Bring more of the leader into leadership storytelling

Employees have a hard time getting to know leaders through business updates alone. Familiarity grows when executives have regular chances to show some personality in the communications employees see and hear.

Jenny Westfall, director of enterprise communications at Brunswick, told Ragan that communicators can create space for more of a leader’s personality to come through when shaping their stories.

“We can guide them on the best way to tell the story or the most impactful channel,” she said. “When an executive comes in with a strong personal perspective and a point they want to convey, that gives us a great starting point.”

During Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference next month, Westfall will join a panel exploring the tactics communicators can use to create leadership stories that build connections. She shared a few of the ways her organization gives employees a better look at the people leading the way at Brunswick.

Give personality room to shine through

Some formats naturally give leaders more room to show who they are. Westfall said Brunswick still considers what a message needs employees to do. For instance, an email may work best for a quick action, while video or a podcast can give a leader more space to talk through culture or a topic where personality matters more. After that, Westfall and her team look at how one piece of material can show up in more than one place.

“If we start with video, we’ll think about how we supplement that for people who take in content differently,” she said. “We might have a written component, splice it into a shorter video for social and pull out a quote for a newsletter. We’re looking at how we can translate that across different avenues and get the most out of the content we’re developing.”

Each format you use gives employees another chance to see a little more of the leader behind the message.

Give employees a sense of the person behind the message

Brunswick’s monthly leadership newsletters give Westfall’s team a built-in reason to spend time with senior leaders throughout the year. Those recurring conversations create access well before a specific executive message needs to be created.

“It’s very important for my team to establish strong, trusting relationships with the executives that we support,” she told Ragan. “We learn their leadership style, their tone, their focus areas and the way they speak. A lot of that comes from constant exposure.”

Those interviews also give Westfall’s team room to venture beyond whatever business update happens to be on the agenda.

“It could be as simple as, ‘What did you do for the holiday weekend?’” she said. “We’re a boating company, so we might ask how they spent time on the water with their family and prompt them to get photos while they’re out on the boat. Then we can bring some of that into their letters, videos and other communications.”

Brunswick has also created an internal comms format specifically designed to give employees a more personal look at their leaders. Its “60 Seconds With” video series asks members of the senior management team one professional question and one personal question. One executive used her minute to talk about her morning routine, including her habit of journaling before work.

“It’s them on video telling you, so you know it’s coming from them and not a ghostwriter,” Westfall said. “People reached out to her and said, ‘I like to do that too.’ It’s a good connection point, and it’s become one of our highest-engaged communication channels.”

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan Communications.