Darren Briggs, of Flametree Communication, looked at how we can make managers better communicators. He said that internal communicators have a vital rule to play in supporting business leaders, many of whom can have their reputation broken by the way they manage change, reports Steve Nichols.
Darren added that the secret to facilitating success is putting yourself in the shoes of your internal customers – both your leadership team and the employee audience with whom they are aiming to connect with.
His philosophy for CEOs is LISTEN, LEAD and LEARN – these are the key characteristics of successful leaders during change, he says.
He then presented 68 slides showing how the world is changing. For example, did you know that:
- People will now have 10-14 jobs by the the time they are 38
- 3,000 new books are published every day
- 40 exabytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes of information are created each year
- The amount of technical information doubles every 12 months
- By the end of a student's three-year course the information they learned in the first year will be out of date.
- By 2013 a supercomputer will have been built that is more powerful than the human brain
- By 2049 a $500 computer will have more thinking power than the entire human species.
“We are living in exponential times,” Darren said. “So given all this, do CEOs and executives really care about internal communication?”
He said that two years ago his company asked CEOs: “What do you actually want from internal communications?”
They said we often focus on what we as internal communicators want – not what CEOs want from them.
The CEO's said:
- Help them listen to opinions and ideas
- Help them clarify their message
- Help them to create context
- Help them learn from others
- Help them understand their audience
Darren added: “One CEO said the trouble with communicators is they think its all about the audience and not the message.”
He then talked about the Carlos Ghosn effect. Carlos became CEO of Nissan, at a time when they were losing $6.1bn a year. In just one year he turned that into a $2.7bn profit.
Carlos Ghosn said:
- Be more visible
- Tell the truth and keep your promises
- Simple and clear purpose will build a cause
- Displaying confidence will build confidence
- Be open to learn from the experience of others
- Use language that means something to everyone
- If you can't listen, you can't manage
So what can you do?
- Help your CEO be more creative with their time
- Write down every promise they make and remind them
- Invite them to tell a personal story and explain what they mean
- Create the right communications environment for them to flourish
- Find out who they admire and why – use their communications approach
- Challenge them when they use “Harvard BS” - no more “leveraging synergies”.
- Regularly listen to your stakeholders, summarise and share it
Darren finished by saying: “Who do you think is the best model today?” The names that came out were Joanna Lumley, Hugh Jackman, Barack Obama and Gregg Dyke. Darren agreed – and finished with a clip of Barack Obama giving a speech. “He has absolute empathy with his audience and knows exactly what his audience wants,” he said. “That's why he is so successful.”
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