In today’s digitally-driven, ever-changing world, it takes more than a style guide to build a successful communication strategy
Photo by Trent Erwin on Unsplash
Although it seems obvious, I’m going to say it anyway: Executives are the foundation on which their company’s culture is built. Executives identify the vision as well as the goals and organizational structure that will advance the company. They’re accountable for company achievements and failures (or opportunities, as we like to say in corporate culture). Their approach sets the tone for every employee working toward the company’s success. It’s simple. Or is it? The effects of the global pandemic on the world of work—the pivot to technology-enabled, remote work; the root causes of the Great Resignation; the emergence of the flexible future of work—have made it clear that company culture is dynamic, responsive and vulnerable. Executives must be more purposeful and strategic about their company’s culture than ever before—and more sophisticated in how they build and sustain it. As communicators, our role is critical in helping leaders find their authentic voice and channel it around a select number of key themes to reach their people with the right messages through the right channels.
With executive level leaders, the subject matter expertise is built in. Our challenge, then, is in how we capture it in a way that it is clear, understandable and engaging to the broad employee audience. We must evolve quickly to do so and it starts by setting aside the traditional tools of the trade. Forget your style guides for a moment and turn off track changes. If we agree executives are the foundation of their company’s culture, then the executives themselves are at the center of our communication strategy. They set the tone, they set the perspective and it is their voice that will engage, inspire and motivate their people.
This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. In the digital era, facilitated for better or worse by omnipresent, instant gratification platforms, authenticity is communication currency. Genuine voices, even when they’re a bit raw, gain traction; inspire likes, replies and shares; and help people feel connected even when they’re sitting alone in their own home. Prep and polish, while they have their place, are recognized as Communication (capital C) as opposed to communication (a form of expression and connection). Our role, communicators, is to facilitate communication.
Know your leader’s thought process and voice
To understand our executives, to harness their voice in pursuit of their goals for their people and business, we must know them. As communicators, we should be listening to our leaders in meetings. We should be with them as they prepare for presentations and interviews. We should be sitting in as they give those presentations and interviews as often as possible. How do they evolve their thoughts to land on the message? What do they choose to emphasize and de-emphasize? Are they formal in their speech patterns or casual?
I was once asked to write six versions of the same strategy message for six different leaders addressed to six functions within a business line. I didn’t know all the leaders well and wasn’t tightly aligned with all parts of the business. Back in the day, this request could easily be accommodated with a little copy/pasting and very minor adjustments. Today, the lack of genuine perspective and voice would fall painfully flat. The word choices, tone and emphasis are all key differentiators between corporate speak and authenticity. Good communicators have an ear for what their leaders sound like. They understand the agenda and they’ve heard their leaders speak to it often enough to identify the key messages for a broad audience.
Know your leader’s passions
In addition to the business, your leader has personal passions and agendas. These could include initiatives like diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) or mentoring. They could be core values like saying it the room or creative solutioning. They could even be something personal: managing a daughter’s soccer team, golf. In today’s corporate culture, we’re not just allowed to bring our authentic selves to work, we’re encouraged to do so. People don’t have to fit a corporate cookie cutter shape and size—and they don’t want their leaders to do so, either.
I worked with a leader who was passionate about getting in front of employee gossip in order to shut down the “duck pond” behavior, as he called it. Together, we would get in front of an issue by talking about it openly and early, committing to updates and keeping our commitment through to resolution. When I used the phrase duck pond in our messaging, everyone on his team knew it was his voice, his passion and his values. We had high metrics on the emails and videos we sent out, and everyone knew what it meant to stay out of the duck pond.
Understand your leader’s strengths—and play to them
We are communicators in an age where we can choose from any number of omni-present channels for our leadership messaging. The challenge is in understanding your leader and which channels best play to their strengths. I work with leaders who level up in front of a camera and others who somehow lose all their polish in front of one. I have leaders who shine following a good prep session and others who do best memorizing their points. Some leaders are people people, while others do better with facts and figures. As communicators, we need to understand where our leaders position best, put them in their comfort zone and let them shine.
I knew a CEO who was a bit of a challenge when it came to modern communication. He was awkward in front of cameras. He was adamantly against social media. He wasn’t high on the emotional intelligence (EQ) scale, which made it difficult to position him as a champion for people agendas like recognition. He kept his personal details and his personality close to the vest, making it hard to leverage them in his favor. If pushed on the above, he tended to come across as flat, unapproachable and awkward. But when given the opportunity to tap into true passion, his business acumen, he could bring an entire auditorium forward in their seats. He completely came to life in a way he couldn’t when asked about, say, his advice to his younger self at the start of his career. The audience responded every time. They fed him sophisticated questions around the business. They talked about his presentation as they left the room. They wanted to go where he was leading—and that’s exactly what you want people to feel when they engage with their leaders.
Your leader is the foundation of your strategy
Your leader brings the skills, experience and vision to drive success for the business. They set the tone and perspective. Their voice that will engage, inspire and motivate. Over the last three decades as a strategic and executive communicator, if I’ve learned one thing it’s that it doesn’t matter how good your strategy is. If you aren’t engaged and connected with your leader, your message—their message—won’t resonate. This means:
Listen to your leader. Hear what they say—how they say it, where they focus, what they de-emphasize. That is the tone and tenor of any message you send out under their name. If you can’t get a seat at the table, at least get into the room.
Know your leader’s passions. Whether you reference them anecdotally or leverage them to tee up speaking opportunities, they add genuine flavor to messaging and help build a culture that’s authentic and resonates with your people.
Play to your leader’s strengths. In the digital era, one size does not fit all. Understand your leader’s strengths and be diligent about using them to your advantage. Your leader will appreciate it and so will their employees.
It takes more than a style guide to build a successful communication strategy these days. Build yours on the most valuable asset you have: your executive.
This blog was originally posted on LinkedIn on 27 February 2022.
