Spin #7: Town halls

Deadly spin #7:

You should host frequent all-staff town halls.

What PR pros say:

Town halls build community. Everyone –you, the entire senior leadership team, managers, supervisors and all of our employees –get together in one place at the same time for a shared experience. Interactions are a big part of that experience. You get to interact with employees in person and face to face.

Those employees get to watch how you interact with your senior leadership team on stage and see that you’re a cohesive team of senior leaders who know their stuff and enjoy each other’s company. Employees get to mix, mingle and catch up with colleagues before and after the town hall.

And thanks to all that mixing, mingling and interacting, information gets shared. Ideas get kicked around. Questions get answered. Problems get solved. Partnerships and collaborations take root. So there’s no question that a town hall is time well spent for everyone involved. Town halls are also a great way to break big news. Everyone gets the same information at the same time. If it’s difficult big news, everyone will see that you’re concerned and that you care enough to stand up and deliver it in person. You share everyone’s pain. To save you time, we’re happy to run the show from start to finish. We’ll write the script and prepare remarks for you and even every presenter at the town hall. We’ll pull together the PowerPoint presentations and run the AV. We’ll livestream and record the town halls for employees who can’t be there in person. If you want a Q&A at the end of the town hall, we can solicit questions in advance, get employees to fill out question cards during the town hall or just invite folks to step up to the mic.

We could even kick it up a notch and turn your town hall into something like a talk show. We’ll replace the lectern with a desk and couches. We’ll bring in a DJ or even a house band. You can deliver an opening monologue. We could show pre-recorded skits and segments between presenters. It’ll be a blast –edutainment at its best.

What employees think:

This town hall should’ve been an email. We just spent 90 minutes listening to what we could’ve read in 90 seconds. And that time we wasted getting to and from the town hall could’ve been spent doing our jobs. Or taking a break and grabbing a coffee.

Town halls are the National Football League of meetings. An average NFL game lasts three hours and 12 minutes. The ball’s in play for around 11 minutes. We’re lucky if six per cent of what we hear during a town hall is news we can use in our jobs. The rest either sails over our heads like a throw from a rookie QB who’s been flushed out of the pocket or it means nothing to us and we forget all of it as soon as we’re out of our seats and back to work.

Everyone knows when a town hall’s been slapped together at the last minute because it was on the calendar and no one thought to cancel it. We’re served up a grab bag of reheated presentations delivered by presenters who are already bored of walking yet another audience through the same slides one more time. We watch senior leaders who’ve already heard these presentations multiple times bolt for the exit or break out their smartphone.

Along with being the NFL of meetings, town halls are not unlike family get-togethers during the holidays. Like those gettogethers, every town hall is pretty much the same. Nothing really changes except the date for when the town hall’s being held. It’s the same format, the same line-up of presenters, the same PowerPoints and the same content. The only unpredictability comes at the end if there’s still time left to open the floor to questions. Which brave soul will risk making a career-limiting move by pointing to the elephant in the room, saying what everyone in the audience is thinking or challenging what was said as the gospel truth? Who’s the lost soul who’ll confuse the town hall with a confessional and overshare personal information with a question that turns into a five-minute monologue? And who’s the sycophantic coworker who’s ready to sell their soul by serving up a flattering, obsequious softball question that seems like it was planned and rehearsed in advance? Watching you as our leader react, recover, keep a straight face and not lose your patience in real time during the Q&A is pretty much the highlight of the town hall.

And thanks for trying to shake things up by turning your town hall into a talk show. But the novelty wore off after about the first five minutes. Talk shows are written, produced and performed by professionals. Famous people come on as guests to pitch their movies, TV shows and memoirs. You’re not a professional when it comes to talk shows and no one on stage is remotely famous. The effort’s appreciated but it doesn’t change the fact that this 90-minute town hall could’ve and should’ve been an email we read in 90 seconds.

What you can do instead:

Fewer is better. But don’t stop at holding fewer town halls. Put fewer items on the agenda. Have fewer presenters, with fewer hand-offs and fewer chances for technical glitches. If you have to use PowerPoint, use fewer slides. Put fewer charts, facts and figures on those slides. Have fewer calls to action. Ideally, employees leave with just one call to action, which would be one more than what’s given at far too many town halls.

Plan your town hall in reverse. Start by asking two questions. What’s the one thing you need every employee to know and remember from the town hall? And what’s the one thing you want every employee to do after the town hall? Build the agenda around answering those two questions. Strip away everything else. A week after your town hall, ask employees “what do you remember?” and “what did you do?” If they remembered and did what you wanted, congratulations. If they remembered and did nothing, sharpen your focus and do better at your next town hall.

Remember that what you do during the town hall is more important than what you say. Showing matters more than telling. And showing genuine appreciation matters most. Spend your town hall thanking, recognizing and celebrating employees who go above and beyond in advancing the strategic priorities of your organization. Thank individuals and teams. Thank your superstars and your unsung heroes. Give shout-outs to employees who live your organization’s core values, who do the right things even when no one’s watching. It’s not just what gets measured that get’s done. It’s what get’s recognized that’s get done and repeated over and over again.

Rethink who presents at your town hall. Bring in a grateful customer, client, patient or student to share their story and show how your organization changes, saves or transforms lives. Use town halls to remind all employees why their work matters and the difference they’re making. I’ve helped put together many town halls.

The best presenter I ever saw –the one who got the loudest and longest round of applause from an audience that emotionally choked up –wasn’t a senior leader or a professional speaker. It was a grateful and emotional dad who spoke from the heart about how the organization had changed the trajectory of his son’s life. There were no PowerPoint slides.

If it’s a town hall where you have to deliver difficult news, give a heads up to managers and supervisors. Don’t blindside them –they’re your organization’s key communicators. They’re the ones who’ll field all the questions that employees will ask once they’re back from the town hall. It’ll be tough for everyone to keep calm and carry on if managers are stunned and angry.

For these town halls, ditch the PowerPoint slides and prepared remarks and don’t hide behind a lectern. Stand at the edge of the stage, say what needs to be said and then answer questions with genuine empathy and honesty.

For your regularly scheduled town halls, think like your employees with each and every proposed presentation. Could and should this be an email?

You could pack employees into an auditorium and then force-march them through PowerPoint presentations on a new policy, quarterly results and the latest KPIs. Or you could you announce the policy, results and KPIs in emails?

Worried no one’s going to read the emails? Write better emails. Don’t assume that everyone’s paying attention just because they’re sitting in an auditorium staring at PowerPoint slides on a giant screen. Minds wander. Emails are a good way to send out information. But an email is not a good way to get everyone in your organization to break out into a spontaneous round of applause. So take the time you would’ve spent anesthetizing your audience with a 20-slide PowerPoint deck introducing a new policy or summarizing quarterly results and invest it instead in thanking, recognizing and celebrating employees and bringing in guest speakers who can remind everyone why we’re here and why our work matters.

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives,” said John F. Kennedy. Town halls are the perfect time and place to stop and thank the employees who are making a difference in your organization and for the people you serve. Employees will come out of your town halls knowing they’re valued and appreciated. Managers and supervisors will follow your lead and make recognition a big part of their team and department meetings. And everyone will forward to experiencing it all again at your next town hall.