The keys to pressure testing leadership messages

No messages carry more weight inside an organization than those that come from top leadership. Any misstep in tone or word choice will be noticed, dissected and internalized among employees. That’s why pressure testing is so critical.

Amanda Ponzar, chief enterprise communications officer at Community Catalyst, said that at her organization, there’s a collaborative process in place that helps show communicators where the wording is unclear or sounds too rooted in the language leaders use among themselves.

“We test our leadership messaging internally with employees from different departments,” Ponzar said. “Our policy and communications teams weigh in on op-ed language and weekly communications, and we bring in other teams when their perspective can help. That gives us a better sense of how the message will be understood outside the group or person that wrote it.”

She added that this review process is key because leaders will often lean on jargon or phrases they’ve been using for years. Those might come naturally to the leader, but if employees don’t have the right context or background, the entire message can fall flat.

“The hardest part is getting leaders to consistently use the right key messages,” Ponzar said. “Leaders often have internal phrases they are comfortable with. Sometimes it is too technical and only used by insiders, while other language can carry a political meaning that is easily misunderstood.”

Test your message beyond the comms team

The people who are closest to a message might find it tough to spot what employees find confusing. They’re aware of the strategy and shorthand behind it. But employees who are reading or hearing a given message from their leaders for the first time don’t have that advantage. This is where communicators can bring in outside minds as part of their pressure testing process.

By sharing the draft of the message with colleagues in other departments to get unbiased feedback, communicators can find either the weak or confusing spots in a leadership message and adjust accordingly.

The employees reviewing the message should also reflect the people most affected by it. Ponzar suggested working with employee resource groups to understand how the language might land across different parts of the workforce.

“The important part is hearing from people who have a different relationship with the language,” she told Ragan. “They can pick up on reactions that the people closest to the work may miss.”

A few questions that can keep the pressure test focused include:

• What do you think the leader wants employees to understand?
• What phrases need more explanation?
• What questions would you have after reading this?
• What would you tell a colleague this message means?

But it’s important to remember that the pressure testing process still needs boundaries. Communicators should tell employees which parts of the message are open to revision and what parts aren’t. That keeps the review focused on whether the language is clear without reopening the strategy behind it. In addition, comms pros can create a shared messaging frameworks that are based on the feedback they get.

“We’ve created organizational messaging frameworks and strategic priority documents based on the input we gathered,” Ponzar said. “Those documents give us a clear foundation to work from. From there, we can focus on how the language will be understood and where people may need more context.”

Show leaders what employees are hearing

Pressure testing only helps if communicators bring the findings back to the leader. Rather than simply replacing a phrase and moving on, they should show what confused employees and explain what people thought the leader meant.

“It’s helpful to explain why we use one phrase over another,” Ponzar said. “Most leaders are receptive to data-driven message testing because they want to succeed and they want their messages to be effective. When they can see how people are responding, it’s easier to understand why an adjustment is needed.”

For instance, if the pressure tests find that a leadership message about an organizational transformation is being interpreted as an indirect sign of impending layoffs, the communicator can share this finding with the leader and give recommendations for more direct language and wording. The final word choices should both stay on topic and answer the main questions found in the test so employees don’t fill in any blanks themselves.

Additionally, the learning doesn’t stop after messages go out. Ponzar said that questions and feedback from the general employee audience can give a wider sample size to communicators as to what wording and language is hitting home and what needs to be further explained in follow-ups.

“All of that starts to crystallize the core messaging,” she said. “The more we understand what people are responding to, the clearer it becomes which messages our leaders should keep reinforcing.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.