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 client — 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™.

You might think that empathy is as simple as putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. But it’s much more complicated. While most of us have empathy for people who we care about and love, we don’t have a natural ability to have empathy for people who aren’t like us. This distinction is easy to ignore until we realize that the audiences we’re focused on reaching with messages that resonate aren’t just like us. President Lee Carter, CEO Michael Maslansky, and Partner Keith Yazmir highlight what it means to practice active empathy; the need for understanding your audience, especially if you don’t agree with them; and how successful empathy can drive growth for your company.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

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EPISODE 3 TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Maslansky:

When was the last time that you went home and you told your husband, wife, or partner that they were wrong, and- and they said, “Oh, you know what? Thanks. Thanks for point that out”? Or- or a client or an employee or a customer. It is an ineffective strategy, and yet that is so much of what the shame, fear and guilt strategies do. It doesn’t motivate people to act. It motivates people to not act. And all of that is aligned. How do you flip those things around to finding ways to communicate with people, things that are easy for them to agree with? Because that’s when you start moving them in the direction that you want.

Lee Carter:

They said what? Welcome to HearSay, a podcast from the language strategists at Maslansky & Partners, where we give our take on the strategy behind the smartest, savviest and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And that’s why we call this HearSay.

Michael Maslansky:

I’m Michael Maslansky, CEO of Maslansky & Partners, and author of The Language of Trust. And in this post trust era that we’re living in, I focus on how we can use language to accelerate the process of building and maintaining trust.

Lee Carter:

And I’m Lee Carter, President of Maslansky & Partners and author of a book called Persuasion. I’ve been since the infancy, together with Keith and Michael, of language strategy, and more than anything, I want to understand how it is that messaging reaches the people we’re trying to reach.

Keith Yazmir:

And I’m Keith Yazmir, partner of the illustrious Michael Maslansky and Lee Carter. I am fascinated at the fact that language has roots that go down to meaning. And really we study human psychology and how human beings interpret information and make decisions.

Lee Carter:

Welcome back to another episode of HearSay. So far this season, we have jumped into the ins and outs of language strategy and what it looks like in practice. We’ve talked about how language strategy can help you sell more in a crowded space, how it can change reputation, and how it can help you expand to new audiences. And today we’re gonna take a step back just a little bit so that we can understand an essential quality that underlies all the work that we do, and it’s what we call active empathy. It’s absolutely central to communicating well. If we’re not really grounded in the person that we’re speaking to, we’re gonna speak right past them.

It’s a topic I’ve talked a lot and written about in my book Persuasion, but in today’s episode, I’m joined by Michael and Keith to go a step further. So, let’s get into it. Michael, how do you think about the importance of- of language strategy and active empathy?

Michael Maslansky:

One of the things that we often don’t emphasize enough is that within this idea of language strategy, the answers are often not in the language or in the strategy, but they’re in what happens before. And Lee, when you wrote Persuasion, you really leaned into this idea of active empathy. It’s so critical to getting to the right answer. This isn’t just about writing a good line. Uh, it’s got to start with this, with this active empathy.

Lee Carter:

It’s so funny, Michael, ’cause I, we used to make a, this joke. It’s like, so how do you define when somebody should call you? And we say that people would always start the conversations with us at the beginning of pride of saying, “Well if people only knew X, Y, Z, then they would think we’re a good company, a good product, the best,” whatever. And that’s never the right place to start, right? The right place to start is where is your audience at? And so, empathy is a term that we talk about a lot, and a lot of people think it’s just as simple as putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. I would say it’s much more complicated, because while 99.9% of us have natural ability to have empathy for people who are just like us, who people we care about and love. We don’t have a natural ability at all to have empathy for people who are not like us. And most of the time, we’re communicating with people who aren’t just like us.

So, I call it active empathy because it actually is something that you have to put yourself in the practice of doing, rather than thinking it’s just gonna come naturally for me to understand them. There’s a few different areas that you need to look at. First, there’s feelings, and everybody has whether you want to call them God given or biologically given feelings, um, that serve good purposes. And those are fear, anger, um, uh, joy, contentment, um, even sorrow and sadness, and those all have distinct reasons. Fear tells you that, you know, you need to get out of Dodge. Anger tells you there’s a problem that needs to get solved. Sadness used to be in the animal kingdom, it made people cry, or animals cry so that they knew that the si- could signal help.

And then there’s these other behaviors, which are shame, anxiety and guilt. Those feelings, shame, anxiety and guilt, um, actually keep people from doing anything productive. When you’re thinking about, how does somebody feel about your company, they might have some fear, they might have some anger. You need to understand where you’re starting so that you can meet them where they are.

Then, the other thing is that there’s a whole bunch of beliefs that they’re gonna be bringing to the conversation. So, if you think, for example, about gun control, you might say that conservatives’ primary value is freedom, right. And so they’ll say, “We have a right to bear arms.” If you’re talking to someone who’s more on the, on the liberal side of that debate, they’re gonna say their primary value is harm versus care, and nobody should have a right to be able to hurt somebody, ’cause there’s nothing more important than caring for each other. But if you don’t understand where the other person sits, you’re gonna end up in a dead lock in creating the wrong kind of messages. If you’re trying to convince somebody that gun control’s, you know, the right thing to do and you’re talking to somebody who thinks it’s their right and it’s a freedom and you’re trying to say, “You don’t care about kids in schools,” you’re never gonna have a productive conversation unless you understand where you’re meeting them.

One of the- the best examples I can think of this was years ago, we did a- a project on- on Type 2 Diabetes. And the insight that people had been operating under is the reason why people weren’t taking care of their diet and exercise is because they were too busy. So if you operated under the insight, you try to convince people to say it’s like, “Oh, here’s a 15 minute exercise routine,” or, “Here’s a 15 minute recipe, you know, that’s gonna make you healthier.” But one of the participants, when we were talking to them, said, “You know the biggest problem? It’s on a day like my birthday. My whole family’s together and I just want to have a piece of cake. And I don’t want to think about it. I just want that piece of cake. I want to celebrate. I don’t want to be explaining to my grandkids and my kids why I can’t have the cake and that I have diabetes and think about my illness. I just want to have cake.”

And that insight was like, well, if you do these things, you can also enjoy life sometimes changes the way you’re gonna enter the conversation. If you understand those two things about your audience, why do they feel the way they feel, why they believe what they believe, why do they do what they do, you’re going to come upon creating messages very differently than if you start just by what do I want to say. And that shift is so critical to getting things right. You still might get it wrong.

We find all the time, we might test five or six different messages, thinking that we’re in the mindset and we’re not there yet because when we talk to those people, there’s this language landmines that you hit and they suddenly get triggered with that shame or that anxiety or that anger that’s just gonna keep them from listening. And so you really need to go in not just by saying, “Once I understand them, I can create a message.” You need to make sure that you test it again with them so you’re really ensuring that they hear exactly what you want to hear every time.

Michael Maslansky:

O- one of my favorite lines to try and help people understand, certainly the unproductive emotion idea is the question of, when was the last time you changed somebody’s mind by telling them that they were wrong? Right? When was the last time that you went home and you told your husband, wife or partner that they were wrong and- and they said, “Oh, you know what? Thanks. Thanks for pointing that out”?

Lee Carter:

(laughs).

Michael Maslansky:

Or- or a client or an employee or a customer. It- it is an ineffective strategy, and yet that is so much of what the shame, fear and guilt strategies do. It’s why negative political messaging keeps people at home. It- it doesn’t motivate people to act. It motivates people to not act. And all of that is aligned. And so how do you flip those things around to finding ways to, uh, to communicate with people things that are easy for them to agree with? Because that’s when you start moving them in the direction that you want.

Lee Carter:

When it comes to negative advertising, there is a time for it. And I- I’m not an advocate of negative advertising. I think most times, framing things in the positive and giving people hope is the right thing to do. But there’s a big difference, if you think about just, for example, the climate change debate. When you make it so big of a problem that it’s so out of control, what people want to do is they go into anxiety because you can’t fix it. Trying to create urgency puts people in a complete anxiety and they can’t really feel like they can do anything.

But if you’re more specific and you give somebody something concrete to think about that they could do differently, you’re gonna have a different result. So the best example I can say of a negative, um, campaign that worked was something that showed a specific action, and that’s the age old negative ad that was Ronald Reagan’s, the red phone that rings in the middle of the night. Who do you want to answer it? That’s a negative ad that’s based on fear, but it actually is specific because if you vote, then this thing won’t happen that you’re scared of. It’s really important when you’re trying to frame things in terms of creating urgency that you understand that if you get somebody to say, “If I do this, I can do something about it,” then you’re gonna be more productive than, “If you do this, the world ends.”

Michael Maslansky:

I would say, Lee, that the example that you have is actually a positive solution oriented message that identifies a problem, but frames it in the context of the solution. Basically says, you know, we have the answer of who you want-

Lee Carter:

Mmm.

Michael Maslansky:

… picking up the phone in the middle of the night. It is the reason why, you know, if you only talk about kind of risk in investments versus risk in return, it’s if you only talk about the problem associated with medical conditions as opposed to also talking about the ability to get help. It’s- it is, y- you know, u- using problems as a way of disrupting people’s mindset and getting them to pay attention to something can be very effective. Often, it is not framed in the positive outcome. It’s only the problem, right? But when the problem is then wrapped in a, now that you’ve seen this problem, let me help you with the solution, it can take a much more positive and productive direction.

Lee Carter:

I’ll buy that.

Keith Yazmir:

We’ve talked a lot about the difference between also political negativity and negativity in the commercial space there. And in politics, the fact is that bringing your opponent’s negatives up can be an effective strategy ’cause it’s a zero sum game, and you can just have people not vote for them or not vote at all, and you still might end up winning because you’ve disaffected them. In the commercial space, if you have people do the equivalent of not voting at all, IE. not choosing either product, you’re hurting yourself, um, and you’re not gaining just because your competitor is losing.

We are often asked by eager clients (laughs), you know, “Can’t we just go after our- our- our competitor a little?” And- and there are examples where that works, but typically what it does is it raises the negatives of how people view you and your brand, and it turns people off. I would say that the- the most similar to the political world example where it has actually been shown to work is in the Mac versus PC campaigns, right. Because in a sense there too, uh, it is a zero sum game. You’re gonna use a computer. You’re gonna use one of the main operating systems. (laughs) So, which one are you gonna use? So, it is similar to politics in that way. But otherwise, often it- it, uh, it lowers all boats.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, absolutely. The first part of the process is active empathy to understand the audience. The second is about this idea that once we understand the audience, it’s also really important to recognize that- that our brains are lazy and that once we understand the audience, if we want to change their mind about something, that there are certain principles that pretty consistently help to move the needle, and it’s all about making it easy for your audience.

So, the first one is be plain spoken. Make it easy for your audience to understand you. If you speak over their head, if you speak in language that they’re not comfortable using, they’re not gonna respond to you. Second one is be plausible. Make it easy for them to agree with you. Um, going back to this idea of when have you ever changed somebody’s mind by telling them that they’re wrong, if- if you can’t find some common ground for them to start at- at a point of agreement, it’s very unlikely that you’re gonna move them in your direction. The third P is about making it personal, which is making your message easy to see and feel. Like make it relevant to people, make it tangible for people, make it connect to them, uh, in- in what’s in it for me, not at a, not in a way that’s about you or your company or your side of the issue or what you want to say.

And then the last one, you have to make it positive, which is make it easy to like. You know, we respond more favorably to positive messaging than we do negative messaging. And so if you take a message, whether it’s on tax reform or it is on a new medication or it’s on a new, you know, product in some other category and you apply these things and you make it easy for people to understand it, to agree with it, to see it and feel it and to like it, you are gonna be much more effective at engaging that audience that you’ve, that you’ve learned about through this active empathy than if you approach it with other strategies.

And while that’s not always the answer, it certainly is a great starting point to think about how to reframe your message to make sure that you achieve the goal that you’re trying to achieve.

Keith Yazmir:

Now more so than ever, but especially more recently, as we see on the political side, uh, but also just what’s going on around the world. We’re having a hard time agreeing with each other. So, can you talk a little bit more about ho- how do you actually do that?

Michael Maslansky:

One of my favorite examples, uh, is actually, we went to- to do some work in Arizona on the topic of education, where Republicans and Democrats were at each other’s throats about, uh, what to do with education policy. And you had Democrats who, um, felt that the system desperately needed increased funding to support teachers and to support, you know, investment in the system itself, and they talked a lot about the education system and the teachers. And then you had Republicans, uh, who were very wary of, uh, putting money into a system that they felt was broken, and so they talked a lot about the throwing good money after bad and the fact that the system was kind of over invested in.

And when we dissected the language, what proved to be the opportunity was one part of the system that would resonate with both, and it was students in the classroom. And so if instead of making it about teachers or instead of making it about the system or instead of making it about the money, we just focused on the students and the classroom and what was gonna make people see and feel a positive experience for those students in that classroom, uh, and what was gonna do it in a way that they understood and that they could agree with. All of a sudden, people were much more willing to come to the table and discuss the topic in ways that they hadn’t before.

It was un-coded language. It was, uh, intentionally a different lexicon from what was being used by either side, so it didn’t tap into that existing perspective. And, um, not only that, it was, it was kind of meant to be values neutral to find those places of common ground so that you could start a much more productive conversation. If we are getting people to nod, then we are winning. If they are shaking their head or frowning or, you know, uh, uh, or tilting their head like they don’t understand, then we’re losing. And so how do you get people to nod? It’s like the first job if we’re gonna, if we’re gonna change their perspective.

Lee Carter:

Yeah. It reminds me so much of the work that we did with Head Start. Um, you know, Head Start is a- a- a fantastic organization that provides so many services to young children and their- their whole families, and it was being politicized. And it was in large part because their message was support the last program that exists from the war on poverty. Now, that’s political. War on poverty, you can say it was a good thing or you can say it was a bad thing, but you’re gonna now have a debate. So we’re talking to conservatives, they’re like, “Oh, you mean the last welfare program that’s spending … We don’t want it.” But when we change the language to say, “Let’s talk about investing in our youth. Let’s start talking about giving every child an equal opportunity from the beginning,” that totally changed the conversation. Everybody’s heads were nodding.

And this happened in real time. There was a, there was a vote on the floor in- in Congress about do you continue to support Head Start or not. The- the Republican Congress in 2010 was gonna vote it down because they wanted no, you know, they wanted to win a spending victory. What ended up happening? They had to support it because how can you disagree with that? How can you disagree with investing in our youth? So similar to what you found. Finding that common ground so everybody’s head nods can make all the difference.

Michael Maslansky:

Okay. So it’s time to grab your popcorn. Final questions. Lee and Keith, what’s the most interesting framing shift you’ve seen this year?

Lee Carter:

I’m gonna go to an example from a client that I just absolutely loved, um, that we worked on, uh, earlier this year. And it was a company who is a financial planning company, and they talked about all of their services in terms of maximizing your wealth. They talked a lot about wealth management. Um, and one thing that we’ve seen over time, and I know we’ve worked on this forever, um, in financial services, I think one of the first projects, Michael, you and I worked on was in financial services and we had this very same finding, which was that wealthy people don’t think of themselves as wealthy. And no matter how much wealth you have, it’s not something that you think about. It’s the next person above you that has the most wealth. And people who are truly, truly wealthy don’t even think about it. It’s like they’re silently wealthy, right?

So what we learn is instead of talking about maximizing your wealth, it was about maximizing your impact. Maximizing your impact was something that everybody could relate to because no matter how much money you had, you’re trying to really make a difference. You’re trying to maximize the impact that that wealth can have on the world, um, and it’s about what that wealth can do, rather than focusing on what it is. And I thought that was a really interesting shift, and has made a big difference for our client.

Keith Yazmir:

I love that. It’s such an interesting insight in that if you’re truly wealthy, you’re just thinking of, well, Bill Gates has more money than I do, so I’m not wealthy, he’s wealthy. And it just gets underneath how people actually operate and- and interpret information.

Michael Maslansky:

Keith, what’s yours?

Keith Yazmir:

You’re always coming back to me. I pick two. These are big, but, uh, I think the interesting piece for me is that they are so interconnected, so Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been masterful in how he has framed Ukraine’s war with Russia. And the first one is something that has been talked about a lot in the media, and I call it the truth, justice and the American way of framing, right. He- he took what could easily have been seen by the rest of the world as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine and said, “No, no, no. That’s not what this is about. This is a conflict between Russia and everybody else, Russia and the West, Russia and freedom, Russia and democracy. So if you believe in freedom and democracy, then you’re on our side and backing us up here.” And the impact has been huge.

The- the interesting additional frame is something he did before that without which none of the rest would have mattered. I call it the David and Goliath frame. There’s that famous line when the US was offering to help spirit him and his leadership out of Kyiv at the very beginning of the Russian invasion, and he said, “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” And with that one phrase, he completely reframed the conversation from clearly Russia was just gonna roll to Kyiv and gu- was gonna have their way, to this is an epic battle between this small country, the David of the fight, and this huge behemoth, the Goliath, Russia. And- and that transformed how people are seeing this. It captured the imagination of onlookers and of folks who otherwise had nothing to do with this fight. And it resulted in a situation where, I’ve been on vacation with my family up in New England driving around these small little towns and seeing people with Ukrainian flags outside in front of their cute little New England stone walls and right next to their mailbox. And- and it’s been fascinating to watch.

Lee Carter:

The thing that is- is a thread that goes through both of these examples, is that it’s targeting what’s important to the rest of us, not what’s important to him. If he framed it in Ukraine, that’s what’s most important to him, but for what’s important to all of us, is democracy. It’s freedom. If it could happen to them, it could happen to any of us. He really is practicing that active empathy where he’s like, “I’m not communicating to me and people like me. I’m communicating to the rest of the world.” And I love that example.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, uh, fantastic examples of framing that he used there. Uh, so I have my interesting framing shift, since we’re- we’re in political season at this point, and there’s a lot of polling out there, and how pollsters and the media frame polling and the numbers that come out. There was, uh, data out there about the Republican primary field, where New York Times covered it by saying, “More than half of Republicans are now willing to consider somebody other than Donald Trump as the nominee in the Republican Party,” which certainly gives you the impression that there are kind of mass defections away from the former president and that he is sure to go down in defeat, until you look at the, at the numbers inside the polls and the next closest candidate at this point, DeSantis, has 25% of the vote. So, right around half of what Trump has.

And it’s interesting to me how different media outlets will cover the polling and how you can look at the same numbers and see very different directions based on, uh, what you want to see in the numbers.

Lee Carter:

I think that is a really, really interesting shift overall. I want to just thank you all for tuning in and listening. Thank you, Keith and Michael, for a great conversation about, uh, language and active empathy.

Keith Yazmir:

Thanks Michael and Lee, as well. For more language insights and to be in the loop on all the other fun stuff we are doing here at maslansky + partners, follow us on LinkedIn at maslansky-partners and join our mailing list at Maslansky.com/connect. If you’ve got questions, feedback, want to tell us how wrong we are, or if you just have some ideas for us, we’d love to hear them. Please reach out to [email protected]. That’s all for now. Join us next time on HearSay because when it comes to truly effective communications, it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what your audience hears.