Messages That Matter: Scaling Leadership Communication Without Losing Touch

Amelia Dahmer: Good morning.

Jennifer Lentner: Good morning. How are you this morning, Amelia?

Amelia Dahmer: I'm doing good. How are you, Jennifer?

Jennifer Lentner: I'm great. Thanks.

Amelia Dahmer: Awesome. And for everyone at home, we're both new to the You've Got Comms Podcast. I will be your host today, Amelia. I'm from Staffbase and have been here for almost four years now, just crazy. Jennifer is coming to us as a guest. She is the founder of Soundtrack Consulting, where she helps CEOs and CHROs scale communications as they scale their business. So, she's got deep expertise in M&A, leadership transitions, employee engagement, and partners with leaders to bring clarity, authenticity, and connection to moments of change and transformation. Did I get that all right, Jennifer?

Jennifer Lentner: You did. Thank you.

Amelia Dahmer: Before we dive into these questions, I wanted to ask you, because you shifted from employed internal comms to more of an independent consultant. And there's a lot of things that are fun about that and scary about that. But, really, for you, it seems like your involvement in internal comms is what excites you beyond just whatever the one org was that you worked. So, what excites you about internal comms, whether it is right now or when you made the switch? Why was it the time, and why is it still the time that this is all relevant?

Jennifer Lentner: Well you know, Amelia, I have kind of a different career path. I started out as an engineer by training and spent the first part of my career on the operations, R&D, manufacturing side of the business. And during that time, we were going through some tremendous growth, which is a great thing to have. It provides so many opportunities in a company when you're going through a period of great growth. But that growth resulted in a lot of change. And what we found during that period of change is that we were scaling a lot of things to support the business as it grew.And the more change we went through, we started to have some resistance to change because people didn't necessarily understand why we needed to do things differently, because we'd been successful. And so, I raised my hand a couple of times and said, "You know, we hire really smart people. I think if we just explain to them why we need to change, even if they don't like the change, they'll understand and they'll participate in the change." And so, after I'd said that a few times, somebody said, "Well, why don't you take a swing at that and see if you can make that work?" And so, that's how I ended up in communications. I didn't set out to build a career in communications.So, fast forward half of my career, 14, 15 years, we had tripled in size. We had acquired a dozen companies. We'd had several leadership changes. And we were . . . I had been, this whole time, adapting the communications function, building it, changing it, reinventing it. It was time to reinvent it again. The business had changed some more. And as we went through that process, I looked at the new organization, the new design, and felt like those were fantastic jobs, and it was time to give somebody else a chance to build that, where I had been building for so many years, and go out on my own.I was still really enjoying the internal communication work. And I really was excited to work with companies that were in those early stages of growth and experiencing that same change in scale that we were experiencing, and help them through that process. And so, I decided to go out on my own and work with those companies to build through that growth for them.

Amelia Dahmer: That's so fun. I mean, you came from the don't shoot the messenger. You were the shooter. So you have that mindset of you're not really spending decades learning how to craft the perfect message. You spent decades learning how to retain the message as the employee. So, that was a very unique background. As things are scaling, for your original company and beyond, it's been 15 some years later, what are the chances and risks for internal communications in such fast-scaling environments like that?

Jennifer Lentner: Well, you know, really, the risks are that if you don't communicate, you leave people behind. People don't understand why things are changing. They're uncomfortable. And one of a couple of things happens. They either resist the change, and it slows things down, or they just don't see where they fit in the future, and they leave. And you can lose really talented people that way. And so, really, the risks in not communicating or not being intentional in how you communicate during a period of change are that you're going to leave people behind.Now, the upside of it is that you can paint a picture of the future that employees are really excited about and bring them along by helping them see how they will contribute to the success of the company and what that looks like. The great news about that is while it sounds like a really complex thing to do, it can be pretty simple. It doesn't have to be complicated to be really effective and start to bring people down that path with you.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, that's amazing. And you even kind of said it yourself at the beginning when you said you were an engineer and just raised your hand and had that idea. And it is that the way these communicators need to change and adapt their strategies is the way they also need to change their leadership strategies, not just the way they're communicating. Because often, when they're on the ground and they're working with you guys as founders, CEOs, whatever, it's very one-on-one. You have a lot of face time with these people. And as you grow, it might be someone you never ever met.So as these companies scale and leadership communications are shifting from one-to-one or small group at least, now it's more one-to-many and email and town hall, things like that. What are the biggest risks in doing that since it might feel a little more impersonal that way? But how do you preserve the trust and the personal aspect of speaking at scale like that?

Jennifer Lentner: Well, Amelia, you're right. I think the biggest risk is that people feel that they've lost access to somebody that they've always had one-on-one access to before. You have great leaders that are proven communicators. They're very personable. They spend their time walking around and interacting with people. They've got their ear to the ground in understanding what's happening in the business. If the shift is too sudden, people feel like all of a sudden they've lost access to somebody, and now everything is off of a script.And you can lose people just as easily that way as if you don't communicate at all. So, the really important thing is that you make step changes and that you're true to that leader's communication style in doing that. So you don't want to go from a very down-to-earth, one-on-one tone to all of a sudden sounding very corporate and a lot of buzzwords and a lot of business terms that maybe people don't understand what that means. So keep it simple to start. Begin with one or maybe two communications that are in that one-to-many format and explain what you're doing as you're doing it.So, it is fine to say, "We're going to shift the way we communicate and here's why. We're growing. There's a lot of things to share. We want to make sure that all of you understand where we're going and how you play a role in our success. For us to do that effectively, we need to change how we communicate." And it's fine to do that. And it's, in fact, really effective to do that. People appreciate saying why we're making a change. And so, you want to pick those simple things that you can do and let people acclimate. Get feedback on how it's going. Does it land well? Do they understand? And then make adjustments as you go because if people see their feedback being incorporated, then that just lends credibility to this new process of communicating. And the other thing that I always make sure people understand is don't lose that one-on-one communication while you're doing this. You can still do the one-to-one communication. It just shifts how you spend your time. So if you're disseminating this information to everybody all at once, and people can understand the direction and the strategy, now you can spend your one-on-one time with people asking questions and hearing how that lands and getting their feedback, so that you can incorporate that feedback that's so valuable both in your communication and in the plans for the business.

Amelia Dahmer: I love that because you said something very early on in your answer about losing access to those leaders and those communicators. And I think we kind of ended on: You haven't lost access. Maybe not as frequently, but it is important to, as the leader, still give people a forum of sorts, whether it's one-on-one and AMA-type, anonymous style. But you, as that communicator, that especially came from the common man role, in your example, specifically working as an engineer, and everyone is on the floor working, and all of a sudden, you become that person who still has access when maybe everybody doesn't.Do you feel a lot of pressure that people are coming to you, "Well, tell the boss this," "Oh, I didn't like how this happened," that they maybe wouldn't tell leadership, but they tell you because you're more of that buddy, you've got your ear on the ground?

Jennifer Lentner: That certainly does happen, and I think that can be also a really effective method of feedback. You know, you have to make sure that it stays constructive, but if people are giving you that feedback and saying, "I like this" or "I don't like that," or "I wish they would tell us this or that," or "I don't know if I believe that," if there's some skepticism, not only can you be a part of that conversation, but you also can use that as context as you're making adjustments in how you coach these leaders.

And whether that is changing the kind of information that you share or helping them adapt their delivery or incorporating some additional two-way communication opportunities. Having that feedback yourself in addition to them giving it to the leader, really can make the whole thing come together a lot more quickly and gel in a way that moves it forward in a lot more constructive fashion.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, and, I mean you're naming a bunch of things that everyone's heard of before, the meetings, the submissions, AMAs, the word of mouth, but specifically in your experience, what structures and practices have worked best? Especially when you're scaling like this, what's a good transition form, whether it is an AMA or a town hall video update? Just in your personal experience, what's the best of those?

Jennifer Lentner: I think there are lots of different things that you can do, and I don't know that any one is best overall. The most important thing that you have to do is to match the type of communication with the audience and with the situation, and make sure you're using the right kind of forum. Town halls can be really great for high-level messages, or rolling out something like a new strategic plan, or following up on a big announcement, but they're not the place to go through lots of detailed information because it just becomes slide after slide, and pretty soon you've lost everybody.If you need to disseminate a detailed business update, then an email might be an effective way to do that. Email's not in vogue in the way that it used to be, but it can be a really effective way to send a significant amount of information that people can process on their own timeline. They can process it when they get to it. They can come back to it when they need it. Really, the important thing is dialing in who is the audience and what is the message, and then matching the tool to that so that you make the most of it.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, and that's something we talk a lot about, in especially frontline comms, when that email works so well, maybe for corporate or even shift leaders. And people on the ground, the frontline employees, do retain information differently, but the goal is ultimately making sure everyone has the same information and translates it in their minds the same way. So, sometimes when you're taking the same message and releasing it in a few different formats, how do you maintain an authentic and unified voice of CEOs, other top leaders, as the channels separate, as the company grows, just making sure nothing's inconsistent there?

Jennifer Lentner: Yeah. Well, there are a couple of things. One is you'd spend all the time coaching the leader on the message, and the easiest thing to forget is to give the next-level managers the same tools to deliver the message because they really are so important in making sure that everybody has the same information and that, for perhaps your frontline team, who may receive information differently, they may be a key vehicle in getting the information to those teams, or at the very least, they're key in helping to explain and reinforce that message. You know, so, one thing that's really important is making sure that you don't forget to prepare those next-level leaders to help deliver that message. And sometimes that is an indicator of, you talked about what are the most effective mechanisms for communicating, something I've seen work really well are roundtables for that manager-level team. We used to bring people together when we would have a specific message that we wanted to deliver, and we expected managers to be a part of that message.We would bring them into a roundtable, deliver the message to them, tell them how we expected them to participate, let them ask questions so that they felt equipped both in what the message was, and then also how they were expected to deliver that. And so, that can be a really effective intermediate step in communicating that information. So, those kinds of things are really important. Making sure that everybody has the information they need to participate in that, and then just making sure, again, that you have that two-way feedback so that as people have questions or feel like they need support, they have a way to get that.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, absolutely. People mention it all the time, providing these leaders toolkits, but I love the idea of a roundtable because I know what that is. The toolkit, I'm like, what are you giving them, a folder with some messaging? How are you differentiating the toolkits? So, being able to open it to a more specific question and answer type style that's amazing. Managers in one area, again, may not communicate the same way in another area, especially on a global scale, where tone shifts, timing of these messaging. Every country is going through something different at different times. It's never the perfect time to lay bad news on everybody at once. But how are you balancing global consistency with local relevance and world events in leadership messaging?

Jennifer Lentner: Just like we talked about, having the right tool for the right situation, the right messenger for the right situation is really important as well. So, the starting point for me is typically for far-reaching, broadly applicable messages, high-level messages to come from those high-level leaders. And then, as you get into specific functions or different geographies or things like that, making sure that you are equipping the leader in that area with the tools that they need to either deliver that message or reinforce that message.So, everybody hears the top-level message from the top-level leader, and then as you get into those specific areas, those managers have the tools that they need to help put context around how that message applies in their particular situation. And I think that that's one of the most effective things that you can do. So, it doesn't take that high-level leader away as a messenger for those different geographies or those different functions, but it keeps them messaging at the level of the organization where they're operating, and it keeps the people that are closer to the street-level messaging at that level because they're going to have the best context to do that.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, I got it. You don't want to take away the leadership level, but let's just take something away for a minute. Kind of going off script here, a fun question is if we could just ditch something or someone, go wild, in comms: a trend, a theme, a role, anything really that this is not working. Let's leave it in the past, it's outdated, something like that, what would you leave behind? I know you said let's not take anyone out of the equation, let's do it for fun.

Jennifer Lentner: You know, it's funny that you asked that question because if I think of one thing I wish we would reconsider, it's looking to those top-level leaders to be the messenger for everything. I think one of the things I've seen as you shift to this more structured communication, and now we've got, we know that this leader does a quarterly town hall and a monthly newsletter, is that I would have people come to me and say, "Can the leader reinforce this message or endorse this project or say that this thing is really important?" And two things come from that.One, you clutter up their message and really take away their ability to paint that high-level picture. And then the second thing is you place that same level of importance on everything, and then people have a hard time prioritizing what belongs where. And so, you know, I think as it's gotten easier for leaders to be out and about and messaging in lots of different ways, it's easier to ask them to participate in more conversations. But I wish that we would really think hard about when we ask those leaders to be the messenger because it isn't always appropriate.

Amelia Dahmer: No. It's like putting urgent in the subject line of every email. Like, this isn't urgent, you're cold-calling me. Calm down.

Jennifer Lentner: Exactly.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah. There is also that in film school or marketing school, anyone's heard it, you've got to see something 20 times to remember it, whatever that saying is. I might be way off. But especially with so much change, whether it's growth, whether it's a merger, or literally anything that needs to be communicated that's that big, you're constantly repeating yourself. And you get in that messy middle where most people got it, not everyone's got it, especially around when you're changing your whole comms strategy, no one really knows where to get it. How do you keep up the momentum and avoid that comms fatigue during a full communication strategy shift?

Jennifer Lentner: One thing that I've found to be really effective is in just parsing out the message as you go. So, it's really tempting to give people a complete download, full information, what you know, and then stop. And then there's this long period of silence. And there are a few problems with that. One, people can't process that information all at once. And so, it's much more effective to start with the very top level, what's changing, why now, and what's the risk if we don't, frankly, so that people understand, look, here's what needs to happen and here's why it's important right now.And then, as you go, building on that message and adding information. So, if you are adding information as you go, that gives you two things. It gives people information in digestible pieces. And it also gives you the opportunity to repeat those high-level messages because every time you come back with some additional detail, you should be reinforcing those messages of why, why now, what's changing, where do you fit, why does it matter to you, and then adding on a little bit.And to your point, I think it's seven times people have to hear something before they will decide to take action or decide to make a decision. What I always tell people is just about the time you think you can't say it one more time, oh my gosh, I can't repeat myself one more time, that's about the time that the message is probably starting to get in. So, keep going. I think it feels a little less repetitive to the messenger when you build slowly, and it also is more digestible on the receiving end if you do that. And then it gives you something like you feel like you have something to add as you work through that messy middle that sometimes can just be a silent period.And that's when people really start to lose momentum and focus and wonder if we're still doing the thing or not.

Amelia Dahmer: Yes. I don't want to put you under the interrogation light, but have you ever, just to humanize you here, have you ever experienced that? Have you had a moment in the messy middle where you weren't quite sure where to go from there? Or you could tell me you're flawless, but is there any stories of a time to personalize that example of how to get through or something like that?

Jennifer Lentner: I think everybody has been through those periods of time. And whether you're on the receiving end or whether you're the communicator. I think if you look at any large change initiative, and a specific one for me is not necessarily coming to mind, but I've seen multiple times where we make the announcement, we send the teams off on their way. The teams know what's going on because they're in the thick of it, but the rest of the organization doesn't hear anything, and so they assume that whatever we were talking about just stopped.And they don't know if we're doing that thing anymore or if we're being successful at doing that particular thing. And what I have seen the consequence of that being is I started to hear people say, we would make an announcement about a new project and they'd say, "Oh, this is just the flavor of the day. We're not serious about this." Because we didn't finish that last thing. And what they didn't realize is that we did finish the last thing. We just forgot to keep talking about it. And so, that's where I've seen that really play out is that people think that we said we were going to do something and didn't.And what we really didn't do is come back and tell people how it was going and what the impact had been, or point to a change that maybe they're aware of, and they just didn't tie back to that thing.

Amelia Dahmer: You're making me feel like such a bad employee because I'm always like, "How's this going? What's that doing? What are they doing?" And, you know, not just in my role here, but in my entire life. You made a good point a couple minutes ago about avoiding comms fatigue by spreading out the message. I am the first to hear one bit of the message and raise my hand with a million questions, and they'll say more to come next week. No, I want it now. But you're right. I'm not taking it all in. I'm just going a million miles an hour in my head and making a lot of noise with my hands that I was told not to do while I'm recording. But now I'm on the listening end of it, understanding that, yes, I am walking away long-term with more understanding than I do usually on day one. And that's amazing. And that's partly because we've got some great communications teams and leaders in jobs I've had in the past, but for really dispersed organizations geographically and in-person versus remote, you've got your local, your onsite communications people typically. And those are the ones at the roundtable you mentioned. Those are the ones you can go to with the questions. And then there's that overarching global comms team working for leadership. What are some best practices there to keep everyone aligned without stifling that local voice, whether it be the tone of the office, the location, the country you're working in, the tone of the sassy employee just coming at you with questions and not trying to make them feel bad? How do we keep all of that consistent but also local?

Jennifer Lentner: It's really tricky. It's tricky in every organization. I think we tend to look at our organizations and say, "Oh, the way we do this is so difficult. We make things really hard on ourselves." But it's just hard everywhere. You know, it's sort of human nature in a way, I think. You're probably going to laugh when I say this, but communicating with each other as communicators is first and foremost. It's really easy to feel like that's just going to happen because these are the people that do the communication, but it's really easy for us to forget to do that for ourselves.The first thing is just that coordination and understanding, okay, what are the needs in this area? What are the needs in this area? And one thing I always felt was my role was to be able to take my business-specific hat off and put my company-level hat on and understand, okay, as a broader organization, what are we trying to accomplish here? And really, just take that in without bias, and then put my business lens back on and say, okay, now, what does the business need to get out of this, you know, this particular piece of the business, and how can we work toward that together?And to really represent the piece of the business I was in to the larger organization, but to also represent the needs of the larger organization within the business, as the business was saying, "Well, but we need this, or but this isn't exactly how we would want that to go." That coordination and that deliberate focus on collaboration and thinking big picture is really important to making that work. And a lot of times, that really has to come from the communicators in those different areas, working together to figure that out, and then standing in the middle between the pieces of the organization and making it fit the pieces together.

Amelia Dahmer: Yes. And how are we also getting that same message across for the organization and the company, what's best for them, for more of the blue-collar frontline employees, where maybe that's not front of mind, it's clock in, clock out? Not saying all of that . . . Anyone can think that way, but those are the ones who are missing a lot of the emails and a lot of the why, and they are getting that trickle down, this is what's happening, and are sometimes missing that core root of this is what's happening because XYZ for the company.So, how do you ensure that they feel communicated to, heard, get that why, so that they don't have as many questions?

Jennifer Lentner: You know, I think it's really important as you're planning communications for those pieces of the business to look at what are the one or two most important pieces of context that we really want people to have and making sure that those are upfront in every communication that you do, both when you launch it, when you reinforce it, it's that repetition. But what you really need to make sure is that you pick the couple things that most matter to that audience and that you really put it in very plain language. And we should be doing that for all of our audiences, frankly, is to put it in very plain language.You know, the simpler, the better, because even if you can understand the complicated language of one part of the business, the simpler you make it, the less room there is for misinterpretation or different interpretations of that information. So, I'm a big fan of saying, what's the simplest thing we can say that will tell people what they need to know, and starting with that for everybody in every communication, but understanding that different people look through a different lens and making sure that if it's going to land really differently in some part of the business, that we may need to add some little piece of context, but not to the exclusion of those pieces that just set the stage for everybody.

Amelia Dahmer: Yeah, absolutely. And you said something interesting. What's the simplest way we could word this? I feel like I'm constantly typing that into ChatGPT. I'll write a super long email and be like, "Oh my gosh, I think too fast. Simplify this." So the question of the hour, the question of the year, really, for internal comms is, where do you see AI fitting into internal comms in general?

Jennifer Lentner: I think AI is a great tool for internal comms. It's a great tool for a lot of things, but it's just that it's a tool. And so, I've had a number of people ask me the question that everybody's asking is AI coming for this job, that job? Will AI replace communicators? I certainly think it's going to change the way that we work, but the reason I don't think that it will replace us as communicators is that human element. And a lot of the leaders that I work with now, I work with mid-sized companies, mid-market companies, and they're shifting from that one-to-one to one-to-many mode of communication.And one of their primary concerns, most of the time in doing that, is losing that personal connection. And so the last thing that they want to do is skip right from one-to-one to having AI write their communications because they're already concerned about losing that personal touch. And so, that is, I think, where the humanity is really important, is in that crafting those communications and helping them feel like that leader to those people they don't want to lose touch with.Where I've seen it really show up for those leaders, though, is that they will sometimes come to me and say, "This is what's on my mind. I put it in ChatGPT," or into whatever AI tool they like, and this is what it gave me, and this is how I feel about it. I like this, I don't like that. And so it gives us a really good starting point. And so, we can get through that, getting your thoughts down on paper, that ugly first draft period, really fast, and get right on to the dialing it in to be an effective communication.And so, I think that's where the tool really comes in this employee communication, in this interpersonal communication, is it gets you quickly to the work that only you can do and skips those steps where we spend a lot of time, and it's really easy for us to get stuck, and it's not where the most value comes from.

Amelia Dahmer: I love that answer. The thing I hear the most is, is it coming for my job? Because it can write, but how many of us have ever taken something ChatGPT wrote and used that without making a single edit? Because it does sound pretty robotic. It's weird. It doesn't have the tone of either Jennifer or the CEO or whatever you're going for. 

Jennifer Lentner: It'll get better over time, and how we use it as a tool will change over time. I certainly think it's going to impact everybody's job, but I think if we are looking at it as a tool and thinking about how we can use it to be more productive and help us do the work only we can do, then it'll continue to be a great addition to the toolbox that we have.

Amelia Dahmer: Exactly. And this truly is a job only a human can do, and a human that really understands the organization and the voice of not just the leaders, but the people listening at the end of the day.

Jennifer Lentner: Yes, I agree.

Amelia Dahmer: And, I mean any parting words of wisdom? AI was the big thing on my mind, but what do you want to leave us with, Jennifer?

Jennifer Lentner: You know, I think, when I think back about communication and just how it's changed over the time that I've been doing it, we've gone from doing everything via email, because there really weren't a lot of other great tools, to having all these different tools easily accessible by lots of people. And it's so easy to just lose sight of that interpersonal connection. And while we can spend all day thinking about how do we communicate and writing communication, sometimes the best thing we can do is to get out and connect with people individually.And that can make all the difference in understanding what's on their mind and helping them navigate a change. Sometimes that communication is the most effective thing we can do. So, I think it's really easy to overthink it and overcomplicate it and do way more than is needed. So, I guess my parting thoughts would be I hope that we will save that for when it's really needed and really stick to the basics because it's brought us a long way.

Amelia Dahmer: It really has. And I mean, look at this video chat. It was a thing, but I didn't do it that often before 2020. So it's been great to connect with you, Jennifer. And anyone that wants to connect with Jennifer Lentner on LinkedIn, please do. I found out we're from very close to the same hometown. So, LinkedIn is a great resource. Connect with anyone from internal comms. But it is really that one-to-one connection that makes this a very fun industry to work in. So, Jennifer, it has been lovely talking to you today. And I hope everyone at home has a great rest of their day.

Jennifer Lentner: Yes, same here.

Amelia Dahmer: Bye, Jennifer.

Jennifer Lentner: Bye.