Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week's question comes from a Director of Internal Communications in New Zealand who wrote:

Thank you for sending this in, you'd be surprised at how many comms people think and feel the same as you; it's very common to get a kind of 'stage fright' when you have to stand in front of a room of leaders and communicate well under such immense pressure.

I've been working in internal comms for more than 15 years and I spent the earlier part of those years absolutely terrified of presenting to leaders. Like I would lose sleep over it and feel physically sick. And I still have a painful memory of getting to the end of a presentation when one unpleasant stakeholder asked me a barbed "gotcha" question intended to humiliate me in front of everyone in the room. I froze, gave a garbled nonsense answer and fled as soon as I could.

When I look back, that was the moment I could have said "nope, I'm never doing this again" but I didn't, instead I opted for "That was clearly a disaster, I need to learn how to get better at this". And I did exactly that.

No one is born knowing how to communicate well with senior leaders. It's a practice that can be learned over time. And lucky you, I've had lots of time to practice and get better and I can confidently say I'm really good at presenting and communicating with senior leaders now. I even enjoy it. (Past me would never believe I would ever say that haha!)

In today's newsletter I'll share some of the practical tips I've learned over the years that will help you to become more effective when presenting to your own leaders. You can avoid the mistakes I made and get up to speed quicker than I ever did!

Working in internal comms is the best job in the world. But it can also be really bloody lonely.

There, I said it!

​Maybe you're the only internal communicator in your organisation. Or maybe you're a communications leader who is expected to have all the answers. You're probably facing challenges that other people in your organisation rarely understand and it can be isolating.

​Finding peers who truly get your work and can help you can be difficult.

​That's why I built The Curious Tribe. It's my membership community for internal communicators who want to become more strategic, learn all year round and also connect with peers who understand them.

The tribe has 80+ members from all around the world with an NPS score of +81. 90% of members renew for a second year or more.

Inside the tribe you'll find tons of support including regular live events. Here's a peek at some of the events coming up in the next few weeks:

All of these masterclasses are designed to help you become more strategic and confident in your work.

You can pay an annual membership fee or split it into monthly payments if that suits you better. You can join any time of year and I'll get you onboarded and settled in.

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Okay here's 3 things I've learned about communicating with leaders:

1. Be concise and get to the point

I’ve sat in on a lot of presentations at leadership level and you'd be shocked at how incapable many people are at simply getting to the point. They will open up a powerpoint presentation with 55 slides on it, share every single detail about every single thing, and yet somehow never manage to land a key message or get to the main point.

From the perspective of leaders, this is bloody frustrating. I've worked with a lot of CEOs and executives over the years, and their schedules are always relentless. Their time is precious and the fastest way to lose their attention is to waffle on at length.

Here's what I want you to do instead: before you present, ask yourself what they need to know, not what you want to tell them. Those two things (what they need to know vs what you want to say) are often very different. Focus on the former. Make your presentation truly audience-centric. And don't forget to rehearse properly, make sure you are communicating your key point early and speaking in words that are easily understood and relevant to your leaders.

2. Think big picture

It's not just important to get to the point, but it's important that your point is relevant to your leaders. It is an easy mistake to make to go into a presentation and share every single chronological aspect of a comms project but forgetting to link it to a big picture business priority or strategic objective.

Your big boss leaders don't want all the nitty gritty details. They don't really care how many clicks an article got or how many people attended the townhall or how many blogs you published last month. What they care about is the bit that comes AFTER, in other words what results did we see from all of this comms activity? Sure, 90% of people attended the townhall meeting but how many of them did the thing we asked them to do afterwards? Did the meeting achieve it's objective?

Focus on telling stories of results, of impact, of how communications is helping the business to succeed. For example, if one of your company priorities this year is to save money, you could talk about how your internal campaign resulted in reduced turnover by 10% and saved hundreds of thousands in rehiring, or you could tell the story of how the new intranet investment has already paid for itself in 12 months by clawing back €50,000 a month in lost employee productivity.

That’s thinking big picture, and it’s what builds your reputation as someone who understands strategic communication and is an asset to the business.

3. Provide solutions, not problems

And my final tip of the day is to be solution-oriented, not fixated on problems. I've sat in countless leadership presentations where people have come in and essentially trauma-dumped on the leadership team: XYZ isn't working properly / We have a serious problem with ABC / We can't deliver our priorities because of an issue with 123. And I've always been shocked when those same people are not proposing any solutions, just complaining about problems they've found.

If you want to communicate effectively with leaders and get their respect, then try to come with proposed solutions rather than just problems. Leaders value the people who don’t just flag the issues but can come up with a sensible way forward. Your job is to come up with a fix and think through the implications, the risks and the questions they’re likely to ask.

A solution-oriented approach shows initiative, problem-solving and critical thinking, and marks you out as someone who can be relied on. And this works particularly well with senior leaders because you’re taking the hard work off their plate. If you've figured out a way to fix this organisational problem then they don't need to worry about it, you've got it. They will love you for this! So come with the rationale for your choice, the evidence to support it, and answers ready for the objections they might raise.

So there you have it, 3 of my tips to help you become more effective with your leaders: be concise, think big picture and bring solutions rather than problems.

These are three things I slowly got better at over the years and now it seems like second nature to me. None of this is particularly complicated, but together these three things will completely change how you come across in that room and how leaders form their opinion of you. These tips will also help to settle your nerves because you’ll walk in knowing exactly what your leaders are looking for and how you can position yourself well.

If you find these newsletters useful and you're a fan of no-nonsense practical advice, come join me in The Curious Tribe. It's my full-time job in there to support internal comms pros like you with your trickiest challenges and help you make a bigger impact in your work. It's also rather fun in there too.

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.​

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