The Morning After: What's Your Plan for Communicating About the Election?

"The Morning After" Do you have a narrative and a plan in place?

We're going to wake up on November 4th to a new political reality, (one way or another). What are you going to say? The final outcome may not be clear for weeks or months. As a leader you need a clear and principled message.

You've got 7 days to get your Election Comms Plan together.

Time to craft your narrative.

What you say in the coming days and weeks, will impact how you are perceived as a leader -- as a company, a team, and a corporate citizen. Big tech is under greater political pressure and more scrutiny than ever before. So are highly-regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, and insurance. It's not so clear or easy to know what to say, or how to say it.

How do you prepare for something you don’t fully control? How do you reassure people’s fear, anxiety, and dread? How do you reinforce a sense of belonging and togetherness? How do you move forward amidst uncertainty and ambiguity?

While the instinct might be to lay low and hunker down, there's potentially a greatest cost in not saying anything. You've got 7 days to work out the narrative.

Here's a quick guide to help you frame the conversation:

1. Speak to this defining moment - The biggest risk as a leader is to ignore presenting reality. The danger of a leadership void: If you're not telling the story, others are going to tell it for you. What is your role and opportunity? In the case of Expensify CEO - the choice was clear: David emailed every customer to convey an unequivocal POV. Not every company may feel at liberty to express such a stance. So here's some additional recommendations to help you navigate complexity and speak to this defining moment.
2. Create a safe place - Your people want to hear from you. Anxiety and fear is running high. How can you give them reassurance, positive reinforcement, and perspective? What are your company policies for election day? Here's a good example from Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon. How do you balance the spirit of inclusivity while holding room for political views that may be outside the majority of your leadership, employees, or customers? Safety is a universal truth, irrespective of politics. So is the principle of voting, and having your voice heard, as Starbucks leadership has so clearly emphasized.
3. Reinforce bonds of connection - For some portion of employees and customers, the election results will feel cataclysmic. While we may not all agree on politics, what do we agree on? How can you reinforce what you all share in common? How are you more similar than different? And what can you share that humanizes our relationships beyond our differences. This Heineken video about different views brings home the power of listening to and understanding each other's stories.
4. Clarify accepted political speech - Every company has a different stance on what is acceptable political speech. For Patagonia, their product label say it all. For Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, political speech on issues outside of the mission has no place at work. This led to 5% of his employees opting for the voluntary severance package. At Google, they've created more structured forums and guidelines for where employees can engage in political speech. The bigger the company, the more complicated it gets as your navigating legislative, regulatory, and government contracting implications.
5. Anchor to cultural tenets - Here's the bottom line: use this moment as a way to reinforce the unique cultural tenets of your culture. What values or beliefs are core to your culture or product? Can you elevate one of them as a torch to find and maintain higher ground?Restate your shared beliefs about the world, your company's mission, and core values. For one global client we serve: data and integrity is core to their functional discipline. Celebrating the value of "trust and transparency" is a powerful rallying cry for both the business and its people.

Election Edition: Key Principles for Narrative Leadership

Ok, now that we've highlighted a few top messaging strategies - lets reinforce a few key narrative principles that are critical to navigating politically charged topics.

• Distinguish between identity vs policy - what makes politics such a third rail topic is that it gets so personal. People's sense of identity is on the line. Try to bring compassion to this conversation. You don't want to make someone's identity "wrong." In short, Political identity needs to be separated from policy outcomes.
• Business interests drive policy positions (e.g. legislation, regulation, laws, and policies) - educate employees about the pressures you have as leaders to consider business interests and mission as you wrestle with complex politically-charged issues. While stakeholders often desire an authoritative moral statement, leaders often wrestle with ethical dilemmas and murky tradeoffs. Just look at the challenges currently faced by Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey and the like and their role is moderating political speech. If you want to further explore the distinctions between morals vs ethics, check out my article The Narrative of Moral Leadership from a couple months back.
• When talking about the issues, anchor to human values - regardless of policy positions, what are the ways that you expect people to treat each other in your place of business? What behaviors will you not tolerate (e.g. hate/defamatory speech, intimidation, divisiveness, etc)? The greatest test of your core values, is when you are willing to lose something in defense of them. Delta's position on gun-control is a powerful example. For general inspiration check out the Business Roundtable's new definition in 2019 of the Purpose of a Corporation, signed by 200 leading CEOs.
• Trust, health, the economy, and the American Dream - every election is about a collective story. Two candidates differing narratives about our country, the future, and what matters most. Regardless of political affiliations, these four topics: trust, health, the economy, and the American Dream are universal truths and defining issues this election that you can speak to in an inclusive manner.

You only move as fast at the speed of trust

More than anything, this election is about trust. Trust in our leaders, trust in our systems, and trust in each other. While you might not be able to control or influence the national politic, your words and actions as a leader do influence TRUST as a team, org, and company. As a colleague recently shared with me:

Trust Equation

Trust = creditability x reliability x intimacy / self-orientation

Give people something to believe in. Have a story worth telling. Reinforce faith in the future. Strengthen a sense of belonging and connection. We can't control the world around us, but we can shape the story we tell about it. That's the art and science of narrative. And the power you have as a leader in the coming days.

What are you doing to speak to the election? Comment below.

Once a month, Storied hosts a private forum for senior execs that leading innovation and transformation. We explore how communicate what matters most in the face of disruption. This past month, the focus was: "election edition". Send me a DM if you'd like to be considered for future gatherings.