Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week we’re tackling a question that came in from an internal comms manager in New Zealand:

First of all, congratulations. You’re clearly doing a great job if everyone wants a piece of you. But you’re right of course, there’s a limit to what one person can do by themselves. And you don't want to end up overextending yourself until you burn yourself out trying to keep up with demand. You deserve support, and in today's newsletter I'll give you advice on how to ask for it.

In an ideal world you could simply say to your boss “I’m really busy, I need help” and that would be enough. But we all know that's unlikely to work in reality. You need a plan. You need to be able to ask for what you need in a way that makes it easy for your boss to see the business value of expanding the team.

This kind of a plan is often called a "business case". It's a document where you basically set out a convincing argument that giving you more resources (whether that's an extra team member, more budget, new tech tools) is going to be really good for the business.

SPONSOR: Want to make 2026 the year of listening?

If you want to really understand that your employees are thinking and feeling, you absolutely NEED to know how to design and run focus groups.

These are hands down the most effective mechanism for deep listening in your organisation, and you can use the insights to drive improvements in your communication system.

If you’ve never run a focus group before (or you have but want to get better at them), my new course will teach you everything you need to know. I’m a sociologist by training and I’ve run hundreds of focus groups throughout my career and this course is packed with practical, step-by-step guidance on how to design, facilitate and analyse focus groups so you can gather the kind of insights that make leaders sit up and listen.

This course is great - but I'm obviously biased so don't take my word for it. Here's what Elke said when she completed the course.

Ready to make 2026 the year of listening?

Let's have a look at how you can create a business case to get more support for your team in 2026.

It's not about you

The first thing is that when you ask for more support, you need to frame it strategically so it's about the BUSINESS (and not about you.

Your boss is likely focused on the bigger picture of the business, not your to-do list. Their focus is on delivering strategic priorities, reducing risk, increasing productivity, working as efficiently as possible... that kind of thing.

So you need to go beyond "I'm really busy, I need more support" to "If you give me more support, this will help the business in XYZ ways".

Here's the kind of things to consider when asking your boss for an extra team members:

Link everything to business goals

I want you to step into your boss's shoes for this part. What does your boss care about? What are they accountable for? What do they have to report on to their own manager?

Think about this first and then consider how you can link your request to their goals or concerns. Can you show that giving you another team mate will result in more business value? Is it going to reduce organisational risk or speed up the delivery of an important organisational transformation project, for example?

Start with what the business needs (not what you want) and you're off to a super start.

Show them numbers and data

A CFO once told me that a business case with no numbers in it would be a hard no straight away. For any kind of business case I reckon you need some sort of metrics and data in there to make your argument really compelling.

But here’s the good news, your numbers don’t have to be bulletproof. Your best estimate is often enough to start the conversation so don't wait until you have the perfect data, just use what you have.

Think about things like staff retention (replacing employees is very expensive), productivity gains (are your employees losing hours a week searching for information they can't find on an outdated intranet?) or the cost of poor communication during a major change (the entire business investment can be lost if the change is not communicated well).

Don't get too hung up on the data; the aim is to generate a meaningful conversation about value, not to present a PhD thesis.

Tell a compelling story

Numbers alone won’t do it. You need a clear and compelling story that brings your data to life. And guess what, you’re already a comms professional so you’ve got an unfair advantage here.

Tell a compelling story about the impact you could make in the business if you had another team member. Make your boss fall in love with the idea, show them a vision of a glorious future in which your team is achieving incredible things with one more person on board.

Use real examples to illustrate what you could deliver, maybe it’s the strategy work that keeps getting pushed to the bottom of your list, maybe it’s the measurement and evaluation you know you should be doing but can’t get to, maybe it's having the space to build more relationships across the business to reduce friction and siloed working. Paint the picture of a brighter future and make it easy for them to care.

Use this report to help you

These are a few things to consider to get you started. If you want more support in asking your boss for extra resources, download this report I wrote with Unily last year. It gives you insights from industry reports, verbatim quotes from C-suite executives on what would make them say yes or no to a request like yours and and a ready-to-use business case template. Get it here:

This report includes a step-by-step template you can use to make a really clear, compelling request for more support that demonstrates business value. This is exactly the method I would use if I was still in-house and wanted to grow my team.

[I now work for myself so my team is comprised of two cats and there's no room to expand the team just yet]

I hope this helps and do let me know if you manage to get a big fat YES when you ask for more support. Being a team of one can be very difficult, I've been there and I know.

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book​

Want to work together?

• Join The Curious Tribe. This is my membership community for ambitious, curious communicators who want to achieve more in their roles and have fun at the same time. Membership allows you to work directly with me for 12 months, make deep connections with other communication pros who 'get it' and improve your skills through training and learning. More info here.
• Ready to review your channels and content but don't know where to start? Download my practical Internal Comms Audit Playbook to guide you through a DIY audit - no expensive consultant needed.​ This has ready-to-use templates and checklists to give you a systematic way to do your own audit which you can repeat every single year. Get it here.
• Take a shortcut. I've developed a collection of tried-and-tested templates, checklists and how-to guides for the key processes you'll need in your role as an internal communicator. You can download my Internal Comms Cheat Sheets here.​

​
​Unsubscribe ·