Few things in the world of a social impact communicator are as demoralizing as a message that doesn’t stick the landing. It can be especially troubling because of the nature of the content you’re creating. Social impact stories and programs tend to soak beneath the surface and enter our hearts, so anything less than what we perceive as perfection can hurt—a lot.
In a past life, I worked with a team to develop a project we cared about deeply. We designed a plan to help our client’s audience make positive changes in their businesses. We attempted to clarify what success would look like and how we would accomplish it together.
We planned to design messages and outreach to these audience members—we would be the deliverers. Our client, meanwhile, thought we would bring these audience members straight to them—we would be the matchmakers. ?
It took months for this disconnect to become apparent. Rather than building a jigsaw puzzle together, we had inadvertently gone into separate rooms to build separate jigsaws. We shared a common aim of helping business owners, but the storylines about how we’d do this—the things we’d told one another—proved substantially different, totally unbeknownst to us both.
Fast forward a few months and we ended up navigating some tough conversations. The story has a happy ending: We came away better partners who were better prepared to navigate the complexities of social impact work. We acknowledged where communication breakdowns had occurred, owned our mistakes and resolved to do better. We brought more team members together, at all levels of our respective organizations, to align on a path forward that fit both parties.
As I reflect on that experience, it’s clear that social impact communication represents a unique flavor of language and collaboration all its own. It requires mastery of internal and external communication. It often requires working across multiple divisions of multiple organizations to arrive at shared understanding and tightly defined solutions about which steps will follow, and what success will look like.
If you are a social impact communicator tasked with defining strategy, developing stories and keeping other leaders glued together, you make a big difference by avoiding games of telephone like the one I experienced. Some ways to do that can include:
- Overshare and embrace repetition: Many of the social impact communicators I know run from meeting to meeting. They’ve got plates overflowing with work and responsibilities. They’re crafting strategy and messaging for internal use in their organizations, and many times they’re also external-facing. They wear all the hats all the time. Consequently, it’s important to take pauses and confirm your colleagues and team are hearing what you’re saying. Never hesitate to repeat what you’re working on, what those key talking points will say and so on.
- Avoid surprises: This applies to all the people you work with, especially executives and other leaders. Brief your leaders verbally and follow up with executive summaries in emails, Slack or Word documents outlining key projects you’re working on, decisions you’re awaiting, and recommendations on which you’d like to have their counsel. This also applies to partners within and outside of your organization—a frequent ecosystem that social impact communicators must carefully balance. It takes time to go to this level of thoroughness, but I’ve never regretted giving people every opportunity to hear something from me before they hear it elsewhere.
- Ask clarifying questions: If you’ve ever eaten at a restaurant, you know that the person taking your order tends to ask good questions. They ask what you want, repeat it out loud and write it down. After all: You don’t want to serve borscht to someone with a beet allergy. This two-way dialogue extends to the world of social impact communication. Listen to people on your team, or to the people you’re interviewing, or from whom you’re gathering content. Repeat back what you’re hearing. Make sure you’re interpreting things correctly. Double-check if there’s a glimmer of uncertainty in your mind. It might feel silly to channel the curiosity of a kindergartener. But it’s superior to backtracking and redoing work you did based on false assumptions.
- Confirm receipt: I learned the principle behind this one from a leader I greatly respect. In our digitized world, it’s easy for messages to get lost in the ether. Don’t convey important messages via text message or email alone (or for that matter, on a videoconference). Further, don’t assume that your instructions will be acted upon with no additional steps taken on your part. Instead, deliver messages in your preferred format and ask the recipient for two things: 1) Confirmation they’ve received your correspondence, and 2) their assent – verbally or in writing – that yes, in fact they will move forward in the direction you (or the collective you) have prescribed. For years, I made the mistake of delegation by delivery. No more! Collaborate, delegate and then communicate. You’re not a bossy or rude person for doing this, by the way. You’re simply increasing the odds that the hard work your team is doing will be put to good use – and deliver the impact you all desire.
- Appreciate the humors of your contributions: In Shakespeare’s day, people thought our actions extended from humors, systems in the body believed to govern our emotions and actions. We know better these days, though of course a good sense of humor makes every day better, as far as I'm concerned. Yet the principle of underlying currents that shape our lives resonates with me. Our roles as social impact communicators aren't simply about producing whitepapers, newsletters or annual sustainability reports. These roles we've grown to love are just as much about influencing the culture of our organizations, our leaders and our stakeholders. They are about finding and deploying precise language that marries business objectives with the positive impact your organization seeks in the world. They are about having the courage to collaborate across all types of people, personality types, belief systems and values. They are about doing what’s right, even if it’s uncomfortable. We all have a unique blend of humors. Don’t lose that. Appreciate your contributions, even when they seem most immaterial. Social impact communication is the skillful and emotionally intelligent practice of being fully human.
I’d love to hear how you avoid games of telephone with the people who help you shape the social impact communication work you do. Great ideas deserve a platform – post a comment and let me know what you’re learning!
