Psychological Safety in a Politically Divided Workplace

Show Notes

Psychological Safety in a Politically Divided Workplace

What if the biggest risk in your organization isn’t a missing procedure or a broken control—but the things people are afraid to say?

In this episode of The Safety Consultant Podcast, Sheldon Primus explores how political and ideological discord can quietly introduce psychological risk into the workplace. Drawing on recent research and real-world observations, Sheldon explains how distrust, self-censorship, and siloed communication create latent safety hazards that traditional safety systems often miss.

This conversation isn’t about debating politics—it’s about understanding how disagreement, when left unmanaged, leads to silence, broken information flow, and increased operational risk. You’ll learn how political tension can undermine psychological safety, weaken hazard reporting, and fracture safety culture from the inside out.

Sheldon also introduces a Learning Team–style approach to addressing sensitive workplace friction, offering practical ways organizations and consultants can surface hidden risks, rebuild trust, and keep critical safety conversations moving—without turning the workplace into a battleground.

Key takeaways include:

• How political discord creates psychological hazards
• Why silence is not harmony—it’s deferred risk
• The connection between trust, psychological safety, and safety performance
• How Learning Team principles can restore communication and visibility

If you care about safety culture, leadership, and real risk reduction, this is a conversation you don’t want to ignore.

What is The Safety Consultant Podcast?

The Safety Consultant Podcast with Sheldon Primus is your ultimate weekly guide to starting or growing a profitable occupational safety and health consulting business. Are you ready to be your own boss and make a greater impact? Your expertise can help more people create safer workplaces, and your skills deserve a platform where they can truly shine. If you feel limited in your current role and believe your knowledge could serve the broader workforce more effectively, this podcast is for you. Join us as we explore the steps to launch your own safety consulting business, share insights on navigating the industry, and provide strategies to maximize your impact on workplace health and safety. Now is the perfect time to take control of your career and make a difference!

[SPEAKER_01]: right well today in the safety consultant podcast we're gonna talk about hazards, controls and procedures but what if the biggest risk in organization this stuff nobody wants to talk about so yeah the stuff that you think right safety failures don't always come

[SPEAKER_01]: They will come from broken communication and right now in the US we can have a real large political and ideological divide and let's kind of accelerating the breakdown in the organizations as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's plead over and I'll give you guys some data on that one.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I am going to shout out Dr. Jay Allen, the radio are rated our safety show, listening to the show episode 12-82, when this agreement becomes the real risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started talking about politics and when people don't talk, you get the selling effect, that's not for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: you get some breakdown in communication, not a good thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, this episode, I'm gonna kind of focus on really, it's not about politics at all and one focus on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's right, watch out, don't want to tell the politics.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's about what happens when safety and disagreements turns into silence and the risk of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, bear with me, we got a good one today,

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Safety Consultant Show with Sheldon Prime Minister, where we blend safety sparks with business brilliance and the pitch of Sheldon's signature wit.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you're a safety pro of fresh face consultant or just safety curious, get ready for a show that will educate, entertain and elevate your safety game.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's dive into the article with Sheldon Prime Minister.

[SPEAKER_02]: With your safety shirt for himself, Sheldon Prime Minister.

[SPEAKER_00]: This episode is powered by Safety FM.

[SPEAKER_01]: And some coffee, yeah, get out of some coffee when you're doing these, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, I set you guys up with something that I've been really thinking about and, you know, the thought process on this show itself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Was a bunch, you know, in the US, there's time of recording, it's January 27th, 2026, and we've had some issues in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, Minnesota area, that led to the death of two Americans at the federal government, and, you know, even that phrasing is going to be something that someone will say, oh, it's political.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just using the phrasing that's coming from the local officials.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the local officials have a lot to do with how I phrase that I'll just go ahead and tell you that.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, I was thinking of root cause stuff, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Most of you guys don't know that, you know, with me when I go into an organization, I'm not just dealing with safety and health.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to look at the organization as a whole, thinking of their culture as a whole, and a lot of that will be the root cause side.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if we have components of the organization and the basic component of every organization is the employee,

[SPEAKER_01]: And the employees can't feel safe enough to talk to them, so talk to each other or there's bullying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Between one facet of the organization, the members, the workers, and one worker, and the steel's bullied by another, it can't talk because they feel like, you know, this individual's gonna judge me, and explain them whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: That equals silence, silence equals increased risk and your risk equals, you're going to have your self some issues.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in 2025 and 2026, Emerald Journal, they actually did this Emerald Insight Journal, we'll say, of knowledge management.

[SPEAKER_01]: They had a research January 12, 2026, and this research was more based on the human resource side, but what the conclusion comes out is the study showed that political polarization unreadiness in the workplaces reduces trust, increase relationship strain, causes people

[SPEAKER_01]: And again with holding information, that's the key here, it causes people to withhold information from co-workers, they disagree with.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that can directly affect hazard reporting and safety communication.

[SPEAKER_01]: Monster Inc., the company that does hiring and HR C.I., and they had this, what they did is they did a bunch of surveys and the respondents came out of the survey related to politics and work.

[SPEAKER_01]: It says the majority of workers find political talks stressful, increasing psychological risk, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Many avoid conversations protect their job or reputation, employees admit they change how they collaborate based on political perceptions.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, basically people stop sharing information because they don't trust each other and the risk doesn't disappear.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just becomes a latent condition, so we don't want that latent condition to take over.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, the risk is still there, but if people aren't talking about what they see because they don't want to conflict with the coworker, that's where the problem persists.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, the...

[SPEAKER_01]: Political discord isn't just US.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's global now.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've heard a lot of different organizations talking about it But usually what you're going to see especially what's going to happen in Organization that has political discord You're going to see safety blind spots and they know I started the conversation with the Minnesota talk and that's very important to me I've got some friends and mental manyapolis are very close friend and

[SPEAKER_01]: and I reached out to her and she's scared, and so that's a real thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Regardless of the local affiliation, if your friend is suffering and not living life to our fullest because of fear of what could happen in our streets, that's a real thing, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: They can't leave that.

[SPEAKER_01]: at home, that stuff goes with you, your humans, so you're going to bring that to work, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So now if you have a perception that the person, political person that you're working with and their political party or their affiliation or whatever is contributing to that personal fear, chances are you're not going to have the same work experience with this person that's open and collaborative and you guys work hand-in-hand in certain areas.

[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be hard, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's going to be, you know, information silo.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of those thought process for that is I'll tell my people, not those people, you know, the ideology stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: So with that, the critical safety lines, it becomes where the department becomes the tribe.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now my department is going to keep information from that department because they're not our people.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now critical insights and safety and operations and everything else does across department lines and now you've got yourself an issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: take it to the individual level, so your co-workers, if they feel like they can't speak up on a conflict because they don't want to talk to someone that they have a conflict with or perceived conflict, then that's also going to lead them to a self-sensorship thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, therefore, any kind of near misses or something that would have happened if they don't feel like they could safely talk to someone about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then at that point, that's going to truly leave you to have a risk that is un...

[SPEAKER_01]: recognize this, it's not recognized and say that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to have an event.

[SPEAKER_01]: The US versus them thinking, yeah, you could disagree with someone on personal, but when they're safety discussions, I go into all these turf wars and everything else.

[SPEAKER_01]: now you're going to have yourself a different dynamic that could happen and again we've talked a bunch about psychological safety in the past.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if there's a psychological safety issue, the worker is going to be feeling engaged in stress.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to be disengaged in a workplace.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're also going to have certain behaviors that might exhibit itself in such a way that you're going to end up dealing with HR conflicts and risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: So those are the things that you're going to want to avoid or hate.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it all ties back to that research that I told you guys about.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if your company truly starts throwing around the terminology psychological safety without addressing these issues, then honestly you're going to end up being in a situation where your system is going to be like Dr. Jay Allen's book.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be kind of a construct with holes in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So with those constructs with holes, you're going to get yourself a big possibility

[SPEAKER_01]: that you're not going to have any true conversation the risk is going to still be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, culture is what we're going to talk about as an underlying thing that's the whole conversation and as safety consultants, where are the people who we help the organization see those hidden losses, those hidden things that could lead the losses that risk factor.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, now I just want to reiterate that portion as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, the myth that you're going to see

[SPEAKER_01]: is that you're going to hear a lot about is politics should not be brought in, it should be stayed, you know, keep it at the door.

[SPEAKER_01]: People can't do that not much, okay, just be honest with yourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: Most people, they want politics off of a work and that's you know what you want, but when you see someone who's driving down with the flag of

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for us in the US, the two major parties will have a donkey, yes, donkey, and of elephant.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you see that coming into your parkway, you see flags or really loud bumper stickers, it gets set you off right away, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And this goes with the other party.

[SPEAKER_01]: So mostly what you want to end up doing though.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to try to acknowledge those things, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: In a healthy organization, you want conversation, you want people to feel safe.

[SPEAKER_01]: A root cause of what I feel is happening in America, it's American born and raised, is back in a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: We used to be able to talk about politics and stuff like that without feeling like you're truly about to throw down with somebody.

[SPEAKER_01]: feelings behind the discord, and there's not enough critical thinking behind what people are saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that escalation seems to be the root cause of everything and any exclamation that goes to that degree is going to lead you to feel that, you know, honestly, you're going to end up

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to end up seeing situations that could have been handled in its incestion phase, but honestly, it's got to agree that people are going to get fired and they're going to sabotage things where there is increased risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you don't want to deal with that on the rate.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that is the idea related to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, talk to you today, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, go ahead and just, thanks for your right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I give you guys some time to process this, and my mindset again is coming through the safety consulting and thinking of the culture, and that's an important part that we have to address.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or else you're going to keep seeing clients repeating the same kind of risk over and over and over again.

[SPEAKER_01]: and so we don't want that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the myth about politics staying at home becomes a little bit hard, and if someone again feels like they're being, you know, uh

[SPEAKER_01]: That's someone because of whatever political affiliation doesn't have their back in the real work in the environment and that silence is not harmony.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just going to be deferred risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going to have a situation where this risk now is going to lead to an incident.

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So here's the thing I'm thinking about that's going to really help.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a process out there called learning teams.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where you do a 2D event.

[SPEAKER_01]: First day is issued a situation day.

[SPEAKER_01]: things that are, uh, that are the, the loss event that I'm not just loss event, the things that you really want to think of of the problem day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Get a soak period and then you come back with a day of solutions.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the learning team model used for this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I do have some episodes without burning tea.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you might hear my world's loudest keyboard clicking away That's me checking in the background.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've got an episode with Todd Conqulin But I'm going to do

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm learning team episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like it's my episode 87 and episode 88.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow that was a long time ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: 87 and 88.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's where I talked to Brent Sutton and Brent Robinson.

[SPEAKER_01]: and Galenis McCarthy.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're all in the show, turning and talking me about learning team.

[SPEAKER_01]: So look that one up, let's gonna help you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in this certain learning team model, what we could do and we could borrow this concept to help us is giving the workers a safe place to talk about this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to make sure it's structured in such a way that it's going to be highly,

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to lead to confrontation, so you want to structure your learning team so that you're going to have a small group, a neutral facilitator.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to focus on the impact of the work.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's honestly what you're going to be looking at.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we don't have this conversation, here's the impact of when this could be.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the focus of this learning team.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, again, you're not going to try to convince people in any way, you know, one political side to the next, that's part of your ground rules that you're going to set up.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're just trying to establish some psychological safety in these sessions.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's for information, it's to make sure that the workflow doesn't stop, it's to make sure that people don't hesitate while trying to speak up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the reasons for these learning team events.

[SPEAKER_01]: But another learning team objective here, only gets more than objective, but you just want to make sure that you're going to try to identify where risk will happen, where siloing of information is happening, where the

[SPEAKER_01]: The workflow is going to end up leading to an increased risk that is not going to end well.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's what we're trying to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we want to make sure that we keep tying things back, especially with the research that I showed you guys earlier.

[SPEAKER_01]: the research is saying that people are taking all the political stuff and it is coming back home so your goal this agreement is just visibility.

[SPEAKER_01]: You may never get the agreement part but you want workers, co-workers to be able to talk and to trust each other again in order for them to feel comfortable sharing critical information.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in practice, you're going to try to set up the training facility where it's in a nice circular situation, so everyone could see each other real well, be really comfortable.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here again, I'm going to try to talk about situations versus actual feeling, your goal is the culture.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you want to, whoever I'm assuming that you guys are going to be the consultants or at least a safety team that's going to be leading the conversation.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, how you want to structure this is, you know, again, you talk about work, no politics.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you're going to truly start the conversation up with this is a learning event.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where does disagreement show up at work for you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Where does information stop flowing?

[SPEAKER_01]: When the people hesitate to speak up, those operational curiosity questions that San Goodman, the Hopner tells us about in his operational curiosity cards.

[SPEAKER_01]: Go to thehopner.com and then shop, you'll see it at the Lowell's Courts.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I start with questions like that, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And now, just...

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, safely, you know, surface some of this friction.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't always feel safe, sharing concerns when I think about some people will dislike me.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the conversation or work or may have, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they decide not, it's not even starting, it's not really important to talk to this person because we're going to have an argument.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the stuff you want to get out, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to see where there's some sort of self-sensorship, and you're going to bring that out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, self-sensorship is going to give us some risk, and you want to make sure that you bring that out in a safe environment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now the other portion of this is you're trying to remind as a facilitator that you're not talking politics but you want to identify risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the culture is stuff you're going to ask is what safety information might be lost or delayed today by not talking to this individual.

[SPEAKER_01]: what decisions now become a little bit weaker because of the situation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing that you can ask you, where does the silence end up breaking in us, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So those are conversations that you could come out of this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, as of identification, giving an open place to talk.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to focus again with a learning key model and something like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to make sure that you're going to be drinking enough to notice emotions when there's escalations, things like that allow people to say their peace, but you want to make sure that

[SPEAKER_01]: You create systems for them to do this in a way where it's not emotional, but constructive.

[SPEAKER_01]: So anonymous recording channels, maybe get a rotating facilitators, some pathway to get some clear escalation, just a way for people to see right here is where you're getting all heated.

[SPEAKER_01]: Bring it back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe in work practices, we get some sort of cross functional reviews.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now you could get these teams to start working together.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you do any kind of cross training, that's a good way to also

[SPEAKER_01]: introduced to your clients ways to get people who don't normally deal with each other, to work with each other, and then also what that's going to do is if there is any disruption in your organization by staffing or anything like that,

[SPEAKER_01]: Then, honestly, if you have a cross section of people who could do other jobs, it's gonna give you some business resilience.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're gonna open the channel, communication, and get business resilience, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a win-win.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, in the end, I really believe that your conversation should be, we do things differently.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see how we can remove a barrier to communication and open discussion for work.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see how the safety meetings, the JSAs, the audits, the briefings, can go where there's no conflict or feeling like you're going to...

[SPEAKER_01]: That the disagreement is going to set you off so much to the degree that you can't work together.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's important.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to need the leadership to help you with this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Business owners, if they're going to hire you as a consultant, they're looking at you as someone who's an outside party.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to have to take that responsibility and lead them through this and have their blessing on this absolutely.

[SPEAKER_01]: but you're truly going to do your best to lead them to a situation where they could see the success and keep telling them this is to help you guys with your corporate culture and safety culture will go into corporate culture when you start getting more mature so you won't even say safety culture anymore, it'll become corporate culture

[SPEAKER_01]: this is to help that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you want to make sure that in your work group you don't want to have too many boss subordinates in the same group.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not going to talk.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to keep it where it's pure level.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if there are some leaders in that group just because a size of company start to ground roll this says hey in this learning team there is no boss subordinate.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were just

[SPEAKER_01]: Leadership cannot punish honesty, they can't ignore the findings, they can't use this session to identify trouble makers or else they would have blown all this work and goodwill.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will backfire spectacularly and you don't want that to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: Psychological safety if they want to preach that which is a great thing, then this is where it begins.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I know I started with a political discord, that's truly how these things will start.

[SPEAKER_01]: However, we could be the vessel as the safety department, as the consultants, to make work neutral again.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then also to help where years looking at co-worker, to co-worker, that says we're in this together, we're exposed to the same risk together, silences, dangers, disagreement, is unavoidable.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is natural, but the siloing effect doesn't help, and you need trust in a safety culture and a corporate culture, and a real leadership is going to be okay with uncomfortable truths.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if a political decision or even a division,

[SPEAKER_01]: in your society is a mirror in the U.S. of what the organization is doing, then let's use this to kind of like go, you know, clean it up a little, see if we could get back to some discord that is truly going to be where you could talk to somebody with that a heated debate and you could hear their side, they could hear your side, and now you two could go

[SPEAKER_01]: some sort of professional understanding and so curing about each other because you're both exposed to the same risk, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the the moral of my story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Alright gang, so thanks for listening to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to remind you that this Saturday, January 31st, I am hosting my very first

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, first of the year, I've been doing this for a few years, but this year I plan on doing a few of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's safety consultant 101.com, so safety consultant 101.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to meet up on mine and we're going to be able to do a nice session to our session where I'm going to help you with your

[SPEAKER_01]: with your safety consulting career.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be that guy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to help you out with that and I want you guys to go ahead and register.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is 100% free and it's going to be January 31 starting at 9.

[SPEAKER_01]: a.m.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's Pacific time.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, safety consultant 101.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: Safety consultant 101.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I just want to let you guys know, sign up for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see this Saturday where I'm going to give you some free workshop stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's workshop.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you guys are going to be right stuff down and everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is just a useless thing to

[SPEAKER_01]: So I will see you guys on Saturday, January 31st in our safety consultant on a one live session with me Three days, 23 hours away But right now Go get him

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a wrap for today's safety show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, safety isn't just about hard hats and caution signs.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's about business smarts too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for joining us on the safety consultant show with Sheldon primus.

[SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, stay safe, stay savvy, and keep consulting like a boss.

[SPEAKER_02]: Go get him.

[SPEAKER_02]: The views in the opinion you expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host in its guest and not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company.

[SPEAKER_02]: Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour only examples.

[SPEAKER_02]: It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available, as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information.

[SPEAKER_02]: Assumption made within this analysis are not reflective of the positions of the company.

[SPEAKER_02]: No part of this podcast of Rodcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means mechanical electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast of Rodcast, Sheldon Primus.

[SPEAKER_00]: This episode has been powered by Safety FM.

[SPEAKER_01]: Never catch yourself thinking I could do this on my own.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a safety officer with real world skills, you don't have to wait for permission to build your freedom.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Saturday, January 31st, I'm hosting Safety Consultant 101, a free live workshop.

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