Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week's question comes from a newly appointed Head of Internal Comms in New York who asks:

Good question and I really like that you’re thinking ahead and planning this. I remember when I moved from a manager role in a finance company into Head of Internal Comms with the Irish police force, I had the same excitement and nerves as you. I understand the desire to make a good first impression because your reputation will be built on that.

Let’s talk today about some practical tips you can use when you’re communicating to your CEO and a group of executives. I worked all of this out the hard way in my career – you can avoid the mistakes I made and make a good impression straight away!

Victoria Burkinshaw knows exactly what it feels like to step up and present your thinking to the most senior people in your company.

She didn’t always feel confident to step up and lead and put herself forward for the big, high-profile projects. But joining the tribe changed all of that.

When her company needed a new set of core values, she took the initiative and put herself forward to get involved. Here's what she told me:

If you’re ready to step up and lead, like Victoria was, this is your sign to join the tribe.

The Curious Tribe is my community for internal comms pros who want to have a great career, make an impact at work and enjoy themselves at the same time. 85% of members renew their membership for a second year or more, including Victoria.

Are you the next member of The Curious Tribe? 👀

Okay let’s talk about today’s topic. How do you present to a CEO and an exec team successfully?

At a high level, presenting to executives isn’t about sounding impressive or showing them how complicated everything is. Your goal is to make it easy for them to understand your thinking, trust your judgment and make a decision.

Now lucky for you, you have an advantage here because you’re already a communications professional. You already know how to understand a target audience and tailor communications to them. Presenting to execs is just a very particular audience, with a few principles worth knowing.

1. Get to the point

I spend a lot of time on calls with senior internal communicators and often times they will do a run-through of their big presentation with me before they go in front of their leadership team. And one mistake I often see is that the presentation is a chronological story of what you did, in the order you did it. For example, the presentation will be something like: Background, research, findings, options… and then finally on slide 24 you get to the point and say what you think we should do or what decision you want them to make.

This can be tiring and frustrating for an audience of executives who would most likely appreciate if you got to the point quicker and told them what you want to do and why. You can still have all the context and background and process to hand if they want to know more or they have specific questions, but ask yourself: do they need to know all of this? What decision are you asking them to make, and what information do they need to make that decision?

Are you trying to show off how much work you did, or are you truly communicating the crucial information they need? (I appreciate this can be a painful question for your ego, especially if you’ve spent months on a comms audit and you want to show it off. But it’s a question worth asking.)

2. Have a point of view

My second piece of advice requires some confidence and bravery, but taking on a leadership role requires both and I know you’re able to do it. You need to have a point of view in your presentation. You can’t walk into a room of execs and just deliver a set of observations and data and a story about a project. You absolutely must have an opinion and a point of view about what needs to happen next and what you recommend. This is the real difference between operating as a manager and a head of function.

You’re not there to report on what’s happening, you’re there to recommend what to do about it. For example, you might make a strong statement like “Our manager cascade is not effective. Fixing it should come before we invest in a new intranet.” Now this statement is not an objective truth, it is your subjective point of view. It’s what you believe should happen based on evidence and data.

You need a confident, reasoned view that you can stand over even when your execs ask questions and challenge you on it. If they do this, by the way, it’s a good sign that they’re listening and they’re engaging with your point of view.

So think about this when you’re planning your presentation. Are you giving your point of view, or are you just presenting observations?

3. Use the magic word: Risk

And the third and final tip I’ll give you today is about the word that will make any exec sit up and pay attention: risk.

Too many times, communication professionals will do a presentation focused on communication metrics or channels or outputs. It can be difficult for an executive to work out why a comms metric matters or why a channel is so important. It’s your job to make it incredibly easy to understand why it matters and why you’re bringing it up.

The word “risk” is going to be very helpful to you here. Because your CEO likely doesn’t care about the open rate of your newsletter or how many people are using the intranet every week. What she likely cares about is risk, cost, productivity, efficiency, whether the strategy is being delivered. So be explicit in calling out the risks to the business if comms is not effective. What’s the risk of employees in a manufacturing plant not understanding the health & safety policies? That sounds like a risk to human life to me, and a risk to the reputation of the company. Or what’s the risk of employees having to trawl through 7 different channels for company updates? That sounds like a risk of a lot of lost productivity and duplication of effort, which costs a lot of money.

Make the risk explicit and make it easy to understand. Focus on business risks and show the execs why your work matters.

To finish up, I want you to remember that you earned this role because of your performance in the interview. You’ve already demonstrated your expertise and experience. Now is your opportunity to go into that presentation and show the company they were right to hire you. Get to the point, have an opinion and show the risks and you’re already halfway there.

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

PS I almost forgot to tell you, The Curious Tribe hit a milestone: 100 members!

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.​

This newsletter is not written with AI. It's a joy to write this with my human brain every week. I love writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.

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