Improving engagement through leader-led communication at Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company decided to launch a new leadership communications strategy at a weeklong executive meeting in Shanghai. Kerri Randel Lewis explains.
In my experience as an internal communicator, I have learned that one key factor in engaging and inspiring employees is the ability of leaders to communicate effectively. Leaders possess valuable context, perspective and insights that, when shared, can help their employees understand and deliver on the organization's objectives. In challenging times, leaders can become so busy that they forget to communicate with their employees or connect with them in a meaningful way. Lilly, along with the rest of the pharmaceutical industry, has experienced a tough period, with environmental and economic pressures that require fundamental changes in the way we do business. It's in times like these that employees most need to hear from their leaders.
We asked [senior execs] for, and received, 45 minutes on the week's agenda. We knew we had to be creative in how we used that time, while delivering a memorable message.
With these factors in mind, my team sought an opportunity: we wanted to get time at a week-long gathering of 150 of our top executives in Shanghai, China and to use that time to elevate the importance of leadership communication.
In this case study we'll examine how the work of my team in this setting helped leaders understand "the power of their podium" and use it more effectively.
How we did it
Our corporate employee communications team developed a creative program for the Shanghai meeting that gave Lilly leaders some innovative communication tools. We kept the work in-house - the only agency help we used was the video production company, and even then we wrote the script ourselves.
To capture the attention of executives, we designed the presentation to look and feel different from anything they might have experienced before.
We asked for and received 45 minutes on the week's agenda. We knew we had to be creative in how we used that time, while delivering a memorable message.
We recruited Dave Ricks, then the president of our USA affiliate (who was later in 2011 promoted to senior vice president and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines), to lead the session. Ricks is an exceptional communicator with a reputation for connecting with employees. He's highly respected by his peers, so we knew he would be credible and very effective.
We also steered clear of a standard presentation format by incorporating two short videos that used a "fast-draw" style to capture the attention and imagination of participants. As characters and scenes were quickly drawn on a storyboard, a narrator shared different ways leaders could communicate with employees, calm fears and build confidence.
Additionally, we piggybacked on an assignment that participants had received from our chairman, president and CEO John Lechleiter, in a separate presentation. He had asked leaders to record a short video capturing their experiences and insights from the summit and gave them 30 days upon their return to shoot the video and share it with their employees [see left for screenshots of two of these]. We saw this assignment as an opportunity to get them talking and to share perspective that doesn't always come through in more formal communication.
Members can read the full article here.
This article was originally published in Strategic Communication Management.
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