114 | Mastering the Art of Communication | Katja Schleicher

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

Knowledge is not an advantage anymore. Knowledge is a commonality. The differentiator between success and being mediocre as a company is the way how do you get your message across.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. You are very, very welcome back. And if you're joining for the first time, you are very welcome. Because I always forget to ask this at the end, I'll ask it now. Please, if you are enjoying this podcast or you've enjoyed previous episodes and you're on Apple, pop on there, give us a review and a 5-star rating 'cause it really, really does help. I'd very much appreciate that. Secondly, as usual, little thank you and a shout out to our friend and sponsor Workvivo. We are very much talking about internal comms today. And if you're struggling with internal comms, particularly in the world of hybrid, then you should absolutely be looking at their solution, workvivo.com, and a little bit more coming up on them later on. So today's guest, I am, those of you that have been listeners to this podcast for the past, oh, 100 or so episodes, will know that I am a huge proponent, huge supporter of internal comms and the difference that it can make. And very often when we talk about internal comms and we talk about channels, we talk about the intranet and we talk about email and we talk about Slack and Yammer and posters, maybe if you're still old school. I do love a good poster. But the one channel, when I'm in chatting to clients, the one channel that often gets missed and is probably the most critical and flexible channel you have is your leaders. Your leaders can be a group of people and act as an internal comms channel that can translate and contextualize messages very particularly for their teams. And that's something that an internal comms team that's looking globally across an organization just can't do because they don't know 500 people individually or 1,000 or 300,000 if you are an HSBC. However, that whole piece about leaders being a really compelling and important channel, whilst true, is also undermined by the fact that often we don't give them the training, they don't have the confidence, the tools, or the skills to be that amazing channel that we really want them to be. And that's why today's guest is here to talk to us a little bit about how we can help our leaders to be a little bit more effective when it comes to being communicators. So Katja Schleicher is the founder of Impact Communications Coaching. She is based in The Hague in the Netherlands. I love talking to people from the Netherlands because they always make me smile. I've got some very good friends who are from the Netherlands, and every time we talk, it just makes me smile. So, Katja, hello there. I'm smiling already. How are you getting on?

I'm very well. Thanks for having me, and thanks for pointing out that internal comms is such a nice channel for leaders to first of all show themselves, show their values, combine these values to the company's and the organization values, and then have an impact like an ambassador. So take the lead in the sense of that everybody in the organization is not just hearing what the leadership team has to say, but understanding it in a very emotional way. So in the end, if everything goes right, they can connect with their hearts.

And leaders can connect way better than maybe the overall senior leadership team can, can't they?

Yeah, because, and then the thing you were pointing out in the beginning in the introduction, I like a lot. It's this, a leader is first instance a human being, and we connect as human beings, we connect to human beings. We do not connect to a leadership team. No, we connect to Scott, who said this or that, or to Debbie, who said this or that. And that is what we tend to believe in. We connect these— the, the messages to at least one person. And if you get confirmation by another person, now then it's even better. And if we get a confirmation from a third, a fourth, or fifth person, then you have the whole leadership team and all of a sudden they all speak with the same voice for the organization. And that, believe me, is very hard.

Very hard, but very powerful. Listen, we're going to get into that in a second. Why don't we start by you telling me a little bit about you, about your career and what you've been doing for the past 17 years or so with Impact Communications Coaching?

So let me, let me start by disappointing you a little bit. Although I live in the Netherlands, I'm German born and raised. Yep, I'm so sorry for that. I have two citizenships. I'm, I consider myself a European citizen. Europe is one of my biggest passions, and I think if we would put more efforts into that joint venture I always love to call Europe, it would be better. And communicating within that is one of my, one of my passions. Most of my clients work on a European basis, and they call me when they either have trouble in excellence and communication and things you pointed out already. I'm having a new role in, in a leadership team, and now I need to connect with my new team, and I bring things from my old company, from my old team, uh, and it worries me. Or I do have very good ideas It's all brilliant in my head, but it doesn't get out of there. And the moment I'm with people, wherever it is, it could be an ordinary meeting or a Zoom call or a big stage, and nothing comes out. I have a blackout, I'm nervous, or all these things, or I have to give an interview. It could be with an internal, internal comms publication, intranet things. But I have to have my message clear and I have to get it out. And that is where I'm coming in. Whenever someone in one of those leadership teams or product development teams has one of these issues, I'm coming and I work with them on exactly that so that they can be the best leader they could be, right? I do that in 3 languages. I think this may be interesting. I do that in German, in English, and in Dutch. So my understanding of pan-European aspects is quite big. So my ideal client is someone who works in a pan-European environment, has at least 10 nations in their teams, and hires me to work with all of them. Now that is to me the most, the best, and the most successful you can give.

Brilliant.

And I do that indeed. You already mentioned that I do that. If you would ask my mother, for all my life already, because communication has been my passion all my life, and I found an early calling because all my professional career was like that. And so it was a natural step in 2006 to found my own company. Yes. And the, you know, the entity per se is not that important because you buy a person, people buy me, buy my nose, my, my recommendations, that is more important to them than the company on my business card. But the reputation I do indeed have all over Europe is that I'm debugging communication things and make it all of a sudden easy. And very often it looks like, oh yeah, oh, why didn't I come up with that idea? Because that's my expertise. So I found an early calling. I do communication all my life and I think it will be like that until the end of my days.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, and when you think about it, you talk there about helping leaders to be the best that they can be. And you also talked about kind of debugging communications and maybe helping leaders to see things differently. Why do you believe that it's so critically important that leaders are really, really effective communicators?

Kommunikation is basically the first and the last thing that we still have, you know, in the age of internet, we all became smart. Knowledge is not an advantage anymore. Knowledge is a commonality. The differentiator between success and being mediocre as a company is The way how do you get your message across in a way that your audience can not just understand it, but being able to kind of act in an intended way. Now that is the ultimate thing. And the better you can do that, the better you are able to walk with, to walk and talk with any particular audience. The more you know about your audience or able to connect with your audience, the more easy that is because the messages per se very are the same. Very often, not always, right? But the unique selling proposition, let me put it like that, has a little bit, is a little bit gone. We are talking about the emotional selling proposition now. So, and that is directly connected to human beings. And the better you can do that, the more easy your communication, your communication gets. And the recipe I'm giving mostly in all of my first lessons is Make it a conversation. It's a two-way thing, at least a two-way. If it's a multiple-way thing, it's even better. Let everybody participate. I mean, of course, not everybody will talk all the time. But even on a big stage with 500 people in the audience, you can have a conversation that feels like you and I talk about something in particular, don't you think?

Yep, it's, you know, I think that big stage piece is interesting because I think the opportunity for speakers on the big stage to be able to interact with the audience, you're not necessarily having a one-to-one conversation with individuals, but you are able to say, you know, we've all been in that place where we've had a blank on stage, right? And you're looking out there and there's, there's 100 nodding heads.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. All right, and it's, it's, it's, it's if it's one person in a conversation you have, or it's 500 people on the stage, the, the, the print, the basis principles are the same. So of course, you have to talk differently if you, if you are in a room with 500 people in terms of size and volume and all that. But the basis principle of treat your audience as if it will be one person sitting across the table, that's actually the same for every communication situation I can come up with, come up with, and no languages and all cultures.

So if we believe between us that being a really effective communicator is critical, and I love the idea of emotional selling proposition, I'm gonna steal that if that's okay.

You might get.

Thank you. What gets in the— so we all know that being effective is really, really important, right? And we all know that being a brilliant communicator is really, really important. But what gets in the way of people being really good communicators?

Now, the easiest thing is here again, the biggest obstacle, that's ourselves, our own beliefs holding us back. And being already more than 20 years, we are teaching people in all these psychological things and belief systems and all that. And everybody knows them. Everybody knows them. And it's so hard to get rid of them. So first of things, like, I'm not good enough. 'Oh, people do not want to hear that.' 'People already made up their minds about that topic I'm going to talk about.' 'I have too many other things on my mind.' 'Oh, I just want to be a good guy.' That's a very common belief. So, 'Please, I don't want to hurt you, so I'm not saying anything that's going to hurt,' all that. Ourselves, we are our own worst enemy on any stage, to be honest, because there is this little devil in our head that is talking all the time while we are talking too. And he has always an opinion. I'm sorry for making him male. It could be a female devil, right? So don't get me wrong here.

Or even a they.

Yeah, exactly.

Could be a they.

Make it they devilish. Anyway. So, but it's— and this is the thing that is talking in our heads, right? And that keeps us from saying what we want to say, putting it in the best words we can come up with. And because we have trouble with that, we try to— and that's the second obstacle— we try to look somewhere else. Oh, we find or the most quoted Steve Jobs or Simon Sinek or whomever we think can communicate well on any stage, which both of them did. And in looking up to these, let me call them role models, the gap between us and them is getting even bigger. So role models are helping in the beginning very much because you can see many things. Oh, this is how Steve Jobs did that, or this is how, um, and someone does this, that, and that is good. But the next step, finding your, your own authentic voice— although I hate the word authentic, um— is crucial. You have to learn who are you, what is the jacket you're wearing on this communication stage. And only if you know that, you can make sure that this jacket gets even more pockets, or it gets a little wider, or a little tighter whatever it is. But if you do not know how you are built, you'll never succeed. So these 3 things I would say: own trouble with your own, you are your own obstacle, then too many role models and too much looking up to them, and number 3, too little self-reflection. Hi, I'm Klina from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

It's absolutely amazing how I was actually only saying to somebody yesterday, probably the last 10 episodes of this podcast that I've recorded, we've gotten back to talking about self-awareness. We've gotten back to talking about just awareness of me as a person and what I'm good or maybe not quite so good at. And I think your point about being Jobs or being Sinek or being whoever is really well made that we're not trying to be like them. But what we're doing is we're looking to see what they're doing really well and saying, oh, I wonder, could I do elements of that really well? I don't want to be Simon Sinek. I don't want to be Steve Jobs. But actually, some of the bits that they've got of bringing audiences with them, there are things there that we can learn for sure.

For instance, in Simon Sinek's way, in Simon Sinek's case, he communicates in very simple sentences, right? His absolute art is to say extraordinary things with ordinary words. What I see very often in leadership is the other way around, that we say ordinary things but using extraordinary words, and that shouldn't be the case. So that makes it complicated.

Yeah, for sure. So let's think a little bit. I think sometimes, and you alluded to it there earlier, Katja, when you spoke about whether you're on stage or whether you've written columns or whatever it might be, that you need to have your story you need to get straight in your head what it is you're trying to say so that you can actually get it out there. So, you know, I think, you know, those of us that work in the comms world know that really good comms follow a structure or a narrative. What's yours? What does that look like? What do you tell people about structuring their comms, structuring their stories?

Let me differentiate between the messaging part and the narrative part. Uh, for the, for the, the narrative part, it helps if you start with looking— it's, it's the 4 C's actually that help. One of them is context. So you look at the context of where's my audience in at this particular moment, where it got— it doesn't matter if it's 9 o'clock, a meeting in the morning, or if it's a dinner speech in the evening. So what does your audience bringing. What does your audience bring? What keeps your audience busy at this particular moment? Context. What's the context of the industry you are, you are in? What is happening, right? Um, what is happening in the world? Maybe sometimes, and as times get more crazy, probably getting more important. So context is one thing. Then the second thing you have to be aware of is, in, in any narrative, is content. What, what's the message message, right? What is it? What is the thing I want to say, right? This nugget thing. The third one is then the structure. So how do I want to get it out of my head and how do I want to bring it? And then the fourth one is very often underrated. It's the consequences. What does what I say bring consequentially for my audience. And especially when it comes to internal comms and especially leadership communication, all-hands meetings, town halls, all these, this is something that very, very frequently gets lost in the rest, that everything I say in my leadership position has consequences. For the teams, for the individuals in these teams. And it is very helpful when you want to make an impact, and this is a certain impact on certain people, that you are first of all aware of these consequences, and then make sure that you can fill that with life and put yourself in the shoes of that particular audience. So to make it tangible for the audience when you, when you talk about it. But the worst thing is, what you, what you should never do is You got to talk about the consequences and not just the rational consequences, but the emotional ones.

Yeah. And that whole then, of course, leads into empathy and empathizing and perhaps putting yourself in the shoes of the people in the room. And I think, you know, all too often we hear leaders stand up and make announcements or send emails making announcements. But the bit, as you said, that's really powerful is, and of course, that means that insert consequences here.

Yeah, yeah. And maybe, that's maybe, because I do not see, uh, in, in leadership communication, actually, I don't see that too often. It should have— everything I say should have consequences for me in my leadership position too. So it's not a sending part. Okay, I'm telling you this, and this means for this team that— now it should there should be a feedback channel. And if you do that, dear teams in that project, that means for me in my leadership position this and that. So if you leave or if you do not use that part, you're missing a big part, especially in internal communications where people have to work with what you say on a daily basis. Then it's not high level anymore, then it's really desk to desk, Zoom to Zoom every day between 9:30 and 4:30, wherever your working hours are. But the real, the translation of this, these headline-y part you often use in leadership comes, how do you translate that in every employee's daily work? What does it mean? What do they, what are the consequences for them? And what are the consequences for me in my leadership position?

Yeah. And I think that for me then, as you travel down through the hierarchy of the organization, makes it even more important for those frontline leaders to have some of the skills that you're talking about, to be able to talk about that story, to have that context, to have the right messages, and to be able to actually do that contextualization piece. I remember a story back when I was working in AIB, one of my colleagues used to work in a different department. And when they came in in the morning, if there had been an organizational announcement, his boss, the team leader, will have printed out a copy for each person, highlighted in yellow highlighter the important bits. He would say, just read that communication for a few minutes when everybody arrived at their desks, and then come in and let's have a chat about what that means for us.

Why, that is one very good way to do that. But at least, and I don't know how in your experience, how your experience is here. In, in mine, I— whenever someone shows— the example you were just mentioning is just one of these examples— says, okay, come on, I try. Maybe I'm not perfect in what I'm doing, and maybe I'm not perfect in the way I'm communicating, but at least I'm, I'm giving you an opportunity I'm giving myself an opportunity, and then we can take it from there. I think that the expectation is probably one of the troubles we are facing, that the expectations to ourselves in a leadership position are simply too high. And my experience is that very often the team members, they do not expect their leaders to be perfect. What they expect is clarity, is psychological safety. That when the leader says something that is at least true-ish, right, kind of, kind of true, and then I'm asking a question that is meant seriously, that I'm not fired immediately, stuff like that. So that there was room. Might we talk about room for failure and all that? Um, if he would start by Giving someone the opportunity to phrase a question, maybe if it's not perfect, but not taking it personal in our leadership position, but taking it seriously and answer it, that would be a very good start for many leaders before they even go on a big stage.

And as you said, it's just that opportunity to have the conversation, to have the feedback, to have all of that. No communication, outside of work is ever just me standing here telling you things.

Exactly. It's always a conversation, right? You expect people to talk back to you, even the shop assistant, the conductor in the train. It's always conversational. And somehow we tend to forget that when we are in a working environment. We said, okay, I'm sending and you're listening. No, it's not working like that anymore. Actually, it never has been working like that. We just thought it would be.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's talk about storytelling. And at this point, most people are probably going to switch off the podcast because they're going, "Oh my God, not that, not that again." But actually, but I think you and I probably both believe that it's a really, really important skill in leaders. Why do you think it's so important? Why is storytelling important in organizations?

It comes— the importance comes down to this very simple psychological aspect that we as human beings are wired for story. We are wired for narrative. We are not wired for bullet points. And probably everybody who listens has heard that 150,000 times. Now then, let me repeat it the 151st time because it is simply, especially in business contexts, not put into practice. That's the problem. It's, you know, the biggest gap we have in everything that has to do with narrative is that we know, we know, but we don't do. Even if we could, we think, oh my God, I don't have the time, I don't want to, everybody's bored from storytelling, which is not true, by the way. But You know, and that's why I'd rather write an email with 5 bullet points. Okay. And everybody will understand. Yeah, everybody will probably cognitively understand, but they won't have any intention to do what you want them to do. So narrative is crucial because we as human beings are wired for narrative. And again, it can be repetitive, but the biggest gap is between knowing And doing.

Yeah. And people don't do unless they know why, unless they understand the reasons. Yeah. And what's the hardest bit? Is the hardest bit finding stories or telling them?

That's a very, very complicated one. In internal, let's stick to the organizational framework. In organizations, because it takes so long and the project is never done in 2 days, The listening to, the finding, and the eliciting of stories is the tougher part because it requires endurance. It is not just a training or a marketing thing or a project. It requires fundamental skills from a group of people who, who bring together parts of the organization and elicit stories. And that is just a project takes really a long time and effort, and it costs money and time. And I, I already mentioned anyway, so it's, it's really, really nothing for the, for the faint-hearted and short-term. So once you've been through with that, congratulations, you've achieved a milestone. Now the second thing is make it accessible. That is the second, uh, the second step on the way that very often is done by marketing or comms departments. If they do it right. So you use the material and you condense it, you make it accessible, you chunk it down for several, for different purposes and different audiences. Now that part is very often easier because the marketing people are most of the time the masters of their craft and they can do it. Now then, now we are coming to the telling part and here Let me differentiate between people who are coming more from the stage personalities and the non-stage personalities. And the non-stage personalities probably would say like, I'm better in listening than in telling, and it takes more energy for me to talk. The stage personalities would probably say, okay, give me a sorry, easy for me. And both of them have to go back in honing your, your strength. Okay, I'm good in telling and I'm good in listening. And look at the other part. So someone who is good at stage should listen more. Someone who listens very well should go on stage more often and practice and do, as I already said, do more of that. So it depends a little bit where you're coming from. The last part, the telling part. The first part is again, takes a long time, takes a strong team and a consistent team that kind of collects and archives. The second part, the marketing comms part, is often easier, but even they need still to do their work. And the last part, the telling part, depends on if you're more from the stage personality or more from the introvert side of life.

And I think in my experience, I would absolutely agree with you that the finding bit is harder. Because if you're in a very big organization, that's incredibly hierarchical, the very best stories, which are often related to your customer, are at the very front line. So they are literally the furthest point away from you that they could possibly be.

Exactly. Yeah.

The challenge then is how do you find them and get them back in a way that isn't Chinese whispers, where it's had a bit nipped here, a bit picked there, or we can't say that to the boss, let's change it and do this and and the other. And eventually, when it gets up the organization, it's a horrible ghostly shadow of its former self and isn't a good story anymore.

No, and that's exactly what I meant when I was saying, like, the beginning is really the efforts of the planes. And we had that in a pharmaceutical company where we were working with them. And in the beginning of the project, we were really telling everybody, like, guys, This is going to require everybody's strength and endurance. It's going to be a 12-month project. It's, it's not over tomorrow, right? And everybody was prepared for that. And even then, even then, after, after 3 months, the marketing director quit. Um, and what was after 6 months? Oh, after 6 months there was a failed product launch. And why ever in pharmaceuticals, that's complicated. So every— everything was put on hold for 6 months. Now then we were allowed to go further. Now, in the meantime, it was 9 months, and we still didn't have any story out there, right? The output very often in story work comes very late, because you have to collect, you have to listen, you have to elicit. And what you said, the best stories are the frontline, right? And you have to sit together in this kind of campfires, right, and listen to them. And that That takes time and craft, and sometimes it's simply for an organization, it's tiring because you do not see the fruit from your seed in the very short term. You only see that after a year, very often.

So tell me how you measure, in your opinion, how can you measure whether your communication, whether that's written communication or verbal communication has really hit the mark. I know that we often in our sector talk about what do you want people to think, feel, and do from the communication or the message or the story. How do you think you could really effectively measure whether you've been successful or not? It's like the $10 gazillion question.

Now, because what you just did, you left out the $10 gazillion question. Think, feel, do is absolutely perfectly fine. And now the fourth question comes: What do you expect other people to say about what you said? So imagine you leaving, you spoke, okay, you said something in an all-hands meeting in an organization, and now people go back to their desks and then they say something. They say, okay, Scott today talked about 'X, Y, Z,' and he said, 'A, B, C.' And this is the conversation as we should record, because these are the conversations that tell us what really sticks. And because that, that is the way it once has been running through their systems once, and now they are able to repeat it in whatever way. And the closer what they are saying and telling others is to what has been said firsthand. That to me is one of the best KPIs, to be honest.

Very interesting. So checking— so I guess what you're saying is checking that the echo back up— yeah, from the front, from— actually, actually is an echo of what you've said rather than a completely different version of—

yes, yes, yes, yeah, yes. How, how, you know, very often there there's things happening and people don't talk at all. Now, ask among my public speaking colleagues and they will tell you, no, this is the worst thing that can happen. You should be very worried if no one talks about what you said, and then you should be worried if it's in a bad way. But if they don't talk about it at all, either you shouldn't have said anything at all because then it was redundant, or nobody understood you and they didn't talk about it, or it was bullshit. And none of the three things are really good. So not hearing anything between the sheets, you know, on the coffee machine, is the worst thing that can happen to you. But echo is— echo is a good word. I'm stealing that from you. What is the echo you get? That's—

well, that's one. We've— that's one each. We've both gotten one each.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Listen, we're nearly out of time, Katja, but Let me ask you one final question, and it's a question that I put to all my guests recently. And just to make you really focus, because I know that listeners love to get some really kind of juicy— I just invented a word, juicy and practical hints and tips. Juicy. There I go. What's the one thing that listeners could do right now to be more effective communicators? So they've listened to all of this the past 35 minutes and they've gone, I really like all that stuff, but Katya, tell me the one thing that I can do. What would it be?

Try to change one conversation per day for the better. Prepare one conversation. It doesn't matter, hybrid, one-on-one, stage. Take one conversation each and change it for the better. Every day, one. Don't go too big. Take one conversation at a time, but do that consciously every day, and you will see how quickly You get better. And another one is be fair enough and listen to your own shit. If you're a leader and you have an all-hands meeting, your comms should be obliged to put your own speech onto your ears while running, and you have to listen to yourself. This is very relieving sometimes because sometimes you say, wow, that was really good. And sometimes you really have to acknowledge, oh my God, I could do so much better. Listen to what you said.

I love that idea. Record your piece and then listen to it back. Yeah. And you know what? And I think that 9.9999 times out of 10, we do that and we cringe. But actually, there are times where you will go, "God, that was really good." Exactly.

And that's an achievement. You should put that in your treasure box, in your communication treasure box. It's okay. The way I was doing it on Friday, I really nailed it. And next time you open up the treasure box and you will have a couple of these things in the treasure box and you get them out and say, okay, next time I have 5 and 6. And this makes you a good communicator. Not— this is, this is not— this is really efforts of the planes. It's work every single day. Every single conversation is— it's no rocket science. But you need to do the job.

Yeah, yeah, practice makes perfect. Katja, before we go, if people want to find out more about you or they want to get in touch, where can they go?

First of all, go to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of my best channels, and there is only two Katja Schleicher on LinkedIn. The other one is a colleague of mine I got to know via LinkedIn, uh, and you will pretty quickly find out who I am of the two. Uh, so then of course the good old internet works all the time, uh, katjaschleicher.com. Or interview-training.eu. EU is important in this particular case. Or you can follow me on Twitter, this good old thing. Woo! Since Elon bought it, it's a little bit different, but still, I'm @mediacoaching on Twitter.

Cool, @mediacoaching. Listen, Katja, it's been really, really nice talking to you. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

Thanks for having me. Bye.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, To read our blogs or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.