It’s a question I’m asked time and again by internal communications colleagues….
“How can we get the leaders of our organisations to see the value in communications?”
As anyone working in communications will know, it can feel like an uphill struggle at times, but there are things you can do to help smooth the process.
In a recent webinar for Workvivo, I outlined the key things to consider when attempting to influence leaders to engage with communications. This blog is a summary of those pointers.
Understand the triangle of influence
In order to be able to truly influence your leaders, you need to be confident that you fully understand them.
This diagram, which I first heard talked about by Professor Anne Gregory, is a really useful way of approaching the issue.
In each of the corners of the triangle are the three things you need to know the answers to before you attempt to put forward any communications strategy that needs leadership buy-in.
1) Your work: What is it that you need to talk to your leaders about? What do you want budget for? What projects do you want them to engage in? Be clear on exactly what you’re asking for and what you need the outcome to be.
2) Their work: What are they currently working on? What are they spending their time doing? What’s important to them? Where are they focusing their energy? Understanding their priorities gives you a better chance of framing your requests in the right way.
3) How they are measured: What are they expected to deliver? What do their leaders measure them on? What does success look like for them? In the same way as the last point, having an understanding of their concerns, fears or pressures, helps you pitch your message in the right way, increasing the chances of that all-important alignment.
This last point is particularly important and, I think, emphasises exactly the challenge we have. We’ve become used to spending a lot of our time talking about engagement as the goal for communications activity, but actually what many leaders are spending their time on, and are more focused on, is risk.
They will be measured by their budget, their time and their efficiency – yet often, to them, it can feel like all we’re talking about is needing to spend more money and more time doing stuff. If this is not what they’re measured on, then there’s a real disconnect here.
A real-life example
Influencing leaders starts with aligning your activity, conversations and questions to what is important to them.
Undoubtedly, they will have priorities that aren’t always the same as yours. Good communication is about being aligned so that what you’re talking to them about is completely relevant to their world.
When I was in one of my previous roles, a new CEO joined the company, and it quickly became clear they didn’t really understand the value of communication.
They were a real ‘numbers person’. So much of what they talked about was data-driven, they were always asking people to show them the numbers, and I made the mistake of thinking this was the way I was going to sell communications to them. I went into our meetings armed with data, lots of reports around engagement, communication, the outcomes etc – and they were not interested at all.
I thought I’d nailed it, because I thought I knew what was important to them, but what I hadn’t done was really listen. When I did, the question they asked was ‘what value does it bring?’ For most other departments this was obviously financial, but for communications this was not so tangible.
I had to be honest and admit I didn’t really know what they were talking about when referring to value. When I actually took the time to ask and find out more, they said it was around risk and reputation. These were the things that mattered most to them and that they needed communications to address.
As a result, I reframed my whole strategy messaging to centre it around risk, rather than talking about engagement, which is what I had previously been focusing on.
Now, I was able to say things like “there’s a risk that the US team are going to spend £0.5m on a new platform but we’ve already got a platform and they need to use this one….”
Whereas previously, I’d have gone in saying “we need to do something about the engagement in the US”.
As soon as I began talking about the risk, it made sense to them, and they told me to get on a plane to the US and do a workshop to help resolve the issues. When I began talking to them in a way that was suddenly completely relevant to their work things changed. The end outcome was the same, but the way in which the required action was framed needed to be completely different.
The importance of priorities
Not everything can be important.
Understanding this is one of the key steps in improving your chances of being taken seriously by leadership teams.
Knowing what the true priorities are makes it much easier to communicate them and avoids a sense of overwhelm on both parts.
As a team, ask yourselves ‘what are the things we really want to fight for and what can we let go?’ What are your non-negotiables? As one former colleague said to me ‘Is this really a hill you want to die on?’
It’s easy to create false urgency in the world of communication but if everything is badged as important it then makes it very difficult to sell in the stuff that’s really important. It’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf. If you’re constantly flagging everything as important then, when it is really important, that belief in you won’t be there.
The importance of relationships in influencing
This might sound obvious but, you need to understand relationships in order to be able to influence.
To build these successfully you need to put proper time into them, and spend time with people in person if possible. If you’re not doing that, you’re not going to be able to influence. Put the time and effort in. Be curious. Leaders will never come to us, we do have to go to them.
Building these relationships makes it much easier to then have the fruitful discussions that unlock effective communications. You need to be able to discuss the outcomes of activities with leaders. What is it they are looking for? What do they want people to do/think/feel?
The ability to advise is crucial too. To explain, why now, and what happens if we don’t communicate X, Y or Z. This is much easier if you already have a solid relationship.
Likewise, if you want to influence you have to be able to discuss the needs of the leader. If you aren’t asking questions, you aren’t advising. And, if you’re not having those conversations now it makes it really hard if you need to do it at a later date. Start by gradually nudging people into the mindset where it’s ok for questions to be asked and constructive push backs to happen. Simply agreeing to everything without giving the benefit of your professional advice can lead to you not being taken seriously.
If you’d like a copy of the briefing note I used to structure these sometimes tricky conversations, or you’d like to chat more about how we can help you cement those relationships with leaders in your organisation, drop our team a message at info@redefiningcomms.com
