Leading to somewhere better

If we want to create social change and win hearts and minds, we have to lead people somewhere.

Conventional (and increasingly old-school) wisdom in comms is that if you want to influence people’s thinking on issues you have to ‘meet them where they are’.

Certainly, you do need to know where people are on social issues. But our job as communicators is to lead people to somewhere better.

Take an obvious example. Let’s say research shows lots of people reason in ways that are racist. If we want social justice and equity, we don’t meet them where they are. Of course, we don’t. We don’t lean into their racism and then drop in our message and hope it wins them over. And the same is true when it comes to talking about immigration, or the housing crisis, or the rule of law. Yet ‘meet people where they are’ is still common advice. It’s a red flag.

The need to advance public discourse in order to build understanding and support on social issues is the reason we at FrameWorks UK do cultural mindsets research.

Cultural mindsets are the sub-conscious patterns of thinking or mental models that we use to reason about issues. They are widely shared across culture and they are enduring.

When we do cultural mindsets research, we start by understanding how people reason about important social issues – like immigration, housing, or the rule of law – so we know what’s top of mind for people. In short, we find out where they are now. But we also find out what else they think, what other ways of reasoning they hold that maybe aren’t their go-to, top of mind ways of thinking. Because we all hold multiple cultural mindsets on any given issue.

Cultural mindsets research tells us which other ways of reasoning are available to people that we can tap into to build understanding and support. It tells us not just where people are, but how they might reason if the issue is framed effectively, if we trigger another less top-of-mind way of thinking. It tells us how our communications choices can bring more productive thinking to the foreground, in short how we can move people’s thinking to somewhere better.

Our cultural mindsets research also identifies if any framing strategies backfire for some groups. It’s all very well boosting support among people who are already on side but if this comes at the cost of pushing other people further away, we risk fuelling polarisation. When we simply meet different groups where they are, this is a real risk.

Instead of meeting people where they are – we can take them somewhere, a better place.

And isn’t that the whole point of communications?