Speaker 1  0:01  
Welcome to Engaging Ideas, the bi weekly podcast from Parsons TKO, bringing you conversations with mission driven leaders and luminaries to shift your perspective and challenge your assumptions of the art of the possible.

Tony Kopetchny  0:15  
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Engaging Ideas. Today we'll be talking about ethics and communications practices with our special guests. soltana. Ali, thank you for joining us. And please don't forget to subscribe or leave us a review after the episode. Welcome. soltanto.

Unknown Speaker  0:33  
Thank you. It's good to be here. Tony.

Tony Kopetchny  0:36  
Delighted for this conversation. And let me give you a quick intro. So Tom is currently serving as adjunct faculty with Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and also working full time in the nonprofit communications industry. So well, thanks. Thanks. All right. I'm very excited to dive in ethics is a when I say it makes sense. But it's broad, and it feels like it could fit into a lot of different sorts of places. So maybe before we get started, you know, what do we mean, when we talk about ethics and communications? What are we really talking about there?

Speaker 3  1:09  
That's a good question. And I think it's a question that we wrestle with daily and communications because it can mean different things in different scenarios, right? A lot of people think well, what do the ancient Greeks or philosophers like Aristotle, what do they have to do with modern communications? But the reality is communication started with the art of rhetoric, you know, and people standing in the public square, extrapolating ideas, persuading people to agree with their opinion, or really think reflectively about issues. And in many ways, that is the field of public relations. That's it is the art of rhetoric, and the way that we go about doing that art, the medium may change social media, digital media, video, etc. But the art of it really doesn't change all that much over time. And what we find is the same kind of ethical principles and values that were really explored during that time period are still as relevant today. And it's really thinking about the morals, the behaviors, the systems and the frameworks by which we make decisions and navigate the dilemmas that come up. And again, this can be an errant tweet, it could be a misspoken word, it could be something that you don't even anticipate or expect, like the COVID 19 pandemic, and how do we respond? How do we reflect as an organization, and communicators are really the ones trying to help captain that ship and think about how to guide leaders how to share between organizations and the audiences they're communicating with. And that's a really critical role. So ethics is is really living with us day to day, even if we're not thinking about it as ethics

Tony Kopetchny  2:44  
as some curious you're teaching at Georgetown University, and you are teaching about ethics in PR there. But you want to start first as a practitioner, or as an educator, and if a practitioner, you know, what led you to then want to work in educating future communicators about ethics.

Speaker 3  3:02  
Yeah, I will say that, you know, I was an educator first, before I entered the field, I was teaching at the high school level, in fact, and I mentored teenagers, for gosh, about a decade. But I came into the communications field with that background of mentorship, very closely held to me. And we did a lot of things that were very communications based, presenting scientific concepts, thinking about how to articulate ideas how to write. So we were doing a lot of those things. And I was working with young people on that before I started at a PR agency when I was in my gosh, early 20s. And it's been great. I think educating and teaching is a theme throughout my career. I do media training in my day to day job and work and I do a lot of coaching, especially with science communicators, and people to really think about how to effectively convey ideas. And when I think about the thread that's been true throughout my career, it is it is really that coaching, teaching, helping people to really convey ideas and thoughts, data story in really meaningful ways.

Tony Kopetchny  4:06  
And so with your work done at Georgetown, I mean, how does this unique and I mean, people take your class, and they're like, I never thought about taking an ethics when I thought about getting into PR or some of the outreach and marketing work they do.

Speaker 3  4:19  
Yeah, one of the beautiful things about the program at Georgetown into the public relations and corporate communications program, is that PR ethics is a required course. And that's because we want to really think about the next generation of communicators being ethical communicators, that really matters, matters to Georgetown. And I think it matters to society, really, that we think about those decisions and how we're guiding those organizations. We work with the clients we work with, the people that we interact with, because sometimes we're that lone voice in the room that's serving as the public conscious or the ethical conscious, right. I like to think of it As the Jiminy Cricket, who's saying, you know, should we do X or Y? And sometimes it's not X or Y, and Z? But how do you actually go about making these decisions? And I find comfort. And I think the students that I teach, find comfort in actually finding out that there are frameworks that can help you to really figure out the road ahead, what is the pathway? What are the different journeys that I can choose? And there are frameworks, and you really have to do a lot of reflection, both as a professional communicator, but also as an organization and think about what are my values? What is my purpose? Why do we do the work that we do and the more we think about that, why, the more the what, and how we go about making these decisions, and what we actually do, those things start to align. And I like to think of that as authenticity, really, it's where those things really converge and become the same thing. You don't have to really think too much about what to do when you understand why you're doing it.

Tony Kopetchny  5:57  
So I'm gonna have a definite follow on to that. But right before I get there, I was thinking about this, getting ready to talk with you. And journalism has a code of ethics. I assume they still mostly follow these days. I don't know there's a lot out there. But they do. Right. So why not other professions? I mean, what I can imagine for them as the fourth estate, it is very, we want that sort of responsibility and trust. But just very curious, from your perspective, how we buy we don't have it infused in others. It's interesting.

Speaker 3  6:25  
Yeah, journalism does have a professional code of ethics. I'll also share that there's a code of ethics for communications through the Public Relations Society of America known as prsa. It's the largest society of public relations professionals and the code of ethics, really, the keys, they're the professional values that undergird our profession, our advocacy, serving the public interest, being responsible advocates of those we represent honesty, I mean, pretty straightforward, but just telling the truth, being accurate expertise, actually furthering the profession by getting that knowledge ensuring that we're doing the professional development that we need to do independence, providing objective counsel, loyalty, being faithful to those we represent, while also serving the public interest, in fairness, being fair, respecting all opinions, supporting the right of free expression, truly feels paramount to who we are as, as a nation as a country and the United States of America. Right, that right to express yourself. So we do actually have a code of ethics and communications, but not everybody fault follows it or has to follow it. It's not something that that people are held to. I mean, it is a standard, right. And the idea of codes of ethics is that these are not necessarily obligations, right? There are things that are aspirational in nature. And I think that that can kind of lead some people to say, Oh, well, I don't need to worry about that. But the idea is that these things should be really more than aspirational. They're really in practice and how you apply it day to day, because it doesn't really mean anything, if you have a code of ethics hanging on the wall, if you're not thinking about it daily and practicing it. So I think you're right. It's interesting that there's fields like law where you know, you have to pass an exam and go through and learn things to be able to practice it. But then there's other fields where you don't necessarily have that same standard. But when you think about the job of communications, it is such a critical part of everyday life and society, we work with journalists to help tell accurate and compelling stories and give them connect them with experts that can really help people to understand the things that they're hearing about, whether that's breaking news, or topics, the environment, any of these other kinds of things that affect our lives. And so those codes of ethics are really vital and important,

Tony Kopetchny  8:44  
Becky, yeah. Just moving forward with that. I mean, how do we start to infuse that practice within organizations, you know, are there? Are there frameworks you've seen apply does, how does it extend and infuse itself across an organization, you know, from brand promise, to the values to a social posts, in a way where maybe you aren't thinking about it every day, but it's such a part of the process? Because there's a whole thing, right? You stumbled to the level of your systems or your process? You know, when when you're so like, yeah, how do we, how do we think about that for designing a team? Are we really want to make sure that in these large organizations, everyone's feeling it and doing it, even if they're not necessarily looking at the wall every day to see what it is they're supposed to be aligning with? Yeah,

Speaker 3  9:28  
I'm so glad that you asked that question. It's interesting because I think the word brand is used reg with regularity, right? We all talk about brand brand awareness, brand engagement in the communications profession. But what is brand, right, I like to think of brand as it's a promise that you make to your stakeholders, that stands the test of time. It's really your purpose for existence. What are you offering the marketplace or consumers or audiences that's different? or special or unique from other offerings, right. And we're always thinking about differentiation. And really, when you think about brand is that promise, it's really not all that different from having core values, or thinking about mission, right? Those things are very closely related and aligned. But those things like you said, really have to align with the systems that we have the policies that undergird the practices that are the day in day out decision making paradigms of our people, our employees, our staff, the people that we work with. So all of those things connect, when you have a strong brand, so to speak. And that brand has value, reputational value, people come to count on you for what that brand expresses. You have strong brand equity, right? You have the ability to move people to influence people and an organization's and and that can be of tremendous value. And you're thinking about working on critical issues that touch people's lives. And really, communicators are stewarding that value day in and day out, right? We're expressing it in different ways, we're finding ways to make sure that we're communicating it. But if we're not clear on our core values, then how we go about doing that can get a little bit sticky, right? What kind of stories are we telling? Who are the voices that are represented in those stories that really gets down to values? And that's where, you know, it goes back to even the ancient Greeks, you know, one of my favorite ethical models, my students are always like, what is what is your favorite model, Professor Ali, and and I don't give that away at the beginning of the semester, because I want students to travel that road and to figure out and explore different systems, what's really magical about that processes, they might start out going, Oh, I don't like this particular ethical framework, right. But then by the end of the semester, they might find usefulness in it, you know, you think about something like Friedman's economics, which is about maximizing profits, that's a model that a business exists to maximize its profits, that can be really problematic. And I think you can see that how that can be problematic if it's not balanced with something like virtue ethics, which is essentially the golden mean that Aristotle espouses, what is the golden mean, it's finding that balance. But you know, you sit in, in the tension between opposites and between these different parties. And you find what is that compromise? What is the virtue ethics is what are the virtues that are under guarding my decision making? Is it harmony? Is it justice? Is it cooperation, right? Is it collaboration, and really espousing those values that a person might take on within an organization and the decisions that you make? So I think that that's one of the special things about learning about ethics. And thinking about how those things apply to the day, day to day work of communications is that you can actually look at these models and figure out, oh, I can actually find my way to that difficult decision that needs to be made in this moment, I don't have to just guess, you know, you think about what would a virtuous person do in this situation, I understand my own code of ethics, I understand my organization's code of ethics, and then it becomes much easier to figure out what to do next.

Tony Kopetchny  13:18  
I like all of that, especially the idea of having people on the communication side, the outreach side, that that public interface component, having that in their minds to think about. The one thing we ended up we, you know, Patti Debow, who's our president PTKO wrote a report last year about how getting D infused throughout the organization's because a lot of times what it felt like over the last couple of years as people were making these statements was that it was the communications and the front end of the brand that was doing all of the work. But organizationally and fundamentally throughout the organization. It wasn't woven into the fabric of the organization. So I'm curious, you know, I'm glad you talked about the values that are being used for the outreach side have to fuse back to the organizational value, but have you seen this working? Or have you in the nonprofit sector in time, because, you know, we've just we've started seeing a disconnect, you know, we'll, we'll run into programs that are doing work, and then they're trying to infuse it back. But it's already missed at the HR department level that's already missed at the finance level. It's already it's in the Miss makes it sound. Nefarious, I don't mean it that way. It's just there is a lot of work that needs to happen. And it feels like it has to start deeper than when it's already to the person who's supposed to be putting tweets out for your organization.

Speaker 3  14:37  
Yeah, I like to think about it in this sort of way of what what is diversity, equity and inclusion mean, right. And I know it's really popular to use this model of the dance. Did you receive an invitation to the dance? Were you in the room for the dance? And then were you actually asked to dance right and that's how sort of diverse Our city and Equity and Inclusion kind of stacked onto each other in a way are you included in the room, when you're in the room is your voice heard, right? And then is that is what you say, actually given merit and value, all of those things have to work interchangeably. And it's much harder to do in practice, especially when you've had long standing systems or practices or policies that were made up in a different time. One of the challenges and I know you and I've talked about this with AI is that a lot of the data that feeds into AI, might have been formed by previous biases that that could have existed from human beings who were, you know, in a different time and maybe had different influences on them. So ethics becomes super relevant in this thing. And we really have to, I think, I find a lot of value in this idea of the golden mean, that when I think about communications, this this interaction between communications and what the organization is doing, it's like a train that's moving along the tracks, communications might be leading the way, we can't forget about the caboose of the train, which is like those actual policies that are under guarding it. And so it's easy to get into this blame game, I think of, you know, oh, you're not doing that, right? Or why did we do that? It's, but really, I would think about it more. And I think what's most helpful is thinking about it as a discovery process and an internal reflection process of what do we value? Let's have that conversation, let's bring a representative group into the room and have a conversation about what we do value. And that starts with lived experience. You know, I'm, I'm a woman of color, I'm multiracial. And so the way that I grew up, and the influences that I had and experienced are going to be really different from somebody else. And there's merit to my voice being in the room, there's merit to someone else's voice being in the room, my voice doesn't matter more than another person's. But what matters is that I'm invited into the space and given the opportunity to speak and to be asked the same questions, because my answer is just going to be different. And we don't know if we're looking at our stakeholders if we're going to reach those people that we want to reach if we're not really reflecting those voices. And so these two things are always needing to be thought about and communications kind of sits in the middle of that of asking that question. Are we inviting a representative group into the room? And even are we asking the right questions? Let's talk to them before we even have this conversation. Let's talk to different groups of people so that we're asking the right questions. And then we need to think thoughtfully about what we do with that information. And I think a lot of people want to start with that end result like you, like you said, this whole move toward more open, expansive conversations around race and diversity and how we interact with systems so important. And that requires internal reflection from organizations, you know, going beyond just putting words on paper, but thinking about how, how do we live those values day in and day out. And that requires space, it requires conversations, it requires connection between people. And that's a time intensive process. That's a journey. And so organizations, we've been seeing this, you know, recently that some organizations might have started on that, and maybe taking some next steps. Because it's, it's hard, because you have to sort of address and acknowledge where people are within that journey. And there may be voices who weren't present in the room that are now present. And that may be uncomfortable for some people. And then we're sort of having to think about this is this gets into things like emotional agility, right? And, and really thinking about how do we adapt with our emotions in those moments, because if we think of it as a learning process, we're all learning from each other. And as we meet different people and learn about their experiences, their values, their codes of ethics, so to speak, we have an opportunity to reflect and grow our own. Because what we know in communications is there's there's things that would have stood 50 years ago that certainly don't stand now. Right. And there was a time when there were advertisements that smoking was good for, you know, people. And we know, we know that's not the truth. So these, we have to be willing to do this self reflection, right, and that we have to be willing to provide the space and the time and opportunity for that.

Tony Kopetchny  19:27  
Appreciate that. Yeah, is wrote a few things down when you're talking. The last one I wrote down was culture eats strategy for breakfast, which I think everybody's heard before. But I think to your point, it was in a learning culture organization where you can take the time to reflect or it's okay to not always have an answer in the moment that I feel like the ability and the agility that you spoke about become something that you've you can be more comfortable with because you don't feel you're on demand to have the right answer at every moment. And I think a lot of orbs span was the idea of a learning culture but they don't ever really embrace air quote, failure the way they talk about. It's rare, I find the organization that doesn't have some chart that shows everything's always going up into the right. Like how to add. So I'm curious if just in your practice and experience, what I've find, we probably need more of and in my experience, there's never been time for it's usually just one annual review cycle. But like, how, how can organizations start thinking about and I think about from software development perspective, or you know, retrospectives when you do a shorter sprint, and then you stop, and everybody talks about what was working, what didn't work, because you don't want to keep going, if something wasn't working, and you're trying to stop earlier in the software process? How do we, you know, have you seen any orgs, taking time before the annual process to say, how have we been doing on this? And Did we learn anything that we need to then think about for the next two months or the next three months?

Speaker 3  20:57  
It's such a good question. And it's not something I think we've historically done in society, certainly not in this nation, this cult culture, right. But I do think that's changing. And I'm a big fan of Brene Brown, she's, you know, a researcher, She researches vulnerability and shame. And she's an incredible author, podcaster, writer, teacher, I learned so much from her. And when I read her book, The first book I read of hers was the Gifts of Imperfection. It changed my life, I didn't realize how much I had embodied perfectionism inside of myself in my work, and life and career, and I was working the energy that it took for me to compartmentalize the pieces of myself work, personal, whatever. It was such a waste of energy. And I had been taught, and I grew up in a generation where, yeah, don't feel your feelings, push those things down. But what I found is emotions are a real superpower. They're a way to tap into experiences that other people might be having. Because if you're having that experience, maybe somebody else's, and just speaking to that the elephant in the room, so to speak, can open up this magical space of creativity. I do a lot of storytelling, I think of myself as a storyteller. And I have built in this process of it empathy and authenticity, where everybody you know, that's on the team gets invited into the process, and has the opportunity to contribute to the ideas and the stories that we tell. And we reflect throughout that process. Are we on the right path? We try not to even though we might have production schedule. So there are other things, we make sure that we make time to think about, is there something that needs to be changed in at the end of every project? We debrief, we look at the metrics? Yes. Did we accomplish what we set out to do we set some metrics at the beginning and goals? That's good. That's part of every public relations process. But what did we unexpectedly learn? What are some sort of magical moments of creativity? We do things where we go, oh, wow, this one piece of the story is really resonant. This thing came up in an interview that we didn't expect, how can we take that and turn that into a video and get that piece of the narrative out? And I think you have to provide the space and opportunity for that, you know, I think we sort of chastise failure as a society. Definitely, oh, you failed. But I have learned so much from my failures. If I had stayed with the failure early in my career, oh, my goodness, I wouldn't be here, you know, I would not have continued in the communications field. It's a two decade career that I've had. And I've had, you know, it's been a winding path. You know, I started working in an agency, and I've always been a mission driven, values driven person. And every day, I feel like I have the opportunity to show up and do my best work. And some days that looks different than others. But the thing that I really think about when I show up at work is how can I really help people do their best work? And that really starts with thinking about the things that I value. And so someday, somebody might be having an off day. And it's my opportunity to say, you know, what, maybe we don't need to have this meeting right now. Or, you know what, let's take five minutes. Tell me what's going on. And that's me living my values. And I think the more that we do that, not just as people to people but as an organization, how do we allow that opportunity for reflection? You know, we were talking about DDI and some of the missteps when I've seen organizations make a mistake. And then they get feedback. And instead of becoming defensive or critical, they stop and they say, You know what, you're right. We messed that up. And we're going to take some time and we're going to reflect and here's what we're going to do differently because this is what we value to you that's authentic, that's real. And then they actually take action. And those things come from a really clear code of ethics. It comes from articulated values. It comes from leaders who are living those values day in and day out. And sometimes that conversation hasn't been had and it needs to be had. I was

Tony Kopetchny  25:18  
thinking as you were talking to things, I was feel like we need to read definition of what a professional is. I think I grew up in the same time period, as you right, no emotions all had it back. Don't ever show it and especially grown up male in that culture, right? Each, I was never supposed to have an emotion. And I became an adult. And I would have all these anxieties in meetings. And I was like, This isn't mine took me a long time to learn that I was like, pathetic, I was feeling the room. Like I couldn't figure it out. I just thought I had issues. Then I finally started talking to some people. And I was like, Oh, this is what's happening to me. In the professionalism, it's like, I think it's that perfectionism, right? You think you hear professional and you think this, I'm supposed to show up, I'm supposed to know exactly what I'm supposed to do in every moment. And I'm supposed to get it right. And I just do it, rather than I might not know what I'm doing. Let me ask some other people, let me get some help. It's like, it's like, I keep telling my daughters in middle school. And like, you shouldn't know that math problem, because you've never done it before. Right? You literally aren't gonna get that, right. That's actually the learning, and you're gonna ask the teacher and you're gonna get it wrong, and you're gonna, then you're gonna know what you got it wrong eventually, and you're not going to get it wrong in the future. I think there's something in our professionalism, probably too. And this environment we're living in where it's like professionalism is about showing up and being ready to do the work. And being responsible and being accountable to your teammate around you. It's not I'm gonna get this exactly right. Every time. It's okay, if there was a typo that went out in your tweet, it happens, that the fact that you came there, and you said, I'd got that wrong house moving too fast, I need to learn. As you're talking, I'm thinking there's something there and like, that realm of professionalism.

Speaker 3  26:58  
Absolutely. And empathy is a superpower, I, I very much identify with exactly what you're saying, where I have that capacity to sort of read the room, sort of speak and, and feel other people's kind of feelings, or whatever. And however, that manifests inside of me. And I'm an introvert, which is kind of an interesting thing and communication. But I think what I realized is that I have value, I have my own intrinsic value, I may not be the first person to speak. But what I'm doing is I'm listening. I'm not just listening to what people are saying, but I'm also listening to those sort of nonverbal cues. I'm also thinking about how I'm feeling and what's coming up for me in the moment. And sometimes it means taking that moment of reflection, and sometimes I don't get it right. And then I go back, and I have a conversation with somebody, I think, you know, in that moment, I sort of plowed forward, and I really should have taken a second to think. But it's that going back and that that ability to repair, which, you know, there's other really great researchers that talk about this, you know, Estera Parral, and the gardens that do research on relationships that are fantastic. But it's not about this perfection, everything is good, or everything is bad, right? It's Do you have that ability to repair? Right? Do you have that ability to have conversations, and come from a place of understanding connect with the other person and these things are not different from from our ethics, right? They're not different from our values of the things that we say that we value. It's so interesting, because coming into the beginning of the semester, I have students come in, and they're like, oh, some of them are grumble, grumble, public relations, ethics, this is going to be boring. By the end of the semester, they have defined their personal values, you know, they've really reflected on it. Some of them may have even changed the course of their career based on the conversations that we've had, they've had the opportunity to listen to other students and what they value and interact with them. Because one of the things that we learn in public relations is that we're interacting with different systems all the time. And those systems are made up of people who are made up of different experiences that they've had. And we don't know what those are, right? We're sort of having to interact with these things. And really think about our reputational value. Think about the influence. We want to create the change that we want to create behavior change, etc. Some of these things can be hard to measure. But when we live our values, when we're clear about those things, that journey it becomes so much easier because you don't really have to guess you have the friend that you count on to be a Jiminy Cricket for you kind of a really good, strong, ethical friend who has high integrity, you know who that is to call in a moment of conscious crisis where you kind of going oh, what do I do you have that friend you can call and you have a friend who's a professional, who's done on really good work that you respect and admire, you have colleagues within your organization that are excellent sounding boards that understand, you know, history, precedents, systems, all of that stuff within the organization. But you also understand yourself and your own kind of makeup to the extent that you know that, hey, I might be what I'm feeling right now may not actually be fact, I might be having an emotional reaction. And so I really need to like sift through this process first. And I'm, I think a lot of what helps me as a communicator is thinking about responding versus reacting, responding, is incorporating that reflection, that time for reflection, thinking about my values, talking to people, between something happening and the decision that we make, what we do in that space. You know, as Viktor Frankl says the the space between stimuli and response, what happens in that space? That's, that's our source of power. That's our source of creativity, what we do in that space, because once we do the thing, we can't undo it. Once we say that thing, we can't unsay it, it's been said, you know, and so how we go about saying, and doing those things really matters. And that's really where I think ethics comes into play.

Tony Kopetchny  31:13  
A lot of it, responding, not reacting, wrote that down. That's, that's really important. But I'm gonna take a slight different tact here to get I feel like we've been talking about a lot of what we can do ourselves, or maybe even within our own organizations, and I'm curious, for some ideas from you, too. We're gonna partner with an organization, whether it's who we're getting our funding from in the nonprofit sector or another partner organization, we want to team up to do programmatic work with how do we balance what we've created them for ourselves and our organizations with another organization's set of values? And especially, I don't know if you've seen it, if there is any conflict in those that comes out once the partnerships already starting to probably is probably the worst case scenario, but not the worst case. But the hardest probably to work through is once you're already engaged, and then it sort of comes up that you're not totally aligned. Have you seen this? And is there is there a way to think about it for people that are listening as they start to get into partnerships?

Speaker 3  32:11  
Yeah, I think you're asking the right question. I think that awareness, it starts with awareness and asking questions. If people just go into that automatic reaction, oh, this is a good idea. Yeah, you're powerful, we're powerful. You have influenced we have influenced let's partner Let's go. That can that could land you where you want to be or not, could lead you further away. But if you stop and go, Hmm, what is the goal we want to accomplish? What is our sort of code of ethics? What are our values and mission? And then let's look at this other organization, let's look at their values, and mission, are they compatible? It's really no different than when you're choosing a partner, right? Or friends? Are we compatible, it doesn't mean that you're the same because we benefit from diversity, we know that that's something that we're learning from diversity, equity inclusion, as we're seeing that take place and seed in organizations, we're able to really tap into amazing creativity by really bringing in that diversity of perspectives. And so it's no different with partnering with other organizations. It's really like is there compatibility, because if you're so far apart, because, you know, you think about a model and ethical framework of maximizing profits, freedom and economics, right, that is one end of the spectrum versus let's just say communitarianism, which is we are taking care of the community, we serve a community, we want to help ensure that community feels represented that they feel like they can belong. Those two things may be incompatible with each other, if there's two different organizations that have two different sort of things that are driving their work. So those things just taking that time to reflect and consider, do we have compatible values? And are we headed in a similar direction? Because sometimes your values might be slightly different, but you want the same outcome, and there might be purposefulness to that connection. But where it gets sticky is how do we work together? Because those again, those values, those ethics, those are going to interact in the day to day decisions. So it's really clear at the outset of that relationship, think about what are the rules of the road? I like the concept of shared agreements. And spending time when you first start out a project, or you're starting out a team or you're bringing a new partnership. How do we have conversations? When we have conflict emerge? How do we resolve that conflict? If we come to a point of indecision, you know, how do we go about navigating that and having everybody around the table contribute to those shared agreements? I always like to start with a slate of things because sometimes people come into that, like, I don't even know what that is. That's not even language, but people are used to hearing so I like to have like, here's a slate of things that I've seen work well things like listen to under Stand, right, because a lot of times we hear people, but we're not listening. We're not trying to understand them, we're already preparing what we're going to say to react. So it takes some real self discipline around our emotions to actually sit back inside of ourselves and say, No, listen to this other person, allow yourself, that means allow yourself to be changed by what you're hearing, allow yourself to take it in, without thinking about the next thing you say, because you're going to benefit from that. Now, you may not agree with this other person. And of course, this is something that's relevant in politics and in everything that we do in families, in society and communities and how we solve problems, if we take that opportunity to give ourselves the space to not react and to respond and to learn from that other person, we end up in such a better place. So that idea of like, shared agreements, how do we have these conversations, and really, that's reflective of our values, it can really put us on the right path. So even if our values not the same as an organization, at least how we travel together, because we have the same goal. And we want to get there together, it can really help us to resolve this dilemmas that come up.

Tony Kopetchny  36:11  
Yeah, I wrote down a question while you were talking. And I don't know if it's too much of a put you on the spot type thing. But my head went, I really liked you, you said you have to allow yourself to be changed by what you're hearing. And I feel like we live in such a hope for we're getting better at it. But it feels very polarizing a lot of times with messages that are put out and if I am to listen to anyone who's on that other side, I'm somehow tainted, you know, how is communicators in in an ethical framework when we are trying, especially in the nonprofit sector to, to check to make positive and progressive change in the world? You know, and you have to have a, you have to have a strong will to move that forward. When there's so much around you that doesn't want it to move forward. How can ethics addressed the ability to sit there, listen, and feel yourself to your point, the willingness to change, but without the negative association of now I'm tainted, because maybe my idea changed. And I'm not as all in on this side as I should be? I don't know. I don't know if my question is rambling, or that I'm drinking a lot of coffee. So we'll see

Speaker 3  37:13  
during the pandemic, I think it was an opportunity for us to reflect and to learn. One of the authors that I came across that really spoke to me in the moment was Jonathan Hite. And he was really struggling, I think, some years ago with political polarization in the country. And how do I talk to people that believed different things than me because he was struggling with this either or mindset. Like if somebody believes this, and I then in their friend, what does that say about me because I need to make sure that I want to reflect my own values, right. And I want to live those values. And we think about those in relationships, right? So he did the research. And he found that there were these sort of moral foundations that undergird the way people make decisions. And what was interesting about that is that researchers have found that those same moral foundations are really present in nearly all people. But there's just different sort of appropriations that they might give to certain things in their brain. So one of those is fairness. Another one is authority, right? So somebody who believes something on one side of politics might value fairness more than authority, it doesn't mean they don't value authority. It just means if they're put in a conundrum, or they're faced with a policy, they're going to choose fairness over authority, because that's something that they put more value behind. Right, another one that he looked at was loyalty. Or another one was sanctity and other ones liberty. So again, a lot of these things, they don't have negative connotations per se. But if you go, in your mind, do I value sanctity more than fairness? Or do I value loyalty? More than authority? Right? These are things that, and this is where the ethical sort of thinking comes into play is, what do I really value when I'm forced to make a choice. But I think for him, it was really useful and helpful to to know that we all have a similar foundation that we start from, but because of how we grow up, you know, the nature versus nurture the experiences that we have the decisions that we make, the lives that we experience, we may put more value behind one thing versus another. But it helps us to not shut someone down and eliminate their humanity. Because we have the same kind of things that make us all up. There's just sort of different proportions. And we can understand that from Geography standpoint, we know that like if you grow up in the south of us, you're gonna have maybe a different accent, maybe a different way you welcome people into your house versus if you grew up in, you know, New York or something, right. It's a different experience, and we don't chat Nice people. for that. We go, huh? This is interesting. So what I really take value and heart in is this idea of curiosity. And when we can move from furious to curious if we're feeling ourselves antagonized internally, or we're feeling that, oh, goodness, I start going into judgment about this person, move into curiosity that helps you move into the learning mindset start asking questions, right? Can you tell me more about why you think that, you know, because that other person may or may not have gone through that process of thinking about it, or maybe they have, but you may actually open yourself up to learning something about that person that you otherwise wouldn't have learned. When we see people that we don't expect to come together come together. In society, we applaud that. But how do they do that? They do it because somebody decided to be curious about the other human being, they decided there's something innate about your humanity that I might identify with, I may not see it in this moment. But I'm going to believe that it's there. And I'm going to search for it and give the space to that, rather than just dismissing you. And you don't know what can emerge from that. You might find that if you allow yourself to be changed by that process, you might evolve into a better person, which might help you evolve an organization into a better organization, I know that I'm infinitely better, as a human being because of the people that I've allowed to change me over my career. You know, I've come a long way, I have a long way to go. I'm constantly learning and evolving. But one of the things I asked my team is, you know, what should we stop doing? What should we start doing? What should we keep doing? What am I doing that's getting in the way of you doing your best work. That's, that's about being a humble leader. That's about being willing to take in information and actually listen and sit back and allow myself to be changed by what I hear. Because I'm not perfect. And I'm not trying to be perfect anymore. What I'm trying to do is be a good human being. And what I'm trying to do is create spaces for people to show up and do their best work. And I'm trying to help organizations serve their mission and the people, the clients, the stakeholders, you know, that they're really seeking to serve and live the values of that mission. And so that's going to require that reflection that's going to require being an ethical communicator, it's going to require really understanding myself and how I'm showing up in the moment. And leaning into that curiosity.

Tony Kopetchny  42:29  
I have written down so many things, you're saying you've got such great The Furious to curious, I love it. Skinner, I'm actually right now these days, I'm gonna send all this out to my team on Slack after those, these are just because it's just the way you're pulling it together so quickly to let you think about it and really think about yourself first. And then how you need to move that a little bit of slow response time is fantastic. Everyone else is listening is I don't know, hitting the note button while you're talking and taking these down to keep moving through some of our questions here though, in our previous conversation, he said, Trust is an important currency. I had a whole episode with our common friend and Fabi about the trust, sort of what that meant. Communications, you know, I'd love to dive in on this one a bit, because it comes up a lot. And I was part of the reason I had talked about it with and too, especially through the pandemic, I think it was business reviews I was looking at for 2020 Trust was a top factor for businesses and 2021. Trust is a major top factor for businesses and but no one ever defined it. They just threw the word out there. And like, Well, yeah, of course you want to trust something. But what what does it really mean? And what does it mean when it comes to an organizational imperative? And have you know, have you thought about it? If you've been seeing it out there the way I've been seeing it talked about? And what are your thoughts on on trust?

Speaker 3  43:44  
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. And thanks for bringing bringing up our good friend who I admire and respect. And I've learned a lot from her. She's a she's an amazing professional Trust is everything. It starts with self trust, and being able to trust yourself in situations it's trust with colleagues, and it's trust in between these different these different systems and people and organizations. And it is a currency. It's a currency that depending on how authentic you are, as a person or an organization is or how aligned it is, with its values. It can cost itself quite a bit if it doesn't really value that when we think about reputation. And he also wants taught reputation management. The formula that undergirds reputation is performance, plus behavior, plus communication times authenticity. So performance, like these are the metrics of success. Whatever we say makes us successful. That's different from a nonprofit for a nonprofit versus a company that sells widgets, right? You're going to rate that differently, but that's the performance how well are you getting results? The behavior is what you do, right? Communication is what you actually say are those things aligned and then the authenticity that's that Nick Enigma, people believing you. But I really think of that is are all of those things aligned, and that creates your reputation. And reputation is directly aligned with trust. organizations that have high levels of trust, have a better reputation. And reputation is currency. We know that some of the leading organizations, from a financial standpoint that are trading stock, right? A lot of their capital is reputational. It's not necessarily dollars and cents on the balance sheet. It's how are they able to actually convince their shareholders or the market that they're going to do what they say they're going to do? Are people going to buy into that particular brand? Are they going to buy that product? And the reality is, it's not necessarily about the features of the product or about whatever it is that that organization is putting out there. Same thing with a nonprofit, right? It's about that reputation. And that's, that's interchangeable, really with trust.

Tony Kopetchny  46:02  
Reputation is currency. I love that. Thank you for diving in on that. I mean, it's it's been on my mind for years. And I think that's a great frame. And I really, that you're the first person who said it that way, reputation as currency. I've been in a lot of conversations where people put it back to brand. The brand is too nebulous, I think and I think you're right reputation is currency. It's like, that's why people buy Tylenol, not acetaminophen.

Speaker 3  46:23  
It's not what you say about yourself. It's what other people say about you. That's, that's really what it it's, it's the reflection, right? And when we're willing to actually take the time to say, How am I seen? How is the organization seen, and listened to what we hear, we actually improve our reputation, which is amazing, because if wouldn't, we want to know if we have an intention? And this is what we know, intention doesn't equal impact? Right? So if we have an intention, and that impact isn't happening, wouldn't we want to know that? Right? It's no different than when we go out there and, you know, put these great communications campaigns together, are we actually having the impact that we set out to do? And this is where I think what you were talking about with the debrief process, an adaptable process and reflection, building that in throughout and allowing ourselves to have a learning culture within organizations and creating a learning culture. That is what really allows that to happen. Is is that intention that we have actually having the impact that we're hoping it, it has,

Tony Kopetchny  47:26  
yeah, and if you even think about trust, less from external audience in but internal audience in those retrospectives by running the campaign to trust each other, that we're when we're learning, we're going to apply it correctly and not blame each other if it didn't work. And then we're going to move it forward. It's, again, here into woven throughout again, well, thank you. When it comes to ethical frameworks and playbooks, this is something I think a lot about too. I feel like the nonprofit sector is the sector that should be leading and putting these standards out there. What's your thoughts on that? I mean, should we be stepping up more? Should we be developing and sharing standards? How would we do that?

Speaker 3  48:03  
Nonprofits have a golden opportunity right now, we know that trust in institutions is quite low today. I mean, really, across all sectors, it's easy to understand why given all of the problems that have been facing society and things that have happened, and obviously at the pace that technology is going, people can't, we're not designed to take in that amount of information. And so the brain will automatically glom on to the negative things, right. But nonprofits actually have an ability to really build trust between people, and to connect some of these other systems, right, and to talk to people that may not be talking to each other. So nonprofits have higher levels of trust. So what do we do with that trust? This is really important, you know, we have an opportunity to really think about how we navigate this time and space. And what I've really appreciated is the opportunity to connect with other professionals, and understand that we're not going it alone. And that cross talk that, you know, like, just, let's get together in a room and throw things at the wall. And what I find is we're coming up against similar challenges. I do a lot of volunteer work as well and have been for many, many years. And I do the same thing. And, and it's valuable to me because doing that volunteer work allows me to interact with people from other sectors as well and see what what's going on for them. And it's, it helps me feel less alone. But it also helps me to get those really good ideas and benefit from that experience and think about how do I how do I try something? We were talking about failure and I think sometimes the nonprofit sector doesn't. They're sort of accused of not having that entrepreneurial mindset that the private sector might have. And I'll just give full disclosure, I've worked for startups in the past So I worked in the tech sector. And one thing that the tech sector I think does really well is this idea of let's try something the nonprofit sector can really benefit from that perspective, let's try something. It doesn't mean we invest all of our resources in it. But let's be willing to try something. And let's see what we learn from it. It doesn't mean we fully invest in it, it doesn't mean we staff a whole team around it. But let's just put some put a small creative team together in the way that the tech sector made. And let's try something new, and see if we can create a new widget or come up with something different, because what we know is that the way that people are consuming information is different. But what isn't different is the power of story, to change, and move and inspire people. So how do we tell those stories? How do we cut through the clutter? Who do we work with, and that's going to require just conversations between nonprofits, but also bringing people into our organizations that have diverse perspectives that have experience, I came into nonprofit, with a career working in agency, everything from serving everything from government to, you know, attractions, you know, launching attractions to doing campaign work, I worked in the tech sector, and then I moved into nonprofit. And so I'm able to bring that wealth of experience to play in the nonprofit sector. And I think that's really, really valuable, is thinking about that diversity of background, and thought and experience because we benefit from that,

Tony Kopetchny  51:31  
like that story is fundamental to I mean, it's everything happens. So fast AI is here. Now everyone's freaking out about it. But I'm like, you know, Bitcoin was the thing not too long ago and the blockchain that everybody was talking about, and you don't hear about that as much as you hear about AI now and all the other things. And I just keep always going back, like I think, to your point, where are the fundamentals? How do we get the fundamentals right, if you don't have your fundamentals, right, who cares about AI and blockchain and the next best thing, because you don't have the other pieces together first. Well, thank you. This has been an awesome, awesome conversation. Thank you. For everything. Thank you so much. I have the hardest question that I will ask you all day is coming up next. And for anyone who has been a regular listener of our podcast, you will know that we have started a Spotify channel that the answers to this final question for everybody to share. So I have to ask, because I asked all my guests soltana What is your go to song when you need a boost? And why

Speaker 3  52:27  
my go to song is titanium. by Sia, I love this song. Because a long time ago, I asked one of my close friends to describe me in one word. It's a hard question. And he said resilient. And I didn't like that answer at the time, I was young, as in my 20s. But I've come to really live into that. And I realize I am a resilient person. And so when I hear that song, it sort of reflects me back to me, it doesn't mean that I don't take in input or feedback or anything like that. What it means is that whatever I go through, I can get through it. And so when I'm having a hard time listening to that song, hearing the beat and music, it just reminds me of my strength, my power and the trust that I can put in myself.

Tony Kopetchny  53:12  
Thank you, thank you for sharing that story with us and the song and everything you've shared with us today. I really appreciate it. I wrote down I was resonating too. We have worked to hone in my intro to something very short that I did in the beginning of today's episode. But I used to intro by saying part of the podcast here. And the purpose was to share that we're not alone in the sector, and that we're all going through these things and we can learn together. So I was really happy to hear you talk about that here today, too. So Tanya, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3  53:42  
You're welcome. Thank you for the great questions, and it's always good to see you, Tony.

Tony Kopetchny  53:45  
It's wonderful to see you. I'll talk to you later. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 1  53:50  
Thank you for listening. Join us again for more engaging ideas with your host Parsons TKO CEO Tony Kopetchny. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a comment and share with your friends. Send us your feedback at create change at Parsons tko.com.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai