This podcast is all about helping you to find Ways to Change the Workplace. We spend more time of our waking day at work than with loved ones, my mission is to make your workplace a good place to be! Sometimes I speak to amazing thought leaders, sometimes the podcasts will be solo episodes. I am Prina Shah, I am a Global Coach, Consultant, Trainer and Speaker with 20+ years of experience in developing Executives, Leaders and Teams. My specialty is in developing your people and working with you to optimise your organisational cultures. Thank you for tuning in! Prina (can't wait to share great things with you) Shah
5. How to recover your internal culture after a workplace scandal with Elaine Bennett and Prina Shah
•Prina Shah•Episode 5
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How can you recover your internal culture and external brand after a workplace scandal?
How can you communicate with impact after losing trust of your people?
How can you find ways to change the workplace culture after bad press?
About today’s episode:
Today I chat with Elaine Bennett all the way in the U.S, in Cape Cod. Elaine is a Strategic Messaging Consultant with years of experience in supporting leaders to communicate the right way.
I speak with Elaine about: How to recover your culture after a workplace scandal.
Elaine talks about how she worked at Solomon Brothers during the midst of a fraud scandal.
How the new interim CEO, Warren Buffett, turned the internal culture and external brand around.
The essence of connecting with people through the framework of communication which Elaine provides.
Elaine’s practical tips and takeaways he has in relation to the above
And listen in to Elaine’s answer to my question: if you had a magic wand, what is one way you would change the workplace?
About today’s guest: Elaine is a strategic messaging consultant, advising clients from Fortune 50 CEOs to entrepreneurs on their messaging. She also creates and delivers trainings on how to improve the writing of everything from internal communications to speeches. Her 2019 TEDx Talk tackles the topic of how language can change the world. She began her career on Wall Street 25+ years ago, as speechwriter for the CEO of Salomon Brothers. When scandal forced the executive to resign, Warren Buffett stepped in as Interim CEO—and Elaine’s newest client. Mr. Buffett offered Elaine one of his highest compliments: "You have a terrific ear and you turn straight thinking into straight writing.”
If you are seeking professional advice or would like to change your company culture through training, consulting, speaking and coaching, get in touch,email me.
Prina (Helping you find GREAT ways to change your workplace) Shah
SPEAKER_01
Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change Your Workplace with myself Prina Shah, where we uncover today how you can find ways to optimize your organizational culture. Elaine is a strategic messaging consultant. Elaine, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your story, what exactly you do, and how you got to where you are today?
SPEAKER_00
Oh sure. Hi Prina.
unknown
Hello.
SPEAKER_00
I am uh I'm a writer and I've been putting words in people's mouths for about 30 years. So I started out as a uh a speech writer for the CEO of a major financial services firm in New York, and um and then I then I had the good fortune to uh work with a gentleman whose name you will know. I won't say it yet, but um, and then I've been I've been out on my own since then pretty much. And I love I love helping people to make their ideas more tangible, to to to take the you know the idea, oh, we want to talk about how important education is. I'm like, okay, great, what's the second sentence? So so I help people to flesh out their ideas, but most most importantly, and you know this because we've worked together, I I stress that people should ground their ideas in their actual experience. If you are giving a talk or writing uh a piece for that you want to communicate to your people, if they have to stop and think, wait a minute, she just said we're gonna have to do some right sizing. What does that mean? Right sizing? Yeah, if you have to think and translate the words, you're you're gonna lose the person, you're gonna you're gonna not trust the speaker, right? Tell me what you need to tell me in words that are actual English words that make sense. We have to lay off some people. Yeah, I it I take no pleasure in saying this, but you know, the business conditions are such, and you know, we need to keep the company strong. Just just say it. Don't don't euphemise, don't use use use euphemisms. Um, and don't turn nouns into verbs like I just did with euphemise. That's don't do that.
SPEAKER_01
What to do and what not to do. Elaine, you make a really good point because you know, within the workplace, there's a lot of um fashionable lingo, let's say, going around every now and then, you know, turn the needle, that's fluid, or wanky words, let's just call them, whatever. Um, I remember one of my teams used to play business BS bingo as well. So someone said something, you can pick it up on your bingo chart and then ding. I love that. It's the best game, but not the best thing for a leader who's trying to actually relay an important message.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, the thing about jargon, I just want to go back to that. Um, I think people fall into it because they think they should, right? And this other leader I admire says XYZ, so I've got to say XYZ too. Yeah. But trust in yourself, trust in your abilities. You, you know, you didn't get to this leadership position by accident. You showed leadership qualities and they put you in it. So, so trust in yourself and don't be a lemming, uh a language lemming. Don't don't follow the crowd just because somebody else uses a word. Yeah. So, and that also, you know, people don't want to be vulnerable. People, I mean, who does, right? I'm I'm but but I'm not talking about exposing your deepest secrets. You're not writing a memoir, you're writing a speech. And and so you don't have to, you know, my mother took my teddy bear away when I was three, and I've been sad ever since. You don't have to do that, but but do connect with your audience in a real way, let them know that the um the issue you're talking about is is one that has touched you. Key to sales or conversations or relationships is know like and trust. But trust. Yeah, that's the hard part. That's the hard part. And but if you are if you are knowable and likable, you will be trustable.
SPEAKER_01
Elaine, you have some fascinating experience where you were working somewhere and something happened and then someone came in.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01
I don't want to steal your thunder. So over to you. If you could expand on that workplace example specifically.
SPEAKER_00
So my very first job as a speechwriter, I started at the top. I was the speechwriter for the CEO of Solomon Brothers in New York. And Solomon was a major financial services firm. And we had a uh a gentleman who was our major shareholder. And so in the corporate communications department, we had a whole shelf of his annual reports from his company. And he was he was known as a pretty good business writer, and I was a business writer, so I wanted to read his stuff. So whenever I had a minute, I would take an annual report down and read it. Well, fast forward a couple of years, and somebody in the organization did something they shouldn't ought to have done, and the Securities and Exchange Commission said, uh, we're gonna shut you down. And our largest shareholders said, Hold on, hold on, I will come in and I will be the interim CEO and I will get this ship straight. Because he had and still has a reputation as an a man with incredible integrity. The Securities and Exchange Commission said, sure, go ahead, be this, be the CEO. And so I they had a big press conference to announce him, and I was sitting in the back taking notes, and then somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, You got to go upstairs and write something. So I went up to my office, and I was supposed to write something, a letter to our clients that was going to go out under this new CEO's signature. Yeah. And I didn't know who was going to be reviewing it because everybody pretty much above my boss had been fired. And so, and this was pre-email, that's how old I am. Uh, so I wrote my name at the top of the paper and I I typed my name at the top of the paper and my office phone number. And the next day the phone rings, and this boy says, Elaine. I said, Yes. He said, This is Warren Buffett. Did you write this thing? Wow. And I said, Yes, yes, sir, I did. And he said, Well, it sounds like I wrote it. And I said, Well, sir, that's my job. And so that was the beginning of my working relationship with Warren Buffett, who had been our largest shareholder. And it was just, you know, the flower that blooms in a bed of manure, right? Because it was such a hard time at the company. But there I was working with a man whose I'd always wanted to work with, but you know, no offense to Omaha, I never really wanted to move there. So he came to me and it was it was great. And I actually have that's a framed handwritten note from him. No, you can't read it. Um, but um, he says, uh, you have a terrific year and you turn straight thinking into straight writing.
SPEAKER_01
Come on. So Elaine, oh my gosh, so you are in the middle of this scandal which is happening. Media are no doubt all over you. So, from an external perspective, you are just getting such bad press, you know, working with Solomon Brothers. Uh, Warren's come in to act as a CEO or take over for however long. So there's external stuff happening internally as well, it must have been quite the challenge, and so much must have hit the fan. So, from an internal culture perspective, I can imagine that combs would have been even more critical than ever before. Yeah, how did you from that internal perspective, how on earth do you get the ship back into order?
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, it was it was a really difficult time. And actually, I um whenever I encounter um video or news about that time, I kind of have a little post-traumatic stress flashback. Um and um yeah, it was, you know, I did not deal with the press. Thank God I am not a press relations person, but my colleagues who were just amazed me. I mean, I remember there was one day when the press knew that we were going to be releasing some news at six o'clock. Yeah. And they kept calling to see if they could get it out of us before six o'clock. And my colleague was just sitting in the middle of the bullpen with her feet up on the desk, taking phone calls. Hey, Jim, how are you doing? How are the kids? How I was uh it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. So yeah, well, Warren came in and very famously brought a uh two-page hand typed uh list of the behaviors that he expected.
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
SPEAKER_00
Um, you know, stuff like if you if you make a business mistake, you make a business mistake. But if you if you do anything to detract from Solomon's reputation, you're out. And and that did happen. A junior trader on the floor put a couple too many zeros in an order. And um, you know, it was it was cost the company money, but Warren was like, absolutely, don't worry about it. That sort of thing happens, but then you know, another another group of people had a had an off-site party that uh became legend in the company and they were out.
SPEAKER_01
Wow. So when things hit the fan and uh Warren came in, he came in. So from that internal perspective, he clearly communicated his expectations absolutely in the form of that two-pager, so code of conduct or a charter or whatever you want to call it. But then the really important part is that he held people to account and it wasn't hidden. Yep, everyone knew this is not expected.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, and he even put his his Omaha office number at the bottom of the two pages and said, if you see anything or you are concerned about anything, call me up directly.
SPEAKER_01
Approachability is a really important thing as well. And for someone at that level as well to open his doors to the whole organization, yeah, is very generous.
SPEAKER_00
That is very generous, and but it but it you needed some, we needed something like that. It was the opposite. I mean, the the this the CEO who had left was famously, you know, sort of inapproachable and you know, angry. And he told he told the press somebody that uh his traitors should wake up every morning ready to bite the ass off a bear. So that was the kind of guy he was. Warren is the exact opposite in in many, many ways. And and really, you know, I mean, I don't remember how many people Solomon this the organization had at that time. It's you know, but it was it was five figures for sure. And and for everybody to get that to get that memo, uh it was very clear.
SPEAKER_01
Far out. And then I guess eventually over time things petered down, and then you you got to a stage of stability and some form of normality again.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, we did a we, you know, hired a law firm to do a an internal review of what had happened. And the brilliant thing that Warren did was when the review was done, it was about six months, and when the review was done, he did not hold a press conference. He took out Solomon took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post and printed the report in full.
SPEAKER_01
This is where we're talking about honesty.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, okay, yeah, and that way nobody could spin it. Yeah, nobody, nobody in the press could spin it. It was right out there for everybody to see.
SPEAKER_01
Courageous.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, yes, yes, well, exactly. Um, I had uh I'd been hired for a job around 2001, I guess it was, and um I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they'd even tell me what it was. And it turned out that, well, the the person who hired me said that their client was having a little bit of a reputation problem. And they thought that because I'd been through the Solomon thing and with Warren that maybe I could help them write an annual report that would deal with this reputation problem. And then it turned out that the client was Enron.
SPEAKER_01
I thought you were going there.
SPEAKER_00
Ooh. And so I they said, give us some three different concepts for an annual report. And I I did, and I said, none of this is gonna work if you are not completely transparent and upfront about everything right now in this annual report. And about a week later, I got an email that said, Thank you very much. We won't be needing your services.
SPEAKER_01
Hey, you Akias?
SPEAKER_00
Best job I've ever been fired from.
SPEAKER_01
Wow, okay, and we know all about the environment story. And for people who don't, I will put it into the show notes as well. Fascinating. So we're really talking about uh communicating in a crisis situation, in the worst situation possible, Elaine. Yes, and so many organizations have cases of fraud or you know breaks of code of conduct or whatever, which hits the media, and the media love a good juicy story, but there is a counter communication response that you can have to it. And from everything that I've heard from you, it's about honesty, it's about being occasionally vulnerable. And I love the fact that you say occasionally vulnerable, you don't have to share your whole life, but the aspects of your life that you relate to whatever situation it is, to build that trust and connection in a genuine way, yeah. Um, and then being clear about your expectations in the form of a charter or code of conduct, whatever you want to call it, holding people accountable, and then being approachable as that leader at the top who's dealing with whatever's happening as well.
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
SPEAKER_01
Um my gosh, and your one page advert of the rapport. So it's very tiny type, but in a magnifying glass, but transparency again, we're talking about honesty.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, the vulnerability that the sharing your life, it doesn't all have to be horrible stories. It could just be, you know, when I was on vacation in in Italy last summer and I was riding a bike up the hill, and I thought how how difficult it is to do, but I was really satisfied that I did it. You know, it could be something like that.
SPEAKER_01
Elaine, this has been brilliant. I have one final question for you. Yes. If I was to give you a magic wand, what is one way that you would change the way of the workplace?
SPEAKER_00
How would I change the workplace? I would make it more relationship-based and more compassionate. Workplaces really have to be more flexible. Many of them learn to be more flexible. So understanding the needs of your people, understanding the stresses that they are under, that not all of them have to do with you. You know, I mean, if it's not COVID, it's, you know, racism in the society, um, microaggressions and and and racism in your organization, you know, it's it's gender disparities and all there's a whole bunch of stuff. Some of it you can control as a leader, yeah. Some of it you can't, but what, but but you have a responsibility to do what to do what you can and let the people know that you have their back, which is why you need the good relationships and that trust and that compassion, because without the relationships, you don't really know what's happening beneath the iceberg.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly. Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Elaine. I don't think this is the only time we're going to speak until the next time, I hope.
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely. I love talking to you, Prina. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01
Always a pleasure. Bye-bye, Elaine. Thank you. And that's how to address a corporate scandal. Now, Elaine does more than that, she also works with individuals, and I asked her about exactly that. So, Elaine, I know what you do in terms of the kind of services that you offer. They are really fascinating. Could you please explain? And um, yeah, you go for it.
SPEAKER_00
Well, one of my favorite things is we're starting again soon, is um is called the TEDx Starter Kit. And and that's a program that you've been through. Yeah, and that's how we met. Um, and so as you know, we start with people and help them flesh out their ideas. And we is me, speechwriter, and my business partner Marie in Contrera, who is an expert at developing content and also at getting people booked. She has for her private clients, she has a success rate of a hundred percent. So we take them from getting their idea crystallized and unique all the way to five weeks later. It's a five-week program now, um, to having a video or the or the outline of a video, the content of a video that they can send to bookers of TEDx events to to do that. And then we have a follow-on program called TED Excellence, where you can take another nine weeks with us and end up with a with a first draft of a full TEDx talk. So that's a lot more hands-on and um really interesting. We're going to be starting that uh again on February 28th.
SPEAKER_01
How good was that episode? If you also stand against crappy workplace cultures, lousy leaders, and toxic teams, you need to join the Ways to Change Your Workplace Facebook group, which is linked in the show notes. I'll meet you at the next episode. Ciao for now.
