Building relationships with leaders

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Do you have a seat at the leadership table? As a communicator, do you need one?

In this webinar for ICology Presents, I talk about how to build relationships with leaders in your organisation and the biggest challenges people have in connecting with leadership teams (from 8 minutes onwards). Be warned – I begin with some bold slides, including one titled “How to avoid being told to f**k off out of their office”! This is a story from my own experience that I often tell when people are looking to engage leaders.

Leaders sometimes leave us feeling deflated, but we need to ask if this is a hill we want to die on. I talk about the importance of listening and how you can overcome the sinking feeling by asking bold questions of your leaders. What does it really mean to them when they talk about “adding value”?

The webinar covers the need to adapt to your audience – something we talk about a lot, but that we don’t always practice when it comes to the leadership teams we work with. It’s really important to check your language. When we’re talking to leaders, we need to make sure we’re talking to them in a way that’s appropriate for them, and not use terms that are only used within the communications industry; “employee voice” is one great example of this.

A lot has been said about how communicators need a seat at the table to get in front of leaders, but, I always say:

It’s so important to build credibility as a communicator: if you’re going to be credible you’ve got to be trusted, you’ve got to demonstrate goodwill and you’ve got to have honesty, integrity and expertise. If you can’t be influential without a seat at the table, you won’t be influential with a seat at the table.

There is a lot more advice and practical takeaways in the full webinar. Thank you to ICology for inviting me to speak. If this is something you are tackling in your organisation, we offer consultancy to move you from chaos to calm, as well as coaching and mentoring. I’m interested to know about any challenges you’re having in building relationships with leaders in your organisation. If you’d like to chat more about the topics I cover in this webinar, please do get in touch.

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Subscribe to join our community and we’ll be in touch with helpful advice and updates about how we can take your organisation from chaos to calm. Our community gets invited to a quarterly 90-minute Ask Me Anything online session with Jenni Field, as well as early access to events, discounts and research.

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Need a fresh perspective?

If you’re a leader or business owner that needs help diagnosing what’s causing chaos, improving your communication and moving towards calm, please get in touch and book a free 15-minute call.

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Join our community

Subscribe to join our community and we’ll be in touch with helpful advice and updates about how we can take your organisation from chaos to calm. Our community gets invited to a quarterly 90-minute Ask Me Anything online session with Jenni Field, as well as early access to events, discounts and research.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.