I chose this week’s topic to address an oversight that I see often made by leaders who do not hail from a communications background. This is the assumption that your personal preferred channel of communication will suffice for all forms of communication. You may write your email or your newsletter, and feel that you can dust your hands of this and let your message do the work. The reality is that in today’s busy world if you’re motivated to communicate a message, it behooves you to find the most effective tool or tools to get your message across.

Most public leaders have a strong foundation of personal communication skills. That’s not the same as being trained in the strategy of organizational communications. Many leaders have no formal communications training at all! As a guest lecturer for the Western Washington University Superintendent Credentialing program, I’ve learned from participants that it’s not uncommon for my session to be the only communications training they receive. 

Most leaders have strong communication skills … but that doesn’t mean they know how to systematize or scale up communications to an organizational level. In this podcast, J.Marie provides a primer for leaders, especially those without a communications professional on staff, to think through their organization’s approach to communications.

As a culture, we have built a stigma around what it means to give and receive feedback. We often hold a fear of judgement, or being deemed unworthy. 

Humans are a social species. Sociologists who have researched and quantified some of our deepest fears actually found rejection, humiliation, and being deemed insignificant among the top of the list. When considering most of human history it becomes clear why. A thousand years ago, being rejected from your social group was dangerous, and could have spelled real harm. Rejection from society could have meant a lack of protection, lack of access to basic needs like food and shelter.

Navigating conflict, particularly within our organizations, makes many leaders uncomfortable. This is both understandable – and changeable.

Public organizations must represent and serve the full breadth of our communities’ values, interests, and needs. As a leader, how do you do that when your community is deeply divided?

A good place to start is by broadening your own understanding of the issues to the point where you genuinely know not just what different factions in your community believe about the issue … but also why they hold those views. A school superintendent I worked with in my youth was known for asking school and community leaders to “make yourself vulnerable to the legitimacy of other people’s perspectives.”