Spoiler alert: There will be winners; there will be losers. Prepare thyself.
Perhaps your favorite candidate—the one you deemed worthy of your vote—will fall short. What if this candidate loses? How will you respond? In the raucous wake of an epic election season, we would be wise to ready our souls.
The tenor of public discourse has already been totally turbulent. Scare ads. Political advertising filled to overflowing with fire and fury. Discourse packed with extra-punctuated, ALL CAPS dissing on opponents. So, what will be our collective tone and reaction in the days and weeks following Election Day?
Let’s plan now to make healthy, more uplifting choices.
Choose Emotional Intelligence
For workplace leadership and neighborhood impact, most of us readily grasp the importance of growth in our emotional quotient. Four domains—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relational management—build toward that solid influence that Daniel Goleman dubs resonant leadership.
Ancient wisdom echoes similar thinking: “A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls” (Prov. 25:28 NLT). In numerous vital arenas, we understand our need to more accurately read our personal moods, recognize deeply held viewpoints, and stop short of potentially dangerous reactions, especially when situations don’t go our way. But in the face of passionate politics, we might easily forget to include emotional intelligence.
Slow down, take a deep breath, and self-assess, especially in the face of potential candidate losses and election disappointment. In attitudinal choices we make, our familial connections, business relationships, and overall communitas are at stake. Now more than ever, we need to excel in resonant leadership and thereby create a more positive emotional-relational environment.
Choose Civility
Recalling the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 should cultivate healthy doses of holy fear, better care, and more level-headed caution. Unchecked, our words and actions can escalate. In advance, let’s boldly think and plan for a calmer, kinder, more productive tone. Dr. LeAnn Brazeal explains that civility is “an expectation that participants will be reasonable, courteous and respectful even if they disagree on certain issues.”
Negative feelings and seething animosity create a ripple, affecting our ability to listen to others with genuine openness. Brazeal adds: “If we see them as our enemies, we’ll be unable to rationally process what they’re saying.”
Whether we are on the winning side or losing side, let’s determine this post-election season will supply fresh opportunities to love our enemies. Who knows? Perhaps, we might start listening better and find even more common ground. With newfound common ground, we might once again work together.
Choose to be Intentionally Kind & Work Toward a Unifying Good
Win or lose, it’s easy to blame, castigate, jump to unfounded conclusions, and even villainize. What if we curate a different tone in our workplaces, neighborhoods, family gatherings, and communities? Let’s aim for conversations and endeavors that are marked by unity instead of division.
In Before the Booth, Josh Park challenges: “. . . you will hear many, many voices preaching the message of rivalry and division . . . In this election year let’s preach the radical message of unity, let’s learn how to work together even when we disagree, and let’s be known by our love.”
After all, the best of genuine, life-changing politics rolls out every day at very local levels. We dare not forget the meaning behind those most basic Latin and Greek root words. Polis, politikos and polites give us modern-day words like politics, political, and politicians. They convey those foundational ideas related to citizens, cities, people, and the resulting affairs of state.
Deeply life-changing politics emerge in shops, classrooms, board rooms, sales network meetings, grocery aisles, hospital floors, household kitchens, and after-hours community initiatives. In these grassroots places, we craft, curate, fund, feed, build, clothe, heal, and otherwise contribute to the common good. At the end of the day, that’s amazing politics!
Whether your candidate wins or loses, choose a down-to-earth, loving tenor today. Let’s deliberately tone down the incendiary rhetoric and rash behavior. Let’s work to build bridges, listen more deeply, and invest for the greater good in more loving ways. Our lives and leadership, cities and states—our entire world—will be stronger, more peaceful, and flourishing through such attitudes and actions.
