#311: Learn the Language of Success Today with Michael Maslansky

As a leader, as anyone who wants to build trust with a partner in a relationship, whether it's a business relationship or a personal relationship, with a customer, with really any stakeholder, if you want to build trust. I believe in the power of flaws. I believe in the power of vulnerability. I believe that those leaders in the world that we operate in today who can never acknowledge any imperfection, that their strategy may not be perfect, that they don't know the answers to every question, that they lack credibility.

I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

Fasten your seatbelts. I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest today, Michael Mislanski. He advises Fortune 500 corporations, industry associations, major litigation practices and nonprofit organizations, organizations on what to say, how to say it, and most importantly, why it matters. How CEOs, companies and entire industries communicate, whether during a crisis like we've seen many recently in advertising, public relations campaigns, or with investors, Congress or the American people, often means the difference between success and failure. Clients from Pfizer to Bank of America, Microsoft to Starbucks. Oh, my gosh, we've got a great case study from Starbucks. Michael works with all of these people to understand the public mood, challenge conventional wisdom, and transform not just what they say to key audiences, but how they say it. He's the author of Language of Trust. Michael, thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me.

Heather, when I went to your Website Initially, the 1 case study or business example that jumped out to me in such a big way, it was so simplistic, yet so profound, was the Starbucks instant coffee example. Will you talk us through a little bit about how that small tweak in language made such an impact?

Sure. Well, I think so. Every time we open our mouths, we're making a choice about how we communicate. And you can make good choices or you can make bad choices, and that often impacts how you're perceived and how successful you are in communicating what it is that you're trying to convey. And so Starbucks is getting ready to launch their first instant coffee, and they thought it was great. But every time we went out and we talked to people about instant coffee, what we heard was they don't really, it's not high quality. They don't like it. They think about those granules floating at the top of the coffee. And so if we called it instant coffee from Starbucks People had no interest in it, but instead by simply flipping the order of the message by saying it was Starbucks coffee in an instant, all of a sudden, the emphasis and the focus was first on how people might think of Starbucks, which is a positive association. And that halo then made the instant coffee seem better. And so really, this very simple flip in the order of language turns something from being almost dead on arrival to an incredibly successful launch for the brand. Just by understanding that insight that you have to know how people are going to perceive you and your brand and then adjust accordingly.

So what I mean, again, it's so simple, yet incredibly powerful, translates to huge revenue differences. If somebody is thoughtful and strategic about this, and this is all that you do. How many companies actually are thoughtful in regards to their word choices?

Well, I think, you know, more and more companies realize the dangers of getting their. Their message wrong and have become much more sensitive to not saying the wrong thing. For I think a growing group of companies, that translates into being more deliberate and thoughtful about how they communicate, but there's still plenty out there that don't. And I think that one of the interesting things is that everything that we do as individuals and as companies communicates, right? It's not just when we do a press release or an advertisement or the really obvious communications. The way that we engage with customers or with prospects communicates, the way that we deal with employees communicates. And the thing that many companies still need to work really hard to do is to recognize that what they're trying to convey in one channel or to one audience or at one time is often contradicted by their behavior or their message or their actions someplace else. And so that's the real challenge, is looking across all of your communications and your actions and communicating a consistent message and being really deliberate about that.

So there are so many great examples recently of some really impactful moments where people use certain word choices and what a profound impact it had on audiences globally. And I was again looking at some of you had an article that Talked about in 2022, some of the biggest, most impactful moments, one being Ukrainian President Zelensky. And another great example that I thought was Tom Brady. And I was hoping you could talk us through some of these really relevant examples.

Sure. Well, you know, the Zelensky example is when at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he said, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. And it was one of these things we talk a lot about, about how you're framing the conversation, how you want people to view you, and the message that you're trying to communicate. And in, you know, in that. In those two phrases, he really conveyed this sense that, you know, I am not going to run. I'm going to stay here, I'm going to fight, and I'm going to tell it like it is, and I'm the kind of person that you can get behind. And so it was one of those moments where I think all of the. Probably all the betting money prior to that was on this guy who was a comedian running for cover at the first resistance, and that Ukraine wasn't going to be able to withstand the attack from Russia. It proved to be really telling of how things have played out. And as tragic as things are over there, they've shown that they really did. They continue to want ammunition and they're going to fight. And so it was just one of those moments that's very memorable. We call it a language moment that captures the Zeitgeist and certainly his mentality at the time.

I want to piggyback on what you're saying about him in that recently he was here in the United States asking for funding from the Congress and House. And it was interesting. A couple of things. It almost seems like he's one of your disciples in regards to really fixating and being so intentional about word choices and so much more. The way he showed up, the way he dressed, number one, I thought was incredibly strategic that he showed up. He wasn't wearing the same navy blue suit that every other man in that room was wearing. He came in wartime clothing in an effort, obviously very impactful, to have that vision instead of language in this instance, really resonate with people on what's going on and that he isn't actually sitting there with everybody else. He's in a very dangerous situation.

And.

And then two, and I'm going to botch it if I try. But he asked for funding from us, but did not use that language. Instead, he used language something like. It was incredible, but was almost like reverse psychology, where he was saying, I'm here today to ensure your future freedom by your choices. Something like that.

Yes. No, I mean, so one of the most important things that you have to do to be an effective communicator when you're trying to persuade somebody to do something is know what's in it for them. Right. And one of the things that he has done masterfully is that when he talks to people outside of Ukraine, this is never about Ukraine. It is never help us. It is about what Ukraine stands for in the broader context of, you know of the world that we're operating in. And so it's an investment in the future of the Western world, in the future of all free people, in the future of a global economy that works. And that reframing is really powerful because we all feel like we are invested in it in a way that we wouldn't feel if this were just help us in Ukraine because we were attacked by bad guys and it's the right thing to do. He really does an incredible job of that.

It really was eye opening to me. How thoughtful. And the reason why it's so eye opening to me, I am not thoughtful in that regard. So I was, you know, I bow down. I'm like, oh my gosh. This is something that everyone can learn from in regards to any approach or any meeting that you may have. Not even such, you know, such a large scale issue. All right, let's get to TB Tom Brady. And what did you think about. Someone on your team wrote an article about his recent exposing his personal situation?

Yeah, I got a lot of shit going on what he said. And, you know, I think so here you've got a guy who is, has achieved just incredible things, is viewed and I think kind of viewed himself in many ways as this perfect, right? He's the goat, right? And he does everything perfectly and there is no vulnerability there. And all of a sudden strange things are happening. We don't necessarily know what's happening at that point until he says that and he can choose one of two paths. He can kind of continue to be the straight faced, kind of robotic, almost individual that doesn't acknowledge that he's human. And then what often happens is we want to criticize those people when they're down. We'll support them when they're up, but as soon as they're down, we'll go after them. But when, when people who are perceived that way show some humanity, they show some vulnerability, all of a sudden we're like, wow, there's like, there's a real person in there and we're more likely to support them when they're down than, you know, they want to go after them. And so what he did, whether it was intentional or not, it was, it was definitely honest. And he communicated in a way that I think everybody can understand. Certainly anybody who's a parent, like, I am, like, there's a lot going on and you get pulled in a lot of different directions and you can't do everything necessarily or sometimes it gets overwhelming. And so I just, I think it was a powerfully Authentic moment. And I don't actually like using that word because I think it gets overused, but that was one of those moments where it went totally against type of. And that's often a way that you can demonstrate real credibility when you say something that people just don't expect you to say. It has a lot more impact than when you are following your normal script.

And this is something that you work with many CEOs on. I know that we were talking prior to recording today about on your wall, you have blown up. My bad. And I thought that that was something that, you know, you were pointing out as something funny. And you shared with me that that's actually a great reminder for you, for your clients to always be owning mistakes. Can you dive into a little bit about why that's important for leaders?

Absolutely. So I believe that as a leader, as anyone who wants to build trust with a partner in a relationship, whether it's a business relationship or a personal relationship, with a customer, with really any stakeholder, if you want to build trust. I believe in the power of flaws. I believe in the power of vulnerability. I believe that those leaders in the world that we operate in today who can never acknowledge any imperfection, that their strategy may not be perfect, that they don't know the answers to every question, that they lack credibility. Those leaders who are seen as the most credible are the ones who recognize that you don't get everything right all the time. And other people may have a better answer some of the time. And if I tell you that I'm wrong when I did something that was either wrong or just not as good as it could have been, then when I'm doing it right, you're much more likely to believe in me, to trust me and to follow me. And so it has these benefits that I think for generations the old kind of male dominated culture was very much one that didn't allow for that kind of vulnerability. And that doesn't work nearly as well today.

No, it definitely doesn't. I have personal experience working side by side with someone in a leadership position that wanted to appear perfect and tried incredibly hard. I mean, constantly exerting effort to showing that there was this perfect person. And in fact I watched the distance that was created from people to her and resentment because people felt they had to live up to that same extreme, which wasn't real in her instance to begin with. But it's impossible for anybody. So I couldn't agree with you more. That is a flawed strategy, old school strategy that is not effective. One of the Things that you also mentioned to me was this idea of fake it till you make it. I actually have a chapter in my first book about that, and there's a lot of conflict that brings up a lot of emotion with people. Some people hate that concept. I personally love it. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are and fake it till you make it.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think I was talking to a group of college students the other day, and many of them wanted to be entrepreneurs. They were talking about, you know, how do you start when you don't have a lot of experience or if you kind of can't prove that you can do what you want to do. And I said, if you look around and you think that everybody around you doesn't have imposter syndrome, then you're, you know, you're totally mistaken. I think everybody has something that they are putting on a face when they go out in public. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, they're, you know, trying to present them their best self and overcome that insecurity about something or that fear of not being received that you want. And that is. It's faking it. Right. I mean, what I've seen over and over again in my career is that there are times where I'm overly cautious, and I end up achieving what you get when you're overly cautious. And then there are times when I just step in and I say, there's no reason why I can't do this. And you tend to be able to do more than you think you can. We have in our organization, and I've worked with others over time, people who are more introverted and extroverted. But there are times that you have to be extroverted if you're in a client service business like mine. My wife is an introvert, but she knows she's like, I have to go out and put on high extroversion when I'm going to go and talk. All of it is about kind of knowing what role you need to play to help yourself in a given environment. And if you can do that, it's not changing who you are. It is simply stepping up to the moment and trying to make the most of it.

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Share with us a little bit. And I know your book does a really good job of framing this up, but how does it work to, to work with you and work with your team? I know that you, you have so much experience doing this, you have so much data that you leverage, you know, so much, so much research, case studies that proves that your strategies work. But how does it actually work when someone comes to work with you? How does this messaging and clarity come to be.

Yeah, well, so I think typically when we are working with clients, they're coming to us and they say we have a message that we want to communicate and people are not getting it. Either they don't understand how good we are or they don't understand why we're different, or they don't appreciate how much we're doing in order to, to help them. And I would say that, you know, if, when they say if my customer or if my stakeholder would just understand, I say this is going to be a long and healthy relationship because nobody has to understand anything. Like our job as communicators is to make it easy for us, for our audience to understand what we have to say, make it easy for them to believe what we have to say, make it easy for them to like what we have to say and to do it all. I believe really strongly while, while telling the truth, but finding the right language to do it. And so when clients come to us, the way that we approach things is we say, look, the first step is let's understand what it is that you want to communicate. What's the substance of it? How is it that you're communicating it today or you think you should communicate it. We then have a process that's grounded in a deep understanding of behavioral science and a real focus on language and framing to say, all right, why don't we approach it in a slightly different way? We're going to try and say the same thing, different, different language, and then we're going to go out and test it with your audience. And that testing may be in a focus group, it might be in a survey, it might be in any number of other methodologies that we use. But the point is, and our business is built on this idea that it's not what you say that matters, it's what your audience hears. And so we come up with a number of different ways of saying, you know, what it is that we're trying to communicate. And then we ask the audience that we're trying to reach, how do they hear it? What is it that they interpret? Why is, you know, how do we know to take that instant coffee and move it to the end instead of leaving it at the beginning? And, and when we test it with, with audiences, they, they generally give us the answer, you know, and then ultimately we build a strategy out of that. And one of the things that is, is really powerful to me and still amazes me each time we go and work with a different client. And I think you probably see as well in the work that you do is that industries have so many different challenges and every company is unique, but there are so many areas of commonality, you know, that there are certain things that just, they work. There are certain things that don't work. And, you know, if I want to connect with you, I have to find a way to make the conversation personal. I have to find a way to connect with you. If I talk about myself the whole time, I'm going to be much less successful. And that's true whether I'm talking about, you know, a drug and in pharmaceutical industry, a financial services product, or, you know, any number or any other industry anywhere. And, and so we're often finding those universal truths and then, and then identifying exactly the right words to communicate that truth in that context on behalf of that client to that audience.

So when you're speaking about that, I'm thinking of, and I believe it was your book, I'm sure you'll enlighten us. Where you use the example of a 401k and a company trying to encourage people to contribute to their 401k and then you framed it up four different ways and showed how differently people receive that. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yeah. So, you know, there are, if you think about saving for retirement, there are all different ways to talk about the benefits of saving for retirement. And on the one hand, it could be about living the retirement of your dreams. Well, actually, I'll tell you so one element of it, which may not have been what you saw, but we ask a question all the time about retirement and it is which of the following describes the retirement that you want? And there are three answers we give. Is it the retirement of your dreams, a comfortable retirement, or a retirement that maintains your lifestyle? And if you look at historically, what most financial services companies have promised about retirement, it is running on the beach, taking these trips, living the life you've always imagined. But if you ask Americans, but it's true globally as well, what retirement they want, it's a comfortable retirement. It's one where they get to spend more time with family and friends. Because for most people, dreams are dreams and they don't necessarily think about retirement as a way to do lots of things that they haven't done. They want financial security more than financial freedom. Talking about the language of comfortable retirement, having the peace of mind, of knowing that you don't have to worry about money, that you've got your expenses taken care of and you can spend time with the people that you care about most often resonates much more than saying you'll be able to go off and do whatever you want, because people don't necessarily believe that that's possible. And so when we talk about 401ks, it could be the difference between talking about a long term future. It could be talking about saving a little bit today and how that will help give you the confidence to retire in the future. But each frame and each message really communicates a different aspect of what it means to think about retirement. And it's kind of remarkable how differently people will interpret those messages from the way you might anticipate.

Oh, absolutely. That was such a great job making that example in the book. But now that I'm listening to you, there's so much validity to what you say. I'm getting anxiety thinking, oh my gosh, I have to start breaking down messaging on every single thing I'm talking about. How does someone give a keynote effectively now? It's going to take years to research this and develop it. So how do you advise people? When should we be looking at the message and when are we just showing up?

Well, so I think first I suspect that you've figured a lot of this out because you can tell from how people respond to you most. Right. And so I think the places where it becomes most Evident that you need to work on it is when you are hoping for a desired reaction and you're not getting it right. And so if you're out there and you're nodding your head at me right now, and that's a good signal to me that I'm hopefully heading down the right path in terms of engaging you. I'm sure you have. Maybe you haven't. I have looked out at an audience that I'm speaking to and got, oh, no, I'm like, I've lost them. They're, you know, this. This is not the reaction that I'm looking for.

Well, let me give you a hack. That's when you stop and say, wait a minute, did I lose you? And you need to reengage right then.

But, you know, but there are a lot of messages out there where, you know that, you know, a. The stakes are really big. You don't want to get wrong. The people that you're talking to are really important, you know, and so, again, you don't want to get it wrong. Or, you know, it's a complicated issue, or it's an emotional issue, or it's a politicized issue. And those are the places where it becomes, I think, really most important to think about. How have you framed this? Have you considered who your audience is, what they want? There's one saying that I use a lot, particularly in the. In the realm of persuasion. It's good for Thanksgiving dinner, which is the question of when was the last time you changed somebody's mind by telling them that they were wrong?

Never.

Never. Right. And so most of us, when we want to. When we want to persuade someone we're so convinced of our truth, of what we believe to be true, that we just want to tell them everything. And if we just give them all of our facts, then it's going to change their mind.

But.

But that's usually telling them that they're wrong because they've got a different set of facts and beliefs. And so that's a place where you've got to say, if I really want to change your mind about something that you don't believe, I better think about what you want, what you need, what you believe, and then build my message from there, as opposed to just telling you what I think, it usually won't work.

Yeah, that's very true. And I've experienced the same thing. It's nearly impossible to do it that way. All right, where does the. Or how important is this. The power of storytelling in all of this?

Well, storytelling, you know, as we've done throughout this conversation, is the way to bring these concepts to life. And that by giving you an idea, but then showing you how that idea exists in the world is really powerful. I think stories are essential. You know, we often talk when we're talking to companies, we talk about the fact that there are. There are stories that are nice to hear, but they don't really move a conversation forward. And then there are what we call scalable stories. And those are stories that are good stories in their own right, but they are indicative of a larger point that the company's trying to make. And so if I tell you a story of one example of something that I've done, let's say we've done work with companies on telling their philanthropy story, and they tell one story about their volunteer efforts, that's a story. It's a nice story. It might be great to know that employees are going out and they're building a house and a Habitat for Humanity, but it hasn't yet become a scalable story because it hasn't been connected to a larger point that you're trying to make about the organization. And so stories are essential, but it's not the story alone that matters. It's how you connect it to a larger point and hopefully many other stories that reinforce that point that really become powerful.

That's a. That's, again, another element that I hadn't thought about. So thank you for sharing that tip with me today. I will be applying a lot of this back to my own business and into my own conversations. One of the things that I noticed through some of your materials is this idea to drop the negative instead of focusing. And I saw this in some of your case studies, too. Instead of focusing on what you're doing, competitors aren't doing well. Focus on what you focus on the positive. And what's interesting to me is I've had Chris Voss on the show a number of times, who's a very famous negotiator. He has a strategy where he leads with the negative to hook people in. So I wanted to hear what your direction was different from that.

Well, so I think in general, what we see is that if I want to bring people along with me, I've got to give them a positive reason to do it. If I want to separate people, if I want to divide, if I want to paralyze people, I use negativity. So going back to ancient rhetoric, that is a core idea of how we bring people together. We use a positive vision for the future. If we want to rally our base. If we want to get people to stop, if we want to divide, we use negative language. Now, there are times where a negative prompt or a disturber can be very helpful in setting up a conversation, but it needs to be surrounded, at least in my experience, with something positive. What do you get out of this? Why should you come with me? What are the positive things that you will find? And I think not knowing exactly what he said in that context, I imagine he was talking about kind of what you would lose if you don't do, leave the hostages behind if you don't, you know, and, but part of that is also then creating a vision of keeping what you have, which is positive. And so there's a little bit of nuance to it. But, but I think, you know, companies often have a tendency to, to talk about the negative, to say, if you do this, something bad or if you don't do this, something bad will happen. And over and over again we see examples that show in our research that it's the, instead of saying that it's, if you do do this, this will happen, and the positive outcome that gets people to move. And so, for example, if you go back to the retirement example, and I say if you don't start saving today, you will not be able to retire when you want. And I'm your financial advisor, for example, chances are you're not going to feel that happy about working with me because I've kind of scared you a little bit, threatened you a little bit, and maybe paralyzed you a little bit. If I say, look, if I help show you how you can start saving a little bit today so that when you get to the point that you want to retire, you're able. I've now kind of set myself up as a partner, as a guide, as a support, and I've given you a solution instead of just a problem. And so chances are you're going to be more likely you want to work with me than the other person. And so that's where we see a lot of the positivity versus negativity really playing out.

So does that mean that you don't. You're not for scarcity marketing?

I am not. So some of it really depends on how you present it right? Because there's scarcity marketing that says you kind of can't have this, and then there's scarcity marketing that says, I'm going to show you how you can get it right, so act now in some ways is a positive, right? If you do this, you will get this as opposed to, you know, whatever the inverse of that would be. That is just, you're not going to be able to get this. So it becomes a question of whether or not I can give you access to a. To the solution that you're trying to get to or to the positive outcome that you're almost always trying to get to, as opposed to just basically telling you that if you don't act, you're going to miss out.

Okay, so this is so funny organically. This just led to another point that I wanted to dive into. In both instances, with the scarcity marketing and the Chris Voss story, I did not give you proper context. And you talk about the importance of context. Can you give us a little bit of color on that?

Yeah. So, I mean, context often determines what conversation we're having, in fact. So I may have been talking about entirely the wrong thing. Right. And that would be my, you know, my mistake, particularly if I was actually just having a. Somebody was pitching something to me and they didn't understand the context in which they were having the conversation with me. And it was a terrible conversation. It was really like they said nothing that resonated with me because they didn't understand what my needs were. And so setting the context is often. Sometimes it's really understanding who you're talking to and what it is that might be important to them or move them. And then once I do that, it may be how I set the context in coming back to you and giving you a response. And so an example of that might be coming back to the Chris Voss example is if I said something to you as simple as, let's say I was trying to do X. I've now set the context in a certain place, and that makes it much easier for me to be an effective communicator in terms of talking about that as opposed to not telling you what I was trying to achieve and then just trying to do it. But there are all different ways to use language to set the context. Sometimes it is talking about things at a very tactical level. Sometimes it's talking about them at a very high level or moving the conversation. We see it a lot on when you have good politicians or good communicators where you ask me a question that I don't want to answer. I can reset the context or pivot and answer a different question, but it doesn't sound like I'm evading the question that you've asked. So context plays a really important role in how we. How we interact with one another, how we interpret information and ultimately you know whether or not we are successful.

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I actually randomly did a post on LinkedIn this morning about labeling and I'm very interested to hear your opinion on how powerful labeling can be if you think it should be used. And by labeling, I use the example of crooked Hillary in the post that, you know, she'd been labeled and whether it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, you're probably going to remember and have some emotion around that labeling. But then also I've seen in media instances be labeled like quiet quitting, you know, so what is that actually? What is the power of labeling and how can that be used or should it be used?

It's really effective. It can be really, it can be used for good or evil, like many things, right. You know, one of the most important realities for people in thinking about how to effectively communicate is that you're not the only one communicating, right. That we're inundated with all of these messages. Everybody talks about how many times we get interrupted during the day or how many messages we are. We have to make things stick. And one of the best ways to make things stick is to make them memorable and disruptive and simple. And labeling has a really powerful ability to do that. It is really effective. You know, in the case of crooked Hillary, one of the reasons why it was so effective is because it tapped into an existing narrative, right or wrong, about Hillary, that there was, you know, there were things in the Clintons past that had been perceived by many as crooked. And so if I put that label on it, it sticks. There are other times that Trump used labels that didn't kind of tap into that same narrative and they didn't stick. And so that's how to kind of use it effectively. But they are really powerful. I mean, it's hard to get messages, ideas to stick and labeling is a really powerful way to do it. Now one of the other things that I think is really interesting in doing this is being careful not to use other people's labels. Right. So when we get into a lot of the most controversial debates that we have today, like use guns as an example, if you are, if you use the term gun control or gun violence or gun safety, you are using labels that have a whole lot of baggage already associated with them. And so you're, you're, you have a whole conversation going on in the background just by using that existing label. And so what we often try and do when we're trying to break through on an issue that that has already been labeled in different ways is to come up with a new way of talking about it. What's a new category to use? What's a new label to use that, that doesn't have all of that baggage that the existing labels already do.

There was an example you used. Somebody on your team wrote an article and it was an LGBTQ issue and they had changed the well known label to something new and different and to your point, was very strategic in that regard and changed the conversation. This was an article from someone on your team had written on, on your blog. The change in language from the Stop Sexualization of children bill to the don't say gay bill sparked a larger debate about the bill's true intentions and impact on the LGBTQ community.

Yeah, I mean, so in some ways the, that made that a powerful shift. So if I say stop the sexualization of children, I'm using a lot of words with a lot of sentences that are not intuitive. If I say don't say gay, first of all, it's got a little bit of that alliteration or very simple. It's very easy to understand. And so that was a benefit to the people who were advocates on that side of the bill to simplify it and make it repeatable. It also kind of tapped into something that I think with the constituents that they were trying to reach. It just intuitively resonated much more. And so it took an issue that was kind of hard to understand or maybe felt a little distant and made it much more personal. I mean, we have one of the examples that, that we were involved in a long time ago was the, was shifting the estate tax to the death tax. And the estate tax was something that an average American didn't really pay attention to because they don't live in an estate. An estate is the wealthy person up on the hill, and why not tax them more? But if I talk about it as a death tax, well, everybody dies and nobody likes paying taxes. So all of a sudden it at least gives you a reason to start to pay more attention to that term. And that's what relabeling can do.

What can someone do? Because this idea of taking something that's too long winded, too many words, and how do we make it shorter and powerful More powerful. And your website is such a great example of how to do that. I mean, it just hits you with these really clear, short, tight windows of words that it's. You understand immediately what you do. And it's very, very powerful and clear. Are there any strategies or tips that you can give people listening to how you can shorten some of these really long winded mantras or whatever they may be?

Yeah, it's a great question, Heather. You know, I think, I think the, the biggest challenge is often separating the most important thing from the other things. Important, but not as important. I mean, when you narrow down, even if you take don't say gay as an example, like there were other aspects of the bill and the debate and the issue that were not included in that phrase. Right. They picked one thing to hone in on. And so, you know, what is the one thing that matters most? You can never communicate everything. And that's often where you end up going from one word to five words to 15 words in a sentence. When you try and describe your business or your value proposition, what's the one thing that really matters most? And if you can identify that, then it often becomes much easier to come up with a simple statement to articulate it.

And where does emotion play into that?

Well, emotion is everywhere. I think sometimes we hear people push back on the idea of being emotional versus being rational. Everything that we do is driven by emotion. All the decisions that we make are driven by emotion. We then rationalize them with good reasons. But emotion gets at the idea of how do I make it easy for you to like, easy for you to believe? Pleasing to your ear is often part of the emotion of it. If I can quiet quitting it sounds nice to the ear. And so the people on the other side talked about or the comeback to that was loud layoffs because we find that we are attracted to those types of terms. But all of this is about appealing to emotion. It really is pretty rare. We do a lot of work with physicians, and physicians say, just give me the data. I'm a scientist, I want to know the data. What we do is we present the data in five different ways in different narratives, each of which kind of taps into a different emotion. And there's always a difference in how they react. And so they are responding to the same data wrapped in different emotional narratives in ways that they don't think that they should be or would be or want to be. And so all of this is about emotion. It's about kind of how does the message make you feel? Does it resonate with something that you believe already because, you know, as a communicator, the first thing that I'm trying to do, I want to get you nodding your head in approval before I'm going to change your mind, before I'm going to introduce something new, or I'm going to tap into something that I know you already believe. But if I can get you nodding your head in agreement like I'm. I'm halfway down the field, it's like sales 101 couldn't. Yeah, exactly. But it is.

So tell us a little bit. I'm sure we piqued the interest of many people listening right now. What does it look like to work with you and your company? And who is that, that right person to reach out to you that might need some help?

Our work a number of different people within organizations, it's often the chief marketing officer or their teams, Chief communications officer. We do a lot of market research, as I mentioned, as part of our work. And so it's people in insights functions. Increasingly, it's actually in the HR function as well, because companies are recognizing that how they communicate with their employees, with their team members, is critically important. Or it's the CEO themselves who have something important that they want to communicate. And then when they work with us, our job is to ultimately deliver them the right language, precisely the right words and phrases, but not just the right words and phrases and understanding of why those words and phrases or that order or that reframing makes a difference. Because if I give you a set of words and say these are the right words, first of all, you're less likely to take my word for it if I haven't explained to you why they work. But also if you get into a conversation and you need to go beyond those words, you're stuck because I've just given you a set of words. And so we really focus on trying to help people understand. What's the obstacle to effectively communicating their message? What's the insight? We call it a shift. How you need to change your mindset by going from A to B. And here are the words to support that shift so that you can be effective. And so ultimately, we deliver a strategy that explains what to say, what not to say, and why it matters.

Well, the work that you're doing is incredibly interesting. It definitely can benefit so many people. Where can they go to find you and find out more?

Well, I think the easiest is maslansky.com which is M A S L A N S K Y dot com. That's our website. We can take it from there.

And you can also check out his book, Language of Trust. Michael, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for the impactful work and language that you are using.

Thank you, Heather. Great questions, great conversation. Really appreciate it.

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