Navigating Employee Stakeholder Activism Inside and Outside the Workplace — with Amy Showalter

Pam Harper (00:00): Employee stakeholder activism is continuing to rise, and CEOs are under pressure to engage in the conversation. What's the best way to navigate these issues inside and outside the workplace? Our guest today is an expert in grassroots and political action committee influence, and we'll share her views on this issue. Join us for episode 205 of Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper®.

Chris Curran (00:35): This episode is brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated, enabling successful leaders and companies to accelerate to their next level of success. On the web at businessadvance.com. And now, here's Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper (00:52): Thanks Chris. I'm Pam Harper, Founding Partner and CEO of Business Advancement Incorporated, and sitting right across from me, as always, is my business partner and husband, Scott Harper. Hi, Scott.

Scott Harper (01:05): Hi there, Pam. It's always great to join you for another episode of Growth Igniters®️ Radio, and as always, our purpose is to spark new insights, inspiration, and immediately useful ideas to help visionary leaders accelerate themselves, and their companies of course, to their next level of game-changing innovation, transformation and growth.

Scott Harper (01:26): Pam, we love to follow trends, and one of the ones that's already big and getting really bigger these days is employee stakeholder activism. Employees in a wide range of companies and industries are increasingly voicing their expectations for CEOs and boards to openly support a variety of environmental, social and governance issues.

Pam Harper (01:48): That's right. As we're seeing in the media and in our own conversations with top business leaders, this can present a special challenge. People are often quite passionate about their views in every direction, and there are all kinds of implications for talent acquisition, retention, company reputation, customer retention, and much, much more, that has both a top and bottom line impact.

Scott Harper (02:15): This puts CEOs and top leaders in a real pickle. What do they do? Engage in the conversation, shut it down, or do something else? We've seen it go in all directions.

Pam Harper (02:26): That's right. That's why we're speaking today with Amy Showalter, a grassroots and political action committee influence expert who founded The Showalter Group to help associations and corporations increase their grassroots and pack effectiveness. As an expert in political influence, Amy has galvanized thousands of grassroot evangelists and staff for her clients who want to advance their cause politically.

Pam Harper (02:52): Amy is currently a columnist for Bloomberg Government and Lobbyblog.com. Over 500 media outlets have featured her insights. This includes The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Politico, CNNmoney.com, Foxnews.com and CNBC.com, among many. She's also the author of the book, The Underdog Edge: How Everyday People Change the Minds Of the Powerful and Live To Tell About It. I love that. You can read much more about Amy's background by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 205, and scroll down to her bio.

Pam Harper (03:31): Amy, welcome to Growth Igniters Radio.

Amy Showalter (03:34): Thanks, Scott and Pam, for having me today, I look forward to our conversation.

Pam Harper (03:38): I'll tell you, it is so timely. We're just seeing so much. Every single day it seems like there's an issue that relates to this topic of stakeholder activism. Before we really get into it, I thought it would be interesting for our listeners to hear just a little bit about what do you especially enjoy about your work? It can be a challenge.

Amy Showalter (04:01): Yes, it is a challenge. What I really enjoy about it is the opportunity to show people how you can engage in a civil, productive way and how to make a difference in that process, not just to be heard, but to persuade elected officials at all levels, local, state, federal, to make a difference, because there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. That's what I like to study. Yeah, I like to find out who does it.

Pam Harper (04:27): How have you changed your approach as the political environment has changed? It wasn't always like this.

Amy Showalter (04:33): Correct; it wasn't. When I started in this field, I worked at Nationwide Insurance. They had something called a civic action program, and that program's goals were to get employees involved in a nonpartisan way on issues that affected the company. It was to do in a courteous, kind way and to be very judicious about that. We didn't pick every issue and so forth, but it was really based on things that affected the company and the employee, I mean, affected how they do their jobs. It had that kind of a focus. It was extremely nonpartisan. We made sure to have candidates from all stripes come and visit with employees and help candidate fairs and so forth. That was very revolutionary at the time, when that was started.

Amy Showalter (05:17): Then what's happened though, as it's changed, and I've changed, is that different social issues have encroached, and the speed of communications has increased. The pressure from external forces has really made organizations say, "Gosh, do we need to look at these other things or not?" What's really changed is that my practice used to be about “these are the issues that affect the company and this why you need to get involved.” Now while I would say 95% of corporate programs still do that, we're seeing this extracurricular engagement happening, which can be treacherous if you don't do it correctly.

Scott Harper (05:56): From your perspective as an expert in influencing in politics, what are the dynamics that are driving this growing trend of employees' and stakeholders' interest in making their opinions known about social issues and what CEOs and boards and companies should be doing about it? What's the role of the CEO in addressing this?

Amy Showalter (06:22): Yes. Well, many factors leading to this, there are a lot of things that have led to it. I will say, if we go back a little bit though, we can find that it's really not new. I mean, corporate engagement and issues, it's not new. If you look in 1776, a third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were business owners -- planters and business owners. The ending of apartheid in the eighties, that was led by over 200 US businesses that said "we've got to end apartheid in South Africa." Then before that, even higher education, the movement towards public school education for all was business leaders' advocacy making that happen. It's always been with us to a degree, but on very huge issues and on issues that seem to be for the greater good for everyone.

Amy Showalter (07:08): What we're seeing now is a bifurcation of the issue. You're always going to make someone happy or someone upset by what you do, and we're seeing the speed. What I see the is just the speed of the feedback, the kitchen table conversations are now on social media. We have the speed of this feedback, which puts pressure on elected officials, elected officials and CEOs of course.

Amy Showalter (07:33): What's tricky about it is that when we look at those conversations, you have to be really sure who is conversing on this. We know that Twitter is 80% men and it's 80% liberal men, and only 20% of the population uses it. You've got this small group of people that use it, plus they are of this particular persuasion. That tells me a lot there, in terms of who is saying these things, so is it representative or not?

Amy Showalter (08:01): Now, that's just one venue for those conversations. There's lots of others that are more authentic and probably more worth paying attention to, but I see the speed happening and I also see a misapplication. How we've gotten to this point is really a misapplication of the data regarding CEO and corporate engagement in these issues. We see a lot of research asking people, "Do you want your CEO to take a stand on social issue?" and people say, "Oh, absolutely," 65% or something say that. However, if you ask the question properly, which is people make decisions, they have to contrast different options, so if you ask the question as, "Do you want your CEO to be active on social issues, even if they disagree with your personal values?" you're going to get a different answer. If you say, "Would you prefer your CEO and your corporation be active in social issues at the expense of customer growth and customer satisfaction?" that's a different answer. We tend to take this social desirability bias answer and apply that in a blanket approach to why people should be engaged or not.

Pam Harper (09:08): One of the things that of course exists but we haven’t talked about is that CEOs have their own opinions about these issues as well, and perhaps some want to talk about issues themselves more than others. What do you think?

Amy Showalter (09:23): Oh, definitely. I mean, they definitely have opinions. We're in the age of authenticity and we're in the age of making yourself heard and everyone's voices are equal. I don't agree with that. You wouldn't take surgery advice from me or sports advice or things of that nature, and so we have to realize that. CEOs are no different, they're human, and so they want to put their voice out there on a particular issue. I can understand that, from a human level, but they have a lot of responsibility, and with a lot of responsibility and privilege comes some benefits and consequences when you do that so you have to weigh it out.

Pam Harper (10:00): Well, it's complex. Adding to that complexity, here's the big challenge: employees’ concerns might or might not align with the CEO, the board and the company's many other external stakeholders. Let's start with a little bit of top line advice for navigating employee stakeholder activism inside and outside the workplace, and then we can dig deeper on it in the next segment. What's your top line advice?

Amy Showalter (10:28): My top line is you want to be an investigator before you advocate. You need to find out what your employees think about certain issues with the proper research methodology, make sure the questions are asked in the proper way, reduce social desirability bias as much as possible, provide contrast in your questions so you can find out how they really believe on certain issues and what they think you should or should not do and to what degree you should do it and how intensely they feel. Many people will say, "Yes, let's get our voice out there. Let's be heard on this particular issue," but to what intensity? On a zero to seven scale, zero being no intensity, do I want them to be a five or do I want them to be a one? There's nuance to it. Nuance is the big thing that I'm hearing from my clients and I advise them on that as well. Let's be nuanced, let's be thinking, let's not follow the herd necessarily on these.

Amy Showalter (11:22): Number one is to do research with your employees and other stakeholders as appropriate. Find out what they think before you do anything and make sure that just because you're doing a survey doesn't mean, well, we're going to go ahead and make our voice heard on these things. You reserve the right to stick to what you do best as well.

Pam Harper (11:39): Okay. Well, we think we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll dig deeper with Amy Showalter, political influence expert and author of the book, The Underdog Edge, about encouraging civil discourse among employee stakeholders with competing social and political opinions. Stay with us...

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Pam Harper (13:13): Welcome back to Growth Igniter's Radio with Pam Harper — that's me — and Scott Harper. Today, Scott and I are speaking with Amy Showalter, political influence expert and author of the book, The Underdog Edge, about how CEOs can most effectively manage employee stakeholders' competing opinions about social and political issues inside and outside the workplace.

Pam Harper (13:40): Amy, tell us how people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Amy Showalter (13:45): Thanks, Pam. Go to showaltergroup.com and underdogedge.com. Everything is in one place there, regarding our different resources, assessments and so forth that you can learn about what we do and who we work with and the results we get for them.

Pam Harper (14:00): There's a wealth of resources. Now, Amy, are you going to be able to maybe share a chapter of your book with us?

Amy Showalter (14:06): It'll be hard to pick one because many are my favorites, but we'll definitely provide you some information on how to determine your underdog street cred. Not all underdogs are equal, not all are winning underdogs, so we'll give you that chapter on how to improve your street cred as an underdog.

Pam Harper (14:24): Okay. And you can find a link to this and more information about this episode by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 205, and scroll down to Resources.

Pam Harper (14:37): Okay, so let's go back to the conversation. You started out with some top line advice about where we get going with these conversations. The first point you made was about nuance, right? Let's go on with that. You told us that rather than avoiding the issue, you believe CEOs should encourage political conversations among employees at work. We're going to go right with it, we're going to engage, why?

Amy Showalter (15:10): Because when we don't set up the proper foundation for those conversations, bad things happen. Gartner, the human resources firm, did research I believe in 2019 and 2020 and found that between 40 and 45% of workers have said that they avoided a coworker because of their political beliefs or because of results of a previous discussion about politics. It didn't end well. We also saw with the CEO of Basecamp, who told his employees “no more political discussions on our employee listserv,” and numerous employees resigned because they felt that that was their right to discuss politics there. It is, and that's okay, but it has to be conducted in a proper way. You have to have the right foundation to make that happen. I think it's a great service that CEOs and companies can provide for employees, because we all say we want more civil discourse. We all say that, but are we really facilitating that?

Pam Harper (16:09): Exactly. That's the kind of thing that Scott and I talk about all the time when we're talking with CEOs, working with CEOs, is the whole fact that you need to engage. It's not an either or, you're engaging in the conversation. It's the only way when you work to understand people's viewpoints and why they have them and figure out how you're going to get through it. It's the only way to move forward.

Scott Harper (16:33): Because if you don't engage, it's going to happen anyhow and then you're not managing it at all.

Amy Showalter (16:38): Yes. I think when companies decide without a process to engage in these other issues that are on the periphery of their company, they affect stakeholders that may be not the exact customer, but they affect other stakeholders, and you don't have that found for people to engage in a proper way, then you've really stepped into the deep end without the lifeboat, without the life jacket, because you've just invited all kinds of issues and scrutiny that will take you away from other priorities.

Scott Harper (17:08): Going with that, you've talked to us about a set of questions that CEOs, C-suites and corporate executives to be asking themselves regarding whether and how to engage in certain social and political issues and conversations. What's the purpose of these questions, and are they to reduce risk, to do something else? How do they set up the conversation?

Amy Showalter (17:33): Well, the purpose is to make sure to reduce risk and to make sure that you're doing this purposely, and that you can really make an impact in the process and what are the upsides and downsides of them. I won't go through all of them. I literally have about 12, 15 questions, but they're in different buckets. One thing you first want to look at is the business and brand impact. Does this issue impact your business truly, or have a nexus to it? For example, Patagonia, anything related to climate change, anything related to the environment, to wildlife, to conservation, that's Patagonia, that's a great fit. I don't know that gun rights legislation is a great fit for them, but the environmental piece, that makes complete sense to me.

Pam Harper (18:20): If I am working in Patagonia or some other company, as an employee, and I want the CEO to talk about, you said gun rights or something, are you saying that that should be shut down and other questions should instead be brought up? Some questions then are shut down and some are opened? I'm not sure I understand.

Amy Showalter (18:44): What I would advise in that situation is that if you have a formal program for employee engagement on political issues and so forth and civil discourse on that, you can direct that employee to that group and to that entity and say, "Gosh, that's not a priority based on what we've determined," because you've gone through and answered these questions that I'll be sharing with you here more at a moment. The CEO has, with a leadership team and a team of diverse employees, looked at these different questions, answered them, found the nuance, found their sweet spot where they want to be or not be regarding these issues, and they can then communicate that to employees, saying, "At this time, here's what we're going to engage in, here's what we're not, and here's why."

Pam Harper (19:28): Well, that helps. You also say that there's a right way and a wrong way to encourage these social-political conversations, and I can see that building. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Amy Showalter (19:40): The right way is to make sure that you have a program led by employees, it is employee-led, it is not C-suite led, that has formal roles for group members, that many of my clients have a program name, a graphic logo to represent the club. They have activities, they have regular meetings, they have officers of the club and they bring candidates in to talk about issues and so forth. They set the parameters on the issues they want to talk about. The best programs of this kind teach the employees how to be discerning in what they read, in the media that they take in, in terms of media literacy, in terms of candidate literacy, knowing what candidates say is true or not, fact checking, those kinds of things. Also, how to engage with employees in a way that just because you disagree with them doesn't mean that your fellow employee's ignorant or has no moral compass. I mean, we see that a lot, right? People assume that someone believes in a certain position, therefore you're ignorant, and nothing's farther from the truth.

Amy Showalter (20:50): The beauty of these groups too, that a lot of people don't think about, is that by nature they're inclusive. They embrace diversity, diversity of political thought, the arena of ideas, the way to talk about different things. Every group that I've been involved in before I started my consulting practice at Nationwide and then with clients where I help develop these programs, the leaders of them are diverse. We've got people from all over the political spectrum and they're just fine with it. They have what I call political maturity. They know they're not hobbyists, they're politically mature. That's what you want to foster, because as leaders of an organization, if you can foster that in your employee base, you're doing a great community service.

Pam Harper (21:32): It's a real responsibility. When you take care with it and set it up in this way that you're talking about, it can pave the way for much more civil discourse.

Scott Harper (21:45): And powerful outcomes.

Pam Harper (21:46): And powerful outcomes, yes. We're going to take another quick break, and when we come back, Scott and I will speak more with Amy Showalter, political influence expert and author of the book, The Underdog Edge, about three immediately useful steps for leading highly-charged employee stakeholder political conversations at work. Stay with us...

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Scott Harper (22:10): You are listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. We're brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated. We're on the web at businessadvance.com and we focus on enabling visionary leaders to dramatically increase momentum for game changing results. Pam, our regular listeners know that many leaders are used to moving in new directions to adapt and successfully respond to a world that's changing in so many ways, faster than ever before. But as one CEO recently shared with us, “it's one thing to be on top, it's another thing to stay there.”

• Pam Harper (22:46): That's why I developed my new keynote, “How Growth Igniters Lead For Tomorrow Starting Today.” Find out the secret of the successful visionary leaders who are able to keep igniting game changing growth over and over again.

Scott Harper (23:01): Go to PamHarperSpeaks.com today to find out more about Pam's keynote and her availability to speak at your next leadership conference.

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Pam Harper (23:21): Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. Over the last two segments, Scott and I have been speaking with Amy Showalter, political influence expert and author of the book, The Underdog Edge, about how CEOs can most effectively manage employee stakeholders' opposing views about social and political issues inside and outside the workplace and live to tell about it... I like that. Amy, tell us how people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Amy Showalter (23:52): They can go to showaltergroup.com, find all my contact information there. I'm on Twitter @amyshowalter, and also underdogedge.com is the book's website.

Pam Harper (24:01): Again, a reminder that you can download a chapter from Amy's book, The Underdog Edge, by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 205, and scroll down to Resources.

Pam Harper (24:15): We're at the part of our podcast where we talk about the takeaways, the immediately useful practical ideas — in this case for leading employee stakeholder political conversations at work. First, let's start out with this: can you suggest an immediately useful idea for creating the proper foundation for these ESG conversations with and among employee stakeholders?

Amy Showalter (24:41): The most important thing to do first is, as I mentioned earlier, you want to be an investigator before you advocate. Do your research, find out what your employees think, find out how intensely they feel about different issues. Conduct it with the proper methodology, ask the questions in the proper way to find out what's really under the surface and the level of which they want you to engage. Don't assume anything, because when you look at our electorate, it's very evenly divided, our country's very evenly divided. Once you decide to engage, if you haven't done your investigating, you will become a politician, just like everyone in Washington and the state capital. I don't know that many CEOs want to go there. I think they view themselves as above that, and they are in many instances. You'll have to start pleasing people on very capricious issues many times, so you'd better be very, very careful how you do that. That's number one, is always investigate before you advocate on any particular issue.

Scott Harper (25:40): Okay, so now once you have gotten more background about where people are, and frequently there are going to be on opposite sides, how can CEOs and top leaders create more civil discourse with those of opposing views?

Amy Showalter (25:59): One way you create more civil discourse is you make sure that the process you have used to determine your positions, or lack of them, because this investigative process can mean that you decide we're not going to, we're going to stick to our knitting, we're going to stick to the issues that impact our bottom line and we're not going in other areas. In those instances, you have that option. You want to have that process. That process is a part of the civil conversations too. That process also, you're asking yourself questions about is there nexus to your business, are your employees directly affected by something or not? I mean, that's something else, you want to ask the questions. You want to have this process down where you can explain very easily, it rolls off your tongue, you can share with people, "Here's how we came to this decision. We didn't just press a button and try to figure it out in some instant way. We asked questions, we deliberated, we investigated."

Amy Showalter (26:56): You have to also look at the community you're in. Will you lose ground or gain ground by what people in your community and your industry sector are doing or not? I think many CEOs, they think they don't follow the herd, but they do. They're kind of like junior high people. It's a junior high, it's human nature. It's junior high, but a lot smarter and achievement oriented. They very much follow what's being done and what's being written about. They follow the herd quite a bit, they're very peer sensitive. They're not as independent thinkers, as we believe many times. What's your effectiveness and credibility in the issue? Can you make a difference by engaging in this or will you just be another voice adding to the cacophony of concerns?

Amy Showalter (27:40): You've investigated through your formal research, you've had a group of leaders and diverse employees representing different parts of the company come together and talk about these things, you have a process down that you can easily explain, and then you form your employee-led, not CEO-led, groups of employees to discuss issues, to have a very formal process for that. Like I said, a big part of this is teaching them how to engage in a civil way. It's not just, "Hey, go online and discuss these issues," like the people at Basecamp did and then they all resigned because they had a misunderstanding of what that was for. They were using too much of their time for that versus their work, is what the CEO said as well. When we had these formal groups, they and meet at lunch, they can meet after work, before work. They're not taking up work time to do that, but there is dedicated time to do it. It's something they can look forward to.

Amy Showalter (28:32): Do you know what I found when I was involved in that personally, running those in 15, 17 states and also with my clients? They love the opportunity to meet other people from their company that they wouldn't get to meet otherwise. It's a networking opportunity.

Pam Harper (28:46): It's a real benefit, absolutely. How much does the value statement of a company go towards coming up with these civil conversations? In other words, is it transparent? Is that something that people look to as to say this is going to be absolutely relevant based on how we've set up our vision and our values?

Amy Showalter (29:10): Yes. I mean, it does. People refer back to that quite a bit, as they should. However, a lot of company's value statements, they're really terrific, forward thinking, visionary, positive things and you can apply that to almost any piece of legislation before your state legislature or the US Congress. I don't care if it's education.

Pam Harper (29:29): Yes, that's the issue. If you have something that actually can work as a guide, people are looking for transparency. What I hear you saying that I love is that the more that you really think hard about what your ethics are, and hopefully it's in line with your values, but also in line with what else is going on in your community, that makes a big difference.

Pam Harper (29:58): The final question I have is about managing expectations, and maybe you've already answered it -- but yours, theirs, other key stakeholders, customers, boards, media, there are so many people -- so that when you have these conversations, going back to the beginning of what we were talking about, you have the most benefits and the least downsides. What's an immediately useful step somebody could take?

Amy Showalter (30:28): I love metrics, I've written a lot about it in terms of the government relations profession and how to really measure that and I think it can't be measured. When we look at grassroots engagement, which is employee engagement, stakeholder engagement, I look at a couple things. I look at are we getting more people involved in these employee organizations, are more people involved, and then every company has their internal social media chatter and so forth and what is that looking like. If I were to do a textual analysis and look at is it, positive sentiment, negative sentiment about these groups, what does that look like? Are we seeing more or less positive media coverage of what we do in this area and our involvement?

Amy Showalter (31:08): We have to remember that if you're a CEO and you decide to speak out on these issues, there will be pushback. The people at Delta, the people at Coca-Cola were not only attacked by prominent, prominent United States senators online. See, it go both ways. They were attacked by them for their stance on the voting rights issues and so forth and the election integrity issues. They were also profiled by a group called Consumers Research that I think did some absolutely brilliant work, whether you agree with their position or not. I look at just the influence capacity in terms of what they did, was they profiled American Airlines and how they are the worst performing airline, like stick to your knitting. You are not doing that well with your customers, but you want to be involved in these other issues? Do what you're supposed to do first. They did the same thing with Coca-Cola with promoting obesity and using low wage labor. You've got to be really careful because will get smacked back. As the great Jordan Peterson says, make sure your own house is in order before you go after everybody else. That's really important.

Pam Harper (32:12): Absolutely. Well, here we are; we're at the end of this episode. Amy, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us on such an important topic. There’s a lot for people to think about and apply. Thanks for being our guest on Growth Igniters Radio.

Amy Showalter (32:29): Thanks for having me.

Scott Harper (32:31): Oh, it's been a pleasure, Amy. Thank you so much, and thanks to you out there for listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. To contact us, get show notes and resource links for this week's episode, including downloading a chapter from Amy's book, The Underdog Edge, go to growthignitersradio.com and select episode 205.

Pam Harper (32:52): Until next time, this is Pam Harper…

Scott Harper (32:54): And Scott Harper…

Pam Harper (32:55): …Wishing you continued success and leaving you with this question to discuss with your team:

Scott Harper (33:00): How can we best acknowledge and encourage civil political discourse with and among employees while also honoring our roles and obligations as leaders to all of our stakeholders?

Chris Curran (33:18): Growth Igniters and Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper are registered service marks of Business Advancement Incorporated. All Growth Igniters Radio episodes are copyrighted productions of Business Advancement Incorporated intended for the private use of our audience. Except as otherwise provided by copyright law, all other uses, including copying, editing, redistribution and publication without prior written consent of Business Advancement Incorporated are prohibited. All rights reserved.