Q:  I am Facebook friends with many of my coworkers.  Now that the presidential election season is ramping up, the political posts and comments are showing up with more frequency.  The problem is that sometimes comments get heated and even escalate into arguments.  The tension that’s created carries over into work the next day.  I stay totally out of it but I can see that this is creating a problem within the team.  Any suggestions.?

A: Having an argument over politics on Facebook (either with your own FB friends or “friends of friends”) that carries bad feelings over into the next real interaction you have with the person, is unfortunately becoming more common.  We all should be more careful.

Relationships with family and with friends can be damaged by postings that are intended to “prove” one’s opinion is correct, or to mock and ridicule opposing beliefs.  This in turn triggers someone’s need to rebut, set the record straight or ridicule right back, creating a vicious cycle.  It’s bad enough to manage this situation -by staying out of arguments and resisting the urge to add our enlightening opinion- within our own circle of friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances.  But when you add co-workers to the mix, it gets even trickier because now the problem overlaps norms for both personal life and work life.

What to do? You’re probably not the only one who’s noticed the detrimental effect at work, so you can suggest that everyone voluntarily agree to some guidelines.  You could decide as a group what those are, but here are some ideas:

• Agreeing not to post political stuff, not to engage, comment.
• Targeting political posts to like-minded people by creating a separate friends list
• Temporarily “un-follow” co-workers.  We’re still friends (avoiding the dreaded “un-friending”) but mostly gone from each other’s newsfeed.  Then reverse after the election.

Facebook is foremost a social place to stay in touch and catch-up with family and friends.  It’s simply not the right format to have political discussions.  People are willing to write things (snarky, sarcastic, trying to be funny and missing the mark) that they would never say face-to-face.  But don’t forget, unlike the rest of our FB friends, we’ll actually see our co-workers tomorrow, and the day after, and every day forward.  So, let’s be kind and be guarded accordingly.

Click here to create a like-minded-friends group
Click here for how to block key words from your feed.

© Copyright Eva Del Rio

Eva Del Rio is creator of HR Box™ – tools for small businesses and startups. Send questions to Eva@evadelrio.com