The S in ESG
maslansky + partners
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™.
What’s the future for ESG now that it has become politicized? Can companies speak out on ESG without risk of being criticized as Woke Capitalists or should they really just focus on products and profits? What if the most controversial aspect of ESG is the language used to talk about? In this episode of HearSay, Michael Maslansky, Lee Carter, and guest Will Howard cover new research on the language of ESG and how companies can find a path forward that serves stakeholders and customers on both sides of the political aisle.
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
maslansky + partners newsletter
TRANSCRIPT BELOW
Lee Carter:
They said what? Welcome to HearSay, a podcast from the language strategist at Maslansky and 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. I’m Lee Carter, president of Maslansky and Partners and author of a book called Persuasion.
Michael Maslansky:
And I’m Michael Maslansky, CEO of Maslansky and Partners and author of The Language of Trust, Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics.
Lee Carter:
And we are joined today by Will Howard, a vice president on our team who has done a ton of work in ESG on both the E for environment, the S for social and G for governance. We’re talking a little bit more about that, but Will, thanks for joining us today. We’re happy to have you and all of your expertise.
Will Howard:
Yeah, thanks for bringing me on. I really gotta write a book so my intro sounds as good as yours.
Michael Maslansky:
Yes, totally. Let’s get to work on that right now.
Lee Carter:
You can have it done any day now. They say by Thursday or Friday. So we’re here today to talk about ESG. Specifically, we’re talking about the S in ESG, which I’ve got to be honest, sometimes I get confused about, is the S for sustainability, is the S for social? And I want to make clear before we dig in that we are language experts, we’re not policy experts, and we’re here really to talk about the communication side of ESG, not what stands people should say. We’re just talking about how people interpret them, how they frame them, how they are reacting to them. Because this is a moment where there’s a lot of controversy around this category, and we know that we can help our clients and people be heard the way that they want to be heard.
Michael Maslansky:
Yeah, this is a highly sensitive topic. And I think you’re, there’re going to be people on both sides who just want to fight and where we stand pretty typically is that the best way to get what you want is often not to go to the extremes in order to do it. And so we’re going to talk about that, but you know, we’re, we’re going to say things that I think are probably going to anger people on both sides in this conversation.
Lee Carter:
So let’s just start before we dig into anything else. What on earth does ESG mean? So, Will, I’m going to start with you. Can you tell me what’s the definition of ESG?
Will Howard:
A lot of the work I’ve done specifically on messaging around ESG is about how do you advocate for an advanced ESG topics effectively. So basically how are you going to drive the outcomes that you want to drive? How are you going to defend and advocate for the actions that you want to take as a business and ensure that they’re going to be perceived the way you want them to be perceived and have the maximum impact? And a lot of that comes down to choosing the best language, choosing the right language. And also really carefully and thoughtfully accounting for your audience, even if you don’t always agree with your audience on some of these issues and calibrating your message to make sure it’s going to do what you want it to do. So I think it’s a really important place to start because actually a really big part of, I think, the conversation we’re going to be having stems from the fact that ESG isn’t really well understood as a broad concept. So as you said, ESG stands for environmental social governance. It’s a framework that’s out there in the investing world, in the corporate world, as a way to talk about the ways in which a company is or isn’t being responsible when it comes to its impact on the environment, on people, and the way it’s led, really, which is what And I think it’s worth talking about and defining that way because we’ve been doing some work recently and we saw that really only one in four people have a level of familiarity report. One in four voters that we surveyed had a level of familiarity with the term. So I think it’s really one that’s not well-defined or widely known at least. And then I think even once you get inside the world of people talking about it, you get a lot of different definitions and you get it used in a lot of different ways. So if we look at the S specifically, that’s social S, right? Some people might tell you that it’s really just about taking care of employees, right? It’s about taking care of customers, consumers, humans, the community, right? It’s your impact on people. There’s a lot of other people who would also broaden that circle or more perhaps better said make that that’ll message a little bit more targeted and specific and say it’s also about performance and social justice, DEI, LGBTQ representation and rights, advocacy for social issues that you believe in, right? There’s really a wide spectrum of ways in which that term is applied and I think that’s actually led to some of the confusion. Because you have some people talking about it in what seemed like very basic terms and then you have some people who are interpreting it or talking about it in these much more activist stance oriented values driven kind of terms.
Michael Maslansky:
Yeah, I think that really is an important aspect of the problem. The fact that most people don’t know what it is and that it does not have a single definition makes it much easier for people to come up with their own definitions, to expand what they put into this ESG bucket, and also for people who want to attack it to criticize it for whatever it is that they want to criticize it. And I think that is really at the core of what’s been happening now. I mean, a lot of the elements of ESG have been things that… that companies have been focused on for a really long time. They used to have corporate social responsibility teams or departments. They focused on building their purpose and their values or their diversity just within the organization. And then ESG came around and I think really in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement is when kind of the height of activism on behalf of companies where they took. particularly the S and really expanded on what the definition was. And so you have companies all over the map. You have some that are just kind of doing what they’ve been doing, which they would say, and I think is true, where they’re going beyond kind of pure profit motive and trying to have a responsibility to a larger set of stakeholders, but in a fairly non-controversial way. And then you’ve got organizations that have taken a much more activist approach. and have tried to use this as a brand building and kind of stance taking effort and created a lot of confusion around what’s going on and a lot of controversy.
Lee Carter:
I think it’s a fascinating journey, because we’ve been working in this space at least for 15 years now. When it was CSR, there was a lot of Harvard business case studies about the concept of shared value, which is doing well by doing good. And a lot of our clients thought that ESG, CSR was a slam dunk. If people knew all the good stuff they were doing, they would think better of them. And largely, that’s the way it went. And then, as you said, a few years ago, with the rise in activism, there was also a rise in expectation, both of employees and customers that said, we expect big change to happen in society, not because of government, but because of the actions companies are taking. And so there was all this polling that said, 80 to 90% of people wanted to see companies taking active stands, and it took companies a little bit to catch up with that. Now, very recently, I saw some polls that said, only 30% of customers want companies to take a stand. And so, my question for you guys is why are we talking about this right now and why is it so hard? Why is this controversial? Isn’t this what people wanted?
Michael Maslanksy:
I think when people answer the question of whether they want companies to have a purpose beyond profit, when most people say yes, they’re kind of speaking of a general proposition that is easy for everyone to agree with. Where it gets challenging is what is that purpose? Or even when it talks about politics or what people would define as politics, right? So take patriotism, for example. In the past, many companies stood for being patriotic. It would have never been considered kind of politics to have the American flag or to celebrate the American flag. I think in many communities now, that would be seen as a policy position just as support for LGBTQ would right now. And so the reality is, is that we have this incredibly polarized public in America, and they have very different definitions of what purposes, of what they want companies to do. I think in a perfect world, they’d like companies to not just be focused on squeezing as much profit out of their customers as possible. It’s just really a question of what they do beyond that.
Will Howard:
Yeah, and I think the places where the pushback is starting to come are really telling because it is, as Michael said, I think it’s most conspicuous in the places where the language of ESG has blended into the language of politics. So we did a survey recently where we looked at a lot of different individual actions, all of which would show up as actions that are being evaluated on like an ESG matrix. Like is a company doing X, Y, or Z? And we just asked people whether or not they thought they were. appropriate actions for companies to be taking. So if you look at the E, for example, one thing we asked was should a company be taking action to lower its long-term energy costs? And over 50% of even conservatives felt that was an appropriate action to be taking. Yeah, lower your long-term energy cost sounds great. That’s well in the world of the E, right? If you then look at taking action on climate change or reducing carbon footprint, that drops to 33%. Republicans or conservatives. So the slightly more loaded language is pushing people to be a little bit less welcoming of seeing a company take those stances. And then really, at the bottom of the list of all the actions that we saw tested, only 16% of conservatives felt it was appropriate for a company to take a stand on LGBTQ issues. And I think if you look at the media, the news right now, you’re actually when you see woke, which is really the word that’s being used to kind of to attack ESG these days, it’s really mostly stories related to LGBTQ and a lesser extent, critical race theory, more so than the green, clean carbon conversation.
Lee Carter:
I also think it’s interesting because in addition to all that context you’re providing, which is so important and all you’re saying, in addition to that, there seems to be some skepticism about the idea of capitalism entering into these conversations. So we’re hearing a rise in terms like when these companies have programs, whether it’s rainbow capitalism or woke capitalism or all of this, as if capitalism is suddenly a dirty and bad word. Why do you think that’s happening at the same time?
Michael Maslansky:
Well, I actually think in some ways that has preceded this and that you had, up until recently, a lot of the pressure on this front has come from the left. And you’ve had progressives who have really wanted companies to use their profits and their wealth and their scale to do things that companies have traditionally not done because government arguably wasn’t doing it. And they were putting pressure on it. And I think a lot of companies felt that the pressure came from only one direction, from the left. and they wanted to try and be responsive to it, particularly internally to recruit the best talent, younger, more progressive audiences. They felt a lot of pressure internally to take stands on things. And frankly, Gen Z, if you look at the data that’s out there, there’s a lot less support for capitalism among the youngest generation in the workforce than there is among the oldest generation. And so they’re challenging all of these conventions. But it was one-sided, and companies, I think, looked at this and said, how do we kind of appease or respond to our progressive employees and to a certain extent our progressive other stakeholders, which may include customers, without alienating the rest of our customer base. And you could kind of navigate that with a certain amount of care for a long time. Companies still got into trouble, but it was more contained. All of a sudden, you see the rise of the right pushing back on this really. strongly. I think this has changed dramatically just in the last six months or a year, kind of started, I would say, probably with the CRT debate going back now a couple of years, where there is a much more vocal, a much more animated conservative movement to oppose these things and now companies are really feeling like they are caught in the middle.
Lee Carter:
It’s a fascinating moment because companies are getting targeted for being capitalist in this moment. They’re getting targeted for being overly political or trying to push their agendas. And so we’re having a lot of conversations with our clients right now about how do they talk about it because many of them, in fact, I think it’s something like 78% of CEOs believe it’s still the right thing to do despite the fact that it’s controversial. So they’re not going to stop moving these agendas forward and doing this stuff, they want to figure out how to talk about it differently. So I’ve had three conversations with different clients this week, and I know you guys have had some as well, about what do you call it now? If you can’t call it ESG because that’s getting turned against you, do you go back to CSR? Do you go about it differently? Or is there a different way that you should frame the whole issue? I think in order to reframe it, first you have to understand what’s so triggering. What do you think is so triggering to people about this? Because for years we’ve had Pride Month with rainbow products all the time, and now people are getting pushed back on it. For years we’ve had all of these things that seem to be good things now, why is it so triggering now?
michael:
I think we’ve seen just the explosion of the use of this term. It’s being forced down our throats. And I think there’s this kind of fundamental question of, what does that mean? And why do people feel that today more than they have before? And I would say, I think that’s been growing. It didn’t just emerge.
Will Howard:
I also think the debate around ESG as it’s bled over into politics has become really a truly classic, political framing battle around a single value sort of, I would argue freedom. Both sides are arguing to control the idea of freedom and it’s a purely rhetorical battle of who can do the better job. I think if you look, again, we’ve been doing surveys on this and messaging research around it and we’ve seen that. As a microstat cosm of this whole thing, there have been some bills going through local state governments where people are trying to ban ESG investing. Basically, you should not be able to have state money invested in ESG funds. And if you go into that conversation and you, you talk about, hey, we need to get rid of the ESG because it’s banning coal and guns and banning these things that you care about and support huge opposition for it as a ban or a restriction on a way against doing something, right? Conversely, if you come in and you talk about these bills as banning investment in clean energy or banning investment in responsible companies now all of a sudden the opposition is towards the bills, right? So both sides on this issue, I think historically ESG language has often been very impositional it has been very much about like we need to restrict X. We need to advance a certain point of view and I think that language has started to get people’s hackle ups something’s being taken away from me, I’m being told what to do. And we need to be exploring ESG language that feels a little bit less like you’re putting someone in a box.
Lee Carter:
I think it’s fascinating too, because I just saw some polling this week about trust in the systems of government to protect our freedoms. And so this is all kind of connected. So only four in 10 Americans right now trust the government to protect our freedoms. And that’s like a huge decline, even in the last year. And when Democrats are talking about what they’re talking about when they’re saying that it’s about freedom, it’s about banning. They go to the book banning, all of these other kinds of things. Republicans are saying that they’re being forced to believe certain things that aren’t true to them. In both cases, there’s this idea that you’re being forced into teaching, forced into learning, forced into doing that is very un-American to them. On both sides.
michael:
I think that’s absolutely right. I think that there is a sense of, if you look at the institutions of government, you’re gonna pick the examples that anger you the most. It’s the nature, it’s human nature to do that. And now there are plenty of examples on both sides. If we, and it’s actually bans on both sides. It’s book banning, but it’s also banning gas stoves. And it’s the freedom to be, to make choices for my healthcare if I’m a woman, and it’s the freedom to to, you know, worship my religion in the way that I want to without being told that my values are not appropriate, you know. And so this thing, as Will said, and as you said, it really is a mirror image of the issue on both sides, just with different examples that are being used.
Lee Carter:
It used to be that the worst thing you could be called when you were doing the social good side of work or ESG work was you were green washing or rainbow washing. And that was very much like saying your actions aren’t true. We don’t trust that your actions are supported by, you know, your words are supported by actions. Now there’s this idea of capitalism that’s underneath it saying you’re making profits off of pushing an agenda, which is a very, very different criticism. But underneath all of that is all of the things that we’re talking about. This idea that companies put profits before people, the idea that they’re pushing an agenda, the idea that freedoms are being taken away. So I think Will, that point you’re making about the freedom framing is so, so important for companies to understand.
Will Howard:
I want to come back to that greenwashing idea and that authenticity idea in a second, because I think it’s really important. But just on that, in as much as we’ve found language that is more effective or framings that are more effective, I think we would encourage clients to think about language that focuses a little bit less. If you are going to be talking about ESG, I think. you need to explore language and framing that’s a little bit less about imposing a specific vision for what the world should look like. Like this is what we’re trying to make happen in the world with our ESG commitments. Less about forcing change and more about being ready for change and more about the ideas of responsibility, the ideas of stewardship, the ideas of preparing for risk and opportunity in the future. The idea that you’re trying to build a business and evolve your forward-looking without being kind of forward-driving or pushing in any particular direction, if that makes sense. And it’s a really tricky line to walk.
Lee Carter:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Maslansky:
But I think a lot of what ends up happening is that there’s a certain amount of arrogance that’s emerged on both sides, that they have the right answer, that only their answer is the right answer, and that when you take a position that presumes that there is no other way to look at this, that everybody needs to agree with you, that it’s my way or the highway, you are going to engender a lot more opposition. And that’s where bans are. It’s basically saying you can’t make this choice for yourself. We have to decide for you because we know better. And so from a communication perspective, the idea of kind of closing down debate, because I am communicating with such certainty, with such absolutism, with such activism about the righteousness of my actions, that is, I think, where companies create the most risk, as opposed to finding a place that respects the fact that other people have different perspectives and seeks to actually persuade them as opposed to imposing on them a particular point of view. It is the typical trope of the, of any group that wants to push back on another group that they perceive as having more power. And so the same argument has been held, you know, by the left against the right, that, you know, for generations, for all of history, they have had the values of the majority in America of whites imposed upon them with no ability to choose. What is happening now on the right is a feeling that again, they’ve been losing this battle in a lot of ways and they actually look at the left as being the ones with the power and the elites. And so they’re using the same arguments. I mean, again, it’s mirror image idea.
Lee Carter:
Yep. So I think this is all in theory, really, really interesting conversation and it helps me understand so much more about this very, very politicized environment that we’re living in. But now I wanna make it a little bit more practical. So let’s talk for a second about our clients who are talking about these issues. And maybe we can talk about Bud Light as an example. of why this was —
Will Howard:
Not our client!
Lee Carter:
Not our client, not our client. About why that became the perfect storm of what all this is.
Will Howard:
Yeah, so I have a lot of thoughts on this one. I actually just had a moderated a session last week where I was speaking to a group of specifically selected ESG skeptics, conservatives, and we spent a lot of time on a lot of topics, but we ended up spending a good 30 minutes on Bud Light specifically and me really trying to understand and ask them what was so enraging about the idea of this company marketing to an additional demographic. Right? So they’re still marketing to all the demographs they used to. They’re just also adding a trans or LGBTQ group to that mix. And it was really pushed back upon. And I think this goes back to something you said earlier when you were talking about the idea of rainbow washing or authenticity. So much of the vocabulary that these participants used with me in this session about what was frustrating about the Bud Light ad was not just what they did, but how they did it. They talked about it being slapped on. They just made the canned rainbow. They just tacked it on top. I think the fact that this was so shamelessly a grab at a specific audience without really telling a story about why it made sense for Bud Light, made it a very easy target. And we’ve actually been going back with my team. Like we’d been looking for other alcohol ads that are specifically targeted with DEI type of messages. Even Bud Light had one, like at Christmas where a six pack was being passed around to a bunch of different audiences. Bacardi has one where it’s like do what moves you and it has very clearly gay and trans characters in the ad and imagery in the ad, right? There have been a lot of ads like this that didn’t result in this level of blowback. There was something about this one that was upsetting to people. And I know Lee, you’ve talked about how you feel like the response actually compounded things.
Lee Carter:
Yeah. And I think it’s become a little bit of a legend, right? Because what happened here wasn’t that Bud Light launched an ad campaign featuring a trans celebrity. What they did is they sent Bud Light can with a picture of her on it, along with, I mean, they had sent cans to a number of different influencers at the same time. And what happened was, she made a video about March Madness and it went viral. And everybody took that to mean it was Bud Light’s ad and it was not. And so when asked about it, I think this is when the problem happened. If that had just happened and Bud Light handled it the right way, I think we probably wouldn’t be in the same place that we are today. But what they did in that moment and the VP of marketing who’s no longer with the firm said is, you know what, we’re changing. we’re changing our audience, it’s time to be enough with the frat culture, we’re gonna be anti-frat, we’re changing who we are, we’re shaking things up, and we’re expanding our audience. So what do they do? They just put down their core audience and they got them angry and said, they almost said that one was more important to them than the other. So imagine for a moment if instead of that, the person responded, you know what, you’re absolutely right, we sent out a can. She made a great viral video, but we sent it out to 100 other influencers too. And we’re just as likely to send a can of Bud Light with their picture on it to a trans influencer as we are to a MAGA influencer because we’re the beer for all Americans. By the way, do you want a can with your picture on it? I can have one made and I’ll send it over tomorrow. My guess is the game might have been over. It could still be controversial, but I think the fact that it seemed like such an overt decision to say that they are more important than the other group. made people want to fight back.
Michael Maslansky:
When we introduce massive change into a culture like our organization, we recognize that there are going to be people who are laggards who we need to bring along for the ride. We need to increase familiarity. We need to help them understand what’s going on. We need to show them, in this case, that a trans person is no different from any other person. And then it starts to become an issue of now you have a trans woman competing against other women in sports and winning, and it feels like something is wrong to them. And then you have this connection between trans, and what is happening with children who want to transition. And it feels like it is impacting their children. And it’s an area of heightened sensitivity. And so without justifying or not how people from the right have reacted to this, I think what it is important to recognize is that this is a massive change in mindset for many people to appreciate and that there has not been a change management approach. And the more that you try and impose change on people, the more they are going to react negatively and there’s going to be a backlash. And I think that is really what happened here with this issue, and that it’s going to take some time to sort itself out.
Lee Carter:
All of these different pieces coming together can make it, I think, a somewhat overwhelming challenge. And so what I’m hearing from a lot of our clients is, what do we do now? So you’re a bank and you’re about to put your ESG report out. What do you do? You’re a retailer that’s about to put out some ambitious goals towards a D&I commitment, and you’re scared. So how would you think about it, guys? If you’re talking to your clients, what should they be doing to repair for this? Because I certainly don’t think the answer is to step down.
Will Howard:
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s my first thing is I just would really encourage clients to not overreact to the extreme examples that have been made of a couple of companies that approached this poorly or didn’t approach it as well as they could have and got dragged. I think in the data, you see a lot of support still, particularly around the E and the G and most of the S. There are a couple of hot button issues that you need to be very thoughtful and sensitive about how you approach. This is not a reason to pump the brakes on your entire ESG commitment just because a couple sensitive kind of issues on the front lines of the debate have boiled over. And I certainly don’t think this is a public referendum against a lot of the spirit behind ESG because you made this point the other day about what’s the new bestselling beer if it’s not Bud Light, well, it’s Modelo, which is a Spanish word. And their entire brand is built around expressing your individuality, whatever that is, brood for those of the fighting spirit, right? They have a message that is so close to the one that just got voted off the path of the, the top of the pedestal, except they did it differently. Right. And in many ways, I think they’re, that them being at the top is a celebration of, of diversity. So I don’t think we have ended the era of ESG. I think we’ve moved into an era where you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about how you talk about it. It would be my first level set for clients.
Michael Maslansky:
I agree with that. I think, you know, we saw Larry Fink say that he’s not going to use the term ESG anymore. I think we’re seeing a lot of companies who are changing the names of their ESG reports to something else. And cthere are a number of different terms that are being used, whether it’s business impact or sustainability or other terms. I think that there is an opportunity to create a new term, an umbrella term for all these pieces. But I think even before you need to get to that, I think we consistently see that that there are many aspects, as Will said, of the E, the S, and the G to the extent that it’s relevant, that people are much more likely to support than they are the umbrella that covers it all. And so, you know, when you talk about having employees that represent the customers that they serve, everybody is going to agree with that. You’re talking about diversity. when you’re talking abouthow people are treated as people, you’re going to get a ton of agreement. If you break down a lot of these social issues and you talk about them as human issues instead of social issues, I think ultimately there’s a lot more room for support there. And so the language I think is going to come, it’s going to be a lot more targeted and tactical than it was kind of high level and strategic around this for the short term. But it also should just recognize that there are these other views out there and that if you want to change people’s minds. Don’t tell them that they’re wrong. Show them why it is that they should change their mind.
Will Howard:
We went through an exercise in these focus groups recently where we talked a lot about, you know, we started each session by asking participants to tell us what they thought the best company in the world was, whatever that meant to them. And then we asked them to give us a list of attributes that they think define what successful companies do. What do successful companies do? And in the course of that conversation, without ever mentioning the word ESG, we heard a lot of the obvious stuff you’d expect: customer service, cost, good products, Apple, right? But we also heard a lot of stuff like, take care of the employees, give back to the community, anticipate the future, adapt, think ahead, innovate. Without ever saying ESG, they described ESG. And just in the course of describing the habits of success. And I think for me, my dream is for there to be no separate ESG category. And to just talk about this as what successful businesses do. Successful businesses take care of people, successful businesses take care of employees, successful businesses anticipate the future and prepare for it and manage their resources intelligently for the long term. I think in creating a separate bucket, you actually separate it from the herd and make it almost by definition non-essential and easier to demonize and take down from the critics.
Lee Carter:
It’s so very clear to me that this is an area so right for language strategy, and there’s not going to be a one size answer for all companies. I think it’s going to be on a case by case basis because what that looks like for each company is going to be so different. But the one thing I do know is that the work that we do is often we’re called in when there’s trigger words, when there’s language that triggers people to feel one way or the other, and we have to neutralize that so that people can actually hear what you’re saying. And I think this is a moment where people do fundamentally believe that companies can do well by doing good, but if you talk about it the wrong way, you’re setting yourself up for a disaster. And so the language you use in this category has never been more important. And Michael, you can laugh at me because I use the has never been more important before, but I really do believe that this moment is absolutely critical for companies to get it right.
Michael Maslansky:
I’m with you. Yeah, no, I think that’s right here. I mean, I think there are just, there’s so much sensitivity to it now. And the risk is that, you know, on the environmental front, they call it green hushing, that companies stop talking about it. There’s also the equivalent on the, it’s probably pink hushing as well, or whatever the relevant colors are across the board where companies are afraid to say anything. And I actually, I don’t think that benefits the company. And I don’t think that benefits. you know, everybody who thinks that there are good things to be done out there.
Lee Carter:
And so if you could leave our listeners with one learning based on everything that we’ve talked about and everything you guys know about this space, because I know you’ve spent so much time recently in it, what would it be?
Will Howard:
I think for me a lot of it comes back to everything about nothing about ESG is controversial except the language basically.
Lee Carter:
Ha ha!
Will Howard:
Like I think so much of when you get down I spend a lot of time talking about what it is what it does and what it means when we’re talking about language or concepts and I think if you look at ESG if you really get into what does it do, how does it work there’s not a lot of controversy around any of the actual aspects or actions that are involved. They all seem on their own like good actions. The problem is coming in with these labels, whether that’s woke, whether that’s rainbow capitalism, whether that’s ESG. The what it is creating this concept on top that floats independent from the reality and that’s what the battle is being fought over. And if there’s some way we can bring this debate back down into what’s actually happening, I think a lot of the polarization disappears.
Michael Maslansky:
Yeah, I think that’s great. I think I’ll just add one thing that we haven’t really talked about, but that is really important to this is that companies recognize rightly that they don’t control a lot of the debate here, that there are media outlets on both sides that have strong incentives to turn what shouldn’t be controversial into something that is controversial. And so it becomes even more important to know what it is that you’re doing, how you want to frame it, how much risk tolerance you have in case there is backlash, how you’re going to respond to that. Because all of these things are kind of are reasonably predictable at this point if you take the time to think about what can go wrong and you and you prepare for a response.
Lee Carter:
And Michael, I just want to underscore that because I think this is even more heightened as we’re going into an election cycle where politicians can make easy potshots out of any company right now and score big political points on the right and the left. Right. So we’re just as likely to hear criticisms from both sides and it’s an easy point on the board. And that means that I’m going to be hearing more about it, not less as we get between, you know, now and 2024. So I guess I’ll just wrap up by saying, if this is something that you’re struggling with, call us. We’d love to have a conversation. We’ve got tons of research on this that we’d love to share. And I think that’s a wrap.
Michael Maslansky:
Lee, this was awesome. Really great conversation. I think more to come on this because it’s such a hot topic. Will, thank you very much for those insights and perspectives. You bring a lot of magic to this conversation and we appreciate it. And so everyone, for more language insights like this and to be in the loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing follow us on LinkedIn at follow us on LinkedIn at maslansky + partners and join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. That is all for now. Stay tuned for more episodes of HearSay because when it comes to truly effective communication, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.
