Should corporate leaders speak out on social and political issues? And if they decide to do so, what’s the best approach? On this episode of The Culture Kit, hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava chat with Matt Kohut, a leadership communications expert, about his new book Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communications. Jenny, Sameer, and Matt dig into historical examples of corporations and politics colliding, the potential pros and cons of deciding to weigh in on social issues, and strategies for business leaders to evaluate risk and maintain accountability when deciding to speak out. This episode’s question came from Laszlo Bock, co-founder of Humu and former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google.
Should corporate leaders speak out on social and political issues? And if they decide to do so, what’s the best approach?
On this episode of The Culture Kit, hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava chat with Matt Kohut, a leadership communications expert, about his new book Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communications.
Jenny, Sameer, and Matt dig into historical examples of corporations and politics colliding, the potential pros and cons of deciding to weigh in on social issues, and strategies for business leaders to evaluate risk and maintain accountability when deciding to speak out.
This episode’s question came from Laszlo Bock, co-founder of Humu and former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Jenny: Hi, I’m Jenny Chatman.
[00:00:03] Sameer: And I’m Sameer Srivastava.
[00:00:06] Jenny: We’re professors at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. And we’ve dedicated our careers to studying and advancing effective workplace cultures.
[00:00:15] Sameer: Jenny is a psychologist who helped create the field of organizational research.
[00:00:20] Jenny: And Sameer is a sociologist who’s pioneering new ways to use big data, AI, and deep learning to uncover insights about what happens inside organizations.
[00:00:33] Sameer: Together, we founded the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation to help business leaders create and cultivate healthy and effective workplace cultures.
[00:00:42] Jenny: In this podcast, we’ll tackle hard-to-fix issues that your organization is facing as we look to the future of work.
[00:00:51] Sameer: We’ll take your questions about culture and give you practical advice that you can put to work right away. Join us for The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer and start building your culture toolkit.
[00:01:04] Jenny: Sameer, how are you?
[00:01:06] Sameer: Hey, I'm doing great, Jenny. How about you?
[00:01:08] Jenny: Great.
[00:01:09] Sameer: Well, we have a really interesting show plan today. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
[00:01:12] Jenny: Yes. Our question today is super timely for leaders. It comes from Laszlo Bock, who led people operations at Google for a decade before founding the companies Humu and Gretel AI. You and I are also working with Laszlo on this incredible CHRO Academy and Executive Education course that launches in just a couple of weeks.
[00:01:34] Laszlo: Many employees are looking more and more to their employers to take stands on social and political issues. What should C-level executives do and say?
[00:01:43] Jenny: Well, like I said, that's certainly a tricky question. And today, we're lucky to be joined by a guest who spent a lot of time thinking about this, Matthew Kohut, a leadership communications expert, who, just this month, released a new book, Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communications.
Welcome to the Culture Kit, Matt.
[00:02:06] Matt: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:07] Sameer: It's great to have you with us, Matt. And let me offer a brief introduction to Matt for our listeners. Matt has spent the past two decades preparing CEOs, elected officials, and public figures for events that range from live television appearances to TED Talks through his firm, KNP Communications. I've known Matt for about a decade, and he's worked very closely with students in my MBA elective course, Power in Politics and Organizations, to provide one-on-one coaching support. And I know the students have really benefited from that support over the years. We even use lessons from his earlier book, Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential.
So, Matt, tell us a bit about what prompted you to write this new book, Speaking Out.
[00:02:51] Matt: Well, I was thinking about this challenge that leaders were facing everywhere over the past decade, and it really seemed just critical that I think about how to offer guidance, because I've been asked to help leaders make these kinds of choices about when, if, and how to think about offering a position on a political or social issue. And we've really seen over the last decade that there was an accelerating trend in which leaders were expected to be able to do this. And it wasn't just externally, it was also internally. And I wanted to think rigorously about it because I've sensed there was a gap in the literature, if you will, where a lot of academics were looking at it. But it wasn't something where there was a complete one-stop-look-at-this that put it into perspective over a longer period and also offered a little bit of a roadmap for how to do better decision-making about this.
[00:03:50] Jenny: That's so interesting. So, Matt, how did we get to where we are today? Maybe you could take us through the history of corporate leaders speaking out on social and political issues.
[00:03:59] Matt: Well, I think that one thing that's helpful to keep in mind is that leaders have always had to navigate political and social issues. They typically have been a little less public about this. A lot of this was happening behind the scenes for decades, but it wasn't entirely always behind the scenes. I'll give you an example I cite in the book, which is that, in 1964, shortly after Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Prize, the president of Coca Cola, Robert Woodruff, got a group of Atlanta business leaders together to support a banquet that the mayor of Atlanta was hosting in honor of Dr. King. And at the time, this was a big deal. At this point in 2024, it sounds ridiculous that required any support. But at the time, it was really the first time that the white business community had shown its endorsement publicly of his incredible achievement.
And for Woodruff to do this is an example of a corporate leader engaging in political and social issues in this way. He didn’t issue a statement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but it was an example of the kind of engagement I’m talking about. And by the way, just to put the cap on that story, Robert Woodruff was not a leading light where civil rights were concerned. Just a decade before that, he’d supported a segregationist for Congress, or for Senate, rather. So, I don’t want to be mistaken in saying that we should put a halo over his head. But I just offered that an example of how far back we go. This is 60 years ago. Essentially, you see a prominent doing this.
Similarly, in the ‘60s, you saw people like Thomas Watson of IBM, talking about the responsibility that corporations had for health care for Americans. So, there are lots of different examples that are hit-or-miss, or rather, you know, they're just sporadic over a period of many, many decades.
What I think we really saw happen, though, was sometime in the 2010s, probably in large part due to the advent of social media, you see executives increasingly saying things about political and social issues, and they're doing it in all these different settings around all these different issues, ranging from gun violence prevention to marriage equality, to, well, you name it.
[00:06:22] Sameer: Yeah. So, as we think about the CEOs and other corporate leaders who've been speaking out on some of these controversial topics, what are some examples of missteps that you've seen, as well as some positive examples? And the one I was hoping you could talk about in particular, from your book, you have this really interesting example of Pfizer making a, what do you call, a straddling move in response to the Ukraine war.
[00:06:44] Matt: Yeah, let's start there. I love this example as well. So, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, suddenly, there was this incredible pull for corporations to withdraw their business operations from Russia. And Pfizer, as a pharmaceutical company, found itself in this real bind. They have people in Russia who are dependent on their medicines, who would be left stranded, essentially, without access to Pfizer products. And yet, Pfizer wants, on some level, to be able to not condone what Russia has done here.
So, they came up with an approach that I've called smart straddling, which is they decided that they were going to honor their mission-based commitment to the patients in Russia who were dependent on these medications, and they offered humanitarian levels of medical supplies in Russia, going forward. And they took the profits from those sales and funneled them into support for Ukraine. So, I think that's really an example of not simply taking a position from firmly saying, “You know what? We're getting out. We're pulling out. We're gone.” But it's doing something that's both humanitarian and in service of their mission on the one hand, and on the other hand, very much aligned with their values where supporting the Ukrainian humanitarian crisis was something they felt strongly about doing as well.
[00:07:21] Sameer: Yeah, that's a great example. What about on the other end of the spectrum? Are there some examples of, like, really terrible disastrous moves that leaders have made?
[00:08:29] Matt: Well, I think one that may be familiar to some folks listening is what happens when CEOs or corporate leaders wander off-script and they start speculating in front of an open microphone. And one that comes to mind for me always around this is, back in 2018, when Mark Zuckerberg was being interviewed by Kara Swisher, a leading tech journalist, and she was pushing him on the idea of what people who are holocaust-deniers were saying on the Facebook platform. And he said, “Well, I don't really want to speculate about their intent, or I don't want to assume I understand their intent.” And she pushed back pretty hard, said, “Really?”
I think it's an example of the kind of misstep that's very easy to make when people are just talking off the cuff, they haven't thought about the fact that they're going to be talking about a certain topic on a given day, when it's an open-ended interview. I mean, this interview with her was probably an hour. And so, a lot, they covered a lot of ground, a lot of topics, but you can guarantee that the one that made the headlines the next day was about this question of him saying, “Well, gee, we shouldn't presume to understand the intent of these people or holocaust-deniers on Facebook.”
So, I think that that's a relatively straightforward example. And I'll also offer it as an example of him then quickly turning around and issuing a very clear apology the next day, saying, “That is not what I meant.” And I think we can probably say very fairly that he recovered from this, in the sense that it didn't take down Facebook or really affect the broader fortunes of the company in any measurable way.
[00:10:07] Jenny: Well, that's an interesting example. I'm sure there are many examples. And I'm wondering, generally, if the best way to recover is simply to apologize or if there are some other tactics people can use. But I'm also wondering, from a cultural standpoint, how those missteps might permeate through an organization and hit employees who have an even more, kind of, reputational investment in what their CEO says.
[00:10:37] Matt: Well, you know, that question brings to mind another example from the book which happened after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. So, if you cast your mind back, a lot of corporations were feeling like they were under immense pressure to show that they could do better on racial justice and racial equity for their employees, specifically.
And a lot of companies came out and said, “Here's what we're going to be doing.” And one of those was Wells Fargo. And CEO Charlie Scharf made a statement, again, like many other CEOs at the time. And he spelled out specific commitments that Wells Fargo was going to achieve. And one of them was doubling its number of black executives. And a couple months later, he was captured on an internal Zoom call saying that, “Well, Wells Fargo couldn't do this because it didn't have a talent pipeline to support this commitment.” And then this was leaked to the public, and he was pilloried for this.
And I think it's an example of one where the consequences for him internally were probably worse than they were for him publicly, in that his black employees clearly heard from their leader that this was someone who didn't think they had what it took to fulfill this commitment that he had already made publicly.
So, I think you're absolutely right, Jenny. This is a huge challenge. And leaders need to be really clear when they're making commitments, that they're ready to back those commitments. And I think that's one of the big points I make in the book, is that there has to be an accountability dimension to taking a position, taking a stand on an issue.
[00:12:16] Sameer: Yeah. So, thinking back to the George Floyd example, that was one where there was, I think, a fair amount of consensus in the business community that there was a need to respond. But if you think more generally about issues, as they come up, there are all kinds of issues on which a firm could take a stand. How do you think about the principles for when a firm ought to take a stand and say a little bit more, if you would, about the role of values, but also going beyond values and culture? What are the other factors you think about?
[00:12:41] Matt: Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head here, because there's really an if question as well as a when and how, when you're thinking, what stand would you take? Should you take a stand, is question number one. And it's not always the case. In fact, I would argue that, most of the time when employees or when people are being pressured to just take a stand, the answer is probably best to be a principled no. And that's because you have to put this through a few filters here. And one is just starting with mission relevance. What is your business? Why does this issue pertain to your business? Is it directly related to what your line of what you do? Is it related to something that matters deeply to your employees? Is it something that matters deeply to your customers? So, there are a whole bunch of hoops that you can work that question through to think about straight up mission relevance.
And then from there, as you mentioned, we can think about values. What are your corporate values? And to what extent does that either support taking a position or say, “You know what? This really is outside the scope of our values. We'll leave this for others.”
Now, let's say you've decided, “Okay, you know what? This is in line with what we care about. It's also what we stand for.” Now, the question is, is this going to be something you’re going to say internally because you're addressing employees primarily as the audience that cares the most about this, or is it something really where you need to let the world know where you stand? And then, again, you need to start thinking about risks and so on.
[00:14:12] Sameer: Let me just ask a follow-up, if I could, which is thinking about the world that Jenny and I inhabit, the university world, there's the famous University of Chicago Kalven Report, which issued a set of principles about when and whether to speak out. And more recently, Harvard University has issued a guideline saying that they're not going to speak out on issues that are “outside” their core function. Where do you come out on those types of stances?
[00:14:37] Matt: So, a university is a unique entity in the respect that a university is there to share, exchange, and build on ideas. And so, I think you can make a principled case that the university's core function is to be the platform for lively exchange of ideas, debate, and so forth, and that the university itself shouldn't be taking a position on ideas that aren't germane to the health, welfare, and well-being of the people involved in the university.
Now, I mentioned that last caveat there because it's easy enough to say that universities shouldn't take a position on the latest flare-up in foreign policy. But it's very easy to imagine something like the next pandemic where, suddenly, everyone has to be vaccinated again, for instance, let's say. And the university takes a position on this and the issue becomes politicized. So, if you cast your mind back to 2021, vaccine mandates were something that became a politicized issue. And when I think about universities taking these stances and they say, “We're not going to delve into politics here,” I think it becomes a fine line when an issue then becomes a political issue that wasn't previously one. And I think the universities are not going to be able to be as on the sidelines as they may hope they can be by issuing these statements right now. So, I think I'm “yes, and” on this one.
[00:16:10] Jenny: So, if I take what you are advising, where firms, organizations should have a plan for how to decide when to weigh in, it makes me think about, as dean here at Haas, I've convened a crisis committee that we pull together whenever something comes up. So, I'm wondering if there are any other processes that you would advise firms to put in place to make decisions about how to respond to these issues as they come up.
[00:16:41] Matt: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the crisis committee possibility because I do think one of the huge things to do is to do some scenario planning, murder board, red team, whatever you want to call it. But basically, where you run the scenario of, what if the decision blows up in our faces? How could that happen? Were there any number of ways that this could go wrong for us?
I mentioned this one technique in the book called a pre-mortem, which is something from the world of cognitive bias mitigation, really. And I think that having everyone who's involved in making this decision jot down on a piece of paper, it's a year from now, and we think what could have gone wrong with this decision, and everybody writes their narrative about, “gosh, this was a disaster, here's why,” you're likely to source some interesting ideas and counterfactuals that might help you to make a better decision. It doesn't mean you don't go forward, but you go forward with your eyes as open as they can be.
[00:17:34] Sameer: So, Matt, I want to go back to some of your earlier comments about internal communications and external communications. And in today's world, I'm wondering how firms can even draw a boundary or distinction between the two. It seems that anything you send internally will, at least, have some likelihood of making it out into the external world, too.
[00:17:53] Matt: You're exactly right about that. And I would expect, if I were a leader saying anything internally, that it will be public. You should always presume that that's going to happen. That said, I know lots of leaders who communicate about issues internally, and their issues never end up leaked, or if they do, the leaks are so narrow that they don't really affect the reputation of the organizations. And I think that's because these leaders are savvy about what they're communicating internally to the point that it's not interesting enough, and I mean interesting in the way that gets you into trouble.
So, I do think that you're right. You have to always assume that anything internal is also going to end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or so. And knowing that, how can you craft your messages internally with that kind of risk management approach to what you say?
[00:18:48] Jenny: So, Matt, I have one last question, and it's going to sound like a strange question. It's going to sound like I haven't been listening to you, which I have. But in the context of hearing lots of leaders these days talking about trying to become more politically neutral because of how dicey these situations become, I guess I have the big question of, on balance, does your research show that CEOs and organizations should or shouldn't weigh in on social and political issues? Are they overreaching when they do, or being under-responsive when they don't?
[00:19:22] Matt: So, let me offer a couple different perspectives here. One is that the old way of doing things, the 20th century way, if you will, was CEOs just tried to avoid issuing public statements about political and social issues, pretty much at all costs. I think, now, the calculus has changed where, if you're always just trying to keep your head down, sometimes you may be seen as the laggard in your industry. If everyone else is taking a stand, where are you? Your silence can actually speak volumes in a case like that. So, I don't think it's possible to necessarily avoid everything all the time.
Now, let me offer another thought, and this is more of a niche approach, but you see it in certain businesses. Some businesses brand themselves very consciously as representing one side of the aisle or the other in our two-party system here in the United States. And so, I'll offer Jeremy's razors on the one side as a business that presents itself as anti-woke, and then you have Penzies, the spice company on the other side, which is very proudly progressive. If you think back 30 years, Ben & Jerry's has been flying the progressive flag very proudly for many decades. So, for some organizations, you can actually see the business case for taking principled positions in your direction over and over again, and it almost becomes part of what's expected of leaders in those cases. It doesn't make it always easy to make those choices, but those are, I would say, like I said, more niched than a company that's going to try and sell sneakers in blue states and red states alike. That's the big trade-off here.
[00:21:02] Sameer: So, Matt, say, one is a leader of a firm that is trying to sell across blue states and red states, what advice would you offer to the head of such a firm about when and whether to speak out?
[00:21:15] Matt: Well, of course, it's going to come down to an issue-by-issue basis, but I think there's some math that you can do, essentially, when you look at whether you're trying to appeal to customers or employees. Let's take the customer’s side. One thing you can do is try and segment and think, “Okay, who are my customers? Even if I'm in all 50 states, are my customers mostly under the age of 40? Are they mostly 55 and up? Can I make some informed guesses about what's going to resonate most or cause the most heartburn among most of the people who I'm talking to here?”
The research shows that you can make points pandering to the crowd, and you can also alienate people if an issue is really tightly divided or polarized, as they say, and you take a position, the net response to that's probably going to be negative. So, understanding who your customers are, doing some of that marketing 101 segmentation work and looking at that can help you decide, are we going to take a position here or not?
[00:22:19] Jenny: Well, thanks, Matt. Boy, I learned a lot today. I really appreciate you bringing this communications perspective to our conversation. Thank you.
[00:22:27] Matt: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:22:30] Jenny: Thanks for listening to The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer. Do you have a vexing question about work that you want us to answer? Go to haas.org/culture-kit to submit your fix-it ticket today.
[00:22:46] Sameer: The Culture Kit Podcast is a production of the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at the Haas School of Business, and it's produced by University FM. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to hit that Subscribe button, leave us a review, and share this episode online, so others who have workplace culture questions can find us, too.
[00:23:06] Jenny: I'm Jenny.
[00:23:07] Sameer: And I'm Sameer.
[00:23:08] Jenny: We'll be back soon with more tools to help fix your work culture challenges.