Should Leaders Buy Into Social Issues? Dodging the landmines

Episode #305 // Over the last decade, there’s been a creeping trend for CEOs to weigh in on social issues, making their private stance very public.

This has now almost become an expectation of high-profile corporate leadership roles. But when CEOs air their personal views on social issues, it also anchors their company, brand, and every stakeholder associated with it, to that position.

Some of these are laudable, timely, commercially effective, and entirely consistent with the brand. Others range from the mildly inappropriate to the quantifiably disastrous.

When putting this episode together, I realized that even I’m a little conflicted on what the right approach might be in different situations. My intent is to take you on a journey through some of the complexities that leaders face when they choose to weigh in on social issues.

I start with a foundational concept — when a leader buys into a social issue, they buy in on behalf of all their stakeholders. I talk about the fact that not all issues are equal and, because motivation is such a critical ingredient, why not all motivations are equal.

I also promise that, if you stay to the end of this slightly longer episode, I’ll tell you a couple of great stories — stories of both stunning success and abject failure in the quest to tie the fate of a company to a stand on a hot-button social issue.

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