Attended this afternoon?s session on Conversations with Chief Communication Officers.? Disappointed that there was only 1 CEO present because I really had hoped to hear from the perspective of the CEO, not so much their communicators.? Thankfully Paolina Milana was a really good facilitator and posed some good questions to the panelists.?
A few thoughts:
- Deborah Tabart, CEO of the?Australian Koala Foundation (and an IABC 2011 Excel Award recipient) invested in having a cameraman as a permanent part of her communications staff. Doing so gives her?access to telling her story?quickly and disseminating it broadly. One?of the other panelists, Wesley Bates, a Public Relations Manager from Innerstate Batteries, also mentioned that they invested in media production, having?in-house editing at their disposal and going so far as to?name their unit ?creative communication and events??rather than the usual ?communications and marketing? that we?re used to seeing.??This really speaks to the changing channels of communications?and for managers like myself, looking at?what kind of specialized skill sets we will need to ask of our?staff as we grapple with getting?our messages?out through mixed media.??Relying solely on email releases and phone pitches?no longer seems to be the norm.?
- Internal communications is gaining more importance than external communications. One of the panelists said ?communications begins at home? - so true!? I?ve always believed that you need to have your internal house in order before you can judge from the outside.? I hope this is a trending pattern for communicators everywhere.
- One panelist recommended reinstigating the ?management walks? as part of the CEO?s commitment to communications. Management walks used to be when managers would walk the ?shop floor? every day (or some other regularly instituted time period) to ask workers how things were, do the drop-by small talk and make that personal connection.? I wondered if this was?too old-skool of an approach to resonate with disengaged or jaded employees.? In my work at UBC Library, I recently discovered that employees respond much better to our University Librarian when she presents information in-person vs. frequent email updates.? There is something about understanding her passion for?librarianship that she has in-person that doesn?t quite translate into?e-mails, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.? But I can?t see her doing ?management walks? to all 21 of our branches, given the amount of time she has.? What we have been looking into is whether podcasts or webcasts may help bridge that divide.? So I understand the importance of face-to-face communications, but it has to be tailored to what employees find most effective.
- Should CEOs have two images - one external and one internal?? I saw a lot of affirmative nods in the room to this answer, which I disagree with.? Yes, some CEOs have a different persona once the camera is turned on, but it shouldn?t differ widely from the person they present to their employees.? What about authenticity?? How can you gain the trust of your employees if you slip into another? character for the media?? This wouldn?t work for me as a communicator.?
- Customize and localize your messages if you?re working with a globe-trotting CEO.? Speak the native language where you can, adopt the vernacular and know that one message cannot be the same for all regional audiences.? It?s good advice if your CEO has international influence, (e.g. our University Librarian will be President of an international industry association this summer), and you wind up having an added layer of complexity with your messaging, developing one layer for the local audience and one for the international audience. It really goes beyond just translation - you need to think about intercultural relations, whether concepts will be grasped and accepted, and understanding global influences.
Overall, this session touched upon some key elements of how communicators can help sheperd their CEOs. It should be noted that the CEOs selected were featured in the IABC Research Foundation study entitled ?Conversations with CEOs:? The communication function in modern organizations.?? It doesn?t look like the research findings have been released yet, but it would have been helpful to have some of the highlights of the study on a PPT slide deck.
Filed under: 2011 IABC World Conference, CEO communications, UBC Library, authentic leadership, global communications, internal communications, leadership, multimedia, non-profit communications, research |
Source: http://lindaong.x.iabc.com/2011/06/12/influencing-the-ceo-c-suite-communications/
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