Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week’s question comes from a communications manager in Calgary, Canada who asks:

Hey you’re in good company here and you absolutely sent this question to the right person. I love townhalls and there is so much that you can do to make them great.

We focused on this exact topic in The Curious Tribe recently. We had a live peer-sharing session to discuss how tribe members are running their townhalls, what’s working, what’s not. This was a candid, open session and people left with practical tips they could use straight away.

Let me share some of what we discussed in the session to help you.

Townhalls are tricky by nature

The first thing I want you to know, because maybe we don’t talk publicly about this enough, is that townhalls are just tricky. They are.

You’re getting leaders to agree on priorities and an agenda, you’re prepping speakers who are too busy to meet with you, you’re dealing with last-minute changes to slides and messages, you’re trying to keep the audience engaged when the content might be dull, you’re trying to convince stakeholders to be less boring without telling them they’re boring… and that’s before you even consider the tech, the logistics, the timing, the reach.

Townhalls are tricky! There’s so much that goes into getting them right.

In our live discussion on townhalls, the key challenges about townhalls were:

• Engaging the audience
• Keeping to time
• Helping speakers stay on topic
• Making the content interesting
• Planning in advance

There’s a lot to consider with townhalls so don’t feel like you have to rush into fixing everything at once. What are the biggest issues you currently have? What do your employees think of your townhall? What are the trickiest bits for you?

How to start: Get clear on the purpose

Once you have an understanding of how your current townhalls are landing, you can start to make a plan to improve them.

Now you asked me in your question if you should start with either the townhall format or with the speakers, but in my view the answer is neither. The first thing you need to do is get clear on the purpose of your townhalls. What are they actually for?

Your company townhall is arguably the most expensive communications channel you’ll ever run, because you’re effectively shutting down the entire business every time it runs. You’re asking people to stop their work, halt production and listen to the leaders. That costs money, so it needs to be worth it.

So please, the first thing you need to do is answer this question: What is the purpose of your townhall? Why does it exist? What are employees getting from this channel that they can’t get anywhere else?

Discuss this with your leaders, get agreement on it, document it. This will save you so much time and effort because now you’ve got a laser focus for every townhall which you can repeat and reuse across every single townhall all year.

The purpose of your townhall might be something like:

• Build trust in the leadership team
• Create space for employees to have their questions answered by leaders
• Give transparent updates on strategic priorities
• Help employees feel part of one team with shared goals

I can’t tell you what the purpose of YOUR townhall is. But I can encourage you to discuss it with your leaders and create one that suits the needs of your business and your employees.

What to do next: align the content

The purpose bit is not academic, it’s practical and it matters. Because everyone knows what happens when you run a good townhall… everyone wants a slot at it to share their team news or their project update.

But that’s how you get a bloated, irrelevant agenda that causes employees to tune out. We don’t want that. We’re going to instead use our townhall’s purpose to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to content topics for every single townhall. We’re going to make sure that all of the townhall content aligns to the purpose, and if it doesn’t then it’s not going in. You can find another channel for it.

Let me show you an example of how to do this.

Townhall purpose: Give transparent updates on strategic priorities

Content:

✅ Update on company-wide digital transformation programme

✅ Insights into company financial performance

✅ CEO plans for next year

❌ How to use the new employee assistance programme

❌ Photos from the family fun day

❌ Update on the marketing team’s re-brand project

Do you see how easy it is to say yes or no to certain content types once you have a clear purpose to use as a guideline?

And once you have your purpose and your content topics, you can then work backwards from there to pick the best speakers to talk about those topics and find the formats that work best to deliver their messages.

Reduce silos to improve relevance

And one other tip I want to share with you that came directly from a tribe member is this: if a stakeholder from team X comes to you and wants to present something at the company townhall, you want to make sure that (a) it fits the townhall purpose and (b) it’s going to be relevant to all employees.

But how do you make a niche update from team X relevant to everyone?

Well this smart tribe member does it like this: In her company, every single presentation coming into the all-hands must be cross-functional. If the product team want a slot, they have to bring someone with them (this might be sales, marketing, customer success, operations etc) so that they can explain what this means for different employees, for customers or for operation of the business. So this transforms “a product update in a product silo” into “a business story for the wider business”.

What also works about her approach is that it acts as a filter to weed out content that WON’T be relevant to the wider business. If team X can’t find a way to make their presentation cross-functional, then it doesn’t belong in the townhall and must go into another channel, like a Slack update or an intranet blog.

Isn’t that clever? I wish I had thought of that.

Want more tips on townhalls?

You can watch the full recording of this 45-min discussion on townhalls inside The Curious Tribe video library, exclusively for members. In the recording you’ll also learn:

• How tribe members handle employee Q&A sessions; do they allow anonymous questions? Do they collect questions in advance or just live on the day? How do you prep leaders to answer honestly and transparently?
• How to follow up with employees afterwards; see how different tribe members are sharing townhall recaps via written and video media.
• See how some organisations are splitting their townhalls in two: a short one focused on business results and a longer one focused on leaders answering employee questions live
• How one member built her townhall purpose straight out of her employee survey data, and used that evidence to get her leaders to agree it
• A step-by-step walkthrough of how to moderate employee questions during tough times, including how to explain it to employees to build trust

And of course members also get access to our all of our live events and async discussions that we have as a community all year round. Upcoming events include:

• Peer sharing session: How are you using AI in your role?
• An insider look at how Appspace run their townhalls
• A practical workshop on how to make videos on your smartphone
• How to use print & events to drive engagement with frontline workers

Join the tribe here

The Curious Tribe is a community of internal comms professionals who share their real work; the wins, the challenges, the lessons. With an NPS of +81 and 85% of members renewing for a second year or more, this is a world-class community and I'm so proud of it.

If you work in internal comms, The Curious Tribe was built for you.

Are you the next member of The Curious Tribe? 👀

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

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

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