Civility in the Workplace with Van Jones

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. I'm glad to be here. And I think especially nowadays in any conversation, it's about civility, bridge building. And I want to be in it. I want to be in that conversation, bro. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about. Yeah. Watching 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. build bridges. And so that all kind of came to a head when I was watching a daytime talk show that will not be mentioned. And the hosts came at you, like it was not pretty, it was not kind, and they came at you furious that you would have the audacity to try to build these bridges. Yes. are we living in a civility crisis? I, I think we're living in a civility crisis. I don't know if it's new, uh, in the human heart. Uh, 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, if you, if you say, Hey, I'm, you know, uh, let me tell you why I'm pissed off at this person. Suddenly it, 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, you know, I'm a part of this new company called Rapport and we'll get to that. But, you know, I also think that, You know, people are mostly sheeple. People just kind of follow the trend. And 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, that's, that's what leadership is. You know, leadership is going first against the current. Uh, this current of everybody crapping on everybody and that being the cool thing to do. I think that's, that's like a sick fad. And I think we need to make a better fad in the other direction. I think it's a fad. to us! It's Well, it's up to us. It's up to us. Listen, the people, 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 like, you know, a monetary incentive for hatred and nonsense. They just thought it's a cool little thing. Let's put a like button here, put a share 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 to 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. Uh, you can't, 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 gotta change what's in the palm of their hand every day. I mean, I want to ask how leaders encourage that in a, in a corporate culture, but it's no surprise you're from CNN. And You've actually talked about this. You know, you can see that media can stir outrage. It's pretty good at doing that. 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? Yeah, absolutely. Um, 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? I mean, you probably are mostly looking at Netflix on your laptop. You're probably looking at your phone most of the time. Uh, and when's the last time you actually touched a physical newspaper? I mean, it might not have been in 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. Uh, 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, uh, divisive culture. And then it also chases people away who don't want that. So now the people left are the lava people. Like they really want it hot, you know, he's like mcdonald's coffee, like scalding your, you know, the skin off your leg. And it's even hotter. So That's the dying game. Well, you can't, 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 to 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 gonna agree on everything. Assume that. Assume that. So if you're not gonna agree, how do you talk about it? then If you're not gonna 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, She just 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. to her. But it starts to make it starts to make sense. But if you don't even understand Where this woman is even coming from, you can't even have a neighborhood like that, 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 there'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 for the rest of society. That's why, you know, the people who are part of SHRM, the people who are talking about, you know, 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, the country won't work. And that's why it's so important. 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. And whenever I have this conversation with individuals. The I really like call up, not call out a lot. And I want you to expand on that. I don't know where this got started, but this idea that I can insult you into being a better person, Right. turns out to not be well backed by science. Okay. 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 you're an unworthy person. Now do what I say, you're a lot less likely to do what I say. They're not coming So the idea is To begin to develop a discipline, look first, 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, um, 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, um, uh, 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, okay? 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 the 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 the stuff I care about is so much more important than who you voted for. The 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, stuff I care about is way more important than who you voted for. And so I found if I start off talking about, uh, 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 they know what it, 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. Like 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. Uh, that was the year they killed Bobby Kennedy, that was the year they killed Dr. King, uh, they tried to kill hope in America that year. But the thing about Bobby Kennedy is always my, one of my great heroes is, he said, moral courage is not, uh, uh, your capacity to challenge your enemies. Any idiot is going to stand up to their enemies. It's the moral courage. It's your ability to challenge your friends when they're wrong, And that moral courage is what I look for in people. You know, I work with Newt Gingrich, you know, and Newt did not agree, 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 you know, he's, he's a tough guy when it comes to law and order, but he's not, without compassion when somebody's, you know, done their time and they want to get back into life. So, I mean, I've worked with people that people are shocked by, but the thing I look for is character. Do you believe what you believe when it's not popular? Do you believe what you believe when you have to tell your friends that they're wrong? You've got character. We can work together. If you're just a sheeple, Go in with the trend, and you're gonna 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. work with. It doesn't The other thing I think is very important. other thing It's the technology that is making the human human beings haven't changed. I mean, 10, 000 years, 100, 000 years, you basically got the same wet where the same wet where between your ears that hasn't changed. It's the software in your hand. It's a hardware in your hand. It's changed. And that's why you're seeing all these differences. And so, you know, 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. Um, for instance, with, with Rapport, before, we 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 working 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 any 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 people now, we're not going to make everybody go back in the workplace all the time. We're not going to, 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 what, 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 we that's what reports the company that you know, I launched this past year is a company a company is basically uses our AI IQ to increase your EQ Emotional quotient, emotional quotient because basically what the what the it's a widget that sits in your flow of work lets you check in with yourself. These people in HR 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 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 want, 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 year old? Our generation, we didn't have empathy for our damn selves. Nobody even had empathy, like, nobody asked me how I felt once. It was like, get your ass to work. That was my entire training. Get your ass to work. That was it. So, you're asking so much from people. And give people such little help. Give them some little training. Some little training they're gonna forget in two weeks. And then give them a survey they can fill out once a year. This is brutal. It's it's uncivilized and you're getting uncivilized results. So what do you do? We've got this product lets you do a check in 15 second check in with yourself first, what's my energy level. What's my workload. You click, click a couple of things. Now then when I understand myself a little bit more. It's, 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, oh, this person's having a high energy day. This person's overworked. This person's mom just died. Now you can't do all, 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 had a, 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. That's what you know, and technology helped you. that, Right now technology is more focused on data and less focused on wisdom. Yeah, Yeah, And so, the next round, I think, of innovation in technology is, how do we now use all this stuff and all these tools for wisdom and not just for data? You mentioned we have universities now that are safe spaces. Do we 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 but a strong way to say that, 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 unhirable. I mean, it's young kids come in here. They expect they come in lecturing us as to how everything's supposed to be. And I was like, you're talking about shut up. You're 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 a certain extent. I 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 gonna get beat up. I don't want you to be afraid you're gonna be sexually harassed. I mean, there's certain things that are off the off limits. Okay? So now that kind of safety, physical safety or, or to be personally harassed, call the N word. Like, okay, that of course I'm with you on that. I'll bite till the last dog barks on that. But that's not what they're talking about. They're not talking about physical safety. They're talking about a certain kind of psychological safety. They want, they want to feel that everyone, whatever they say, wherever 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, 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 gonna, 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 something, 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? 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 my capacity. That's what we need from young people in a turbulent that what I'm saying about these kids, I'm saying about myself as well. I would rather, and I've been more cowardly, um, sometimes than I feel proud of. There have been times, there have been tough issues on the air that I've ducked. Or there have been conversations, I was like, don't want to involved in that because I'm scared, man! I don't want people saying mean stuff about me. 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, you know, like my friend, Bill Maher, like my friend, Ben Shapiro and others. It's somebody's just got to call it like it is. And people, 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, um, I want to actually challenge myself to speak out more. And I also want to, like I said, I want to challenge the technology industry to help us do it better. Mm. that's why we, we launched And No, no, but, but, but that's, that's what society requires. Balancing things that don't go together. That's what, That's what society is. Liberals like myself, we love the idea of justice. Um, social justice. Make sure the poor are treated right. Make sure the, you know, mistreated people have what they want. But if you only care about justice, That's what society requires. And don't care about Liberty. Don't care about individual liberty, you can become a totalitarian just like that. 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 with a situation where the corporations have all the power, and then they buy your media and buy your government, and then you don't have, and 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 in that, held in that tension. That's why, uh, you can say, on the one hand, I want technology to help people to be kind, to, to, 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, uh, a, a, a, a, 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 have 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. And you can get there just like that. And so I really appreciate what you guys are doing. Van Jones, author and host of the Van Jones show on CNN. And of course, co founder of rapport. There's gotta be one central website. Let's put that in there that where everybody you with that. Yeah, sure. Uh, it's at Rapport. co, C O. Rapport. co. And Rapport, for people who don't know French, Rapport is spelled R A P P O R T. so much. on tomorrow list.