Working with line managers on internal comms 🔥 The Curious Route


Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. Here's the one I'm going to tackle today:

“How can line managers support cascading internal comms messaging and making it relevant to their teams? How can / should the internal comms team support them with this? I work in a large organisation with a large number of line managers with varying levels of ability, competency and levels of engagement in communicating with their teams beyond the day to day team operations. Any advice?"

The topic of line managers as a communication channel is one that comes up again and again in internal comms. The line manager cascade is one of the oldest and most traditional communication channels in the corporate world, and one that is still widely used in many companies today. Does it work? Sometimes. Can it work better? Yes, in my experience.

I think it’s helpful to think about your line managers as both:

  1. A target audience for your communications, AND
  2. A powerful communications channel to reach another target audience, i.e., their direct reports.

They have a dual role, don't they? It's important to bear this in mind so we can work effectively with them.

Managers are a high source of trust in an organisation

Line managers can be (and often are) the most trusted source of information in an organisation. Your comms team might send out well-crafted, thoughtful and clear communications through your official comms channels, but employees will still turn to their managers for their take on it and to make sense of what this message means to them and their day job.

Line managers are the ones who answer the inevitable "But what does this mean for us?" questions from their team when a big organisational announcement hits. We, as internal communicators, are heavily reliant on line managers to translate concepts and ideas from the big picture to the minutiae to help team members make sense of things.

Managers are also highly influential

When you're thinking about managers and communication, it's important to remember how highly, highly influential managers are for employees. They can act as either champions or blockers to your communication efforts.

  • As champions: They can be the best advocates of important messages such as changes to ways of working or using new tools, as their opinion will strongly influence how their team feels about the change or how likely they are to successfully adopt a new tool.
  • As blockers: Conversely, line managers can also be your biggest obstacle; if they cascade messages in a negative tone or add on their own toxic take on corporate decisions, their teams will feel this and it will influence their perception and sentiment.

Line managers' reactions to company news can legitimise or undermine your carefully designed messages. We ignore this risk at our peril.

[I never get to use the word peril. I enjoyed that.]

For example, let's say you're rolling out a new safety protocol in a pharma company with lots of frontline workers, and you're heavily reliant on line managers to explain the protocol properly, make sure everyone on their team understands what is expected of them and helps employees take action on what they need to do. If you have a line manager who doesn't explain things properly or makes no effort to clarify questions with their team, the compliance rate with the new protocol can plummet. Simply because of poor line manager communication.

So this stuff matters, it makes a difference.

Context matters, as ever

Now if you've followed me for a while you know I'm very likely to say things like "it depends" and "context matters". And the same is true here. The importance of line managers as a communication channel is different from organisation to organisation. It depends on what other channels you have, how effective your reach is through those channels, how trusted your information sources are, and so on.

As a fair generalisation, companies with frontline workers rely more heavily on line managers to communicate messages to employees. In these companies, more effort, energy and focus should be placed on using line managers as a channel in a very intentional and well-designed way. Companies like retail chains, fitness clubs, manufacturing plants, hospitals - any workers that aren't sitting at desks all day - line manager comms needs a lot of attention so that you can involve managers in co-creating an effective cascade system that works for you, for them, and for their team members too.

How internal communications can support managers

As internal communicators, there's a bunch of stuff we can do to support line managers in communicating with their teams. The support you give and the amount of energy you put into this will heavily depend on your context, your capacity, and your capability.

For example:

  • Do you have a learning & development team to collaborate with, or are you doing this all by yourself?
  • Do you have budget to outsource some support?
  • Have you got any time and capacity to design & run training for managers on communication, or are you already overloaded?
  • How important is this channel for your organisation, and how much a priority is this for the success of your internal comms strategy?

I can't answer these questions for you. But what I can do is give you some simple things you can do to support your line managers that won't break the bank.

Practical things you can try for yourself

Firstly, make it EASY for managers to cascade messages. For example, give them a simple one pager with bullet points under headers like "This is what we want you to know" and "this is what we want you to communicate to your teams". They don't need 50 page slide decks or long PDFs. Bullet points with clear calls-to-action will be hugely appreciated.

Related to that, keep it short. Many line managers will cascade corporate messages during pre-shift operational briefings or quick team meetings, so you need to be succinct and concise. If you need something covered in more depth, then maybe another channel would make more sense, like a townhall for example.

Another thing you can do is to help managers answer questions from their team members. You can provide FAQ documents, overview docs and explanations that managers can access if they need more context or information.

And make sure you're creating some mechanism or space for feedback. You need ways for line managers to give you feedback on how the cascade is working, if it suits their way of working and how their team members are responding to it. You can ensure the best chances of success by involving your managers in the creating of the cascade system. They probably already know what will work and what won't - you just have to ask them.

A final note

There are really tons of things you can do to work with your managers, but really we want to slow down and ask ourselves questions like: How can we make this easier for them? How can we simplify things to make it less of a chore? And when do we need to just get out of their way and let them at it?

Have a conversation with your HR team or your Learning & Development team to see how you can collaborate to support your managers to become better communicators. Remember that investing in your line managers' communication skills has benefits that extend far beyond just the cascade of corporate messaging.

Using line managers as a channel can be difficult, but designing the system with intention and curiosity will put you on the right track.

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.
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  • Enroll in my course, "How to use ChatGPT as your personal assistant". This is a practical, on-demand course where I'll show you 38 specific ways to use ChatGPT to help you in your job as an internal communicator. You can enroll in the course here.

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Demystifying internal communication

Internal communication and employee engagement consultant, lecturer and author with 10+ years industry experience and 4 award wins. I can help you understand the world of internal communication and employee engagement and level up your communication skills. My weekly newsletter, The Curious Route, gives you actionable insights to improve your communication skills and understand how to improve employee engagement in your organisation.

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