How to help leaders become great communicators

5 strategies to increase leader visibility and interaction

In our research with employees, there is one request that comes up again and again: more time with leaders. Here are a few examples of what employees tell us:

· “I want to hear from my group vice president more than once or twice a year.”

· “Increase face time with business unit presidents and those below them.”

· “More face-to-face communication with immediate level of leadership.”

When you understand employees’ expectations, it’s evident that leader communication is an investment worth making. Leader visibility and interaction build trust and commitment among employees.

So, what’s the best way to build the communication capabilities of this cohort? How can we help leaders think differently about communication?

Here are five strategies to help leaders be great communicators and build a culture of communication for your organization.

1. Help leaders understand their communication role

It’s part of leaders’ DNA to share big-picture concepts and jump in to solve problems. But these approaches often get in the way of communicating effectively. By articulating leaders’ roles, you’ll set the foundation to help them think differently about communication.

Set expectations. Taking the step to define roles makes expectations clear. For example, we often highlight the differences between the top levels of leaders across the organization: the CEO is responsible to share the vision and the plan to get there, and it’s up to her/his direct reports to reinforce those messages and translate what the plan means for their teams.

Expand leaders’ definition of communication. Leaders often rely on the easy part of communication: sending an email or speaking at a meeting. It’s important to remind them that interaction increases employees’ satisfaction with communication. Facilitating two-way communication — providing opportunities for employees to ask questions and provide input — is an important part of their role.

2. Help leaders be experts

There are two sides to the expert coin: a) learning about what makes communication effective — especially from the employee perspective, and b) learning about a specific topic.

Teach leaders about communication. Given leaders’ roles, we often assume they have lots of experience with communication. But our experience tells us that even the simplest improvements can have a big impact on communication effectiveness. For example:

· Coach leaders about setting a communication objective (I want employees to feel X or I want my team to do Y) and developing two or three actions to support it.

· Help leaders understand what drives employees’ satisfaction with communication.

· Just as leaders receive media training to help them deal with reporters and interviewers, train them for internal talks and answering tough questions.

Prepare leaders for their communication role. Leaders like to be prepared especially when they need to answer questions or explain a concept. When a pharmaceutical company made the decision to bring together several operating companies under one banner, we designed a two-day workshop to help leaders understand the change, their role in the process and the key elements of effective communication.

Build leaders’ knowledge. Just because a leader is part of a senior leadership team, does not mean she/he is knowledgeable about every topic that needs to be communicated. Help leaders build their knowledge by immersing them in the topic. It could be an hour with the CEO or a full-day retreat. My favorite tools include: quick overviews/summaries, key messages, frequently asked questions and presentation or discussion tools.

3. Hold leaders accountable

While we know that making an investment in communication pays dividends, we often don’t hold leaders accountable. Be sure leaders understand your communication objectives, the plan to get there and how success will be measured.

Create mechanisms that engage leaders. In other words, give them a job to do. For example, during an organizational change at a financial services company, we asked leaders to meet with their teams and come back with each team’s top three questions. The questions were analyzed, responses developed and content shared across several channels, including a set of FAQs for leaders.

Describe how leaders will participate, but make it easy. Set the plan for how communication will work for a defined period. Of course, leaders are busy people, so communication tactics need to feel manageable. For example, ask each member of the leadership team to host a town hall and three coffee chats during the next quarter. Connect with leaders after their tactics are complete: What did they hear? Are there themes?

4. Provide tools

Sometimes a communication tool is just what a leader needs to get things started. Tools often make communication easier because the path is set and there are directions to follow. And tools encourage the right behaviors, such as engaging the audience rather than talking at them.

Encourage interaction. When a support function within a pharmaceutical company introduced a new business strategy, we designed a 30-minute exercise for leaders to conduct with their teams. The goal was to encourage conversation and learning about the new strategy.

Start conversations. Remember those card games designed to encourage conversations at a dinner? We’ve used that concept for conversation starters at meetings. For example, when a healthcare company introduced a new set of values, we developed question cards designed to encourage discussion about each of the values. Here’s one for a customer focus value: Name a company that is known for exceptional customer focus. What can we learn from this company?

Support communication moments. There are many moments in an employee’s worklife when leader communication is important. We often create cheat sheets for leaders that act as prompts for discussion. For example, we created a year-end discussion guide that covered a process to follow, topics to cover and questions to ask.

5. Share results

If leaders don’t know how they’re doing with communication, how can they be expected to change? You may have existing sources of feedback (such as an engagement survey), but you may also need to gather new data.

Gather data and share. Typically, we deploy two methods to assess the effectiveness of leader communication: surveys and focus groups. Here’s an example: At a telecommunications company, the top two senior leaders held live town halls across the company twice per year. We asked a consistent set of five questions after each town hall and reported back to the two executives. Their interest in the data (and improving the results) drove changes to the format and delivery. The town halls became a key communication tool — highly regarded by employees.

Establish a scorecard. What are your objectives for leader communication? Set up a scorecard that captures the results, share the data with leaders and facilitate a discussion to inspire next steps.