Episode 22: Using Language to Build Trust

Transcript

0:00 – 0:0:33
Chris Thornton

Change@Work is a podcast about the ever-evolving world of work and the human behaviors that drive it. I’m Chris Thornton, Senior Principal here at Daggerwing Group. Together with partners, clients, and leading experts from a variety of industries, we’ll share what’s happening in the world of work, how leaders can prepare for the future, and how to engage employees along the way.

0:33 – 0:47
Chris Thornton

Joining me today is Michael Maslansky, CEO of Maslansky & Partners, a language strategy firm that helps organizations connect with their audience to shape perceptions, change behavior, and drive business results. Michael, welcome.

0:47 – 0:49
Michael Maslansky

Thank you, Chris. Great to be here.

0:49 – 0:56
Chris Thornton

You know, we’ve had your colleague Lee Carter on, and I’ve got to tell you, I’m a big fan.

0:56 – 0:57
Michael Maslansky

He’s a tough act to follow.

0:57 – 1:25
Chris Thornton

He really is. Please, try your best because she sets the bar so high. Thanks so much for joining us, it really is great to have you here. I get to work with folks from Maslansky so often so it’s really a pleasure to have you on as well. At Daggerwing, we focus in on people, so we’ve got to start with some people questions. If you could live anywhere in the world right now, or forever (let us know), where would it be?

1:25 – 1:41
Michael Maslansky

Well first I’ll say, we love working with Daggerwing as well – some of the smartest people we get to work with and really complimentary approaches that we take. In terms of where I want to live, you mean not downtown Manhattan in the middle of a pandemic?

1:41 – 1:44
Chris Thornton

I mean, maybe? Maybe, I don’t know.

1:44 – 2:05
Michael Maslansky

I think if I had to find that one place, I’m a skier (have been my whole life) it’s my favorite activity to be out on the mountain, and so I would pick a mountain. An all-year round skiing outdoors place. You know, Utah is one of my favorites, Snowbird.

2:05 – 2:12
Chris Thornton

You know, Michael – I’ve never been skiing. I guess I’m embarrassed to admit that. What do you love about skiing?

2:12 – 2:30
Michael Maslansky

You know, it is one of those sports where (I guess like many), but once you get your balance and understand how to do it, you can fly down the mountain. You can do 40 plus miles an hour with no net and feel just amazing on the slopes. It’s a fabulous sport.

2:30 – 2:40
Chris Thornton

Do you do moguls? That’s the one thing on the Olympics when I watch it, I think “yes it would destroy my knees,” but I think I would love it. Any thoughts on moguls?

2:40 – 2:50
Michael Maslansky

I love three moguls – by the fourth one I’m ready to die. I love them – I’m terrible at them, but I love them. I love doing them.

2:51 – 3:01
Chris Thornton

Got it, I’m sure I would do one and be done…but, amazing. Alright, if you could learn any new language, which would it be?

3:01 – 3:23
Michael Maslansky

I think it would be Gen Z. I think Spanish (I speak a little bit of Spanish), I’ve always wanted to speak more Spanish. Would definitely be Spanish. I just feel like if you go around the world – other than English – it’s the language that allows you to do the most things.

3:23 – 3:35
Chris Thornton

I see, that makes sense. Your group focusses in on language and I know words matter so much to you. So that leads me to quotes – do you have a quote that you love or that inspires you?

3:35 – 4:49
Michael Maslansky

You know, I do. There’s the quote (our tagline), which is “it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” But actually beyond that quote (because I won’t talk about that here), it lead me to look – the art that I purchase tends to be art that is focused on words and language and I found a piece of art (it’s actually an Icart), and the Icart actually spells out, it says “the question is not what you look at, but what you see.” And I didn’t know at the time it was a Henry David Thoreau quote, but it kind of got me to digging into the quote, and I think this idea of “the question is not what you look at, but what you see,” how critical that is to me in the work that we do in everyday life, that our perspective is a choice and that we can decide what it is that we see based on what’s right in front of us, based on what we look at. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how do I get better at seeing the world from different perspectives, in different ways, finding the details, figuring out what really matters. And so, the quote to me really says a lot.

4:49 – 5:55
Chris Thornton

That’s really powerful. Let’s take that quote, and actually the first quote that you mentioned, and dig into it a little bit more – “it’s not what you say, but what they hear.” Maslansky’s just so good at language strategy and language that connects with people. And when working with your team, one of the things that I’ve learned from them is you can spend all the time (and you should) on getting that right strategy, focusing on making sure that leaders know how to lead, that you’ve got the right talent, the right ideas, the right way forward. But if your language doesn’t meaningfully connect with your audience, it’s not going to matter – the rest of that stuff isn’t going to matter. It does, but you’ve got to find the language that’s going to move people forward, move people into action – if that’s what you need. So, can you talk a little bit about how your methodologies and how you get people to understand that it’s not what you say, but what they hear?

5:55 – 7:42
Michael Maslansky

Absolutely. Well, I’ll start with another quote that I use a lot, and it’s from George Bernard Shaw – it’s “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it’s taking place.” So often when we’re working with clients or in the day-to-day world that we live in, we think that just because we’ve said what we want to say, that we’ve communicated. And that so much of communication is about the person that you’re communicating with, and who are they, how do they look at the world, what do they believe, where do they come from, and at the core of what we do is trying to build a sense of empathy for the audience and recognizing that just because you said it really doesn’t mean that they heard it, and that we have to identify and then overcome all of these barriers, cognitive biases, obstacles that people on the other side have, before we actually get to communicate. And so, every methodology that we use has these multiple components – it is what are you trying to say, what is it that we know about our audience (or think we know about our audience) that may impact how they will interpret, or understand, or respond to the message. How do we identify different ways of framing or articulating the message so we can overcome those gaps and so that ultimately, we can deliver a recommendation to our clients – what we call language strategy – that is more likely to be understood, more likely to be believed, and more likely to be effective at achieving the original goal of the communication.

7:42 – 8:51
Chris Thornton

One of the phrases that I despise that leaders say all the time is “get on the bus.” And that metaphor of “we’re going, change is happening, get on,” and one of the things that I’ve counselled leaders over the years is to start eliminating that phrase because if you’re saying, “get on the bus, we’re going,” it means a couple of things. First of all, I don’t have control. Second, you don’t need me, you just need me to be a passive member of whatever strategy you’ve got going so I’ll just sit here and not dig into making the strategy a reality. It is also, to me, a symptom of really bad leadership or perhaps poor communication. And what resonates, is that people are saying “but I don’t know where you’re taking me, you may have told me, but I haven’t internalized it yet and it doesn’t mean anything to me, so why would I ever get on a bus that you’re driving?” Can you riff on “get on the bus,” and any dangers you see in that language?

8:51 – 10:03
Michael Maslansky

I see a couple of them. I think the biggest one is that one of the challenges that leaders have today in terms of leading is that we’ve gone from a command and control environment where basically you can say “go get on the bus,” and people follow, to a much more bottoms-up approach to leadership, and I think to work in general, where people say “if I don’t understand where we’re going then I’m going to question it,” or “I’m not going to get on,” or “when I get on I’m not going to be happy about it.” The art of communicating that you want people to get on the bus is to empower them to feel like they made the decision to get on the bus themselves. And we look at ways of doing that, so the bus could be going in exactly the right direction – it could be the best bus to get on (to torture the metaphor) – but if you tell people that it’s the right thing for them, they are much more likely to want to do it and to embrace the idea of doing it than if they believe that it’s the right thing for them and that they’ve made the decision.

10:03 – 11:38
Chris Thornton

One of the things that I’ve learned from your folks – there’s a deep, deep cynic inside of me and part of it comes from being at Arthur Anderson when it fell apart. And I saw leaders saying one thing to the press, and something completely different inside. And it was that disconnect between “here’s out PR statement,” but “here’s the real talk inside” – and it was such disconnected language for me that it really made me deeply cynical of leaders. That the way you portray yourself to one audience, and if it’s different to another audience, it can really start to make people question “Wait a minute, who are you as a leader?” “What are we trying to achieve?” “How are we trying to achieve it?” and “Why can’t you just tell me one story, or at least a connected story.” So I want to dig in on trust a little bit because, if you can tell, it’s stuck with me for…Arthur Anderson fell apart more than 20 years ago, and it still stays with me. We know that trust is important to our personal relationships or work relationships. During times of uncertainty though, and people are experiencing change, (certainly fear in some cases), how do you help clients build trust with their employees in situations where it may have eroded? Where do you think leaders should start?

11:38 – 14:16
Michael Maslansky

So first of all, I think there is that cynic in all of us, or maybe if not a cynic, then certainly a skeptic. It is kind of a question of how quickly and easily it comes out for each of us. I also think that in the business that you’re in at Daggerwing, you have to have a certain amount of that because if change were easy, and you could be poly about it, we wouldn’t need the Daggerwings of the world. It’s because it’s so hard, because there is so much embedded skepticism and cynicism about these things that it actually makes it hard, and that’s why you all are so great at it. But when I think about trust (and I actually had a name for it starting in 2010 I called it the post-trust era, other people started calling it the post-truth era a lilt bit after that), but this idea that part of what happened because of Arthur Anderson, Enron, and the financial crisis in 2000 that then exacerbated by the financial crisis, was just this fundamental breakdown in the assumption that you should trust institutions, and that we no longer come to conversations with that, what I would call, benefit of the doubt. To me, trust is “do you have the benefit of the doubt?” in a personal relationship, when you say that you were doing something, do they take you at your word and assume that you were doing it, or do they doubt you? And when it comes to relationships between employers and employees, between people and their government, between individuals and all kinds of institutions, I think there’s just been this incredible fraying and loss of that benefit of the doubt, and that our job – in helping to understand that and then build it or rebuild it for companies, is to recognize that they may not have that with their employees (if we’re talking about internal situations), that even when they have it it’s incredibly fragile and that it’s incredibly fleeting, and that just because you have it today, doesn’t mean that you’re going to have it tomorrow, and it’s got to be a constant process of saying and doing – not only doing what you say you’re going to do, but also explaining to people why you did what you’ve done in order to build and keep that trust.

14:16 – 15:12
Chris Thornton

So important, especially in change – and one of the things that we find, to build off of your idea, is people don’t know your motivations as leaders. They don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and I think it’s pretty easy for leaders to say “But I’m trying to do the right thing, I know everybody sees that, and I’m sure they can connect the dots because I told them this before, so I don’t want to overexplain this because I bet they get it already.” What we’re finding is that people are just trying to do their jobs and they’re living really complicated lives (and they always have), but especially complicated right now. And having to explain here’s why I did what I did, or here’s why we’re going to do what we’re going to do can go so far in helping people reconnect to the narrative, reconnect to “Why am I here?” reconnect to “Where are we going?” in really powerful ways.

15: 12 – 16:19
Michael Maslansky

I think that that is totally true. I think we hear a lot (I’m sure you do to) about the ‘say-do’ gap. There are some people who say “Look, if you just take the right actions and you close the gap between what you say you’re going to do and what you’re going to do, then it’s going to be fine.” But I really think that misses the other half of the equation – that doing the right thing is necessary but it’s not sufficient. And that if people don’t understand why you’re doing it, then they can misinterpret it. A quote I use all the time also is actually from OmniCamp, as I call it, from Babson Francis Fries, which is that “Everything vague will be interpreted negatively.” If you give people the opportunity to hold the wrong inference, they will do it every time – your motivations, about the outcomes, about the process, you name it. And that communication at its heart is to really make sure that people understand what it is that you’re actually trying to do.

16:19 – 17:33
Chris Thornton

I’m going to pick up on post-trust, (others called it post-truth later). So post-trust, I’m wondering (given our current work environment), not ours, but what’s happening in the world and workplaces across the globe, challenging seems to be an understatement. That we’re facing all kinds of challenges – that we’ve got many people leaving their jobs in the exodus we’ve been seeing. There are conversations going on right now – with our clients certainly that I’m picking up in the media about the meaning of work, what the purpose is – “Why do people leave?” “Why do they stay”, “Do I belong”, “Am I going to grow”, “Do I have the flexibility that I need?”, “Can I work from home or not?”, at its very basic. So when you think about language and how it can be used to respond to these challenges and respond to these issues to move us beyond – I don’t know, can we move beyond post-trust? What do we do, as leaders, to address these challenges and hopefully build trust?

17:33 – 21:16
Michael Maslanksy

I think, in some ways, knowing that you have a problem is the first step, and knowing that just telling people to get in the bus is not going to be sufficient – is a really important step. And then once you’re there and you recognize that trust is a process, and an ongoing process, and a lot of it is based in communication, then I think there are important things that you can do. First is understanding what you’re trying to communicate because it’s very hard to be an effective communicator if you’re not sure what the substance is that you’re trying to explain – it doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers, in fact authentically communicating that you don’t have all the answers is very often a great message for building trust. But we look at a couple of things that I think are really effective at trust building, and I’m going to give you two models for thinking about this that we find work pretty consistently. So, the first is (and I’m all about alliterations, I get made fun of it) – I’ll talk about the 3As then I’ll talk about the 4Ps. So, the 3As are Acknowledge, Accept, and then Add. So, if I want to build trust with you, and I think you’re skeptical because you’re worried about your job or your future and the direction of the company, the first thing that I need to do is acknowledge that. I need to acknowledge that I see you, I understand how you feel, and doesn’t mean that I’m saying that it’s right, but I see it. I acknowledge it. The second is, and now I’ve given you a sense that I’m not totally tone deaf or out of touch. The second is I accept your perspective as valid, whether or not I agree with it. I can say not only do I see that you’re concerned about your future or that you feel like it’s important for you to not have to commute for two hours everyday, and I can accept that that is a valid way to feel without saying that it’s the right way or the right way for the organization. If I’ve done those two things, I now hopefully have you nodding your head that you agree with me, that you’re willing to listen to the rest of what I have to say. And once I do that, I can start to add additional information. And so, (let’s say it was a commute) I understand/kmow that you have a two hour commute – and that takes a lot of time, it takes time away from your family and I completely understand and respect why that may not be something that you want to do or why it’s something that we need to consider in a really meaningful way in terms of coming up with our meeting policy – there are a couple of things we’ve been thinking about that I want to make sure you understand in terms of the decisions that we’re going to make as it relates to these things. That we’ve seen that when people gather together in the room at specific moments in time that we get better outcomes, that we build better morale, that we have stronger culture, that people stay here over the long term. These are all things that for me, as a leader, are incredibly important. And so, what we’ve tried to do is to find a balance that recognizes your perspective but also helps us achieve what we want to achieve as a business. And so, if I go through that, you may still decide that you don’t want a two hour commute and there are other options out there, but I’ve also at least given, I think, myself and my company, the best chance of explaining to you that maybe if I say now I want you to commute two days a week or three days a week, that that trade-off is reasonable one on both sides.

21:16 – 21:57
Chris Thornton

And you’ve given me a …I don’t have to agree with it – with your thinking, and I don’t have to agree with your decisions, but at least you’ve given me the respect of sharing it – how you’re thinking about it and what you’re solving as opposed to communicating, “Yeah I don’t really care about your two hour commute, get in here.” So, appreciate that – tone certainly matters here right? Because you could do all those same steps and be condescending as hell, or at least be perceived that way. So, you’ve really got to watch yourself in that situation. Any guidance before we get to the 4Ps so you can show up so it can be heard and that you don’t offend people in that process?

21:57 – 22:59
Michael Maslansky

Absolutely, and it goes to something that you said earlier, and that is, in the world that we live in, (and some of it’s generational, and certainly some if it is amplified among Gen Z and to a certain extent Millennials), but I think it’s true across the board, is that people don’t want to be told what to think anymore. We’re seeing it in every area of our lives. And they want to feel like they are in control of making their own decisions and their own choices. And if I approach communication from the perspective of not trying to tell you what to think, but to persuade you that the perspective that I have is the right one, and that you will choose, then the tone is going to be respectful and the outcome is going to be more successful than if I try to ram it down your throat, and if I have leverage then I’ll win, and if I don’t have leverage I’ll lose.

22:53 – 23:00
Chris Thornton

Got it, and tell you how to feel in the process. Totally makes sense. Alright, give us the 4Ps.

23:00 – 26:21
Michael Maslansky

So, the 4Ps – within that, you know, the 3As – there are a lot of different approaches you can take to communicating a message and I start from the proposition that first of all, I always want our clients to be telling the truth – something that they believe is accurate. I also say they believe, because there are many different flavors of what’s true, and I don’t mean that in any nefarious way – we see the world in different ways, there is no one truth that we can all simply point to and agree on and that was true before this politicized world we operate in. But I want clients to be able to defend their actions and then within that, I want to help them find the most effective way to talk about it. And so, the 4Ps are really four ways of establishing and building credibility through the language that you use. The first one, and as any marketer will certainly recognize is about being personal. If I speak to you directly and I talk about your challenges and issues or opportunities, it’s going to be much more effective than if I talk about it in the third person or in the abstract. And so, how can you make your communication personal, that’s the first P. Second one is plain spoken – we take for granted what it is that our audience knows. If you’re a CEO, even at a mid-size, even at probably a small company (certainly at a big company, you breathe different air than everybody else, you read different things, you occupy an entirely different space, and the language that you speak (while it may still be English, it’s like my wife who’s also English says two countries separated by a common language), the language that leadership speaks, and that employees speak is often totally different. How do you ensure your team understands what it is that you are actually are saying and what you mean. The third P is about being positive. I think that you see over and over again that if I have a choice between talking what I am for and what I am against – first of all I can take almost any issue and I can talk about what I’m for, related to that issue, or what I’m against. If I want to divide people, I will talk about what I’m against. And Cicero said this, however many hundreds of years ago he was around – “if you want to divide people, use the negative, if you want to bring people together, use the positive” So how do we talk about what we’re for? How do we talk about framing things in a positive, solution-oriented language. And then the last is being plausible. And it really comes down to how do I say things that are credible in the world that we live in today – our lived experience would just reject certain statements. If a company leader gets up there and says everything is great while the walls are burning, it’s not plausible, you cannot convince people to do things, you cannot build trust with them if the reality that they’re living and what you’re telling them are totally opposed – and so, how do you make sure that you are communicating in language that’s really plausible.

26:21 – 27:43
Chris Thornton

I’m taking all of it in – I don’t know if this is a fair question, but I’m still going to ask it because you’re here. You can work with leaders as much as we do, and you can help steer them on the path. And there comes a point in some cases for me, maybe not for you, but this is where I want your input, where you just realize they’re full of shit and they’re not going to make it. And I’ve been in that situation – not often, but I’ve been in that situation. And language at that point can become a manipulation. Can become propaganda. Can become a bludgeon. And can start to hurt people. When you know it’s language and a leader who does not have the best of intentions, who isn’t going to meet people, wherever they need to get to go next, and sometimes we’re faced with do I say this, do I redirect behavior, do I point out the things that they cannot see in themselves? – any thoughts there because language is so powerful, and I’m wondering if there’s a time or a way that you approach those situations.

27:43 – 30:36
Michael Maslansky

I think it’s a great point and I’ve learned some hard lessons over the years about how to deal with situations like that. I think there are a couple of different manifestations if it that we’ve run into, and one of them is when there’s a right answer and an acceptable answer inside an organization and you have to choose that the acceptable one that gets implemented (even if it’s not the best one) is the better choice to recommend because it’s the only thing that will make progress. And I believe a lot in making progress and I think if there are leaders out there who I think have really nefarious purposes and are trying to use language to manipulate, I’d like to think that we stand down at that point – we will not aid those things. I think what’s the more challenging circumstance actually is when you have leaders who may be that way, but they’re surrounded by other people who are also trying to push in the right direction and to get the organization to move in the right direction – and do you support them, do you leave them. I will say, the one thing that I’ve seen as a positive in this area (and there’s also a fair amount of science) is that how you speak doesn’t change how you think. And I think particularly, in the energy industry, where we’ve done a lot of work over a long period of time, when part of the industry was moving towards reducing carbon emissions and (?) was really behind the curve, and we armed the industry with language that was much more forward leaning about the why, and the what of helping to address climate change. And leaders – they started to speak this language, and they started to get positive feedback to it when they’d spoken and took action and supported it. It became mutually reinforcing, and it moved them in the direction (I won’t take more of a little bit of credit), but by changing their language, we started to help them change their minds and their actions, and it really helped create a lot of momentum, and it’s been a powerful example of how you can use language to move people from what may be neutral to or negative to something that’s much more positive.

30:36 – 31:04
Chris Thornton

Michael, I think that’s incredibly powerful, and it does come down to some tough choices and making the right one with leaders, and helping the organization move forward. Thank you so much for this conversation – I am so appreciative of you giving your time and your ideas and I started the conversation saying how much I love your team – I love your team so much, I love getting to work with them, and I love getting to see the work they do.

31:04 – 31:20
Michael Maslansky

Thank you, Chris. Great to be here and also, feeling is mutual. The people side of change and the language that we use to help make that change a reality I think they’re so good together. So, to many more opportunities in the future.

31:20 – 31:22
Chris Thornton

Absolutely, thank you so much Michael.