Leader communications – two ways to be more inspiring

Leaders have a tough gig. They are responsible for so many things, as well as needing to be inspiring in how they go about their work. This is often a measure in employee engagement surveys and can bring up some interesting discussions, as what constitutes ‘inspiring’ can be so different depending on who you speak to.   

Communicating effectively is vital to being seen as inspirational and increasing employee engagement. Leaders might have all the best ideas and intentions, but if they can’t share them and bring others along on the journey, they’ll be going nowhere fast, alone.

So, how can make leadership communications more inspiring? For the purposes of this post, I’ll leave out the ‘big ticket’ items like communicating strategy, vision and goals and focus on the ongoing communications that can often be neglected.

I’ll also premise this with saying something we should all hopefully know by now; face-to-face is best. Nothing can measure up to meeting with employees in person. But for many companies who’re spread geographically, this is not a possibility – especially for how often we should be communicating with employees.  

So, here are two tips focused on day-to-day communications of a digital nature.

1.      Keep it real

A bit of a buzzword in marketing and communications at the moment is the word ‘authenticity’ – but with good reason. Leaders need to communicate in a way that is both honest and reflective of who they are as a person.

If you’re normally pretty relaxed in the way you communicate, yet an announcement comes out that is completely formal and full of words you’d never use – likelihood is people are going to assume you didn’t write it. Same goes for if you’re someone of few words and your communications are really upbeat and lengthy.

Often leaders will have someone take a look at their writing and that’s okay. Leaders are busy folk and communication may not be their strength. But I believe leaders should always work closely with whoever is helping them communicate. This can be done by that person first speaking to the leader to get a sense of what they want to say (= their words, just captured) or by the leader taking a stab at the draft and someone helping to edit (= their words, just finessed). It is a leader’s responsibility to own their tone of voice and what goes out in their name, as it can make or break how employees connect with them.

2.      Get the frequency and channel right

People like to hear from their leaders – probably more than many leaders currently do within their company. The key here is to make sure they are hearing about the right things and in the right way. Not everything has to be a full CEO update or departmental newsletter. Some of the most inspiring leaders I’ve worked with utilised very simple ways of communicating.

One CEO would often forward on someone else’s email about a company success with such lines as “I’m so proud of the story below”. There was no doubt it was from that leader direct, it was extremely timely and it meant the story was credited to the person who shared it.

Another senior executive would often give quick video updates to his broader team on how a meeting with customer just went, or something he had learnt that day. Again, the key to this was it being timely, and authentic (you can’t get more authentic than seeing your face speak the words!). If there is a little vulnerability thrown in there too? Well… then you’re really making yourself human and might just become quite likeable too ;)

A third example was a head of marketing who’d host a monthly get-together with the whole team – encouraging a very open discussion about what was working and what wasn’t. She’d lead into this meeting with questions and prompts on an online discussion forum, and ensure she stayed a part of the conversation in the team. By keeping up the frequency and touching base via multiple channels, she created a sense of safety within the team around bringing up challenging topics and being able to speak to that leader about anything.

How did these leaders know what their people preferred? They LISTENED to what their people wanted and found a way to communicate in a way that felt authentic to them too. It sounds simple, but it can be quite challenging when we’re time-poor and used to reverting to old, safe, corporate email announcements.

So, whether you’re a leader, or you help leaders to communicate, I encourage you to take a few moments to think about whether you’re following a cookie-cutter-comms approach or whether your leadership communications truly reflect the leader and audience preferences.

Need communications advice? I am a freelancer operating from Tauranga, New Zealand. Get in touch and we can chat.