How to give feedback to help leaders communicate better

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Each week, I answer a reader to help you solve your trickiest internal comms challenges. This week, I tackle this one:

I work for a luxury company that for the first time in a long time isn’t achieving the results it used to. Employees are feeling anxious and can feel that changes are likely coming. Last week we had a Global Townhall and it is evident that people want more transparency and communication from our senior leadership team. The Q&A section was embarrassing, many relied on cue cards to answer questions, they either didn’t answer questions or got the answer totally wrong and at one point one leaked sensitive information. How do I tell them their performance wasn’t good enough? And what can I do to ensure they understand the importance of communicating more regularly at a time of transformation and crisis and encourage them to do so?

This is a great question and one that links to a broader theme of leadership communication. How can we help our leaders to communicate better? What’s our role in supporting them and what kind of feedback should we be giving them? Let’s explore that in today’s newsletter.

Firstly, let’s talk about the importance of data. In the question above, the reader asks

How do I tell [the leaders] their performance wasn’t good enough?

You don’t need to be critical of the leadership team (it probably wouldn’t do your career any favours to do that) and you don’t need to tell them their performance was crap. What you DO need to do is to collect some data and present it to them for a conversation about what went wrong and how it can be improved.

You could try one or more of these to collect data:

• A post-event pulse survey to all employees to get their opinions on the townhall. How do they rate the way the leaders communicated? How satisfied were they that their questions were answered openly and transparently?
• Have some conversations with people who attended the townhall and gather some verbatim quotes to sum up their perception of it. Try to capture how the leadership communication made them feel.
• Gather some ideas from employees about how the next townhall could be improved and what would make it easier for them to go through this change and trust the leadership team along the journey.

Now you can have the conversation with the leaders about their sub-par performance, but it’s an evidence-based, data-driven conversation. Here’s how you could start.

“I’ve been gathering some feedback from employees after the townhall and there’s some data in here that we really need to discuss together. 76% of employees rated your communication in the townhall as “poor” or “very poor” and 81% said you didn’t answer their questions openly and honestly. One employee said the townhall left him feeling anxious and upset, another said she wondered should she start job hunting now as she feels so uncertain about the future of the company.”

So can you see here that gathering and presenting this data is very different than if you just said “That townhall was rubbish, I didn’t think it went well at all”. Using data and evidence from employees positions you as analytical and insightful, and this data makes it very difficult for the leaders to bury their head in the sand and think they did a great job.

Bring the data to the leadership team and encourage an open discussion about the townhall. How did they feel it went? What moments did they realise it was going badly? Get it all out in the open and then drive the conversation forward into action planning.

What can we learn from this experience and what can we change next time? Use the insights you’ve gathered from employees about the changes they would like to see next time. You can design a new townhall that is both (a) more employee-centric based on employees preferences and (b) more comfortable for leaders to perform well by diagnosing what went wrong this time.

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In the latter for example, you might find that certain members of your leadership team really flounder when put on the spot. Maybe your CFO is terrible at taking questions right there and then and struggles to come up with a good answer when everyone is staring at her. So make a note of what your leaders strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to communication and design a situation to help them improve. For example you might consider things like:

• Ask employees to submit questions ahead of time so the leaders can sit together with you in advance of the next townhall and discuss answers and messaging and agree on what to communicate for each topic
• Brainstorm a list of other questions you think employees might ask on the day, including tricky or awkward questions, so that leaders can think about these in advance and are less likely to flounder on the day.
• Get the leaders to practice answering difficult questions aloud so they get more comfortable with it.
• Encourage your leaders to answer on-the-spot questions with “I don’t have the answer to that right now but I’ll follow up in the newsletter next week” if they’re faced with a question that they’re unsure how to answer.
• Prep your leaders to say things like “In the interests of transparency, I can’t disclose that right now but I will be in a position to share more on X date”
• You could also look at bringing in a communications training agency who specialise in media training. They can train and prep your leaders for media interviews which includes being put on the spot, answering difficult questions, redirecting and staying calm under pressure.

And of course, throughout the year and on an ongoing basis you should be building up trusting relationships with each member of your senior leadership team. This will help you to give them more frank feedback over time and they will learn to trust you and ask for your guidance and counsel.

So there you have it, some practical and actionable advice on how to help your leaders communicate better.

What other questions do you want me to answer in this newsletter? I seem to be rather enjoying my role as internal comms agony aunt!

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

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