40 | The power of truly values-led organisations

The decisions companies are making now, I think, are going to impact them for the next 10 to 20 years.

I think those brands that have succeeded are the ones that have thought to themselves, this is not a time to sell something. This is a time to serve or to solve a problem.

Remote onboarding, I think, is probably, you know, one of the top 5 growth opportunities for internal communication. It can be a total game changer.

Welcome to the Inspiring Change podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communication, Communications, Engagement, Leadership and Change. Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. It is episode 40, which is massively hard to believe given this was a little pet side project a couple of years ago, and here we are at episode 40. And thanks, I suppose, at this point for all your listens and comments and likes and everything that you've sent on, because it really does help to keep going. The one thing that really struck me is that there are so many brilliant internal communication questions podcasts out there, absolutely loads of them. So today I've asked the hosts of some of those podcasts to join me for a panel discussion. Because you know what, I don't think it's fair that we're always the ones answering the questions, that actually sometimes it's nice for us to have opinions as well. Because we have a lot of experience and a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts, and we work with a lot of clients. So my belief is that actually in, in having these guys on the podcast today, we're going to, we're going to be able to get some really interesting insights. And over the next 40 minutes, what we're going to be looking at is what the return, what that return to the new normal, and I hate that term, we'll talk about that in a second, new normal, what that looks like and what the role of communications and engagement professionals is going to be in supporting that change across organizations globally. We're sick of talking, or certainly I'm sick of talking after probably what's only been about 12 weeks, of talking about COVID But it's going to be really important that the organizations do support their people, that you, the listeners, support your people on this ongoing journey because it is a change journey. And like every change journey, people are going to need support to get them through that or else they're going to dig in their heels and stop. So, today I'm delighted to be joined by Katie McCauley, who's the host of the Internal Comms Podcast, Chuck Goss, originally the host of iCology, but more recently you might know him from the Culture, Comms and Cocktails Sales Podcast, and Mike Klein, host of the Internal Communications Podcast. And of course, as I said, as well as hosting some cracking podcasts, which you will find on all the, the main podcast directories, and I will of course link them in the show notes, each of my guests is an internal comms professional in their own right. So I'm hoping that today, as we dig into this whole issue of COVID and change and new normal and getting back to work, we'll come up with some really practical takeaways that you can all implement in your organizations. But for now, enough of me talking, let's get over to the panel. And I guess it might be useful for each of you to maybe give us a minute or so on where you are, maybe geographically in the world, and on your background. And I guess with chivalry not being dead just yet, let's maybe let ladies go first. And Katie, over to you.

Thank you very much, Scott. Yes, I am based in southern England in Hampshire, normally in London right by the Shard on Bermondsey Street where I run AB, the internal comms agency, and yes indeed have a lovely podcast studio there that I can't use to host the Internal Comms Podcast. I've been working in comms now, oh, just a little bit more than 30 years, so unfortunately yes, that does age me and date me, but yes, that's the case. Previously worked in-house, but more recently yes, on the agency and consultancy side, and have a real passion and always have had for all things to do with internal comms and employee engagement.

Brilliant. And I think it is a passion. And I think that in order to work really effectively in this space, you do have to be really, really passionate about what you do. Chuck, tell us a bit about yourself.

So first off, thanks, Scott, for inviting me on. As you said, my name is Chuck Gose. Thanks for getting that part right. Some people screw up that announcement. Good job. I am a senior strategic advisor at Social Chorus, as you mentioned, current host of the Culture, Comms and Cocktails podcast. Still am host of the iCology podcast, just haven't had time to do much with that lately, but I'm always looking for a kick in the pants to get that going. And much like Katie, I have a long career in the world of communications, having spent time in internal comms at General Motors and Rolls-Royce before coming along onto the tech side of things. And at times, I guess I'm the self-described internal comms cheerleader. I'm always trying to raise the game of communicators, cheer them up, build them up, level them up. To what I know they are capable of, even if they don't feel they're capable of it.

Brilliant. And there's a massive gap. I think people talk about communications, and I think there's a huge gap in what people think is good communications, good internal communications, and what actually is the art of the possible when it comes to really, really good internal communications. Yeah, for sure. Mike, tell us a little bit about you.

Sure. My name is Mike Klein, and I am based in the Netherlands, although I'm actually in the process of moving to Iceland at the beginning of August. I am the principal Changing the Terms, which is my internal communications practice. I'm also senior advisor to Smarp Strategic— it's to Smarp Strategic Services. Smarp is another vendor in the IC platform space, and I'm working to build up a strategy consulting practice that works with their technology. I've been in internal communications for the last 20 years. Before that, I I managed political campaigns in the US for 10 years. I'm a dual US/UK citizen, and I'm pissed off about Brexit.

A dual US/UK citizen, wow, that's a really good place to be at the moment from a politics perspective. Precisely.

Just one thing to clarify, I am not the host of the Internal Comms Podcast. I have been a very frequent guest. Which is where I think that came up. But it is hosted very ably by a fellow by the name of Jonathan Davies.

In that case, I'm going to cut you off right now and get Jonathan on the line as quickly as possible. Listen, it's great to have you all. Thank you very much for joining me, as I said. I want to kick off just with that term that I hate. I'm going to throw this to you, Katie, first, given that you went first the last time. This whole idea of new normal, I don't like it. I don't think it's actually particularly representative of what's happening. But what does it actually mean? What do you think it is they're actually trying to describe?

It means so little, in my view. It's totally the wrong term. It's one of those catchy, potentially marketing phrases. When you unpack it, actually, it promises far less than it actually delivers. For me, actually, there might be something fundamentally wrong about the phrase, because I think for me, you know, and I was a bit sort of ain't really retentive about this, and I looked the definition up of normal just to check. And we all know that it means something standard, typical, conforming to a certain sort of expected type. And what I think COVID-19 has all taught us is that what we thought were and was our normal lives, you know, what we thought was predictable and standard and stable was anything but, and in an instant our lives could be turned upside down, and all of a sudden we couldn't do those normal things like go to work or go to the park or take our children to school. So even as we come out of this and there's an easing, I think psychologically there's an ambiguity, there's an uncertainty, and there's a precariousness that we're left feeling. There's also a possibility, there's new possibilities and a reimagining of what the future might be, which is quite exciting. But for me, it doesn't really acknowledge that precarious feeling and feeling of uncertainty and uncomfortableness that we might be having about what's next.

Hmm.

Chuck, anything to add there?

Yeah, I compare it to Back to the Future, which I know doesn't follow the real definition of time travel, but let's, let's subscribe to the Back to the Future way that we all had plans in 2020 and things changed dramatically all over the world. I think there's this mix of people that think we're going to go back to what the plans were prior to COVID-19. There's some that are recognizing that nothing will ever be the same again. And we're now starting to see that friction happen. Between things. So whatever was normal before for people is certainly not going to be normal after for anybody involved. And I think some of that friction is what's driving that. Just speaking from the United States standpoint, we had within a month people protesting to open things up because they felt like their lives were being endangered because of it. Now with Black Lives Matter, we have another protest happening nationwide. So these— here you've got two different nation nationwide protests happening and we're seeing this friction playing out on a political scale. What I'm curious to see what happens is what happens at the work level at organizations for people who maybe they're ready to go back to work, whatever that is, back to the office. We'll use that terminology. They're ready to go back to the office. Their coworkers are not ready to go back to the office. Leaders might be ready to go back to the office. Their employees are not ready to go back to the office. How are organizations going to handle that friction, I think, will define that employer-employee relationship for the coming years.

And I think people think that that friction, they can just simply wipe away. I heard stories of 3 communications that went out in reasonably sizable organizations recently. One was, okay, well, based on guidelines from the government, we're reopening the office on the 29th of July. We'll see you all there. The other one was, "We're staying closed until at least the end of the year." And the third one was, "None of you are allowed to go on holidays because if you do, when you get back, you're going to have to self-isolate for 2 weeks." Now, all of those, for different reasons, just made my blood boil because it's not about a one-size-fits-all black and white line in the sand. Actually, different— exactly to your point, Chuck, different people are going to need different things and different ways of doing things in order to feel comfortable, in order to maintain productivity and motivation and employee engagement and keep the business going, keep supporting their customers in the way that we know they need to be supported. Mike, over to you. If when we think about that whole idea of friction and when we think about, you know, what might happen around the whole area of work, you know, I'm a huge believer actually in— I think there is going to be a lot of pain, but I do think there's the potential for a huge amount of gain. I am a kind of a focus on the silver lining on the cloud rather than the cloud. I wonder what opportunities this emergency has perhaps presented for companies when it comes to creating better and stronger cultures in their organizations.

Well, I think part of the whole conversation about the new normal is that even if the new normal is a bogus idea, there are new constants. And by having some new constants, you can then kind of start to create a level of predictability, a level of structure, a level of integration that hasn't been possible in the initial wave of COVID chaos. And I'll mention a few of these constants. One is that social distancing at some level needs to be maintained. Whether people ignore it or not is another question. But the workplace and society needs to be organized so that social distancing to the maximum extent possible, can continue to take place. Second, you're dealing with, you know, the likelihood of continued travel restrictions, particularly to international travel. You know, even if two-week quarantines go away, you know, there's, there's not going to be a lot of enthusiasm for economy class business travel anytime soon. The recession is going to be a huge factor, and that's not going to go away anytime soon. It will change, and I can get to that in a second. But the other thing is that there's going to be, based on what's happening in the US and beyond the US's borders, a heightened focus on racial consciousness specifically, and in diversity inclusion generally. And so these are very new rules for a new ballgame that are going to be very different to what we had back in January. And so whoever can create an efficient, effective, and engaging representation of those rules is going to have a huge advantage. Now, the thing with the recession is right now we have Depression-era unemployment, certainly in the United States, talking about 20%. But the projections all say that by the end of the year, it will go to 10%. That means a massive swing in the workforce. You know, you're going to have, you know, 10% of the workforce at a minimum going from one organization to another, and that's going to have huge implications for employer branding, employee engagement, and particularly the issue of trust in the workplace, because a lot of those people will have been jettisoned because of panic by their previous employers, and they're not necessarily about to kneel in front of words on a wall.

Agreed. And when you think, Chuck, about that whole idea of the social distancing, of international travel, of a recession coming, of a renewed sense of diversity and inclusion, what to you are some of the opportunities that perhaps this whole emergency can present for organizations and how they can strengthen their culture or strengthen their employer brand?

Well, that's a great segue, Scott. When Mike mentioned about travel, I'm someone who traveled almost every week. For work, whether it's domestically, internationally. So I was on the road quite a bit and I was one who— I do have a home office. I didn't spend necessarily a lot of time here because I was on the road, but now I'm spending all of my time at the office, which has its pros and cons. One of those pros is I've now adopted a dog for the first time ever because I can. I'm not going anywhere. I know where I'm going to be tomorrow and the next day and the week after that and the week after that. But I do think from a culture standpoint, going back to my earlier line around friction, we're gonna see those organizations who are truly strong, truly led with values, with servant leadership succeeding. We have seen the cracks in culture before that, that maybe those companies were put on a pedestal earlier. We've seen the faults in those company cultures. All of us on the phone, we know that there is no such thing as a perfect company. Every single company has its warts. But what we're seeing is some warts are a lot worse, a lot more painful than others. And to Mike's point, the decisions companies are making now, I think, are going to impact them for the next 10 to 20 years from a reputation standpoint, hiring standpoint, recruitment standpoint. When you look at how people are responding to Facebook and having employees speak out against it, I think 5 or 10 years ago, that would have been hard to fathom that. But having— and it's not the comms teams and the marketing people speaking out, these are the engineers. They're speaking out against what's happening. So you've got these new employees that feel very empowered to speak out. You can look back to last summer. With the Wayfair walkout that happened, where employees were tired and fed up with a decision that the company made. And rather than just swallow it or speak about it quietly, they all walked out. So where we were looking at, uh, you know, people sharing on being employee ambassadors, now it's employee activism. And with this new feeling, especially in the United States, and we're seeing it now abroad with protests happening and being able— it's not just you and you're bringing a crowd with you. I see employees now holding leaders more accountable, no different than how we're holding political leaders more accountable. I think I would like to see organizations hold company leaders accountable for decisions made in the past and decisions going forward in the future.

And I love the idea of employee activism and that whole idea of holding leaders to account, because I think actually, if they are the right leaders in an organization, What will happen when they're held accountable? They'll actually do what they say they're going to do. They will act with integrity, which in turn builds trust, back to one of the things that Mike said. And for me, that is— and we all know because we all work in this area that the whole trust deficit thing is still a gigantic issue globally. And I wonder then, Katie, just from that, particularly around the whole idea of trust and building trust, one of the things that companies ask me a lot is, if we end up in a situation where more and more of our people are are going to be working at home, are going to be working remotely or from wherever. How do we continue to build a really strong culture in an organization where people don't necessarily get to see each other anymore? How do we get to build and maintain those levels of trust?

I think it's still important to start with the fundamentals. And so for me, all the— everything we've been talking about at the moment, you know, just now has come down to one word, and that's purpose. Why does the organization exist? Who is it there to serve? What is it— what role should it play in society? And I think we know that newer generations, younger generations coming into the workforce are terribly interested in this question. And quite interestingly, through the pandemic, I think those brands that have succeeded are the ones that have thought to themselves, this is not a time to sell something, this is a time to serve or to solve a problem. And if we can be clear about that purpose and it's meaningful— and the point about a crisis is that it is a defining moment, and I'm completely with Chuck on this— bad cultures fall apart because they're built on nothing, you know, they're built on fault lines. Strong cultures, when their backs are against the wall, everyone knows what to do. It's in their DNA how we make a decision because the values are lived and breathed. So You know, who are we? What do we stand for? Who do we seek to serve? Being very clear about that. And then I think what we've— a problem that we do have in this kind of remote and virtual world, and one thing that concerns me a lot, is all of a sudden you've gone from an organisation that might have had 3 sites and 30,000 employees to 30,000 employees and 30,000 sites. And so there's that social connection It's all very well doing all the broadcasting stuff, but how do we get social connection? How do we maintain that sense of community and get real genuine informal dialogue going, which is the glue, I think, that organizations need?

And Katie, that's a fantastic point because I think that's— we can't even begin to imagine what that's going to do whether this pandemic goes on and impacts us through 2020. Probably in the 2021 and beyond. We can only begin to imagine what that does to an organization. Some will strengthen in that purpose. Some individuals will strengthen maybe because they've given the freedom to do their job, whereas before, maybe in an office, in a setting, they, they felt somewhat stifled. But we don't know what impact that's going to have because we haven't been in this environment. We've never had the technology and privilege to be able to work in this way, because there are individuals like us who can conceivably work from anywhere. There are a lot of employees who don't have that privilege. And so they are stuck. I say stuck, that's probably the wrong word. They go to manufacturing location, they're at the retail store, they're at the healthcare facility. So they are there. So again, going back to, I've had this thought lately of haves and have-nots. Where there's been two different buckets of people who we called deskless or non-networked associates or tech disabled, whatever those words were. And then there's those who are tech enabled or desk-based workers. We're seeing that difference even more now than we did before.

Yeah. And I've seen that for years. When I worked with one of the largest banks here in Ireland for a number of years, that difference between branch staff and staff who worked in the head office, because the branch staff were expected to be out on the floor. So, when you sent out an internal communication and you said, listen, it's on the intranet, they would say, well, when do you expect me to be sitting looking at our intranet when I'm supposed to be on the floor serving customers? So, it is hard. But I do think it's interesting to your point, Chuck, that this whole idea of, you know, we haven't had the technology and, you know, we can't do our business in a way where we have people remote. Yeah, okay, for the examples you gave there, absolutely right, manufacturing, retail, You know, banking, financial services, yes, there's definitely areas that can't work remotely, but many that can. And I think for years, those excuses, the tech excuse and the we can't do our business like this excuse, they were wiped out literally, not literally overnight, actually overnight, when everyone was told to go home and work, and they have worked. So I think there's going to be some very interesting conversations stirred up around the whole remote working thing and the potential for remote working. Mike, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I've got a huge thought on that, which is that— and it ties into what Katie was saying about networks and conversations and informal relationships. And that is, you remember that 10% of the workforce I was telling you about that left its work before COVID or during COVID-19 and will work up somewhere different afterwards, or at least after this first phase. A lot of those people are going to be coming into remote positions and will have to be onboarded remotely. Remote onboarding, I think, is probably, if not the biggest, then, you know, one of the top 5 growth opportunities for internal communication. It can be a total game changer, particularly if there are enough people involved, because you're going to have coming in people coming in from the outside with no networks, no organizational knowledge, and maybe some functional skill, and they'll be thrown into roles where they're expected to instinctively understand what's going on in the organizations in which they're joining. And the current onboarding process is very much focused on getting people compliant and getting people functional within a limited range, mainly of HR systems and activities. Internal communicators really need to embrace the challenge of remote onboarding and embrace our role in it because we are the folks who can convey the information, the context, the content, and facilitate the connections in a way that human resources can't.

And I know it's a great point. I know a couple of people, one that just started in a senior sales role in Ireland for Amazon Web Services, and one that just started in one of our biggest private healthcare companies as HR director, and they've both gone into roles which are big meaty senior roles, and they've never met any of their teams. It must be bizarre. I was actually only texting one of them earlier on in the healthcare company, just saying, it must be very, very odd to never have met any of your colleagues face to face, and probably unlikely to in the very, very close future. Your feedback's important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode of the Inspiring Change Podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. So when we think about that whole idea, yes, onboarding is one area where comms engagement is really going to have to step up and HR is really going to have to step up. What is going to be the broader impact do you think, Katie, on the whole area of internal comms engagement, and particularly on teams in organizations, or maybe actually even on senior execs in organizations where they don't have those teams?

Yes, I mean, for some teams have— some IC teams have absolutely been thrown right into the spotlight, and a lot's been put on their shoulders, and they've been saying for some time, we want that seat at the table, and before they knew it, they would be thrust onto that table, and it's been tough. I would I was invited to speak about imposter syndrome recently, and I was surprised by the 700 people that joined that call who were interested in this. There was a lot of people feeling maybe a little bit uncertain and lacking confidence who have been thrown into the spotlight in that regard. I would just say to those comms people, wherever you are, this is not a time necessarily to tear up the rulebook. The fundamentals still count. Still have a plan, have a purpose as a team, have a channel strategy, have a content strategy and a plan and a content framework, because all of these things— still measure— all these things matter just as much, if not more, than they did before, I think. And the only other thing I'd say possibly to IC teams is, in a crisis, we all know because of our good crisis comms training that it's all about establishing the facts, and communicating them clearly, and we've been doing that. You know, normally it's go to the nearest exit, in this case it's been, you know, stay where you are and lock the doors. But we've got to get into a stage of starting to listen, I think, because as we do come out of this and try to get back to work, however that work, whatever that work looks like, before we do that, I think we've got to take a moment, reflect, and find out what people are thinking and feeling, and get into deep listening And I'm not sure we've been doing that up till now. So, you know, that would be a big piece of advice I'd give comms teams at the moment.

Chuck, in your experience, are internal comms engagement teams or senior execs who are responsible for internal comms engagement, are they particularly good at listening during change like this to employees' needs?

I would say no. I think that we are— there's that whole, you know, listening to understand and listening to respond. And I think we are in that mode oftentimes of listening to respond in hopes that people don't even have to ask us a question, that they're just going to take what we give them and go. And there was something that Seth Godin wrote about a month ago that really resonated with me. And he talked about tunnels and bridges. And it resonated with me thinking about communicators. Communicators often, we build bridges. We build these big structures that everybody can look at and gawk at, and we want them to praise. But we really should be focusing on tunnels because what bridges do— bridges are big and up and they go around the problem. Tunnels go through the problem. Tunnels can be more expensive than bridges. They don't seem like it, they can be more expensive, but they require less maintenance and people— they might be these big shiny objects in the sky, but they're more effective. It's getting to the problem much sooner. So that's something I've been thinking about. That Seth wrote is, as communicators, senior leadership team, let's start looking for those tunnels, start looking for those quick routes, simpler routes to a problem versus building some big shiny object that might get lots of attention. I do think though that this is, you hate to say that there's an opportunity out of a crisis, but this is one for communicators and I reference it to, we get to see their superpowers. As a crisis happens, superheroes show up during a crisis. What superpowers do they use? Superheroes don't need a lot of praise. That's just what they're there to do. So I would love to see communicators celebrate each other, celebrate the work they do, but then go on about the next day and continue leading the organization. And a lot of times I tell communicators is get the hell out of the way. Let the organization communicate. You build those tunnels, build all the avenues to make that communication happen, but then empower people to communicate what they want to share and not have to funnel you as this gatekeeper to get the word out.

Yeah, I did a really nice piece of work with a client a couple of weeks ago where they wanted to put together a video celebrating their newly created values through the stories of the people in the organization who had been doing stuff around COVID and coronavirus globally. And it worked really well. But of course, it was driven by the comms team. But what I thought was really interesting was that very shortly after, people started just to pick up their phones and make little videos and put it up on their social intranet. And here's what I'm doing and here's what I've done and here's how I'm living a value. And it became employee-driven comms content rather than internal comms team-driven content, which I thought was really exciting. Mike, when it comes to listening, if we all agree that the organizations maybe traditionally and historically haven't been very good at listening, What are some of the things that leaders and comms teams should be doing in order to maybe check the temperature of the organization and to get some really good feedback from people?

Well, the quality of— the quality and accessibility of survey tools is such that there's no excuse not to do this in a serious and rigorous way. That much being said, a lot of the bad things that organizations do in the space really come back to haunt them. And the current crisis could be a huge opportunity to get rid of— and there's one intervention that I have a particular bone to pick with, which is the annual employee engagement survey. If you can overthrow, jettison, barbecue the annual employee engagement survey and free up half of the resources to doing a regular and rigorous program of qualitative research, quantitative research, because part of the problem is about, you know, about senior executives listening, is that they don't tend to listen well in face-to-face settings, partially because the people who are talking to them are too scared of what's going to happen when that actually gets listened to. And so, you've got to, you can't just treat listening as an interpersonal phenomenon in the corporate space. You've got to have a rigorous, thoughtful, dare I say mechanical program that produces data that can be analyzed for the betterment of the organization and to give people insights into what to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know I, just for the listeners' perspective, when Mike said that you should barbecue the annual employee survey, all the panelists said sitting here in front of me were nodding vigorously, just so you know. And I am one of those, my head was also nodding. You touched there on, you know, we've touched on listening, which I think is a huge issue in internal comms. I think that people still see internal communications teams and individuals, particularly here in Ireland actually, less so maybe in the UK. I still think that fundamentally we're a good few years behind the UK in terms of maturity of comms and engagement. But I think people still do see the internal comms team as the gatekeepers, to Chuck's point, and as a mouthpiece for broadcast comms. And I think the more that we can do to drive employee-created communications, that would be a very, very powerful thing. One thing Mike touched on there, which I thought was interesting, was the whole idea of leaders, and Chuck talked about it as well. What do you guys believe is the role for people leaders during a time of really significant change. And actually, that's what I see this as. You know, we talk about organizations going through a huge organizational change or a new technology platform or a move to remote working or whatever. This to me, albeit global and impacting most of the people on the planet, is just another change for organizations. So, what role do you think, Chuck, people leaders have to play during this time of change?

I think they have to be the truth tellers. I think that we've seen, again, we talked about trust earlier. I think that during a time of crisis, whether it's the coronavirus pandemic playing out or the racism pandemic that you see in the US, employees want answers and their leaders have to give them the truthful answers, the non-political, straight to the point answers of what's happening, what they believe, so that then employees feel informed and aware of what their options and choices are. So I think that we saw, we have examples of that where you see the leader, I'm spacing on his name, but the gentleman, the CEO of Airbnb, very open and transparent in what they were doing, why they were doing it, how they were doing it, who was affected. They didn't need to do an FAQ around it because he answered all of the questions. So if you're doing an FAQ, you've done something wrong in the communication because there shouldn't be those— you shouldn't know all the questions people are going to ask. It should be— you should be answering those in there right away. So that goes back to what we said before around the organizations that are getting it right, the leaders that are getting it right, they're going to be part of those case studies going forward that everybody's going to be jealous of for the next 5 to 10 years. The ones that get it wrong, we're all going to wipe our brow and be like, "Whew, thank goodness we weren't there." when that happened. So we're seeing the people that are the true leaders, and these might not be the CEO, the COO, the CTO. These might be leaders that we never see a LinkedIn post from, but they've, they've inspired their team, they've answered their team's questions, they've checked in on them. We've seen the topic of mental health come up time and time again in this new way of working for some. Those are the leaders that are making a difference. We will never hear from them, we will never see them, but they've made the impact on their employees, and that's exactly what a leader should do.

Yeah, agreed, and do it quietly with humility for sure. Mike, thoughts on what leaders should be doing to build on what Chuck said there?

I have a slightly different take on it, partially because I spent a fair part of today working on an FAQ set for a client, but seriously, the role of the leader for me, or at least the ultimate role, for the leader in an organization is really to challenge or reduce the disparity between the stated version and the actual version. Because the challenge with things like purpose, the challenge with things like values, even the challenge of things like priorities, is that the organization says, "This is our purpose, values, and priorities," but then at the team level, something else often gets to the surface, usually because a manager is making their report emphasize something that's not necessarily compatible with the value set. And so if you can reduce the ambiguity and the discrepancy between, for lack of a better term, stated purpose and actual purpose, then you can minimize a lot of the organizational resistance, suffering, inertia and get to the point where Chuck is talking about this really authentic neural leadership that just happens.

I think for me, there's a piece around translating and leaders because no organization in the world can write a communication that's going out to 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 people and make that communication relevant to those people individually. That's the role of the leader. To contextualize, to translate in the context of that particular team. And that's an important thing. Katie, anything to add?

I don't think there is one leadership style. I think that's really important to say. And it's interesting in the podcast where I interview leaders that the most interesting CEO that I met so far was one who seemed to be doing everything right. He was on the road constantly, town halls, engaging people in conversation. And I said, "Goodness me, you know, you just seem to have it all going on here. You're doing everything right, you know, you could write the textbook, basically." And he said, "I am such an introvert, and everything I do, I have to be consciously competent." And I thought to myself, how interesting, because I've worked for leaders who thought of themselves as superstars. They thought it all came naturally, and they would shoot from the hip, and before they knew it, they said something that was totally wrong, they had to retract, built on nothing, and no one believed them, and it all fell apart. So I think it's important that leaders don't think that they have to be a certain way, they just have to be them, and whatever them is, they have to work out their leadership style. And I did a really interesting little bit of analysis in the early days of the pandemic when I was looking at CEOs, basically their films, their videos to staff, and a lot of them thought that if they removed the tie and opened just the top button and sat on the edge of the desk, that somehow this made them more engaging and they would connect more emotionally with staff. No, it's not as simple as that. You really have to put something of yourself, and I really mean of yourself, in the message. And I have an all-hands meeting, it's only 30 people, but sometimes 'When I do that, I get quite embarrassed because occasionally the emotions got the better of me,' and I think, 'Oh, that was really embarrassing,' and they have to take a moment and reflect and think, 'Well, actually, if they think you're human, that's possibly not such a bad thing after all.' I would say one final thing: if you're a strategic advisor to a leader at the moment, can you please make sure you're also telling them to take a break? If you've got leaders turning up for every virtual call, every all-hands in these, in these quite intense calls, and you're an advisor make sure you're being kind to them and you're telling them to pause and have a moment of reflection. They will burn out really quickly.

Brilliant. Chuck?

Yeah, I want to touch on— Mike Klein used a word that's been pretty popular for, I would say, the better part of the decade, which we use authenticity and transparency as these two words that we want with leaders. And I think those are the wrong words for them, because I think it's when we see authentic person and the transparent person. That's not who we want. So maybe in hindsight that is a good thing. But I really think during this time what people want is honest leadership. And I think we use terms authentic and transparent, but really what I think employees want, which if you ask them, not in the annual engagement survey, but maybe every town, what type of leadership you want, I think they would just want honest. Leadership. And I think, I hope if anything comes out of this, that's what we get. Because there's a, I use this all the time when I'm talking at events or webinars, there's a line from a Fast Company article that was from a few years back. I might have used it, Katie, when I was on your podcast. Honesty without compassion is cruelty. So we're seeing a lot of cruel honesty, but an employer in this world, we must have compassionate honesty. When we're dealing in these crises with employees and what they're each facing.

For sure. And that whole idea, Katie, of the CEO perched on the edge of the desk with the tie off of the top button undone, making him more connected to his people. I watched a video back at the very top of this, and I think it was Marriott, the CEO of Marriott possibly, doing a talk, but he was suited and booted, a blue corporate background, But the words that he used and the way he used those words was just fabulous and just went to show that, you know, just because you're the CEO, you don't have to all be Richard Branson because we're not all Richard Branson. Listen, guys, really conscious of time, I'm going to ask you one last question and it's just literally a 10-second answer for each of you, please. If you were going into the office of a large organization tomorrow and you were head of internal comms, what's the first thing that you would do to help your people on this journey? Katy?

I would say you're probably not, and you're definitely not starting from scratch, so don't throw away everything you already know about the organisation, but I think it is a moment to pause and take a breath and just find out what everyone is thinking, feeling, and doing at the moment, and then the big question you have to ask is, as leaders of this organisation, how can we help you do your job better? 'If this is how we're expecting you to return,' and we can lay it all out there, 'before we start actually returning, can we ask, how can we help you do it better?' That would be the big question that I would have IC people ask around the organization.

Brilliant.

Mike?

I'd say the first thing I would do is organize an organizational network analysis for about a month— in a month's time. The rationale being you do not have any idea what's happened to your organization during this period in terms of people leaving, people working out of their homes, relationships ending, relationships forming, and relationships that need to be created. You've got to do this. This is no longer optional.

Brilliant. And Chuck, last word to you.

Absolutely. My first one word was listen, but then I came up with another one because we have to, we'd have to do a better job of listening listening, we talked about, I'm gonna quote the philosopher, Mr. Rogers, which I'm gonna butcher this quote, but it goes something like this, in a time of crisis, look for the helpers. So we, if you're walking into an organization, look at the people that are helping, but then don't stop there, you have to be one of those helpers, you have to be one of those leaders inside. I mentioned servant leadership before, be one of those servant leaders in an organization to drive change, drive compassion, and again, be one of the helpers.

Brilliant. Katie, Chuck, and Mike, thank you very much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate you having taken the time. It's been a really interesting discussion, and I hope that people, when they listen, will take away a lot of really good hints and tips, really practical stuff that they can put into practice tomorrow or whenever it is they get back to the office or back into work or back with their teams. For now, That's all from us to all of you. Thank you very much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about Inspiring Change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.