While the world goes to hell in a hand basket, Global consulting firm Watson Wyatt issued a news release today with some good advice for corporate leaders:
The release features a concise, hard-hitting list of "basic communication tenets" that leaders should keep in mind:
- Be a leader. Leaders don’t have to have all the answers. Tell employees what you know and what you don’t. Explain the steps the organization is taking to identify issues and resolve problems. Knowing senior executives are there to lead through uncertain economic times is crucial to your people.
- Show your strengths. Reinforce the core competencies and values that make your organization successful. Talk about how they will help the organization thrive in the future.
- Be visible. Credibility, conviction and passion are important messages that only actual presence can convey. Employees can benefit from seeing engaged and informed senior leaders through Webcasts or other interactive vehicles.
- Use your team. Make sure the management team knows how and what to communicate, and that no one is a bystander. Limit potential damage from leaders’ informal conversations that are overheard and ripple through every organization.
- Be coordinated. Coordinate your internal and external messages. Employees should hear company news from the company first.
- Share responsibility. Be clear about what you want your managers and your workforce to do. People want to help — tell them how. It’s never a bad time to reinforce customer focus.
- Give up the myth of message control. Find ways to listen to what is on employees’ minds. Monitor the press and social media for what is being said about your company and your industry. Have a process for quickly developing and distributing answers to rumors and for clarifying inaccurate statements, such as possible layoffs.
- Be humane. Some employees are experiencing personal trauma from falling 401(k) account balances and home prices. Acknowledge their pain and make them aware of the resources at their disposal, such as the company’s Employee Assistance Plan.
Usually these kinds of releases from consulting firms are ridiculously self-serving. Obviously Watson Wyatt issued the release in hopes that executives will read it and pick up the phone to ask for help, but in this case it's also some useful free advice that, whether anyone picks up the phone or not, amounts to damn good stakeholder relations.
If I were a CEO, I'd use this as a guide for a briefing with senior leaders. And if I were an internal communicator inside a big organization, I'd use it as a guide for briefing my CEO.
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