Writing Boots

After cursing the communication darkness yesterday, I promised to light a communication candle today.

I was on a call Monday with a bunch of executive communication professionals at the newest ECC member, a giant company that will go nameless because the call was off the record.

I was giving a fast overview of executive communication past, present and future, and someone asked something awfully close to, what’s the point of exec comms? What are we actually trying to do here? I almost gave her the right answer, sharing how former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern communicated during COVID—via various media, you saw her everywhere, in every context—including in her own home, in her sweatshirt—so that eventually you felt you were traveling as a sidekick to her thoughtful, warm, good-natured, curious, indefatigable self. At the time, I felt more comforted by Ardern than by any politician around here. As I wrote back in 2023, “Jacinda Ardern Showed Us How Leaders Should Communicate Now.”

But it was only almost the right answer, because most leaders, especially the kind of hard-driving corporate type my questioner no doubt serves, won’t take the time Ardern took to bring her audiences along so intimately or constantly. Nor should they, probably.

Here’s what they—and, the communication people who support them—ought to do, in every every appearance they do make. Whether it’s a big speech at Davos, a town hall meeting with employees or a selfie video from the road, they ought to be answering the two ultimate questions every audience is asking, simultaneously:

1. What makes them so special? Why am I down here and they’re up there? Are they smarter than me, more devoted to the organization or industry than me, more articulate on these issues than me? (And the audience wants a very good, affirmative answer to at least one of those questions.)

2. Are they like me? Based on their upbringing, their career, their life story, can they understand me and my colleagues and our families well enough to treat us right? Have they struggled, too? Have they had a boss too? Have they worried about their livelihood too? (And the audience wants evidence.)

If you’re in executive communications, you want to be helping your principal answer those two questions over and over again, with every opportunity. Indeed, you should be seeking opportunities to answer those questions. And once you start looking for them, and assuming the leader you’re serving is both special and human, they’re not that hard to come by. See Mary Barra’s Father’s Day post from last week, on LinkedIn.

That short post answers both of the essential questions that any GM employee, customer or investor might have about her:

She’s special because of who her father was and how he raised her, to be a car nut with a curious engineer’s mind and an honest spirit. Who else should be the CEO of GM?

And she’s a normal human being, because her dad was a mensch and diemaker and she was a little girl on his pajama clad lap, just like you. Who would you rather have as CEO of GM?

Answering these two essential questions once isn’t enough, of course. Leaders must answer them, in one way or another, in every appearance. Their comms folks must help them answer the first question humbly. And remind them—after all the years they’ve spent taking private jets to private airports and private elevators to private suites—why they must answer the second question, too.