Great communication is more than just passing on information.
As a communicator, you create context so that your audience can understand the message, engage in a campaign, and feel connected to your organization’s mission and goals.
Whether you’re part of a large communications department or are a mighty team of one, you know the power of good communication.
But did you know that there are more communicators in your company? Ones that don’t fall under your comms department?
Here’s the thing: everyone in your organization is a communicator.
Your CEO has to communicate your company’s annual revenue goals to all employees. Your line manager has to communicate project feedback with you and with stakeholders. And your colleague in Sales has to communicate the value of your product or offering with a prospect.
Whatever the case is in your organization, you have a unique opportunity as an internal comms pro:
You can empower your colleagues to communicate more clearly and strategically.
This is the art of enabling employees to communicate effectively, part of our Masterclass on enabling your organization for internal communication.
Here are some tips to enable three core groups within your organization with internal communication skills: CEOs, line managers, and internal publishers.
How to enable your CEO for internal communication
1. Make comms training easy
It’s no surprise that CEOs are pressed for time. With so little flexibility in their calendars, it can be difficult to make comms training a priority. Make your coaching session with your CEO as effortless as possible, and equip them with memorable pointers that they can easily apply to their day-to-day.
2. Focus on empathy
Great leaders speak to both the hearts and the minds of people. While hard numbers and key results are important to communicate, it’s equally important for your CEO to communicate with empathy.
You can help them fine-tune their communication style by suggesting that they use a personal story to get a message across. This empathetic approach will resonate with your employees — and will help them feel more connected to your organization’s business goals.
3. Find the right format
Whatever your CEO’s preferred communication style, make sure you find a format that suits their personality and offer support where needed. That might look like helping them prepare speaking notes, additional comms training, or working through edits on a written piece.
How to enable line managers for internal communication
1. Provide context through comms training
Line managers are often overwhelmed by information. They have to communicate with many different departments and funnel information down to their employees. This information overload makes it difficult to know which messages to prioritize.
Focus line manager comms training on context. Encourage your manager to ask themselves: “Is this message time-sensitive for my team? And if so, how do I provide context to my employees so that they know why this message is relevant to them?”
2. Lighten the load
Encourage your line manager to assign champions to support their comms. This could look like a team member sharing project updates over Slack or via your intranet. Lean on whatever channels your team uses regularly — it will help lighten the load and free up time for your line manager to focus on other tasks.
3. Create concise comms
Enable your line manager to communicate concisely. Their comms should be short and to the point, addressing employee questions and concerns directly.
How to enable internal publishers for internal communication
First of all, who are internal publishers?
They’re the employees who specialize in a certain topic and communicate through internal channels — like an HR team member who publishes a new home office policy on your intranet.
Here are some ideas for their enablement:
1. Point to your internal comms strategy
The main communication challenge with internal publishers is coordinating so many different messages. The solution: point to your internal comms strategy. Think of it like “air traffic control” — your goal is to avoid collisions and make sure not too many messages are landing at the mental airports of your employees at the same time.
And, if needed, you can appoint an editor who helps make sure that all internal publishers’ pieces align with your company’s internal voice and tone. This will help keep messages consistent and in line with your organizational values.
2. Provide examples of good content
Do you have an example of internal content that performed really well? Share these pieces with your internal publishers. It’s always good to provide tangible examples of what resonates with your audience so that your colleagues have a reference point to create their own content.
Resources to help you enable your team for effective internal communication
Enablement takes more time and is not as visible as producing content.
But the payoff is well worth the effort. You’ll position yourself as a trusted communicator, leader, and coach in your organization.
Want to dive deeper? Check out our full Masterclass here:
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