Introduction

That sounds awful, said my boss.

She was asking for new ways to communicate with faculty and staff.

So I pitched an old idea.

You could host breakfast meetings, I said.

Invite a dozen different faculty and staff every month to join you for breakfast.

No death by PowerPoint. No prepared remarks. No agenda. Just an hour of informal conversation.

I’d introduced breakfast meetings at two previous organizations. We invited everyone from new hires and awardwinners to opinion leaders and justpromoted supervisors. Sure, the conversations were sometimes slow to start and could get a little stilted. But the breakfasts seemed like time well spent. And who didn’t want to have breakfast with the boss? I’d never heard a leader say this before. And, to be honest, I'd never given it much thought. I didn’t empathize with the employees who were pushing eggs and bacon around their plates and hoping they wouldn’t get called on to talk about their favourite vacation spot, the latest show they’re watching on Netflix and the one thing they love, and the one thing they’d change, about their jobs.

No one wants to have breakfast with the boss, said my boss. People are just being polite. She said awkward and forced conversations would add up to an all-round awful experience. A waste of a good hour.

So she nixed the idea and proposed something better. Instead of summoning a random group for bagels in the boardroom, she’d join their regularly scheduled team meetings as a guest. And she’d make time for post-meeting tours if the teams offered. I’d spent 28 years in public relations helping leaders get the word out. I paid zero attention to the employees on the receiving end of all that communication. I’d sometimes remember to ask employees what they wanted to hear from the leader. But I didn’t ask how they wanted to be communicated with, when, how often or if they even needed to hear from the leader. What employees wanted finished a distant third behind keeping leaders happy and keeping myself busy and employed.

With breakfast meetings off the table, I revisited the other greatest hits from my leadership communications playbook. Were these tried tactics no longer true?

She sent out an email and teams were quick to extend invitations. The conversations were better and my boss was in her element. She got to be curious, listen more than she talked and show genuine appreciation for the day-to-day work being done by the teams. As an added bonus, she’d recap the visits and tours when meeting with other people from across and outside the organization.

My boss passed on breakfast meetings not because she didn’t want to play host but because she didn’t want to make people endure them. She empathized with everyone who’d start stressing the moment they got the invitation, second-guess and overthink everything they said during the longest breakfast of their lives and then bolt as soon as the hour was up. I was also rethinking that playbook from a new vantage point. For the first time in my career, I wasn’t working in a central PR department or camped out in a president’s office. I was now closer than ever to the frontlines. I went from being the sender to a receiver of leadership comms. I didn’t spend my days in meetings with senior executives and PR pros. Instead, I went to meetings with colleagues who didn’t work in PR and were preoccupied with other priorities.

It was a good reminder that not everyone rolls into work hoping today’s the day they get a three-page memo, a five-minute video or an all-staff invite from the leader.

So I spent part of the pandemic rethinking what I thought I knew about leadership communications while also reflecting on all the senior leaders I’d worked with over nearly 30 years.

That rethinking and reflecting led to Leadership Miscommunication and what I’m calling the seven deadly spins of leadership communications.

For each of the deadly spins, I’ll sum up what PR pros typically say, what employees think and what leaders can do instead.

Happy to hear if you think I’ve hit or missed the mark. Send me an email at jayrobb@cogeco.ca.

The Seven Deadly Spins of Leadership Communications

You should be all over social media.

You should be the star of a podcast or video series.

Cheers, You should invite everyone to have coffee or breakfast with you.

December 2021 You should be a thought leader.

You should invite everyone to help write the strategic plan.

You should hire a speechwriter.

You should host regular all-staff meetings.