A common frustration that leaders experience is communicating a new corporate strategy to their employees to ensure alignment, buy-in and drive to execute. Here are a few communication approaches that could help leaders effectively do so :

1) Give Context

Many leaders often assume that their employees know the macro factors that affect business decisions. Sometimes, they think it is unimportant for their employees to know about the market context as it is irrelevant to their roles and responsibilities. However, they must understand these things. For instance, the change brought about by COVID-19 has influenced a leader’s decisions in shifting their gears. So it is crucial to help employees understand the reasons for implementing new corporate strategies in response to the external environment. More importantly, leaders need to inspire their employees, and hence they need to present their message to capture their employee’s attention.

2) Provide Clarity

It is vital for leaders to clearly articulate the differences between the current and revised corporate goals as well as business strategies. Without understanding, the employees may blindly follow instructions. Therefore, leaders need to provide job-specific tools with complete information for employees to apply in their daily operations. Preferably to deliver the message through dialogues than monologues and conduct in smaller groups where employees can express their thoughts without restrictions and feel ownership on execution.

3) Reinforce Strategy-Aligned Employee Behaviors

As most of the workforce continues to work from home, leaders must craft personalised communication while conveying a new set of organisational goals and strategies. Employees may specifically ask what they should stop and begin doing upon executing the new process. Leaders need to ensure their messages are being reinforced through various tactics, mediums and experiences. Besides, the Head of People needs to integrate these messages with their training and initiatives to relate them with people development and performance metrics. Rewards and recognition is an excellent way to motivate employees to action.

4) Don’t Be The Typical “Launch and Disappear” CEO

One of the common mistakes is that leaders often adopt a “massive launch event and disappear” approach. They don’t integrate regular communications into their employee’s daily operations and deliverables. Leaders can consider forming a team of employees who wish to be ambassadors to deliver a new set of strategies. The role of this team is to provide important messages regardless of the individual’s hierarchy at the company. This team can be rotated regularly to increase the participation rate. This can help to ensure that delivered messages are well-received, believed and executed.

5) Be A Great Storyteller

Storytelling is one of the best ways to bring humanity to a company. It can help employees understand the relevance of a new set of corporate strategies. It can help communicate real-life examples of progress. Hence, leaders should encourage their employees to share their stories and use them to spark conversations that help strengthen their understanding of the behaviours they want to promote. Furthermore, collective stories and discussions will help create a positive culture aligned with the new organisational purpose and strategic goals.

6) Adopt Innovative Media and Be Unexpected

Communication has changed drastically in the recent five years. Social media, networking, and games have changed the way messages are being delivered to their employees. Leaders may consider using similar platforms and apps for their communication purposes. Gather Town, a virtual platform that creates “natural” navigation of social interactions, is a great example. It provides different meeting settings, such as offices, rooftops, parks, conference rooms and classrooms, albeit virtual. This gives a fresh feel instead of the standard video conferencing tools that many companies are currently using.

If leaders don’t win their people, succeeding with their employees’ customers will be more challenging. Hence, leaders need to invest in their employees to upskill and reskill, which help to internalise their business strategies while innovating their customer experience.

Learn more about communication skills by registering for our Accelerator Series. Enhance your corporate communication strategies and get better results with us. 

References

1) Abigail Blair 2021, Communicating Corporate Strategy to Employees in 2021, Gartner, viewed 24 August 2021, <https://blogs.gartner.com/abigail-blair/communicating-corporate-strategy-to-employees-in-2021/>

2) Georgia Everse 2021, Eight Ways To Communicate Your Strategy More Effectively, Harvard Business Review, viewed 24 August 2021, <https://hbr.org/2011/08/eight-ways-to-energize-your-te>

3) Sara Saez-Fajardo 2021, Gather Town Brings Mingle Activities to Online Language Teaching, The FLTMAG, viewed 24 August 2021, <https://fltmag.com/gather-town-mingle/>