Value-Based Narrative During Campaigns
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Part of being a leader is being a communicator. If you’re still in the running to become one, then it is important not to fall trap into slips of the tongue and ruin your chances. Expanding the last episode’s discussion, Bill Stierle and Tom take a look at how to stay out of the nuance and go after the throat of the question. Especially in this time of heightened election campaigns, they go deep into value-based narratives over issue-based narratives in discussions. They also talk about moving away from the language of judgment, criticisms, or one-upping a lot of tragic narratives inside the debate. Get into this insightful conversation about finding out what really matters to candidates every time they speak.
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Bill, I’m excited to continue what we talked about last time, which has to do with the difference between a value-based communication and a needs-based.
How do you get your values and your needs to line up? How do you move away from the language of judgment, criticism, blaming or one-upping? There are a lot of tragic narratives inside the debate. There are a lot of struggle with the ability to communicate nuance. Donald Trump keeps his message very clean and clear. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, good or bad. It’s clean and clear, you’re for us or you’re against us. To think about a high-level executive creating an enemies list, which Richard Nixon did. Am I on an enemies list and what does that mean to be on an enemies list? Do we do that in the American government? It was a question that was asked during the Richard Nixon Watergate trial. The guy from the IRS pulled the list out and said, “Here’s the list I was given. I did nothing with this list for a year and a half. It’s been in my vault ever since.” That proves that Richard Nixon did develop an enemies list and that he was trying to use the government to take advantage of his rivals. You can’t do that.
In the beginning of this episode, you made a very good point that Donald Trump is very clear in his messaging and consistent. At the same time, it seems clear that Donald Trump may well have his own enemies lists. After the impeachment verdict was rendered by the Senate, he started swinging next at all these people that he sees as disloyal.
How can you not move him into the comparison to an authoritarian leader to get rid of somebody that testified truthfully against him and how that person is not protected?
I would like to add to that, “Testified truthfully.” That’s it. I don’t know that those against him matters here. It wasn’t even that Alexander Vindman was out to get the President. This guy was committed to integrity and telling the truth as most of the other witnesses like the English woman.
She was an all-star because she’s like, “This is it.” A lot of those people haven’t been fired because they resigned before there’s an opportunity to get fired. If Alexander Vindman would have retired, it would have been interesting to see if he would have fired anyways. That would have been upsetting because how do you fire an ex-ethics attorney? The ship is not saying, “Something is wrong here. We’re sinking over here.”
I feel confident in being able to say that people like Alexander Vindman were telling the truth despite the potential consequences and pressure that might come their way. When you have somebody like the former Chief of Staff General John Kelly, among others coming out and saying, “Alexander Vindman did the right thing. He did what we train our soldiers and our military people to do.”
It’s interesting what has happened in the communication between the politicians even on the debate stage. They were struggling with the same thing called, “How do I be in integrity? How do I tell the truth, but yet, how do I score points?” Whether it’s Alexander Vindman doing and following his integrity and his ethics or somebody on the debate stage following their communication strategies, none of that looks like leadership. That makes it hard.
It’s disappointing to see how everybody is trying to score points, knocked the other guy down and raise themselves up. That’s not what a debate is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a more meaningful and substantive discussion about issues, values, vision and all these things. They’re all competing for a soundbite.
They’re also trying to create an artificial soundbite instead of having it ready to go. That is something problematic too. You’re trying to create a place for a joke and it’s not natural and second nature. You’re maneuvering language around to get there. Even one of the late-night talk shows got into that and saying, “It looks like Michael Bloomberg spent time going to this exit and this exit and now he’s over here.” Literally, they used all of the New York subway and exits of the freeways as directional. He struggled there. He struggled with his jokes and his ability to connect informally. I probably wouldn’t have coached him to make an attempt to do that. I wouldn’t have coached him to, “You did junkie last time. Why don’t you just be friendly to everybody?”
He’s regrettably unprepared and unskilled in the ability to communicate in a way that’s going to provide the level of leadership that’s needed. Be thoughtful with your responses. You and I are very thoughtful with our responses. When we make a mistake, we pull back and then we re-engage. We keep it at a level that still has the frustration, aggravation and the irritation that we normally experience in our bodies when we talk about something that’s opposite of us. Not to the place of overwhelmed, angry, aggravated and irritated. Most of those people on the stage did not have the ability to manage their emotions. Therefore, they started blurting out things and raising their hand instead of going, “This is what stable leadership looks like and it doesn’t look like what everybody’s doing.” Have your sentence ready. Everybody else is looking and going like, “How did they do that?” They picked what the primary thing that was not happening and spoke directly to it. Stable leadership is not happening on this stage.
It’s that amazing how Michael Bloomberg seemed to be staying above the fray, taking the high road with his ad campaign and not engaging in the bite in the first few primary contests. He’s been sucked into the debate being so unprepared. Doesn’t that make him seem a bit more elitist than he already was? You have all this time and money. You look one way in all these commercials and this high road up here. You get into the proportionality of your speaking unprepared.
It’s professional. He is the Cincinnati Bengals who only won a couple of games doing their marketing ad campaign for 2019 at the beginning of the campaign, “Here’s what we have. We have Angelo and Deltha here. We have this player here.” As soon as they hit the field the first time, the cooperation is not there. The collaborations, the interface between the team, and the defense is not ready. Everything is not ready. This is the way he’s showing up. He was a first-year college student in the NFL who walked on the stage and got his butt beat twice by other seasoned people. You’ve got to be ready for somebody that is coming at us in these different levels.
Also realizing that we’ve got to have a better leadership communication than the one that they’re bringing. The major reason why Bernie Sanders is in the position because he is matching his campaign. He’s on the stage performance. The way he is in a rally and the way his ad campaigns are going are all in alignment. They’re congruent. The rub on him is you’ve been talking about this stuff for many years and, as Joe Biden would say, “You haven’t gotten anything done.” His best sentence back, “I’m glad you mentioned that. I’m glad you mentioned that the greater vision for America has not been completed yet. On your watch Joe Biden, here’s how many Americans died because you guys didn’t get healthcare done. I’m just saying I want to get healthcare done. It doesn’t mean that you and Barack Obama didn’t take a step to do your best effort with the fierce opposition that you had, but I’ve got 100,000 people.
I’ve got two million people behind me. I’ve got four million people behind me that are interested in caring for every single American, not what half of the people on this stage is saying, ‘We’re still only going to carry for the ones that can afford it.’ Is that the way we want to go forward, Joe Biden? Is that the way we want to go forward, Michael Bloomberg? Pete Buttigieg, you don’t think the numbers are there? Why don’t you just do the math? Your math is not adding up because you’re trying to keep the status quo in place and making this an add-on. This is not an add-on. This is the foundation of who we are as people. I’m not even running for president, but I’m starting to sound pretty good.”
A debate is supposed to be a more meaningful, substantive discussion about issues, values, and vision.
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That was a good response that Bernie Sanders certainly could use. What’s ironic about that is the Barack Obama administration, which Joe Biden was an integral part of, especially I believe in the passage of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, is they are largely credited with eliminating pre-existing conditions with getting twenty million more people healthcare than had it. There are still at least another 20 or 30 million people in this country that still don’t have it. As you’re responding as if you’re Bernie Sanders, you just made it sound like what they did wasn’t very good and this is what needs to happen for America. That was a pretty brilliant reframing of it.
It’s framing an advocacy. I channeled my internal progressive. What is an internal progressive? Somebody that sees a vision of something that is a best practice in some countries. Their best practice is to act in this way, to care for every single person inside their country. No matter who they are, how they got there, somehow they want to be in our country and they want to be a citizen of ours, let them be a citizen. Here are some of the things that you get for being the citizen and picking our tomatoes and our strawberries for their first generation. Your kids get a better shot at it because they get a chance to get an education and we get a talented person that appreciates being there and honoring the sacrifice their parents made as an immigrant. That is where it needs to go. You’ve got to appreciate the person that brought you here and not saying, “I’m glad I’m on the top of the hill.” It’s because we were smart, not because we got support as if that’s not what Donald Trump got from his dad and that he took advantages that were all available to him. There were all these advantages that the city and the state gave to Donald Trump Sr.
The interesting thing with this healthcare discussion is back when Barack Obama was President early on in his first term and they were looking at getting healthcare done. They wanted a public option too, but they couldn’t get it passed through Congress. It’s interesting to see where the goalposts have moved on the Republican side of things because they didn’t want the Affordable Care Act to pass at all. Now that it happened and they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act a few times and that hasn’t worked.
Almost over a couple of hundred times, they’ve tried to repeal it.
If you look at all the polls, the American public is in favor of healthcare in a big way. They’re arguing not a popular argument here. Now that the Affordable Care Act exists and we’re talking about either a public option or doing Medicare for all, something completely different. You’ve got the Republicans trying to keep that from happening, saying, “What’s wrong with the system we got?” They no longer have a lot of support for repealing the Affordable Care Act. They’re trying to keep it from getting to this universal healthcare thing. There is a lot more support in the country and in Congress, “Let’s leave the Affordable Care Act alone. Maybe improve or fix what’s wrong with it in a few different ways, rather than completely replace it with something new.” There are a lot of people thinking, “It didn’t go far enough. We need to provide healthcare to everybody, whatever that takes and it may be more affordable if you do universal healthcare.”
The money is available to everybody to have healthcare. The impact on the insurance companies in their new roles, they’ll have to change the roles. The policies will need to be rewritten. The identities will need to be changed. How they’re going to stay in the profit space will change. We need everybody on board. The fantasy that government takeover means you’re going to hire all government employees. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is all the people from those different insurances that have those expertise will get rehired and in a position of strength. Maybe not all of the top executives that had been siphoning off all the money will get rehired. They’re going to have the worst part of it. If you’re the type-A executive in whatever organization and you’re making $500,000 a year, you don’t have a job. Those guys are going to lose their jobs. The thing is they still have a business mindset and they can have a fine life and a fine career at any other major company. The talent will move around with new problems.
The idea of for-profit medical industry or insurance industry is part of the problem here. That was very interesting if you’re Bernie Sanders trying to come back at Joe Biden and some of the other moderates. Let’s talk about some other value-based campaign versus needs-based and some tragic language. Isn’t Elizabeth Warren struggling here?
I’m glad you brought her up because that was the next person I was thinking of talking about. One of the biggest challenges that Elizabeth Warren faces is that she’s stuck in a narrative called, “I have a policy for that,” or “I have a plan for that.” Whether a person has a plan for something or not, doesn’t have a plan for something, the problem with the plan is it’s a nuanced implementation or an execution of a vision. Her vision needs to be spoken about, not her plan and that she has one. In order for somebody to follow a policy, they’ve got to engage inspiration before they follow a policy. Let me show you how that works energetically. I want to be inspired by the work that I do.
Let’s imagine that I want to go into police work. I want to be a police person. I like the rules. I like law and order. I want to protect people. I’d like to serve people. I’d like to stand for the rule of law and I don’t like it when people make mistakes and people get hurt by that. I want to go into law enforcement. The value is service. The need is protection. It’s no mistake that many police departments have to protect and serve. There is a protection piece and then there’s a serve piece. It doesn’t say that my job is to catch criminals breaking the rule or people speeding. That’s not what it says on the side of their car. It says, “To protect,” which looks like if somebody is speeding, then I need to do something about it. “To serve,” if I see somebody that’s hurt or needs help, I’m going to pull over, turn my lights on the car so that I could serve the community or the public. Notice the value “protect and serve” has got to come to the front. The policy that the police department follows has got to be in alignment with that need or that value.
Arresting people that are breaking the law is the plan for how you protect and serve the rest or the tactics for how you do it. Tactics don’t get people excited to vote for you.
They do not. This is why the discussion regarding nuance can’t be had on a debate stage. A need space narrative would look great. It might sound like this from Elizabeth Warren’s standpoint, “Just like Senator Bernie Sanders, we need to care for each individual here on the United States. No matter what you hear from the other side, there is enough money for this thing. This thing can be done. We are a caring nation that cares for the citizens and the people that want to be citizens here in the United States. This is what care looks like and Senator Bernie Sanders and I stand in a similar position to get that done.” Everyone else on the field is out. They’re looking on the rearview mirror quickly like, “How did the door get open and I get shoved out? I’m watching the image of my face leave in the mirror.” What it just did was we’re coalescing around caring for Americans.
“Everybody else who doesn’t agree with us must not care for Americans,” is the implication.
They don’t care enough to do what Bernie Sanders says. Fight the big drug companies, that’s not a vision. Take on the billionaires, that’s not as much of the vision. Fairness is. If this person is paying 25% in taxes, then this other person is paying 25% in taxes. If this person is paying 13% in taxes, then this rich person is paying 13% in taxes. That’s what fairness looks like. That’s why a vote for me will engage fairness. I didn’t say I’m going to take a rich person out into woodshed and take all their money. I said 13% or 25% of it. It’s the same as the person that’s slugging it out in McDonald’s. If you’re working at a fast-food restaurant, you’re paying this much in taxes. Are you going to stay home and not vote for fairness? Are you going to vote for fairness? If you vote for fairness, come out and vote for fairness. If you would like more fairness to take place, you may want to consider me and Senator Elizabeth Warren. If you’d like less fairness, you might want to vote for some of the other candidates.
Their heads would spin if that happened on the debate stage.
Use a needs-based narrative if you want your moment.
How do these candidates who have achieved and accomplish so much in their lives have such a lack of awareness of this?
They’ve been rewarded for hard work. They’ve been rewarded for chutzpah. They’ve been rewarded for persistence. There’s one thing that you’ve got to give to Donald Trump. He is persistent and diligent. He will move the cup on you. As soon as he puts the ball under the cup, he moves the cup and says, “The ball is under this cup.” He’s very good at moving the ball.
You have to respect somebody like Michael Bloomberg for having run one of the largest cities in the world that’s economically, culturally and ethnically diverse. It’s not easy running New York City, especially in a post 9/11 era with a hyper need for safety, security and all the things that were taking place.
It is if you set a clear vision for each department. Do you see how that landed with a thump? You said, “Bill, you’ve got to give them something.” You go to the police department and say, “What are your recommendations or what are your frontline people thinking that they need to do to reduce crime here to 30%?” They bring up suggestions to say, “Let’s pick this one. Let’s try this one out.” That’s what happens to be throughout the frisk and they said, “That’s what the recommendation is. What we’ve got to do is increase our presence and the seriousness of our presence.” I think that those certain populations weren’t trusting the police department. One way to get them to trust is to observe other people getting arrested or there’s some action to send a greater narrative. The police in this area are active. All of a sudden, I am giving the speech that Michael Bloomberg should have given when he was first asked the question.
He talks about the situation, the context, the need of the time. You’re talking about much more than just the tactic.
I’ll be Michael Bloomberg. “We needed to decrease crime anywhere between 30% to 50% in some of these areas. We went to our leadership. We talked it over with leadership and what good leaders do is they listen to the front line and they take things. One of the recommendations that came up as a part of our team, we made the decision to take this tactic. Regrettably, we did not move off that tactic overtime into something that was more positive. Some officers, not to say there’s anything wrong with those officers were still following a policy that we needed to move off sooner. Sometimes leadership is slow to make changes, just like what we’re facing at the federal level. Sometimes leadership is slow to make changes and that’s why you should vote for me for president. We can move off of changes and make changes much quicker than needed to take place at the stop and frisk. At the bigger level, we need to make bigger changes to take place. As a leader, that’s something that lesson taught me.”
You’ve shown experience, lessons learned, flexibility and improvement.
If I want to pound on Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, I can then pick that thread up for Michael Bloomberg and they should start working like a team up there. “You’re right, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we do need to learn. One of the things that we’ve learned about this administration and President Donald Trump is that he has fired and let go of skilled and seasoned professionals, that have had years of experience without even consulting anybody else but himself and his given few people. He is so isolated with his decision-making that he does not know how to ask for what the best thing is at the front line that needs to take place and use that as an advantage. No, he wants to be known as the decision-maker and that’s why we’re in the trouble that we’re in. Anybody on this stage, including myself, would be a better fit than he in the office. Cooperation, collaboration, leadership, decision-making, respect and making sure people are being heard. Come on, Elizabeth Warren. Get on it. Use that degree. Come on, Michael Bloomberg. Use your money and wisdom. Come on, Bernie Sanders. Adjust your narrative just 5% and you’re on this. Come on, Pete Buttigieg. Get some better advisors.”
Whoever gets his nomination, sure better practice and get some skills for that general election and those debates because they could so easily mop before with Donald Trump. Make it look like he shows his true colors in reality because he’s so easy. He’s like a moth to a flame. It’s not that hard to put himself in a corner.
He walks the plank and people let him come back and, “He pushed me off into the sharks. Let me swim out of the sharks. I just made it. I’m now in the little dinghy out here with no food and water.”
It’s the value-based narrative and the needs-based narrative that will lead you there. You have to have enough presence of mind to think about it in that way and to identify the values and the needs and to talk about.
This is one of the difficulties because black and white thinking versus nuanced thinking for creating a definitive narrative based on a value or based on a need that can create a lot of inspiration about the policies that you want to take to move forward. We’ve been at this for a little while and I think the next time that we get together, Tom, we talk about framing, what the nation will look like as President Donald Trump leaves the office. We talk about the framing of what America is going to look like. Paint picture if he stays. If he stays, one of the things that Americans are going to start experiencing is these things are going to happen next.
Be a little bit of the predictor of it. The reason why you want to be the predictor of what the next four years of Donald Trump’s going to look like is because if you do not win, it gives you the opportunity to run again because you told everybody what was coming and then all of a sudden it showed up. “I told you that was coming, you didn’t elect me. You may want to elect me this time. Here are the five things I said that was going to take place. Here’s what happened in the judge. Here’s what happened in the business world. Here’s what happened in healthcare.” You may want to get out. I think Pete Buttigieg could do probably the better job of that because here’s what’s going to happen.
He probably could get a hold of that a little bit better because some of the experienced people are just trying to hold the system together mentally because of their own belief structures. Mayor Pete Buttigieg thinking has a little bit more nuanced that a little bit more flexibility to start painting the picture. “If you don’t elect me, if you elect one of these people here, here are some things that you can think about them.” I probably wouldn’t go there, but I would start painting the picture about Donald Trump.
I like that idea, to set the vision of what it will look like when he leaves office and what it will look like if he doesn’t. You set yourself up for success, either way, if you would do that as a candidate.
We’ve got to set ourselves up for success. Tom, I’m looking forward to the next one.
Thanks, Bill.
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