Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
We love to tell stories because we learn from them. They stay with us. That's why Hollywood is so popular. We looked at that and we said, there's a real opportunity to do more storytelling and compliance and ethics because while a story may not cover everything that you do, people can relate to a story.
Intro
Hello, and welcome to Integrity Through Compliance: AMI’s Business Success Series. This podcast was created by seasoned compliance experts at Affiliated Monitors to speak practically to your business needs. During this series you will hear from AMI’s experts who will provide their observations on industry trends, geared to raise your awareness and to protect your brand. So grab a cup of coffee and join us as we guide you and your business to integrity through compliance.
Jay Rosen
Hello, and welcome to Affiliated Monitors’ Integrity Through Compliance podcast. This is your host, Jay Rosen. I'm the Vice President of Business Development at Affiliated Monitors, and a monitoring specialist. And we'd like to thank you for joining us for part two of a podcast with Stef Tschida and Lisa Beth Lentini Walker. and we're here to celebrate the release of their new book, Raise Your Game, Not Your Voice: How Listening, Communicating in Storytelling Shape Compliance Program Influence. We're in for a treat today, because very often you don't get to say that, you know, people who create a book and furthermore, you don't usually have the opportunities for them to walk you through chapter by chapter and share the good bits with you. We're not going to give everything away because there's still some things that you need to read in the book. And there's some great worksheets that I'm sure Lisa Beth and stuff we'll talk about when we go through the chapters, but we're going to focus on chapter five now. And Lisa Beth is going to share some storyteller secrets. So Lisa Beth, take it away.
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
You know, it's so hard to pick a favorite chapter for me in the book, because there are so many ones that I think just everyone needs to hear. I like the storyteller's secrets though, quite a bit, because it really gets down to the essence of who we are as human beings. And one of the things we know is that human beings love stories. We've been telling stories to each other for literally thousands of years. And why are stories so influential? Well, they teach us things. They allow us to experience things without having to physically be there. The way that our brains learn, we’re wired for stories. So if you think about the greatest works of all time, things like the 10 Commandments, the Vedas, the Bible, the Book of the Dead, these are all filled with stories that tell us things and sometimes give us instructions or provide codes of conduct.
They just weren't called what we call them today, which is kind of life manuals or expectations, right? So the way that we work, we love to tell stories because we learn from them, they stay with us. That's why Hollywood is so popular, right? They're constantly telling stories and all types of stories. So we looked at that and we said, there's a real opportunity to do more storytelling in compliance and ethics. Right? I can't tell you how many times I work with people who are in this profession and they tell me, my mom doesn't know what I would do. My kids don't know what I do. And I asked them, have you told a good story? Because while a story may not cover everything that you do, people can relate to a story, especially ones that resonate with them.
So we looked at what really good storytelling looks like. You know, typically there's a pattern to storytelling. You typically capture someone's attention through either conflict or tension. You have a way that you can put yourself in their shoes, whether as the protagonist or someone else in that story. And then you use techniques that have been honed over the years to tell the story, or could provide a solution in a novel way. So we know based on lots of research from people who are much, much smarter than me, that there are certain types of stories that resonate. And when researchers were doing work into this space, they found that there were basically six types of stories that encapsulated the storytelling of the world. Everything from rags to riches or riches to rags, you know, people who are stuck and trying to climb their way out of a situation — called man in a hole.
The Icarus story, you know, where Icarus flew too close to the sun and then the wings melted because they were made of wax, and Icarus fell to the ground. Cinderella is one of my daughter's favorites, but it is a good story of a hardworking person who has an encounter and is lifted up from their life. Or even the Oedipus story. So we go over all of these different types of stories and what the story arcs are to them, and how to craft your stories about whatever profession you're in. In our case, we were speaking mostly to compliance and risk professionals into one of these archetypes so that your story can have impact and that people can connect with your story. And one of the things that we tell along the way is you don't have to have all of your own stories.
You can borrow stories. There are stories in the news every single day. You can look at, for example, Theranos. You can look at the story of Elizabeth Holmes and you can put that into a story arc and tell a story about compliance and about the importance of boards asking the right questions and all the different responsibilities that were there. Or you can take Lance Armstrong, you can take lots of public figures and put their stories into a story out arc that can help you tell a compliance story that people will then relate to. So storytelling, I think, is one of those things that connects us and allows us to be able to explain in a different way that activates the brain and gets people to remember from a sustainability standpoint, because they can relate to the story and they can relate to the message that you're trying to send to them. Other than just being told, don't do drugs, don't bribe people. Don't, don't do all of these things. Tell a story that connects a person with outcomes and you have an advocate after that, who understands.
Jay Rosen
So Lisa Beth, you've talked about these different archetypes and there's people out there, whether it's William Golden to Joseph Campbell, who talk about, you know, the hero with a thousand faces. What do you think are — you, you've talked about these different stories, but is there one that's an overarching compliance story that should apply to everyone? Is there one that kind of sticks itself raises its head up a little bit more or all those different th the seven different archetypes, or are they all equally important?
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
You know, I don't think that there's one that stands out over the other because they all serve different purposes. Some of the stories that you tell will be to inspire ,and others will be to warn. Some of the stories you tell allow people to experience things so that they can make better decisions. So whether you're telling like the — we talked about the Ben and Jerry's story, as you know — a great example of a rags to riches story that people can connect with, because it's values and purpose driven, corporate behavior. Or whether it's the Enron story, and what Ken Lay was responsible for at Enron, for, you know, flying, you know, pretty high. And then all of a sudden being diminished to nothing and going to jail and — or about to go to jail before he passed away. But I think that all of these storytelling types are important because you have to vary your stories.
If all you're doing is, you know, you're the person who's like inspiring, inspiring, inspiring, inspiring, like all of a sudden your story is start getting old. Break it up, shift it around, make sure that you do both cautionary tales as well as ones that help people to feel good. That's the art of the storyteller. If you only sing one song, you're not much of a musician, same thing with being a professional or even a professional storyteller. If all you've got is one thing, right? If all you've got is a hammer, everything's a nail. If all you've got is one story, then you know, those one trick ponies don't go very far.
Jay Rosen
So Lisa Beth, thanks for sharing your insights into storytelling. And this really segues perfectly into chapter six. And Stef’s going to tell us about it, even though Lisa Beth may have crafted the right message with an inspirational story, how do you get it to the right audience and at the right time? So take it away, Stef.
Stef Tschida
Yeah, I have to say, this is my favorite chapter because this is just so fundamental to effective communication — is starting with your audience. And we talked, um, you know, in the last podcast about starting to understand your audience by asking great questions, clarifying your understanding, really listening. And this has been about putting that into practice and communicating with them in mind, and as Lisa Beth and I have been out talking about this book, it's, you know, we've had a lot of discussion about: why is this so hard? You know, why is it so hard to start with your audience in mind? And I think there's a few reasons that are worth thinking about and reflecting on before we start talking about, you know, how to do this well. The first reason is, you know, it's human nature to be self-centered. We're all, you know, looking for survival and, you know, kind of looking after ourselves and especially in a business context, you've got, you know, your objectives and your goals and your timelines and your deadlines and your compensation and all of those things.
And that can make you really focused on yourself and what you are out to talk about as it pertains to communication in particular. And so this is about, you know, pausing and really flipping that perspective to lead with your audience first. What do they care about? How are they measured? What are their deadlines? What are their goals and objectives, and how do we fit what we're trying to talk about from a compliance perspective into their world? One frequent framework for looking at this is kind of the analogy of the hero and the guide. So, you know, if the compliance department goes out and communicates what the compliance department wants to communicate, it's making itself the hero, and it's assuming that people are sitting around and, you know, internally or externally waiting to hear what you have to say, and just open arms, wanting to hear whatever you have to say.
And that's simply not true, right? People are more distracted now than they've ever been probably. And so the goal and the point is to make the end user, your audience, the hero. They're the hero of their own story. They're going about their day, you know, doing whatever it is that they need to do, and you are the guide who's going to come alongside them and position the compliance content in terms of how it helps them and how it, you know, enables them to do whatever it is that they're going to do. So I think — I don't want to just gloss over that, and just assume that people sort of inherently understand why, you know, focusing on the audience matters. Because again, as we've been talking about the book, it's really been interesting to drill in on that and think about why is this so hard for us?
Well, that's how we're wired. But with that in mind, yes. Effective communication is all about putting your audience first and thinking about, you know, again, what it is, what is it that they care about. What do they need to hear and when, right? So we might, as a compliance department, again, be thinking about something months and months in advance, because it's super important to us. But how do you think about adjusting time delivery for your audience so that you're getting the information to them when they can actually take action on it, and when they actually need it? And that's content-based, and then I'd also say you balance that with channels or vehicles, or the method in which you communicate. So how does your audience want to be communicated to? Where are they already consuming information? Um, in the communications world, notoriously hard to reach audiences: manufacturing employees, right? Because — or call center employees, because they aren't sitting on their email. They're not tuned into their computers, they're out doing. So think about that. You know, think about how you would communicate with that audience, and how different that would look from how you would communicate with a typical corporate person. Think about how younger people are communicating and consuming information, and how that differs from older people. Just again, think about that end user, visualize them and how your information can best be communicated to them.
Jay Rosen
So, Stef, in part one, uh, we took a look at how crucial it is to build that bridge between compliance and communications or publications. And some people may have worked for smaller companies that really don't have that communications department. So could you just take a couple moments and let our listeners know, what are things they should be thinking about in terms of the five key publication milestones?
Stef Tschida
Yeah. In an ideal world, you'll have a corporate communications partner like Lisa Beth, and I have partnered to help you navigate this, but the truth is many of us won't. Many of us are doing this without that level of support. And so that's why we've covered this in the book. And so these milestones vary by company and industry, certainly, but just generally speaking, they include approvals. So you create content — wonderful. Who needs to approve it and bless it to say, yep, this is ready to go out to the audience, whoever that may be? So think about that when you're creating content and backing out from whatever it is, you ultimately want it to be in the hands of your end user plan time for approvals. Often these are busy executives giving approvals. It can be hard to get their attention. Plan enough time.
Um, I speak from experience on this in multinational or global organizations. Plan time for translations, if needed, you know, that's nice to do, and a must do depending on the jurisdictions in which you're operating. That takes time, not only to get those translations done, but often to quality check them with local speakers. And so really, again, a really critical component to be planning for as you're backing out from when you ultimately want to communicate. Of course, there are publication milestones. There are different things that go into publishing different vehicles, depending on what the lead times are, um, you know, all sorts of things to keep in mind and to investigate and understand. There can also, in corporations, be advanced notice or pre-IND form processes. So I work with some clients where nothing, no matter what, how menial or trivial it is, nothing goes out without, you know, the executive team being informed 24 hours in advance. That can look very different across companies, but understand what that is, and make sure you are abiding by that.
So you're shipping in culturally, um, within the organization and then finally printing and, or shipping lead times so much less is getting printed and shipped to these days. And yet, depending on the audience, depending on what it is that you're communicating in the vehicle, this may be in play. And there are certainly, um, you know, times required to create a physical document and ship it around the world. Um, and so these are all things where it really encouraging, um, the compliance folks listening to think about as you're planning, how you deliver that information you've created.
Jay Rosen
Next up, we're going to delve into chapter seven and it's entitled Say it Again: Repetition Matters. And Stef, if you can, you just talked about some of those different consumers in the last chapter, but how do they consume your compliance messaging? So if you can talk about, I don't know what the specific number is, but there's research that a message needs to be repeated. I don't know if it's 13 or seven times until that message gets in. So how do you use this concept of repetition to really take your message and make it take off?
Stef Tschida
Yes. And Jay it's, you know, in communications, we often say seven times, seven ways. So that tends to be kind of the common lexicon there. And it's important to understand it's seven times. So that's repetition. And it's seven ways, which is to vary repetition. We talk about in this chapter. And so, you know, we talk about the need to repeat is because, you know, people are more distracted than ever. There's a lot of information coming their way. And so often when I'm counseling clients about repeating themselves, they rightly ask, well, isn't that just adding to the noise, that's already part of the problem, right? Um, and that's where the key here is the varied repetition. So it's not about, you know, saying the same exact thing in the same exact way, seven different times that would annoy people, even though there is some validity in that with, you know, social media algorithms that keep us from seeing so much of what's put out, et cetera.
But again, from a communication standpoint, it's all about varied repetition is the best practice. And that can be a few different things that can be, you know, variation of channels. So, you know, serving different things up in different ways across maybe a blog versus social media versus an internet article internally versus in an app versus a digital screen or a, you know, a flyer in a break room for some of those hard to reach folks. Um, so there's variation by channel and inherently, you know, your information will be different to appeal to each different channel. You've got, you know, 140 character tweets versus longer form formats. Um, so that's kind of baked in when it comes to that. And then there's also variation, just in terms of the content itself. So different audiences will care about different aspects of a particular message. So you might really choose to focus in on what your audience cares about, and vary that.
And there's also just, you know, creating variation on the same simple message for the same audience. So for example, maybe your first notification about a topic is all about the what — what it is we're talking about. Why does it matter? Um, and kind of focusing on that, the next message might be a quick summary or a recap of the what, but then it really drills into the how or the when, and it brings people along on that journey. So we walk through that in detail in the book and give specific examples. And we also have worksheets in the back of the book that help people do this and really take them step by step through how that might look again with specific examples, so they can apply it to whatever it is that they're trying to communicate about.
Jay Rosen
So you shared with us earlier that you both both met while you were at Carlson Wagonlit. Are there any specific stories that are about the travel industry that you can highlight in a campaign on how you broke that to the employees? Or are, is there some type of, kind of, um, story or methodology that kind of cuts across industries that you can speak about?
Stef Tschida
Well, Lisa Beth. I love it when you talk about the human trafficking example.
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
Yeah. So, um, one of the things that, uh, I think we were all very proud of at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and within all of the Carlson companies, is the strong stance that the Carlson family had to, um, eradicate human trafficking and to provide tools so that every person who is working at a hotel, every person who, um, working in, uh, with airlines knew how to identify and knew what to do when they had suspicions that there was trafficking going on. Um, one of the things that I thought they did that was really exceptional was they put faces to the stories of trafficking. They brought in speakers, and they, um, had us understand from the speakers’ vantage point, the benefits that, um, existed in terms of having charitable work that was focused on helping survivors. And so they really focused on the whole challenge that existed and put their name behind making sure that they were doing everything possible to eradicate trafficking globally, right?
And part of eradicating that globally was really allowing people to connect and say, you know, that could be my mother. That could be my sister. That could be me. That could be my nephew, you know, really allowing those stories to stand out so that people remembered, and then were able to do their jobs better because they knew what to look for; that there was a human face to this concept that could be nebulous without it. So, um, that's one of the stories that's in the book because you know, many of the topics that we deal with, whether it's trade sanctions and embargoes or bribery and corruption, it seems so far away until it's not.
Jay Rosen
Great. So we're going to work our way into the home stretch and take a look at chapter eight. We're going to keep the microphone with Lisa Beth. And we're going to take a look at the listening advantage. How can we appreciate the gift of feedback?
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
Well, this is one that, I mean, I almost feel like this should maybe be the first chapter in the book because listening is actually so critical. If you say something and nobody's listening, does it matter? Nope. It's like, yeah, it didn't say it at all. And one of the things that can be really hard to do is, you know, we are always very, you know, self-centered human beings. We want to have our needs met, but forcing yourself to listen to what other people are saying in an unbiased way is actually one of the greatest gifts that you can give to yourself. And you can give to others around you. It allows you to have better self-awareness and understand how you're being perceived and how you can better navigate the world around you. And this goes for like, in your personal life, as well as in your professional life, right?
If you spend all of your time not listening to your significant other's needs and not meeting their needs, where they are, uh, you're not going to have that relationship very long. The same is true in, in the workplace, right? Like, it can't always be just about you. Um, and so we talk about, um, the listening advantage and the gift of feedback, because feedback really is a gift of time and energy. Whoever is giving you feedback is making an investment in you. And that's how we have to see it rather than getting all bent out of shape about something that we might not want to hear. So I think it's really important for, particularly in this position of trust, where we're entrusted with being guardians of enterprises, guardians of integrity, et cetera, that we do really deep, critical listening. So I always encourage people to, um, learn how to accept that two-way dialogue. Learn how to collect that information and make it easy for people to give you feedback, giving really critical feedback — things that people need to hear — is hard because you just don't know how people are going to take it. You don't know whether it's going to be accepted or not. So creating an environment where feedback is actively encouraged and sought out and accepted and incorporated, and people can see that it's making a difference is so important in every aspect of your life. And look, you know, the numbers don't lie when you, when you get feedback from enough people, you know, there's validity in that. Yes, people can have an off experience, but if everybody's having the same experience, that is probably telling you something. So I encourage everyone who's in this profession to actively seek out the voice of the customer, right? And your customer is every stakeholder that you ever have an interaction with, right? You've got stakeholders in your personal life. You've got stakeholders in your professional life. Listen to what they have to say. Most of the time, they are saying things to help you not to hurt you. And then figure out how you're going to communicate back to them. So you have a feedback loop, and look at what's really causing the impressions that you are leaving with the people around you. So ask good questions, connect with people, really listen to what they have to say, and then think about how you continue to grow and move forward. There's always room for growth. So those voices really can help lead the way.
Jay Rosen
I've got some very tough questions that you ask in the book that I want to read. And that's going to lead me to what we do with regard to “keep, stop, and start.” So these questions are, what support are you looking for from your compliance program? What's your biggest complaint about compliance? What words would you use to describe the compliance program? And what areas does compliance really excel, and in what areas can the compliance program improve? So how does one take these very hard questions and take answers, and make them actionable for improving your program going forward?
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
So I do like to use the “keep, stop, start.” Like keep, what are we doing well, and we just need to maintain the quality of, right. This is a question that helps you to identify the things that are huge accomplishments, um, hallmarks of your program. The stop part is, you know what, this is not going well, this communication didn't hit, right? We need to rethink how we're delivering it, or we need to rethink the way that we're showing up. Like, if you're delivering messages in an already crowded space and yours isn't sticking out, then something's going sideways. So how do you stop? What's not going well. Or when they're, you know, core experiences so that you can have capacity to either start doing different things or support differently, those things that are going well.
And then of course there are things that you might want to start doing — those goals that you have. So understanding and kind of bucketing the feedback that you've received into things that are going well, things that aren't going well, things that are opportunities, is a really good way to start moving the needle on how everything is perceived, how you are perceived personally. I think you can also do this by substituting “compliance program” — you can put your name in there and ask your significant other, like what's going really well? What's not going really well? What are you happy with? What are you really unhappy with? And actually, you know, this isn't meant to be like, um, you know, a relationship advice book, but like you can kind of use some of this stuff in every aspect of your life.
Jay Rosen
Perfect. So we unfortunately are getting close to the end of our time. I like to open this up for some final thoughts from Stef and Lisa Beth, and I'd like to frame it that, you've written this wonderful resource. You've gone out, you've done some podcasts. Uh, hopefully we're seeing some good numbers on Amazon, but where do you go next? You're at the top of the mountain right now. You can look at where you've gone, what's happened, but besides taking a deep breath, giving yourself a pat on the shoulders, what do you think is the next thing, Stef?
Stef Tschida
Yeah. You know, one thing Lisa Beth and I really hope comes from this, is that we get the opportunity to do some of this consulting and partnership with specific organizations and their compliance departments to help them communicate more effectively and manage relationships effectively. We'd love to be able to take the real-world experience we have and apply it elsewhere. So we're wide open for that. And of course, you know, from my perspective, just continuing to do the communications consulting work that I love across industries.
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
So from my perspective, here are a couple of things I'd leave you with: continue to be curious and continue to learn. Make sure that when you are working, you surround yourself as much as possible with people who lift you up and make you better at what you do. If you do that, and you have the opportunity to work with people who make you a better practitioner every single day, you would be astonished at the things that you can accomplish. You know, find your Stef. Find your person who amplifies and challenges you, and makes you into a better version of yourself all the time. Um, and then the other thing that I would say is, we put this book together because we thought it was a voice that needed to be heard. We hope that people read it. We think, I kind of feel like I'm at the beginning of the mountain, like we've gotten to the foothills, because I do think that we are going to take this message further and further because part of this book is enabling people to be better communicators in all aspects. Our hope is that people will read this. If everyone followed it, I think we'd have a better workplace and that people would be communicating better and more often with each other in more meaningful ways. So we're hoping that this leads to better conversations, deeper understanding, and that the worksheets help anyone who reads them. We hope that this book is dog-eared and well-worn over the years.
Jay Rosen
So thank you so much. Uh, within the show notes, we'll have contact information for both of you individually, and we'll also have information on where to go and find the book on Amazon, but just to have a verbal cue to Lisa, Beth, what is the best email address or best way for people to reach out to you?
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
My email is
[email protected]. And you can find me on LinkedIn.
Jay Rosen
And then to find the book?
Lisa Beth Lentini Walker
Go to Amazon, or go to Corporate Compliance Insights. And you'll see in their publications page page, there is a landing page for the book.
Jay Rosen
Stef, the best way to get in touch with you?
Stef Tschida
Sure. Um, my email addresses
[email protected]. So it's a little bit of a doozy. If that's too hard, you can easily find me on LinkedIn as well, under Stef Tschida.
Jay Rosen
Perfect. Well, on behalf of Lisa Beth Lentini Walker, and Stef Tschida, this is Jay Rosen here at Affiliated Monitors on the Integrity Through Compliance podcast. I'd like to thank my two colleagues, Deloris Saad and Dan Barton, for their crack audio work on this podcast. And we look forward to joining you again when we look at how we can increase integrity through compliance on the Affiliated Monitors podcast.
Outro
Thank you for joining Affiliated Monitors’ podcast, Integrity Through Compliance: AMI’s Business Success Series. Today's segment is just a sample of the subject matter expertise captured by AMI’s compliance professionals. Go to our website at www.affiliatedmonitors.com to view the comprehensive list of industry and in-house talent AMI has available to enhance professional and business integrity programs and controls. Also, connect with us on LinkedIn to receive updates and trends in the areas of enforcement and compliance. If you have any questions about today's podcast or would like to learn more, please contact us at
[email protected]. Our Affiliated Monitors podcast production team of Deloris Saad, our compliance associate, and Dan Barton, our editor and podcast music composer, look forward to you joining us again for our next installment of Integrity Through Compliance: AMI’s Business Success Series.
