How do you ensure your communication is transparent and honest with all stakeholders?

Keep sentences short, no matter the audience. Concise messages can be more straightforward and readable while making your message approachable. If you want to elaborate, do so in a way that's easy to understand. Bullet points are good vehicles for this. Proofread/edit for redundancies, poor grammar and misspellings. This will show that you care, lending authenticity. Context is important to improving the transparency and honesty of communication. As has been said, write to the audience, but also reread/relisten to your finished messaging to hear how the message will make each audience feel.

There will be times in a communication professional's career when full transparency is impossible. However, the ethical foundation of our profession is that we are truthful, objective, and ethical. That said, one crucial task is to ensure that you meet your audience where they are at; much like marketing in corporate and executive communications and brand management, you need to think through the goal of the communications, the medium you are using, and the language to ensure that the internal and external are cohesive, transparent, engaging and even inspiring where possible. It is also imperative to lead with empathy in your communication objectives. Lastly, a clear comms plan and messaging house help align and keep messages transparent.

In my experience, it's also key to tailor messages to each stakeholder group. Your most senior leaders may need to hear actions they need to take, whereas your broad employee group may need awareness only. As well, consider sourcing questions in advance from each stakeholder group so that you know where the gaps in understanding may come from.

?? If facing a crisis management situation, start with a situational analysis. This practice reveals the goal, delineates the communications approaches, aligns internal hierarchy and it identifies and assess crisis scenarios and strategies.

Consider running your copy through a tool like ChatGPT to check it's inclusive, will be understood globally (or in whichever region you addressing), and free from inadvertent bias. It can also be used to make sentences more crisp and succinct.

People receive and understand information in different ways. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time is difficult, and a multi-channel approach that understands the need states of different stakeholders is critical to success.

I try to understand what action and response each tactic and channel will elicit. A simplistic example here, but in a particular campaign you would dig deeper into the product for each channel... For example, standard posters = awareness, newsletter = understanding, town hall meeting = awareness, SLT = buy in, SPDR = call to action / behavior change and so on.

I've often felt that transparency isn't about sharing everything, it's about sharing the right thing with the right audience. It's showing the workings but only if that aids and doesn't hinder your objective.

Be an advocate for collaboration among the corp comm team. Everyone on that team should have the firm's best interests at heart. Bringing different perspectives into the process is helpful to eliminate any blind spots that might impact how messages are perceived by various stakeholders and audiences.

In addition to being open to criticism, it's actually better if we seek it out so that we learn where our communications may not have hit the mark.

It can be useful to do a qualitative and quantitative baseline and end-of-project evaluation to see how your communication has landed. We rarely conduct detailed assessments of how well a particular communication strategy did, and this can be a useful tool to guide further strategies or pivot on tactics. Also, at the risk of using a trope, feedback is truly a gift. If we can look beyond the "that's not how we do it" instinctive pushback to what we see as negative feedback, there's usually a diamond in the rough hiding in there somewhere.

Feedback is great. But it should only be captured if you plan to use it to modify your approach, clarify your message, correct missteps, etc. Taking feedback and not doing anything with it can cause greater frustration among stakeholders and pull them away from you and your message.

Transparency doesn’t mean telling your stakeholders everything and anything. It’s about sharing what is most important for them to know about a situation at a given time so they can take appropriate actions that align with your project or program. This requires a strategic approach that considers each stakeholder group, what they need, where they are on the journey and more.

Take the time to understand stakeholders’ priorities, needs, pain points, and motivations. When you ask purpose-driven questions in a meaningful, transparent way, you are able to build a level of trust with your audience and achieve a more successful relationship and project outcome.