start off talking about, I'm talking to a group of Republicans, what I admire about them. I don't have to work hard. A lot of Republicans... Listen, a lot of Republicans, many of them are veterans like my dad.
Justin Brady:
Yeah, your dad was.
Van Jones:
They know what it means to stand up for the country. I respect that. A lot of Republicans are, especially now in the Trump era, a lot of them are union members like my mom. They know what it means to stick together, try to get something done for the group, not just for yourself. I respect that. A lot of Republicans are small business owners. They're putting food on the table for people. I respect that. And in fact, a lot of those values are the same values I want my kids to have. So, if I start with that and then I say, "Let's take those values, which are awesome values and apply them to stuff I care about these kids that don't have anything. What can you do with the values you have to help these kids?" It's unbelievable how much they're willing to do.
I was born in 1968. That was the year they killed Bobby Kennedy. That was the year they killed Dr. King. They tried to kill hope in America that year. But the thing about Bobby Kennedy, he was always one of my great heroes, is he said, "Moral courage is not your capacity to challenge your enemies. Any idiot is going to stand up to their enemies. Moral courage is your ability to challenge your friends when they're wrong." And that moral courage is what I look for in people. I worked with Newt Gingrich. Newt and I didn't agree on very much, but I have addiction in my family. He's got addiction in his family. So, we were able to work together to stand up an organization called Advocates for Opioid recovery to help people who are addicted get access to the right medications to be able to get off of drugs.
Proud of that. Worked with Newt Gingrich on some criminal justice stuff as well because he's a tough guy when it comes to law and order, but he's not without compassion when somebody's done their time and they want to get back into life. I mean, I've worked with people, people are shocked by, but thing I look for is character. Do you believe what you believe when it's not popular? Do you believe what you believe after telling you're friends that they're wrong? You've got character. We can work together.
If you're just a sheeple going with the trend and you're going to change your ideology just based on whatever's popular today, then it's harder for me to work with you. It doesn't mean I can't find something. But the other thing I think is very important, it's the technology that is making... Human beings haven't changed. I mean, with 10,000 years, 100,000 years, you basically got the same wetware, the same wetware between your ears. That hasn't changed. It's the software in your hand. It's the hardware in your hand that's changed. And that's why you're seeing all these differences.
And so we launched this company, Rapport, because we felt that somebody needed to take a stand, that you could use technology to bring people together. And that you could, first with Rapport, we think what's happening right now is going to be looked back on as brutal, as uncivilized in terms of putting people in virtual work environments where they never have met the person that they are supervising. They've never been in the same room with a person who's managing them. They've never breathed the same air, they've never shared your pheromones. They're just in a Slack channel or on Teams or on a Zoom.
That literally is almost an impossible situation for a mammal like you and a mammal like me to engage in well. We have no human experience. So, what you've got to do in that situation, where is the technology to help people in that situation be more human toward each other? Now, we're not going to make everybody go back in the workplace all the time. You're not going to shut off Zoom. You're not going to shut off Teams. You're not going to shut off Slack. So, you can't take that away, but what can you add? Can you add technology that begins to give people the opportunity to check in with themselves and check in with other people and begin to help? And that's what Rapport is. The company that I launched this past year is a company that basically uses our AI IQ to increase your EQ.
Justin Brady:
Emotional quotient, yeah.
Van Jones:
Your emotional quotient. Because basically, it's a widget that sits in your flow of work, let's you check in with yourself. These people in HR, this is what they want. They want you as a manager to have empathy for somebody who's totally different from you. Maybe you're middle-aged and white, maybe this person's a 23-three-year-old Black lesbian. You've never seen this person. You never will see this person, and yet you're supposed to have perfect empathy for them. You're supposed to know exactly how they're feeling. You're supposed to be this perfect manager for them. And there's zero context cues, and it's impossible.
If you're in my age group, I'm in my 50s. You want me to have empathy for some 23-three-year-old? Our generation, we didn't have empathy for our damn selves. Nobody even had empathy, nobody asked me how I felt once. It was like, "Get your ass to work." That was my entire [inaudible 00:14:48], "Get your ass to work." That was it.
Justin Brady:
Exactly.
Van Jones:
So, you're asking so much from people and give people such little help. Give them some little training, some little training they're going to forget in two weeks and then give them a survey they can fill out once a year. This is brutal. It's uncivilized and you're getting uncivilized results. So, what do you do? We've got this product, let's you do a 15-second check-in with yourself first. What's my energy level? What's my workload? You click a couple little things. Now I understand myself a little bit more. It's not a survey, but it's a 15-second quick check-in prompted.
And then when you connect with someone else, you can see their prompts. Now suddenly you know-
Justin Brady:
Oh, interesting.
Van Jones:
... "Oh, this person's having a high energy day. This person's overworked. This person's mom just died." Now, you don't want to do all that stuff in the beginning of your Zoom calls. Everybody check into a therapy session. But if you knew instantly when the Zoom call started, everyone's energy level, everyone's workload, everyone's most important fact of the day, suddenly you've increased the emotional intelligence of that team. Now, and technology helped you. Right now, technology is more focused on data and less focused on wisdom.
Justin Brady:
Yeah, that's true.
Van Jones:
And so the next round I think of innovation and technology is how do we now use all this stuff and all these tools for wisdom and not just for data?
Justin Brady:
We have universities now that are safe spaces. Do leaders of today, just verbally tongue-lash these students coming in and say, "You just need to grow up and get your ass to work," or is there a more empathetic way, but a strong way to say that?
Van Jones:
Well, I think that the empathetic and strong way to say it, if you're not talking about young people, and frankly even a lot of these young people coming off of campuses into our workplaces who are practically un-hireable. I mean, as young kids come in here, they expect, they come in lecturing us as to how everything's supposed to be. And, "Hang on a second, you're talking about stuff you'd never heard of two years ago, and now you're some Instagram expert on. How about do your job?" Well, "Oh, my God. You can't say that." But here's the reason that I think you have to.
I tell these young people all the time, I agree with you on safe spaces to a certain extent. I want you to be physically safe. I don't want you to be afraid you're going to get beat up. I want you to be afraid you're going to be sexually harassed. I mean, there are certain things that are off the off limits. Okay?
Justin Brady:
Yes, yes.
Van Jones:
So, now that kind of safety, physical safety or to be personally harassed called the N-word. Okay, that of course I'm with you on that. I'll fight till the last dog barks on that. But that's not what they're talking about.
Justin Brady:
Right.
Van Jones:
They're not talking about physical safety. They're talking about a certain kind of psychological safety. They want to feel that everyone, whatever they say, whatever they put in the Slack channel, it's going to make them feel good. And I'm going to say, I don't want you to be safe, psychologically. I want you to be strong psychologically. I want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong emotionally, and you get strong by being challenged. I'm not going to take the weights out of the gym for you. That's the point of the gym. And so I want you to be challenged. I want you to be offended. I want you to be insulted.
And then I want you to be able to find your center and find the words and find the argument that is persuasive and that is effective, and to use that. Don't use an appeal to authority to get the person in trouble, so you never have to learn how to reason for yourself. I am not going to bow down to the cult of making you weak so that you can stay safe. I'm going to do what was done to every generation of human beings for 10,000 years, which is to put challenges in front of young people.
Ask them to step up to them and recognize when somebody says something that offends you, the question isn't, "How do I stop them from saying it again?" The question is, "Why am I offended? What do I think is correct? How can I state my position in a way that's more effective than what they're saying? How can I use this momentary breakdown in terms of my comfort into a breakthrough in terms of buying capacity?" That's what we need from young people in a turbulent century.
What I'm saying about these kids, I'm saying about myself as well. I would rather... And I've been more cowardly sometimes than I feel proud of. There have been times, there have been tough issues on the air that I've ducked over. There have been conversations I've like, "I just don't want to get involved in that," because I'm scared, man. I don't want people saying mean stuff about me.
Justin Brady:
Absolutely.
Van Jones:
But as I'm getting older now and I see how things are going, I'm now in a position where, you know what? I'm willing, just to... Like my friend Bill Maher, like my friend Ben Shapiro and others, somebody's just got to call it like it is. I get more credit for having done that than I deserve. I definitely did that during the Trump administration. We were working with them on criminal justice. I've done it on other stuff, but honestly, I've been more cowardly and I want actually challenge myself to speak out more.
And I also want, like I said, I want to challenge the technology industry to help us do it better. And that's why we launched Rapport. That's what society requires, balancing things that don't go together. That's what society is. Liberals like myself, we love the idea of justice, social justice. Make sure the poor are treated right. Make sure the mistreated people have what they want. But if you only care about justice and don't care about liberty, don't care about individual liberty, you can become a totalitarian just like that.
Justin Brady:
So true.
Van Jones:
Same time, my conservative friends, they care so much about liberty, individual rights, individual freedom, limited government. That's important. But if you care about that too much, you can wind up in a situation where the corporations have all the power and then they buy your media and buy your government, then that's a nightmare as well. So, justice without liberty is a left-wing nightmare. Liberty without justice is a right-wing nightmare. That's why you have liberty and justice for all. Those two ideas don't actually go together, but they create a society you can live in when they're held in that tension.
That's why you can say, on the one hand, I want technology to help people to be kind, to reward people, to encourage people, to prompt people to be kind. And I don't want a cancel culture that tries to impose that on people. I think you want technology to nudge it, to support it, but people still need to be at choice. These are the kind of conversations we've got to start having as we develop a more complicated society, and civility is key to it.
SHRM, raising the banner for civility is a big deal. It's a big deal because it's so easy to blow it off and say it's corny. It is not corny. It is not corny. And if you ever been to a country where it doesn't exist, where you really don't have civility. You know what you have when you don't have civility? You have civil war.
Justin Brady:
Yes, you do.
Van Jones:
And you can get there just like that. And so I really appreciate what you guys are doing.
Justin Brady:
Van Jones, author and host of the Van Jones Show on CNN and of course co-founder of Rapport. There's got to be one central website, let's put that in there, where everybody can find and connect with you. Let's do that real quick.
Van Jones:
Quick. Yeah, sure. It's rapport.co, C-O.
Justin Brady:
Rapport.C-O.
Van Jones:
And Rapport, for people who don't know French, Rapport is spelled R-A-P-P-O-R-T.
Justin Brady:
Van, thank you so much for having the conversation with me on Tomorrowist.
Van Jones:
Thank you.
Justin Brady:
Before we say goodbye, I encourage you to subscribe to Tomorrowist wherever you get your podcasts. You can find Tomorrowist's weekly newsletter and all episodes at SHRM.org/tomorrowist. Thanks for listening and remember, the decisions you make today, shape tomorrow. Be a Tomorrowist.