The Language of Leadership: Empathy and Cultural Clarity

As language evolves and workplaces divide, CCOs must lead with empathy and clarity. Listen to SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. join Page CEO Dr. Rochelle Ford to explore how communicators can craft the unifying language today’s organizations need in a fireside chat at our 2025 Spring Seminar.

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Transcript

Eliot Mizrachi VO: At the 2025 Page Spring Seminar, Johnny C. Taylor Jr. the president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, also known as SHRM, joined Page CEO, Dr. Rochelle Ford for a lively fireside chat about leadership in chaotic times and the evolving role of communicators in bridging divides.

This conversation covered some of the most pressing challenges facing CCOs today from the growing polarization around DEI and ESG to the challenge of leading across six generations in the workforce and the business imperative of defining and articulating culture with clarity. As Johnny said,

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: We've got to be really, really careful, about how we deliver this message, that it doesn't end up dividing versus unifying.

Eliot Mizrachi VO: This episode explores how empathetic leadership and authentic communication can help organizations unite and thrive even when running straight into the storm. We pick up the conversation with Rochelle asking [00:01:00] Johnny how communicators can still drive meaningful change when caught between competing stakeholder demands.

I'm Eliot Mizrachi, and this is The New CCO.

Dr. Rochelle Ford: businesses increasingly being pressured.

to take political stance. How does, SHRM, resist the pull of partisanship, while still driving meaningful change, and what should communicators do when caught between these stakeholder demands, and diversity and equity inclusion is one of those,

tell us how, how is SHRM addressing that?

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: Right. So, gosh, let me unpack a little bit of it. So the funny thing about this term DE& I is it's relatively new. For those of us who've been around in this business for a long time, for years it was just diversity.

Then it was diversity and inclusion. Then it was diversity, equity, inclusion. Then it became diversity, equity, inclusion. Accessibility, so D E I A, and then somebody added a B, and so [00:02:00] this thing is now D E I B. It's, it's, I don't mean to be glib about it, but it's kind of insane. I think well intended, but that's what's so amazing to me is that when people are like, you have to focus on these words and not using that phrase, and I said, gosh, it's relatively new.

How about, and this is, I think will resonate with you all, focus on the work and not the words. If you get hung up on the words, well, the words have changed every two or three years. They have just told you, they added a new, the acronym just grows and grows and grows. And some people are really offended if you just stop at DEI because they want you to say the A and the B.

And, and words do matter. So, right, I get it. But one of the terms that we've used within our organization is let's focus on the work. And less the words, let's figure out what matters to the employees within our organizations. And let's show them how to be diverse, how to be inclusive, how to make people belong, et cetera.

The second rule that we have in achieving [00:03:00] this goal is we actually do try to stay away from polarizing terms, especially the ones that are hyper polarizing like equity. Part of the problem with equity is no one can define it. It means different things to different people. Some people say it's equal access, equal opportunity.

Some see equal outcomes. And here's a dirty little secret from the lawyer in the room, and I'm sure some of you are here. We don't have a Pay Equity Act. We have an Equal Pay Act. So when people go around saying, Pay Equity I'm like, the law doesn't even provide for that in the United States.

There's some countries that do have a pay equity construct. We don't. We have an equal pay and those are very different terms. So even then the legal folks get involved and say, well, you can't, there's no, no reason for you to use that language. And then you find it polarizing amongst your employees. So employees aren't happy, the lawyers aren't happy, the politicians aren't happy, but we dig in and say, but we're still going to say it.

Because what? We've only been using it for the last five or seven [00:04:00] years anyway. So I start with that. On ESG, parallel sort of experience. Larry Fink, as you all know from BlackRock, coined it. Right. And then a year ago, he famously announced, I'm never going to use it again. Never. I'm just not going to use it.

It's not that we don't care about the environment. We don't care about social issues. We don't care about governance. But this has become so polarizing that it has divided our workforce. Not unified it. And the goal, right, ultimately is to figure out how to unify people around the work, who cares what they call it.

So I think we decide to follow a lot of that, that sort of strategy. And I think it's helpful. So, to the extent a word is extremely divisive, you could run into it and decide I'm gonna do it anyway and sort of put it in the face of people, but then people don't hear you. And the people who don't hear you are the people who you need to hear you, right?

so we have a phrase that I came up with. In the car, I have to say, riding, I had been appointed. [00:05:00] Now, mind you, I was Hillary Clinton's North Carolina finance director both times that she ran. I get this call, I promise you, my team is here, it's the truth, from the White House.

The President would like to see you in Trump One. Really? Okay. What am I going to be banned from the country? So this is the I don't know. You're good. You're good. You're good. To my surprise, he invited me in to serve as his advisor on historically black colleges and universities. So I was the chairman of his board of advisors on HBCUs.

Now I didn't attend an HBCU to be clear, but I had served as the CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, so he needed a subject matter expert in the work. So I said, well, this is interesting and great meeting. I come in, he said. You didn't vote for me, did you?

That was the opening I said, well, because I was on Hillary's team, you could probably guess I didn't, but okay. but it was a great conversation. I accepted the gig, he accepted me, and I served as [00:06:00] advisor for three plus years. But, I say that to say I learned, I once he called and said, would you do this?

I'm writing. And I looked at my head of comms who was with me as well as my government affairs. And by the way, I, I go with him. You know, oftentimes I say, your HR person and your CFO, that's, that's not my two. Like I have my government affairs in Washington DC and my comms person, I say, go with me. We're riding into town to the White House.

And I said, how can I explain this to my members? Because I've got a large swath of my population who's gonna be really pissed about this. And it came to me. SHRM is about policy, not politics. And it literally was something, I was talking it out, and this team, the three of us, all riding in the car, said, that's what we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that.

We're gonna be about policy, not politics. Which means there are times when we're gonna support policy that the Democrats don't support, and there are times when we're gonna do things that a Republican's gonna, not gonna support. But we're gonna be true to what we do. And, and just the nuance [00:07:00] of saying, we're not bipartisan.

We're not partisan. We're nonpartisan. Mm

hmm.

Just that nuance of words, and sometimes you have to explain to people because they use them interchangeably, but there is a difference between saying, we're just nonpartisan. And there are going to be times, for example, when the President, President Trump in this decided that he was going to be anti visa, you know, allowing legal immigration.

We said, oh, cowboy, that's not a good idea. Like we need thesetalented people. We have a birth rate problem in America. We have a lot of problems, retention, you know, the great resignations. And pfft. It's a lot going on. And he pulled back because we had been positioned not as a partisan group at all, but one that would focus on good policy for our country, no matter who sits in the White House or who controls which of the houses of Congress.

and the more that professionals like you can help us craft. unifying language as opposed to divisive language. We all have our personal point of view about anything. I mean, we saw the electorate. It's very divided. The workforces are very divided for the [00:08:00] first time in 2019. We captured data.

We survey and some would argue surveil. employees around the globe, uh, every day we send surveys out and we survey employees, we survey employers, usually CEOs, but sometimes CEOs and CHOs to see the Delta. So all day we have this team of biopsychologists, statisticians, researchers, on SHRM, full time staff, and they do nothing but survey all day.

And what we learned was. People are really divided. But everyone actually wants to find what we have in common. So what we said is we have a lot more in common than we have different. But we focus so much on the difference that that's a problem.

it was one of the things I reflected on, what's been this pushback on diversity?

Why is this so bad? Why are people so angry about it? And I think When we, you know, we reflect as an HR professional on this topic, one of the things we did forever was we focused on our [00:09:00] differences and not what we had in common. We ignored the fact that if I go to a reception and I meet this gentleman in front of the table, I don't go up and say, how are we different?

Tell me how we're different. No, I say, where'd you go to school? Where you from? What'd you major in? Because I'm trying to find what we have in common. Human beings naturally want to find commonality, particularly when they meet someone who's diverse to them. Sometimes visibly diverse, sometimes not so visibly diverse, you know, we have invisible diversity, uh, dimensions as well.

So, that's what we've done, and how we get through it is, everyone in DC knows, and I hammer it to my team, I've actually had to, and this may be controversial, separate Employees who could not embrace that. That is our culture. That is our mission. I'm not telling you who to vote for, I'm not telling you who to like, I don't even care what you think about these issues, but when you show up as SHRM, and more importantly, outside in your personal life, if you're on the, LinkedIn or wherever you're in or [00:10:00] name the social media and you're trashing that follows our brand as well because you really can't separate it now.

So we're really clear when you come work for SHRM, you've got to be able to walk into the White House, whether it's a Biden White House or Trump White House. ultimately, if you're not there, business won't be not done because SHRM isn't there. So you've got to be there no matter what policy, not politics.

Dr. Rochelle Ford: I so love this, and I think you are just reiterating so many things that Page is ultimately about. One thing, prove it with action. That's one of our core principles, you have to prove it with action.

so we have to create that space. But the other thing that you were saying about, your approach of policy, not politics, I would. What we call corporate character at Page, so how do we become this authentic enterprise?authentic on what our enterprises, our companies, our non profits, et cetera, what we stand for, it goes down to what's our purpose that we're trying to serve?

That's right. What's our purpose? What's our mission? Why are we here? [00:11:00] Right? But then it also goes into what are the things that we value? Yes. And if you're going to be part of our team, you have to believe in these same values. So for sure, it's going to be, you know, policy over, over politics, finding those commonalities.

Let's stay away from divisiveness. But each of our organizations have those same sort of values and they articulate things differently. And so how do we use that as a litmus test on what we're going to talk about?

And what we ain't going to talk about because that's not in our lane.

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: And who's going to work here and who's not going to work here.

So I'm going to tell you, I have a very, sometimes controversial position on culture. Ultimately, what we're talking about, and I think between HR and communications professionals, we help our organizations. We are the We should be facilitators and brokers of culture within our organizations. We should be.

How do you articulate? See, the word culture means a whole bunch, but you know it when you see it. It's just as Potter Stewart said about obscenity and pornography or one of those, it's like, you know, when you see it, we have this notion, or at least I do, and SHRM's research is [00:12:00] supporting it. There are no good or bad cultures, workplace cultures, save for illegal, immoral, unethical.

Let's take those off. Those would be bad. But other than that. There are no bad cultures. You just have to articulate very clearly to people what I call, have cultural clarity. So many of our organizations, and this is where you all as a profession come in. You haven't articulated and given clarity to what your organization believes.

How do things work? And it's the worst thing in the world to recruit someone into an organization because they can technically do the job. I have this many years of experience, I went to this college, da da da da da da. And then when they get there, they're like, Oh my gosh, this is a disaster, there's a total disconnect.

Most of our turnover, our data at SHRM will reveal to you, is because people are not culturally aligned. They didn't understand what they were walking into. And therefore, what we say is, during the interview process, [00:13:00] for example, you know, you ask them, do you meet these criteria? Can you do a job?

Here's the task of the day. But then you also say, here are our cultural values. Here's who we are. And you describe it. It's not a yes or no. Give me an example where one of ours is, and it upsets everyone, is you have to be smart and curious. And so, of course, people are like, oh, that's such a snobby. That's a no.

Who wants to work with a dumb person? Go on, get a grip. Like, no one wants to do that.

Dr. Rochelle Ford: But you can be smart without going to MIT.

That's the point. That's exactly the point. Is that they heard or thought smart meant College degree, many of them from the right school's top of your class and said, no, no, no, I worked for three billionaires, Barry Diller, Sumner Redstone, and now two of them are deceased, Wayne Huizenga, because I was at Blockbuster, guys, there once was a thing, I was the third lawyer at Blockbuster, I still card carry, but anyway, There was one left in Alaska.

One left,

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: but the point is, two of them didn't have college degrees at all. And they were the, some of the most [00:14:00] successful people in the world. Right. And I'm not talking about, I went to Harvard and dropped out to go pursue my business idea. Like didn't go, like it was not going to go that kind of thing.

So what we have to do is we had to articulate to people. What does that mean? Bold purpose. We articulating your culture. If you do nothing else, getting that right, will help your organization in ways that you can't imagine because on the way in people will understand who you are. And who you aren't and they can then decide if there is alignment and we literally will say perfect.

This person could do this job in their sleep, but they're not aligned with our culture. For example, and so going to the civility conversation. So let me just quickly tell you where this come up. 2019 we did some research and for the first time. The word toxicity showed up, but it wasn't in the care areas that we thought.

So we're surveying employees around the world and the word toxicity. I'm prepared to leave my job because of workplace toxicity. We assumed, Dr. Ford, that what they were talking about was race discrimination or [00:15:00] sexual harassment or the things that have led to and been tied, you know, sort of tied to the term toxicity.

For the first time, toxicity was tied to my colleagues and their unwillingness to accept that I believe different things. So political affiliation. worldview, and perspective. And we'd never seen that. It's always the demographic issues of gender, race, national origin, ethnicity that had sort of been tied to toxicity.

And the other area of toxicity that we typically heard, always my manager. I have a bad people manager, and that person creates a toxic workplace for me. Well, for the first time, 2019, now, to be fair, we were going into the 2020 election, we were hearing it's not my manager, and it's not based upon my demographics, it's the person sitting next to me, who is being openly uncivil toward me.

And I'm not going to come here. I'm not going to stay here. If you allow that to continue, because I can do the work and remember 2019, we had [00:16:00] very low unemployment. It like I said, we called it the great tsunami people were turning over resigning and walking out so people had choices. And so we began to do this work and I'm so you're right, we reached out and work with the folks at the dialogue project and others.

We have got to get our workplaces under control. People are incredibly uncivil toward each other in ways that are more than just, it bothered her that I said this, but mean, they hold each other in contempt if they don't agree with them. So we've got to retrain our workforces or otherwise we're going to lose our best people because our best people are not going to work in an environment where it's that hostile.

And again, I'm not talking about just sexual harassment or race, I'm talking about the hostility of showing up to work. Final tidbit. So we did some data collection and it shows that the average person takes 37 minutes. 37 minutes to get back to themselves and get back to full productivity after experiencing an act of incivility in the [00:17:00] workplace.

37 minutes. So you do the math. I always say that, would you want, you're going into having some form of surgery, any kind of surgery, even if it's elective surgery, and your physician has been under attack walking into the room?

No, no, I want you at your best, and we allow our employees to be subjected to countless acts of incivility, and we expect them to perform well and for them to continue to want to work here. It's a really bad idea. So this is a business imperative now. It's not a feel good. civil toward each other, but we've learned that you've got to teach people how to do it.

So two things, be clear about what your culture is and articulate it along with behavior. So it's not enough to say, here are five words. I mean, behaviors like this is what we do tolerate, what we don't tolerate, et cetera. And then you will have a much better workforce and that's going to require you all because HR people, we're not, this is what you do.

You're communicators. You have to help us enable us to do the work that we have to carry out.

Eliot Mizrachi VO: As the conversation turned to inclusion and leadership. [00:18:00] Anne Green, the CEO of G&S Business Communications posed a question that captured the complexity many managers are grappling with today. What happens when the language we've relied on to build understanding between employees and managers disappears along with the DEI work

Anne Green (G&S): I love this conversation for so many reasons. One thing I've thought about a lot is, What is it that interferes between a manager and a managee? Or a leader and a person that they may be leading, where they don't understand each other.

There are barriers, there are breakdowns.So, I was happy in the progress around aspects of DE& I, although I very much agree that the acronym and the lack of specificity has not helped us.

It has been highly hurtful. I think one of the things I was heartened by Is that if you think about things like implicit bias, that's one of the things that may be inter interfering between a manager and a manager understanding each other.

But there's a lot of other things. Styles. Have I given you the [00:19:00] keys to understand me? Am I asking you to perform something for me? Oh, you did something wrong and you haven't performed enough grief for meVersus that younger person maybe just looking at you like, I don't know how to respond.

So, I was excited that part of the conversation around DE& I was actually helping us unlock What are those barriers that makes us better people managers, that unlocks that connection between people? And it's very depressing that now with this rollback of DEI, that some of the language we have around microaggressions, or around bias, or about how do I take a courageous look at myself and really own where I may be at, I think we've taken a great step back there, because that's the hardest thing for people to do, is to look at, I've hurt you, or I have something in myself that's unexamined, or I don't know how to articulate to you.

You know, where I'm coming from, or I don't even recognize that I'm, I'm putting a lens on you, could be anything that is going to interfere with you actually performing. So, it's a big question, but it's one I'm grappling with, we've lost that language and that ground, but what can we do to, to get [00:20:00] back to un, you know, unlocking some of that again?

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: So, I remind everyone, how many of, you know, everyone's talking about the executive orders. To be fair, how many of you actually read the executive orders? Like about half of you. A lot of us talk about it, but, What it really gets to is it says illegal or discriminatory DE&I? So believe it or not, there is no prohibition against DE& I. There is a way to do legal, and I'm not so sure about the E to that point, so I'm going to focus on what we say, which is IND. The inclusion work absolutely can be done, and it can be done legally. the D work can be done, but we have to acknowledge, guys, and I, again, I hope no one is offended by it, but I'll be gone in a few minutes, so it's okay if you are, but

Dr. Rochelle Ford: And you're going to leave me here because I brought you here.

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: My own posse will get me out of here, but no, we have to be willing to look at and take an honest look at some of the not so good parts of the D and I work that we engaged in. We found, [00:21:00] our data is overwhelmingly that oftentimes DE& I created more divide than good. It did more damage than good in the way that it was practiced.

It may have come from a good place. But the reality is, if you vilify any one group, all white men are bad, daddy's bad, kid's bad, unborn, grandson's bad, like, you can't do that. That was a recipe for a disaster. We saw it coming, and vilifying white men and holding them accountable for everything wrong in America was a stupid idea.

They did it, and I told them constantly it was a bad idea. You can do this work, but you can't do it in such a way where you're only focused on groups that are historically underrepresented. If we talk about inclusion, it should be inclusion for all! And we didn't do that. Oftentimes it was inclusion for certain groups only.

Built in that was all sorts of issues of, you know, guilt and shame and all whatever. But that's, people were, that's not cool. And the data is overwhelmingly that it ultimately created in some [00:22:00] instances bad. The other thing, and you are the communicators, is words matter. Words matter. And the way that we describe some of the language that we use.

Anti racist. My gosh, like you thought someone was going to agree to that? Like, yeah, I'm a racist. Like, no one does that. It, it was, it was, whether right or wrong, the words offended people. One that drives me nuts, and Doc may not agree with me on this, I'm sure, but people of color. What the hell does that mean?

Are white people translucent? Clear? I mean, what the hell is that? Do you not have a color? I have on a white shirt today. It's a color I could have put on a blue shirt. Another color. But we just, we choked in our effort. These people made up stuff. We have to be honest. And unfortunately those words got in the way of the work.

Because it began to divide us. You're communicators, and you should be better than that. You should have advised us whether we heard it or not in HR, which is typically where [00:23:00] the diversity of work sits. But we've got to be really, really careful. about how we deliver this message, that it doesn't end up dividing versus unifying.

There's great work to be done on the inclusion side. SHRM is committed to it. for example we just acquired, , from, PwC, it's, I think it's called the C, not, what is it called, CEO Action for Diversity Inclusion. We acquired that from, from PwC and so now that's a business that we're running and we're going to focus very much on legal.

The type that can withstand legal challenge, inclusion, and diversity work. I think you're right, all of those principles are incredibly important. But here's a big shocker, we're as diverse as we've ever been, yet we're as divided as we've ever been. So for all of us who did this diversity work for 30 years and assumed that somehow it was going to bring us together, net net is a big question mark.

We're going to do data, we're going to do a lot of research, we're going to actually understand what works, what doesn't. Do ERGs work? Maybe, maybe not. You [00:24:00] have to be willing to get, to ask yourself the right questions. The law says you just can't do those things. I'm going to have a women's only group and a black only group.

Well I thought we were trying to bring people together. So you bring them to work and then divide them back out? I get the point of needing to be in an environment where you feel safe and you feel like you belong. But two things, you got to comply with the law at the same time. So that's what we're going to do is we're going to help organizations do good inclusion and diversity work.

And once the E is sorted, we'll come back to it. I said this at an event yesterday, it came out of my head from nowhere. I said, you know, I wish growing up if we had the acronym E would have stood for empathy. Cause that is the most important tool. That tool would have helped us to your point, understand the generational difference between, you know, a 50 something year old manager and a 27 year old kid.

And they're not just empathy understanding that single mother and what she has to deal with to get to your office by 8 [00:25:00] 45 every morning when her school says her kid's daycare says you have to drop them off. Can't drop off until eight. 30. That's empathy. But when we started trying to bring this concept of equity, I think it sent everything sideways.

And I'm not an anti equity person because I do believe in healthcare equity issues. I do believe in educational equity. So I want to be clear. I'm talking about equity in the context of the work. Place because there are laws, title vii, there are laws that control how we address these issues at work, but there are legitimate healthcare equity issues, educational equity issues, et cetera.

So I do want to clarify that I'm not anti-equity.

Dr. Rochelle Ford: And and that's one of the things that we found in our study that we released at Davos, looking at the confidence in business.

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: Yes.

Dr. Rochelle Ford: And when we looked at the confidence in business, and this is what. 14 different countries and asking consumers, what would, what are the issues and things that would help elevate, confidence in business?

And we found a lot of commonalities across country, but some of the [00:26:00] biggest differences that we found were among generations. That's right. Gen Z. Yes. Versus boomers. No one ever talks about the Xs. I'm an X. Anybody else an X in the room? Hey, Xers, let's rise up. Rise up, revolution. Um, Xers, yes. There you go.

There we go. Hit me with your best shot. Come on, y'all. You know I'm talking about. Be careful, they'll do it these days. Oh, I know they actually will. Um, okay, I'll find another 80s song. But anyway, um, But what we found is that there was a big generational divide, with the Gen Zs, they were saying, Mental health and they have vocabulary.

They want their their mental health days But they also said that they had higher expectations on issues of equity in the workforce, gender equity, right? They wanted these, they wanted to make sure that these issues were covered.

establishing that culture is, is really, really important and part of what Our job [00:27:00] as a member of the C suite is to kind of help as an advisor, as a strategic advisor having a voice.

how do we really own the seat at that table with all these generations that are in the workforce, establishing the culture, the corporate character, the mission, the purpose, how do we partner

When you have one generation saying one thing, mental health, another generation like, yo, just economic development. Right. Talk to me. What would we do?

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.: Well, you know, listen, I wish I had all of the answers, but the way that I think you has acknowledged that we now have six generations in the workplace.

For the first time ever in our history, most people talk about five, but the alpha generation entered, they born in 2010, it's now 24. So we have 14, 15 year olds who are actually working in our workplaces now. So for the first time, you've got these six generations. And what we do is like any other market research group, understand your audiences.

And understand where there's overlap, understand where there are differences, don't make huge assumptions because there's also the [00:28:00] overlap and overlay of demographic differences. It's amazing. When I say demographic, I should say on the map. Like it's amazing what a millennial in the Midwest, Des Moines, Iowa thinks and how differently they think than a millennial on the coast.

So we're finding that actually, if you break it down, that millennial in the Midwest thinks more like many of you in this room because of just the differences. So it's a very complicated and nuanced area that I think we're very careful not to generalize about. generations. But within your organizations, it goes back to culture.

You're going to really, if you survey your employees really well, you're going to understand the multigenerational differences. I have a guy, a kid who works for me. I call him a kid now because I'm old enough to say it, but he's like 30 years old, but he's like 60 in his mind. Like he was born, both of his parents are military born in the South.

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. He shows up with the suit every day to have to talk him out of the tie. Like really, but that's the way he, so I think [00:29:00] we have to be really careful. That would be the biggest advice. But then you asked me, how can you become, your goal is to be the go to trusted advisor. Of your CEO and more broadly your organization and frankly, hopefully your CHRO,

I see a world where we are operating hand in hand as professionals as you know, you think about HR, we've got our ears and eyes on the pulse of the organization. You've got to help us. Communicate to that. And as much as it is important for you to communicate outwards to your external customers, communicating to your internal customer is almost more important these days.

Because they will go out with the legitimacy. I work at SHRM. I work at Apple. And no matter what they're advertising, this is the real deal. they will immediately undermine so much of your efforts to go to your external customers because they will say, It doesn't match. What they say doesn't match with what they do.

the younger generation, really critical, try to understand what they're saying. I don't feel psychologically safe. Is a [00:30:00] term that we hear a lot well, but I got to do this performance review You do understand it's probably not gonna be comfortable, and I don't know what else to tell you I'm overwhelmed got it, but we're gonna get through this thing I promise you hold my hand and I'm talking through it, but we do have to understand what they're actually saying And then do some translation.

I think it's more like translate. This is what you say. This is what you mean. This is what you want. It's nuanced, but it's why you are experts at what you do. And if you figure this out, you will be absolutely the profession. My HR people will kill me if they hear me saying this, but you become invaluable if you can teach CEOs like me.

Dr. Ford and myself, how to show up, how to communicate and offend the fewest number of people that you can. That's the goal is to do that. Listen, I've really enjoyed this time. Thank you all so much for having me. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you.

Eliot Mizrachi VO: As communicators, face mounting pressures from both inside and outside the organization. The words we choose feel like they've never been more consequential. [00:31:00] What we say and how we say it, and importantly whether it matches what we do, are the signals that shape culture and influence trust.

If we're to take one lesson from DEI and related initiatives being in the political crosshairs lately, it's that the future of corporate communication isn't just about crafting messages. It's about helping organizations articulate their values, set behavioral expectations, and build a culture grounded in empathy and commonality, not just our differences

as a communicator, your power isn't just crafting the perfect statement. It's in helping organizations define who they are and to prove it through action. That's the kind of leadership that will carry us forward through the storm together.

Thanks for listening to The New CCO. I hope you subscribe so that you're kept apprised when we drop new episodes and offer more insights from the front lines of corporate communication.

Eliot Mizrachi VO: I'm Eliot Mizrachi We'll see you next time on The New [00:32:00] CCO.