In 2023, Every Executive is an Influencer... How Can We Craft an Internal Communication Strategy Fit for a Celebrity?

Workday’s?recent Super Bowl spot ?lampooned the co-opting of the term a “rock star” by boring business-types. The hilarious, star-studded ad earned a ton of praise from advertisers, HR practitioners, and the general public alike.

While the rock legends in the ad took issue with Ted in Finance being labeled a “rock star,” the most effective business leaders are actually pulling a page right out of the rock star playbook to lead their distributed teams.

While some companies have struggled to scale their culture in a remote-first world, others have thrived by tapping into a powerful phenomenon that used to be strictly in the purview of celebrities.

Parasocial relationships and the role of celebrity

When I first launched my Substack , I got a?ton?of questions about the name… What the hell does “parasocial” mean and what does it have to do with remote work?

Honestly, I believe that in the next decade, parasocial relationships will completely upend the way we think about working and leading teams, regardless of whether they’re in-person or distributed around the world. The leaders who excel at harnessing this phenomenon will thrive while those who rely on the old playbook of influence will struggle.

So, what is a parasocial relationship and how can executives harness parasocial relationships to lead their teams more effectively??Let’s start with a definition:?

“A parasocial interaction, an exposure that garners interest in a persona, becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media persona causes the media user to develop illusions of intimacy, friendship, and identification. Positive information learned about the media persona results in increased attraction, and the relationship progresses. Parasocial relationships are enhanced due to trust and self-disclosure provided by the media persona. Media users are loyal and feel directly connected to the persona, much as they are connected to their close friends, by observing and interpreting their appearance, gestures, voice, conversation, and conduct.”

• Wikipedia article on?Parasocial Interactions

Simply put, parasocial relationships are one-way mirrors. One side is observing the other and feels a sense of intimacy. The other side is either unaware of the person behind the mirror or simply has an asymmetric amount of engagement with the individual that makes the relationship one-sided.

There are two ways to view this type of relationship. You could choose to view this as bleak, hollow, and vapid… The synthetic byproduct of a life lived online. Don’t get me wrong, it?can be?all of those things. There are thousands of examples of YouTubers, podcasters, and TikTok influencers who develop deeply unhealthy parasocial relationships with their audience that lead to manipulation and exploitation.

Just like any phenomenon, however, there are ways to harness this phenomenon for good. There are?tons?of online personalities who have not only leveraged their parasocial relationships to deepen bonds of trust with their audience, but also to build community.?

One of my favorite examples of this is?Nerdfighteria , an online subculture started by brothers John and Hank Green (A.K.A - The Vlog Brothers ). While some YouTube stars build an audience strictly to monetize and self-aggrandize, the Vlog Brothers focused their YouTube channel (and later podcasts, newsletters, and TikTok presences) on building a community of like-minded people.?

As this community grew and developed deeper bonds, not only with John and Hank, but with one another, they began turning these connections into action. John and Hank founded?DFTBA.com ?(which stands for “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome”) in an effort to raise money for charity. Today, the majority of the profits of their online store currently go to decrease maternal mortality in Sierra Leone.

20 years ago, this wasn’t possible. These parasocial relationships were entirely one-sided and took place on our TVs or in our tabloids. Today, however, the game has completely changed and those who win the?next?20 years will be those who recognize this shift.?

How the attention economy made everyone an influencer

One of the reasons that no one knows the term “parasocial” is because, until very recently, you were highly unlikely to be on the receiving end of any type of parasocial relationship. You might follow some celebrities, but no one is following?you?in the same way.?

Today, we all have the power to be influencers. In many ways, the “attention economy” of social media has created an incentive structure that disproportionately rewards influencers based on the size of their reach. As a result, the online creator landscape is currently flooded with people trying to capture attention from the largest possible swath of people.

In the coming years, however, I see this trending in a different direction. I believe that successful leaders of many stripes (executives, politicians, community organizers, etc.) will leverage the power of parasocial relationships with smaller, more concentrated audiences that they can call to take direct action. This will amplify their effectiveness and allow them to lead larger groups more effectively. It’s a shift from 1:few to 1:many communications that will amplify the strongest leaders and develop active communities underneath them.

Leading a remote-first team requires winning their attention

Here’s a hard pill for many executives to swallow… As a leader, your title has never carried less weight than it does today.

When we were living in an in-office world, the CEO’s title and swagger alone carried a ton of weight. When you walked around your fiefdom, people took notice. They listened to what you had to say, not just because of your title, but because of the social proof of the body language of their peers. When you spoke, they saw others paying attention, so they paid attention, too.??

In this world, a memo from the CEO was practically a decree from a feudal lord. After all, this person controls everything as far as my eye can see… which thanks to my astigmatism, is just about to the copier.?

Today, however, our teams are no longer working 8-10 hours per day in our fiefdom. In fact, many of them are in their own little fiefdom and they’re?letting us in?for 8 hours a day.

When we view our relationship with our team through this prism, we realize that the dynamic has been turned on its head. We’re no longer in charge here. As leaders, we’re not automatically granted authority by virtue of our titles. Our team will follow us based on the merits of our ideas and our ability to galvanize their support.

If we fail to galvanize their support, they’ll leave at higher rates than ever before. When we all worked in the same office, leaving a job required some serious tradeoffs. I am going to have to change my morning commute, learn a new office, and adapt to a new culture. When I’m working from home, however, the biggest change to my day-to-day life is the Slack instance I’m logging into from my living room.

The stakes for leaders are incredibly high here… Those who capitalize on this successfully will attract better employees, retain them more effectively, and generate stronger results and deeper team bonds. Those who fail to develop these parasocial bonds will muddle along for a few more years in an awkward, Zoom-filled existence until they’re fully displaced by leaders more adept at leading online.??

Crafting an internal communication strategy fit for a celebrity

So how do we galvanize support among our team and develop the parasocial bonds necessary to lead in this new era? The secret lies in thinking of our internal communications through the prism of a publicist working with a celebrity or influencer.?Here are three mindset shifts we can make today to improve our internal comms in a remote world:?

• Start with how we want our team to feel:?Something I learned from David DeRam when I was at?Greenlight Guru ?is that our team’s culture is best defined by how they?feel?about work. In this new era, the first step of an effective internal communications plan needs to focus on how we want our team to?feel?about us, our company, themselves, and their work.
• Map your content hubs and distribution channels:?In fully distributed teams, internal communications pros have more in common with digital marketers than with internal comms teams of yore. We’re not editing memos, we’re crafting digital communications strategies that drive people to take action. This requires thinking of your executive comms in a whole new way. We need to find a few central content hubs and recognize tools like email, Slack, and all-hands meetings as distribution channels for that communication.
• Develop an intimate line of communication with our team:?Digital intimacy is an extremely important piece of building this support. Because of the one-sided nature of these relationships, it’s extremely important to leverage communication channels that foster a feeling of intimacy. Podcasts and videos are two great examples of more intimate communication mediums. The team at?Share Your Genius ?has developed an internal podcast playbook that can scale our company’s story and develop these deep, parasocial bonds with our team.?

I’ll be blunt, this next decade is gonna get weird… The way we work has changed forever and this is sparking a revolution across every aspect of our businesses. A ton of leaders are going to be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being an “influencer” within their own company. They long for the days when they could earnestly say “I sign their paychecks. Isn’t that enough?” For those leaders, this decade is going to be filled with frustration, disappointment, and watching as their brightest stars go to follow someone else.

For the rest of us, this decade is gonna be fun as hell. Now, let’s go make it happen.?

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