The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or two — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

In this inaugural episode, CEO Michael Maslansky, President Lee Carter and Partner Keith Yazmir discuss how we need to communicate in a Post-COVID world.  From how we talk to consumers to how we engage with employees, we need to take a close look at everything we say — and how we say it.  But not everything is new and different.  They have a (sometimes) heated debate about how and how much our language needs to adapt.  Ultimately, they agree on one thing:  words have never mattered more, and they offer up a few essential tips on how to resonate keeping in mind that it’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

Listen below or on your preferred streaming platform:

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

EPISODE 1 TRANSCRIPT:

Lee Carter:
They said what? Welcome to HearSay. A podcast from the language strategists at Maslansky + Partners, where we provide our take on the smartest, savviest and stupidest messages in the market today, and what you can learn from their experience. Our philosophy is, “It’s not what you say. It’s what they hear.” And that’s why we call this HearSay. I’m Lee Carter and I’m President and Partner at maslansky + partners, author of a book called Persuasion, Convincing Others, When Facts Don’t Seem to Matter. I’m a lover of words and always have been and feel like every step in my life has led me here to be focused on messaging language and talking to you guys today.

Michael Maslansky:
I’m Michael Maslansky. I’m the Chief Language Strategist at maslansky + partners and author of a book called the Language of Trust, and have been a student of how people communicate, how companies communicate for way too long at this point, and really happy to be here and talking to you on HearSay.

Michael Maslansky: 
Hey, Lee. 
 
Lee Carter: 
Hey, Michael. 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
How are you doing? 
 
Lee Carter: 
I’m good. I’m so glad we’re finally doing this. 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
We’ve been talking about doing a podcast for so long. I think because we operate across so many industries and we see so many different challenges, but we’re always coming back to these fundamental human truths. And so while every situation is different, I think we all get to spend all this time talking about the lessons that we learn that apply more broadly. And so this podcast is our opportunity to talk about what we’re seeing and how we can apply those lessons and hopefully help companies do it as well.  
 
Lee Carter: 
Yeah. I’m really excited about this. We’ve talked about… We have so many of these conversations one-offs with individual clients in one-on-one settings and there’s themes that I think goes so much bigger and more broad that can help so many more people. So I’m really excited to share some of what we’ve learned through research and through years of blood, sweat, tears, and excitement with others. 

Michael Maslansky: 
Yeah. And couldn’t imagine doing our first episode of any podcast without Keith Yazmir who is our partner, our friend, a spinner of stories and a wizard of words. Hello, Keith. 
 
Keith Yazmir: 
Said just like a Michael Maslansky would talk about somebody. Hey guys.  
 
Lee Carter: 
He’d only talk about you that way Keith. 
 
Keith Yazmir: 
With alliteration?  
 
Lee Carter: 
Exactly. 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
So when we talk about beginning of podcast at a moment like today, we have to, I think, recognize that this is a unique moment in time, and we’re hearing from so many clients about all the things that are going on. We’ve got COVID, Black Lives Matter, the election cycle that we’ve just gone through. It feels like there’s just so much that’s changing that obviously it means that we’re going to have to change the way that we communicate about everything. And the question is, I think the place that we want to start is, there’s so much change going on out there, but has everything changed? Is it a different world than what we’re used to?  
 
Lee Carter: 
No, I think this is a really interesting question. I’ve heard it so many different times with different people because it feels like everything has changed, right? It feels like this is a totally different world than we were living in when we used to gather, and we used to plan communications in totally different ways that we did and we had events. And now it’s different. But we’ve had so many debates about, is it really different or not? And I’m not sure it’s totally different.  
 
Keith Yazmir: 
Yeah. I would agree. I tend to take the long view with pretty much everything, and this is no different. I think a lot of people have made the comparison between the pandemic of 1918 and there it was much harsher. People suffered much more. And right after we had the roaring 20s, and it was somewhat different, sure. But it was certainly not totally impacted by the pandemic itself. I think what we’re seeing today is a temporary shift in how we’re doing things, but more importantly, change like this accelerates how people act.  When I think about change, I think of, “Is this transforming how we need to think about communications?” And again, when it comes to that, I argue that it is not transforming. It is accelerating. It is accentuating the fact that we need to be really conscious about speaking to our audience in ways that they can hear in this day and age.  I think it’s interesting when you think about how that impacts what we’re here to talk about, which is communication. And it’s another good example. Communications for a long time has been a very challenging area. As we always say, “It’s not what you say that matters. It’s what people hear.” But how do professional communicators really speak to their audience? And our clients ask us, as Lee was saying, “Well, how does this impact how we communicate?” And I think our answer generally, and I’d be curious if you guys agree, is it doesn’t transform how we think about it? It magnifies how we think about it.  What we need to be doing is we need to be looking at those emotional responses, resonance on a much deeper level, what the actual words mean to our audience. Because suddenly we have such little time to get them, to grab them, to get their attention. People are stuck at home watching things online, and we need to make sure that every word as communicators that we use actually matters. 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
Lee, what do you think? 

Lee Carter: 
So it’s interesting because now I want to pull up something. In communication I would say it’s really accentuating more than accelerating because in communication I think we have to be very deliberate. And I think there were so many conversations we’ve had over years talking to our clients about how do we get a seat at the table as communicators in the boardroom. And now it’s like nothing can happen without communications because we’re all virtual, we’re all apart. It’s never been more important.  There has never been a time where we need to focus on it more where every word matters more, where every gap in communication, the silence is felt so acutely because we’re so isolated and alone. And we talk about this all the time. Any silence that’s left out there can be filled with negativity or negative interpretations. And so absolutely amplify the focus. We’ve got to double down on communication. I think there’s never been a more important time to be in communication because we have to be so deliberate about our connections across the board, inside our organizations, with our customers, with our clients, with our constituents, with our neighbors, because there’s no happenstance communication now. It has to be planned.  I don’t think that we’re going to be all in person in the same way as we were. And so our communication has to be much more intentional and deliberate and frequent, and we really have to make the effort to connect, to communicate with our teams, with each other, with our customers, with our clients. And so in some ways I think the world is very, very different. In other ways I think we’re on a path we’re already going down.  
 
Michael Maslansky: 
I think overall, I think we do have two different ways of looking at what’s going on in the world. So on the one hand, if you look at what you could put in to the political social environment, I think there you can say that this has been in an amplification or an acceleration or an accentuation, right?  We’ve got, when you’re talking about social justice issues, Black Lives Matter has turned what was a sensitive and important area to an urgent and extremely sensitive area.  And so if you’re in that space of the political and the social, I think it just has really increased sensitivity. I think there are other places and you’ve both, I think, seen my sawtooth chart about how over time communications stays pretty steady on the up slope in terms of consistency. And then you have these inflection points and all of a sudden everything gets reset.  And to the extent that we’re talking about messages that may come out of financial services, out of tech, out of pharma and health to a certain extent that relied on people’s perspectives about the market, about their own financial safety, about things like that, I think it’s dramatically flipped on its head, and we’ve got to reset. We’ve had this question that we’ve been asking for over a decade about financial security and financial freedom and what is it that people think is more important?  And in moments of economic plenty in bold, bull markets, people are much more focused on financial freedom, of trying to overachieve where they are. In moments of uncertainty and recessions and economic downturns, then people are much more concerned about financial safety and protection. And so that is clearly changed now where people are much more likely to be focused on the protection side of the equation, on the safety side of the equation. And so the answer is, I think, it depends on what we’re talking about, right?  Are we talking about things that you could say, “Well, this has already been out there and really it’s just continued to move forward, faster.” Or, “Principally, I think because of economy and health, it’s really flipped on its head and therefore we need to think and talk differently.” 

Keith Yazmir: 
And I love you bringing up the idea of a vacuum creating it’s own communication. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about not only is it more difficult for us and our partners to reach who we’re trying to speak to, but we are reaching people in their own personal echo chamber. So to the extent that that was a problem widely reported on and spoken about beforehand with the internet given the option to opt into who you’re listening into, that has been accentuated and accelerated in a huge way.  So not only is it harder to reach somebody, do you need to matter more because you have even less time and need to get their attention with even smaller bits of information, but you also have to be that much more convincing because they’re sitting there listening to themselves, listening to their family, listening to only opt-in communications. They don’t even have their coworkers at the water cooler who are able to say, “Hey, have you thought about this differently?” 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
But don’t they have much more time to hear and see messages, read stuff, see advertisements? 
 
Keith Yazmir: 
They have a hell of a lot more time to pick exactly what they’re going to listen to and hear the same thing that agrees with what they’ve already agreed.  
 
Lee Carter: 
I think it’s hard right now to find new things, right? Because we’re fed so much of what reinforces what we already believe. I mean, we know this from behavioral science anyway. We pick up on things that reinforce what we already believe, and that comes with programming, that comes into things we read, that comes in the areas we go for referrals, that comes in how we shape everything that we do. And so in this moment, how do you even get in front of a new client, a new customer?  How do you get a new idea in front of someone who just has never even thought about it that way? Because we are very, very bubbled. We’re very, very siloed. And it’s really hard to change people’s minds in this moment when everything is about reinforcing what your existing beliefs are. 

Michael Maslansky: 
You know when we talk about words have never mattered more, where’s the proof? What are we use as the examples that that’s true? So that if somebody says, “I disagree. They’ve always mattered a lot.” 

Keith Yazmir:
Or they’ve never mattered…

Michael Maslansky:
Or they’ve never mattered, right? It’s all about the substance. You have to be authentic, you have to be real. And it’s more important to focus on what you do as opposed to what you say. Where’s the proof? Why do words matter more?

Keith Yazmir: 
I think when we talk about words and language mattering, it’s really shorthand for perception and for how communicators build perception, right? What do we communicate and how do we communicate it to have an impact on people? And when you talk about communication, words are critical, framing is critical, but actions are equally critical. That communicates as loudly as anything else.  So I think when you look at maybe some of the statements that were made by different around the killing of George Floyd, there were some that were very well-received because they seem to be coming from a place that made sense. They were aligned with a company’s brand, with how people saw that company already, but often also with how a company had shown itself to act in the past, right? And that was incredibly important. And you saw on the other side. You saw companies that got lambasted both externally and as most people who may be listening to this probably experienced in their organization, internally as well, because their words did not align with the perceptions of the organization or of the brand in question. 

Michael Maslansky: 
So give me an example of where do you think words matter more today than they did a year ago?  
 
Lee Carter: 
Along the theme of communications being amplified, we’ve been doing a lot of work with a bank. And in one of the things that they have seen is that their in-person experience has changed dramatically, right? Because when you go into a banking center now or into a branch now, you don’t want to be cross-sold. You don’t want to spend a ton of time in there with the same kind of experience that you’d have before.  Maybe you look forward before to talking to a teller, getting to know if you were in a local community. But now, you go in, you want to get in and out of there as fast as you can. And if you’re going in there, it’s likely because you are doing something like, “I need a certified check.” Because you found a way around going in-person almost no matter what in this time. And so the bank has had to respond to that and say, “Well, we’ve got to get people in and out quickly. But that means that we’re going to have to change the way we interact and the change the way we engage.” That piece of language, that inflection point where you say something like, “I’m going to get you in and out just as fast as I can because I’m sure that you want to get out of here very, very quickly.” That small sentence goes a long way to show this isn’t just a fast transaction that I’m afraid of you. I’m actually thinking about you. I care about you. As an organization we’ve thought so much about this moment that we’re going to make it better for you, so you’re going to get in and out of here as fast as you can, and you’re going to stay safe because of what we’re doing here. But that small sentence matters. It changes the engagement from being something totally transactional and fast to something thoughtful and meaningful. 

Keith Yazmir: 
I love that example, and it almost makes me want to throw out the question of, do words actually matter more now, or are people realizing how important those words and that language is more today than they were before? It gets back to our conversation about accelerating the focus on certain things. We’ve always proselytized that language, understanding your customer to the point, Lee, that you just mentioned. Understanding them such that you understand the emotion that they’re going through, and you’re communicating directly to that, matters. Now, I think a lot of the rest of the world is realizing especially under all the pressure and constraints people feel they are under today, we better pay attention to that more than ever. 

Michael Maslansky: 
Sometimes we’re doing things, but if we don’t talk about why we’re doing them, then they lose their impact. And there are so many situations where talking about the things that we’ve already been doing can really have a big impact on establishing emotional safety, on building trust, on helping people realize what’s going on.  We, as you both will know, as part of our dynamic response platform where we’re building out messaging for crisis situations, one of the things that we found is that you always have to respond to a crisis by talking about what you’re doing. What we often hear from clients is, “Well, we don’t know what to say because we’re not doing anything specific right now.”  And I think one of the most powerful insight that we’ve had in testing different crisis responses is that there were a lot of actions that you can point to and talk about that you may not have given credit to inside your organization, right? So the standards that you set for your organization that are transparent, that people don’t see on a day-to-day basis, if you talk about them, they help you build credibility.  You know so there’s probably a lot that restaurants do, that airlines do, that hotels do on a normal basis, even pre-COVID that people don’t know.  And if they go out and they talk about all of those things it helps them to establish that really there’s a lot more going on than you think. And so the actions part of communication and building trust and instilling a sense of safety is often going back and looking at the things that you’ve just taken for granted as part of your standard operating procedures and saying, “How do those contribute to a safer environment, to a more customer-focused environment, to an environment where you deserve the trust that you’re trying to get?” 

Keith Yazmir: 
Part of communicating those things is creating those things, right? And it would be really smart, for example, for New York City restaurants or for the restaurant industry across the country to develop a seal of approval of saying, “This is a restaurant that follows these safety protocols, and that has been shown to act in accordance with them.” Elements like that, which you can extrapolate to almost any industry. How do we wrap up those messages into bite size, powerful kind of bullets of safety, of comfort of confidence and do that in a broader way so that the communications that happens across these industries also then coalesces and drive safety as a whole. 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
And I would just say, no knock on the building security industry, but after 9/11, right, every building got more security guards who were there to check IDs, which really did nothing for security because any idiot can go get an ID that would allow them to pass through security.  It was security theater. It was there to symbolize this focus on security. It wasn’t really necessary. It wasn’t really doing anything. But what it did was it communicated this idea that we are focused on security and we’re taking it seriously. 

Lee Carter:
I think we’ve talked about some big trust issues here, right? Some big, how do you establish trust in bigger ways. But I think there’s things that we’re all dealing with in our own lives on a day-to-day basis, which is how do you get people to do basic things that are going to keep us safe like wear a mask? I mean, it seems like it should be so simple. Just say like, “Wear a mask.” And yet it’s really, really hard to have those kinds of conversations. And so I think for this part of the conversation, there needs be some practical tips that we can give our listeners on how do you have better conversations about these things that are so emotional and so important right now.

Michael Maslansky:
Yeah. Well, I think the place where you start a little bit before where I would get practical is thinking about the framing of what we’ve seen in the political environment or the politicization of the pandemic, right? We’ve seen really the incredible politicization of things. We do a lot of work building on the literature and the findings of Jonathan Haidt, who is a moral psychologist. And his Moral Foundations theory establishes that depending on your politics really, you’ve got a different morality and that different narratives appeal to you. And there were two that have really dominated, I think, the political debate over the pandemic. So on the one hand, you’ve got this narrative, this morality around liberty. Liberty versus oppression. It’s central to the conservative ideology of, “We should be free to do what we want to do and government should get out of the way.” On the other hand among Democrats, you’ve got a caring morality. One that says that the government and community, family is here to care for people and to avoid harm or to protect them from harm. And if you just start to think about how this debate over the pandemic has played out, it completely maps to those distinctions. On the one hand, you’ve got the pro-liberty side who fights against the mask mandates because mandates would be taking away our liberty. On the other hand you’ve got Democrats who think that those are important because they would protect us from harm, right? And so they think that those mass mandates are important. So Democrat will talk about a mandate, a Republican, conservative will talk about a guideline so that people can make their own decisions. We see in some of the work that we’ve done on the virus, is that when you talk about taking blanket action across the country, that people have a really strong negative reaction to it because they feel like it is government infringing on our rights, on our freedoms. And so a lot of the backlash, I think, to the actions that different states have taken is that it’s over broad. And yet when we tested terms like “targeting the virus: where we’re saying, it’s a more strategic approach to how to tackle issues related to the virus. That we’re targeting it in certain communities, that we’re targeting it with certain approaches, that we’re targeting it so that we can have the greatest impact with the least amount of harm, people tend to have a much more positive reaction to it especially on the conservative side of things. So I think, to get back to your question about how do you have better conversations? Well, where do those people come from in terms of their moral philosophy, and then how do you appeal to them in a way that will resonate with that philosophy?

Lee Carter:
I think this is such, in our personal conversations, I think it’s so important. We always say, “There’s two truths.” Right? There’s my truth and there’s your truth. And in a conversation there’s only one that matters. So if you’re trying to talk to someone about wearing a mask and they don’t believe in it, trying to tell them you don’t care about other people if you don’t wear a mask is definitely not going to work because you are not speaking to their truth, you’re speaking to your own. And there’s something else that you’re going to do by doing that. You’re going to put that person into shame. You’re shaming that person by saying and making a judgment about them. Rather than trying to elevate them and find something that you can find common ground and reframe it in a way that allows that person to enjoy the freedoms that are so important to them and you to feel safe. And so I think the goal in these conversations has to be understanding. It can’t start with “You’re a terrible person because you’re not doing what I think is right.” It has to be, “Well, why do you believe that? And how do you reframe around that?” Because these issues are so personal and they’re so visceral and they’re so emotional, and they get right at the heart of what makes us feel most unsafe. And so it’s really going to take a stepping out of ourselves in order to have better conversations. So if you can imagine having a better conversation saying, “You know what? I feel really unsafe when I see people not wearing masks. And my guess is you feel really unsafe having the government tell you that you must wear a mask. How can we make it so that we both feel safe and we can stay healthy at the same time?” Then you’re going to be more likely to have a conversation that’s much better and if you just went right into what you think is right versus what they think is right.

Keith Yazmir:
One of the fascinating pieces of this, and Lee, I couldn’t agree more with what you just said. I’m very eager to see how that works in practice. I’ve spent a bunch of time as you guys know in Europe and simply the contrast of coming back to New York and to a country where the way you treat the risk of coronavirus is a fundamentally political act and statement, was just such an incredible moment of discordance. I don’t know if there are many other places on earth that have managed as we so skillfully have to turn this into a political conversation as opposed to a national health crisis.

Michael Maslansky:
Absolutely. And what’s so interesting about it is that it could have easily gone the other way. Is that patriotism, which would appeal to the same people who are refusing to wear masks. If the president had said that this is about your patriotic duty and that every patriot stands up and wears a mask, it could have flipped the whole thing on it’s head.

Lee Carter:
But he did it once, and it wasn’t a message that repeated. And I think we talk about this all the time. If you don’t really lean into a message, if you don’t repeat it over and over again, so much so that you get nauseous from repeating it, it’s probably not even going to get traction. So I think the fact that he said it once, tweeted at once with a picture of himself wearing a black president United States mask with a seal on it, it was really great to shadow shroud, it was pretty amazing. But the fact that it was just said once made the whole thing lose its meaning.

Lee Carter:
All right. Now this is our first, our inaugural podcast. We’re going to do this in every episode, three questions for every guest, but we’re going to start with all of us today because we’re in this together. So the first question, what’s your least or most favorite word? Michael, I’ll start with you.

Michael Maslansky:
I am going to say “peruse” because it’s the word that no one ever uses correctly. People think that you’re supposed to run through a document. I just checked it out, whereas peruse means to read deeply to really understand.

Lee Carter:
Okay. Keith, what about you.

Keith Yazmir:
I think I’m going to go with a “resignate.” Because we work fundamentally in an area where we talk a tremendous amount about actual resonance and things that resonate with people and with emotions and with audiences. And you run into people all the time that say resignate and I’d never know what they mean. Are they quitting something? Are they going connect with somebody? Are they trying to quit something while resonating with their audience?

Michael Maslansky:
Lee, what about you?

Lee Carter:
You both picked words that cause confusion. I’m going to pick one totally different, and it is “moist.” There was absolute laser focus clarity on what that word means and yet it gives people a visceral response. I used to have a wall of words in my office, all kinds of sticky notes. Moist was up there as one of the words I hated. It is visceral and also a very important symbol of how emotional language can be.

Michael Maslansky:
Cool. What’s our next question?

Lee Carter:
Our next question is what is your superpower? I think, one of the things that I love learning from other people but I love to know why I should be learning for them and what’s so important and what’s so great about them. So let’s talk about it. Keith, what’s your superpower?

Keith Yazmir:
Well, again, I think that we’re all going to say things that each of us is jealous of and says, “Wait, that’s mine too.” But I I’m going to stick with the chestnut, which is empathy. And again, if my wife was here and be listening to this, she would be throwing something right now. But in terms of how we look at the world and understand audiences well enough to see things through their eyes and hear things through their ears, I spend a lot of time probably way too much thinking about such things.

Michael Maslansky:
Well, I’m going to say that mine is an ability to set the context for people, to help people put things into a different context. I’m always saying, “Let’s take a step back. What are we trying to achieve? How do we frame something so that people can understand, why are we doing this?” And so that’s very often how I help people move down a different direction in their communications.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. You often do that.

Lee Carter: 
I like to think that my super power is helping people understand what they don’t already understand. I like to try and show an alternative perspective to help people really feel what other people are feeling rather than just think they know. And it’s something that I really strive hard to do whenever I can. 

Michael Maslansky: 
All right. Third question. 

Lee Carter: 
Third. What is the biggest change in how you communicate since COVID? 

Michael Maslansky: 
So I actually think that the biggest change for me has been to really try and listen more and ask more questions before I give an answer partly to just make sure that I am focused on the right question, the right topic to talk about. And partly just to be more sensitive to the perspective that different people have today. 
 
Keith Yazmir: 
You’re talking about it at home, right? 
 
Michael Maslansky: 
Yes, absolutely.  
 
Keith Yazmir: 
I’m doing a lot more video conferencing these days.  
 
Lee Carter: 
Fair enough. Fair enough. 

Michael Maslansky: 
Keith, thank you sir for bringing wisdom to this conversation and perspective and for helping us kick this off. 
 
Lee Carter: 
I always love conversations with Keith because he’s amazing at flipping things on their head and you go, “Oh, my gosh, I have to think about things so differently.” So super appreciate your perspective, Keith. Thank you so much for joining us on our first podcast.  
 
Keith Yazmir: 
It was a lot of fun, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.  

Michael Maslansky:
For more language insights and to be in the loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing, follow up on LinkedIn at Maslansky-Partners and join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. If you’ve got questions, feedback, or want to tell us how wrong we are, or ideas for us, please reach out to us at [email protected]. That’s all for now. Join us next time on HearSay, because it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.