3 ways to humanize leadership comms

A company’s culture usually starts with the leader. How they communicate, their style, their voice and their personality naturally trickle down and set the tone for the entire company. But most people don’t interact with leadership every day. Their communications – whether a memo or a townhall – are vital ways to share who they are as a person, which in turn makes them more likely to believe in their vision and the information they have to convey.

Communicators often hold the keys to making that relatability happen, whether that comes in the form of helping executives edit their messages to strike the right tone or providing counsel to ensure that messages are delivered in the most relatable fashion and on the right channels.

Karen Testa, director of global communications at Bell Flight, told Ragan that the task of humanizing leaders through messaging begins long before employees see a single second of video from a CEO or read a single word of a leadership blog. It all starts with getting a sense of the leader’s true voice.

“The background work might require looking for videos of past speaking engagements or reading things they have written before,” Testa said. “But simply getting accessibility to the leader is the most important step. Understanding their current reputation among employees also helps.”

But not every leader is warm, funny or even comfortable speaking in public. That’s OK.

“If you know the leader sending the message is perceived as unapproachable or closed off, stick with a factual approach and don’t push too hard to make them sound like someone they are not,” she said. “Wait for the opportunity to have a breakthrough.”

Testa shared an idea for communicators who might have a tough time showing off the top brass’ true colors in a way that’s relatable to an internal audience. These approaches can create the much-desired breakthrough.

“One of the things we do in our CEO podcasts is ask our guests a few rapid-fire questions before digging into the planned conversation,” she said. “Beer or wine? Cats or dogs? Tennis or golf? Silly, lighthearted questions can help put people at ease and show the audience a little of their personality.”

Tips to humanize your leadership comms

Not every message from leadership needs to be emotional or full of personality, but at a minimum, it should reveal a bit about how a person thinks and feels, rather than just stating staid facts. Here are a few principles for comms pros to keep in mind when they’re giving their leaders advice on putting together employee-facing messaging.

1. Fit the messaging to your leader’s style. Some leaders are going to want their messaging prepared for them, with every comma in the right place. Others will want to draft their own materials or speak off the cuff with minimal intervention. The challenge for communicators is to figure out what channels and methods fit your leader’s personality the best. In a recent piece for Ragan, Alejandro Zequeira, internal communications manager at Baptist Health South Florida, shared an anecdote from his team’s internal video series and how to deal with different personalities in message production. “Our CEO is very much about having a script on a teleprompter,” he said. “He wants to be succinct. But we have other leaders who are more conversational and open to being themselves. You have to adjust your video approach to fit that personality.” The more your leader’s personality bleeds through the message, the more relatable they’ll be.
2. Pick the right cadence and moments. Your employees don’t need to hear from leadership on every single event that happens. However, leaders should also refrain from parachuting in with a message of support during tough times or major changes and then returning to a sealed-off office. Regularly scheduled communications like blogs from the C-suite or Q&A sessions during town hall meetings can set the tone for more conversational and approachable leadership.
3. Lean into the personal. This doesn’t require telling a leader’s life story — but even small windows into the leader’s life outside of work peppered into messaging can help build relatability with the employee audience. In this note, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad shared with employees upon entering the role earlier this year, he discussed his passion for audio and even shared a bit about his audio-related tattoos. That’s the sort of personality that shines through and leaves employees with an impression beyond the message itself.

For more examples of humanized leadership comms, join Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.