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How well do you communicate with your employees?
Story telling - a useful IC tool?
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LCP Newsletter
Greetings!

A warm welcome to the very first edition of the LCP newsletter!  Our plan is to keep you informed of the latest news and research about learning and development topics that will be useful for growth organisations. This month's topic is internal communication and we hope you find it interesting. 
How well do you communicate with your employees?
 
Often determining what should be communicated to employees, how often and by whom, is left to chance rather than forming part of an ongoing, strategic plan. 
 
Successful organisations understand the importance of creating a strong internal brand and research has shown that CEOs and senior managers of high-performing companies  devote personal time to internal communications.
 
"Top performing companies treat communication as a key business driver.  They use communication to educate managers and engage employees in the business by providing line-of-sight to customers' needs and business goals". Kathryn Yates, Watson Wyatt (2008).
 
If you want to improve employee engagement it is important to clearly communicate your company's vision and goals in a way that they can buy into.  Ultimately, this will result in improved co-operation, productivity and profit as your people will be working to the same shared vision and long-term goals.
 
In a study by The Work Foundation and Communicators in Business (2007), CEOs stressed the importance of internal communications, particularly when leading change initiatives. But although IC specialists agreed that CEOs understood the importance of internal communications, they reported they were not always engaged in practice.
 
So what can we learn from the research?
 
A recurring theme is the importance of the role of your line mangers in the IC process.
 
"Research shows that messages from leaders, and most importantly supervisors, are more important to employees than those that originate from the internal communications department". Stromberg Consulting, 2006.
 
Treat your managers and supervisors as a special case as they will be the ones that deliver the essence of your messages as well as the content.
 
Another theme is the personalisation of information and tailoring messages to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.  Stromberg Consulting argue that Generation Y employees demand more concise and compelling information than their predecessors. Good practice seems to advocate a mix of delivery methods from team briefings through to ezines.
 
In his letter to CEOs Ron Shewchuk, an internal communications specialist, offers nine top tips for improving communication with your employees.  To read more click here.
 
Learning Consultancy Partnership deliver workshops on internal communication and if you would like further information please contact us at enquiries@lcp.org.uk .
Story telling - a useful IC tool?
stories Storytelling is an ancient art that has been used for generations to pass on wisdom and embed culltural expectations.  As children, our carers told us stories and fairy tales to ignite our imaginations and reinforce acceptable and unacceptable behaviours as well as cultural values.
 
The role of storytelling in a business context is growing in popularity.  Authors like Stephen Denning and Noel Tichy advocate the power of storytelling in engaging employees by providing them with an inspirational vision of the future.  Tichy argues that leadership is about taking others on a journey of change and storytelling can be a highly effective way of leading people into the unknown by painting a picture of the future that fires their imaginations.
 
So how useful is storytelling in an internal communications context?  Research has found storytelling to be particularly effective in a number of areas such as communicating change intititatives, training, problem solving and conflict resolution.  In their review of storytelling in organisations, Sole and Wilson found it was used to:
 
- share norms and values
- develop trust and commitment
- share tacit knowledge
- facilitate unlearning
- socialise new members
- generate emotional connection
- kick start a new idea
- share wisdom
- mend relationships
 
"Stories are particularly relevant for communicating complex knowledge within organisations - which may include awareness of values and norms, or details or workable solutions to complicated problems." Sole & Wilson.
 
Although stories have many uses in an organisational arena there are some limitations which are important to note.  Stories are told from the individual's perspective so may be less relevant to others; the impact of the story is also highly dependant of the skill and commitment of the story teller; stories are not useful for developing deep skills-based knowledge, for example, we may like to hear  stories of how pilots learn to fly, but I'm sure we would all be less than willing to fly with them unless we knew they had the relevant skills based training and experience!  Finally, stories are not particualry effective in developing and communicating detailed policies and procedures.
 
As we can see it is important to select the appropriate topic for storytelling and be clear about what we are trying to achieve.  The message must be clear and simple to have the right impact. 
 
Denning provides eight storytelling objectives from stories designed to spark action through to those that foster collaboration.  He also explores four key elements of storytelling performance which are:
 
Style; Truth; Preparation and Delivery.
 
For details of his book on storytelling in organisations click here.
Learning Consultancy Partnership provides bespoke coaching and development solutions to meet the specific needs across all levels of an organisation.
 
To find out more, please visit our website at http://www.lcp.org.uk.