For many C-Suite executives, protecting their brand’s reputation is a top priority. In an age where misinformation and disinformation is becoming increasingly common, leadership teams need to act fast to prepare for harmful effects on business. In this episode of the “Can You Hear Me?” podcast, co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson discuss “Navigating the Misinformation Highway.”
How Comms Pros Can Counter Misinformation By Gini Dietrich
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Rob Johnson: [00:00:19] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Can You Hear Me podcast. I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications. [00:00:26][6.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:00:27] And I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of The Harbinger Group, a marketing and strategy for. For many C-suite executives, protecting their brands reputation is a top priority in an age of misinformation and disinformation content becoming increasingly common. Leadership teams need to act fast to prepare for harmful effects on their businesses. So today we will discuss navigating the misinformation highway where bots, influencers and propagandists rule the road. [00:00:54][26.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:00:54] To put them in their place. We'll try. We'll do our very best to do this. We want to first credit Jennie Dietrich, the CEO of Arment Dietrich Public Relations in Chicago, for prompting this episode. Topic Her blog How Comms Pros Can Counter Misinformation. Brings up multiple essential points, many of which we are pondering and also reading about. For instance, she talks about mis belief and misinformation. You've seen it time and again where people share information that is clearly fake, but since it backs up someone's point of view or belief system, they share it anyway. We saw this commonly leading up to and since the recent election. That's a terrific example, I think. [00:01:33][38.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:01:34] Absolutely. There was so much baked into there. We can hit on that when we get to the social part of this conversation. I think in particular, there'll be tons to talk about. We go to the election. [00:01:43][8.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:01:43] But it is amazing how people how people just they'll they'll say, well, it lines up. It's good for me. This is what I want to share. And, you know, getting the facts right used to matter a long time ago. And now it's it's it's not. You're wrong or I'm wrong. It's. Those are my facts, Eileen. And you might say, well, those are my facts, Rob. I mean, I don't think we would do that, but that's how that conversation goes sometimes. [00:02:06][22.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:02:06] Yeah, increasingly, no doubt about it. And it's so perplexing and difficult to for rational minds to really kind of, you know, wrap their brains around. When I think about the the harmful effects of misinformation on businesses in particular and how quickly that that threat is escalating, it just makes me think about, you know, the C-suite executives we typically are speaking to, I guess, on our podcast, because I want I know you share the strive every leadership team to know that they should be preparing for this actively and on an ongoing basis. And I think that's what we're going to attempt to cover today in this show, because this isn't going away. It's getting worse and worse and worse. Four years ago, I don't think any of us anticipated that what happened in this election year would have escalated to the degree that it has. But that is spreading everywhere on the Internet in terms of where social media platforms, where information is sought by people today. So it's not going away. I think it's the top business issue for leaders today that should be at the tippy top or work that they put their minds to in 2025 because it directly affects customer reference. Choices, as we said, affects brand reputation, all of those things. It's so, so serious that they need I think CEOs really need to educate themselves about why is this here now and how can it impact not just reputation but also sales and all kinds of things, you know, relative to their business? And we're going to dig into a few the books and resources that will be useful in understanding how people process information. [00:03:47][100.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:03:48] I mean, think about being a CEO right now, being one of the CEOs that's been on our show, or you are a CEO, so you don't have to imagine it. You are one. Imagine having to have the real things that are in front of you, that are in front of you, that are huge challenges on a daily and weekly, a monthly and quarterly basis. And then imagine having all of a sudden all this stuff that isn't real that might get you so. So yes, you have to worry about what's right in front of you, the real stuff. And then you have to worry about the stuff that may or may not happen. That's not real at all. That's very daunting. [00:04:20][32.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:04:21] Yeah. And it used to just be that, you know, it was crisis preparedness and crises usually would happen because an employee did something wrong or a leadership team member did something wrong or a product malfunctioned. Those are the types of crises these this is the potential for completely false information about an organization should just be perpetuated for with nefarious intent. Often we know that's disinformation and how you can be prepared for that can feel almost impossible, but absolutely at a minimum, overwhelming. So that's why I appreciated that Ginny wrote this article from the perspective of what communications professionals need to do. You and I are going at it from what C-suite executives need to do today. [00:05:05][44.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:05:05] A little bit different. Yeah. [00:05:06][0.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:05:06] Yeah. I'm there were there was one book that Ginny had in her article that will highlight she called it or it is titled Pardon me Mis belief by Dan Ariely our. Why? There's a real good section in her article about that. But we'll highlight some of it because coincidentally, I also read that book. I share the same fears. I think that's in those same nightmares. So and we must be similar in that we both when I'm faced with things that scare the hell out of me, I want to go learn everything that I can about them and try, because I think that's the control side of my personality type. The other book that she didn't mention, but I want to highlight because it was equally helpful for me and understanding kind of what's going on, especially in this election cycle. It's called Invisible Rulers, and that was written by Rene de Rasta on d i r s t a Rene is with the Stanford Internet Observatory, although I think I should say was with because I believe a lawsuit shut that down this summer and crushed it unfortunately. But her book, both of these books are incredible resources. I'm highlighting them now at the top of the show because often CEOs, their first reaction is, I have to go learn about this as well. These are great resources, particularly for understanding how people process information. That's I think in this belief in particular, there's quite a bit of kind of the psychological side of things like because rational people think, why would you ever believe that, that that's a lie? There's not even like a remote possibility that that's accurate. Why are you perpetuating that, first of all? But secondly, how come you believe it in the first place? So it goes into the psychology of how people are kind of in this era environment, predisposed to or are susceptible or vulnerable to things that aren't true, merely because they tug at fears that they may have kind of buried deep within their psyche? Yeah, and so that's the activator time. And there's a lot of fear right now, isn't there, now? [00:07:09][122.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:07:09] Absolutely, yeah. [00:07:10][0.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:07:11] So it makes it pretty easy. So I highly recommend both of those books. There's a little bit from Rene's book in particular that I found pretty interesting. But we'll we'll dig into that next because it's at the social media section in particular. Could be juicy in our conversation today. So relative to this topic, let's let's let's move on to the social media effect here, because, you know, I've been in this industry long enough and you certainly have to rob the business of news and communications when people in communications could kind of help out an organization or business if if they faced a crisis by doing things that were far more standard and straightforward. The classic op ed in a newspaper media outlet, for example, you know, just support your own opinion or even an initiative that's that's okay today. But it's not it's not really the full answer that we're going to talk about why it can't be next. But let's stick on social media, because now in social info just spreads like wildfires, like the wildfires that are burning all over our country now, frankly. But it hits every channel almost at the same time. It increases in voracity with speed we've never seen before. And controlling it can be really, really difficult. [00:08:25][74.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:08:26] That is the scary part because yeah, we think about, you know, op ed still happen, but it's just I mean, it's just a pretty small tool in the toolbox now. And what you're talking about multiple social channels being able to blast things out simultaneously. And so if you're on the receiving end of that especially misinformation as we're talking about today, it it is head spinning because it's like you're trying to you're trying to stop the water leak. And it's like, well, where do okay, stop that leak. What about this one? And it's just it is daunting because it happened so immediate and because it has such great reach and and because of the reason we talked about earlier, which is people are inclined to believe if it's their belief system, they're all in there, like these are the facts and they may not even research it or look into it. You know, you talked a little bit about, you know, looking people up or doing research. And I think that's one of the key components, too, is you see something new like, well, let me let me dig a little deeper on that. I'm not sure if that's true. Most people don't even do that. They're just like they're the facts. I read it on whatever their social channel is. Got to be the truth or they want it to be the truth. [00:09:36][69.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:09:36] Yeah. Is that they want it to be absolutely fair point. The gasoline on the fire in social and this goes in a book Invisible rulers by Rene director I can't I have a whole block on her name dressed up. She talks about the gasoline being the influencers and that they're paid by their platforms to bring in bigger and bigger audiences. And their incentive is to grow their audience, but also to keep their attention longer. Because, you know, in the breaks is when the advertising gets sneaks in, right? So the sponsors are happy the longer that they stick around. And director talks about these five category. Series of influencers. So she says they're entertainers, explainers, besties idols and gurus. But regardless of the type, you know that the above all goal, no matter who they are, what they're talking about, whether they see themselves as ethical or not, it's engagement. And as influencers match their topics to their compensation, their paycheck, they quickly realize, the algorithm rewards me when I talk about these things. It has the highest, you know, residents and engagement rates. I'm going to keep steering in that direction. And that isn't healthy because when you when you couple that with. So this is another thing that Dresser asserts in her research. It's the combination of influencer plus algorithm plus crowd is where the scary stuff happens. And there's some great case studies that she goes into how outright lies are spread. But it's it it's often early on in and in kind of the catching the wave I mean social media it is the influencer or multiple influencers who started it and then they just kept pouring more and more gasoline on it by cutting that content into all kinds of different slices and dices and continuing to put it up, etc., etc., etc.. So the algorithm responds to that and that creates this disinformation firestorm. So that's why it happened so fast. And that's why I want to mention that a core component of that is the influencer. And many brands are involved with lots of lots of influencers right now. [00:11:51][135.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:11:52] And we're not saying influencers are bad. [00:11:53][1.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:11:54] Not at all. [00:11:54][0.4]
Rob Johnson: [00:11:55] Not at all. What we are saying though, you just outlined the way the the way information is is spread and used to be spread by somebody who would be a impartial source. And so you could say, that must be, you know, or you'd look into it and say, that must be true. But that's not the goal. The influencer, you just outlined it perfectly. Their goal is to get clicks, to be influential, to have people stick around and to keep consuming whatever it is that they're sharing, and that's how they get paid. I even see it in mainstream media sometimes when people are criticizing an on air, you know, opinion person or, you know, who's giving a kind of crazy take that people say, wow, that's kind of, you know, out of left field or even somebody who's writing, you know, an opinion piece or a blog and people like you're just trying to get clicks, you're just trying to get clicks. And it's like, that's the new rating system, You know, when when I did, you know, when I did TV, everybody's worried about, you know, the ratings, the Nielsen ratings. And I know they still are to a degree. But now people to get influence now that that now that the world of information has shifted from say, news more traditional news to this, it's how has your audience are you engaging them And nobody says, is that true? There's nobody there's nobody at some of these outlets or, you know, you know, the big customer and the people who are engaging the influence are that saying, is all this true? Nobody's saying that, are they? They're just flat. They just want influence. I don't want to paint everybody with a broad brush, though, either. But I'm saying in in instances like the ones we're talking about with misinformation, I would say that's the case. [00:13:26][91.2]
Eileen Rochford: [00:13:27] Yeah. There's the intent is simply that's a, that's a wave I can ride and I'm going to get a bigger paycheck as a consequence. I don't care if it's not true, I don't care if it's and. [00:13:36][9.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:13:36] Nobody else cares either. Right. Like they're saying, they may be saying we don't care and then and the audience is like, we don't care. The audience used to care. They don't. [00:13:44][7.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:13:44] Care. But just understanding, I think from, you know, the leadership team C-suite executive perspective that that the role of influencers in all of this and and why it's important to understand that and be very careful about any influencers you might align yourself with in your partnerships, whether it's in marketing or, you know, co-hosting events or whatever the case may be. Just be certain that you're really seeing what kind of content they put out there and what control do you have over any content that might involve you. So just a little note for as a sidebar action item, if you will. But that that book, Invisible Rulers, Renee, goes into it in great depth and I highly recommend it again, simply because understanding the beast that you're dealing with is core to being able to create a strategy where you can protect your organization as well as a plan for what to do if it were to happen to you. [00:14:38][53.2]
Rob Johnson: [00:14:38] And there it is. It's everybody sitting here going. [00:14:40][2.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:14:41] Who's out. [00:14:42][0.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:14:42] There? This may be saying, my gosh, this they've outlined the problem beautifully. Now how do we try to solve the problem? Let's get to some of those more actionable things. Eileen, we cannot understate the challenges of AI in this scenario. We also know the challenges oftentimes produce opportunities. The fact is with AI, you can create fake content, fake picture, fake quote, anything, and that fake content, it puts a client in the crosshairs. It's incumbent upon the communications professional with those folks to make sure they have the scenarios built in where you can debunk. I fallacies and some people might be saying that sounds like a lot more work. And we're saying, yeah, it is. [00:15:22][40.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:15:23] It is. That's absolutely the case. [00:15:25][1.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:15:26] But there is a there is a pathway here to sort of to try to blunt that because I can create whatever you want it to. Content wise? [00:15:34][8.9]
Eileen Rochford: [00:15:35] Yeah. So if you're not investing in the type of monitoring tools that look for misshapen representations, visual and otherwise, of your organization, all of your intellectual property, that's that's absolutely abuzz right now. Any organization, frankly, of any size, you know, there's different price points for these kinds of tools and we'll link to a few of them in the shownotes. But as you're thinking about 2025 and the investments you need to make in this area that we've identified is probably one of your very top urgent priorities to address. You know, in the coming year, you're going to have to have a tool like that or several that can help you track any misrepresentation visually or otherwise, even going beyond just your brand logo images that involve your brand to faces of your people, especially your leadership team members, making sure they're not being superimposed on images that put them in compromising situations. Things that manufacture, that use their voices because it's able you can access your voices from lots of contexts. [00:16:36][61.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:16:37] So easy. [00:16:37][0.2]
Eileen Rochford: [00:16:38] On out there. So that can be reproduced quite easily as well. So setting up all the tools to look for that and make sure that it's not happening to you, you're not becoming a victim of that is it? Is essential, frankly, as a next step. No doubt about it. And it's you know, it's hard to stay on top of it for sure. [00:16:55][17.1]
Rob Johnson: [00:16:55] It's hard to stay on top of it. And let me raise a point. And I think we saw it a fair amount in the election when there would be something that was clearly fake and somebody would say, now run it through their tool and figure out that picture was fake or that never happened, that incident, you know, that was all made up. And it kind of it kind of or the water on that, the fallacy fire that was burning. Right. But let me ask you this question. I don't know if you know the answer to it is because what you're going to see, if you run something through your air tool and you say, that's clearly fake and here's how, and you can even outline it, here's how that's fake. What's going to keep the person that's perpetuating the lie to be like, that's not fake. That's that's real. You're lying. You're fake, you know, because you don't want to get into like a he said she said back and forth kind of thing. But I feel like these monitoring tools did their jobs pretty well during the election when there would be things that were not true that were being put out there. Is does that make sense? And then I'm asking the question, too. So you're like rubs, you know, all over the map here. [00:17:56][60.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:17:57] Nothing new. So what is the question? Just recap it for me. [00:18:01][4.1]
Rob Johnson: [00:18:02] Question is a threat. Question is when you run it through your A.I. tool and it says clearly fake and will, here's how it's fake. And so you put out that fire. What's to keep the other side? The other side doesn't want you to know They're the ones that perpetuated the lie, so they're not going to be getting into the he said she said right there, they're trying to do it stealth, like let's see if that fake picture passes muster. And then Eileen in her air tool for her client said, no, no, no, that's completely not true. And here are the reasons why. And whatever that seemed to have ended it, because I'm guessing the people that are perpetuating the lie don't want to step out and say, well, that's that's the truth, because they want to stay. They want to stay below radar, right? [00:18:38][36.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:18:39] Yeah. I think the the primary things to focus on in an instance like that is to identify as best you can where it's coming from, who posted it, what organization might be behind it, Get as far as you can down that rabbit hole as possible. There are ways that you can identify some of these markers for sure and get your legal team involved as quickly as you can, because they're going to be your best line of defense in many of these situations is if it becomes more of a reputational crisis where there's a conspiracy about something like Jenny cited in her article, the company Wayfair, when they faced a situation not long ago where there was just this rumor that was kind of it wouldn't die on the Internet about why their dressers, I think or credenza is like certain types of furniture were so much less expensive. And if you can believe this, I know it seems ridiculous to the rational mind, but the theory that was being perpetuated was that they were trafficking human children inside of these furniture pieces as they were being shipped for real. And so they were making their profit off of the trafficking and therefore the furniture discounted the furniture. So that would move quickly and things of that nature. Right. There's a whole case study on that that will link in the show notes. But in a situation like that, that's what reputational and you're gonna have to have an entire team almost an army involved particularly we'll get to a second but your your own employees can be an awesome line of defense in this regard to equipping them with consistent messaging. It could be. All of your partners who you you know, if you go down, they go down, lining them up. We'll talk about some of these things, too. But you get the idea when it's reputational. It's one thing if it's their one off things all day long for many, many brands that they're just playing Whac-A-Mole with. But that's the cost of doing business. And frankly, that's a new hidden cost. [00:20:35][116.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:20:35] That's real. That is a new hidden cost. [00:20:37][1.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:20:37] It is a new hidden cost, no doubt about it. Your legal fees are going to go up and your tool fees for tracking and monitoring for misuse of anything related to your brand or your people, that's another investment that you absolutely have to make. You're probably going to have to add more staff in in the marketing side or information technology side of your businesses. All of those things are realities. So no doubt. Yeah. [00:21:00][22.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:21:01] Good stuff. No, that's that's I mean, that's kind of where I was heading. And you you articulated it well. [00:21:06][4.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:21:06] Well, thanks. You shape that. Okay. So being proactive is also imperative. Monitoring is not enough in this new age. And I think what we can talk about here in terms of activity, doing that crisis planning, which in this new world isn't just the far fetched scenarios, it's these are scenarios that could happen honestly to any organization, forcing yourselves to go through the practice of identifying the possible scenarios and developing messaging. You're going to have to have all kinds of different tailored messaging that might relate, that might need to be utilized based on these different scenarios. You know, that that you brainstorm and probably you need to go through that not just with your inside folks, but certainly some outside counsel would be beneficial to really because, you know, the more minds, the better. Well, and frankly, what you could find. [00:22:00][53.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:22:01] Was that with a counsel, whether it be internal or external, there's a lot of these things that they have. You have to run it by them anyway. So it's not like, hey, we're going to go send this message out. It's like if it's sensitive enough, you've got to make sure the the attorneys get involved. And some people are like, really? And it's like, yeah, really? So whether they're internal or external, they probably need to see it anyway. So getting those eyes on it early is a good idea. [00:22:23][22.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:22:23] Yeah. I want to make one point here that I think is very relevant that misinformation thrives in a void, right? It's the absence of positive information that often creates the environment in which people can more readily accept a fallacy. So remember that misinformation thrives in a void because the antidote to that is the active insistence authentic communications from your own organization. So again, that's another hidden cost. You need to communicate more now more than you ever have. You need to have more reasons to communicate and you need to be consistently committing to and adhering to a plan for a drumbeat of communications, if you will. That's like I said, it's authentic and positive. That's that's really what matters here. It's like I think of it as the more that you invest in and commit to create creating positive stories, information about your organization, whether it's for profit, nonprofit, it does not matter. You're building up like layers in your shield. [00:23:30][66.9]
Rob Johnson: [00:23:31] So great analogy. [00:23:32][0.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:23:32] Yeah, Yeah. It's like armor. So you're going to be so much better able to deflect whatever bullets or spears or whatever gets shot at you in, in the digital world. So because it's it's that consistent sharing of this is who we are, this is what we do, these are our values. Here's how we live. Those values. Your stories of human beings who are part of our organization, who live those values, or the people we serve, who are impacted by our choice to conduct business in this way. All of those things are the little seeds that are sowing trust sprouts that are going to shoot up and they're going to grow and they're going to thrive. So that's how I just mixed a bunch of different things. But I think you get the idea. [00:24:16][44.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:24:17] Now, the mix metaphors I told I was following along and I was like, that's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Well, you're also saying here is by having a cadence, a regular cadence with your messaging, whether it's, you know, external to customers directly or clients, whether it's social, the fact that you're there putting out the content that is positive, that not only is it positive, but it's from your point of view, it is content that you have created that defines the company in the way you want it defined. And if somebody goes and spreads misinformation about you, if you don't have a cadence or if you don't have a presence online, then all of a sudden it's like, well, gosh, I haven't seen anything that done in months. This must be true. These people are hiding behind whatever, as opposed to you're creating regular content that is relevant to the audience, that is positive, that is done with your point of view and mind. And so when somebody if somebody were to try to. Sneak some misinformation in there. I'm not saying you don't have to deal with it. You would. But the fact that you have this history of content creation and of regular messaging is so important. So I just wanted to take what you said, which I fully agree with and kind of give it just, you know, take it down a little bit different path there in terms of making it relevant to everybody else because your multiple metaphors were awesome. [00:25:38][81.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:25:40] Thank you. Okay, let's see if I can come up with few more of those zingers. So, yeah, I guess the closing point in this part of our discussion is you're you've got to build and strengthen continuously get make those muscles bigger and bigger when it comes to establishing your credibility, which is directly connected to trust. So I guess the other thing I would like to say is that you can't just tell human stories. You have to use data to prove things, too. So you've got to have whatever data it is that you know is the thing in your world. Remember, you've got to prove and show. It's the human stories that create the opportunities to connect and relate. So it's just that's all. [00:26:22][42.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:26:22] The stories I tell, the stories I tell this to clients all the time in nature, and I know you do, too. It's and you got to back it up with facts, stats, and then you have to make it relatable. You can't just sit here and tell them what the issue is. You have to be able to tell the story around that fact, that stat. And I think that's very important. [00:26:39][16.9]
Eileen Rochford: [00:26:39] Definitely. [00:26:39][0.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:26:40] We have some takeaways here from Jenny Dietrich's article. And while we pointed out some of the perils of this newer, faster paced digital landscape are also opportunities for innovation, new tools to verify information that we've been talking about, improve monitoring that could alert you to potential problems and building strong networks of trustworthy partners that can offer truth and combat the fake content. So we talked about the two previous, but the last one there, you touched upon it briefly, I think, Eileen, about the the partners, the people that can, you know, the network of people that can help, you know, help you make your case. [00:27:14][33.3]
Eileen Rochford: [00:27:14] And that that's a that's a big world. And when we use that word, you know, network and partners, certainly those you conduct business with. So any. So if you think about financial services organization, depending on what sector they're in, they're going to have lots of different companies. They do business with banks, different, gosh, insurance providers most likely. I'm trying to think of even my own financial advisor is a great example. He's just got so many different partners. When you think of all those types of they're like the the octopus tentacles that kind of come down from the body of your organization. They can all be swatting at your enemies on your behalf to ward off threats. So create inventory as part of your preparedness plan and make sure that you have real solid, healthy relationships with them, Maybe even as part of that consistent communications that you're creating, you bring them into a lot of that content production so that it doesn't look to the outside world as inauthentic. So you're kind of inoculating ahead of time? Yeah, we do business with these people. We have extremely healthy relationships and we've conducted research together. We've written white papers together, whatever the case may be. Just some examples of how you can do that. That's one kind of network you can activate. Another one is and I do want to delve into this a little deeply is your employees. This is key. So part of the problem right now and this is for everybody, but I think it applies because it's within your direct control C-suite, folks, everybody is lacking in critical thinking skills right now. Everybody, the entire world. So if you want to be in a position where you can activate your employees to help, you need to start putting some effort into developing their critical thinking skills so that they can help you identify things that are false. That's just think about that, right? So putting some effort into improving critical thinking skills across the board for everyone who works in your organization, the payoff significantly for you in the long run. Another thing is you want to have them all be trained, invest in some more training. So in in two areas is where I think the trains are most important. The first is they need to understand the story of your organization, its origin story. What do you do today? Who are the people you serve like in their bones? Right? You need to make sure that they know it. They feel it, they believe it, and they can talk about it authentically. As an individual human being. I don't think enough companies do that, frankly, and certainly not to the degree that you would need them to be prepared to do that on your behalf if something very bad happened. [00:29:49][154.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:29:49] Or when you're onboarding someone, you know, a new employee, not a lot of times getting that professional development that they need, I wouldn't even call that professional development. I would just call that onboarding. You know, like even onboarding. Here's who we are. Here's who we stand for. I mean, they they know about the company, but do they know about the company? And a lot of times these younger people or these newer hires don't know about the company. And then you talk you talked about professional development, areas of training that you see. It's been a. I'll let you finish that thought in a second. But you know, people like our profession. Well, it's like it's very important. So we're really talking about two different things here, the proper onboarding and then the professional development. [00:30:25][35.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:30:25] Please correct the continuation. Yeah, because I mean, I work with organizations we all do here at The Harbinger Group, many of whom we've had very long relationships with 18 years, 19 years kind of long. And people we work with have been there longer 26, 27, 28 years. You're going to forget and you're going to need a refresher. Anybody who works anywhere at least once a year needs to have the opportunity to hear the story, tell the story, because the story evolves and you want them to know that in its current authentic state, always they just need to feel it and know it in their bones. The other aspect of this. So I just I critical thinking that's a thing that you can bring in into your organization as part of professional development message training, and that means your story of your company and that if a crisis were to occur, make sure that they have, you know, the talking points of how to counter it. That's really the messaging. But then the third thing is this. Again, imagine the scenario where you want to activate your employees to be part of your line of defense. Should, you know, some misinformation and disinformation situation arise for your company? They need to have strong digital networks. What if they don't? If you're not investing in helping them understand how to grow their digital networks on LinkedIn in particular, and making that maybe even part of their growth plan with a measurable outcome where people. [00:31:51][86.1]
Rob Johnson: [00:31:52] Have reviews, You're talking about a growth plan. We've talked about that before. That's, you know, two different things there, but that's very important to talk talk about. Yeah. [00:31:58][6.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:31:59] So the idea of it's not lip service, but you're going to give them whatever those trainings look like. LinkedIn offers quite a bit of them. They come and organizations and give them. Then having someone on point on your staff who is helping them like, okay, let's learn how to write some posts. Let's use some shortcuts to be able to do that. Let's think about how often are you looking at what the company posts and are you sharing that content regularly? How are you when you thinking about networking? How are you but practice? Do you have in place so that when you go to an event, whether it's virtual or in person and you're coming, you're interacting with people in our industry, are you then taking the step to connect with them on LinkedIn and establish, you know, some level of relationship with them? That's how networks grow. And if you don't make that an important part and tell your folks this is a priority for us, for a whole bunch of reasons, here's one of the reasons why it benefits you as a professional, benefits us as an organization in terms of social amplification. And then you give them the time and resource to learn and to do so. I just I don't think people think about that enough. They say, activate your employees. Well, if you're not teaching them how to do that, well, they're not going to be able to do so. So it does. [00:33:08][69.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:33:08] Require the expectation is there. You know, again, just a lot. [00:33:12][3.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:33:12] Of sensitizing. [00:33:12][0.1]
Rob Johnson: [00:33:13] About this early on in this part of the discussion about, you know, people, the critical thinking isn't there because people would just want you to tell them what to do. They want it sometimes, not all times, but sometimes in recent years. People want to be order takers, like, okay, I'm supposed to do X, Y and Z. And what you're talking about is being a critical thinker, figuring out how to solve that problem and then coming to the boss and saying, here's how I, you know, solve that problem. And if they've been trained properly, they got that continuing education, they're going to have greater success in being critical thinkers. So I'm just. [00:33:42][28.9]
Eileen Rochford: [00:33:43] Thinking, yeah, for sure, for sure. It bleeds into every aspect of performance. Frankly, for anyone who works for any organization, critical thinking is core to success. Just don't. Yeah, nobody wants order takers anymore. So yeah, develop those critical thinking skills especially. [00:33:57][14.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:33:58] It's absolutely. All right. Before we head on out, I know you have a couple of notes you want to share with our audience here about resources to help them along on this journey. Yeah. [00:34:07][9.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:34:08] Well, I know we talked about two books, Mis Belief and Invisible Rulers. Those are two books that we'll put links to to their author pages, and you can buy it however you'd want to. And I will also suggest strongly, if you're not already following Ginny Dietrich on LinkedIn, you should be. So we will include a link to her profile too. And she also has an incredible newsletter, which is where this article that we've mentioned a few times originally appeared. Subscribe to her newsletter. Absolutely. So worth your time. If marketing kind of is within your kind of box of responsibility, you'll learn a ton from Jenny every single time. She puts an immense amount of effort into the creation of those newsletters, and the resources that are linked within each addition will be super, super useful to you, for sure. I don't know. I think that's about it. Yeah, that's. [00:35:02][53.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:35:02] Good. I mean, it's what we always want to leave everybody with a little nugget of information or three, you know, to help them along. And I think you, you definitely did that. So I think we've navigated the misinformation highway a little bit. We didn't get you know, we could probably talk about this a lot longer, but I hope that was helpful to everybody. And that's going to do it for another edition of Can You Hear Me? I'm Rob Johnson. If you'd like to weigh in on the podcast or give us an idea for a topic or a guest which people are doing increasingly and we love it, please contact us at our new Can You Hear Me podcast page on LinkedIn. [00:35:34][31.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:35:34] And I'm Eileen Rochford. Thanks everybody for listening. If you like this show, please consider giving us a review on any of the platforms where you find our show Apple, Spotify, whatever the case may be, because your reviews help other potential listeners find us and we certainly want to reach as many people as we can. So thanks for doing that and thanks for being with us today. [00:35:34][0.0]
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