Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week's question comes from an Internal Comms Manager in Manchester who asks:

Working with line managers is one of those internal comms themes that comes up again and again. It's one of the most common questions I get asked.

In lots of companies, line managers really are your most trusted source of information. When employees are asked who they trust most and who they look to for important information, the answer is almost always their direct manager. Not the CEO. Not the all-staff email. It's their own boss, the person they see every day. This makes total sense.

And yet, many line managers are wildly under-equipped to communicate well or to cascade messages effectively. Maybe they find out about changes too late. Or they're handed a 30-page deck and expected to magically translate it for their team with no support. Maybe they get no training in how to communicate and they're not even clear what's expected of them.

We tackled this topic inside The Curious Tribe, in a candid peer-sharing session led by the brilliant Laura Kennedy. Laura is Head of Internal Communications at Lifetime, a US company running luxury athletic country clubs with thousands of frontline workers. She's one of the founding members of the tribe, she joined when I first opened the doors in December 2023 and she's renewed her membership every year since.

Laura has been focused on improving line manager comms and she's been building out a really impressive, thoughtful and structured approach that I think will help you.

L et's have a look at some of the advice she shared.

Here are a few of the insights from Laura's session that you can use in your own role.

Insight 1: Lead time isn't a luxury, it's the whole game

One of the biggest reasons that cascades fail is that managers find out crucial information at the same time as their teams. They have no chance to digest the message, no chance to ask their own questions, no chance to prepare for what their team will throw at them. This makes their job really hard and of course they're not set up well to communicate effectively in this scenario.

Laura's rule of thumb is to give each layer of leadership at least two business days to absorb a message before the next layer is informed, and the all-team message should land at least a week before the change actually takes effect. Earlier is always better, especially for anything affecting pay, benefits or compliance.

Now this won't work in a crisis situation of course, but most of the time we AREN'T in crisis situations. So having a timed, structured approach to non-urgent messages can really help give your line managers time to understand the message, clarify what's expected of them and think about the best way to communicate this with their teams.

For many of us, there's a sort of "it's ready, send it now to all staff" culture, but part of our job is pushing back on this and creating that space for managers to be more effective at comms. That's the difference between a cascade that works and one that doesn't.

Insight 2: Context isn't optional, it's part of the message

When managers don't have the context behind a decision, they will likely default to "this is a corporate decision" or "I don't know why leaders did this" when asked for the 'why' by their team. And this is more than just frustrating for managers, I reckon it's quite damaging. It tells employees their own manager doesn't understand or believe in the change and creates an us-vs-them mentality between leaders (the decision makers) and everyone else (expected to go along with things with no understanding of why).

But the good news is, this is avoidable. If you brief your managers properly with the real business reason behind a decision, they have something to stand on. They can say "here's why we're doing this and here's why it makes sense." If you don't brief them properly, they will reach for "it's a corporate decision" or "This is just what the CEO wants" because they have nothing else to say.

So when you're building your manager pack, the "why" isn't a nice-to-have. It's the whole point. Having this context built in will really help line managers to lead the conversation and communicate effectively.

Insight 3: Managers don't realise how much influence they have

When someone is promoted to manager for the first time (or even if they've been a manager for a long time, now that I think of it), they often don't fully appreciate how much influence they have over their team. They may wildly underestimate how much their tone, body language and word choice will shape how their direct report will think or feel about a piece of news.

For example, if a manager walks into the team meeting and says "I hate this new policy, this is ridiculous," their team will hate it too. If they say "here's the new policy, this is what it is, let's get on with it," their team will shrug and get on with it. Same message, totally different outcome.

Perhaps simply pointing out the influence that managers have and illustrating that with some stories can help managers understand the responsibility that comes with communicating corporate news to their team. It has a massive impact on how messages are received and acted upon. Is this strictly a comms issue? No, probably not. It could be something you could discuss with your Learning & Development team to see if they could cover it in any manager training they are running, and you can also gently flag it to managers directly when you're prepping them for a cascade.

The practical playbook is in The Curious Tribe

After the session I created a practical Line Manager Cascade Cheat Sheet for tribe members. This cheat sheet covers:

• Practical tips for supporting managers with a cascade
• A briefing pack format and what to include
• How to support managers with a live briefing call
• How to create a 3-tier cascade system based on the importance & urgency of the information
• How to plot out the layers of your cascade system by audience type
• The most common mistakes in cascades and how to avoid them

This cheat sheet is available to download inside The Curious Tribe for all members. If working with line managers is something you're trying to crack, this is your sign to come join us.

As ever, we've got tons more live events planned in the tribe including sessions on AI, doing a DIY channel audit, leadership comms, employee listening and more. If you work in internal comms, The Curious Tribe was built for you.

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

PS If you're not following Laura on LinkedIn yet, let's fix that. She's smart, ambitious and also a wonderful human being. You can find her here.

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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