The engine of some of strongest internal comms? Manager feedback.

The best manager comms tools reduce friction instead of adding more work to a team leader’s pile of tasks.

At Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference last month in Boston, Brooks Newkirk, director of executive and internal communications at Honeywell, told the audience that communicators should look to make managers’ lives easier with effective comms tools.

“On top of everything managers already have to do, here we come as communicators saying, ‘Now help us cascade this strategy, keep your teams engaged and communicate this change,’’ she said. “Managers are looking at us like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Nobody has time for that. So if we want managers to be engaged communication partners, we have to make it simple, practical and action-oriented.”

Newkirk added that one major challenge comms pros need to confront is the fact that they’ve managers as passive messengers rather than active participants in how a message reaches a team.

“They’re closest to employees,” she said. “They know what employees are feeling, what they’re worried about and what questions they’re asking. That insight can make our communications dramatically stronger.”