TCR — More and more we are running into Chief Executives that are in trouble. They’re feeling the pressure and struggling to consistently marshall their troops.
Business communication is a challenge because we tend to think that if you say the same thing twice you are stupid. And yet when chief executives say things differently from one day to the next people try to see what has changed.
Increasingly communication is a fundamental part of a CEO’s job.
It used to be that people were impressed if the CEO spoke… and even more impressed if he made sense. Today the expectations are different.
People want inspiration in their work. They want direction. They want to be heard. And none of these things are easy. None of them can be delivered simply and without planning and careful execution.
That sounds dumb, doesn’t it? The idea that a seasoned, high-flying business-person needs help with their communication?!
But our businesses are increasingly social. They are about getting the most out of people. CEOs have more and more in common with politicians. They have to sell policies and motivate populations. And less and less in common with the executives and managers that we used to think of them as.
A CEO’s communication involves change management, internal communication, strategy and planning. It’s the biggest and most important change campaign that any business has. And there’s no reason that it shouldn’t spend as much time and money on it as they do on, say, accounting…!
It’s easy to tell a business where the CEO has a proactive plan for communications. It’s a CEO with confidence in their strategy AND convinced that people know it and know what they can do with it.
/df
David, Great use of the image “Son of man” by René Magritte. My interpretation of the painting is that everything visible hides something more meaningful, which is why we always want to read between the lines. That’s why what our leaders do is far more important to us than what they say and why we often find more about the truth in what they dont say. Credibility comes from building trust, I’m not convinced leaders can learn much from politicians except from their mistakes see: http://blogs.thebrandunion.com/youcantkissajpeg/2009/06/10/brown-leader/
CEOs make the same mistake politicians do in their persona communications with employees. They get bored with their message because they have said it more than once, while most employees havent even heard them at all, let alone understood what they said.
CEOs need a grid of their total audience and need to be told that they can change their message once they have clearly put two check marks in every square – and not before. If you heard the same message twice from a CEO you’d think he was committed to the idea. If you never heard it at all you wouldn’t know what she was thinking or where she was going.
Love the blog. Smart, easy to read and right on the money. Keep it up.
David Macleod touches on some of this in his review of employee engagement published this morning http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/employment/employee-engagement/index.html