From Micromanagement to Trust: Strengthening Leadership-Communications Collaboration
When “We Should Do This!” Undermines Communications Collaboration
Early in my communications career, I would often receive messages from leaders within my organization with links to other nonprofits’ social media posts, media features, campaign materials, or the likes, with a note that read something like, “We should do this!” or even “Let’s discuss how we can replicate this.”
I experienced this for many years in my career. Well-meaning leaders thought they were sharing helpful tactics. But the truth is that they were undermining the very strategic work of the communications team. To me, it felt like distrust and disrespect toward my function and expertise. In truth, it was that my colleagues did not understand the communications strategy well enough to understand the tactics that supported it.
Well-Meaning, But Misguided
As a professional communicator, I love to follow other organizations to get inspiration and ideas. I learn so much from fellow communicators who I follow on LinkedIn, for example, about how they approach strategic communications and lead in a constantly evolving world.
However, it is inspiration only. Because here’s the thing: Communications strategy is based on several elements unique to the organization. Things like:
- Business priorities and goals
- Target audiences
- Communications goals
- Desired outcomes and behaviours
- Political environment and trending issues
- Past performance and metrics
- Capacity (this one is especially true in the nonprofit sector)
What one organization does is not going to work for another because each has a different mix of the elements above. One organization may be prioritizing a particular policy change while another is focusing on attracting new donors and yet another focused on partnership building. These are all totally valid and presumably linked to the organization’s broader strategy and mission.
Why Strategy Must Guide Communications Collaboration
As I progressed in my communications career, I learned to better manage these messages from colleagues sharing inspiration from other organizations. I also matured in my approach to how others perceive communications. It took reflection, experience, and mentors to help me realize that I had to stop blaming others for this kind of behaviour and take responsibility for what I was passively allowing. I had to be much more proactive and so I set on a mission to show communications as a strategic function rather than a service department.
From Passive Frustration to Proactive Communications Collaboration
I had to do two things. The first, was to get to the root of why colleagues, particularly senior leaders, were sending me links to other organizations’ communications products. I’d often get the link with little else–no context, no information as to why they thought the communication was effective. And so, I started to ask questions to understand what they liked and why they thought this might work at our organization. I needed to understand the behaviour to mediate it. I learned to ask better questions. I listened, but I also pushed (respectfully) to get to a shared understanding and determination: Actually, this was probably not a great tactical fit for us.
Ask Questions to Build Alignment
What I learned through asking questions and discussing the tactic is that my colleagues didn’t understand the communications strategy. They weren’t aware one was in place, which meant they really didn’t understand how that was playing out in the day-to-day.
Strategy is the only way to be able to say “no” to things that are not a right fit. Without one, we as communicators are prone to perpetuate an ineffective model: A busy team, grasping at tactics, with no real sense of direction or way to know whether we’re on track. I’ve been on that team. I was not going to let that play out.
Educate to Build Understanding
And so, the second thing I needed to do was educate my colleagues on the strategic nature of communications. I needed to flip this perception that we’re a service-based department but rather a valuable, contributing function to realizing our mission and meaningful change in the world.
I requested time at senior leadership and executive meetings to share strategy and draw a direct line between the plan and the organization’s broader goals and priorities. In quarterly performance reports, I used indicators to demonstrate how the communications team was contributing to our enterprise progress. I worked with my team to document workflows and shared those broadly so colleagues understood when to engage communications (hint: early in the process) and why (spoiler: so we can contribute to strategy). I corrected colleagues who had requests like, “Can you pretty this up” or “Please send this to the whole organization.” I was on a mission to educate about the very strategic nature of communications.
As fellow department leaders and executives began to better understand the strategic nature of our work and why the communications team was prioritizing particular tactics over others, an interesting thing happened: The messages with links to other organizations’ work slowed. I began to receive different kinds of messages from colleagues who could now understand the communications strategy and see it play out. Suddenly it was “I love this” or “I’ve received a few messages from partners in response to this.” When senior leaders feel like a team has things handled and that they are bringing deep thought and strategy to the work, they no longer feel the need to frantically micromanage.
A Final Note on Respect and Communications Collaboration
Professional communicators have important work to do to define and socialize strategy and how colleagues perceive the function. But also, here is the ask to leaders outside of communications: Trust that your communications team has a sound strategy in place that is aligned with the organization’s priorities. Trust that the tactics in the communications plan are contributing to the organization’s goals for the year. Trust that the communications team brings deep expertise and experience to their roles. Give them the same trust and respect that you do other professions (HR and finance come to mind). We’re really good at what we do and sending us notes about what another organization is doing and suggesting we change course is disrespectful.
Receiving “helpful” messages with inspiration from other organizations is frustrating for communications leaders. It’s also a waste of time. There’s work to do for communicators and other leaders to align and work more effectively moving forward. We all just need the time to plan, understand, and align.
Have you joined the Nonprofit Hive? If not, you are missing out! Join today 🐝
Anne Greenwood is a communications consultant working with mission-driven organizations to shape the stories that drive meaningful change in our world.
She offers additional strategic capacity to nonprofit communications teams and leaders so they can provide mission-critical value and get out of the vicious cycle of churn. Anne works collaboratively to develop high-impact communications that influence decision-makers, build trust, and centre voices closest to the issue.