OPINION: What do CEOs think about us?
In revisiting a Melcrum study from 2007 focusing on CEO's perceptions of internal communciation functions, it is interesting to see that the findings then are still relevant in today's altered business landscape.
In 2007, Melcrum conducted a study in partnership with The Company Agency to understand CEO's perceptions of 21st century internal communication functions. Across the last few months, I've had a number of conversations with communication leaders and chief executives that caused me to revisit the study. It's fascinating to find that - even in light of the dramatically different business environment many of us find ourselves in due to the economic downturn experienced across much of the world - what we heard from those CEOs then really doesn't seem to have changed so much now.
To that end, I thought I would share some highlights from the study, blended with insight Melcrum has heard across recent months. I might add here that we also took the liberty of making recommendations to CEOs in terms of their engagement with internal comms functions. Perhaps I should use those recommendations in a future edition as an interesting article to leave on your CEO's desk?
Ensuring that messages are credible and relevant to their audience is of paramount importance to leaders.
Here are the key findings from the interviews we conducted with the CEOs (a mix of just under 30 from a range of geographies and industries).
Internal communication is increasingly being used to help leaders listen as opposed to just speak: Business leaders value internal communication as much for enabling them to listen to input from their internal stakeholders as for its capacity to help them transmit their own messages. We discovered a broad consensus that "listening" has replaced "talking" as the key leadership communication skill. The traditional perception of internal communication as being primarily a forum for leaders to broadcast their views and decisions to their employees is dead. A focus on genuine dialogue has risen to replace it.
It's also interestingly still the case now (as it was when we first did this research) that many leaders regard their gut feeling when walking around the company as the true and reliable touchstone of employee engagement - with formal measurement data relegated to a largely secondary or supportive role.
Members can read the rest of the article here.
This article was originally published in Strategic Communication Management.
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