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Leader and Manager Communication

Case Study: Helping Leaders Understand and Commit to Their Role in Communication and Engagement


The Challenge

A large financial institution partnered with us on a communication audit, which clearly showed that if senior leaders were more effective in communicating about business strategy and current challenges, the entire culture would benefit and employees would be more engaged.

The Solution

We partnered with Corporate Communication to design an experience for leaders that creates organization-wide alignment around the role of leaders as communicators and builds their skills for successful execution. The work, which begins with the Operating Committee and their direct reports, includes:

  • Interviews with participating leaders to develop customized messages and workshop content to meet the needs of each business group.
  • A survey administered to participants' direct reports to assess the leaders' communication skills in each work group.
  • A day-long, highly interactive workshop that includes:

    • The business case for leadership communication using data specific to each team
    • Aligned messages for the organization and each specific division
    • Strategies for effective leadership communication during change
    • Customized skill-building for each group that includes storytelling, listening, and recognizing
    • An action planning process to clearly define next steps and accountabilities for each workshop participant

The Results

Feedback from the training sessions has been positive and leaders throughout the company often refer to the session contents when discussing how best to communicate company issues and initiatives. A demand has been created to roll the sessions out more quickly and deeper into the organization. Questions about leadership communication effectiveness have been benchmarked in the 2007 survey and results will be compared for improvement in the 2008 survey.