The Internal Comms Podcast

Episode 106 – School of thought: Inside Matt Tidwell’s comms curriculum

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes Matt Tidwell to the hot seat. Matt is a consultant, communicator and educator, and has led comms agencies, built brands, advised CEOs and nurtured the next comms greats at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. As you can imagine, he has a wealth of fantastic life experience to share.

We begin this episode by unpacking the influence Matt’s mother had on his route into comms. Matt shares the importance of empathy, curiosity and strategic thinking in internal comms and insight into the gaps in modern communicators’ skillsets. He also makes a strong case for upskilling in areas you might not expect. All this, and much, much more.

As always, share your thoughts on this or any other episode of The Internal Comms Podcast using the hashtag #TheICPodcast. And thanks for listening.

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Katie 00:00
Katie, welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast with me Katie Macaulay. If you’re passionate about ensuring employees are informed, inspired, involved and truly connected to each other and the mission of your organisation, you are in exactly the right place. Every two weeks, I sit down with a leading comms practitioner, consultant, academic or author, and together, we explore fresh ways to improve communication in the workplace. My guest today ticks many of those boxes. Matt Tidwell is a consultant, communicator and educator with a wealth of experience. Matt has helped lead comms agencies, lead comms departments, and has worked alongside CEOs to build brands and engage employees. These days, Matt is helping shape the next generation of comms professionals as Assistant Dean and faculty member at the William Alan White school of journalism and mass communications at the University of Kansas. I first met Matt while we were serving together on the board of the International Association of Business Communicators, IABC, and I was immediately struck by his clarity of thought and deep passion for our profession. In this episode, we dive into what it means to be living in the age of the empowered stakeholder. We explore what internal comms pros can learn from our friends in marketing in terms of leveraging the power of research, mapping the customer journey and building personas. We discuss why IC professionals must be front and center when planning a crisis response. I asked Matt what critical skills aren’t taught in the classroom and what qualities set apart those students who go on to have stellar careers in communications. And besides all that, we discuss a lot, lot more. It is my very great pleasure to bring you Matt Tidwell. So, Matt, welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you.

Matt 02:30
It’s so great to be here. Katie, thank you so much, and thank you for the great work you’re doing. It’s been fun to watch the success of your podcast, and it’s become go to listening for those of us anywhere around the internal communications sphere. So proud to have had you ask me to join.

Katie 02:44
Thank you, Matt, that’s very kind. Let’s start near the beginning, and this might seem a strange place to start, but can you tell us about your mum? Because I believe she had an influence on two things: your actual career, what you went on to actually do in life, but also your overall approach to work as well your ethos. Would that be fair?

Matt 03:06
I think that would be fair for sure, and a good place to start, right, because we begin at the beginning. My mom was a journalist. She was a working reporter. She was a features reporter, so she covered long form features and interviews and things like that in the days before podcasts, right, when that had to be limited to the print sphere. But she did some really interesting work. I was cleaning out my basement and looking… she’s unfortunately passed, but she interviewed some really terrific, well known subjects. Margaret Mead, the famous social scientist, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek science fiction franchise. So yeah, and so that certainly gave me an interest in the power of communication, the power of story, and certainly these days as communicator, story is probably more important than ever. Absolutely, I look back to a lot of the things that she did as being inspiring to me as a communicator later in life. And she actually spent some time in corporate communications, PR, as well. So we had a similarity there. But I think, from the approach to work standpoint, single mother and working a job that didn’t necessarily land on the higher end of the pay scale, and trying to raise two children simultaneously, and all the struggles and the difficulties that entails, that sticks with you, certainly when you’re a child in that situation, and hopefully, it has informed things like work ethic for me and just to continue knitting and really trying to work as hard as you can on your craft. All of those things played a role, for sure.

Katie 04:26
Now you’ve worked in your career across both internal and external comms, so perhaps one of the obvious questions to ask up front is, what’s the difference? Is there a basic, fundamental difference in approach or delivery or the strategy? There’s a big debate, isn’t there, whether there is even a need for a line between internal and external? I just wonder what your take is on that.

Matt 04:51
Yeah, that’s such a good question Katie, and absolutely, it’s changed. Right? Convergence has had such an impact. Truly now, I think the lines between internal and external are probably blurred more than they ever have been. Certainly, when I was working in the internal field a dozen or so years ago, the lines were much clearer. But by the way, I think convergence, in many ways, is a good thing. I don’t see it as a bad thing. I think that I tell students, you need to be a five tool player, as we say in American baseball. You need to be able to do a little bit of everything. And so I think convergence has been a good trend. But there are differences. I think externally, the quality of our external programs quite often depends on the depth and the insight from the research that we do, and we have very expensive listening tools and research tools that we use on the external communication side, but I think increasingly that’s true for internal communications as well. I think that our employee audience, let’s say, is so much more diverse. Things like the hybrid work environment have created an employee ecosystem that’s much different than it was. And I think that research there needs to be as diligent and as thorough as what we do on the external side. In the old days, when I was practicing, the line was always “we’re around our employees all the time,” right? We see them in the cafeteria, in the break room, so therefore we have a good pulse on the employee base. I’m not so sure that’s true today, particularly with the hybrid environment. So I would encourage, and do encourage my students that are interested in internal to really approach research with the same rigor that they do externally. So I would say that’s probably the major change that I’ve seen, but, yeah, convergence is here. It’s here to stay. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And we need to recruit and train more of those, as I say, five tool players, communications, who can do who can really do it all.

Katie 06:34
I’ve had some guests say, Oh, the big difference is, you can’t put a gloss on internal news. These are people that see under the hood, they see under the bonnet. But I’m wondering, isn’t that true for all audiences now? They have access to so much information, and organisations have to be pretty transparent. You need to think of their corporate walls almost being made of glass bricks. People can see in at all different levels. So is that really a big difference?

Matt 06:59
Yeah, well I tell my students, were living in the age of the empowered stakeholder, which is much, much different than, say, the Mad Men era or something like that. The stakeholder has tremendous power now, and we need to be cognizant of that. I teach a lot of crisis communications, and believe me, in that course, we talk a lot about treating the stakeholder from the perspective that they have true power and that they deserve transparency. And by the way, if you don’t provide transparency, they will demand it. And so the game has changed, I think. And why that is, I’m not so sure, but certainly they are more empowered. The tools, social media has made a big impact on that, both externally and internally, but no, I don’t think we can gloss over communications or try to slip things past, I just think it’s extremely difficult. This audience has a lot of power. They’re very close to where the work is happening, to where the issues are. And in something like crisis, you need to be able to use your employee base proactively. And think of them as just as much of a communications mouthpiece, if you will, as any kind of communications you can do, whether that be a press release or a standby statement or those types of things.

Katie 08:06
You mentioned your students that are interested in internal communication. I’m just wondering what the perception is though of internal comms compared to those communication disciplines that people thought of as having a little bit more attention and time and budget, the slightly sexier ones. Is the perception changing? I hope it might be.

Matt 08:26
I hope it is. I’m not sure we’re there yet. I happen to believe, and I tell my students all the time that internal communications is every bit as exciting as external. I think actually some of the more innovative work I’ve seen strategically and from a planning perspective, is actually happening on the internal comms side. But having said all that, you’re absolutely right. The students look to the bright shiny objects, right? And of course, we’re living in the Instagram generation, and so I think we have some work to do there. What I try to do is just showcase the really terrific work that’s happening internally, and also underscore the value that we can provide as communicators working in internal communications. I think we we have a little bit more of a freer hand there, because we don’t have a lot of the outside influences that we will see in external, whether that be legal, whether that be our friends in sales and marketing. And I just think there’s a lot of power that comes with internal communications. When I was in corporate and agency all those years, I was almost split down the middle. But when I think back to the projects that I really look back on with a lot of pride, most of those were internal. They were watching an audience move in a particular direction, or they were seeing an executive team really pleased with what was happening culturally. You work a lot on those kinds of things when you’re in internal and so I look back on that time really fondly.

Katie 09:42
Yeah, I mean, there’s some very big, meaty projects that we, as IC people, get involved in. You know, major it transformations, cultural transformations, as you say. And when we’re involved from the very get go on those we can make such a big difference. And I also, think we get a very privileged position into the beating heart of an organisation as well. And I’m not sure someone working in external comms gets quite that privileged peak into every single function.

Matt 10:12
Yeah I think that’s fair. And not that there’s not pressure and there’s pressure on both sides, right? No, my students are going into internal communications, you know, they’re like, what is this? Sounds like it’s going to be an easier role. I’m like, I wouldn’t be so sure. Corporations, organisations have very definitive goals about things like where they want to see their culture go and focused on the right things like employee engagement, and you’re right at the heart of that when you’re working in internal communications. It’s not without stress, it’s not without challenge. But I do think that it’s a it’s an exciting time to be working in the internal communication space, no question about it. And frankly, that’s why your show is such a must listen for me, because I get a chance to hear all these great leaders talk about the wonderful things they’re doing on the internal side.

Katie 10:55
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Katie 12:29
Matt, you have taught for over a decade at this point, and you must have seen the curriculum change quite a bit, I’m guessing, over that time to meet the changing demands of today’s businesses. Are there any gaps? Do you think what is being taught in college that future comms professionals will need to address once they actually enter the workplace?

Matt 12:57
There are some gaps, certainly that we’re seeing. I work a lot with, at our university, we have, of course, undergraduate students in our school, and then we also have more working professional master’s degree students, and that happens to be the audience that I work more with. So these would be students that may have graduated two, three years ago. They’ve been through their first job. They’ve probably taken a few lumps in that job and had some challenges. So I get them at a unique time. But there are two things that I see from a kind of a gap perspective. One of those is business acumen. We are just simply not doing a good enough job in the kind of the secondary education world teaching the language of business fluency. And I think that’s just extremely important, right? Because particularly on the internal communications, because you’re, you know, you’re going to be looking at data, whether that be financial, whether it be supply chain related, because you’re going to have those kinds of projects all the time, and you want to be as fluent in the language of business as you can. And we’re seeing that as a real deficit. And by the way, you know, when you ask CEOs, and I’ve been watched a couple CEO panels in conferences and things like that in the last two or three years, they will mention that as well, that too many of the younger communicators just don’t understand the business. We do a great job of teaching them the tools, if you will. So how to write a good press release, how to write a good employee statement, how to manage maybe a marketing event internally or externally, that type of thing. But what we don’t do is get them ready for the fact that they’re going to be working in a very kind of segmented business sector, whether that be healthcare, whether that be finance, publicly traded companies, things like that, and they’re going to have to understand how to read a balance sheet, how to look at a statement.

Matt 14:33
I distinctly remember one of my very first corporate roles after a promotion. I’m finally in the CEO suite, right? And I’m seated there, and the other executives come in, and the balance sheet, or the cost of goods sold, or whatever it might be, reports start going around, and I just look at it, and I just, my face just drops almost audibly, and as I tell my students, that was not a good day in my career. Because guess what? Other people see that, and they understand that you’re, you know, you don’t feel like you’re ready. You’re not confident, and it can be definitely a real issue. And yeah, so I think business acumen is definitely the number one gap.

Matt 15:06
I will say that there’s some great work being done. I just had an orientation session with my students a week or so ago, and a couple names that I would suggest maybe to listeners, Dr Matt Ragas and Professor Ron Culp at DePaul University have written, I think, two books, one of them called it is called strategic acumen for business communicators, I believe. But the authors are Ragas, R-A-G-A-S and Culp, and all they do is talk about learning the language of business fluency for communicators. Highly recommend them as a resource.

Matt 15:32
The second gap, to me, would be what we would think of as professional skills, sometimes called soft skills, things like self awareness and team dynamic and things like that. We hit that really hard in my programme. When you and I were young communicators, everybody was working in an office environment. There was a kind of a commonality about our shared experience as employees that we frankly are not seeing now, and I think that’s causing issues. It’s causing communicators to, frankly, not understand some of the ways of working in a large organisational setting, and that’s been a real deficit. And by the way, the students understand that as well, that they’re not getting some of those softer skills, or professional skills, and we work a lot on things like emotional intelligence and the importance that, because I think in this hybrid environment, is much harder. I think it’s going to continue to be difficult for them to pick up on those kinds of things that, again, you and I picked up very easily because we were there in the break rooms, and there around the water coolers and things like that. And students today, they may graduate, they may take a job at an agency. Let’s say they’re here in the US. They may be based in the Midwest, I have a couple students that are this way. Working for a large agency. They’re working out of their one bedroom apartment, 10, 12 hours a week. Their entire team is new in New York. They may see them once or twice, and it’s just it’s an entirely different way of working. Say, when I was at an agency, very collegial, and everybody was there together. It causes a lot of issues. We could spend an entire other episode on things like even loneliness for people like that, but one of the things where it creates a deficit, as in this area of professional skills.

Matt 15:32
Yeah, I just remember spending the first three or four, maybe longer, many years, early years, watching my bosses and watching everything. Watching the way they took notes, watching the way they handled meetings, spoke to their boss. It was learning a lot through observation, and if you can’t do that, I think that’s, yeah, how do you replicate that? So it’s a really hard question, I think. I totally agree.

Katie 17:29
In terms of business acumen, I think I was very lucky, because I had to spend some time in investor relations, writing the annual report for a very large British bank, and I had that moment the first time, thinking, what do all these numbers mean? And very slowly, or actually, it wasn’t very slowly, because I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it pretty quickly. But I found friends that would break it down for me in the finance team, and that were very kind and would talk me all through it. Is that the best way, what do people do to get that business acumen? Is it find a friend in finance?

Matt 18:05
It’s a great question, I think that certainly, take the initiative on your own right. Because, as I mentioned, we’re really not… in the communication school, the journalism schools, we’re really not teaching that part of it nearly as much. When you get to the master’s degree level where I am, there’s some more of that. But again, we’re not teaching courses like finance and accounting. We’re just doing it. We’re focused on other things. And you really have to take the initiative to gain that knowledge yourself, whether it be through authors and books, as I mentioned. But there are also, there’s some terrific, even publicly available, kinds of things, LinkedIn learning tools like that. Luckily, as we’ve all seen, our inboxes are inundated with professional development opportunities. And I would say before you just, particularly very younger professionals, before you just send those directly to the trash, if there are any of them that talk about business fluency, understanding the business of the business, the language, whether it be supply chain, finance, accounting, whatever, you know, sometimes students will say, Gee, do I really need to know this intimately? And I don’t think that’s the idea. I think what you want to be able to do is look at a company’s annual report and be able to glean some key insights out of that, so that when you are in those executive team meetings, you’re able to be conversant, you’re at least able… there aren’t long, 20 minute spans of the conversation where you’re on supply chain, let’s say, where you’re completely checked out. And I can remember those days, and it’s very frustrating, and it frankly, can be career limiting. That part of business is not going away. Sometimes our younger pros might think that that’s the finance and account jobs, and I really don’t. I can just stay concentrated on writing and editing and video production and things like that. The reality is, if you want to get promoted, you need to get better at those types of things.

Matt 18:17
When we spoke in preparation for this show, you said that you’ve met some CEOs over the years who believe internal communication can impact a culture as much, if not more than HR. Really interesting that you’ve got leaders now that believe that. Can you elaborate on how internal comms can, and perhaps should, play that pivotal role in shaping and sustaining a culture?

Matt 20:09
I’d like to say that when we all go to work for big companies, that we can choose our CEOs. Obviously, we cannot. Some of this is a bit of luck, right? Some CEOs, quote unquote, get it. And some CEOs, quote, unquote, don’t. And we’d much rather work with the ones that get it, and we all know who those are, and we can point back to them in our careers, right, on both sides. But I do believe that as communications becomes more prominent, as we’ve earned, definitely earned more of a seat at the table, with Chief Communications officers being very common, at large companies, I think CEOs who are more cognizant of the power of internal communications as a driver of culture, I think we’re seeing more of those. And so I think that’s a positive trend. Yeah, I’m really passionate about this one.

Matt 20:50
I happened to work for a CEO when I was working for global pharma who ran our US business, who was outstanding at this, and would really look to the internal communications team to be as much of a driver to your point of our cultural programmes, whether that be our values program, whatever it might be doing, as our HR folks. And even to the point of, I remember there was a year that he asked for the internal comms team to actually run and manage the employee engagement survey. He took it out of the hands of HR. I won’t go into all the complexities and politics of that, and what might have been going on in the back in his mind, but he gave that project to the internal comms team and basically his premise is, I think the people on this team understand our employees and are able to get to engagement absolutely as well as our folks over in HR. And so all of a sudden, we found ourselves developing survey questions, which was an interesting exercise, because we came up with, or I would say, new survey questions. We all know the employee engagement survey… questions that I think provide deeper insight, like what I call the golden question, quote, unquote, my manager does a good job explaining what’s going on in the business… Me, that’s a very kind of meaty employee engagement, and we made that the number one question, right? Whereas in the days when HR was managing and it was somewhere down toward the middle or the end. We wanted to again, by our choice there, indicate the importance of middle management being good communicators, which we all know is so acutely important.

Matt 22:15
Having said that, don’t get me wrong, you need a good relationship with your HR department. There’s no question about that. Because they obviously do very many very important functions in the employee space. But when it comes to things like culture, which is so rooted in how we communicate, both in terms of outwardly, but also in kind of an inward way as well, yeah, no question. I think that communications, internal communications, can have a huge hand in that. And we hope that the CEOs are are on board with that, and I think more and more of them are.

Katie 22:45
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I guess it depends on the maturity of your HR function, because just as there are some internal comms teams that are still possibly mainly just sending stuff out, equally, there may be some HR teams that are still a little bit in the personnel space. They’re not really managing talent. They’re more around the policies to do with personnel, and that’s a very different space. So yeah, I can imagine in certain organizations, it could even make sense for IC to pick up more if they’ve got a better handle on what is driving engagement?

Matt 22:45
At the very beginning. That’s at the core for us, and I’m sure, again, I do not want to make this sound like I’m running down our friends in HR. They play a very important role. But a lot of it, I do think, is training. A lot of their training is very systems based. It’s very kind of bureaucracy based, and it’s no wonder that’s really more of where some of their strength lies, to ask them to really negotiate this very nuanced world of communications where we have to be intimately familiar with our audience. let’s say, that might not be realistic. And so I think that was sort of our CEO’s point, that I believe this internal comms group really has the pulse of the organisation at a much deeper level than, say, these folks in HR. So that’s why that was such a cool example.

Katie 24:10
We touched on crisis communication earlier, and you said that in a crisis your employees can and perhaps should be real advocates in the in that crisis situation. What’s your message to IC folk who maybe need to up their game when it comes to preparing for a crisis? I know this is a particular area of expertise for you. How can they handle a crisis successfully?

Matt 24:36
Yeah, what kind of advice would I give to internal communicators to deal with the crisis? I think the first thing I would say is fight not just to be on the internal communications team, but fight to be on the communications writ large team, because, as I mentioned earlier, employees are an integral tool to our success in handling crisis, and many times they can make or break it, frankly, particularly in large organisations. So I worked in a lot of companies where we had five to 10 to 20,000 employees, and I remember one of those was an energy company that was working in a couple of different states, so had a large geographic spread, and had employees spread throughout all of those communities, right? In the breakfast diners, in the churches and things like that. And if we were facing a crisis, we had to have our employees on board with us as carriers of the message, whether we needed to raise our customer rates because we were trying to fund new projects, and that would always get a lot of media attention, because here goes the energy companies raising everyone’s bills. We were doing that for a specific reason, right, there was a need for more power, more energy production in the company, and I can remember spending a lot of time in some really regimented and calendarised employee meetings going through key talking points, because we would be, again, out in the breakfast diners, out in the churches, talking with their neighbors, and we wanted them to be armed with all of the same talking points that we gave to our communications team, that we gave to our people working in government affairs.

Matt 26:03
Everybody needs to be out of the same hymnal in a crisis. That’s so important, right? Because we see when they’re poorly managed, there’s been dissonant messages, there have been messages that haven’t been congruent, and it’s just super important that everyone be on the same page. And if your employees are not, that’s a real problem.

Matt 26:19
Or, the other thing that I’ve seen happen, you will have a situation where employees aren’t properly trained in how to do things like, for instance, work with media, right? So if you have, you can almost predict what will happen in the news coverage, right? What happens is the news teams go out to the gate as the employees are driving away, right? And will roll your car window down and stick the microphone in. We’ve seen this coverage, right? Our friends are very predictable in terms of what they’re… they’re telling us what they’re going to do. They’re going to talk to our employees and they’re going to get those windows rolled down. I tell my crisis comm students, you need to make sure your employees understand how to handle that situation. And that there should be, they should have that index card with the go to names and numbers at the organisation of who to call when you get that rap on your car window. And I just see too many of the… I can almost… I see the reports all the time, and I just shake my head and go, Oh my gosh. There was just absolutely no training on heck, because they, invariably, the employee may be well meaning, but they’re going to be inaccurate in their details. They’re going to have a number wrong. They’re going to have a rationale wrong, even if they maybe have been in that cafeteria meeting where all of this was explained, and you don’t want to leave it to that. And yeah, internal communicators need to fight, to be on crisis communications team, and not somewhere down the hall. They need to be in a room where it happens, so that they can help to manage those pressured situations. And boy, I just, I we spend a lot of time talking about the important audiences in a crisis. We put them on the whiteboard in the classroom, and invariably, employees go right to the top of the list. Because, wow, they’re just, they really play such a role and cast a huge shadow, particularly if you’re now, if you’re more spread out globally, it becomes more complex, and it may be not be as much of an issue, but regardless, you need to have your folks trained, and that’s the job of internal.

Katie 28:09
I believe you studied the VW emissions scandal. And there are two types of crisis. There’s the crisis that no one expected. It comes out of the blue. Maybe it’s an environmental one, a hurricane takes away your plant, something that you you could have maybe ran a scenario for, but you weren’t in control of it. And then there are others that are completely crises of organisations’ own making. And I just wonder whether you’ve got any reflection on what causes those kinds of crises – is there an element? Is there a common element? When you look back on those kinds of crisis, think that’s where the organisation or that’s why the organisation fell down?

Matt 28:49
Yeah, boy, I’ll tell you again. Katie, this, it’s another hour long episode. But what I would say because this is, it’s a huge issue. And every time we think it can’t happen again, Enron, Wells Fargo, Volkswagen… it happens again! Where we have an organisation that, through its own misjudgments, its own misdeeds, frankly, causes tremendous upheaval. And just when you think it can’t happen again, it will, and it does. And as crisis scholars, we look at it from a couple of different ways. We tend to look at it more in terms of, what was the response? And what corrective action? And things like that. But you’re right. These are all root indefinitely. Something’s going on in these organisations that allows that to happen, and by the way, that’s why it’s important for internal communicators to know these stories and understand that this can happen, and be ready to be the voice in the back of the room that says, just like our external comms brethren would say, what will the impact of this decision be? I watched too many communicators try to clean up an aisle three after the spill, than those that have gone around to make sure that the bottles are all properly placed on the shelf in the first place, right? And we can’t abdicate that responsibility, particularly one side of our mouth we say we want that seat at the table. Yeah, and, but the other side, and I’ll say those guys screwed it up. So now we get to clean it up. Now we’re one of those guys, if we’re at the leadership table. When we look at these case studies, the rooting and cultural is large. Cultural mores, the cultural standards of the organisation are allowing for these kinds of things to happen, these sort of either misjudgments or intentional misdeeds in case of some of these companies. And it’s a very complicated kind of cultural question, and some of it may only, not only be corporate culture, some of it may be even just the culture of the particular geography where some of these things are happening. And maybe what’s going on there… a complex question. But I think maybe the important point to be made is that as communicators, we need to not just be ready to do the cleanup. We need to be ready at the beginning with a strong voice that says, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, are we making the right decision for our customers or for our employees? As internal communicators, we’re even closer to that.

Katie 30:56
It’s a really interesting question, because I often think of us as the conscience of the organisation, because we’re often the ones that say, Hang on a minute. I think it could be perceived this way. I think it could go wrong this way. Have you thought about this audience? They’ve been left out of the mix, and then I think, Oh, is that unfair to place that role on internal comms people that you’re the conscience of an organisation? But it comes back to what you said before, which is empathy. We walk around having really deep understanding and knowledge of the people that work for the organisation and how the organisation operates. We can probably see where the values and the commercial incentive doesn’t quite line up, and I think that’s why these things often unravel. It’s just that we say we’re going to do this, but actually we’re rewarding people on that behavior, which is at odds. And I think that’s often where we can put a hand up and say, these two things aren’t quite aligned.

Katie 31:52
You recently alerted me to a study by Annenberg and the IABC about hybrid working. We’ve touched on this already, around isolation, but this report really did suggest that it’s impacting corporate culture hybrid working. Can you share with us some of the key findings of that report, and also any implications for us as comms professionals in our work?

Matt 32:18
Yeah, that’s a great question. Thank you, Katie, and this was an important project that IABC recently undertook. So thank you for giving me just a second to talk about it. We commissioned it with the terrific folks at University of Southern California, Annenberg Center, some of you may be familiar with them. They publish an annual relevance report that really is must reading for those of us in communications, along with Trust Barometer and all those great tools that come out annually. But in this case, Annenberg worked with us to survey, oh gosh, just a wide range of corporate leaders, employees around what are the biggest challenges resulting from remote and hybrid work? And you’re correct, the number one challenge was maintaining corporate culture. Well over almost 70% of the respondents viewed that as either a challenge or even a major challenge in this distributed workforce. And it stands to reason, because everyone is more distributed, maintaining that that culture can be more difficult. By the way, there were some other interesting findings, including things like training and mentoring being much more of a challenge in the remote space. And then, certainly, we all know training and mentoring well in our roles and but yeah, culture, training, mentoring, to some degree, maintaining positive morale. All of these take fairly major hits in this study in this more remote and hybrid workplace. And I think it’s, again, you’ll be able to certainly on the IABC website, we have promoted it several times, and I think it can be a really valuable tool for those of us making decisions anywhere in the employee ecosystem. They also asked employees how do you feel about remote and hybrid work? And of course, guess what? There was very positive kinds of feelings in that regard, right? So it’s a situation where our employees were telling us we actually liked this for all the flexibility reasons and convenience reasons. But yet, the things we’re trying to as the organisation writ large, around culture and morale are destabilised in that environment. It’s just this really interesting dichotomy. Again, we’re very early on, right? So this is early work in this space, because we’re this new way of working is really just again, at two or three years old, where this is all going to shake out ultimately, who knows? But we’re talking about internal communicators. It’s going to make our job more difficult, not less difficult at the end of the day, right? I mean, we really have to up our game, based on what we’re seeing in this survey, and so I encourage everybody to take a look at it.

Katie 34:32
Do you think there’s going to be experiments? Is that where we’re heading? Because, as you say, it’s very early days, and I don’t think anyone’s quite exactly worked this out. The only thing I think is going to happen is that organisations are going to have to get a lot more intentional about when and why and how they bring people together. Even at AB, we’ve got now quarterly anchor days, and these are days when we don’t come in just to sit behind a screen and have more online meetings. We try to take those out of the calendar and give ourselves a project to work on in that day that involves demands face to face collaboration. So it’s a very deliberate day, if you like, that’s planned months in advance, and that’s again, just trying things out and seeing what’s working. But I think you’re absolutely right in terms of our strategies as internal comms people, we’re going to have to think about, how do we even reach people, now? I had had a guest the other day saying, I’m worried, Katie, because I’m now in competition with people putting the washing on. They said they’ve got a gap in their day. What are they doing? And they’re not walking down the corridor and having a chat to someone around the water call us. Yeah. Have you got a prediction for how organisations are going to solve this one, or is it going to be just a lot of experimentation?

Matt 35:45
Yeah, and we’re experimenting now, right? You mentioned an example. I’ve seen them as well. By the way, the deeper it does talk a little bit about that dynamic of how to handle remote workers, at least in this kind of initial phase. But yeah, the rules of the game have changed because of the this ecosystem has changed so dramatically, there’s no question about it. And but at the same time, we still have we work for companies where we have manufactured a lot of time, internal comms career. I was in a manufacturing environment. Those people were still coming to work. We can’t forget about them too, because we’ve learned the years, what happens if you forget about that audience, right? We all have those horror stories if you don’t provide that direct line of sight to our people that are working a manufacturing role, punching a clock, if you will, you’ve got the key tenant around things like line of sight and making sure that we’re taking care of all audience segments, that won’t go away. What we’ve seen now is we just have this more challenged situation with these more desk based employees – organisations need to experiment. Funny in the early days, I was in a after the pandemic. I was in a panel discussion with some agency leaders. They were running advertising agencies and PR firms, and we all know the cultures and those very hip and with it kind of culture. And they were talking about how what we need to do is, we do they use this word. We need to lure our employees back, they use the lure word, and so then, so let’s add, instead of one pool table, let’s put in a second one. Let’s have a beer fridge and on every floor. And they were throwing all these sort of, what I would call ease at employees to get them to lure back, to ostensibly lure them back. Such a terrible word, but yet they were using it right. These are leaders of an organisation. Names will be changed to protect the innocent, just that’s an example. We are truly experimenting, and we’re feeling our way through this time, and that’s why, again, I think we need to continue to do projects like this one that IABC did with Annenberg, so that we can be armed with the data that will hopefully help us make the best decision.

Katie 37:41
Yeah, you raise such a good point, because it frustrates me this working from home argument, because there are so many people that cannot work from home, and they’re doing such important jobs in society as well, often, and I’ve been inside so many organisations where people on the front line doing those jobs already feel slightly distant from the corporate center, but if you layer on the fact that they’re working in such different environments, now you’re making me think that actually part of the solution needs to be connecting people better to the front line of an organisation where the action really happens. I don’t know what the answer is, but that is an interesting idea, I think.

Matt 38:21
Things like maybe job shadowing, or, you know, the job swapping, you know, kinds of things. Again, we’re experimenting here. We’ve got to test things out, you know, that’s the that’s the phase we really need to be in, because something is going to work to help. Because you’d really like to see those numbers around things like morale and culture improve the next time we do this study, because it’s really obviously a key issue.

Katie 38:45
Yeah this is a difficult question, but I’m going to ask you it in a way. At this point you must have taught, I was going to say, countless students, but maybe you could estimate how many students you’ve taught at this point in time. I don’t know. Can you spot those who are most likely to have a stellar career in communications, and if so, what sets those students apart?

Matt 39:09
Such a good question. Oh, yeah, I’ve been teaching for more than a dozen years, so I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of students in that time. And you’re right, many times there are some kind of, what I would call innate qualities about a person that will allow them to be a good communicator. I firmly believe that with the training that we provide and things like that, a lot of people can have a successful career. But the ones that seem to be set apart are, I would say, a couple of areas. The first is curiosity. These are people that are curious by nature. I mentioned my mom’s experience as a reporter and a features writer and things like that. Hopefully that’s where I picked up on some of my curiosity.

Matt 39:44
Empathy. Absolutely, the people that are more empathetic are going to be successful, I would argue, in the external or internal side, for sure on the internal side, no question about it, but you need to understand customer, right? You need to understand stakeholder. And that starts with empathy.

Matt 39:58
And I think those that have a keen understanding of the difference between being an order taker and being a strategist, right? And that’s so key, and we can’t assume that the 23 year old that comes into our office understands that difference. You just can’t assume that. You want them to be much more on the strategist counselor side, but they’ve been trained around tools and around things that allowed them to be a good sort of order taker. And so that was the best advice I remember I got in my young phase as a young communicator, marketing communicator was, you know, you’re not an order taker, you’re a strategist and a counselor. That’s how our clients own their nature. That’s how they need to view you when you walk into the room. And the people that get it right away, they already have that understanding built in that they shouldn’t just be saying to their boss, hey, I can press release. They should be saying, Hey, have we asked this question of our employees? Have we experimented with this particular strategy? And they keep themselves well versed in what strategies and toolkits are out there, and so I think that’s important as well. But yeah, those would be three things, I would say. And the good news is there are some very bright people coming into our field that do have a lot of those types of qualities. And you see them every day in classrooms, and they’re making this a real commitment. And you can see it right off.

Katie 41:18
Do you see empathy playing out in the way that organisations and maybe even students as well in their own projects, are getting under the skin of audience groups? Because what I’m noticing in internal communication is, you’re absolutely right, most of our work starts with some sort of discovery or exploration, some kind of research, and a lot more clients are interested in personas for their employee audience. They wouldn’t in a million years sell something externally without understanding customer personas, but they would happily send something out internally without properly segmenting or understanding their internal audience. Do you see that changing? Is there more interest in getting deeper under the skin of who is actually employed by these organisations?

Matt 42:05
Yeah, it’s like my other answer, I think, I hope so, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. In looking at what I’m seeing coming out, you see the same things. There’s still a lot of one-size-fits-all communications, much more so on the internal side than the external side. And again, I don’t know whether it’s just in the beginning, whether it’s that focus on good quality research, which we tend to do more externally, I would argue, than we do internally. I’m not sure what’s driving it, but there’s way too much one-size-fits-all, and with this empowered stakeholder audience, that’s dangerous. I think they will tune out very quickly as communications become… so I think you’re asking a very relevant question, and I guess maybe one of the things we’re circling around in this conversation is our jobs are getting harder, not easier, as internal communicators, right? But that’s the world we’re living in, and I just think you have to be really diligent to keep that in mind. But, yeah, interesting question, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. I think there’s more work to be done, and I think that, I will say that a lot of the same tools we can use on the external- I also teach branding, right? I teach external branding, and guess what we’re using there, audience personas, customer journey maps, right? Where we’re customers going from online space to show room to consideration to where we’re doing these elaborate labyrinth maps of the customer journey. And I even just as thinking about our conversation is, why couldn’t we do that for employees? Employees take a journey too. Employees take a journey just like customers take a journey. That’s a great tool, and again, some terrific outcome in academics. So I love authors, people like Brian Solis and those folks have talked about the benefits of a customer journey map, but I think we can flip that around and use that same tool for the employee experience, and probably get a lot of benefit out.

Matt 42:06
I couldn’t agree more, and it’s actually mapping that journey out is really interesting and vital, if you’re at all interested in developing some kind of employee experience value proposition, if you like, and where you get to, I think, is an audience that really could be very powerful for many, many organisations, and that’s their alumni. You leave and that’s it. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? They could still be advocates. They could still be interested. Some of them could even come back. You never know. So, yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Matt 44:13
One of the problems with the way we treat employees is we put a lot of emphasis on their experience when they get there, the orientation, and it’s the buffet spreads and the tchotchkes and the goodies and the swag and yada yada, and we spend money and time and effort and all these things, and then we shoo them out the door after orientation, and we don’t think about what their experience looks like beyond that. We do a wonderful job managing their experience on day one. And I used to get frustrated with this all the time, because we would spend all this time and money on this two day orientation, and then we send them out the door and forget about them – that’s a generalisation.

Katie 44:47
It’s a good point. It’s a very good point. You’ve already mentioned IABC, and I know you’re also involved with the PRSA. This is a question I kind of love to ask, and it’s a bit of a devil’s advocate question, because I’m heavily involved with the IABC and a huge fan, but we get a lot of stuff, seemingly for free online. Now I’m just wondering how these organisations need to evolve to better support the development of the next generation of comms leaders, who might be thinking, what’s the point of these professional associations when I can get LinkedIn learning, or whatever it is? I’m just interested in your perspective on the value of them and how they need to change.

Matt 45:28
Well, it’s an important question, because, as you and I know, these organisations have really been laid low by the pandemic. Right? Memberships are way, way down and unfortunately, and they’re really struggling. They’re actually just now crawling back out of it, which is amazing to me. God forbid we have another pandemic. But I think that you’re right. They could be doing more. IABC is doing some, I think, very interesting things along the realm of younger professionals. They unveiled a couple three years ago, a tool we call the Career Roadmap, where you can go on and take a look at where you stand. And I know you were familiar with that tool, which again, extremely important for a young communicator to get a could you get a clear picture in their mind where they may fit in a career continuum? And then there are other tools that go along with the Career Roadmap, and some of those are free, actually, for young professionals to avail themselves of. And then they’ve done some other things too. Like, I know there was a very popular short course on business acumen, private, a concept we talked about earlier that IABC had in place. So gosh, even prior to the pandemic, I believe that’s been popular with younger communicators. And so I think they’re making an attempt to evolve an outreach but it’s yeah, the generational gaps and these organisations have been pretty pronounced, and I’m not sure we’re there yet, but I do think those are positive steps.

Matt 46:40
I’m telling younger communicators right now: You know what? Probablyat this point in time it’s more important for you to join an organisation like that than any other, partly because of what we just talked about with this hybrid, distributed workforce. Right? If you are staying in your bedroom, working 10 hours, 12 hours a day, and your entire team is in New York, you find a team in your own city, and that is through one of these organisations. And because, to your point about getting that more person to person thing going, you can do that by by proxy, by using your membership in one of these organisations. Now, I realize it’s expensive, and we’re trying to work on that as well in these organizations to make it more affordable, and that’s been slow going, but hopefully that will get there. But you know, because you’re going to get so many things out of it. You’re going to it, you’re going to learn more soft skills. You’re obviously going to pick up training real time and not being thrown at you through a computer screen. You can take a role on, let’s say, a chapter board. You can get valuable leadership experience. I know somebody who hires and they tell me, I look for people that have had leadership experience in one of the local marketing clubs or organisations, because I know that even though there may only be 26, 27 years old, they’ve had a leadership role, and that can make them more viable. All kinds of great reasons. I could go on and on, but it’s more important that we recruit and that these younger professionals join these organisations than ever before. But unfortunately, the trend is not… it’s moving the other direction, and to me, that’s frankly dangerous.

Katie 48:03
I’m just interested to ask you this slightly philosophical question before we jump to the quick fire ones. You spend your day surrounded by the next generation of employees, leaders, communication professionals. From a broader societal perspective, how optimistic or maybe pessimistic are you about the future in general, when you look at the people sat in your classroom today?

Matt 48:30
I am optimistic. There’s no question about it. I’m fascinated by Generation Z. I just I think they’re, and there’s some, if you haven’t read some of the books out now on Generation Z and the very different kind of mindset they approach things with, and the fact that they’re a little more fiscally conservative, and an author that I read recently that called them kind of old souls and younger bodies, there’s just, I’m just, I can’t… everything I get my hands on about this generation, I read it, and I’m fascinated by it, because they have, in some ways, they’ve moved backwards in terms of their orientation than, say, the millennials may be a little more conservative, but I just I really like the way they are approaching things, and the importance of living your life and having it be meaningful and experiences. And I suppose how it was when you and I… you have to go get that job, you have to get on that corporate hamster wheel as quickly as you possibly can and start just turning away. This generation doesn’t think that way. And I think that, again, we’re in the experimental phase because they haven’t been around a long time. But how are organisations going to meet them where they are? And that speaks to hybrid/remote work, because they want that. So how can we now accomplish what we want to do culturally when they want to work at home? We really hit it at something that’s right at the crux there. But I am optimistic about them. I think they’re extremely bright. I think they’re extremely driven, once they’re interested. I always tell them, you have to find the color of your parachute. You can’t be feeling around for it. But, man, they’re incredible. Can’t read enough about them. I can’t learn enough about them. I’m enjoying them. In my classrooms. It’s going to be a really interesting next few years, as they move deep force.

Katie 50:04
I think it means that leaders, organisations are going to have to up their game, because, as you say, they haven’t got an army of unthinking people that jump on the hamster wheel and 30, 40, years later, think, Gosh, why did I do that again?

Matt 50:20
Oh, boy, I burned a lot of years on that hamster wheel, Katie.

Katie 50:24
Exactly!

Katie 50:28
This episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is brought to you by my very own Friday update. Would you like a short email from me, never more than five bullet points long, giving you my take on the week’s news from across the world of communications? This might be the latest reports, books, podcasts, conferences, campaigns that have caught my eye during the week. I always limit myself to just five nuggets of news, so you can read it in record time, but still feel a little bit more informed, hopefully a little uplifted as you end your week. This is subscriber only content, which was initially intended just for AB colleagues and clients, I don’t post this content anywhere else, so you do need to sign up, but that is super easy. Simply go to abcomm.co.uk/Friday. We just need your email address, and it’s equally easy to unsubscribe at any time, so give it a go. That sign up page again, abcomm.co.uk/Friday, and if you do choose to be a subscriber, I very much look forward to being in touch.

Katie 52:02
Let’s hop over to those quick fire questions. Quick fire in terms of me asking, but not necessarily you answering them, Matt, So do feel free to answer them in your own way. What would most surprise people about Matt Tidwell?

Matt 52:15
Boy, I don’t know. Maybe surprising or maybe just more of a fun fact about me, if you will. But I started my career as a bit of an entrepreneur. I started a business along with a colleague in association management, oddly enough, and we would run small healthcare associations, things like that. My first job was working for a company that did publishing for that group, and I’m really glad I did it. I had all the issues that entrepreneurs have, and made lots of mistakes, and certainly, at the end of the day, failed as most but I’m glad that I did it, because when you think about things like just understanding a bit this more holistically, I think even though, believe me, I can be a bit math challenged, that’s why I went into journalism and communications, like a lot of us. I think the training that I had there over those four or five years, very early in my career, I’m talking mid 20s, was really helpful for me. Yeah, people just tend to think of me as just a lifelong marketing comms guy. But actually was, for a while, I was was a business starter.

Katie 53:12
What’s the one piece of bad advice or unhelpful thinking that has consistently dogged the communication profession?

Matt 53:21
Yeah, and this may sound familiar, I think probably my biggest pet peeve is that we still have too many of us at the thought leadership level, Katie, that you and I have spent so many years in, that are still talking about us getting a seat at the table. I just that phrase, you know, I think… and you’ve interviewed a lot of these people, right, Sally Sussman..? We had to have our seat at the table, at least in most places. And so we need to quit being so focused on the journey to get there, and we lose our focus otherwise, right? We need to be doing the important work now that we’re at the table, but yet I still see, yeah, you gotta… I looked at a programme for some kind of regional communications conference not long ago, and there was a session around getting a seat at the table. Oh my gosh. Are we ever going to break out of that mindset? So I was on a bit of a soapbox there. That was a pet peeve. But quit complaining about earning a seat at the table and just go out there and lead, because we can do that more than we probably ever before.

Katie 54:14
I love Shel Holtz’s answer to this question. He was like, I don’t want to see it at the table. I want to be called before the person goes to the table.

Matt 54:21
Exactly, yeah. Leave it to Shel.

Katie 54:25
Provide the advice before they get to the table.

Katie 54:28
What’s your go to productivity hack or tool that helps you stay efficient and get stuff done?

Matt 54:35
My gosh, such a great question. Because, boy, earlier in my career, I was an early adopter any productivity tool that was out there. Boy, I would jump on and buy it and order it and whatever it might be. You know what I’m doing now is just the aspect of just good, solid calendaring. I use my calendar not just for events, but also for tasks. I think that is the verb used, ‘calendaring’! And that’s been probably my best productivity tool that I’ve stumbled onto, is just find a good calendar programme that will allow you to not just show events, but also tasks, and those can be color coded and ranked and things like that. So I’m a big fan of calendaring. That’s my go to.

Katie 55:09
You read a lot. I can tell through this conversation. How do you find the time for that? That’s all about prioritisation. Is there something that you deliberately don’t do or do less of than you see other people do?

Matt 55:23
I’ve tried to, and you see them these services that will give thumbnail versions of books. Yeah, some of those, and it can be helpful. Particularly, I look a lot for authors and books that might help in the classroom, so it gives me a feeling for what the key points are. And I still use some of those services a little bit, but I tend to be centered in certain genres. So if I’m teaching branding, or if I’m teaching… I teach leadership, which is a really cool class to teach. And there are obviously numerable authors that speak about leadership, so it just depends on the on kind of the genre. But yeah, I think that again, it speaks to the point that where we are currently in our profession, we have to be well read because things are changing so rapidly – or well listened, in the case of a tool like you provide. And, yeah, I don’t miss an opportunity on a commute to pick up an episode of a terrific podcast like yours or others and and so it’s it comes at me in different ways, but yeah, but the point is, it needs to be coming at you on a fairly rapid basis. If you’re doing the wash, if you’re doing… you need to use your time wisely. I’m a sports fan, and I love that kind of thing as well, but I also know how rapidly our business should change.

Katie 56:32
Yeah, great advice. How would you complete this statement? World Class internal communication is…

Matt 56:42
Picking up on a prior theme, I think, of world class internal communication is relentlessly striving for empathy. And it’s becoming harder for us to reach because of some of the complexities we’ve talked about. But I think the struggle continues and the striving needs to continue, because, particularly on the internal side, again, our stock and trade, to me, is to be relentlessly striving for it. So how’s that?

Katie 57:10
Yeah, no, I love it. And you’re also making me think you said earlier, our jobs have got harder. And there’s no doubt our jobs have got harder. But do you also think, when you reflect back on the early days, the prize has got bigger as well. So although the job’s harder, what we can deliver for organisations now, potentially, is so much greater in terms of behavior, value, perception, change all of those things?

Katie 57:36
Excellent. And finally, Matt, we give you a billboard for millions to see, and you can put on that billboard any message you like. What are you going to put on your billboard Matt?

Matt 57:36
Yeah, without question. And when you see those successes, right? And when they’re chronicled, wow, there’s some really cool stuff there, and we’ve all seen those examples. So yeah, the payoff is tremendous. I would argue that payoff when it goes well on internal as I mentioned in thinking back in my earlier in my career, is every bit as satisfying as driving a sales number on the external side, or driving customer acquisition, or whatever it might be, a win. And some of that is we get to be very in close proximity to our successes in internal connections, conversely, as we do if we fail. But I think that again, that also makes the reward sweeter is because we can see an employee who was once disengaged now engaged, or a work group that was once lagging behind now performing at a top level. Those are pretty special moments. And so I think again, it may take some selling for our younger communicators to make sure they understand that there is a lot of reward there, but oh my gosh, it’s definitely there. So yeah…

Matt 58:12
Boy, a billboard, such a great question because you’re driving by at a high rate of speed, right? So it doesn’t want to have a lot of copy. Then, is it a one word type of thing? I think if it were a one word, it would just simply be ‘Grace’, you know, and give it to others. Give it to yourself. I work with a lot of younger professionals. They’re successors because they’re pleasers and overachievers. But many times that comes at a cost, and the cost is they don’t give themselves grace, right? They don’t really give themselves a break, if you will. And I think that we need to, we don’t we don’t want to burn ourselves, because it’s easy to do in this business. And I would would start and stop with grace. And if I had a slightly bigger billboard, I put those little subheads under it. Give it to yourself. Give it to others. How’s that?

Katie 59:34
That’s such a lovely answer and a perfect way to end this conversation. Matt, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom.

Matt 59:41
You’re welcome. Katie, thank you for what you’re doing. This is such a terrific service to those of us who care so much about this profession and honored to have the conversation.

Katie 59:50
Thank you. Thank you so much. So that is a wrap for this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast. As always, you can find all the links mentioned in today’s show, including a full transcript on our website. Just head over to abcomm.co.uk/podcast. Matt and I talked quite a bit in the show about the importance of building your business acumen. If you’re interested in developing your understanding of business, check out workstream two of my Masterclass which is devoted to helping IC professionals become more savvy about the fundamentals of business. You’ll find my Masterclass programme at icmasterclass.com. Now, we’ve got some fantastic episodes lined up in this season with some of the sharpest minds in our field. So be sure to hit that subscribe button today. You won’t want to miss a single conversation. A huge thank you to Matt for sharing his insights today, and a big shout out to the dream team behind the scenes, my producer, John, sound engineer, Stuart, content manager Madi, designer Rob and the rest of the incredible crew at AB who keep this show rolling. And finally, of course, my heartfelt thanks to you for tuning in to The Internal Comms Podcast. I do love hearing from you, so please do continue to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Until next time, lovely listeners, stay safe and well and remember, it’s what’s inside that counts.

Jump to

The matriarch who inspired Matt’s comms career [02:44]

The perception of IC [4:26]

Identifying gaps in today’s communications curriculum [12:29]

How you can build your business acumen [17:29]

The pivotal role IC folks can play in managing a crisis [24:10]

The hybrid working conundrum [31:52]

Spotting a future comms pro [38:45]

The value of organisations like the International Association of Business Communicators [44:47]

How is the future of comms shaping up in the classroom? [48:03]

Quick-fire questions [52:02]

Links from this episode

Discover where your career could take you with the IABC’s Career Roadmap

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Episode 100 – Meet the super-connector behind #CommsJobs

May 29, 2024

After years running an internal communications team, Daniel Mendez emigrated from Chile to the U.S., where he faced a host of barriers to success. A language barrier. A small or no...

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Episode 99 – The communicator’s communicator

May 15, 2024

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by Linda Zebian. The very first Director of Communications at PR management platform Muck Rack, Linda s...

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Exclusive reveal: Katie’s IC masterclass

May 1, 2024

Join us for a special episode of The Internal Comms Podcast as host Katie Macaulay announces the imminent launch of her unique on-demand masterclass. With more than three decades ...

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Episode 98 – How to build a powerful personal brand

April 17, 2024

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by serial entrepreneur, author, keynote speaker and business mentor Chris Ducker. Chris is a renowned expert ...

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Episode 97 – Leaving the ladder down: helping IC pros step up

April 3, 2024

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes back the show’s first-ever guest, Rachel Miller. Rachel is an internationally recognised internal com...

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Episode 96 – Inclusion in action: Kindness is the keystone

March 20, 2024

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by Global Belonging, Equity and Impact Consultant, and self-styled ‘human-centric technologist’, Bob Wata...

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Episode 95 – Mastering your approach to strategic communication

March 6, 2024

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by award-winning marketing and communications expert Danielle Bond. Recently retired from corporate life, Da...

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Episode 94 – The stories that shape us

February 21, 2024

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by leadership communications coach and co-founder of Engage Kenya, Agatha Juma. Agatha credits an emba...

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Episode 93 – The sound of success: Why it pays to listen to employees

February 7, 2024

We’re back for Season 11 of The Internal Comms Podcast! And kicking us off with a very special episode, this week host Katie Macaulay is joined by not one, not two, but three gue...

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Moment 35 – The four Cs of content: How internal communicators can create comms that land

January 31, 2024

Looking for tips on creating internal communications that land – and stick? In this Moment from The Internal Comms Podcast, Steve Crescenzo shares a few things you absolutely mus...

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Moment 63 – Are you listening? The power of questions in leadership: Mike Roe

January 24, 2024

“I realised I was probably a pretty crap listener,” Mike Roe tells Katie Macaulay in this Moment from The Internal Comms Podcast. We often go to leaders and start by asking th...

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Moment 57 – Language matters: Building two-way engagement at IKEA

January 17, 2024

At IKEA, choosing the right words when communicating with the workforce is everything. Guy Britt, IKEA’s Global Head of Co-worker Comms, tells Katie Macaulay the use of ‘co-wo...

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Episode 92 – Revolution coming: How AI is transforming internal comms

December 20, 2023

If you have ever attended one of Shel Holtz’s presentations, you will know that, more often than not, it’s standing room only. Shel has a remarkable ability to anticipate what'...

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Moment 61 – Human-centric businesses do better: Victoria Dew

December 6, 2023

Does your approach to internal communication have the human touch? It’s essential to the humans you employ, says Victoria Dew, CEO of Dewpoint Communications and an internal com...

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Episode 91 – How to build a one-person IC powerhouse

November 22, 2023

Ever feel like, as an internal communicator, you’re fighting an uphill battle all by yourself? This week’s guest on The Internal Comms Podcast has exactly what you need. Host ...

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Episode 90 – A shared vision: ED&I and IC in action

November 8, 2023

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by Sim Sian, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Mitie, and Yvonne O’Hara, formerly Mitie’s Grou...

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Episode 89 – Netflix-style IC: Snackable, on-demand and authentic

October 25, 2023

In this episode of the Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by Access Group’s Global Head of Communications and Engagement, Paul Downey. Paul caught Katie’s ...

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Episode 88 – It’s fixable: How to tackle hard problems

October 11, 2023

In this episode of the Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay is joined by Anne Morriss. Anne is an entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and the Executive Founder of the Lea...

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Episode 87 – Tracing the legacy of internal comms

September 27, 2023

It’s often said we must understand the past to build the future, and that sentiment sits at the very heart of this episode. This week on The Internal Comms Podcast we welcome pr...

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Episode 86 – How to crush your next public speaking gig

September 13, 2023

Season 10 of the Internal Comms Podcast kicks off with one of Katie’s most compelling conversations yet. Shil Shanghavi is a public speaking specialist, storyteller and head of...

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Coming soon: Season 10 of The Internal Comms Podcast

September 6, 2023

Our summer break is drawing to a close, Katie has dusted off her mic and we’re ready to launch Season 10 of The Internal Comms Podcast! This season, we’ll be welcoming more o...

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Moment 18 – 3% of employees are driving 90% of conversations: Mike Klein

August 30, 2023

In this moment, we catch up with Mike Klein, former political consultant, modern-day communications stalwart, and two-time guest on the Internal Comms Podcast. Mike breaks down h...

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Moment 17 – How we create meaning: Sue Dewhurst & Liam FitzPatrick

August 23, 2023

What’s our one true purpose as internal communicators? It’s the question we’re all seeking the answer to. This moment takes us back to when Katie first welcomed Sue Dewhurs...

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Moment 13 – The message must change at each leadership level: Dr Kevin Ruck

August 16, 2023

If there’s one thing we’re clear about at AB, it’s that communication should not be a one-way street. And that’s what this moment is about. We head back to Episode 13, w...

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Moment 06 – On tolerance, kindness and being enough: Henry Normal

August 9, 2023

As communicators, we could often do with slowing things down a little. In this moment, Henry Normal – author and co-founder of production company Baby Cow, which he founded with ...

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Moment 01 – What happens inside is reflected outside: Rachel Miller

August 2, 2023

Have you heard of an inside-out approach to communication? It’s no secret that today’s internal comms messages seep into the world outside the office walls. After all, anythi...

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Episode 85 – Lessons from a trailblazer

July 26, 2023

We’re ending Season 9 of the Internal Comms Podcast with a bang this week, as Sally Susman takes to the hot seat for her second appearance. Sally is Executive Vice President an...

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Episode 84 – Ethics in action: Insights from a global compliance leader

July 12, 2023

In modern business, integrity is non-negotiable. As legislation ramps up in lockstep with colleague and customer demands, operating an ethical business in line with global regula...

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Episode 83 – ESG: How IC can drive the agenda

June 28, 2023

Define ESG… Well, it stands for environment, social and governance. But can you really define what ESG actually is? Put very simply, ESG is a set of criteria used to evaluate a ...

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Episode 82 – The truth about resilience

May 31, 2023

It seems everyone’s talking about resilience, the ability to bounce back from misfortune or adversity. But as Bruce Daisley explains to host Katie Macaulay, there’s something w...

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Episode 81 – Unilever: Inside a global success story

May 17, 2023

With over 130,000 colleagues, and a 100-year history, Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. And this week on the Internal Comms Podcast, we get a peek ...

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Episode 80 – The inside track on comms at Mercedes F1

May 3, 2023

“The days we fail are the days our competitors live to regret,” said the late, great Niki Lauda. And that’s what this episode of the Internal Comms Podcast is all about. Thi...

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Episode 79 – Lifting the lid on comms consultancy

April 19, 2023

Ever considered what it takes to become an effective communications consultant? Then this week’s episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is for you. Host Katie Macaulay welcomes Si...

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Episode 78 – Comms with courage

April 5, 2023

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes Audacity’s Jason Anthoine. Jason has spent three decades working in internal communication, employee experie...

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Episode 77 – Here for the culture

March 22, 2023

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes culture-chameleon Shane Hatton. Shane is many things – author, international speaker, trainer, leadership co...

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Episode 76 – Employee experience: For the people by the people

March 8, 2023

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes Nicholas Wardle. Nicholas is Head of Employee Experience at Brand Experiences, and co-author of ‘Monetising ...

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Episode 75 – Inside the world’s most famous corner shop

February 22, 2023

This week on The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay welcomes Sam Bleazard. Sam’s role as Employer Brand Content Producer takes him behind the scenes of ‘the world’s ...

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Episode 74 – Culture with sticking power

February 8, 2023

The Internal Comms Podcast is back for Season 9! To kick off this season, we welcomed BizJuicer’s Andy Goram to the hot seat. Andy’s passion for building businesses ‘from t...

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Season 8: In the rear view mirror

February 1, 2023

With Season 9 of The Internal Comms Podcast right around the corner, host Katie Macaulay has taken the opportunity to reflect on the wisdom and insight shared over our latest seaso...

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Episode 73 – Forging your own path

December 21, 2022

The season 8 finale features Jennifer Thomas, Head of Communications for the Data & Analytics branch of the London Stock Exchange Group. Born in London to Guyanese parents, Jennif...

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Episode 72 – Making your way to the top

December 7, 2022

Episode 72 of The Internal Comms Podcast sees host Katie Macaulay joined by Adrian Cropley, CEO and founder of Cropley Communication and the Centre for Strategic Communication Exce...

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Episode 71 – Effective comms starts with knowing yourself

November 23, 2022

This week’s guest on The Internal Comms Podcast is Joanna Parsons, Head of Internal Communications & Culture at Teamwork. Joanna made Irish history as the first ever Head of Inte...

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Episode 70 – Reaching across the aisle

November 9, 2022

Shelby Scarbrough, author of 'Civility Rules! Creating a Purposeful Practice of Civility', shares her deep insight and experience ‘reaching across the aisle’ on episode 70 of T...

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Episode 69 – Measuring what matters – actions not feelings

October 26, 2022

Episode 69 of The Internal Comms Podcast sees IC heavyweight Mike Klein return to the hot seat. An internal and social communication consultant based out of Reykjavik, Mike is help...

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Episode 68 – Host in the hot seat: Reflections on 250,000 plays

October 12, 2022

In this very special episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, the tables have turned. Katie Macaulay is in the hot seat, and AB’s Senior Content Editor Freddie Reynolds takes over ...

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Episode 67 – The ABC of research: Ask, believe, change

September 28, 2022

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay invites qualitative research expert Mari Lee to sit in the hot seat. Mari’s specialism is in ‘development com...

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Episode 66 – Combatting IC isolation

September 14, 2022

The Internal Comms Podcast is back for what promises to be an incredible Season 8! In this kick-off episode, host Katie Macaulay welcomes ICology’s Vice President of Community an...

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Season 7: The rewind episode

September 7, 2022

The countdown is on, and The Internal Comms Podcast will be returning from its summer break with Season 8 imminently. And while its eighth instalment promises wisdom unbound from a...

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Episode 65 – Remote but not unreachable

June 22, 2022

In the final episode of season 7 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay speaks with Lily Goodman D’Amato, Delivery Trainer at US-based digital pharmacy Medly. Lily b...

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Episode 64 – Releasing your inner sceptic

June 8, 2022

In the latest episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay speaks with Martin Flegg, founder and co-owner of The IC Citizen internal communications consultancy. With...

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Episode 63 – Lessons in leadership

May 25, 2022

In episode 63 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay meets Mike Roe, who had a 28-year career in the police force and is now CEO of Tensense, a data insights company. ...

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Episode 62 – Textbook IC: rewriting comms for a new era

May 11, 2022

In the latest episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay speaks with the duo who wrote the book on internal communications – literally. Sue Dewhurst has worked i...

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Episode 61 – Embracing the messiness of being human

April 27, 2022

In this week’s episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay sits down with Victoria Dew, founder and CEO of Dewpoint Communications. Her firm is focused on helping ...

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Episode 60 – How to have better conversations

April 13, 2022

In this week’s episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay sits down with Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, co-authors of Conversations Worth Having, Using Apprecia...

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Episode 59 – Strategy & IC: A masterclass in collaboration

March 30, 2022

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaluay looks into the dynamic between internal comms and strategy – at its best a symbiotic relationship that drives t...

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Episode 58 – The state of IC: what’s behind the numbers?

March 16, 2022

In episode 58 of The Internal Comms Podcast, we dissect the results of the latest State of the Sector report, the definitive global survey of the internal communication landscape, ...

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Episode 57 – Unboxing internal comms at IKEA

March 2, 2022

In episode 57 of The Internal Comms Podcast, listeners can take a peek inside the world of IC at IKEA, as host Katie Macaulay chats with a dynamic duo from the multinational furnit...

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Episode 56 – IC at the sharp end

February 16, 2022

In this first episode of season 7 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay talks to Jim Shaffer, an internationally recognised business adviser, leadership coach, author ...

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Leading Lights – Highlights From Season 6

February 9, 2022

Get ready to tune in to our next season of The Internal Comms Podcast. While Season 7 promises an amazing array of guests, this special episode highlights some of the best moments ...

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Episode 55 – Mission Possible

December 1, 2021

In the final episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay speaks to Sally Susman, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer. ...

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Episode 54 – Brain care: Mastering your mind

November 17, 2021

In the sixth episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay talks to Phil Dobson, founder of BrainWorkshops and author of The Brain Book: How to Think and W...

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Episode 53 – Suicide Prevention: Reflecting on an award-winning campaign

November 3, 2021

***The content in this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast may be triggering for those who have experience of suicide.*** In the fourth episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms...

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Episode 52 – How do you create comms with purpose?

October 20, 2021

In the fourth episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay catches up with Maliha Aqeel, Director of Global Communications and Digital Channels at Fix Net...

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Episode 51 – Why are we here? How purpose and values drive healthy cultures

October 6, 2021

In the third episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay catches up with communications expert and IABC Fellow Jane Mitchell. Jane began her career with...

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Episode 50 – A guru’s guide to internal podcasts

September 22, 2021

In the second episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay talks to Brian Landau, an authority in podcasting and expert on all things audio content creati...

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Episode 49 – Engagement: how it started, how it's going

September 8, 2021

In this first episode of season 6 of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay talks to the father of employee engagement, organisational psychologist Professor William Kahn....

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Industry experts – highlights from Season 5

September 1, 2021

The curtain is about to go up on the new season of The Internal Comms Podcast, with some fantastic guests joining host Katie Macaulay to talk about all things communication. For t...

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Episode 48 – Changing minds: using behavioural science in IC

May 12, 2021

It has always been Katie Macaulay’s goal for The Internal Comms Podcast to help improve the way organisations communicate with their people, and this week she does so by explorin...

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Episode 47 – Conversation with a comms rebel

April 28, 2021

Katie Macaulay’s guest this week is a leading light in efforts to advance the careers of under-represented groups in IC. Advita Patel is a qualified coach, mentor, public speake...

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Episode 46 – Influential Internal Communication

April 14, 2021

This episode sees the return of the brilliant business communications strategist, international public speaker and podcast host Jenni Field. The immediate past chair of the Charte...

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Episode 45 – Sharing the magic

March 31, 2021

The life and career of this week’s guest has been a literal roller coaster. Mark Webb fell into PR and media relations by chance, after spotting a job ad for the new Eurodisney ...

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Episode 44 – How to prove your presence

March 17, 2021

Katie Macaulay’s guest for episode 44 of The IC Podcast is Canadian comms expert Prarthna Thakore. After beginning her career in Calgary and then moving to London, Prarthna has ...

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Episode 43 – Kate Jones on the state of our sector

March 3, 2021

Every year since 2008, internal comms pros have responded to the Gallagher State of the Sector report. Because it’s been running for 13 years, and because similar questions are a...

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Episode 42 – Once Upon A Time In IC

February 17, 2021

Katie Macaulay kicks off Season 5 of The IC Podcast with a riveting conversation with business storytelling specialist Gabrielle Dolan. Gabrielle is a highly sought-after internat...

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Looking back, looking forward: highlights from Season 4

February 10, 2021

With the new season of The Internal Comms Podcast just around the corner, we wanted to whet your appetite with a selection of the best bits from Season 4. For this special best-of...

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Episode 41 – At the heart of the crisis: NHS comms during Covid-19

December 23, 2020

The NHS has never been far from our hearts and minds over the last few months. As the national jewel in the UK’s crown, the National Health Service has battled many difficulties ...

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Episode 40 – Founding fathers – building the first IC agency

December 17, 2020

What prompted the creation of the first IC agency back in 1964 and what convinced those first chief executives that they needed external help communicating with their employees? W...

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Coming soon in season 4

December 9, 2020

Coming soon in season 4 of The Internal Comms Podcast

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Episode 39 – Evidence-based IC

November 25, 2020

Recent research shows measurement is particularly challenging for many internal comms professionals. Katie’s guest on this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is Benjamin Ellis...

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Episode 38 – The secret thoughts of successful people

November 11, 2020

Amid the turmoil of 2020, with IC pros thrown into the spotlight as we strive to keep colleagues informed and connected, it’s not surprising that many of us are feeling a degree ...

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Episode 37 – The art of negotiation

October 28, 2020

If you want to take your communication skills to the next level, then this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is for you. Katie’s guest is a formidable negotiator and expert ...

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Episode 36 – Navigating the digital landscape

October 14, 2020

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast we meet digital expert Frank Wolf. Frank spent seven years as a business consultant at Accenture. Then at T Mobile, he was responsible...

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Episode 35 – How to do less, but do it better

September 30, 2020

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast we meet Steve Crescenzo, a witty, straight-talking and charismatic speaker, workshop leader and coach from Chicago, USA, who has spent...

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Episode 34 – Cross-cultural comms

September 16, 2020

The Internal Comms Podcast is now in its fourth season – and to kick it off Katie sat down with Tasneem Chopra for some honest and open conversation. The self-styled “professi...

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Choice cuts: highlights from Season 3 of The IC Podcast

September 2, 2020

Before the curtain lifts on Season 4 of The IC Podcast, we wanted to leave you with some food for thought from Season 3. And what a season it was; we had a whole host of remarkabl...

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Episode 33 – IC’s founding father

July 8, 2020

The goal of this podcast is to bring you meaningful, in-depth conversations with people who are helping to shape the world of internal communication: practitioners, leaders, author...

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Episode 32 – Leadership in unprecedented times

June 24, 2020

President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Jenni Field has more than 16 years’ experience in communications. She is the founder and director of Redefining C...

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Episode 31 – What's next? IABC roundtable on the impact of Coronavirus

June 10, 2020

The Internal Comms Podcast has gone truly global with our latest episode featuring three speakers from three countries. In episode 31 Katie tables a roundtable discussion with Jen...

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Episode 30 – Your biggest, best, boldest self

May 27, 2020

Chief Executive of the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), Adriènne Kelbie has an exceptional understanding of the true power of communication and engagement. The first woman to ...

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Episode 29 – Crisis communication at the coalface

May 13, 2020

Katie’s guest this week is someone who is no stranger to crisis communication. Amanda Coleman was the Director of Corporate Communication at Greater Manchester Police when, on M...

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Episode 28 – The Godfather of IC

April 29, 2020

Katie’s guest this week is one of the world’s leading authorities on internal comms and the management of change: Bill Quirke. As managing director of IC consultancy Synopsis,...

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Episode 27 – Stepping up in a Crisis

April 14, 2020

This week Katie speaks to renowned communicator Shel Holtz. As listeners continue to grapple with keeping workforces informed, galvanised and feeling connected during the corona cr...

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Episode 26 – How to thrive in IC (Part II)

April 1, 2020

This episode is recorded as the majority of the UK is in lockdown while the country attempts to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic. Katie Macaulay’s guest, Rachel Miller...

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Episode 25 – Crisis Communications: Covid-19 Special

March 25, 2020

Katie Macaulay recorded this special episode on Friday 20 March 2020 in response to the rapidly developing situation surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Her guests to talk all thin...

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Episode 24 – A view from the top

March 18, 2020

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, Katie puts her first CEO in the hotseat: Marc Barone. Marc is chief executive for continental Europe at AECOM. This Fortune 500 comp...

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Episode 23 – Courage, confidence and communication

March 4, 2020

In this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast Katie talks to one of world’s most qualified communicators, Priya Bates, from Canada. Priya has an Accredited Business Communicator...

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Episode 22 – State of the Sector

February 19, 2020

State of the Sector is the longest-established and most in-depth survey of the internal communication profession, based on responses from more than 1,000 professionals around the w...

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Episode 21 – The cheerleader for IC

February 5, 2020

During Seasons One and Two we covered a lot of ground in IC and beyond. As we begin Season Three, brace yourself for more fascinating insights as we delve into the very heart of co...

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The highlight reel – nuggets of wisdom from Season 1 and 2 of The IC Podcast

January 29, 2020

Since the launch of The Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay has interviewed more than 20 fascinating guests from the world of IC and beyond. Now, as we gear up for Season ...

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Episode 20 – Advocacy in action

December 18, 2019

Katie’s guest this week is Keith Lewis, UK Social Media and Social Business Manager for Zurich Insurance – one of the world’s largest insurance groups with 55,000 employees i...

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Episode 19 – The appliance of neuroscience

December 4, 2019

Katie Macaulay’s guest this week is a neuroscientist with extensive experience in the field of organisational change. Hilary Scarlett began studying the brain in 2009 after read...

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Episode 18 – Editing organisations

November 20, 2019

In this episode we get up close and personal with someone who helps improve the way we communicate at work. Mike Klein worked as a political consultant in the US, but for the past...

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Episode 17 – Black Belt Thinking

November 6, 2019

As individuals, this week’s guests have impressive CVs. Sue Dewhurst is an experienced internal communicator who, for many years, has been training and coaching thousands of lea...

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Episode 16 – A Passage to India

October 23, 2019

With this podcast now reaching listeners in 50 countries worldwide, host Katie Macaulay has chosen to go international for this episode. Her guest is creative services entrepreneu...

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Episode 15 – The Power of Two

October 8, 2019

This week, Katie meets Claire Hyde and Louise Wadman, joint heads of IC at KPMG UK. Possibly the most senior IC job share in the country, Claire and Louise have more than 45 years...

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Episode 14 – How to start a movement

September 24, 2019

Katie’s guest this episode is Nita Clarke – whose services to employee engagement have earned her an OBE from the Queen. Nita has a long and fascinating career. She co-authore...

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Episode 13 – A check-up with the IC doctor

September 11, 2019

The Internal Comms Podcast is back with a new series of fortnightly conversations with leading lights from the world of internal communications, engagement and leadership. AB Mana...

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Season 02 Trailer

September 6, 2019

Season two of The Internal Comms Podcast is almost here!

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Episode 12 – Listen and learn: insights from 30 years in IC

July 24, 2019

In this extra special bonus episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, the tables are turned on Katie as she takes the spotlight as an interviewee. Posing the searching questions is J...

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Episode 11 – Putting the soul back into Patisserie Valerie

June 25, 2019

For this special bonus episode of The IC Podcast, Katie interviewed Paolo Peretti, Managing Retail Director of Patisserie Valerie, in front of a live audience at AB Thinks Live, ou...

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Episode 10 – Internal comms at the sharp end - recorded at IoIC live

May 21, 2019

For the final episode of season one, Katie Macaulay travels to Bath for IoIC Live and interviews two of the conference’s speakers, Martin Fitzpatrick and Matt Batten. Both Marti...

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Episode 09 – How to win colleagues and influence people

May 7, 2019

Social influencer marketing is a new and rapidly growing means of getting your message out to your audience. It’s changed the face of advertising and has everyone from up-to-the-...

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Episode 08 – The Joy of Work

April 23, 2019

Katie’s guest this week is an extremely versatile communicator. In his day job as European Vice President of Twitter, Bruce Daisley has overseen the development of one of the wor...

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Episode 07 – What social purpose (really) means

April 9, 2019

Running the UK’s largest retail and financial services network with more branches than all of the UK’s banks and building societies put together, the Post Office is at the hear...

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Episode 06 – The craft of communication

March 27, 2019

In episode six, Katie travels beyond the boundaries of internal comms to find out how to write more engagingly, tell better stories and use humour to deliver your message. And who ...

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Episode 05 – Learning comms lessons from PR

March 13, 2019

In episode five, Katie aims to find out what internal communications can learn from external communications. So she sits down with ‘mister public relations’, Stephen Waddington...

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Episode 04 – What it means to be the voice of IC

February 27, 2019

The Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) is the voice of the IC profession – dedicated to strengthening confidence, credibility and community. And on 12 March, the IoIC cel...

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Episode 03 – What the State of the Sector report means for IC

February 13, 2019

Episode three lands as Gatehouse’s latest State of the Sector report is published. Katie invites Jenni Field, a tireless, high-profile personality of the IC landscape, to discus...

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Episode 02 – What it takes to be an IC leader

January 30, 2019

Even if you’re only vaguely familiar with internal communications, Katie’s guest in episode two will no doubt be a name you recognise. In a career spanning 30 years, Russell G...

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Episode 01 – How to thrive in IC

January 16, 2019

In the first episode of The Internal Comms Podcast, Katie meets Rachel Miller – a prolific blogger, educator, keynote speaker and one of the most respected voices in internal com...

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Trailer

January 11, 2019

An introduction to the new Internal Comms Podcast.

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