I was recently a guest on the Supercharged Change and Comms podcast. Hosted by Pete Hodges and Chris Bradley, the podcast speaks to leaders in the field of change management and communication to get their insights on the best internal communications practices, and the lessons they’ve learned during their career. In this episode I chat to Chris and Pete about my top tips for getting started in comms, whether we should be worried about AI, and the skills I think all internal communications teams should be prioritising in 2024. I also talk about our upcoming unconference, Comms Reboot, which you ..read more

If we are to lead, we have to be accountable. Yet so many leaders still find it extremely hard. It’s a topic that comes up again and again in my work. When you’re in a senior role and dealing with a barrage of decisions that need to be made, and constantly changing goalposts, it can be really hard to remain accountable. Yet it’s one of the main areas that, when it’s not there, can quickly lead to crisis within an organisation. In this blog I’ll look at why accountability can be so difficult, why it’s so important and outline some tips to help you and your organisation get better at it. Why is ..read more

Are you clear on your organisation’s purpose? Are you communicating it well? And are you embodying it with your actions and decisions? Chances are if you’re in an HR, PR, communications or marketing role the answer will be yes. But often as a leader it can become easy to make decisions that are not in line with the purpose, especially when you’re juggling multiple stakeholders and different pressures. It’s also easy to miss the correlation between decisions, actions and purpose.   It’s a topic I‘ve been researching and reading about for the last five years – looking at the impact it ..read more

How to lead a remote team effectively? So much has been written about remote working in the last four years, with organisations across the world adapting to new ways of working in the post-COVID era. But there’s one thing that I don’t think we, as leaders, acknowledge enough – leading a remote team is tough. When you’re not having regular face-to-face contact with colleagues, the effort required to keep people engaged and inspired is much greater. I’ve done a lot of research and had many conversations with leaders about this over the last few years and it’s a recurring theme. Sustaining a grea ..read more

Establishing the culture of an organisation takes time. Get it right and your employees know what’s expected of them, what they can expect from others, and feel confident in their working behaviour. Get it wrong and chaos can ensure. Which is why it’s so important that culture comes from the top down and that we, as leaders, play an active role in creating and promoting it, both in our words and our actions. In this blog I’ll talk about the link between culture and leadership, and explain how understanding your own leadership style can be the key to creating or restoring calm. What is cult ..read more

Nothing creates chaos inside an organisation faster than fear. If not handled correctly, fear of the unknown and fear of change can become breeding grounds for distrust, false information and incorrect assumptions. This can lead to devastating impacts within a business, creating: Second guessing Scepticism A lack of faith that people will do what they say Deliberate resistance to change Wasted time Stress and anxiety Internal communications plays a huge role in addressing and minimising fear, but it’s important for all leaders within an organisation to play their part. In this blog post we’l ..read more

You can’t create a high-performing organisation without creating a better experience for your employees. Yet, so often, this is something that’s only focused on at the start of someone’s journey. We know the importance of a good experience when it comes to recruitment and onboarding but if this doesn’t continue into their employment staff can easily become distrustful and disengaged. Which is why we’ve developed our own employee experience model. By aligning employee experience with the employee lifecycle and looking at what areas should be the focus at each stage, we can ensure staff are havi ..read more

In this LinkedIn Audio Live, I talk to Nicola Rylett-Jones, Human Accountability Leader and Executive Coach, about the importance of clear communication by leaders. We discuss why effective communication is so important within an organisation, the key things to consider when trying to get your message across to your audience, and take a look at examples of excellent communication in practice. It is crucial that leaders are able to articulate where they/their organisation are going if they want people to follow. People need to feel safe at work and communication plays a huge role in that. It t ..read more

Internal communications trends are always a hot topic for those in the industry and in the last three months there have been lots of reports, research papers and blog posts with suggestions and ideas from technology companies and experts in the profession. It can be hard to know which ones to pay attention to but, based on my reading, these are the trends or themes that I think will have the greatest impact throughout 2024… Internal communications trends for 2024 Connecting employees with each other in the human sense, not the tech sense AI (Artificial intelligence) Hyper-personalisation – ta ..read more

In almost every organisation we work with, leadership emerges as an issue. Failing to get to grips with how you lead, and the subsequent impact of this on those around you, is a sure-fire route to organisational chaos. As humans, we have an inbuilt need for hierarchy but the challenge lies in making sure those at the top have the skills required to be a good leader. Often those in senior roles may be there because they are good at what they do, not because they have excellent leadership skills. Taking time to understand your own personal leadership style and that of wider leadership teams sh ..read more