The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed

Reaching frontline employees takes more than an app, a digital sign, or a weekly briefing for supervisors to deliver. Employees working in manufacturing plants, on delivery routes, on construction sites, and in healthcare settings have different opportunities to receive information—and different needs. Communicators may not control the channels those employees rely on, and getting a message in front of someone doesn’t mean they understood it or could act on it. Before auditing channels or proposing another communication tool, organizations need to answer a more basic question: What are they trying to accomplish? In this episode of “On the Same Page,” Shel Holtz and Mark Dollins explore how to make frontline communication relevant, accessible, and useful. Drawing on recent studies and examples from their careers, they discuss working with local managers, equipping supervisors to interpret decisions, creating opportunities for employees to ask questions, and testing approaches before expanding them. They also challenge the assumption that frontline employees care only about schedules and pay, and offer a practical way to uncover the gap between publishing information and communicating it successfully. Links from this episode: The frontline information gap: why more technology hasn’t made work easier 3 Reasons Frontline Workers Experience a Communication Gap 2025 International Employee Communication Impact Study Team dynamics on the front line: How managers and organizations impact this overlooked key to retention Staffbase-Commissioned Study Finds Only 23% of US Frontline Workers Feel Fully Supported Subscribe to Employee Signal, Mark’s New Substack! Raw Transcript: Mark Dollins: Hey, Shel, how are you doing? Shel Holtz: I am doing great, Mark. How about yourself? Mark Dollins: I’m doing very well here in Connecticut, just past Halloween, and I guess we’re ready for Christmas. We kind of skip directly to the next major holiday. There’s this Thanksgiving thing in the way. It’s crazy. Shel Holtz: Yeah, on my end Hanukkah starts almost immediately after Thanksgiving, so I’ve got to get ready. Mark Dollins: They’re all jumbling together. But I was thinking today we could talk about a topic that I hear a lot about from my clients. Of course, I spent a lot of time working on this in my roles leading employee communications for a number of large multinational companies. The topic is frontline communications. Invariably, the question always comes to me first: “Hey, Mark, we need to figure out how to improve our frontline communications, so we need to do an audit.” And I say, “Well, let’s talk about something that we need to answer first, and that is: What are you trying to accomplish?” Interestingly enough, most of my clients can’t really answer that question because they haven’t thought it through fully. They’ve got some ideas, but they really do need to have a very clear sense of what they want to do with frontline communications. It comes with a lot of, let’s just say, politics and potential conflict. It’s not as easy as, “Well, we own all the channels and we own all the ability to reach our frontline employees,” because, especially in most larger organizations, the truth is communications does not. I’m curious if you’ve got similar things happening in your world, where you’re working or in the world of consulting that you’ve come from. I would imagine you’ve tackled this topic a time or two. Shel Holtz: Most definitely, throughout my career. My first corporate communications job was with an energy company. Oil production was way at the top of the list. You had people out in the oil patch, people on offshore oil rigs, people in refineries, all of them in different conditions and different circumstances for getting information. We had people on ships, on the tankers. I worked for a pharmaceutical company where you had salespeople out in the field driving around to doctors’ offices all day. You had people working in labs and in production facilities. I was with Mattel, the toy company, so manufacturing was a big deal there, as well as people like retail merchandisers. And now I’m with a construction company, so every construction site, every project, is a different siloed frontline collection of employees. Certainly, during the 21 years I consulted, this was an issue for a lot of my clients. It’s interesting that you brought this up as a topic. The day you sent me the email suggesting this was the same day I got an invitation to a webinar from Forrester and Staffbase. They had just finished a brand-new survey on frontline communication. So I think we have a lot to talk about here. Mark Dollins: We certainly do. I think you’ve made probably one of the most important points of all already, and that is: This is not a one-size-fits-all solution for anybody. As you were talking about the industries that you’ve worked in, I was reflecting on the work that I did when I was with PepsiCo for almost 20 years. You would think that the way a Frito-Lay route delivery driver has access to company channels and communications would be somewhat similar to what happens on the beverage side. And the truth is, that’s not the reality. Not just across industries, but even within the same company, that frontline experience, whether you’re in manufacturing or distribution or whatever you’re doing, is going to be different. It takes a lot of thought and a solution that looks at all those potential scenarios. Shel Holtz: I think in a lot of those really large organizations, you end up with communicators in big business units, big divisions, and they’re making decisions on their own for their people. They may have a dotted line to the top-line corporate communications, but they’re dealing more with the corporate-level messaging and communications. In a lot of cases, they’re dealing with executive communications and don’t have that much influence over how information gets to the front line. Mark Dollins: Yeah, and especially when you’re in the manufacturing area, ownership of those channels does not belong to communications. It belongs to those shift supervisors and the staff management at that location. They have very limited windows in which they can communicate, and they’re going to own it as much as they possibly can and prevent outside influences from stepping into it. So that’s another bit of politics that we’ll talk about. Shel Holtz: And it brings us back to manager communications too, doesn’t it? Mark Dollins: Absolutely. Number one. I thought maybe we could start with—you know how I’m big on data—talk to us about the results of that survey. It’d be a curious place to start and see how our experiences line up with what the new research is telling us about frontline communications. Shel Holtz: Sure. There are some interesting findings out of this. I summarized the ones that I found most interesting. First, more than half of employees who responded to this survey, which included managers, by the way, receive necessary work information through six or more channels. So access to information can coexist with fragmentation, but it also leads to the potential for inconsistency. Mark Dollins: Wow, okay. Shel Holtz: Do you want to talk about each of these as we go through them? Mark Dollins: No, keep going. This is all good. Shel Holtz: Okay. Twenty-seven percent report moderately to very inconsistent information across channels, which speaks to that fragmentation. Getting to your earlier point, distribution of this needs clear ownership and version control. Forty-eight percent report lower productivity or operational efficiency when needed information is missing. So failures in communication have operational consequences. Forty-four percent report greater risk of errors, quality problems, or missed deadlines. So “Did they see it?” really becomes an inadequate measure of success. I know that’s what a lot of communicators did measure: “Did you see this information?” And 83% of frontline workers expect a single app combining work activities and information to have a high or very high impact. They’re looking for simplicity, but this measures expectations and not demonstrated results. Is giving a phone to employees adequate? You have to look at a couple of things. First, do the conditions allow them to use a phone while they’re working? Do they have individual accounts? Is there reliable connectivity where they’re working to use their phones? When they do have allowed time to read, can they also ask questions? Do they have that allowed time? Does the night shift get the same opportunity as the day shift? There’s a lot to consider here, and the nature of the work also matters. A nurse, a delivery driver, a retail associate, somebody working on a construction project site—they don’t all automatically get the same channel strategy. Or if they do, it wouldn’t be very effective. Mark Dollins: Nor necessarily should they have the same channel strategy, to our earlier point in this discussion. All of those data points lead me to wanting to know more. As I think about those macro trends, how does this work where I’m working and with my employee communication base? I’ll go back to that question. People want to audit. Okay, yes, please do audit in order to get the data on how your organization is working with and responding to those issues. You’ve got to have data to help you make those decisions. But before you go out and measure things, you still have to know: What is it that I’m trying to accomplish? Am I trying to drive a CSR message into an operating environment? If so, the only way I have to get there is through a shift supervisor and a supervisor’s meeting. Probably not going to be a big successful strategy for you, right? What is my lane that I want to stay in, where I actually can influence because I have access to those channels and I can create the right kind of relevant content? I’m going to go back to something you just said: “Do they actually see it?” as a metric. Well, should they see it, or should they hear it? Or should they receive it directly from face-to-face communication? That’s what a lot of those frontline communication solutions need to have: that face-to-face, verbal, live delivery. It’s not just, “Here, I’m going to hand this out. Read it.” At the same time, there are kiosks or monitors in a lot of those frontline environments that can be very helpful for saying, “Yes, it is important that you saw that deadline for annual registration for your health benefits is on Thursday, October”—whatever it’s going to be. Those are important things to see. But if you want people to understand or to act and change behavior, the strategies very quickly have to shift to other channels. That’s why I’m really big on making sure: What is it you’re trying to accomplish by reaching the front line that is actually attainable? Then let’s start talking about the channel auditing strategy. What channels do you have? What channels do you need? Regardless of that, what channels do these people use, and which ones do they trust? Which ones do you own, and which ones do you not own that maybe either you should, or you need collaboration? As I work with my clients, those are really important questions and issues to sort through first before you start going out and asking questions. I don’t know if you have different approaches, Shel. Shel Holtz: No, not at all. I agree completely. I think that recognition of the channels you own and the channels you don’t, and establishing that collaboration, is vital because you risk inconsistency and mixed messages if you don’t do that. If the manager gets up at the briefing and says one thing, and the digital signage says something else that’s coming from corporate, and employees are seeing that, that’s an issue. I know at UPS, for example, when the drivers are loading up their trucks, there’s digital signage. UPS sees that as their primary opportunity to get corporate messages to employees. But when they come back and see their supervisor, and the supervisor says something different, now you have a problem. Mark Dollins: It’s about us as communicators going into that environment and understanding: What is it that you do here? What do you need? What would be helpful for you, Mr. or Ms. Frontline Manager? Versus, “We’ve created this one-page weekly brief. We want you to read or communicate it to your people.” You can imagine how well that usually goes over, right? It’s like, “These corporate people want me to read this to you, but we’re not going to have time. You guys can read it over here. I’ll put it on the dresser,” or whatever it is that’s nearby, “and you can read it at your leisure.” It’s just not going to work. But when you sit down and have the conversation with a leader who’s there working with your front line and start asking questions—“What’s helpful to you? What are you struggling with right now? How could an adjustment in communications help? What is the content that would be helpful for you?”—chances are good you’re going to find something in there that a corporate communicator, someone who has enterprise responsibilities, can actually act upon. I’m also a big believer in not doing everything at once. Get a pilot going. Get some small wins that have very clear outcomes that matter to the stakeholders you’re trying to reach. When I say stakeholders, be clear about who that is. It’s the employee as well as the managers we’ve been talking about, as well as you and your boss or whoever’s driving you to do more with frontline communications. When you have those small wins, that’s when you say, “Now it’s time to scale it up. We’ve got a great story to tell. We have proof points that say, ‘Look what’s happening at manufacturing or frontline location A, B, or C.’ They’re actually seeing a measurable improvement in something that people care about.” Versus, “Here’s our solution to give you a one-page summary,” which I have heard on many occasions. I go, “Just stop. Please save yourself a lot of time and frustration.” You’ve got to ask the questions. Learn first and then come up with a solution. Shel Holtz: Right. And multiple channels—despite the fact that employees may think having one app is great, you give it to them and then they don’t use it, or even worse, it’s a bad app. That becomes an issue. But even if it’s a good app and they do use it, getting a briefing at the beginning of the shift, seeing a printed notice, having digital signage and the mobile information increases the opportunity for people to see it, the likelihood they’re going to see it. It also creates reinforcement. We keep hearing that it takes seven exposures to a message before it sticks. I’ve heard lately that number has actually gone up. I don’t remember if it’s up to nine. Mark Dollins: Would not surprise me at all, especially with all the diverse channels reaching people. It reaches people in different ways. You walk by a monitor and absorb information differently than somebody talking to you about it. Shel Holtz: I think it used to be seven, but I’ve heard recently that it’s gone up, with more recent research. I think that’s attention issues with digital. Mark Dollins: Guilty myself. One other thing to think about as we think about the channel solution is: What’s the right content that’s actually going to resonate? This is where I think we also get in our own way. We don’t really think about how this content can be presented in a way that’s clear, direct, concise, but also maybe a little innovative and, dare I say, fun, if it’s a topic that lends itself to fun. Have we put the filter in that says, “What’s in it for me, the employee?” And, to get back to our earlier point, “What’s in it for me, the manager?” If we always have that in mind as we’re creating that content, our odds of success in connecting with our frontline stakeholders and the managers who work with them are greatly increased. We have to think not just about the channel itself, but: Do we have the right recipe for the kind of content that will keep people engaged? I know some people focus more on one or the other, but it really is about the total package. Maybe one last point I would make is that it’s almost thinking about it not from, “What are we doing in corporate to reach them?” but, “Let’s define the personas that are out there.” To your earlier point, Shel, let’s define a couple of different personas on that front line: what they look like, what their world is like, where they get their information, what channels are reaching them—all the things we’ve talked about. Maybe we start with the end case: What is that persona’s experience like, and what would make it better or easier for him or her? Then we start coming up with solutions. Maybe we don’t need seven channels to do that. Maybe we need 12, I don’t know. Maybe we need one or two really good ones that are better at it than just using repetitive and different versions of the same content. It’s just flipping the model around to look at that end-user experience first. Shel Holtz: Having those personas can be invaluable. If you have a lot of people who are driving—it could be a delivery person, a FedEx driver, for example. Before we started recording, I was telling you that I had the fortune to meet Ed Robertson, the late Ed Robertson, who was the head of internal comms at FedEx. He reported directly to the CEO. That’s how internal comms was valued at FedEx. He came up with, I think it was initially a cassette and then a CD for the drivers so that they could listen to a show they put together. Today we would think about doing a podcast and just send them the notice that there’s a new podcast to listen to. Mark Dollins: This is going way back, but I even remember him being credited with putting monitors in the hallways at a check-in station so that when drivers came to get their trucks, they had no choice but to walk through this hallway and see these repeated monitors with messages the company wanted them to see. Nothing really super involved, but I thought, “Gosh, that’s so brilliant,” understanding the employee experience and how to take advantage of something that doesn’t necessarily take more time but gets their focus. I still remember that from many years ago when I was new. Shel Holtz: Right. It would certainly get their attention, which is the second step in what he called the pyramid of communication quality. But above that, it had to be relevant. So that gets to what messages you were putting on those monitors. If they’re walking down that hall and saying, “Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care,” then the monitors were just a waste of time and money. Mark Dollins: Exactly. The content has to be there. Maybe one other thing that’s crossing my mind as we’re talking about this is remembering that we’re not the only ones seeking access to those channels. Aside from the people who own them in the frontline environment, there are other parts of our corporate group, our brothers and sisters, who are also vying for access to those channels. It’s a competition. When we approach whoever owns those channels, we need to remember we’re not the only ones vying for that attention, trying to insert ourselves into a channel that works for them as they have it. Understanding that also helps us be better prepared for potential solutions, either collaboratively with some of those other functions—HR, compliance, whoever needs to get access. I can think of a million different parts of an organization that all want to get to that front line and make sure everybody sees this message. We’re not alone. We need to find out what’s happening. How are they doing it? Does it make sense to collaborate? Should we be working together? Or maybe we shouldn’t. That’s okay. But let’s ask the question and get the true big picture of what’s happening. That’s almost a separate persona, right? That persona of the manager who has responsibilities in that plant, in manufacturing, at that front line. Who is trying to reach into his or her world to insert themselves into that channel, just like us? Let’s think that one through. The more we know, the better solutions we can come up with that get people understanding: “We get you. We understand where you are. We’re here to help.” Ask the questions before just throwing a solution out there. Shel Holtz: We have digital signage, and it’s on a lot of our project sites. We work with a vendor that allows the project manager, project director, whoever the top dog is on the project, to put their own content on it. We work with them and talk to them about what they need to get to people, because it’s different from project to project. We try to limit the corporate messages to just a few, just the things we absolutely need to get out there. If there’s a deadline for taking the annual safety training, we’ll put that on the digital signage. If we need RSVPs to the holiday party by a deadline, that’ll go up there. If there’s new software we need everybody to start using and stop using the old one, we’ll do that. But we try to leave most of that space for local information. At one project, they did “Three things you need to know this week.” Others put their safety data up there because they wanted to improve that. It’s important, I think, to leave some of this decision-making at the local frontline level, but to work with them so they understand how to best convey that information through whatever channel they’re using. Mark Dollins: Right. The only way we can do that is by having a conversation with them. What I often will see is, “We need to get our CSR agenda out to the front line.” I’m like, “Well, how do you expect you’re going to do that?” It’s like, “We just wanted to share our sustainability report.” I go, “What are you going to do with that?” As opposed to, “If we had an example in your plant of someone who’s working on this and tied it to, ‘You should feel good about this. This is a point of pride, consistent with our values.’” Versus another topic: “Hey, let’s have a values series going out to the front line.” It’s like, “About what?” You really have to understand that those are operationally driven environments. To insert a corporate feel-good kind of message, you can do it, but you’ve got to be smart about it. Otherwise, it falls on deaf ears and you get rejected faster than you’d like. Shel Holtz: That happens all the time. I also think if the message is important enough—and it really does have to rise to that level—then an executive roadshow is not an inappropriate tool. This can be very important. First of all, it’s face-to-face visibility for frontline employees with the senior leaders of your organization, and that never hurts. It’s an opportunity for two-way communication, because presumably if you’re going to have three or four, even one or two executives meeting with all the people at the construction site or at the distribution center, it’s an opportunity for them to raise their hands and ask questions, or to fill out little cards and submit them if they’re not comfortable raising their hand and talking to the CEO directly. But it’s also an opportunity to say, “Hey, this is why this is important to you,” and then to ask questions of the audience: “Why does this matter here? How do you see this? What’s happening, or what needs to happen here on this site, in this facility, in order for this to be meaningful and to have an impact on the way you do your work?” Mark Dollins: An amazing thing happens when we operate outside of a vacuum, when we start engaging others in the solution, but also in defining the problem that the solution is here to help with. I find we often try to get really quickly to the solution that we think will work because we understand channels and communication—and we do—but we don’t understand the problem. We don’t understand what we’re solving for. Therein lies the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity to do things that add value. Shel Holtz: I think two-way communication is also something outside of the executive roadshow. Two-way is really important on the front line. Employees really do need confidence that raising a problem is going to be safe and that somebody will respond. There was a survey two years ago from Catalyst, of 1,800 frontline employees, and it linked manager fairness, support, and openness with better team relationships. Twenty-nine percent said their manager didn’t demonstrate openness. The study emphasized making actions taken in response to employee feedback visible. So it’s not just, “I got feedback,” but everybody knows the feedback was given. Mark Dollins: And here’s what we’re doing with that feedback, right? It makes a big difference. Shel Holtz: I’d also come back just for a minute to the issue of the manager, the supervisor, the person who’s having the huddle at the beginning of the shift. Are we enabling them to interpret decisions, or are we just giving them another distribution task? You mentioned this early: Just giving them the message to deliver really isn’t enough. Mark Dollins: No. Context is everything, right? Why are we talking to you about this? Well, let’s tell you why. Shel Holtz: There was a survey last year. This was another Staffbase survey. They did this one with YouGov: 3,574 employees across six countries. Only 48% of non-desk employees felt well informed by their managers, compared to 65% of desk-based employees. I think that’s an issue. For some reason, managers at the front line don’t feel it’s their job or don’t feel they should have to convey these kinds of messages, whereas those managers in the office apparently do. Mark Dollins: We’ve talked about this on other On the Same Page podcasts, about how important it is for employee communicators to focus on managers as a distinct stakeholder group, a subsegmented stakeholder group within employee communications. Giving them the content doesn’t mean they’re going to deliver it or deliver it well. Understanding their orientation to communication—to your point, “It’s not part of my job,” which we would all very much disagree with—is a big thing to understand. It looks like we need to do a job of explaining why it is part of your job and what happens when you do it well, and sadly, what happens when you don’t. There has to be context and consequences for doing the right thing and an understanding of what happens when you do it poorly, and the impact not just on your team, but on you personally. There’s the “What’s in it for me?” When we help managers understand what’s in it for them to be a good communicator, we help them develop the skill set, the awareness, the understanding, and then we give them the right content and the tools to do that. Now we’re doing something really powerful and empowering them to do the things we need for the sake of our company. Shel Holtz: And you’re still going to end up with managers who aren’t going to do it or are going to do a poor job, which is why those multiple channels continue to be important. Mark Dollins: Of course. You can’t bat a thousand, but you can bat a lot closer to it by focusing on those folks and giving them some help. It’s interesting, because of communicators I’ve talked to over the years, I’d say about a 50–50 split. Fifty percent say, “Yeah, that’s our job and we’re working on it.” The other half say, “That’s HR and org development and training.” I’m like, “No, it’s yours, trust me.” You can do it in partnership with HR and executive development, however you want to do it. At the end of the day, if you’re responsible for engaging employees in communication, it means you have to understand how that communication reaches them. One of the most impactful ways is having their manager well empowered and equipped to deliver it to them. So that’s your job. Shel Holtz: When we talk about the influence that internal communications has, I think influence with executives and influence with HR counts. If you can convince them to add communication to the mix of what managers are evaluated on, then they’re going to pay more attention to it. If they’re already being evaluated on it and it counts for 5% of their performance review, they’ll be willing. Mark Dollins: That’s a whole other podcast we could get into: How do you do that? I’d love to talk about that more because, yes, that is often a conversation I’ll have with people who lead employee communications, corporate communications, and HR. I’m finding more HR folks actually do include communications, but not in the way we would necessarily define it. I think there are always opportunities to refine that definition and really get into more of the details about what that looks like in terms of behaviors. Shel Holtz: One more data point. This is from a survey last year, Workvivo’s research: 7,500 frontline workers globally. Forty-eight percent considered most communications that came to them from the company irrelevant to them. This goes back to an earlier point: What is relevant, and how do we get that information to them? But 69% wanted to understand company decisions better, and 58% wanted updates from their CEO. That challenges this idea that frontline employees only care about the stuff happening at the front line, and what they want to hear from the corporation is about schedules and pay. Mark Dollins: Employees are getting smarter all the time. They’re learning how to ask the right questions and understand bigger, broader topics and issues as they relate to them and their futures and, quite frankly, their company’s reputation in the marketplace. We should expect that employees are getting smarter and wanting to know more about the big picture from their most senior executives. If we’re doing our jobs as employee communications leaders, we’re putting those leaders in positions to provide not just the answers, but the context to those questions and decisions. Shel Holtz: Right. And again, recognizing that some may not hear that from their managers, it gets to this notion of tailoring information to the employee. These days it’s very easy; it didn’t used to be. We can get information to the front line that’s different for a project engineer than it is for a foreman. A lot of the information they need is the same, but a lot isn’t. The project engineers aren’t doing huddles. They’re not talking to people at the beginning of a shift. They don’t need that information, so it’s different. Our intranet is the dumping ground. That’s where everything goes, but then we can parse it out from there. The tools are there to make that really easy. Mark Dollins: Right. I think that’s when it doesn’t become a repository but a place for doing work, as we always like to say. In my world, my experience working with intranets, it becomes a useful, valuable channel for the organization. It’s when it becomes a repository for information that it’s not viewed that way. Shel Holtz: Right. If I were going to summarize all this, I’d say: Choose an important announcement. Ask employees across different shifts how they learned about it, what they understood, and where they went with questions. Include employees who never opened the digital version. This is an exercise that can expose the difference between publishing information and successfully communicating it. It gets back to your point that it starts with asking. Mark Dollins: Love it. Shel Holtz: I wanted to ask you: On your microphone, it says Employee Signal. That’s your new Substack, isn’t it? Mark Dollins: I’m sending a signal, Shel. Employee Signal is a new newsletter and podcast. It’s available on Substack, and thank you, Shel, you’re willing to place this also on the FIR network. This will be a monthly update solely about employee communications issues. I go into a lot more detail about some of the topics we’ve covered. The first edition, which we just put out last month, is all about change communication and the discrepancy between the recognition among employee communication leaders that we need to understand the discipline of change management and the number of people who are actually getting the knowledge or certification that demonstrates we understand change management as a discipline we can apply communications to. We go into a lot of detail. There’s a free edition of Employee Signal every month. There’s also a paid version if somebody wants to pay a couple of bucks. I put some tools out there based on best practices, case studies, and workable tools that can be deployed immediately, along with some very specific AI-related prompts that can help you save a little time in getting to what you need in the world of employee communication. I’m happy to have shared this, and thank you for asking, Shel. I’m excited to launch this and keep things moving in the world that I care about and love so much. Shel Holtz: I’m a big fan of cross-promotion of podcasts on the FIR Podcast Network. Delighted to have you there. We’re going to have to talk about getting you set up so they can start appearing there. Mark Dollins: Great. Shel Holtz: Internal communicators, having seen the first edition of this, I would definitely urge you to subscribe. It’s a great resource. Mark, I’ll see you in two weeks. Mark Dollins: Thank you, Shel. You got it. Have a good one. The post OTSP #11: Are You Reaching Your Frontline? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

What becomes possible when people feel seen at work? As workplaces feel increasingly transactional, helping people know they matter is both a human and leadership imperative. When people feel seen, they are more likely to engage, contribute, connect, and thrive. There are many ways we help people feel seen, but one of the simplest and most powerful is appreciation: noticing who people are, what they bring, and the difference they make — and letting them know. In this conversation, four IABC Fellows explored the role leaders and communicators play in creating workplaces where people feel seen, and appreciation becomes part of how we lead, communicate, and connect. What changes in people, teams, and organizations when people know they matter, and what gets in the way? About the panel: Although Zora Artis began her career outside the communications field, she has had an outsize impact on the profession since entering it more than 20 years ago to as an account director and then strategic planner with branding and integrated marcomms agencies. Since then, she has led her own brand and communications consultancy and served as CEO of a 20-person creative, digital, and strategic communication firm. In 2019, formed her current management consulting practice, bringing together strategic alignment, brand, and communication expertise. She has received five Gold Quill awards. Her significant contributions to the profession and the body of knowledge include her original research with IABC colleague Wayne Aspland on strategic alignment, the role of communications and leadership – the first substantial research effort for the reconfigured IABC Foundation – and co-authoring a subsequent white paper, “The Road to Alignment,” supported by 27 senior communicators from five continents. Zora has also researched the correlation between strategic alignment and experiences and the impact on stakeholder value and brand. This has led her to develop her own proprietary Alignment Experience Framework. She has also examined gender equity, perceptions, and bias in organizations, and wrote a chapter on this topic for the Quadriga University e-reader, Women in PR. Since joining IABC a decade ago, she has contributed as a volunteer, including serving as chair of the IABC Asia Pacific Region and IEB director; she currently chairs the 2022 World Conference Program Advisory Committee. As a certified company director and chair of the IABC Audit and Risk Committee, she introduced proper risk oversight into the board’s processes. Zora received the 2021 and 2015 IABC Chair’s Award for Leadership and was named IABC’s 2020 Regional Leader of the Year. She is also a Strategic Communication Management Professional, Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, and Certified Practicing Marketer. John G. Clemons, SCMP, ABC, APR, IABC Fellow, an independent communications consultant based in North Carolina, has held senior executive and consultant roles throughout his career in corporate and organizational communications. He specializes in providing strategic counsel and support to top executives and corporate offices at Fortune 500 companies. John has served as chair of IABC and holds accreditations from both IABC and PRSA. John has worked with Walmart, Raytheon, and Marriott (among others). John has been an adjunct instructor for six years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Loyola University in New Orleans. Founder and Principal of Fluency Leadership, Catherine Ducharme, IABC Fellow, PCC, CLC, is a career communicator, certified coach, and facilitator with more than 35 years of experience in communication and leadership. She has held senior roles across public relations, corporate, internal, and marketing communication in industries, including high-tech and health sciences, grounding her work in deep, real-world expertise. Building on that foundation, Catherine now focuses on developing communication and marketing professionals to be exceptional leaders. Catherine is also the author of the book SEEN: The Power of Appreciation at Work. Jennifer Wah, MC, ABC, has helped clients deliver ideas, plans, words, and results since she founded her storytelling and communications firm, Forwords Communication Inc., in 1997. With more than two dozen awards for strategic communications, writing, and consulting, Jennifer is recognized as a storyteller and strategist. She has worked in industries ranging from healthcare and academia to financial services and the resource sector, and she is passionate about using storytelling strategically to support business outcomes. Although she has delivered workshops and training throughout her career, Jennifer formally added teaching to her experience in 2013, first with Royal Roads University and more recently as an adjunct professor of business communications with the UBC Sauder School of Business, where she now works part-time to impart crucial communication skills to the next generation of business leaders. When she is not working, Jennifer spends her time cooking, walking her dog, Orion, or discussing food, hockey, or music with her husband and two young adult children in North Vancouver, Canada. Raw transcript: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 134 of Circle of Fellows. This is the monthly panel discussion among Fellows of the International Association of Business Communicators, of which I am one. I’m Shel Holtz. I am Senior Director of Communications at Webcor. We’re a commercial general contractor operating in California, and I’m coming to you from our headquarters offices in San Francisco. Today I am joined by four of my friends, four IABC Fellows. I will ask them to introduce themselves in just a minute. First, I want to let everyone know what we are talking about today: the role communications can play in ensuring that employees feel seen and heard at work. From the description that we shared: In this conversation, we’ll explore the role leaders and communicators play in creating workplaces where people feel seen and appreciation becomes part of how we lead, communicate, and connect. Recognition undoubtedly will be part of this conversation as well. I hope that you who are joining us live will participate in the conversation. You should do that by sharing a comment in the comment field on YouTube. I’ll be able to share that on the screen for our panelists, and we will pivot to talk about your observation, your question, your experience. I’m very much looking forward to your engagement. It really makes these things even more fun than they already are. They’re already fun because I get to moderate a panel of friends. I’m going to ask them to introduce themselves now, starting with Zora. Hello, everyone. I’m coming to you from Melbourne in Australia, so it’s Friday morning for me. I love being here with friends, as Shel put it: Catherine, John, Jennifer, and Shel, of course. I’m a strategic alignment specialist. I am a facilitator, leadership coach, and advisor. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Zora. John, you’re up. Hello, everyone. I’m John Clemons, and I’m coming to you from Huntersville, North Carolina. I’ve worked in my career for a number of Fortune 100 companies, including Marriott International, AT&T, and Walmart. I am now a communications consultant and an adjunct professor for two universities. Great to see you, John. Catherine, you’re next. Hi. I’m Catherine Ducharme, coming to you from Vancouver, British Columbia. I am a leadership coach, and I develop leaders. I’ve been in communications for most of my career, and I’m also the author of the book SEEN: The Power of Appreciation at Work. This is a topic that’s near and dear to me, so I’m looking forward to discussing it with my friends here. I think it’s highly appropriate that you be part of this panel, given the theme of your book. Next to you is your neighbor here on this panel, as well as in Vancouver, Jennifer. Hi, everyone. Just theoretically up the street from Catherine, and pleased to be here. I work as a storytelling consultant with my own boutique agency, Forwords Communication. I teach at the UBC Sauder School of Business as an instructor there. I love it all, and love these Circle of Fellows gatherings and the conversations that come out of them, which are always both unexpected and insightful. I’m particularly pleased to be here on this topic. I love Catherine’s new book. Terrific. I’m going to have to give that a read. This is a really interesting topic. I have been focused to some extent here at my job on psychological safety, something that we believe in. As I was reading through the topic and some of the comments that you, the panel, shared in advance, I connected those dots: You can’t feel seen and heard if you don’t feel safe to speak up in the first place. I was wondering if you felt that way, if you think psychological safety is part of what we’re talking about here. Catherine, I’d like to start with you, given that this is the focus of your book. I love that thread that you pull through of psychological safety, because I think being seen is all about building relationships and trust. Without psychological safety underpinning everything, if we don’t feel safe to speak up, to see people in a vulnerable way, to show up differently, we remain quiet. I think that’s what’s happening in a lot of workplaces today. It becomes very transactional. Some of us can feel like cogs in the wheel because we don’t feel safe to say what we need to say, to see each other as human beings in the workplace. Catherine, can you explain a little bit what you just said, “show up differently”? What exactly are you saying? I love that. I think particularly as leaders in the workplace, we have an opportunity to be more relational in how we show up. As organizations, we can often focus on getting the work done, efficiency, results, metrics, and all of that’s important. But if we don’t see people, the people behind who’s making that happen, if we don’t see the value of how people contribute, then we’re missing out on something, because it’s relationships that get the work done. It’s incumbent on leaders and communicators to say, “How do I show up in a way that’s more human, where we see what people bring to it and we actually emphasize that value rather than just the metrics?” Thank you. There was another book that came out earlier this year called Forward Talk by a fellow called Gustavo Razzetti, who does a lot of work on culture. He was wondering why people stay silent, so he did a survey. Over 5,000 people responded. When the question was, “Why don’t people speak up?” most said it’s because of fear. Then when the question was, “Why don’t you speak up?” it’s because they’ve either been shut down themselves, they’ve seen somebody else shut down, or they’ve tried before and nothing’s changed. It becomes apathy to a degree as well, so people stay silent as a consequence. It was something like over 70% stay silent because of that, which is quite a striking number. Just to layer into this, our friend and colleague Priya Bates, who’s not on this call, speaks a lot about diversity and wrote a book on culture and inclusivity. It occurs to me that when we’re talking about psychological safety, and exactly what you’re describing, Zora, the culture where someone doesn’t feel comfortable or has been shut down, that can in some cases have to do with the cultural filters around diversity. Understanding how someone shows up, how someone might communicate, how someone might express or receive appreciation or feel seen in a different way than I might—that’s a nuance that is a pretty important one in workplaces. To both of your points, for minorities, what I’ve seen with myself and with other African American professionals in particular, they feel like they are not heard when they are in those meetings. We all have stories where we’ve said something, and then someone else who may be Caucasian says the same thing. Then people go, “Okay, okay,” but you have just said that a few minutes ago. That makes you back down from commenting because you realize you’re not being heard, so why should I say anything else? John, the data really backs that up. Particularly African Americans and Hispanics feel that recognition in the workplace, of being given credit, is actually not fair. That really bears out in the data. We just wrapped up Construction Inclusion Week. I think it was last week or the week before. It’s an annual event organized by a coalition of construction companies, and a lot participate. It’s based on this idea that inclusion means listening and bringing people into the conversation who may not be like you. It seems to me that in addition to psychological safety, or as a requirement for building psychological safety among all our people, inclusion is also really important in helping employees feel seen and heard. I wanted to make a point about psychological safety, which is, of course, part of organizational culture and has the tone set by leadership. One of the things that I find most hopeful and inspiring about this movement that Catherine has written about, and that is having a bit of a moment, is the individual ability to participate in appreciation or to participate in feeling and creating a culture of being seen. Even within organizations where I have not felt particularly seen, appreciated, or heard—John, completely different than what you’re describing—but I will say that as a woman of a certain age, I have found myself far less visible than I have been at other points in my career. In a similar, but not at all nearly as impactful or concerning a way, others of different generations taking my words and being heard in different ways. I don’t want to go down that thread. I wanted to focus on our individual ability to contribute to a culture of appreciation. That’s really about the one-on-one connections that we have with people. Yes. I write about how we don’t need a program or a policy to actually see people and appreciate people in the workplace. What usually gets the attention in the workplace is the loud voices or just the results. In fact, in the book, I really make the distinction between recognition and appreciation. Recognition tends to be about the results and the outcomes, whereas appreciation is about who you are. One is about what you do; the other is about who you are. It’s seeing the people in the workplace who may be the quieter voices, but they’re the peacemakers in the organization, or they make things run smoothly, or they speak to customers in a certain way because they’re really listening. I think there’s an opportunity to really see the strengths and qualities of people in the workplace, and when you see it, to name it out loud, because then that becomes feedback for them on what’s working and how somebody’s contributing in the workplace. I like that, Catherine, because if you look at people in the workplace, in the environment that you’re working in, whether you’re a leader, manager, or another team member, and you’re showing them appreciation and acknowledging them for who they are and how they make a difference, rather than just “What did you create today?” or “What did you produce today?” I think that makes a big difference for them as an individual. I appreciate that distinction between recognition and appreciation. It’s not one that I had made in my own head before, and I was going to raise the idea of recognition. How do you get an organization to demonstrate that appreciation? Does that happen at a high level? We talk to our leaders about the fact that recognition is not really aimed at the employee that you’re trying to recognize. It’s trying to get everybody else to say, “This is the kind of behavior that earns recognition. You want to get recognized, do what this person did.” Appreciation is something else altogether. Does it happen at a higher level, or does it happen within the teams? I will say I’ve worked for employers where appreciation is so big, so huge. One company that I worked for started with a yearly appreciation day, and it was so successful that it was expanded to appreciation week. This is a global company, and they had all kinds of specialty items, free lunches, working with Habitat for Humanity, doing community work, recognizing employees, an awards program. This was something employees looked forward to, and at that company, you were appreciated. I’ve worked with other companies where it was very important for you to assimilate, to become like others, as opposed to being an individual. If you were an individual and a little bit different in your approach to communicating and operating, then you stood out, and you were not seen. You were moved to the side. In my experience, it depends on the organization that you work for. John, that makes it sound like culture is in play here. Yes. How we do things. That’s absolutely right. I think there are ways to build appreciative cultures, and it does require you to look at what matters in the workplace and what is recognized. In certain cultures, there’s a feeling that we’re a team, and if I recognize one person on my team and not the others, I’m showing favoritism. I go into a whole chapter on that, because that really gets us into the participation ribbons: We’re all special, we all need to be appreciated. But I believe people have their moments where really seeing and valuing what they did and how they contribute is important to point out, because it’s feedback for them in their development. While it can be a cultural thing, I think it can start with just the leader, as a leadership behavior and a skill to notice what’s good in team members and just to say it. It doesn’t take much more than that. I was just going to ask, John, in the organization that you referenced, to what degree did that come from leadership? Without getting into the weeds, what did you notice about leadership in that circumstance versus others? Where employees were appreciated, those leaders, and in fact the founder of the company, would go to the cafeteria and just sit down with a tray and start having conversations with employees, starting with “What do you do for our company?” That would become almost like company lore. Having a Christmas party for those employees who have done an outstanding job during the year and inviting them to his home—that was an extraordinary experience. Then with those companies where employees just did not respond, they did not ask questions, it was the leader in that situation who really did not appreciate the work that his employees were doing. It was a company where we had to put out a lot of contracts, and we would lose them repeatedly. I think it was driven by this person’s leadership and how he made employees feel. I’ve seen the extremes in both situations. To Catherine’s point, it starts with the leadership, and that’s where it can break down, as you said. Leaders modeling the right type of behavior and being genuine in how they’re doing it and why they’re doing it as well, rather than it being performative. Yes. One of the questions in the book was: Appreciation is free, it’s abundant, it’s renewable. As soon as you give it away, you have more to give, yet it’s surprisingly rare. Looking into that, what’s the barrier for a lot of people? There are many barriers, but one is people aren’t sure how to do it. They may say, “Hey, good job,” or “You aced that goal,” and feel they’re appreciating someone, but the recipient doesn’t feel seen through that. It’s often how it lands, not how we give it. Recognition always strikes me as programmatic. While there are certainly managers who are good at it more organically, most organizations need to have recognition programs to ensure that recognition happens. Again, that’s to influence the behavior of others. Appreciation seems to me to be more of an organic thing that happens because it’s in somebody’s character. Can it be trained? Is it something that should be included in manager training? I totally believe it can be trained. I think looking at the barriers that keep leaders from giving appreciation and challenging that, because often it’s about our discomfort with giving appreciation rather than being focused on others. What’s the benefit? How can I lift this person up? How can I help them with their development by pointing out what their strengths are and how their qualities make a difference? I think it’s context setting. Then there are some really practical things. I came up with a mnemonic called TAPS that really talks about how you give appreciation. It needs to be timely and authentic. It needs to be about the person, not about the results. Then it needs to be specific: In what way are they making an impact? In what way is how they showed up really making a difference or making a contribution? I totally believe it can be trained. Catherine, in your research for your book, do you find that some leaders view recognizing or appreciating employees as a sign of weakness, that they’re giving up something? There are all kinds of reasons, and that’s one of them. I think it can feel vulnerable for some people. “Can I say that? Is that too squishy? It doesn’t feel professional,” which is a bit at arm’s length. One of the interesting things I found is that our comfort or discomfort with appreciation impacts how we give it. If we find receiving appreciation very uncomfortable, we’re likely to withhold that because we don’t want to create that experience for somebody else. It does come down to what’s our relationship with appreciation? Have we seen it modeled? How do we receive it, and then how do we give it? It seems to me, based on that, Catherine, that it’s also important for managers to have a good understanding of the personalities of the people on their team and how they like to receive appreciation. You don’t want to make somebody uncomfortable. Totally. There’s a whole chapter on tailoring appreciation, but it’s relational. It’s about getting to know your people and what matters to them, what’s important, and how they like to receive appreciation. I was going to say, Zora, you point to research that speaks to the gaps between what leadership thinks and how it’s received. I’m curious if you can talk to that, because I think perception can be a factor too. That’s right. There’s been so much research out there, as well as the work that I’ve done when I was looking at alignment and leadership. The perception, mostly at the C-suite but also at the senior leadership level, is they genuinely believe that employees trust them more than they actually do. There is a significant gap. There is a gap even around AI as well, but I won’t go into that just yet. It’s really about leaders being able to recognize what that gap is. I think a lot of that comes down to those in the organization who have that enterprise-wide, potentially stakeholder-wide view, that lens, which is people in the communication profession, who will see and feel and hear where the gaps are. They will see what leaders are saying and doing, the decisions they’re making, what they’re resourcing, how they’re treating people. They will see where those don’t match up with what they say the culture is supposed to be, or what they expect of people when they’re not doing it themselves. When there are those gaps, it takes courage on our part as communication professionals to surface that and bring it to leaders so they understand there is a gap, and to help them understand how to address that. There’s an opportunity for us, but it’s not an easy one. I wonder if there’s anything generational going on here. As I was reading the description of this session in preparation to post the announcement that it was the topic for this panel, I became aware of something I hadn’t really been aware of, although in the back of my head I was noticing it. Younger people in this organization tend to respond when something is done for them, even if it’s just a response to a request. They’ve asked for something and you deliver it. They say, “Thanks. I appreciate you.” That “I appreciate you” is kind of new, and I am hearing it mostly from younger employees. Is appreciation something that is more highly valued, maybe in Gen Z these days? I don’t know who wants to take that. When I was doing my research, the generational stuff really didn’t come up, because when you think about a time where you’ve been truly seen and appreciated, and somebody has really valued a quality that you bring to the workplace, that resonates. I have coaching clients who have kept appreciation notes they’ve received from a leader for 10 or 15 years as a way to remind them of their value. In that way, appreciation sustains. I hear you, Shel. I’m hearing more people saying, “I appreciate you,” and every time they do, I get warm fuzzies. But no matter who you are, to be seen and heard and valued is a human need, because we’re wired for that connection. I’m glad if it’s being verbalized more. Shel, I hear that and I see it in messages from friends more and more: “I appreciate you.” But when it comes to myself, I think about it before I say, “I appreciate you,” because I’m thinking about the person and how they will receive it. “My God, why is he sending that emotional message to me?” as opposed to “I appreciate it,” which takes the personal out. I think about it before I put it on a page or say it. It’s not something I just do. Right. I’ve been hearing “I appreciate it” for decades. “I appreciate you” seems to be fairly current, fairly recent. Just to make a sidebar observation from a generational perspective: In the classroom, I teach first-year and third-year students. In both cases, and in my own kids, who are of a similar age, young adult children, there is more of a rightful expectation of psychological safety in the workplace, in their communities, and therefore a greater desire to have appreciation expressed and received. I have students who come to office hours who are seeking appreciation and feedback. Obviously they’re grade-motivated, but they are, at their very human core, not afraid to ask for appreciation in ways that I really admire. How do they ask for it? They will say, “Could I have some feedback on this assignment? What did I do well? What didn’t I?” We’ll go through that. Toward the end, I’ve had an increasing number of students over the last year or so say, “Would you mind me asking some ways that I show up well in class?” Again, this is more about what they’re doing than who they are, because I don’t necessarily know them. But I believe I can tell that what they’re getting at is a greater set of data about how they’re showing up in the world. I think that is generational, to be able to ask for that, a greater vulnerability and a higher bar around psychological safety in the classroom and in communities. I was going to say, I imagine there are some older people hearing this who are thinking, “Wow, is that needy?” I’m sorry, Zora, go ahead. There’s a fellow, an Australian, who is also a coach who works with a lot of high-performance athletes as well as executives. His name’s Ben Crowe, and he wrote a book last year called Where the Light Gets In. He talks a lot about the difference between moving, as individuals, from a human doing to a human being, and recognizing the difference. It was really obvious in the work he did with the former world number one tennis player, Ash Barty. She was doing extremely well, won Wimbledon, and then she retired the year after, I think, because she didn’t want to be defined by what she’d done. She wanted to be defined by who she is. There’s much more of this recognition about who am I as a person, and appreciating myself for who I am rather than just what I do and what I achieve. There’s an element of the individual starting to appreciate themselves more. When they do, that shows up in how they are, how they do work, and how they treat other people. Their performance actually improves, and it improves in the workplace. It’s really fascinating stuff. It’s really cool. It seems that speaks to the need to take this to our manager communication. I think a lot of people who have risen through the ranks over time and achieved that level in the organization of being a manager know how to recognize what people did, but don’t know how to recognize or even see how people are. You want to talk about people not feeling seen: If their manager doesn’t see them as a person, only as a producer of outcomes, that’s an obstacle to appreciation. I’ve found in my career that if there were messages from leadership that needed to be cascaded down, we would look at those mid-level managers to share key messages. They would have scripts, the Q&A, everything. But the problem was they didn’t really know how to communicate. We assumed they knew how to communicate, but it was stalled because they didn’t know how to approach it. They had everything they needed, but actually doing it fell short. I agree, John. It’s a skill, and I think that’s where communicators can play a huge role in shaping culture and supporting managers in where you can bring in appreciation. Appreciation isn’t only just words. We show appreciation by how present we are in a conversation, how curious we are, if we’re involving people, if we’re giving them context. All of those are forms of saying to people, “I see you. I value you. I’m inviting you in.” It’s such a playground for communicators to help shape that and help leaders build those skills. Jennifer, I know that you have been doing some work about office-first communication. We’ve been talking about generations, which is dividing employees up into classes. Those who are in the office and those who are remote is also a distinguishing set of classes of employees. Is it harder to feel or to give appreciation to people who are not in the same room as you, if it’s over a Zoom call, for example? Like all of our communication, it requires thinking about the audience and how they will receive it. Is it harder? I don’t know if I would say harder. I would say it’s easier to make an impact in person. I’ve been thinking of this as we’ve been talking about some of the examples. John, when I asked you about the leader of the organization where you felt appreciation was part of the culture, you talked about in-person expressions of that. I’ve been doing some work with a couple of clients on office-first environments. The research is not showing greater productivity for being in the workplace versus working from home, let’s say. There’s for sure room for that hybrid approach. However, what we’re missing out on in the longer term, in the interest of the short-term convenience of not having to drive to an office, of saving on gas and transit and maybe shorter childcare and all of those important things, is several things, including one of the things I’ve been working into some of my communication planning: proximity to success. I think that is true in all aspects, including the expression of appreciation. In other words, when we actually see firsthand the way something should be done, the way a conversation should go, the way a conflict is handled, the way appreciation is expressed, it has a far greater, exponentially far greater impact, the research shows, than when we don’t see that firsthand in real life. That’s something workplaces culturally are going to have to address, or consider at least, as we see the impact of post-COVID changing workplaces. I think appreciation can be delivered over a screen, absolutely. With each of you individually, I hope I’ve expressed appreciation for who you are over a screen at some point in the time we’ve known each other. I think we’ve probably all done that for each other. But we know it, to Catherine’s point, when we are able to gather in a room together, be fully present, show with our body language and our eyes and our engagement how much we appreciate each other and appreciate what we bring to, in this case, our IABC community, but also as professionals out into the world. I would say biologically too. There’s the oxytocin and the dopamine and all the brain chemicals that are released when we’re in close proximity. Oxytocin is the bonding kind of chemical; we feel it more. I would say there’s a more felt connection. But the research also shows that appreciation online works in terms of aligning our brains, and we feel closer to a person. Zora, you shared some thoughts about AI as it relates to all of this. A lot of it is around the idea of trust, which is a word that has come up several times in the conversation already. Trust is something that communicators are very accustomed to dealing with. One of our jobs is to build trust between the organization and its various stakeholders. One of the data points that I’m aware of with AI inside the organization is that employees are starting to turn to AI instead of subject matter expert colleagues when they have a question, which is producing fewer employee-to-employee interactions and therefore fewer opportunities for appreciation. “I’m a subject matter expert. People used to come to me all the time, and I felt really appreciated for my knowledge, and now no one’s calling me anymore. They’re all just going to a chatbot.” I wonder what you think the impact of AI is on trust and, by extension, on appreciation and this need or desire to feel seen and heard. I feel like the workplace environment is becoming much more transactional, with AI being introduced at speed. A lot of decisions are being made at speed, and change is just a constant thing that happens. It’s almost like it needs to be a capability across an organization. I think there’s clearly a breakdown of trust, and there’s lots of research showing a breakdown between leaders and employees. The way AI is being introduced, the way people are going to that because it’s simpler, quicker, easier, all of that sort of thing. But then there’s that element of: Do we know why AI is being introduced? Do we really genuinely understand why it’s being introduced? If they’re saying it’s to improve productivity, what does that actually mean? If it’s not clearly communicated and people aren’t involved in the conversations and given some sort of autonomy in this, how are they going to interpret things? They’re going to interpret things in their own ways, and they’re going to potentially feel threatened. Then there’ll be a lack of trust. If they’re feeling threatened, they’ll be less engaged. It’s going to have a detrimental impact on engagement within the organization and potentially performance as well. Then you’ve got all the layoffs that come along, and it’s like, “How can we trust people at the top?” It’s certainly hard to feel appreciated when you see your colleagues being laid off and wonder if the same thing is coming for you, despite a track record of outstanding performance reviews. I was speaking at a conference last week, and it was technology people, knowledge management folk, intranet people. I was talking to one particular fellow, and he worked for a large law firm that has just gone through another round of layoffs, and it’s in the knowledge management team. Last year they reduced their team from, say, the mid-20s to the high teens. This year, he just lost his role. He was second-in-command, literally lost his role last month. Now the whole team’s been wiped out because AI’s there. What does that say to the rest of the organization? I get that. I remember years and years ago hearing an anthropologist talk about how, as humans, we have this need to balance. When one thing is getting over-indexed, like the transactional workplace, then somewhere there’s a need to go, “What about the relational part of the workplace? Relationships, human interactions, being kind, noticing what’s good in people?” As a species, humans have that need to balance. Hopefully that provides some optimism around this bleak AI world where it’s all transactional and we don’t need to talk to people. We are wired for connection. I’ve got to trust, and I’m an unapologetic optimist, that humanity, human-led leadership, heart-led leadership, is going to become more of a factor because of the way a lot of workplaces are going. I’m reading more and more about some leaders moving toward that servant leadership model. Zora, you also pointed to Boston Consulting Group research. I was already familiar with this: 90% of CEOs believe that the workforce trusts leadership, but only 46% of employees agree. We could talk about the trust element of this, but it led me to wonder: We have been talking about appreciation here as a top-down process, where we want to make sure that the people who report to us, or report through the chain up to us, feel appreciated. It seems to me this is something all humans need, that leaders need to feel appreciated too. But I don’t hear a lot about what happens in organizations to help leaders feel appreciated. I can imagine the approach they take to leadership would be influenced if they felt they weren’t appreciated. There is also research showing that because of the complexity of the work and the uncertainty, a lot of leaders are genuinely under a lot of pressure and feeling, to some degree, that they don’t necessarily have all the capabilities they need to do the job to the level of expectations that are there for them. Your point about them feeling like they’re seen, heard, and appreciated is a really good one, because what’s happening to them? Who’s doing that work for them? Who’s showing them that they matter? Other board members? The CEO? They say the higher you get in leadership, the less feedback you get. I would say the less appreciation you get too. If leaders can instill a culture of appreciation even within their team, then it can be shared among the team, from the team to the leaders. If they can model or understand how to give it, it’s not a one-way thing. Back to the point of psychological safety, that needs to be in place. Anyone can appreciate anyone at any time if they know how to do it. Even if they’re learning how to do it, that’s okay too. It’s the intention behind the appreciation. But your point at the beginning, Catherine, was that it’s a capability, a leadership capability. For it to become a leadership capability, it needs to become part of the rhythm of the work. It needs to become a practice. That will require vulnerability from everyone in the team so they can practice and do it well. In the United States—I don’t know if they do it in Melbourne or in Canada—a number of companies have annual employee opinion surveys or associate opinion surveys. We communicators would get that information. I think that’s a huge responsibility for communicators, to share the information, the results of what employees are saying, which could lead to greater appreciation and recognition, because employees are telling you that they are not happy with X. The leader of the company needs to know that and then take action to resolve the situation, which could lead to greater recognition. I think one of the things we’re talking about is career resilience. Zora, your story about the conference and the person you spoke to who had just lost their job and their team had been wiped out: That’s a really hard moment in your life to feel in any way appreciated, when you are dispensed with in that way. I’ll be vulnerable for a moment and share that early in my career I was fired from my first communications job. I was young and had messed up, and I deserved that consequence. But one of the things I did not have at that early stage of my career was professional resilience in a way that allowed me at that time to bounce back with any necessary speed, because we have to. Generally, most of us have to get back out into the workplace. Circling back to what we were talking about generationally, I admire this next generation for seeking out the building blocks of that resilience that they, on some level, perhaps consciously or unconsciously, know they are going to need. In my circumstances, I acknowledged that I had messed up, but I thought I would be a little bit immune because I thought I had been appreciated. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a culture where that was going to be valued, and my lack of resilience on lots of fronts didn’t let me process that. I think what we’re talking about culturally, from a leadership perspective, obviously needs to be there. But it really comes down to us building that muscle within us individually, both the giving and the receiving. I also think leaders have a role to play in building that resilience. Appreciation is seeing who a person is, their qualities, their strengths, their character. I started out my career with a mentor for whom that was second skin. I was very clear about where I was succeeding and what my strengths were, and that built resilience. At the same time, when I had these learning edges, as I like to call them, and when I screwed up, he would have those conversations with me too. That gets back to the John Gottman memo: We need to receive five positives to one negative. I think appreciation can build that resilience. To your point, Jennifer, it also has to be intrinsically within us. But the more we know about ourselves and how we show up, I think that builds resilience too. If anybody can feel seen and heard, you would think it’s leadership in an organization. Yet there are leaders who could just be introverts, could feel they’re too busy to be visible to employees. How important is executive visibility to the ideas of appreciation and psychological safety and trust and everything we’ve been talking about today? I think it’s essential. I think it’s really essential that leaders get out of their offices and take the time to see and meet and hear some of the people who are working hard for them. I think it would give them a greater appreciation for the work they do too, to lead people who want to give, who want to serve, who want to be in those roles and make a company successful. I’ve had meetings with them, and I’ve done the impromptu coffee-with-the-CEO type thing, where you just invite some employees to meet the CEO or the president of the company, really relaxed, no formal agenda. Those have proven to be really successful. They need to be out there. I remember hearing about John Chambers when he was the CEO at Cisco Systems. They would have a monthly event at their headquarters in San Jose. Everybody having a birthday would get together with the CEO, with John Chambers. There was no program, there was no talk. He was just wandering around wishing everybody a happy birthday and chatting with them, regardless of their level. I swear people would have followed this guy anywhere. When they do show up, it’s to show up with that curiosity, to listen, because a form of appreciation is just being present and attentive and creating space for people. You talk about the introvert leaders or the ones who don’t have time. They can be introvert leaders too. If you’re asking questions about other people, if you bring in the curiosity, it’s easier to have those conversations because people are responding to that. It doesn’t have to be scripted. As you say, John, it’s just showing up and being there and not having anything scripted, but showing up with curiosity and listening. Shel, I think you’re saying that some CEOs and presidents are introverted or they don’t have time. Those are excuses. I don’t buy into that at all. Okay. I plus-one that, John. We’ve been talking a lot about all of this without really getting tactical in terms of what communicators can do to promote it. I’d love to hear your thoughts about the role of the communicator here. I think it’s seeing appreciation as a skill, and also seeing appreciation as a little distinct from recognition, from gratitude, from acknowledgment, a compliment. Communicators who know how to communicate and connect with audiences are well positioned to help teach those skills. There are practicalities of how you give appreciation and what’s the difference between the two. Then the channels where appreciation can be brought in can be where communicators play a role too. Absolutely. We are the catalyst for greater appreciation and recognition and communication. We know how to do that. Just to underscore, I know you mentioned it earlier, Cath, but to get practical: Since I have been close to you as you’ve gone through the research and developed this book, your TAPS acronym really works. It’s something we can take into workplaces and teach and model and practice, and even develop as a program. As you say, it’s generally a low- or no-budget item within organizations that can have big payoffs. I would just add that there’s an opportunity to shift from top-down communication and cascades to more conversations, and show people that they matter and you want to hear from them. Give them some element of involvement in how things are done. Opportunities to be seen and heard that they may not get through the normal course of their day-to-day activities. Right. Correct. I’ve got to get your book. I’ll just say, Catherine, I’ve got to get your book. I’ve already made a note. Excellent. I’ll send you the links. It’s available on Amazon. Excellent. It’s been as fast an hour as they usually are, but we are at the end of our time. I have just enough time to let everybody know that episode 135 of Circle of Fellows is scheduled for Thursday, November 19. It will be at noon Eastern time, which means nobody from Australia. It is an international panel, though. Diane Gayeski is in the U.S., Andrea Greenhous is in Canada, Andre Oberholzer is in South Africa, and Gloria Walker is in the U.K. A global panel. The topic will focus on long-term communication value, inclusive communication, cross-team collaboration, and role clarity. Somehow we’re going to pull all those threads together and unify them. It sounds like it’ll be a great conversation. I want to thank all of you for your time and for your insights. Of course, as always, a big thank-you to Anna Willey, who is the behind-the-scenes producer of Circle of Fellows. It couldn’t happen at all without Anna. Thanks to Anna, and thanks to all of you. We’ll see everybody next month. All right. Great job. Thank you. Take care. The post Circle of Fellows #134: Lead, Communicate, and Connect appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

description overflow, removed

When companies talk about trust, the conversation usually centers on whether employees trust their leaders. But what happens when employees stop trusting each other? Edelman’s latest Trust at Work study found that trust in coworkers is falling faster than trust in managers or CEOs. That decline can undermine collaboration, weaken communication, and leave employees questioning their colleagues’ motives. Bad experiences with organizational change, including the introduction of AI, may be making matters worse. In this episode of On the Same Page, Shel and Mark explore why internal communicators should pay more attention to peer-to-peer trust. They discuss the everyday behaviors that build or erode trust, how managers shape relationships within their teams, and why candor matters when plans change or answers aren’t available. Along the way, they consider what communicators can measure, the behaviors they can reinforce, and where communication alone cannot solve the problem. Trust may appear in the company’s values, but keeping it alive takes more than putting the word on a wall. Links from this episode: Coworkers say they distrust each other more than ever Trust at Work: Transformation Triggering Trust Demise New Workday Global Research Finds AI is Easing Burnout but May Be Deepening a Connection Deficit at Work Gen Zers are more disconnected and distrustful of coworkers than their older colleagues—and they’re so lonely they’re taking days off work Gen Z doesn’t trust anyone—especially their bosses, data shows PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey Companies overestimate their employees’ trust. That’s bad for business, PwC says. Antecedents of coworker trust: Leaders’ blessings How Managers Impact Team Productivity Raw transcript: Shel Holtz: Mark, trust is key to any organizational communication effort. When I think about trust as an internal communications factor, I think about it in several ways. How much do employees trust leaders? How much do they trust their managers? It works in the opposite direction, too: How much do leaders and managers trust employees? I also think about departments that may not trust one another. I’ve heard some interesting stories about departmental trust. But one thing I hadn’t considered was the possibility that employees simply don’t trust each other. Edelman just released its Trust at Work study, surveying more than 10,000 employees across 10 markets. Trust in coworkers fell from 82% in August 2024 to 73% today. Trust in direct managers dropped from 79% to 72%, and trust in CEOs fell from 70% to 66%. Each is a record low in Edelman’s data. Here’s what bothers me: Two years ago, coworkers were the group employees trusted most, ahead of managers and the CEO. Now, their trust is declining fastest. Mark Dollins: We often talk about culture and how, when it isn’t consciously attended to, things happen that usually aren’t what you want. I suspect trust, which is often expressed as a cultural value, is eroding partly because organizations and employees expect it to be there without thinking much about it. Add remote working and team structures in which people aren’t in the same location, and it’s easy to see how trust can erode. In one sense, that decline is shocking. In another, it isn’t surprising that it’s happening. The speed of the decline surprises me most. Shel Holtz: Me too. AI may have something to do with it. Some data suggests employees are turning to AI instead of reaching out to coworkers. The less interaction you have with colleagues, perhaps the less you trust them. There would certainly be implications for internal communications if employees trusted each other less. What do you see as some of those impacts? Mark Dollins: You’re less productive if you don’t trust each other, and you’re less likely to collaborate. Even when you do collaborate, you may not trust what you receive. People start looking for ulterior motives. It’s no longer just about the work. It becomes, “What is this person trying to accomplish? Am I truly a collaborator, or am I standing in the way of what they want?” We’ve all heard employees say, “I get the work done, but I don’t trust that person,” whether they’re talking about a manager, a peer, or somebody in another department. You still have to work together, get along, and build trust. Shel Holtz: It may also affect how employees receive our messages. Someone might say, “I’ll go along with this, but I don’t trust other people to pay attention to it.” What does that do to the impact we’re trying to achieve—the change in behavior, attitude, opinion, or belief? Mark Dollins: If we aren’t paying attention, this will continue. Communicators should be actively engaged in the issue. Trust discussions often focus on external stakeholders and whether they believe the company is doing the right thing. Internally, we’re now recognizing there’s much more to it. If we can’t trust each other to get the job done, we have a problem that starts much closer to home. This is ground zero for internal communicators. Shel Holtz: Some of Edelman’s findings should particularly interest you, given your focus on change. Three-quarters of respondents had experienced at least one transformation in the past year. The most common, reported by 53%, was AI implementation. Among employees who had a bad transformation experience, trust in coworkers with different values dropped from 77% to 50%. When change goes badly, it doesn’t just erode trust in leadership. People retreat into their own camps. Mark Dollins: Sadly, this is only the beginning of change on that scale. AI isn’t going away. I suspect it will become bigger and more complex, especially as regulation adds another dimension to how we use and trust it. That reinforces what we discussed about change management as an essential part of AI adoption or any significant technological change. We can’t treat this as simply a technology rollout. It’s change with a capital C, and it needs to be managed. Shel Holtz: I looked for other research exploring declining trust among employees. Workday’s Human Connection Workplace Index found that a third of employees rarely or never have a conversation with a colleague that goes beyond transactional work. PwC has made the point that people don’t trust what they don’t know. Without regular interaction, you don’t develop trust. Could part of the explanation be that simple? Mark Dollins: I suspect a good portion of it is. Think about what builds trust: setting an example, doing what you say you’ll do, following through, and establishing clear expectations. If you’re a leader, you explain the standard and address situations in which people fall short. Many of the behaviors that build trust between leaders and employees also apply between peers. If I tell you I’ll get something to you today, Shel, and I don’t, your trust in me begins to erode. I deserve that unless I take responsibility and explain: “I know what I promised. I can’t deliver it today, and here’s why. Here’s what I’ll do to make it right.” Taking ownership builds trust. These are simple things—common decency and human behavior—that sit at the center of peer-to-peer trust. Shel Holtz: It’s also about bringing people together and spending time together beyond work transactions. Mark Dollins: It’s easy to distrust people we don’t know. “You’re a stranger. I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you.” Shel Holtz: We talk about this with safety all the time. You can encourage people to speak up until you’re blue in the face, but it’s different when they know each other well enough to care personally. “I know about your family and the challenges you’re facing. I see you doing something dangerous, and I’m going to speak up because I don’t want you to get hurt.” That extends well beyond safety. Mark Dollins: A question for you, Shel: When you work with organizations on their values and how to bring those values to life, trust comes up in almost every set of company values I’ve seen. How do you make it a living, breathing part of the organization? Shel Holtz: For the past nine years, I’ve worked with one organization. Trust is one of our core values and one of the four planks of our strategic plan. We have committees working on it, we’ve researched it, and we’re taking tangible steps to build trust internally and externally. If I were advising an organization today, I’d start with measurement. You can say trust between peers has declined, but you can’t explain why without asking. You need to understand what’s underneath it. Mark Dollins: As you say that, I’m thinking about pulse surveys. They’re a common measurement tool, but I can’t say I’ve seen many that specifically focus on internal trust. Perhaps some of our viewers can tell us what they’re doing to measure trust in their organizations. Even when trust isn’t explicitly named as a value, it often appears in how organizations define respect. Respect is another value that comes up frequently, and its definition often includes building trust among stakeholders. Shel Holtz: We’ve talked about engagement before. I think one reason people have become skeptical of engagement surveys is that they don’t explore these underlying issues. Our engagement survey has 40 questions. We aren’t tying it to Gallup or another packaged survey. We want to understand the issues underlying engagement, and several questions concern relationships with peers. We do explore that where I work. I also found an older study, from 2008, showing that employees trust peers more when their formal leader trusts those peers. That effect was stronger when team performance was poor. Manager behavior helps shape who gets trusted. That connects directly to the manager communication work we do. Mark Dollins: Often, we don’t do enough of it. We can coach managers to lead in ways that build trust. Most of us have experienced a micromanager. Managers need to understand what that behavior looks like and how it affects their teams’ willingness to trust them. Whether or not it’s intentional, micromanagement communicates, “I don’t trust you.” It’s a two-way street. Empower employees to do their jobs and step back. If something goes wrong, address it. But give people the opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the work. That communicates, “I trust you to do the job I hired you to do, and you can trust me to fulfill my responsibilities to you and the team.” Shel Holtz: I’ve been thinking about what communicators can do. There are limits; we can’t fix every issue through communication. First, measure it. PwC found that executives overestimate how much they’re trusted, and most trust measures are subjective. If we don’t ask about peer trust in our surveys, we don’t know where we stand. Second, get honest about change. Edelman’s prescription is “truth well told”: Explain what’s changing, what isn’t, and how employees have a say. That requires a real conversation, not simply a rollout announcement. Third, equip managers. Gallup says managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. They help establish the conditions in which peers trust each other, yet many have never been trained to do that. Mark Dollins: A culture of trust begins at the top. In many organizations I’ve worked with, a lack of transparency and candor has interfered with trust, particularly during significant change. I’ve always advocated that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know,” or, “I can’t tell you,” provided you explain why. You might say, “Shel, I know the answer and would like to tell you. Here’s why I can’t, at least not yet.” Or, “About 80% is settled, but the remaining 20% could change what I tell you, and I don’t want to give you information that turns out to be wrong.” There are many ways to explain what you know, what you don’t know, and why you can’t share everything. The Dow–DuPont merger is a good example. People wanted specifics about the organizational structure, but we couldn’t provide them because divestitures were still being negotiated in the United States, the EU, and elsewhere. Those decisions would affect the portfolio and, ultimately, the structure. The discussions were difficult and confidential, including negotiations outside the company. Until those were resolved, we couldn’t fully explain the outcome. I advocated explaining that uncertainty, even if we had previously said we expected an answer in six months. We could say, “The negotiations are more complex than anticipated. The world around us is responding differently to our plans. We’re working on it, and we’ll update you.” Give people a revised time frame if you can: “We’re aiming for the next 60 to 90 days.” I kept pushing leaders not to stop at, “We don’t know,” or, “We can’t answer that.” After hearing that repeatedly for eight or 10 months, people may conclude, “Either you’re lying to us, or you don’t know what you’re doing.” You don’t want either conclusion. Transparency doesn’t mean revealing trade secrets or Willy Wonka’s chocolate recipe. It means giving people as much explanation and context as you can. Shel Holtz: I’ve encountered this during periods when communications are restricted around a merger or acquisition. Sometimes even explaining why you can’t say more can disclose something you shouldn’t. But there are usually things you can say instead of saying nothing. Mark Dollins: Right. You can refer to what you’ve already announced and explain that it’s taking longer than expected. “Hang in there. We’re working on it.” Shel Holtz: More recently, this has come up with AI. Initially, we told employees, “Use it. Experiment. Try things.” Now some organizations are saying, “We need to move beyond general experimentation and become more focused on how we apply AI.” They’re also saying, “Please stop burning through so many tokens. It’s costing a fortune. We need you to dial back what we previously encouraged.” Some leaders seem embarrassed by that rather than explaining what changed. Perhaps the organization moved from a subscription arrangement to token-based pricing. Explain it, and people can understand. Mark Dollins: Absolutely. This is new territory. We don’t have 10 years of experience with these tools in their current form. Change isn’t a straight line, and we’ll have to adjust as we learn. You can say, “Thank you for experimenting. You did what we asked. Now we need to adjust, and here’s why.” It’s about candor. Shel Holtz: AI could also contribute to declining peer trust. Suppose I use it to produce a polished document, save myself time, and send it to you. You start reading and realize it sounds good but has no substance. Now you have to spend two hours making sense of it. Your trust in me is likely to decline. Mark Dollins: I teach at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and I’ve seen students use AI in ways that make it clear they haven’t done the necessary work. In one case, a student advocated something that didn’t exist. That doesn’t apply to everyone, but it happens. It makes me examine that person’s work more closely because I can see they’re using AI without checking it. I start wondering whether they’re being careful. Why wouldn’t the same thing happen at work? If someone produces sloppy or substandard work, I don’t want that to reflect on me, particularly if we’re supposed to be partners on a project. Shel Holtz: We can address that during AI adoption. You may save time, but if the result is slop, you’re transferring work to colleagues, and their trust in you may suffer. There’s also a generational dimension. The Workday report found that Gen Z employees were 16 times more likely than Gen X employees to say they don’t trust their coworkers. That makes communication across generations an interesting challenge. Mark Dollins: It does, and we need to pay attention. A one-size-fits-all approach to trust won’t work. Different generations may have different expectations about what matters and how trust is established. Something else occurs to me about working in teams. Whether someone has submitted inaccurate AI-generated work or simply made a mistake, trust can be built through how others respond. If it’s an honest mistake, that’s an opportunity to say, “I understand how that happened. I’ve done something similar. What can I do to help? Don’t beat yourself up over it.” Intentional misconduct is different. But when somebody makes an honest mistake, showing support can go a long way. That’s especially relevant if you’re aware that others don’t trust you. Supporting Joe or Sarah when they make a mistake can help people see you differently. Again, these are basic human behaviors. Getting to know people and standing up for them when there’s a problem can build or rebuild trust. Shel Holtz: This is an area where communicators can play a significant role because it’s a culture issue: “This is how we do things around here.” We can reinforce those behaviors through communication and encourage leaders to recognize people who demonstrate them. Leaders also need to address behavior that works against trust. Mark Dollins: Leaders have opportunities to build trust through how they manage conflict. Almost every team has people who don’t get along. Managers can help find common ground between individuals or groups. Communicators, working with people who have the right expertise, can develop content and experiences that help managers and employees learn to navigate conflict. Shel Holtz: Having the managerial courage to hold those difficult conversations is a big deal. That might be a topic for a future episode. Mark Dollins: Exactly. You don’t need a master’s degree in conflict resolution. A few useful tools can help you accomplish a lot. Shel Holtz: Can you get a master’s in conflict resolution? I didn’t know that. Somewhere you can, no doubt. Mark Dollins: I’m sure you can, Shel. I’ll find it for you and get back to you. Shel Holtz: Sounds great. Listeners and viewers, we’d love to hear what’s happening in your organization with peer-to-peer trust. Are you measuring it? Have you noticed a decline? Email [email protected], leave a comment in the show notes at FIRPodcastNetwork.com, or respond on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, or Threads, where we announce new episodes. We’ve received comments and will collect and share them in an upcoming episode. Until then, thank you, everybody, and thank you, Mark. It’s been fun. Mark Dollins: Thanks for joining us. Good to see you, Shel. Take care. The post OTSP #10: The Decline in Employees’ Trust in Each Other appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Most communicators long for that coveted seat at the table. What do those who have attained it have to say about it? What does it take to achieve it? And does it deliver the kind of influence top-level communicators want? Neville and Shel explore the data and share their own thoughts in this short midweek episode.