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Greentarget

Aaron Schoenherr

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If you’re a business leader, the Great Resignation poses a significant threat to your firm’s wellbeing in 2022. We believe the best way to address that threat is to start treating your talent with the same emphasis you historically place on attracting and serving clients.

As unprecedented numbers of experienced professionals re-evaluate their careers and exit their industries altogether, you’re faced with a significant challenge. How do you attract and retain the employees who will drive your business forward? If you’re in the legal industry, you’re likely aware that associate turnover at the nation’s largest law firms increased to nearly 25% in 2021 – up from 18% in 2019 – an alarming number that likely explains the historic rise in associate salaries, that also is an imminent talent and financial risk to firms in 2022.

We’re seeing similar attrition in other segments of professional and financial services, as well – and this isn’t just a problem for your HR and marketing teams to solve. As a business leader, you’ll need to personally make sure your firm is the kind of place where the most talented people want to spend their time and devote their efforts. In fact, you’d be wise to prioritize this issue ahead of client growth for the foreseeable future.

Here’s how to make your firm an employer of choice amid one of the most competitive and challenging hiring landscapes we’ve ever witnessed.

Define and Communicate Your Firm’s Behaviors

Although often conflated, your organizational values and culture are not one and the same. Values are what you say. Culture is what you do. Behavior is the connective tissue that links your stated values to the boots-on-the-ground reality of what it’s like to work at your firm. When your values inform and influence behavior on a consistent basis, you have a healthy culture that’s worth joining. 

It takes intentional effort to create a values-infused culture. Here are two ways to get started.

1. Talk to your talent 

It sounds simple, but very few professional services organizations communicate with their own people with consistency and intent. If you’re like most professional services organizations, you interview your clients on a regular basis. And that makes sense — you want to know that your relationships are healthy and that your account teams are delivering the value you’ve promised. 

But are you regularly conducting similar interviews with your employees – beyond an annual performance review or other HR-led initiatives? Understanding your culture begins by collecting qualitative insights from across your organization. Imagine what you could learn if you created a safe atmosphere for employees to answer questions like:

  • How would you describe our culture to your family?
  • Does the way we approach our day-to-day work match our values?
  • Do you believe our core values are an accurate reflection of how we behave as an organization?
  • Is this an environment where you feel confident that you can reach your individual goals?
  • Why do you think we exist as an organization?

Of course, these conversations will only be useful if your employees are candid with you. To earn their trust, leaders should demonstrate vulnerability and a genuine desire to listen and show that they’re willing to invest the time to shape and own this process. That’s the best way for it to truly have an impact.  

2. Articulate the Specific Behaviors You Expect at Your Firm

After you obtain a clear understanding of your current culture, spell out the specific behaviors that will create the type of environment you want your firm to embody. Your mission statement should drive your organizational values, and your values should then influence and inform the behaviors you expect.

For example, Greentarget’s mission is to drive smarter conversations for our clients. In pursuit of that mission, we value being authentic, working hard, embracing curiosity that drives creative thinking, embracing the stretch and growing as individuals and as a team. But without specific behaviors that bring those values to life, what we value are just words on a page. To really bring this to life, we identified the concrete actions we need to take to solidify our culture. These include:

  • Drawing on colleagues
  • Asking insightful questions
  • Focusing on the details 
  • Responding with “yes…and”
  • Bringing fresh thinking 
  • Staying informed 
  • Building personal connections
  • Embracing inclusivity 
  • Recharging strategically 
  • Getting uncomfortable 
  • Asking “how can I help?”

Take time to define and communicate the mission, values, and behaviors that will attract the best and brightest talent. Compile persuasive stories about your employees’ achievements and successes. While a competitive salary might be the element that gets a prospective employee’s attention, an authentic, purpose-driven work environment is what will inspire them to stay. Purpose-driven team members seek out and stay with organizations where they feel they have strong relationships, are making an impact and see the opportunities for growth.

And keep in mind this isn’t a “one and done” exercise. There’s a reason author and consultant Patrick Lencioni fondly refers to the CEO as the “Chief Reminding Officer.” Great leaders articulate the behaviors they expect, emulate those behaviors themselves and then remind, remind, remind until they’re sick of hearing themselves talk about it. (And even then, they keep going).

Take on New Clients Based on Whether They’re a Good Fit for Your Team

Your internal culture is important. But it’s not the only factor determining whether your employees remain happy and fulfilled at work. Your clients also play a significant role in shaping your team’s day-to-day experience. 

That’s why it’s so important to consider client engagements carefully. No one wants to work with a client who is harsh, demanding and capricious. Difficult clients deplete your employees’ motivation and hinder the creativity necessary to do great work. 

Likewise, you should be careful to take on clients whose values align with your own. For example, if one of your core values is authenticity, don’t take on a client who pushes your team to misrepresent the truth or uses passive-aggressive behavior to bully your team. That only undermines your firm’s stated ideals and communicates the wrong message to your employees. 

Greentarget evaluates new client engagements using a quadrant that plots them based on financial opportunity and cultural alignment. Even if the potential client could bring significant revenue to the firm, we turn down the work if there are signs of low cultural alignment. We’ve assessed what we’ve learned over the years about strong client relationships, and we use this list to assess “fit” using more than our gut instinct.

There is plenty of client work to be had — especially in today’s climate. Be choosy about whom you welcome into the fold. Engage clients who are a pleasure to work with and who will treat your employees with respect. These engagements foster the best collaboration between your team and their clients, which in turn will keep them motivated, engaged and loyal.

A client once told us: “I want to be the account that your team is clamouring to join. The one that people talk about around the lunch table with appreciation. That’s how I know I’ll get your best and most creative work.” What does that type of client look like for your organization?

Prioritize Talent to Realize Greater Success

The only way you’ll meet your growth targets is if you have the talent to support your business objectives. And it will take more than pay and incentives to overcome the challenges brought on by the Great Resignation.

The good news is your culture can become a differentiating factor that attracts and retains the employees you need to drive your organization forward. A leading technology-focused professional services firm with an enviable culture and impressive DE&I track record recently added “Culture” to the head of communications’ title and responsibility. This individual is now focused both internally and externally on continually demonstrating and celebrating the firm’s most important cultural assets, initiatives and successes. This is an excellent example aligning culture and brand. 

You too can prioritize culture and employee experience over client growth, thereby creating the conditions that will ultimately lead to higher levels of success. And rest assured – if you take care of the talent, the revenue will follow.

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Even with a contentious presidential election and the worst of COVID-19 behind us, journalists say the fake news situation isn’t getting better. And they don’t know how to address it.

But if journalists don’t know how combat fake news, who does? That was the focus of Greentarget’s 2021 Fake News report, which was released in late October.

In this episode of Authority Figures, Aaron Schoenherr sits down with members of the Greentarget team – including Betsy Hoag, Director of Research and Planning, Lisa Seidenberg, Vice President of Media Relations, and Paul Wilson, Vice President of Content and Editorial— to discuss the report and its findings. The team discusses how fake news can be combatted, what role regulation might play and how we can prepare the next generation to face the challenges presented by fake news.

Episode Highlights:

1:00 — Betsy describes the background behind the report, what went into devising the survey questions, and who answered them

4:26 — Paul defines fake news and discusses the term’s polarizing nature

5:47 — Acknowledging fears of journalism’s delegitimization, Lisa goes over what clients should take away from this year’s survey findings

7:37 — Betsy and Lisa talk about how survey respondents’ political beliefs challenge preconceived notions about who is affected by fake news, and how to counsel clients in such a polarized environment

10:23 — Paul and Betsy try to get at the heart of journalists’ hesitation to amend Section 230

13:40 — Lisa and Paul speak about how to engage journalists amid the fake news controversy, and what journalists can do to combat fake news

19:30 — Betsy, Lisa, and Paul examine the psychological impact of consuming a fake news story, and share their own experiences with fake news

25:39 — Knowing that trust in news media is at an all-time low, Betsy, Lisa, and Paul contemplate ways to prepare their children to navigate the fake news landscape

Click here to download Greentarget’s 2021 Fake News report.

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Your effectiveness as an executive often hinges on your ability to persuade. What you say and how you say it can either inspire your audience to buy into your vision for your organization or cause them to look elsewhere. Likewise, your words wield enormous influence in attracting and retaining the talent that drives your business forward, a dynamic more important and relevant today than at any point in recent memory.

You may think your instincts and hard data are enough to guide you, but you’ll be much more effective if you hone your skills based on what behavioral science tells us about human decision-making. Because you need to convince people to follow you every single day, likely even more often than you realize, it’s crucial to understand exactly what motivates your team to make decisions, change their minds, and take action. 

So whether you’re trying to convince your audience you’re still relevant in an era of social reform or you simply want to strengthen your in-office culture after a long season of working remotely, here’s what you need to know to tap into the power of persuasion.

In Decision-Making, Human Beings Lead With Emotion

Much of what we believe about persuasion in business is wrong. We want to think that decisions are consistently made on the basis of fact and rational thought. After all, the ability to reason is a hallmark of the human experience.

But the truth is people don’t make decisions on facts alone. Emotion is what actually drives us. Surprisingly, this is the case even in professional services where many leaders assume that logic reigns supreme. That’s why your business development team doesn’t simply bombard prospective clients with statistics. They build relationships and tell stories about the impact your firm has on clients just like them. It’s these narratives that compel prospects to hire you.

In his book Descartes’ Error, Dr. Antonio Damasio argues “We are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think.” We lead with emotion and then use facts to rationalize our decision to others. This is particularly true when the stakes are high and when decisions are made in groups, two common elements of decision-making in professional services.

Trust, competitiveness, curiosity, uncertainty, a desire for safety — all of these feelings factor into the decision-making process. And to evoke the emotions that drive decisions, you need to first understand the role narrative plays in influencing hearts and minds.

Compelling Narratives are the Transporters of Persuasion

Facts alone don’t persuade. That’s because cold, hard data doesn’t make people feel much of anything. Stories are what spark interest and effect change.

“Tell me a story” is the refrain of our childhoods. And we echo that refrain throughout our lives every time we reach for a novel or lose ourselves in a good movie. Your business narratives should always be rooted in fact, not fiction. But the best way to ensure your audience absorbs those facts is to transport them via narrative. 

Consider the role persuasion plays in recruiting talent. If your success depends on attracting the best of the best, how might you use the power of narrative to stand out from your competition? Here are four approaches to consider:

  • Make it personal. Highlight the individual experiences of one person. Rather than talking generically about your firm’s employee culture, tell the story of someone who chose to make your firm their professional home. Every good story features a hero’s journey.
  • Paint a picture. Details make for good stories. Talk about your hero’s struggles and triumphs at your firm with specifics while avoiding generalities. Did they salvage a tenuous client relationship? Land a big account? Draw your listener in with vivid descriptions.
  • Use action verbs. Don’t be afraid to lean into your flair for the dramatic. Make your narrative interesting by choosing words that propel the action forward.
  • Awaken the senses. Put your listener in your hero’s shoes. Make them feel the pressure of that challenging client relationship. Help them imagine everything your hero experienced.

Include Elements of Your Own Story

The command-and-control leadership mindset of yesteryear isn’t effective today. Stakeholders now expect transparency and a degree of vulnerability from their leaders. And if you want to persuade them, one of the best ways to do that is to share personal experiences and anecdotes from your own life. 

We recently worked with a dynamic leader of a major professional services firm who was preparing for a media interview for a story highlighting her new leadership role. She wanted her skills and expertise to carry the story and was hesitant to share too much about her personal background. But the truth is, her upbringing and involvement in a series of family businesses founded by her immigrant parents is what shaped her into the leader she’s become.

Another executive spoke with us to develop an obituary for a longtime colleague who was a pioneer in his field and a mentor to other leaders. Rather than simply saying that as a point of fact, we worked with the executive to include a short anecdote about how he had learned “much of what it takes to be a good leader” sitting on his now-deceased colleague’s couch decades earlier, listening to conversations over a speakerphone.

People respond to stories like these. They envision the sweat and tears it took to triumph over challenging circumstances. Or they relate to how a mentor’s hands-on approach made a difference that had lasting effects. In both cases, the tangible details are key ingredients to telling compelling and effective stories.

So what’s your story? What can you share from your background that will allow your audience to see and connect with you and your firm? You don’t have to “tell all.” But find kernels of your personal experience that will resonate with your listeners and craft them into narratives that persuade.

Audiences Engage with Concrete Language, not Jargon

Concrete language turns the brain into a simulator and enables your audience to experience what you’re describing. By contrast, jargon causes empathy to flatline. Sometimes it’s essential to use certain business terms and phrases to establish credibility with certain audiences. But by itself, lingo won’t help you persuade.

Think about the words you use to describe your business. Do they awaken emotion and stimulate interest? Can your audience draw what you’re describing — or at least picture it in their mind’s eye? Or are you leaning on meaningless (and even trite) business-speak? There’s almost always a way to translate jargon into narrative.

For example, we recently helped a client who struggled to describe what their firm does. In official communications, they used words like “synergy” to talk about a complex service offering. We helped them transform this buzzword into a much more persuasive analogy using jazz music. In jazz, musicians play off of one another, take turns taking the lead, and embrace improvisation as they work together to create beautiful music. 

This client’s service offering functioned just like that. Describing their work in jazz terms gave their audience a better idea of what to expect than the word “synergy” ever could.

Effective Communicators Master the Art of Persuasion

To communicate effectively, don’t shy away from the fundamental humanity of your audience. Connect with them by evoking their emotions, telling powerful stories, and using concrete language to draw them in. 

Greentarget is well positioned to help you skillfully participate in the persuasive conversations that will drive your business forward. If you need help crafting the narratives that will elicit the response you’re looking for, reach out. We’d love to hear from you.

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We’ve all seen unprepared leaders lose control of difficult media conversations. Reporters delight in putting interviewees on the spot, tripping them up, and delving into topics respondents would rather avoid. But if as a leader you can’t skillfully and adeptly navigate these interactions, you risk undermining your own authority and harming your organization’s reputation.

Reporters aren’t the only people who will ask you pointed questions. In today’s world, control is disseminated more and more. And that means employees, stakeholders, and community members are free to challenge, test, and iterate on your ideas at any time. That’s a good thing. Because every media interview, town hall meeting, and hallway chat is another opportunity for you to strengthen your position, increase your influence, and solidify your message.

However, to effectively navigate these uncontrolled situations, you need to master the principles of positive, productive engagement within the original, uncontrolled environment executives have worked for decades to master – the news media.

The key is skilled participation, which can be accomplished by applying these tried and true techniques to every area of your professional life as your pathway to authentic, true authority.

Complete the Prerequisites of Skilled Participation

Skilled participation affords you an element of control in an uncontrolled environment. And the more uncontrolled the environment, the more credibility you earn by participating. But before you can master the techniques involved, start by doing some foundational thought work.

Shift Your Leadership Mindset

What it means to be an effective leader has changed dramatically. In the ’80’s, ’90’s and early aughts, leaders (especially CEOs) were high-powered executives who projected a carefully crafted image based on command and control. Confident, assured, possessing all the answers — but also unapproachable, inaccessible, and often inauthentic.

By contrast, the defining traits of effective leaders today are vulnerability and authenticity. You aren’t shielded by handlers and tucked away in your corner office on the top floor. Instead, you’re expected to be out on the playing field. Weighing in. Actively engaging. Opening yourself up to scrutiny. 

To do this well, you need to demonstrate a personal commitment to growth and continuous learning. This might involve moving forward with incomplete information, allowing yourself to be questioned, welcoming honest feedback, and admitting when you’re wrong.

Vulnerability and authenticity can be humbling, but these are the characteristics that invite others to connect with you, respect you, relate to you, and ultimately follow you. There’s no leadership authority without vulnerability. And if this sounds uncomfortable, it’s because it is. But more often than not, the credibility it fosters is worth the effort.

(Much like sitting down with a reporter.)

Refine Your Point of View

Skilled participation requires you to have a well-thought-out point of view on a variety of salient topics. That doesn’t mean you have answers for everything, but it does mean you’ve taken the time to carefully consider the issues that matter most to your stakeholders.

Polite society doesn’t exist anymore, which means you never know what topic might be thrown at you. At any moment, your employees and stakeholders can ask you hard questions about your business decisions, strategic vision, financial outlook, operational plan, and organizational values.

Furthermore, social issues are now business issues, too. From critical race theory to voting rights, you’ll need to be prepared to enter into authentic conversation about the ideas that matter — and not just to your business specifically, but to society at large. Because, what’s good for society is good for business. And there are new expectations for leaders as a result.  

Master These Proven Media Interview Techniques to Prepare for Skilled Participation

After you’ve completed the soft-skill prerequisites, it’s time to practice the media interview techniques that allow you to communicate your messaging effectively, no matter the arena you’re in. 

Deliver a Crisp, Compelling Message

Skilled participants excel at getting to the heart of a message quickly and distilling their agenda into digestible viewpoints. 

To craft an authoritative message, use these tactics:

  • Concreteness. Your audience should be able to visualize exactly what you’re saying. If you can’t draw it, it’s not concrete. Abstract, squishy language flatlines empathy and gives listeners permission to check out.
  • Emotion. Behavioral science tells us that humans are “feeling machines that think.” Reason and emotion are inseparable, and emotion is always more effective than cold, hard facts. If you want to propel people toward a decision or influence an outcome, strategic use of emotion is key.
  • Narrative. Stories are the transporters of persuasion. The more immersed we become in a compelling story, the more open we become to changing or challenging our beliefs. Peppering your messaging with “micro-narratives” is an excellent way to use the power of story while maintaining crisp message delivery.

Need an example of how to employ these techniques? Steve Jobs used these three elements perfectly when he introduced the iPhone during a transformative CNBC interview. He used concreteness to describe the iPhone as a computer you can fit in your pocket. Drawing on the emotion of frustration, he then talked about how easy the iPhone is to use compared to other technologies that were harder for users to learn. And finally, he told stories about how his team conceived the iPhone and how they approached the design and development process. 

Jobs’ discomfort with media interviews is well known, but he took himself out of his comfort zone and mastered the art of skilled participation. To become a true authority, you’ll need to do the same.

Build Your Argument Backwards

When building your argument, start at the end. Our natural tendency is to start at the beginning and build a strong argument systematically. But in a media setting — and in other uncontrolled settings — the longer you talk, the more you risk being interrupted before you can make your point. Don’t give your audience the opportunity to flip your script before you deliver the key takeaway.

Start with your headline. Then make your supporting points. Conclude with a summary to reemphasize the message and solidify it in your audience’s mind. Use repetition liberally. As organizational health consultant Patrick Lencioni says, your ultimate role is to be the “chief reminding officer.”

Expertly Maneuver Back to Your Agenda

In uncontrolled settings, you can’t follow a script word for word. But you can and should become proficient at maneuvering the conversation back to the ultimate message you want to convey. 

Blocking and bridging is the most common approach. This two-pronged strategy involves acknowledging the question and bridging the conversation back to a related topic that aligns with the message you want to share. 

For example, say an employee asks what you think about critical race theory. Perhaps you haven’t delved into this subject and aren’t familiar enough with the theory to provide a thoughtful point of view. You might respond by saying, “I don’t know much about critical race theory and I’ll need to do some research to make sure I understand it fully before I weigh in. But what I have thought about at great length is how our organization can do a better job of recruiting and retaining people of color. May I tell you about some of our recent diversity and inclusion efforts and ask for your feedback?”

This response shows you care about the overarching racial injustice issues that critical race theory seeks to address, signals that you are open to learning more about it, and invites honest conversation about the related issues your firm is actively working on. In short, responding this way demonstrates your authority. 

Preparation + Improv = Skilled Participation

Your final requirement for perfecting the art of skilled participation is to embrace and develop your improvisational mindset. Improvisation is the ability to think on your feet, adjust your messaging based on how it’s landing, and successfully navigate uncharted terrain. This comes back to relinquishing control. We live in a rapidly changing world and, as a leader, you’ll need to make decisions with incomplete information and answer questions you don’t necessarily see coming. 

But hear this. We aren’t advising you to fake it. Rather, we’re saying that — once you’ve prepared your messaging and mastered the art of engaging in media interviews — improvising comes down to trusting yourself. You are equipped to navigate the hard conversations that will come your way. You possess a reservoir of experience to help you improvise well.

At the end of the day, every conversation is improvisational because no authentic interaction is scripted. So suit up. You’ve refined your position and sharpened your skills. It’s time to skillfully participate to prove your authority.

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New complexities in the age of “cancel culture” are no longer just a challenge for celebrities. Increasingly, professional services firms face a new reality as online communities and individual actors use the power of social media to whip up public outcry because of the people or organizations firms represent.

These actors can be tenacious, even vicious. If they access your client list and accompanying email addresses, they will use that information to exert incredible pressure, sometimes going as far as demanding you fire your client or face their wrath.

In this evolving court of public opinion, you may feel the pressure to drop individuals and corporations who are controversial. And if you’re like us, you’re struggling with questions regarding the bastions of our liberal society — namely, free speech and the right to fair representation under the law — in the face of attacks that modern communications have made more intense. It takes deep pockets and a whole lot of courage to stand firm — to say nothing of the soul-searching that’s often necessary to make sure doing so is the right thing for your organization.

Here’s how to mitigate your risk of exposure and respond appropriately if and when you come under attack.

Refine (or Define) Your Firm’s Organizational Values 

On the social media battlefield, your organizational values are your first line of defense. But what does your firm truly stand for? 

Don’t roll your eyes just yet. Think about how common it is for firms facing criticism to release a statement claiming “this is not in line with our values.” Does that ring true if, in fact, it’s clear that their modus operandi is to prioritize top-line revenue above all else?

Before you can assess your risk and develop an authentic crisis communication strategy, the first step is to reevaluate and redefine your firm’s values. Who do you aspire to be? Is it time to evolve your position in order to be relevant in today’s world? Or do your values compel you to hold fast to a particular ideal, even in the face of criticism? Do your business practices demonstrate concern for prominent social issues such as racial justice, climate change, economic disparity, gender equality, and voting rights? And are you communicating effectively about the issues that matter to your firm and to society at large with confidence?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can effectively assess your risk in light of your defined values.

Analyze Your Risk in 3 Key Areas

There are three unique areas of vulnerability for professional services firms — your talent, your clients, and your history. You’ll need to identify possible risks of exposure within each area.

Talent 

If your partners are involved in the political arena, are outspoken in ways that don’t align with your firm’s overarching values, or choose to represent problematic clients, those decisions can tarnish your firm’s reputation and test the bounds of your partnership agreements. To mitigate this risk, assess whether your talent pool is aligned around common values. In our experience, the best way to do this is to talk about those values as frequently as possible, solicit feedback from across the organization on the strength and accuracy of those values and ask your teams to share the ways in which they’ve relied on those values to make tough decisions. (And if your team can’t cite examples, it’s probably an indication that your values need to be revisited).

Clients 

Take a close look at your client rosters to identify any controversial individuals or companies in your fold. Do you have a firm handle on who your organization represents? Is there a clear process to make decisions on new engagements that have the potential to draw scrutiny? Do your newly-refined values guide you toward continuing to represent them? If so, proceed — but be sure to include specific clients like these in scenario planning so you’re ready to respond to outside criticism. If your values don’t align with continuing to represent that client, it’s time to make some hard decisions.

History 

Your past representations may also come to light when your firm faces scrutiny from a social advocacy group. These relationships leave fingerprints on your firm’s public image and likely will not simply fade with time. If your past decisions don’t align with your current values or today’s social context, they could come back to haunt you. It’s worth the time and effort to do the hard work of assessing past representations that may not reflect positively on your firm without proper explanation. Be prepared to face scrutiny for these engagements and be willing to explain why the organization’s decision to represent certain clients from the past was the right (or wrong) one.

Once you have a handle on the vulnerabilities that exist within your organization, it’s time to do a deep dive into possible scenarios that could arise using a simple scenario planning framework.

Conduct Worst-Case Scenario Planning 

How will you respond if the vulnerabilities you’ve identified in your talent, client, and history become a public issue that reflects negatively on the organization? The last thing you want to do is panic and react in a way that makes a bad situation even worse. 

Instead, take the time to conduct thorough scenario planning in advance to help you craft appropriate responses to a variety of hypothetical crises. Bring your C-suite, key partners, and members of your communication team together to develop a playbook for each scenario. The best strategy to mitigate reputational threats around talent, clients and history is to invest the time to prepare in advance.

Together, we suggest working through the following steps:

  • Plot the likely scenarios based on vulnerabilities identified in your talent pool, client list, and history. What decisions would you need to make in this situation? What actions would you need to take? 
  • Identify and prioritize the impacted audiences. Who will be most affected if an imagined crisis becomes reality? Clients? Partners? Employees? Among the audiences you identify, who is the highest priority? What perceptions need to be anticipated and addressed? 
  • Develop the messages each audience needs to hear. Now is the time to craft standby messaging that can be used in various scenarios and targeted to key audiences. Your messages will be stronger, clearer, and more strategic if you draft them now, rather than when you’re in the midst of the storm where emotions tend to cloud decision making and limit the possibilities.
  • Identify and prepare the right spokesperson(s). Choose the right media spokesperson (usually someone other than your CEO) to represent you — someone who is calm under pressure and has the credibility to represent the organization well. Allow them to practice delivering difficult messaging before a crisis actually hits. And only leverage your CEO when the issue(s) truly rise to the level of the C-suite. Remember that leveraging your CEO as the organization’s spokesperson is a message in and of itself.
  • Deliver key messages via the appropriate channels (internal and external). If possible, identify internal and external audiences who can help evaluate your messaging and give you honest feedback on how it lands. Social media in particular is a preferred communications medium among these online communities but is often not the most advantageous delivery mechanism for your organization. You may need to recast the communications approach to traditional media, for example, to help level the playing field.
  • Measure the impact so you can reassess and adapt as needed. Even in a hypothetical situation, practice adapting your messaging based on the feedback you receive from target audiences. Establishing effective feedback loops is critical to help you make the decision to shift course when necessary.

Don’t Waste a Good Crisis

Activist groups know how to use the super-charged political environment we all live in to their advantage. But you can use the threat of a hypothetical crisis to your firm’s advantage as well. After all, sometimes it takes an emergency (even a hypothetical one) to inspire organizations like yours to do the hard work that will end up enhancing your reputation in the long run.  

By strengthening your values, aligning your business decisions around your overarching principles, and crafting compelling messages for a variety of scenarios, you can win the hearts and minds of the audiences that really matter to you — your employees, your clients, and the various other stakeholders who contribute to your success.

Invest the time now to prepare for scrutiny from these online communities before you land in their crosshairs. You’ll be better prepared, you’ll likely uncover reputational vulnerabilities that you didn’t know existed previously, and your organization will emerge stronger and more aligned with its values as a result. 

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Another transformation brought on by the pandemic? Internal communications have become more important than ever before.

We all experienced it: the constant emails about safety protocols, reassuring check-ins about remote work logistics, regular video messages (often from the CEO), and any number of other efforts to stay connected during a difficult time.

But already, the frequent, transparent and authentic communications employees have come to expect is waning: a recent survey found that 40 percent of employees have yet to hear any vision on what post-pandemic work life might be, and another 28 percent said what they’ve heard remains vague. For professional services firms whose success relies on recruiting and retaining talent, this poses real cause for concern – especially when 1 in 4 employees are planning to look for a new job as the pandemic subsides.

These headwinds make it all the more crucial to reimagine your internal communications strategy for a post-pandemic future. Here’s how to do it well.

Embrace Authenticity and Vulnerability through Your Internal Comms

Most professional services firms operate in a pretty buttoned-up atmosphere. It’s the nature of the work. But when the pandemic put us all in the same boat — working remotely while juggling the demands of home life — something powerful happened. Leaders invited us into their living rooms for video updates. Unplanned cameo appearances from our children, partners and pets livened up non-stop Zoom meetings. Unscheduled phone calls became a refreshingly analog way to connect. Working from the back patio with birds chirping in the background became a new norm.

The surprising result? Physical distance notwithstanding, many of our interactions became more authentic and vulnerable than ever before. 

Don’t let this new authenticity and vulnerability go by the wayside when you return to the office. No one wants to revert to sterile email updates and canned messages. Create an internal communications strategy that relies heavily on personal connection, harnesses the power of storytelling, and creates a strong sense of belonging. In other words, fight to keep it real.

Leverage the Face-to-Face Communication Cascade

Even as our interactions grew more authentic during the pandemic, official internal communications grew more prescribed and controlled. Emails were painstakingly crafted, those CEO living room chats were highly scripted, and real-time feedback loops often fell by the wayside.

Leadership consultant Patrick Lencioni suggests another, if counterintuitive, route. “The best way to ensure that a message gets communicated throughout the organization,” he writes, “is to spread rumors about it.” In other words, we’ve all seen how rumors can undermine our best communication efforts. But what if we lean into the underlying human behaviors that contribute to the rumor mill and make those tendencies work for us?

That’s where a communication cascade comes in, replacing a dry, top-down messaging strategy with personal conversation and connection.

Start by involving front-line leaders to determine the broader strategic themes you want to get across.  From there, empower those leaders to disseminate the information to their direct reports as they see fit. Employees continue communicating the news down the chain to their own team members, who are free to discuss the information with their colleagues. 

Since you won’t control how every word is delivered, it involves less scripting and more trust. Cascades also create expanded feedback loops, resulting in more ownership of and buy-in for the messages you want to communicate. 

The outcome? A more authentic, effective and comprehensive communication loop than the leadership team could ever have achieved alone.

The Power of Storytelling in Your Firm’s Internal Communications

If you want a cascade to work, turn your messages into stories that make your communications personal and engaging.

For instance, perhaps your organization wants to release an internal statement on the anniversary of a significant current event, such as the murder of George Floyd. You feel pressure to convey a point of view on this important social issue, but you also know that firms like yours often lack diversity — especially in leadership positions.

Sending out a company-wide email could lead to unhelpful rumor mill chatter about your firm’s commitment to racial justice. By contrast, a communication cascade — combined with storytelling — has the potential to inspire your entire organization to talk about the issue in a constructive way.

In this scenario, start by having your leaders tell their teams about your firm’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Ask leaders to invite employees to share personal stories of how racial injustice has affected them or those they care for. This opens up channels for authentic conversation with employees about the firm’s commitment to DE&I. It might even lead to honest reflection and feedback that compels you to think through how to strengthen your firm’s values and better live them out. 

Transformation like this takes thoughtful, open conversation and a willingness to hear feedback and respond to it. It also requires leaders to embrace vulnerability. And it all begins with stories that capture the hearts and minds of your people and inspire you toward action.

Communicate that Employees Belong

Internal communication isn’t just about providing updates on company directives or even weighing in on matters of cultural and historical significance. It can also be used to create a strong sense of belonging so your employees feel more connected to and personally invested in the organization.

One leader we work with noticed a desire among his team to stay connected to the physical office during  the pandemic, especially when the monotony of remote work began to set in. Art is important to his firm and greatly contributes to the atmosphere of the physical office space. Therefore, he decided to begin telling the stories of the firm’s art collection through a series of emails that promoted a sense of connection and place among his employees.

With an imminent return to the office on the horizon, he’s now exploring opportunities to create a guided tour of the art collection for team members. He also plans to include the tour as part of the onboarding process for new hires. The pandemic made this firm’s love for art even more meaningful, all because a leader had the creativity to use it as a visual and symbolic representation of their overall culture.

Opportunities like this one will emerge for your organization, too — if you’re willing to seek them out. Many of your employees have missed the office just as much as you. Find ways to signal that they belong when they finally return.

Now’s the Time to Enhance Your Commitment to Internal Communications 

You’ve worked hard to keep employees informed and engaged during the pandemic and have made great strides in ramping up your internal communications efforts. But the benefits of effective communication transcend COVID-19. Good communication contributes to positive morale and leads to a greater sense of employee loyalty and commitment — pandemic or not. 

Don’t let the momentum you’ve created fade away with a return to the office. Instead, double down on your efforts to make your internal communications strategy more effective and compelling. Your entire organization will emerge stronger as a result.

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