We’ve all heard the buzz phrases and lingo that accompany the internal communication profession. Employee engagement, messaging, channels, stakeholders – the list goes on. And we all know, as professionals of the trade, what is meant when we refer to our role as ‘internal communication professionals’. We want to facilitate connections and messaging across the workplace in order to promote trust and transparency. We also want to motivate staff through demonstrating how their work directly contributes to delivering the strategic goals of the organisation.
Sounds easy, right?
Well what if we told you there is a dark side to the internal communication profession that often goes unchecked – dare we say unnoticed, by most communication professionals. This dark side lies on the inside world of the internal communication team. How self-aware are we in our ability to achieve everything we stand for as a profession? Does the internal communication team effectively communicate as a team?
We share two personal career perspectives about this inside world – one about employees and one about the role of the leader.
The Employees
Many people do not live to work. In fact, these people view work as the necessary thing they must do in order to support the real business of living their lives. I have worked in, for and with many teams throughout my career, and for a multitude of reasons, I find that those who seek the work-life ideal are often attracted to the communication profession – and it’s not hard to see why.
Working in communication means you get to be creative. You get to think strategically about content, timing and how to engage various audiences, while evoking the skill you have been developing since birth: communication. If you are great with people and great with words, the communication profession is a buzz. You get to do what you love, then go home without thinking about work.
What happens when the work-life people interact with the career-minded people within the same communication team?
Yet the profession also attracts the career-driven people. They like the critical thinking that comes with the job. How does a business communicate a major project to everyone involved? When should they communicate? What should they say? How should they say it? The factors that need to be considered are often varied and complex, with the solutions themselves being specific to certain audiences and certain contexts.
So what happens when the work-life people interact with the career-minded people within the same communication team? Does it have an impact?
First of all, the motivations someone has for working does not explain nor account for their actual work ethic. You can be a hard working work-life employee, and you can be a lazy career-driven individual. This example presented itself in an internal communication team I was in which concerned two employees at the same pay level. For the work-life employee, they were hard working, punctual and committed to their job. Yet ironically for the career-driven person, they saw the job as a stepping stone towards the career they actually wanted. This person would often show up late, write poorly-worded messages, and publish unapproved articles.
The work ethic of the career-minded person started to affect the work ethic of the work-life person. Why should the work-life employee show up to work on time, work hard, and manage a number of tasks when their colleague did little to no work, had gotten little repercussion for their actions, and yet still got paid the same income?
What was happening was that the disengagement of the career-minded person was affecting the engagement of the work-life person. And had it not been for the manager who stepped in to talk to both employees separately, and in turn removed the career-minded person from the team, then the disengagement of one could have easily turned into the disengagement of many.
The disengagement of the work-life employee could have affected the rest of the team and in turn could have impacted their work outcomes; affecting the employees they were tasked with communicating with in the business.
Leadership is often seen as the driving force behind many internal communication practices, and had our team not had a good leader in place, we would have been one of those teams who did not practice what it was they preached.
The Leader
All humans have a superpower – which is the choice in how to behave. We as humans have automatic thoughts towards situations and others – but we still have a choice in what we do next. Through my experience in many different work teams over the years, the way in which a manager communicates with the team has a major influence on how team members feel, which directly affects motivation and work ethic. There are of course many other factors that contribute – but given choice in how we behave towards others is free – what a valuable tool!
People look to their manager (consciously and unconsciously) to guide their behaviour. If you are a manager – ever noticed that when you display signs of stress, your team becomes more stressed? Ever notice that when you talk about your work with enthusiasm that a feeling of joy emerges?
Yep, that was a lot to do with you.
The manager sets the tone, gives permission for the type of behaviour that is accepted and has a direct impact on the satisfaction of staff.
So often in the workplace I have seen a manager’s technical knowledge or work experience held up as a reason why they should be managers. What is often overlooked is their communication with others – i.e. their human qualities or their emotional intelligence.
The best manager I have had is a person who was consistently (not just when it suited them!) respectful, engaging, supportive and (when appropriate) humorous when communicating with me and my peers. The manager took time to personally reflect and it always felt he was ‘in tune’ with us. Yes, he was also fantastic at the work and highly organised – but it was the way in which he interacted with us that stood out. Unsurprisingly, we remained a team for years and delivered high quality work. In my experience, these qualities the manager possessed have been the exception rather than the norm.
The manager sets the tone, gives permission for the type of behaviour that is accepted and has a direct impact on the satisfaction of staff. Unfortunately, a lot of managers communicate at work without knowing this and instead go about blaming their team’s behaviour, attitude and outcomes on anything else but themselves.
‘Choice’ naturally means there are at least two options. So in order to see these options, you must first observe your usual or automatic ways of communication. Look for patterns – do you communicate differently with different people and why may that be?
- Do you communicate differently when stressed?
- How do you communicate with yourself?
You could ask your staff members or simply put yourself in their shoes (“if my manager communicated with me the way I communicate with my colleagues, how would I feel?”).
Now, consider, how your team’s behaviours, outcomes or overall happiness shifted when you communicated in a particular way?
If this is done with honesty, you may not like what you discover. It may feel uncomfortable and perhaps embarrassing. So observe through curiousness as opposed to blame or through a lens of morality. Now consider, what will you do differently?
By identifying these inside world contradictions we have described, you have the say to take action, live the values of what we stand for as a communication profession and build a supportive and joyful workplace. What a gift to have.
