December 6, 2023 • 38 mins
This week we talk about corporate communications, influence, and the future of political discourse with the world’s preeminent language strategist. We're diving into the power of empathy in communication, exploring how it influences everything from high-stakes business outcomes to our daily interactions with loved ones. Highlights include…
🎙️ The “Four Ps” of communications: personal, plain spoken, positive, and plausible
🎙️ How ESG went from insider acronym to “Eggs Grits and Sausage” to politicized buzzword
🎙️ The trick to changing minds: Tell them they're right?
🎙️ Politics and polarization: bridging divides by understanding the other side
A down-to-earth, insightful episode for anyone looking to communicate with impact
Go Deeper
📚 The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, by Michael Maslansky
📚 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
📚 Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely
📚 Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Find links, plus Mike's full reading list, and other resources here: www.mikesteib.com
Next Week’s Guest
🚨 Claire Hughes Johnson, COO of Stripe and author of Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building. DM me your questions on Linkedin or leave a voicemail at 213.419.0596.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome Office Hours, where we sit down with the chief
executives shaping the world and answer your most pressing questions
about leadership, careers, and life. I'm Mike Steib and today
we are joined by my good friend Michael Mislansky, the
world's leading authority on reputation and crisis communications. As CEO
of Misslansky and Partners, he advises companies ranging from Procter
(00:25):
and Gamble to Toyota to Pepsi as they navigate industry transformations
and crises. His book, The Language of Trust, Selling Ideas
in a World of Skeptics is one of the best
books you will ever read on the power of language
to influence others and how your communication strategy can create
or destroy value. He's a regular and sought after expert
guest on TV and at industry events, and he knows
(00:47):
more about the power of words than anyone you will
ever meet. Michael Mislansky, my friend, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Mike. It is great to be here. Thank you for
that intro. I'm going to can that one and use
it in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So you know, I always start with somebody's bio, but
you're never allowed to say on your own LinkedIn. I'm
the absolute best at this, but.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I know now I can quote you saying, now you exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You can quote. According to Mike Stive on the Office
Hours podcast, the best in the world. So, getting ready
for this, I was flipping back through your book, which
I read probably eight or ten years ago, and it's fantastic,
and I was reminded that your book has the four
piece of communication, personal plainspoken, positive, and plausible. My book,
(01:31):
I don't know if you remember this, Michael, the career
Manfestor has the five piece. It's purpose, people, productivity, plan,
and presence. It's a lot of peas for one podcast.
It's a lot of peace well coming in like hot
with alliteration for the rest of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So you know, peas, I would say that are the
most commonly alliterated letter.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In my experience, it always comes down to a piece sometimes,
you see.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We promptly proceed to a plethora of questions from the audience.
First question is from Coal and Boulder Collar, who says I'm.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
A discrumpled lawyer thinking about a second act.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Michael, he made the transformation from lawyer to entrepreneur to
interestry leader, had to do it and are there any
less with chair?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I think the important thing if you're going to make
a move is to really take some time and appreciate
what it is that you've learned in being a lawyer.
I mean, how I learned to think as a lawyer.
I use every day, how I learned to write. Even
though lawyers write in ways that are very different from
what I do today, I've adapted that and it applies.
I teach it to my team, basically the approach that
(02:32):
we learned in law school about issue rule, analysis, conclusions.
So there are lessons that you can learn that will
help you get that next opportunity and make you good
at the next thing that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
There you go and then from marketresearch dot com to
political consulting, So.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yes, I went. I actually went backwards to political consulting
is where I started my career before law school. I
worked on Ross Bro's presidential campaign, Who's back in the
news now kind of doing going to open up the
good And so I ended up going back to work
with the guy that I had worked with back then
and transition that firm from political consulting to really broader
(03:08):
communication consulting.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And broader communication consulting focused on politics.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Focused on well politics, and then we evolved into the
corporate space. I mean, really what we saw was an opportunity.
If you think about the political world. We started by
framing issues by changing the way you look at something
like the estate tax and calling it the death tax,
or even shifting the conversation around global warming to one
around climate change. And we saw that there were opportunities
to do that for corporations all the time, that if
(03:34):
they wanted to get more buy in for what they
were doing, more understanding, more credibility, that they could look
at the language that they were using and think really,
really deliberately about how to talk about these issues and
be more effective in what they were communicating.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You know, there's a question somebody had sent me on LinkedIn,
and I'm going to jump ahead to on this topic.
It's Aisha and Toronto, Canada said, ESG has become such
a controversial term. Now, I always thought it was obvious
that companies should care about the environment and society. How
did the branding of this term go sideways? So this
is what you're referencing in your experience in political consulting.
(04:10):
What's happened there?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You know, so, I mean, obviously we're living in an
incredibly polarized world and that is now affecting everything. And
what you take is a term like ESG. It was
never meant to be publicly communicated. It was meant as
like a stakeholder term in investments and for sustainability stakeholders,
and then all of a sudden it goes public and
you have critics out there who want to demonize it.
And it's really easy to demonize the term that has
(04:32):
no meaning. You know, most people don't know, I know,
the acronym. When we asked them what it was, we
had like handfuls of people saying, it's egg sausage and grits.
So when you've got a term that has no meaning,
it's really easy to turn into whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
What's the case against ESG. If it's egg sausage and grits.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think you're right, people enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So all right, Well that's I appreciate that perspective. I'm
going to go back to a question I was called
in by Nora and Ann Arbor Michigan.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I'm in business development. This pot has great invite so
far on perscasion and sales. How can language strategy make
me a better seller.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You know, I think, what are you doing when you're selling?
You're using your language to communicate a value proposition, and
the approach that you take to understand the psychology of
the buyer is really going to be probably the most
important thing that determines whether or not you're successful. And
so we have all different techniques that we talk about
when it comes to communicating in a sales context. I'll
(05:30):
give you a couple. The first is take objections. So
in a lot of sales techniques, you need to handle
objections after you've given your pitch. What I would say
from a psychology perspective is, if I know you're going
to have an objection, and I anticipate it, and I
kind of already kind of reposition that objection before.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You raise it, load it up ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You know you're never going to bring it up. As
soon as you bring it up, by the way, that's
all you're going to be able to think about, because
you're going to want to tell me your objection. So
if I don't to it before you do, I'm at
a real disadvantage the audience.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So I'm sitting there with my objection I'm not hearing
you because all I know is why I'm against it.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Right, you want to kind of point out that there's
a catch or that you've got that question that's going
to prove that that you're that I am overcharging you
or I'm taking advantage of you, So you anticipate the objection. Second,
I'll give you one other. There's a lot of sales
techniques that talk about creating a disturber that you have
to really like, you have to stir the waters to
get people to want to buy. And what we find
(06:28):
over and over again in our testing is that, uh,
that culture has advanced. We're much more sophisticated consumers today. Right,
we know these techniques that are going to happen. And
if I just give you the negatives, if I just
try and scare you into what's going to happen if
you don't buy life insurance, for example, right, you're going
to be a either paralyzed or be pissed off. Either way,
(06:49):
you're not gonna buy for me. And So rather than
giving you a negative to try and disturb and scare
you or kind of create a problem, I'm gonna give
you a solution that embedded within it. I've talked about
the problem and told you how I'm going to solve it,
So I'm giving you comfort. I'm giving you confidence that
I'm going to make sure that you're protected, that you're
taking care of your family and things like that, rather
(07:10):
than just talking about what would happen if you don't
buy it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
One of the which I'm sure you've read all the
books on the topic of the Robert Sheldin's book I
really like, and he has his six now seven principles
and persuasion. I remember one of them is he talks
about sort of what you say before or after the word,
but to your first point, right, it's like getting the
objection out ahead of time. The difference between revenue is
good this quarter, but there are headwinds ahead, versus you
(07:35):
say there are headwinds ahead, revenue is good this quarter.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Feel told it's the same facts, you feel totally differently
when you hear it.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Absolutely no. I mean he's brilliant at this, obviously, and
I think that that's a really important point. The order
that we communicate messages makes a huge difference in terms
of how they're perceived. Sometimes you want a prime with
a positive. Sometimes you just want to again anticipate that
negative so that people are less likely to be skeptical.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
There's also that principle of scarcity, which now you see it.
What is it they do in those direct response commercials there? Now, Yeah,
they don't say operators are standing by. They say if
the line is busy, please try again. You're like, whoa.
Everybody wants it. They can't even make the phones work
over there.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The crazy thing is that it still works. It's still worms,
which is kind of shocking to some people.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
No, I mean, I didn't know I wanted to go
to Taylor Swift, but now that I can't, I can't
get the tickets. I'm I can get tickets. I'm going scarcity,
Scarcity works. Any other books on this topic you love,
not Top of Mind. Daniel Conoman gets a lot of play.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, but I'm assarily as the sales. I mean, he's
so you know, on the topic of like persuasion and
and how we think about the human mind and how
people respond information. Commomon Thinking Fast and Slow. Nudge is
a great one. Predictably Irrational is one of my favorites. Actually,
my favorite story from that is about if you think
about why popcorn. The medium is really expensive. It's just
(08:58):
slightly less than the large and the small as much
lower because we always like to choose the middle, and
so we'll buy up to a more expensive medium popcorn.
We won't go all in for the large, but we
don't want the small, so they get their biggest margins
on the medium.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So nudge, that's from nudge, that's from predictably predictably I rash.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Dan Arielie Danner.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
All right, well we've got our reading list. We're rolling
in next to one from Wyatt in Phoenix, Arizona, who says, Hey.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I work in pharmaceuticals. My company is literally carrying cancer.
I think it's the most important work in the world,
and I'm very proud of it. But we are constantly
being dragged in the media. What can my company and
our industry do to win over public opinion.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It makes a good point, like we celebrate people who
become billionaires with apps, and we seem to as a
society have something against pharmaceutical companies. You do a lot
of work here.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, I'll tell you I was in a focus group
I'll never forget it where women stood up and said,
I I am on a life saving medication. It literally
saves my life every day. I am still pissed off
at the manufacturer who makes it because they charge me
more than I want to pay.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Oh well you oh them in the prices are and cheap.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And so you have this like dissonance between the fact
that people can can respect the fact that these are
breakthrough drugs and also really hate the fact that it's
costing them so much because they don't have a choice.
So that's the biggest area of frustration.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Give monopoly on the drug after you've invented it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
But even there, you know, even when it goes generic,
that's true, it changes, right, But I don't have a
choice whether or not I want to take this drug
because I want to stay alive. So dying is not
really a choice. And so if I have to pay
a lot for it, I'm going to be really frustrated.
And so what do pharmaceutical companies do? What do we
do in situations like this? I think the first thing
(10:52):
that we have to do is empathize with our audience
that we have to respect the fact that charging them
this amount of money is a hard for them, and
that we need to we need to recognize that like
you cannot get past that with people if you have
not acknowledged it. And so often we want to persuade them.
We want to use facts. We want to tell them
(11:13):
how much it costs us to innovate, how many years
it took, how many failures there are of drugs, And
the facts will not set you free when it comes
to topics like this. If you want to shape public opinion,
almost in every case, you have to show people that
you care about them, you care about their issue, and
that you're working hard to solve their problems. And in
(11:33):
this case, their problem is partly the condition that they're
suffering from. It's partly the hardship where the feeling that
they have about CEOs making lots of money and charging
lots of money and them having to pay lots of money.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Have you seen examples from the industry where this has
been done, well.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yes, I mean I think there are companies in the
industry and moments in time where the focus is on
on getting patients getting medications to patients who need them,
that they are really focused on the empathy side of
the equation, and they what they do is they try
and persuade that they are the kind of company that
(12:13):
you can trust, and that if it costs a lot
of money, well it's not because they're trying to make
money from you, but because that's what it costs.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Right. It costs a lot of money to caure cancer.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Costs a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I can't get you to listen to me and
actually hear how much it costs to cure cancer until
I have persuaded you that I care about you and
that I'm trying to do the right thing for you.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
They are listening, and I know a lot of people
are working pharmaceuticals. They do care about humans is what's
drawn them to what's drawn them to the job.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Absolutely, But also every time they try and say, well,
it's billions of dollars and a decade to produce a medication,
and that's why we charge this much, and people say,
I don't care. I want I want the medication and
I don't want you to charge.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Me this us because I didn't start by being empathetic. Actly,
it's a good takeaway. Next we have Zoe and Chicago says, as.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
A public relations professional, I like your take on what
are the worst and best corporate communications practices you've observed
what should we learn from those out of communicators.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So you must have some favorites I do or unfavorites
I think.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So the biggest one is that some messages make you
feel good. Some messages work, and they're usually not the same.
And so if you think.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
About you as you communicate tour, yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So if I'm trying to communicate a message, the things
that resonate with me, they're going to make me feel good.
They either I'm defending my position, I'm telling you the
facts that I know that you don't know. I believe
the things that I'm talking about, whether or not you do,
so they make me feel good. But the whole point
of communication is that I'm trying to persuade you as
(13:54):
the listener. Right, the things that make me feel good
may may not make you feel good. So I need
to understand what makes you feel good, and I need
to communicate those messages. And so the first thing that
that communicators do is that they look at the world.
It's navel gazing. They look at the world through their own,
you know, filter, and they don't understand that they're communicating
to somebody who's very different. The second is the idea
(14:17):
that you know.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
By the way, on that point, we had Bob Piman
on the show and he said he had his whole
leadership team together and he said, raise your hand if
you drive to work, and this company I heard radio,
I heard media runs ads mostly in cars, and everyone
around the room just looked at them, like, I don't
drive to work, right, says you know, raise your hand.
If you like country music, Everyone's like, I don't listen
to country music. Having that understanding that you, often as
(14:41):
the communicator, are not the same as your audience is
an important takeaway for them.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So important, and any anyone in the world of really
a business will say, well, obviously you need to know
your audience, and then they forget that they need to
know their audience as soon as they start to communicate.
And so coming back to that idea is so important.
The other one is when was the last time you
changed somebody's mind by telling them that they were wrong?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
No, it doesn't. That doesn't go well with me, It
doesn't go well with.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Anybody right like, And yet in almost every case when
you're arguing with somebody, when you're trying to change their mind,
the place that you start is here. Let me tell
you all the reasons why you're wrong, instead of telling
them all the reasons why they're right and then adding
some information that's going to help them see your point
of view as well. So I never want to persuade you.
(15:31):
I want to engage you and then show you information
that's going to change your perspective on things.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And presumably through the course of that sometimes you will
change your mind. You're trying to understand someone else's position
that may that that may move you off the mark. Yes, Now,
are there are there specific campaigns or moments you've seen,
like I remember, like remember when Jet Blue left everyone
on everyone on the runway? Was this in your book?
This is the reasons? Do you remember? Tell tell everybody
this story because they I mean they remember the story
(15:56):
the execution, right, So people were just trapped on an
airplane for hours on the tourma They're like, we want
to get off, Like, oh, you can't do that. And
then afterward they like they did this whole thing is
whole like bill of rights for customers, and they ran
media all around it, and they really tried to fix
the problem and they were like, we screwed up. We
should have never done that, and they went back to
the consumer and tried to make it right. I felt
that was one where I felt like somebody who knows
(16:18):
what they're doing is talking to the consumer.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know, so they are they so often in those
cases they're trying to defend their actions right, and they're
trying to explain why it wasn't as bad as you
thought it was, or why there were circumstances outside of
their control, and that never works. So we were doing
work in the energy industry during a period of high
bills and and and a lot of the companies out
(16:42):
there wanted to say, hey, our bills are high because
there's war in Ukraine, there was a pandemic, there's supply
chain shortages, gas prices have gone way up, and so
really like, we just want you to understand that it's
not our fault, it's the supply chain. And customers were like,
I don't want to hear that, But if instead they said, look,
I understand that that getting the energy you need is
critical to the life that you want to live, and
(17:03):
we're doing everything that we can to make sure that
that energy is as affordable as possible. Here are some
of the things that we're doing. Oh and by the way.
These are some of the reasons why it happened, and
we're going to try and be, you know, better prepared
for that. In the future. I'm going to get much
further with the empathy, the understanding, uh, the acknowledgment that
you're pissed off, and that I'm now trying to take
(17:24):
action to do something that I am by denying that
you're angry.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
This is good, although people try to hack this one
when they say to me, like, I don't disagree. I
hope you don't tell your clients to do that. This
does not work. This does not work. I don't disagree, Mike.
But it's like then say then, then say you agree,
and let's stop.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Let's stop.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Let's let's roll on to the next topic.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I disagree with you.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
People have exactly, people have.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
People have.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Also, there's there's some I don't know what course out
there at Harvard Business School on gives people. They've told
people don't say don't say yeah, but say yes. And
I hear people were placing the butt with an end
when it's clearly supposed to be a butt.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
If what comes after the different, it's still gonna sound
that way.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Faithful listeners, don't do it. Please, don't do it. The
next question you're gonna have have fun with. It's from
Eliana in Asheville, North Carolina. Politics seem to be more
(18:32):
divided and the way we talk about politics more vitriolic
than ever you came out of political consulting.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
What would you say.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Is at the root of this.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
First of all, I love Asheville.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The rapids there you got Michael and I have actually been,
but we've been to Ashville and there's a there's a
place where you can go rafting and it's like class
three to four rapids. It is class zero rapids zero.
All due respect to the great town town. Was I
think we missed we missed the weather or something.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yes, I don't know. I don't know what we missed.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We missed something.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
There's yes, uh so politics So I think you know,
we've seen this trend for a long time on politics,
and what has really emerged is that you've got a duopoly.
You've got a business model that is built around extremism.
It is built around monetizing anger, it is built around
(19:28):
kind of encouraging bad behavior. Right, if you think about
where all the money goes, people get funded if they
are more extreme, more kind of binary in their positions.
They get they get on TV if they yell and scream,
but not if they're moderate. Uh and uh and all
(19:49):
of the like centrifugal forces pull people out to the extremes.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, it's hard to be heard if you're a moderately right.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It's like, where do we want candy?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
What do we want reasonable compromise? When do we want it?
We're willing to negotiate. It is together.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It is the biggest problem in politics right now is
that really the extremes are given out candy and the
middle is telling you to eat us out. And the
question is like, how do you make that powerful and
compelling and find that really mobilized the middle of American
politics and say that Look, this is if we sit
around the kitchen table, we always make decisions based on
(20:28):
finding common ground, based on some kind of common sense,
some balance, some sense of compromise. All of a sudden,
we go out into this world of politics and it's
yes or no, it's black or white, it's up or down. Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
You've read The Righteous Mind. There's a lot there about
how our own sort of psychology it's and our own
intuitions are upstream of our morality and our moralities upstream
of our politics. Do you read that? Do you take
away from that that there is that there's no way
to get back to a middle ground because of the
way we're wired. Or are we just missing Is there
some trick that we're missing in in how we talk
(21:06):
to each other, in how we communicate where the choices
people are going to?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah? No, I think it's a great question, and I
think some of it goes back to this idea that
some messages make you feel good and others work. Like
if I am a Republican and I'm talking to Republicans,
then the messages that make me feel good, are you
going to make them feel good as well? If I
want to go talk to Democrats, then I need to
understand what works with them, And there is an overlap, right,
(21:30):
It is just about whether or not you want to
find it. So what Jonathan Hyde talks about is that
for Democrats, they're much more focused on messages around caring
and around caring in general. For Republicans, it's much more
about liberty versus oppression, and there are ways to find
messages that bridge the gap. You have to be looking
for them, and most people are not really looking.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
For them because Democrats care about liberty too, and totally
it's in Republicans care about is.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
In fact, I'm doing a lot of work right now
and find those shared American values that we can talk
about and then a language that we can really communicate
effectively to reach people in the middle of the political world,
you know, kind of moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents
and say, look, there is so much more that we
agree on than what we disagree on, and that unites
(22:20):
us rather than divides us. And we got to go
forward and really show how powerful we can be.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And you know, in as much as the last Gallipole
said that that forty nine percent of Americans are independent,
which is the highest number I think recorded in if
not forever, in like thirty years. So in a way,
we're more polarized than ever, and yet there's also more
people who don't want to be polarized than ever.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Absolutely, but you've got the people on the extremes who
yell louder, right, and they so you've got you've got
loud voters on the extremes, You've got loud politicians on
the extremes. You've got loud media on the extremes, and
so they create this environment that really amplifies all the
polar rization. And everybody else who really wants to have
(23:04):
a balanced conversation, who can have a reasonable conversation on
topics on which they disagree, They're just like, WHOA, this
is not this is not how I operate, And there's
no there's no platform for them to effectively kind of communicate,
get votes, get support.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Well, when you find the words and you find you
will have you back on the show and you can
you can clear this up for us, because Eleian is
asking a really good question. This next one was on
politics too. This is we even't had a politically oriented one.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Let's be in the air.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
It must be. I think it's maybe it's in the
guest Benjamin in Los Angeles, California asks the rise of
Donald Trump has been one of the most shocking developments
in American politics the century, and he has the most
unusual communication style too. Is there a connection between the two?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yes, for two reasons, I would say, First is and
I got I got more flaming comments from friends when
I first wrote this. Then for anything else that I've
written is that very early on in Trump's campaign in
twenty sixteen, it was clear that he was connecting with
(24:17):
people in a way that Hillary Clinton was not. And
the first reason was that he had three things that
he was focused on. Right, he was going to make
America great again. He was going to build a wall,
he was going to prere what the third thing was.
If he went to Hillary Clinton's website, she had one
hundred and twelve reasons in counting as if the one
hundred and thirteenth reason was going to be the one
to get you over the limit. Right, So what does
(24:39):
she stand for? You don't know. She stands for one
hundred and twelve different things. He stands for three. So
the first was that he was much better at engaging
people in a discussion on things that they cared about.
And the second thing was that we are, i think
largely for worse in kind of a crisis of expertise.
Where it used to be in America that we respected
(25:01):
the people who were experts at things, who had who
had spent forty years becoming really qualified to do things,
we now generally reject that, or at least on the extremes,
we reject that. We reject science in a lot of
cases on both sides of the aisle, and experts. We'd
much rather hear from regular people.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Right. This always comes up in political hympains, people like well,
I don't think i'd want to have a beer with him.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
That is the most important indicator who's going to who's
going to win the presidency is almost always who you'd
rather have a beer with.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
I have.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
There's tons of people I enjoy having beers with. Well,
I just don't think are qualified to be personal.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yes, but you're you, you're kind of uh, maybe I'm
not the example or not the example.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Okay, so you heard a clear message connecting with the audience.
He also uses really small like it's the the language is.
I don't know if it's if it's just how he talks,
or if it's a if it's if it's a technique
he's developed. But the degree to which the language is
(26:04):
so simple, that's got to be part of how not
just that there's few things to say, but he says
this is bad, this is sad. Somehow it breaks through.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yes, Well, I mean we just sort of pull a
bunch of streams together of things that we've been talking about,
and one of those four p's of mine, not your
five p's, was plain spoken. Right, you have to speak
in the language of the people. And we often try
and make things harder to understand than they need to be.
He makes it very easy to understand. Right, two legs good,
(26:36):
four legs bad. You know, it is very easy to
understand where he stands on things, and so you're you're
either with him or against him. And on the topics
that he picked, there were a lot of people with him,
and so it really resonated.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I have a one of my colleagues was asking me
for sort of advice on being a better public speaker,
and I said, one of the things we actually talked about
on this podcast was recording yourself speaking and watching for
the nuances. But another one I found is really powerful
is watching people who have become famous or important through presenting.
(27:14):
Watch Bill Clinton's Democratic National Convention speech and the way
he connects with the audience and when he goes off prompter,
and how he's so smooth, and watch anything Obama's done,
watch old Reagan clips. They're all different, but every one
of them has developed this technique for connecting with the audience.
And what I also tell people like, you have to
(27:34):
watch an entire Trump rally because if you're in the
same medio media echo chamber, iman, you get the insane
clips and you're like, I can't believe anyone hears him.
And when you watch the whole show and the way
that he riffs and iterates and rifts, and then he's
talking and out of nowhere, he's talking about wind turbines,
and then he goes, ah, they kill so many birds,
(27:56):
and he starts calling him a bird graveyard, and then
the audience starts reacting to it, and he's like found
a thing, and he just works it. But as you're
trying to become a great communicator, watching folks who have
gotten to where they are by communicating and absorbing all
of it without, you know, by putting your personal emotions aside,
I've advised folks is a great way to get good.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I would actually say you probably learn more if you're
an anti Trumper. You probably learn more from listening to
Trump than you do from listening to Clinton and Obama,
because when you listen to Clinton and Obama, you're going
to get taken in by the things that you agree
with and if you watch Trump probably right, and you say, look,
I disagree with everything that he has to say. I
have to understand why he's resonating with people. Then you'll
(28:34):
really understand how he does exactly what you said, which
is kind of riff off the people, and build on
what they have to say and listen to what works
and then respond to it.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So we've covered some power of language stuff and in
some of the ways that it permeates our politics. We're
back to a question and how this affects how companies
communicate with their consumers and employees. It's from Carter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He says, my company was very local and social justice issues.
After George Floyd, there was then a lot of pressure
(29:04):
to make statements on other issues, including legislation. Recently, our
early statements on the crisis in the Middle East went
very badly. How should organizations navigate this complicated landscape.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It's a it's a really difficult challenge in general, Steff.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
A lot of companies coming to you on this topic
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know, whether it's on Israel, we saw it on Dobbs,
we saw it obviously after George Floyd.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Are they generally smart enough to come to you ahead
of time, or is everyone coming to you after they
after they made the first mistake.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean I think that there are there are
a lot of companies who have actually gotten pretty adept
at this and kind of understand where to be careful.
And then there are others who come after, you know,
come after they've made a statement, and then you're helping
to clean up them. Yeah, you know, I think the
the the biggest lesson to understand is that Americans do
not all share the same values, right, and that if
(29:55):
you go out there and you say that I'm going
to you know, we're doing the right thing. And that's
why we believe that that not everybody's going to agree
with you, and anybody who disagrees with you is now
going to hate your right. There's a lot of pressure
internally to say one thing that doesn't often align with
what a broad you know, national customer base may agree with.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
And your own employees.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Own employees who tend to be more progressive, tend to
be the most vocal about a lot of these social
issues want you to speak up on their issues, and
so you're being pushed to talk about a lot of
issues that you wouldn't otherwise want to talk about. I
think the lessons that we've learned are, first of all,
that there are issues that you don't need to talk about,
you know, if they are not related to your business,
(30:40):
If they don't impact your business, then the question is
why are you talking about them. Usually, if they don't
relate directly to your business, but they relate to your values,
and you've spoken about your values, then you may want
to consider making a statement. It may be just an
internal statement, or it may be an external statement. But
where I think the biggest change has happened in the
last you know, kind of a year or so is
(31:01):
that the companies are, I think appropriately much more reluctant
to take political positions. We see now only about a
third of Americans think it's appropriate for companies to take
positions on political issues.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Okay they.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And they will boycott you if you take the wrong position.
And so the place that you can avoid, even on
Israel and Hamas and the Palestinian situation, is focus on
how it impacts your employees. Focus on universal values that
are going to less likely do to cause problems. And
so it is mourning the loss of life, you know,
(31:38):
being anti terrorism is pretty safe base, and then from
there it gets more challenging, and so you have to
really know why it is that you want to wage
into a battle beyond. You know, I'm opposed to terror,
I'm more in the loss of life. I value peace.
I'm taking care of my employees. You know, those are
(31:59):
the places that you can that you can communicate a
position without getting yourself into trouble.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And something we talk a lot about our work is
that our company was created to achieve a particular mission.
To your point, when every thing's come up, we first
run it through that framework, which is is this going
to help us to be a better company and better
achieve our mission? And the secondly, what creates the environment
that's most inclusive for your employees. And a lot of
times the issue is it's something of it's something on
(32:30):
a topic of equity, it's something on a topic of diversity.
It's important to lean into those for us because that
is what creates a more inclusive environment at work and
in our broader market, which is aligned to our to
our mission. Other times, if it's just a polarizing issue,
it's going to make some portion of the people at
work feel unincluded and that doesn't help us be good teammates.
It doesn't help us to achieve the mission. We have
(33:04):
one from a friend of mine, very good friend of mine,
Joey and Scottsdale, Arizona.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
I think we often forget about communication and building trust
when we walk through the doors at home after a
long day. And so I'm wondering what lessons you've each
learned about communication that translate to success as a spouse
and as a parent.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Well, I want to hear your answer first.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
One of the insights I get from you as a
communications expert is simplicity and repetition and values based communication.
And when our kids were little, we made a conscious
choice to sort of ground our instructions to them in
values rather than in do this, don't do that. So
(33:51):
we set our values are work hard, take care of people,
and be brave. So if you weren't nice to another
kid at school, it's in the context of did you
take care of other people? If you didn't try hard
in the little soccer league? Were you being brave for
everything else? I feel like I want to get in
the tub with my socks on. I'm like, I'm get
in the tub with your socks on. There's nothing in
(34:12):
the core values that prohibits it, So give it a try,
and that I think that's a way in which a
lot of your lessons on communication. I think our kids
turned out pretty good. I think helped helped me to
be a better DABT helped us to be better parents.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
How about you, you know, I bring everything back to relationships.
I think you know in the context of trust, and
where I focus a lot of how do you build
trust with someone? The way that you do it in
a personal relationship and the way that you do it
with a customer or an employee I think are very similar,
and that is that you are really trying to get
the benefit of the doubt, that when you say something
(34:49):
it is going to be treated at face value. Right
when you lose trust, all the benefit of the doubt
goes out the window. And so if I I have
a relationship with someone and there's a breach of trust,
I can no longer say what my motives are like.
I can't say I care about you because their response
(35:11):
will be, well, then why'd you do X?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Right? I don't trust your answers anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So I can say, well, let me show you how
I care about you because then I'm proving it with motives.
But so when when it comes to thinking about like
what what is lost when you lose trust and what
is gained when you have it. You know, whether you
can talk about motives, whether people are going to behave
kind of rationally, whether they are going to whether they're
(35:38):
going to whether they're going to take what you say
at face value. It all comes down to that trust.
And you can build that trust by being more personal,
making sure that I know what's in it for you,
like how you're going to feel about something, being positive
about things, being credible. So all the lessons that I
teach companies, I also think apply with my kids, kids,
(36:00):
with with Susie, and.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
More generally well. Having been able to observe your communications
and be in contact with you for a number of years,
I can tell you it makes it makes things around
you better. So to our to our friend Joe the
I think the lessons of what we've been hearing from
Michael today on how you build trust with language, on
how you make yourself clear, on how you and how
you're more sensitive to what your audience is hearing, not
(36:23):
just what you're saying, is as powerful and it's valuable.
And I hope all of our listeners got as much
out of this today as I did. This was really fun.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, thank you, Thanks Joey, Thanks Mike.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Well, my friends. Today we talked about the power of
language with the number one expert on the topic in
the world. And one of the things Michael says a lot.
He says it in his podcast Hearsay, which I strongly recommend,
he says it in his book The Language of Trust,
which I strongly recommend, and and I believe it's even
the tagline for his company is it's it's not what
you say, it's what they hear. And I wanted to
(37:03):
leave everyone with that thought today because you're communicating constantly,
whether it's home or whether it's whether it's at work,
and so often we're wondering why didn't people follow what
I said? Why didn't people believe me? Well, why didn't
I get the right response? And putting it in that
framework what did I say versus what do I think
(37:25):
they may have heard, might help to make you a
better communicator. But I also want to remind everyone that
we're on the other side of that too. We often
hear what someone else didn't mean to say we've got this.
We've got this phrase we always use a work assume
positive intent. And as you look at your work and
your life over the next week or so, and if
this podcast sticks in your head, I hope you'll also
(37:47):
ask yourself, you know what I heard? Is that really
what the other person meant to say? And how can
I get to the bottom of it? Because better communication
is ultimately what brings us together, and it's what helps
us to succeed at work, and it's what helps us
to have great relationships in life, and it's what I
want for all of you. So thanks for tuning in today, everybody.
We've got some amazing guests coming up the next few weeks,
including a world class Silicon Valley operator and iconic New
(38:10):
York City restaurant tour and more so, text or calling
your questions at two point three four one, nine, five
nine six or just hit me up on LinkedIn at
Mike Steib. I want to thank Michael and of course
Jen Jada and the team at Blue Duck Media for
putting all this together, Dylan, Sasha, Gay Nathan and Christine
(38:31):
at iHeart bahed making the magic happen in the Studio
and Ben and the team at William Morris endeavor for
all their support office hours. Is a production of Blue
Duck Media and distributed by iHeartRadio. I'll see you next week. Everybody,
stay on your grind.
Welcome Office Hours, where we sit down with the chief
executives shaping the world and answer your most pressing questions
about leadership, careers, and life. I'm Mike Steib and today
we are joined by my good friend Michael Mislansky, the
world's leading authority on reputation and crisis communications. As CEO
of Misslansky and Partners, he advises companies ranging from Procter
(00:25):
and Gamble to Toyota to Pepsi as they navigate industry transformations
and crises. His book, The Language of Trust, Selling Ideas
in a World of Skeptics is one of the best
books you will ever read on the power of language
to influence others and how your communication strategy can create
or destroy value. He's a regular and sought after expert
guest on TV and at industry events, and he knows
(00:47):
more about the power of words than anyone you will
ever meet. Michael Mislansky, my friend, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Mike. It is great to be here. Thank you for
that intro. I'm going to can that one and use
it in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So you know, I always start with somebody's bio, but
you're never allowed to say on your own LinkedIn. I'm
the absolute best at this, but.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I know now I can quote you saying, now you exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You can quote. According to Mike Stive on the Office
Hours podcast, the best in the world. So, getting ready
for this, I was flipping back through your book, which
I read probably eight or ten years ago, and it's fantastic,
and I was reminded that your book has the four
piece of communication, personal plainspoken, positive, and plausible. My book,
(01:31):
I don't know if you remember this, Michael, the career
Manfestor has the five piece. It's purpose, people, productivity, plan,
and presence. It's a lot of peas for one podcast.
It's a lot of peace well coming in like hot
with alliteration for the rest of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So you know, peas, I would say that are the
most commonly alliterated letter.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In my experience, it always comes down to a piece sometimes,
you see.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We promptly proceed to a plethora of questions from the audience.
First question is from Coal and Boulder Collar, who says I'm.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
A discrumpled lawyer thinking about a second act.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Michael, he made the transformation from lawyer to entrepreneur to
interestry leader, had to do it and are there any
less with chair?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I think the important thing if you're going to make
a move is to really take some time and appreciate
what it is that you've learned in being a lawyer.
I mean, how I learned to think as a lawyer.
I use every day, how I learned to write. Even
though lawyers write in ways that are very different from
what I do today, I've adapted that and it applies.
I teach it to my team, basically the approach that
(02:32):
we learned in law school about issue rule, analysis, conclusions.
So there are lessons that you can learn that will
help you get that next opportunity and make you good
at the next thing that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
There you go and then from marketresearch dot com to
political consulting, So.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yes, I went. I actually went backwards to political consulting
is where I started my career before law school. I
worked on Ross Bro's presidential campaign, Who's back in the
news now kind of doing going to open up the
good And so I ended up going back to work
with the guy that I had worked with back then
and transition that firm from political consulting to really broader
(03:08):
communication consulting.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And broader communication consulting focused on politics.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Focused on well politics, and then we evolved into the
corporate space. I mean, really what we saw was an opportunity.
If you think about the political world. We started by
framing issues by changing the way you look at something
like the estate tax and calling it the death tax,
or even shifting the conversation around global warming to one
around climate change. And we saw that there were opportunities
to do that for corporations all the time, that if
(03:34):
they wanted to get more buy in for what they
were doing, more understanding, more credibility, that they could look
at the language that they were using and think really,
really deliberately about how to talk about these issues and
be more effective in what they were communicating.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You know, there's a question somebody had sent me on LinkedIn,
and I'm going to jump ahead to on this topic.
It's Aisha and Toronto, Canada said, ESG has become such
a controversial term. Now, I always thought it was obvious
that companies should care about the environment and society. How
did the branding of this term go sideways? So this
is what you're referencing in your experience in political consulting.
(04:10):
What's happened there?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You know, so, I mean, obviously we're living in an
incredibly polarized world and that is now affecting everything. And
what you take is a term like ESG. It was
never meant to be publicly communicated. It was meant as
like a stakeholder term in investments and for sustainability stakeholders,
and then all of a sudden it goes public and
you have critics out there who want to demonize it.
And it's really easy to demonize the term that has
(04:32):
no meaning. You know, most people don't know, I know,
the acronym. When we asked them what it was, we
had like handfuls of people saying, it's egg sausage and grits.
So when you've got a term that has no meaning,
it's really easy to turn into whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
What's the case against ESG. If it's egg sausage and grits.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think you're right, people enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So all right, Well that's I appreciate that perspective. I'm
going to go back to a question I was called
in by Nora and Ann Arbor Michigan.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I'm in business development. This pot has great invite so
far on perscasion and sales. How can language strategy make
me a better seller.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You know, I think, what are you doing when you're selling?
You're using your language to communicate a value proposition, and
the approach that you take to understand the psychology of
the buyer is really going to be probably the most
important thing that determines whether or not you're successful. And
so we have all different techniques that we talk about
when it comes to communicating in a sales context. I'll
(05:30):
give you a couple. The first is take objections. So
in a lot of sales techniques, you need to handle
objections after you've given your pitch. What I would say
from a psychology perspective is, if I know you're going
to have an objection, and I anticipate it, and I
kind of already kind of reposition that objection before.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You raise it, load it up ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You know you're never going to bring it up. As
soon as you bring it up, by the way, that's
all you're going to be able to think about, because
you're going to want to tell me your objection. So
if I don't to it before you do, I'm at
a real disadvantage the audience.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So I'm sitting there with my objection I'm not hearing
you because all I know is why I'm against it.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Right, you want to kind of point out that there's
a catch or that you've got that question that's going
to prove that that you're that I am overcharging you
or I'm taking advantage of you, So you anticipate the objection. Second,
I'll give you one other. There's a lot of sales
techniques that talk about creating a disturber that you have
to really like, you have to stir the waters to
get people to want to buy. And what we find
(06:28):
over and over again in our testing is that, uh,
that culture has advanced. We're much more sophisticated consumers today. Right,
we know these techniques that are going to happen. And
if I just give you the negatives, if I just
try and scare you into what's going to happen if
you don't buy life insurance, for example, right, you're going
to be a either paralyzed or be pissed off. Either way,
(06:49):
you're not gonna buy for me. And So rather than
giving you a negative to try and disturb and scare
you or kind of create a problem, I'm gonna give
you a solution that embedded within it. I've talked about
the problem and told you how I'm going to solve it,
So I'm giving you comfort. I'm giving you confidence that
I'm going to make sure that you're protected, that you're
taking care of your family and things like that, rather
(07:10):
than just talking about what would happen if you don't
buy it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
One of the which I'm sure you've read all the
books on the topic of the Robert Sheldin's book I
really like, and he has his six now seven principles
and persuasion. I remember one of them is he talks
about sort of what you say before or after the word,
but to your first point, right, it's like getting the
objection out ahead of time. The difference between revenue is
good this quarter, but there are headwinds ahead, versus you
(07:35):
say there are headwinds ahead, revenue is good this quarter.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Feel told it's the same facts, you feel totally differently
when you hear it.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Absolutely no. I mean he's brilliant at this, obviously, and
I think that that's a really important point. The order
that we communicate messages makes a huge difference in terms
of how they're perceived. Sometimes you want a prime with
a positive. Sometimes you just want to again anticipate that
negative so that people are less likely to be skeptical.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
There's also that principle of scarcity, which now you see it.
What is it they do in those direct response commercials there? Now, Yeah,
they don't say operators are standing by. They say if
the line is busy, please try again. You're like, whoa.
Everybody wants it. They can't even make the phones work
over there.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The crazy thing is that it still works. It's still worms,
which is kind of shocking to some people.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
No, I mean, I didn't know I wanted to go
to Taylor Swift, but now that I can't, I can't
get the tickets. I'm I can get tickets. I'm going scarcity,
Scarcity works. Any other books on this topic you love,
not Top of Mind. Daniel Conoman gets a lot of play.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, but I'm assarily as the sales. I mean, he's
so you know, on the topic of like persuasion and
and how we think about the human mind and how
people respond information. Commomon Thinking Fast and Slow. Nudge is
a great one. Predictably Irrational is one of my favorites. Actually,
my favorite story from that is about if you think
about why popcorn. The medium is really expensive. It's just
(08:58):
slightly less than the large and the small as much
lower because we always like to choose the middle, and
so we'll buy up to a more expensive medium popcorn.
We won't go all in for the large, but we
don't want the small, so they get their biggest margins
on the medium.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So nudge, that's from nudge, that's from predictably predictably I rash.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Dan Arielie Danner.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
All right, well we've got our reading list. We're rolling
in next to one from Wyatt in Phoenix, Arizona, who says, Hey.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I work in pharmaceuticals. My company is literally carrying cancer.
I think it's the most important work in the world,
and I'm very proud of it. But we are constantly
being dragged in the media. What can my company and
our industry do to win over public opinion.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It makes a good point, like we celebrate people who
become billionaires with apps, and we seem to as a
society have something against pharmaceutical companies. You do a lot
of work here.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, I'll tell you I was in a focus group
I'll never forget it where women stood up and said,
I I am on a life saving medication. It literally
saves my life every day. I am still pissed off
at the manufacturer who makes it because they charge me
more than I want to pay.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Oh well you oh them in the prices are and cheap.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And so you have this like dissonance between the fact
that people can can respect the fact that these are
breakthrough drugs and also really hate the fact that it's
costing them so much because they don't have a choice.
So that's the biggest area of frustration.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Give monopoly on the drug after you've invented it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
But even there, you know, even when it goes generic,
that's true, it changes, right, But I don't have a
choice whether or not I want to take this drug
because I want to stay alive. So dying is not
really a choice. And so if I have to pay
a lot for it, I'm going to be really frustrated.
And so what do pharmaceutical companies do? What do we
do in situations like this? I think the first thing
(10:52):
that we have to do is empathize with our audience
that we have to respect the fact that charging them
this amount of money is a hard for them, and
that we need to we need to recognize that like
you cannot get past that with people if you have
not acknowledged it. And so often we want to persuade them.
We want to use facts. We want to tell them
(11:13):
how much it costs us to innovate, how many years
it took, how many failures there are of drugs, And
the facts will not set you free when it comes
to topics like this. If you want to shape public opinion,
almost in every case, you have to show people that
you care about them, you care about their issue, and
that you're working hard to solve their problems. And in
(11:33):
this case, their problem is partly the condition that they're
suffering from. It's partly the hardship where the feeling that
they have about CEOs making lots of money and charging
lots of money and them having to pay lots of money.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Have you seen examples from the industry where this has
been done, well.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yes, I mean I think there are companies in the
industry and moments in time where the focus is on
on getting patients getting medications to patients who need them,
that they are really focused on the empathy side of
the equation, and they what they do is they try
and persuade that they are the kind of company that
(12:13):
you can trust, and that if it costs a lot
of money, well it's not because they're trying to make
money from you, but because that's what it costs.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Right. It costs a lot of money to caure cancer.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Costs a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I can't get you to listen to me and
actually hear how much it costs to cure cancer until
I have persuaded you that I care about you and
that I'm trying to do the right thing for you.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
They are listening, and I know a lot of people
are working pharmaceuticals. They do care about humans is what's
drawn them to what's drawn them to the job.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Absolutely, But also every time they try and say, well,
it's billions of dollars and a decade to produce a medication,
and that's why we charge this much, and people say,
I don't care. I want I want the medication and
I don't want you to charge.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Me this us because I didn't start by being empathetic. Actly,
it's a good takeaway. Next we have Zoe and Chicago says, as.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
A public relations professional, I like your take on what
are the worst and best corporate communications practices you've observed
what should we learn from those out of communicators.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So you must have some favorites I do or unfavorites
I think.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So the biggest one is that some messages make you
feel good. Some messages work, and they're usually not the same.
And so if you think.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
About you as you communicate tour, yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So if I'm trying to communicate a message, the things
that resonate with me, they're going to make me feel good.
They either I'm defending my position, I'm telling you the
facts that I know that you don't know. I believe
the things that I'm talking about, whether or not you do,
so they make me feel good. But the whole point
of communication is that I'm trying to persuade you as
(13:54):
the listener. Right, the things that make me feel good
may may not make you feel good. So I need
to understand what makes you feel good, and I need
to communicate those messages. And so the first thing that
that communicators do is that they look at the world.
It's navel gazing. They look at the world through their own,
you know, filter, and they don't understand that they're communicating
to somebody who's very different. The second is the idea
(14:17):
that you know.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
By the way, on that point, we had Bob Piman
on the show and he said he had his whole
leadership team together and he said, raise your hand if
you drive to work, and this company I heard radio,
I heard media runs ads mostly in cars, and everyone
around the room just looked at them, like, I don't
drive to work, right, says you know, raise your hand.
If you like country music, Everyone's like, I don't listen
to country music. Having that understanding that you, often as
(14:41):
the communicator, are not the same as your audience is
an important takeaway for them.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So important, and any anyone in the world of really
a business will say, well, obviously you need to know
your audience, and then they forget that they need to
know their audience as soon as they start to communicate.
And so coming back to that idea is so important.
The other one is when was the last time you
changed somebody's mind by telling them that they were wrong?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
No, it doesn't. That doesn't go well with me, It
doesn't go well with.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Anybody right like, And yet in almost every case when
you're arguing with somebody, when you're trying to change their mind,
the place that you start is here. Let me tell
you all the reasons why you're wrong, instead of telling
them all the reasons why they're right and then adding
some information that's going to help them see your point
of view as well. So I never want to persuade you.
(15:31):
I want to engage you and then show you information
that's going to change your perspective on things.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And presumably through the course of that sometimes you will
change your mind. You're trying to understand someone else's position
that may that that may move you off the mark. Yes, Now,
are there are there specific campaigns or moments you've seen,
like I remember, like remember when Jet Blue left everyone
on everyone on the runway? Was this in your book?
This is the reasons? Do you remember? Tell tell everybody
this story because they I mean they remember the story
(15:56):
the execution, right, So people were just trapped on an
airplane for hours on the tourma They're like, we want
to get off, Like, oh, you can't do that. And
then afterward they like they did this whole thing is
whole like bill of rights for customers, and they ran
media all around it, and they really tried to fix
the problem and they were like, we screwed up. We
should have never done that, and they went back to
the consumer and tried to make it right. I felt
that was one where I felt like somebody who knows
(16:18):
what they're doing is talking to the consumer.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know, so they are they so often in those
cases they're trying to defend their actions right, and they're
trying to explain why it wasn't as bad as you
thought it was, or why there were circumstances outside of
their control, and that never works. So we were doing
work in the energy industry during a period of high
bills and and and a lot of the companies out
(16:42):
there wanted to say, hey, our bills are high because
there's war in Ukraine, there was a pandemic, there's supply
chain shortages, gas prices have gone way up, and so
really like, we just want you to understand that it's
not our fault, it's the supply chain. And customers were like,
I don't want to hear that, But if instead they said, look,
I understand that that getting the energy you need is
critical to the life that you want to live, and
(17:03):
we're doing everything that we can to make sure that
that energy is as affordable as possible. Here are some
of the things that we're doing. Oh and by the way.
These are some of the reasons why it happened, and
we're going to try and be, you know, better prepared
for that. In the future. I'm going to get much
further with the empathy, the understanding, uh, the acknowledgment that
you're pissed off, and that I'm now trying to take
(17:24):
action to do something that I am by denying that
you're angry.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
This is good, although people try to hack this one
when they say to me, like, I don't disagree. I
hope you don't tell your clients to do that. This
does not work. This does not work. I don't disagree, Mike.
But it's like then say then, then say you agree,
and let's stop.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Let's stop.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Let's let's roll on to the next topic.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I disagree with you.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
People have exactly, people have.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
People have.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Also, there's there's some I don't know what course out
there at Harvard Business School on gives people. They've told
people don't say don't say yeah, but say yes. And
I hear people were placing the butt with an end
when it's clearly supposed to be a butt.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
If what comes after the different, it's still gonna sound
that way.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Faithful listeners, don't do it. Please, don't do it. The
next question you're gonna have have fun with. It's from
Eliana in Asheville, North Carolina. Politics seem to be more
(18:32):
divided and the way we talk about politics more vitriolic
than ever you came out of political consulting.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
What would you say.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Is at the root of this.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
First of all, I love Asheville.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The rapids there you got Michael and I have actually been,
but we've been to Ashville and there's a there's a
place where you can go rafting and it's like class
three to four rapids. It is class zero rapids zero.
All due respect to the great town town. Was I
think we missed we missed the weather or something.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yes, I don't know. I don't know what we missed.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We missed something.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
There's yes, uh so politics So I think you know,
we've seen this trend for a long time on politics,
and what has really emerged is that you've got a duopoly.
You've got a business model that is built around extremism.
It is built around monetizing anger, it is built around
(19:28):
kind of encouraging bad behavior. Right, if you think about
where all the money goes, people get funded if they
are more extreme, more kind of binary in their positions.
They get they get on TV if they yell and scream,
but not if they're moderate. Uh and uh and all
(19:49):
of the like centrifugal forces pull people out to the extremes.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, it's hard to be heard if you're a moderately right.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It's like, where do we want candy?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
What do we want reasonable compromise? When do we want it?
We're willing to negotiate. It is together.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It is the biggest problem in politics right now is
that really the extremes are given out candy and the
middle is telling you to eat us out. And the
question is like, how do you make that powerful and
compelling and find that really mobilized the middle of American
politics and say that Look, this is if we sit
around the kitchen table, we always make decisions based on
(20:28):
finding common ground, based on some kind of common sense,
some balance, some sense of compromise. All of a sudden,
we go out into this world of politics and it's
yes or no, it's black or white, it's up or down. Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
You've read The Righteous Mind. There's a lot there about
how our own sort of psychology it's and our own
intuitions are upstream of our morality and our moralities upstream
of our politics. Do you read that? Do you take
away from that that there is that there's no way
to get back to a middle ground because of the
way we're wired. Or are we just missing Is there
some trick that we're missing in in how we talk
(21:06):
to each other, in how we communicate where the choices
people are going to?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah? No, I think it's a great question, and I
think some of it goes back to this idea that
some messages make you feel good and others work. Like
if I am a Republican and I'm talking to Republicans,
then the messages that make me feel good, are you
going to make them feel good as well? If I
want to go talk to Democrats, then I need to
understand what works with them, And there is an overlap, right,
(21:30):
It is just about whether or not you want to
find it. So what Jonathan Hyde talks about is that
for Democrats, they're much more focused on messages around caring
and around caring in general. For Republicans, it's much more
about liberty versus oppression, and there are ways to find
messages that bridge the gap. You have to be looking
for them, and most people are not really looking.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
For them because Democrats care about liberty too, and totally
it's in Republicans care about is.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
In fact, I'm doing a lot of work right now
and find those shared American values that we can talk
about and then a language that we can really communicate
effectively to reach people in the middle of the political world,
you know, kind of moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents
and say, look, there is so much more that we
agree on than what we disagree on, and that unites
(22:20):
us rather than divides us. And we got to go
forward and really show how powerful we can be.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And you know, in as much as the last Gallipole
said that that forty nine percent of Americans are independent,
which is the highest number I think recorded in if
not forever, in like thirty years. So in a way,
we're more polarized than ever, and yet there's also more
people who don't want to be polarized than ever.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Absolutely, but you've got the people on the extremes who
yell louder, right, and they so you've got you've got
loud voters on the extremes, You've got loud politicians on
the extremes. You've got loud media on the extremes, and
so they create this environment that really amplifies all the
polar rization. And everybody else who really wants to have
(23:04):
a balanced conversation, who can have a reasonable conversation on
topics on which they disagree, They're just like, WHOA, this
is not this is not how I operate, And there's
no there's no platform for them to effectively kind of communicate,
get votes, get support.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Well, when you find the words and you find you
will have you back on the show and you can
you can clear this up for us, because Eleian is
asking a really good question. This next one was on
politics too. This is we even't had a politically oriented one.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Let's be in the air.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
It must be. I think it's maybe it's in the
guest Benjamin in Los Angeles, California asks the rise of
Donald Trump has been one of the most shocking developments
in American politics the century, and he has the most
unusual communication style too. Is there a connection between the two?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yes, for two reasons, I would say, First is and
I got I got more flaming comments from friends when
I first wrote this. Then for anything else that I've
written is that very early on in Trump's campaign in
twenty sixteen, it was clear that he was connecting with
(24:17):
people in a way that Hillary Clinton was not. And
the first reason was that he had three things that
he was focused on. Right, he was going to make
America great again. He was going to build a wall,
he was going to prere what the third thing was.
If he went to Hillary Clinton's website, she had one
hundred and twelve reasons in counting as if the one
hundred and thirteenth reason was going to be the one
to get you over the limit. Right, So what does
(24:39):
she stand for? You don't know. She stands for one
hundred and twelve different things. He stands for three. So
the first was that he was much better at engaging
people in a discussion on things that they cared about.
And the second thing was that we are, i think
largely for worse in kind of a crisis of expertise.
Where it used to be in America that we respected
(25:01):
the people who were experts at things, who had who
had spent forty years becoming really qualified to do things,
we now generally reject that, or at least on the extremes,
we reject that. We reject science in a lot of
cases on both sides of the aisle, and experts. We'd
much rather hear from regular people.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Right. This always comes up in political hympains, people like well,
I don't think i'd want to have a beer with him.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
That is the most important indicator who's going to who's
going to win the presidency is almost always who you'd
rather have a beer with.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
I have.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
There's tons of people I enjoy having beers with. Well,
I just don't think are qualified to be personal.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yes, but you're you, you're kind of uh, maybe I'm
not the example or not the example.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Okay, so you heard a clear message connecting with the audience.
He also uses really small like it's the the language is.
I don't know if it's if it's just how he talks,
or if it's a if it's if it's a technique
he's developed. But the degree to which the language is
(26:04):
so simple, that's got to be part of how not
just that there's few things to say, but he says
this is bad, this is sad. Somehow it breaks through.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yes, Well, I mean we just sort of pull a
bunch of streams together of things that we've been talking about,
and one of those four p's of mine, not your
five p's, was plain spoken. Right, you have to speak
in the language of the people. And we often try
and make things harder to understand than they need to be.
He makes it very easy to understand. Right, two legs good,
(26:36):
four legs bad. You know, it is very easy to
understand where he stands on things, and so you're you're
either with him or against him. And on the topics
that he picked, there were a lot of people with him,
and so it really resonated.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I have a one of my colleagues was asking me
for sort of advice on being a better public speaker,
and I said, one of the things we actually talked about
on this podcast was recording yourself speaking and watching for
the nuances. But another one I found is really powerful
is watching people who have become famous or important through presenting.
(27:14):
Watch Bill Clinton's Democratic National Convention speech and the way
he connects with the audience and when he goes off prompter,
and how he's so smooth, and watch anything Obama's done,
watch old Reagan clips. They're all different, but every one
of them has developed this technique for connecting with the audience.
And what I also tell people like, you have to
(27:34):
watch an entire Trump rally because if you're in the
same medio media echo chamber, iman, you get the insane
clips and you're like, I can't believe anyone hears him.
And when you watch the whole show and the way
that he riffs and iterates and rifts, and then he's
talking and out of nowhere, he's talking about wind turbines,
and then he goes, ah, they kill so many birds,
(27:56):
and he starts calling him a bird graveyard, and then
the audience starts reacting to it, and he's like found
a thing, and he just works it. But as you're
trying to become a great communicator, watching folks who have
gotten to where they are by communicating and absorbing all
of it without, you know, by putting your personal emotions aside,
I've advised folks is a great way to get good.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I would actually say you probably learn more if you're
an anti Trumper. You probably learn more from listening to
Trump than you do from listening to Clinton and Obama,
because when you listen to Clinton and Obama, you're going
to get taken in by the things that you agree
with and if you watch Trump probably right, and you say, look,
I disagree with everything that he has to say. I
have to understand why he's resonating with people. Then you'll
(28:34):
really understand how he does exactly what you said, which
is kind of riff off the people, and build on
what they have to say and listen to what works
and then respond to it.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So we've covered some power of language stuff and in
some of the ways that it permeates our politics. We're
back to a question and how this affects how companies
communicate with their consumers and employees. It's from Carter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He says, my company was very local and social justice issues.
After George Floyd, there was then a lot of pressure
(29:04):
to make statements on other issues, including legislation. Recently, our
early statements on the crisis in the Middle East went
very badly. How should organizations navigate this complicated landscape.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It's a it's a really difficult challenge in general, Steff.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
A lot of companies coming to you on this topic
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know, whether it's on Israel, we saw it on Dobbs,
we saw it obviously after George Floyd.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Are they generally smart enough to come to you ahead
of time, or is everyone coming to you after they
after they made the first mistake.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean I think that there are there are
a lot of companies who have actually gotten pretty adept
at this and kind of understand where to be careful.
And then there are others who come after, you know,
come after they've made a statement, and then you're helping
to clean up them. Yeah, you know, I think the
the the biggest lesson to understand is that Americans do
not all share the same values, right, and that if
(29:55):
you go out there and you say that I'm going
to you know, we're doing the right thing. And that's
why we believe that that not everybody's going to agree
with you, and anybody who disagrees with you is now
going to hate your right. There's a lot of pressure
internally to say one thing that doesn't often align with
what a broad you know, national customer base may agree with.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
And your own employees.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Own employees who tend to be more progressive, tend to
be the most vocal about a lot of these social
issues want you to speak up on their issues, and
so you're being pushed to talk about a lot of
issues that you wouldn't otherwise want to talk about. I
think the lessons that we've learned are, first of all,
that there are issues that you don't need to talk about,
you know, if they are not related to your business,
(30:40):
If they don't impact your business, then the question is
why are you talking about them. Usually, if they don't
relate directly to your business, but they relate to your values,
and you've spoken about your values, then you may want
to consider making a statement. It may be just an
internal statement, or it may be an external statement. But
where I think the biggest change has happened in the
last you know, kind of a year or so is
(31:01):
that the companies are, I think appropriately much more reluctant
to take political positions. We see now only about a
third of Americans think it's appropriate for companies to take
positions on political issues.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Okay they.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And they will boycott you if you take the wrong position.
And so the place that you can avoid, even on
Israel and Hamas and the Palestinian situation, is focus on
how it impacts your employees. Focus on universal values that
are going to less likely do to cause problems. And
so it is mourning the loss of life, you know,
(31:38):
being anti terrorism is pretty safe base, and then from
there it gets more challenging, and so you have to
really know why it is that you want to wage
into a battle beyond. You know, I'm opposed to terror,
I'm more in the loss of life. I value peace.
I'm taking care of my employees. You know, those are
(31:59):
the places that you can that you can communicate a
position without getting yourself into trouble.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And something we talk a lot about our work is
that our company was created to achieve a particular mission.
To your point, when every thing's come up, we first
run it through that framework, which is is this going
to help us to be a better company and better
achieve our mission? And the secondly, what creates the environment
that's most inclusive for your employees. And a lot of
times the issue is it's something of it's something on
(32:30):
a topic of equity, it's something on a topic of diversity.
It's important to lean into those for us because that
is what creates a more inclusive environment at work and
in our broader market, which is aligned to our to
our mission. Other times, if it's just a polarizing issue,
it's going to make some portion of the people at
work feel unincluded and that doesn't help us be good teammates.
It doesn't help us to achieve the mission. We have
(33:04):
one from a friend of mine, very good friend of mine,
Joey and Scottsdale, Arizona.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
I think we often forget about communication and building trust
when we walk through the doors at home after a
long day. And so I'm wondering what lessons you've each
learned about communication that translate to success as a spouse
and as a parent.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Well, I want to hear your answer first.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
One of the insights I get from you as a
communications expert is simplicity and repetition and values based communication.
And when our kids were little, we made a conscious
choice to sort of ground our instructions to them in
values rather than in do this, don't do that. So
(33:51):
we set our values are work hard, take care of people,
and be brave. So if you weren't nice to another
kid at school, it's in the context of did you
take care of other people? If you didn't try hard
in the little soccer league? Were you being brave for
everything else? I feel like I want to get in
the tub with my socks on. I'm like, I'm get
in the tub with your socks on. There's nothing in
(34:12):
the core values that prohibits it, So give it a try,
and that I think that's a way in which a
lot of your lessons on communication. I think our kids
turned out pretty good. I think helped helped me to
be a better DABT helped us to be better parents.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
How about you, you know, I bring everything back to relationships.
I think you know in the context of trust, and
where I focus a lot of how do you build
trust with someone? The way that you do it in
a personal relationship and the way that you do it
with a customer or an employee I think are very similar,
and that is that you are really trying to get
the benefit of the doubt, that when you say something
(34:49):
it is going to be treated at face value. Right
when you lose trust, all the benefit of the doubt
goes out the window. And so if I I have
a relationship with someone and there's a breach of trust,
I can no longer say what my motives are like.
I can't say I care about you because their response
(35:11):
will be, well, then why'd you do X?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Right? I don't trust your answers anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So I can say, well, let me show you how
I care about you because then I'm proving it with motives.
But so when when it comes to thinking about like
what what is lost when you lose trust and what
is gained when you have it. You know, whether you
can talk about motives, whether people are going to behave
kind of rationally, whether they are going to whether they're
(35:38):
going to whether they're going to take what you say
at face value. It all comes down to that trust.
And you can build that trust by being more personal,
making sure that I know what's in it for you,
like how you're going to feel about something, being positive
about things, being credible. So all the lessons that I
teach companies, I also think apply with my kids, kids,
(36:00):
with with Susie, and.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
More generally well. Having been able to observe your communications
and be in contact with you for a number of years,
I can tell you it makes it makes things around
you better. So to our to our friend Joe the
I think the lessons of what we've been hearing from
Michael today on how you build trust with language, on
how you make yourself clear, on how you and how
you're more sensitive to what your audience is hearing, not
(36:23):
just what you're saying, is as powerful and it's valuable.
And I hope all of our listeners got as much
out of this today as I did. This was really fun.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, thank you, Thanks Joey, Thanks Mike.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Well, my friends. Today we talked about the power of
language with the number one expert on the topic in
the world. And one of the things Michael says a lot.
He says it in his podcast Hearsay, which I strongly recommend,
he says it in his book The Language of Trust,
which I strongly recommend, and and I believe it's even
the tagline for his company is it's it's not what
you say, it's what they hear. And I wanted to
(37:03):
leave everyone with that thought today because you're communicating constantly,
whether it's home or whether it's whether it's at work,
and so often we're wondering why didn't people follow what
I said? Why didn't people believe me? Well, why didn't
I get the right response? And putting it in that
framework what did I say versus what do I think
(37:25):
they may have heard, might help to make you a
better communicator. But I also want to remind everyone that
we're on the other side of that too. We often
hear what someone else didn't mean to say we've got this.
We've got this phrase we always use a work assume
positive intent. And as you look at your work and
your life over the next week or so, and if
this podcast sticks in your head, I hope you'll also
(37:47):
ask yourself, you know what I heard? Is that really
what the other person meant to say? And how can
I get to the bottom of it? Because better communication
is ultimately what brings us together, and it's what helps
us to succeed at work, and it's what helps us
to have great relationships in life, and it's what I
want for all of you. So thanks for tuning in today, everybody.
We've got some amazing guests coming up the next few weeks,
including a world class Silicon Valley operator and iconic New
(38:10):
York City restaurant tour and more so, text or calling
your questions at two point three four one, nine, five
nine six or just hit me up on LinkedIn at
Mike Steib. I want to thank Michael and of course
Jen Jada and the team at Blue Duck Media for
putting all this together, Dylan, Sasha, Gay Nathan and Christine
(38:31):
at iHeart bahed making the magic happen in the Studio
and Ben and the team at William Morris endeavor for
all their support office hours. Is a production of Blue
Duck Media and distributed by iHeartRadio. I'll see you next week. Everybody,
stay on your grind.
Host
Mike Steib
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