Only human

I've been talking to my friend Charles Artichoke about the volume of media coverage about Jade Goody.

One angle that's been picked up is the question of whether Channel 4 coached Jade through her eviction interview. Was she genuinely sorry, or did some wicked PR person put the words in her mouth, in which case, we don't believe her and we're mad at Channel 4 for trying to manipulate us.

Moving away from the Big Brother madness, I've been thinking about how this applies to internal comms.

In my line manager workshops, I ask people to talk about a leader they regard as a fantastic communicator, and why.  Usually people talk about leaders that are 'human', 'real', and genuinely on board with what they're saying. Conversely, the poor communicators may be extremely polished presenters, but they are seen as giving the company line, communicating what they've been told to in an impeccably-trained way, but TOO coached, too polished, too quick with their pre-prepared messages to be believed.

I've been talking with a few organisations about how we help leaders, yes, to understand and communicate corporate messages, but also to be themselves and make the most of their personalities.  How do we help people see the strengths of their own style and give them permission to use it, rather than having to cover it up with what they think the 'right' one might be? How do we get people just to be normal instead of talking a load of cringe-worthy jargon they'd never dream of using outside the office?  (Apparently Jade said she 'couldn't dignify her behaviour' in her interview. She thought up those words all by herself, did she?)

When I first got a coach, I was asked (not by anyone in my organisation) whether I'd be getting help to seem 'less feminine' and 'more corporate' in my style. The answer was, no thanks - this is how I am.

I've seen leaders a bit less sure of themselves with their personalities literally coached out of them. After seeing one person become more and more 'corporate' but lose almost all of his spark and look permanently miserable, I went to see him and asked where 'he' had disappeared to. He said I was the only person for months who had actually asked about him, rather than talking about who the organisation wanted him to be. And I'll bet his team wouldn't have described him as one of those 'human' and 'real' communicators, although he was saying all the right things in a technically perfect way.

I'm not arguing against coaching here, by the way.  I found it so helpful that I trained to be a coach myself. My question is, in an age where people are so alert to any idea of being spun a line, how exactly do we help managers just to be natural, human communicators?  Since when did 'just being yourself' get so difficult?

Sue

Comments

[Fiona]

A slight tangent but one I'm interested in... the difference between the 'party line' and what actually gets distilled down to the average Joe. I've got a background in banking, so I'm interested to see today on BBC online (link at the bottom) that some banks will get fined over payment protection insurance - or loan insurance to you and me.

Now, when I was at a high street bank, the party line was always "don't mis-sell, never mis-sell, we have a duty to customers etc. etc.". This was often translated by local managers into sales targets and sell to anyone - at any cost.

Having spoken to senior management about this problem during drinks, I'm convinced they actually meant what they said. While they wanted profit to increase, they wanted it done responsibly otherwise it will come and bite them in the backside (as it had done before as a result of a legacy from previous management).

This, then, leaves us with a problem. A new management team saying what they actually want to happen (is this rare?) and a workforce continuing to do what years of previous management has drummed into them. While this is a cultural change, I'm not sure this is possible when distillation of messages seems to produce the same result.

I must admit, towards the end of my working life there, I did begin to give up.... so to link in with Sue's "How can we be good at being ourselves when people don't believe us?", how can we make management more believeable to cynical staff? And how do we stop those messages getting distorted into the same old shapes?