Katie 00:03
Hello and welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast, where it is my privilege to explore ways we can make communication at work work. I’m Katie Macaulay, and I’ve dedicated a career to helping organisations better hear, inform, involve, and ultimately inspire their employees. I’m going to keep my preamble for this episode short, because it is so good I can’t wait for you to hear it. Now, be prepared. This conversation will challenge how you respond to the inherent diversity within your workforce and how you bring your organisation’s values, mission and vision to life. In short, if you think you understand that three letter acronym, DEI, I’m confident this conversation will make you think again. My guest is Kim Clark.

Katie 01:07
Now I first learned about Kim’s work via her book, which she co authored with Janet Stovall. It’s called The Conscious Communicator: the fine art of not saying stupid shit. Then this year, I saw her on stage at IABC’s world conference in Chicago. Kim’s speech just blew me away. She was so inspiring, so moving, her passion and experience was so evident, so compelling, that I just had to ask Kim if she would share all that passion and experience with you, and I’m delighted to say that she said yes.

Katie 01:51
Kim has a really bold vision for what we as comms professionals can achieve inside our organisations. And no, we don’t need a perfect strategy. She says, rounds of approval and lots of permission. There is important work we can do tomorrow that will make a tangible difference. Societal change these days lies in the hands of businesses, not governments, says Kim. After all, in the United States, for example, there are more protections for women from harassment, assault and violence in the workplace than in their own homes. Businesses can and already are leading the way in this conversation. Kim explains how to support your leaders in using DEI as a way to achieve the business outcomes they really desire, we talk about moving away from performative DEI measures, how to cultivate safe spaces for respectful dialogue inside our organisation, and how to deal with pushback and dissent. I loved this conversation listeners, and I really do hope you do too. So without further ado, I bring you Kim Clark.

Katie 03:15
So Kim, welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast. It’s a real delight to have you here.

Kim 03:22
It’s an honor to be here. Thank you for asking me to be a part of this really important relationship that you’ve built with internal communicators all over the world.

Katie 03:31
Thank you. You have an intriguing background in radio and video production and also documentary filmmaking. I’m just wondering, in terms of setting the scene, how did your journey lead you from that into internal communication?

Kim 03:49
The beauty of internal communications, Katie, is that it’s all of it. Yes. Internal communications is what you make it to be. Depending on where you live, what your culture is like, the spread of geographic regions, you can make it whatever you need it to be.

Kim 04:04
I had that opportunity when a friend of mine was leaving a role and saying, you should check this out. And you’re right. I spent most of my 20s in radio. I was doing promotions and marketing. I had been a college DJ. That’s my degree, is radio, television, film, and I really wanted to do TV and video production, but I started off in radio, and so having that relationship with people right there, people love the brand of the stations that I worked with, I made people happy, giving them front row tickets to see U2, and building that kind of connection has helped me in internal communications. And then as I went over to the other side of my degree and started producing and creating different documentaries, some with the Discovery Channel, doing television documentaries, some doing my own independent documentaries, there I was tested in sharpening my storytelling skills, and getting to know people, and being able to build trust with them in order to have conversations with them and have them share things that they feel comfortable sharing that they could be vulnerable with. Because as a documentary filmmaker, much like internal communications, you go in with a certain idea, but you have to release it so the story that wants to be told can be told. That kind of learning went into my internal communications and how I shaped the communication strategies. If I was creating a video for a recruiting or a culture video, or some other kind of video internally, I would go in with an idea, but I had to release that idea if there was another story, a better story, that wanted to be told. And then having that relationship with employees, much like radio listeners, of just getting that instant feedback, being able to test things out, be creative, have people feel a sense of pride of being a part of our brand, which was all things that I got to sharpen while working in radio.

Katie 06:07
When we spoke in preparation for this show, you talked about having multiple identities. Do you mind sharing those identities with us? And maybe also explain how you balance these in your professional work, and how these identities help you connect with diverse audience groups.

Kim 06:30
It has really helped me, as a DEI practitioner, to have very dominant identities. Like I’ve been treated as a white woman in the world, right? A college educated, middle class, white woman walking in the world. And I’ve had that power and that privilege, and internally, I have LGBTQ+ status. I am a gay woman. I am very open about that, and I have Native American ancestry on my mother’s side. My grandmother is a survivor of Indian boarding schools in Oklahoma. She was in Tulsa as a small child when the Tulsa race massacre happened, and she never talked about it. And so there’s this side of my family that was forcibly removed out of the southern area of the United States, Georgia, Alabama, the Muscogee nation, and forced on the Trail of Tears. Moved by the guy on the $20 bill in the United States, Andrew Jackson, and moved into Oklahoma, and with us, we brought enslaved people. We were one of the tribes that enslaved people, and that’s how Black Wall Street started in Tulsa, which was destroyed in the Tulsa race massacre.

Kim 07:44
So there’s this history of where part of my ancestors were part of the oppressed and then we oppressed. And there’s my dad’s side of the family, which is European, like English and Norwegian, and coming over and having that kind of height privilege. I’m 5’10 for example. I have this mixture of power dynamics in society where I have privilege, and I have these other not as visible sides of me that I’m very motivated by, where my work is motivated by me trying to find reconciliation with this ancestry, with this history. Yes, I’m a white woman. That’s a power position in most scenarios. But if I’m going to talk about being gay or being born and raised in a conservative Christian environment and coming out and what that experience was like for me, I am not in the power position, so depending on the situation, I’m either the one who’s running the show or being on the reactive and navigating that situationally informs me as a DEI practitioner. And also, I have two kids, both with some form of disability. So my son is autistic, my daughter has dyslexia, and so seeing how they’re treated in the world and really wanting to make the workplace and society a safer environment so they don’t feel stupid or left out, or all the things that can happen to teenagers, you know, with disability. So I have a lot of motivation to do this work. I’m very committed to it. I also wrestle with the privileges that I have to question and work through and utilize, especially with the platform that I’ve been graciously given by the communications world over the last many years that I’ve been doing this work.

Katie 09:45
Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Kim. That leads us very neatly into talking about one of your mentors. Can you tell us about the mentor who shaped your understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion? Yeah, and how their experiences have impacted your approach? I’m a big believer that everyone needs a mentor.

Kim 10:06
So you’re right. Katie, you’re right. There’s no way I could do this work in a meaningful way, growing myself, because this is work that we have to do personally so we can show up as the professional. It’s going to show up in our work professionally when we do the work personally. And that is mandatory as part of this work. DEI is asking us to change. DEI is asking companies to change, organisations to change, and we have to embrace that this is change management. One of the reasons I know that for sure is by meeting my mentor over 20 years ago now.

Kim 10:41
She’s been through all the movements in the United States. Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, so you’ve got Watts riots, women’s equality. She was very steeped in the LGBTQ+, when it was just gay and they had to fight to get the L on there. She’s got many stories about that. She went through the AIDS crisis in LA and all the subsequent movements ever since, civil rights as well. That rich experience makes history come alive. Yes, it’s not like an old film reel that pops up on my Instagram. She’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we couldn’t… we were fighting just to get the L on to think that we’ve got so many parts of the acronym now is just blowing my mind.’ And she never thought that there would be marriage equality in her lifetime, and being able to vote for a black president in her lifetime.

Kim 11:34
Just learning from her, she’s an educator, a pastor, a scholar, and in her sharing DEI in a very practical way, I immediately started applying it to my communication strategies. I could see the connection, and it served me well for things that I didn’t know I was preparing for, such as in 2016 the Pulse tragedy in Orlando, Florida, there was a mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ dance club. That happened over the weekend, I come in on Monday, my inbox was flooded with employees saying we’re hurting, we’re angry. We don’t know what to do with this information. We’re so distracted we can’t work. And so I turned around and said, Okay, we’re gonna do a virtual vigil, book conference rooms in every office that you’re in. Come together so you’re in person together. But we’re gonna get on a Zoom and I have a speed dial to my mentor. And I said, Can you please help me with this? She stepped in. We even had HR on there to make sure that all the benefits afforded to the employees to support them through crisis situations, emotional support, were made available very clearly to them. But I opened it and my mentor talked people through context, yes, and then gave them permission to talk to each other, use chat in conference rooms, go on mute and just be with each other and no judgment, you know? So there was anger and there was crying and helplessness, and we made that space available immediately, and that’s because of the infrastructure that I had built, because of what I learned from her, that I put in place that I didn’t even know I was preparing for.

Kim 12:53
Let’s share her name with listeners, and I believe you also have an episode of your podcast where you interview her. Is that correct?

Kim 13:27
She starts off the podcast series actually, because, you know, I pay a lot of honor to her, and I continue to work with her to this day. Her name is Reverend Deborah L Johnson. She affectionately goes by Rev D. She also has an article in our book, The Conscious Communicator: The Fine Art of Not Saying Stupid Shit. That’s the book that Janet M Stovall and I co authored, where we introduced the depth model at the end of the chapters. We have guest contributors and Rev D contributes, one about intention and vision.

Katie 13:59
I want to talk to talk to you about your book. You have a line in that book, ‘DEI communications must align the organisation’s business goals with its business vision.’How important is it to frame DEI in the context of the business opportunity that it presents? Because I think this is key to your approach.

Kim 14:24
That’s the point of DEI, to work to fix inequities that have been systematically built into our companies, no matter how old they are. If they’re 10 days, 10 years, 100 years old, capitalism especially, is built off of inequities. So when we have these grand visions and these purposes, every company has been started to solve a problem in society. Somebody had an idea, saw an opportunity, figured out there’s a market, and then said, There’s a hole here. There’s something that we can do better than anybody else. We have an idea to help something in society. The bigger a lot of our companies get, the farther away, even though our mission, our vision, the words, the values, may still be desperately trying to cling to the point of solving a problem in society, the shareholder mentality, you know… being in internal communications, a lot of us know this, because we hear how leaders talk. Their minds are completely on the board, on the shareholders, on the stock price, on revenue generation, and they have this language and this mindset that’s way over here. And then we have to remind them, when they go into an all company meeting or a town hall that is not where the employees are, they want something that matters in society, that they are contributing to, something meaningfully, that we’re a part of solving something or bettering the world. There’s a point to my spending all this time with y’all, more than my family and friends every week. There’s meaning in this. And the leaders have to translate the pressures they feel into that connective tissue. So that’s where we get the beauty of really strong, powerful motivating words around our vision, our mission, our values, but inherently within the structure and policies of a company, We’re gonna have inequalities that we inherit as an infrastructure, and so we have to employ DEI to remedy that.

Kim 16:49
So there’s something that the company says they wanted to solve in society, but they’ve inherited a flawed, inequitable system. The remedy is DEI, to bring integrity into the organisation. And it still speaks the language of leaders, where it says, If you want revenue generation, a robust, strong, powerful talent strategy, if you want innovation, if you want growth. This is it.

Katie 17:23
This is the way to get it.

Kim 17:24
The way I work is the way to do it. And we as internal communicators have this opportunity now, as we shake through the infancy of how DEI has been talked about at corporations, to the point where we can mature more into talking about DEI as this connective tissue that brings our organisations back to its original purpose of serving society, providing solutions to society, and bringing in that integrity of what we stand for and who we are. So it’s not a tactic. It’s not a strategy to trick leaders into saying DEI is important. It already is, and it’s helping them see that in a very tangible way.

Katie 18:11
I love that because it just gives two strings to our bow. We can bang on about how it’s the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, the humane thing to do, and we should, and we should never forget that, but also saying this is good for business, this is how you achieve your business goals. I think it deepens the message that we’re trying to get across to leaders, doesn’t it?

Kim 18:32
I’ve been at, I’ve been in the workplace for a minute Katie, and I remember having an electric typewriter in my office, and there was one computer. It was in the sales office, and there was a digital revolution that happened. It was expensive and scary, and we had to pay for people and other resources and change management and operational changes. It changed how we did business. If you didn’t do it, you’re not here anymore. That is very similar to what DEI is offering. It’s a change of business. If you don’t do it, if you don’t go through the operationalisation, integrating into your business, having it be a part of your talent strategy, or be your talent strategy, etc, etc. Yes, you’re going to need training. Yes, there’s going to be change management. You have to embrace it. If you don’t do those things with a DEI mindset, you’re not going to be your own as Gen Z continues to get into the workforce, and that’s how serious it is, and that’s the question that we’re being tested on right now.

Katie 19:34
Let’s just step back for a moment. I do want to get to the practical how we do this well inside organisations, but I believe you and I are both fans of the Edelman Trust Barometer, and what that’s been saying in recent years, I think has huge implications for us as internal comms folks. Do you want to share your reading of the Edelman Trust Barometer?

Kim 20:00
You know people who know my work really closely, they would suspect that I’m paying Edelman to do this report to back up everything that I’m doing. It is like, I read it and I’m like, oh, there it is. You are supporting what I’m saying through data. Thank you!

Kim 20:21
Especially the 2023 report, I was just like, everything in here is exactly what I’ve been saying and why I started doing this on my own and started my own firm focused on DEI communications. For example, one of their findings in the 2023 report was that employees want more social engagement from business – not less, more. Another one was consumers and employees pressure businesses to stand up for them. One of the questions was, I buy or advocate from brands based on my beliefs and values? 63%. Wow. Having a societal impact as a strong expectation or deal breaker when considering a job. 69%.

Kim 21:05
At the end of that 2023 report, their recommendations are titled, navigating a polarised world. So we weren’t quite yet into the election season here in the United States that we’re facing in November of 2024. They had another graph that identified several countries, the countries that they survey, and because this is a global report, and they rated level of polarisation. The United States is way in the polarisation area, the UK is in danger of severe polarisation, along with France, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Germany, so many European countries are in the in danger of severe polarisation. The US is next to Colombia. Wow. You don’t often think of Sweden as polarised, but they’ve got them in a severely polarised section, but their recommendations in navigating this polarised world is first and foremost, businesses must continue to lead, because business is the only trusted source,. Yeah, not NGOs, not government, not media, businesses. My favorite Katie is the graphic that talks about CEOs. Are CEOs trusted? Or do you trust your CEO? It’s like CEOs. No, I don’t trust CEOs. But my CEO… other CEOs are shady, but my CEO, yeah, totally trust my CEO. Yeah, funny to me. At least there’s some comic relief in all this. That puts a lot of responsibility on internal communicators. So we are the only trusted resource and source of truth and integrity. We have to be the one to green the facts and say, What does this mean for us as a business? What does this mean for us as employees who live in certain areas of the world, the country, their states? We have to be that source of truth. We are the ones that have to maintain and honestly, you know, one of the graphics talked about that business being that source of trust is hanging on by fingernails, it’s a very delicate, fragile relationship. We’re not speaking out when we need to, whether it’s internal or external, or sharing the facts of what this means to us and just acknowledging and talking it through. Number two is collaboration with government. We could do a whole podcast on that. I’ve done webinars talking about how companies can’t function without a relationship with politicians, legislation and government, and they don’t exist without being registered with the government, it’s like. And then the ask was, restore economic optimism. And the fourth one is advocate for the truth. So I’ve been doing a lot of work, because we are recording this around the US presidential election in 2024 in the United States., and I’ve been doing a lot of work with several clients about putting together guides and helping them navigate the election season, how to have conversations, how to mature collegial conversations of colleagues who want to talk about the election or talk about politics, and we can certainly, you know, talk more about that, but this ‘advocate for the truth’, now is that a small t a big T? If it’s the big T, it’s something all employees from all backgrounds can relate to, and that’s what we need To stand for. I love the Edelman Trust Barometer. There’s so much good stuff in there. I recommend that, especially internal communicators, go to their webinars when they talk through their reportings, participate if you have the opportunity. There’s a lot of data there that I think communicators miss out, especially internal communicators, and being able to back up why we’re saying what we’re saying. And for some cultures, we can’t say that’s my gut feeling. Some cultures we can. But we also have data that backs up saying the way talent is going, the way demographics are going, the way that social media and that discourse is going, is that we have got to be transparent, and we have to be in integrity with who we are, with what we say, with what we do.

Katie 25:26
I remember reading, and I don’t know if it’s ’22 or ’21 but there was a slide from the Edelman Trust Barometer that said employer media is most trusted over any other media source. And I looked at that, employer media, hang on a minute. They mean internal communication. That’s us, that’s us. That’s our license to operate if we ever needed one. That’s it, right there. My reading of the Edelman Trust Barometer is, at this point, probably business is our best bet in terms of creating meaningful societal change, but I might be overstepping it. What’s your view at this point?

Kim 26:07
I completely agree with you. This is how I got introduced to my co author, Janet M Stovall. She has a TED talk, and I encourage everyone to go watch her TED Talk. It’s 11 minutes of brilliance. I was driving, actually, I was on a road trip, just in the car by myself, just, you know, scrolling through TED talk after Ted talk about DEI. Hers comes up, and she says, one line in it: ‘business can dismantle racism.’ And I nearly went skrrrrrr, kind of fell over towards the side of the road, like whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait. And replayed it, and she said it as clear as day with the clearest conviction, business can dismantle racism. And I said, I have to meet this woman. Fortunately, we were both speaking at the same conference. I was in the morning, she was in the afternoon, but we were like ships in the night. We missed each other. We didn’t get to meet. But the opportunity did come up. By the end of the five hours at a Spanish restaurant where we shut it down, we were like, We need to work together on something. And that was the fall of 2019, then 2020 happened. It was pretty clear, especially after the black squares started to go up after the murder of George Floyd and the protest, what communicators were putting out in social media and what was happening with our clients, these statements of solidarity had great intention, but we knew that this was courage and would create a backlash, which is exactly what has been happening. So we hustled to put together the work that we had been doing with our own clients and codified into a book and created the depth model in there, which helps position organisations on when do you say something? Who should say it? What should you say? How should you say it? But most importantly, why? The role of business, and what she says in the TED Talk, is that the very fact the different people coming to work every day, in order to get paid, you got to work together. Performance Management dictates you got to work together. It’s a good point. Yeah. So in order to get paid, you got to work together. So we do have, especially with global organisations, the opportunity to give exposure to countries and regions and cultures and traditions and languages that are completely a different ways of working, a slower pace, faster pace… different ways of preparing for meetings, the cultural competency, our cultural intelligence, is going through the roof. We do have an advantage, you know, the UK as well, but the America, especially in coastal areas like I’m based in California, so I can have any kind of food from anywhere in the world. I can go to San Francisco and hear all kinds of different languages just standing in line in the grocery store. But that’s not the way it is in other regions. So DEI looks different in each area, but in particular the way business is conducted, we’ve got to make this switch from exploiting into building these relationships that actually is going to improve the quality of the work, but also the quality of us as people.

Katie 29:18
I love that so much. Kim, thank you. This episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is brought to you by the Internal Communication Masterclass. I’ve condensed more than 30 years of experience and expertise into this unique on-demand learning experience. Gain the capability, confidence and credibility to turbo charge your career. There are eight work streams in this programme, which you can buy individually or as one comprehensive learning journey. Each work stream comes complete with a downloadable course book filled with yet more resources and some compelling homework tasks. Visit ICmasterclass.com. This is an entirely on-demand program, so you can learn at your own pace, anytime, anywhere, plus there’s no expiry date so you can revisit the content whenever you wish. That website address again ICmasterclass.com. And as a listener of this show, you enjoy a 20% discount on each work stream or the entire programme. Simply use the code podcast20 at the checkout. Stand out from the crowd, gain that promotion and feel reenergizsed and inspired.

Katie 30:54
You emphasise in your book, and you touched on it there, moving beyond these performative DEI efforts, and you talk about the danger of performative communication. What does the opposite of performative actually look like? What does authentic DEI look like?

Kim 31:15
Telling the truth, being transparent? What trips us up Katie is that we’re built within a performative system. There’s a goodwill sense to it that a lot of companies love. It’s like internal comms. We’re looking for some good news. We just did all these layoffs or org changes, or revenue is down. You’re searching for good news and some business cycles, just to look forward to something and say, Okay, we’re lifting people up. We’re telling people stories. These are good things. So getting into cultural observances like Black History Month or Pride, International Women’s Day, it’s like, okay, we can be creative. We can have some fun with this. And it’s an outlet. So just like, say something good. This is really good. And also the kinds of things like having employee resource groups and doing panels and stuff. But when we put out those annual reports, I haven’t seen one that isn’t performative yet, because we’re built within this performative system of keeping things safe for the company. So this kind of surface level, you can say these things, but we’re not going to go any deeper. Part of the reason is because we’re not educated on where did this even come? Why do we even have Pride? Yes, and we might bring in an external speaker like me. I do a lot of talks in June and October, because it’s LGBTQ+ History Month in the United States. But Pride is, you know, a global event in June. And so you can bring me in. I can tell you, you know, I can speak to the reason and stuff, but I always tell my hosts and any client that I’m working with that there’s the 3 Cs that you need to have an approach to that’ll take you out of that realm of performative communication, not just in cultural observances, but that’s a great place to start, because it’s the first, easiest place to start, because it’s already funded. You already have a track record there. But you do have to mature into talking about what the issues are.

Kim 33:18
The first C is celebration. Yes, we need the acknowledgement. We need the visibility, not just in that one month or that one day. It needs to be throughout the rest of your content calendar, and I’ll talk about that in just a second. But you do need to celebrate. You do need to acknowledge. We need to switch our default from not acknowledging and then having to be convinced to say something. We need to switch that mentality into our default is, here’s what we do say on the things that we are committed to, that we can move the needle on, and not be talked out of those things, because this is who we are. It’s a part of our identity. We’re being in integrity with who we are in society. A company is just made up of a whole bunch of people in society. We operate within society. So we can’t be separate and pretend this is just business. That mindset has to evolve. So celebrate, yes, the acknowledgement, the visibility is very important.

Kim 34:16
The second thing is the crisis. So why do we have a Pride in the first place? Let’s get educated and understand that this isn’t something from just like the 1980s or the 1960s there’s elements of it that’s very, very alive right now, very, very alive. It just came out last week that the United States Supreme Court is going to take up a case of reverse discrimination, so called, of a heterosexual woman saying that someone who is an LGBTQ+ person took her job. That is laying the groundwork for companies to get ready for any kind of challenge of marriage equality in the United States that may be heard and therefore overturned. In Project 2025 there’s multiple ways that LGBTQ+ discrimination policies would be removed, and so that… My community is being set up, and has been the trans community. It’s been set up. These aren’t separate from businesses, because we are employees of yours or we are purchasers. We’re trying to live a life of safety, happiness and opportunity. So this kind of ties into what you’re asking me before about the role of business. It’s like business is money. That’s power. So you got to celebrate, educate and talk through the crisis of the populations you’re celebrating.

Kim 35:46
And the consistency I spoke to earlier, it’s the consistency of showing up in meaningful ways when we need companies to do so, and when it is in their mission, vision and values and their power to show up for our communities.

Katie 36:03
And when we spoke in preparation for this show, you said you don’t actually need to have an all encompassing, perfect, fully approved DEI strategy to get going. I just want to reassure listeners that that is the case. They can make a change. They can start doing this without the all encompassing, beautiful strategy.

Kim 36:26
Especially if you’re in an area that is very anti DEI, your leadership may want nothing to do with this. One, you don’t have to use the term, but the work isn’t going away. So smart internal communicators, those are the folks that I’m working with to say, start with where you are, what is in your control? Do you control the newsletter? You don’t have to run around and get permission to say, I’m going to put somebody with a disability in my newsletter. Just do it. Look at your visuals, whether it’s stock photos or if you’re getting employee photos, represent the diversity amongst your employee base, your customer base. That’s the truth. Tell the truth. Just go out and give visibility. Change the stock photos so you’re not reaffirming any kind of negative stereotypes, or you’re not being exclusive.

Kim 37:20
I was working with a company on their careers website and their website in general, with that kind of audit, if you will, of looking for ways that language could be more inclusive, looking for ways that visuals can be more inclusive. And this is an organisation that focused on serving veterans of the military, and there was no representation of any kind of physical disability. Was fully whole and in great shape. It was not representative of who they serve. And everyone was 30. That’s not representative. So you got to look at age, body size, hair, bald, whatever. If there’s apparatus that is represented by your constituents or employees, just tell the truth. Be really honest. There are things you can do with language within the channels that you own and the visuals that you use. You can do it right now without any permission. You don’t have to tell anybody. You don’t have to say it’s DEI. You’re just telling the truth. Start with where you are, with what you have that didn’t start today, right now, on that thing that’s due Friday, look at it with a DEI lens.

Katie 38:40
You’re making me think of the massive impact we’ve had over the years just commissioning real life photography of employees. Because stop, oh, my goodness me, be real. Just get a photographer out on the front line.

Kim 38:57
And look at who you’re hiring. So here’s an example, Katie, that’ll probably make your skin crawl. So there was a career site that a team had been working on for like, a year to put up this new career site, and they had gone out to different offices and got new photos of employees and all this kind of stuff. When they finally hit publish, I took a look at it because I knew the leader of that team. I look at it and I’m like, Oh, no. So what happened was, you have to look at the photos that you choose in association with the job category or the content that’s next to it, right? And what they ended up doing in their job categories is putting stereotypical representation in those job categories. So for customer service, it was a young black male for technical it was an Asian woman and an Indian man, both with glasses. For corporate, it was a white woman, maybe in her mid 40s, blonde hair, right? And so it goes. So I wrote her, and I’m like, Hey, heads up. I don’t think this is on the same web page as their ERGs, their commitment to diversity, this unconscious bias is a real thing Katie, for those of us who look like me. We’re less exposed to recognising where we’re unconsciously biased. I think we have different representation of real employees. But then you, ah, then at that last minute, you put those things together, and I’m like, at least switch them up, put the black male in corporate. Because that’s true too. But when we have these opportunities to tell the story, we have to be thinking through, are we reinforcing any kind of stereotypes and bucketing and limiting people on where they belong? It’s not intentional all the time. That’s the insidiousness of unconscious bias. It can creep in.

Kim 40:58
Now let’s think about the system. They went away from stock footage for a reason. But then, who did they hire to take the photos? Who was making decisions of the employees they were choosing, and then who was writing the copy, who was laying it out, who was doing the review and who was doing the approval? There was a lot of people that were part of this project, and it happened over a long time. Did anyone see this? If they did, did they say something? If they said something, were they dismissed? Because, if they were heard that never would have been published. It never should have happened.Iif you have a DEI lens, especially if you’ve got like representation amongst that process of creating something like that. That stuff doesn’t go out like that. You don’t make those kinds of mistakes, at least you mitigate them substantially. Look at our systems and processes, the people involved in the makeup. We have to deliberately, intentionally and strategically assemble a team that is going to check and balance each other so we can all learn, and the end product is going to be way better.

Katie 42:09
Because otherwise, what you shift is from one lazy way of thinking into another lazy way of thinking. You’ve not really moved the dial much. You just created another load of stereotypes.

Kim 42:20
Think 1000s of dollars of travel and photography and stuff, use the same kind of stuff for stock footage, and ended up with exactly the same result. You’re right.

Katie 42:28
There’s a really wonderful, powerful quote in your book from Bishop Desmond Tutu. ‘Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.’ We’ve talked a lot about imagery here, but do we also need to rethink the words, the phrases we use too? And do you have some favourites that you’d like to ban forever?

Kim 42:55
Yes. I would imagine it’s like this in the UK as well, but the United States, we have inherited lexicon and vernacular that has really horrific roots, and then we’ve incorporated into the business environment, and without really knowing that there is this historical aspect of some of the language that we use. One example is grandfathered, and I invite the audience go look up grandfathered and what it means and where it came from. We use it very innocently. In our internal communications. I always do an exercise in one of my trainings, some form of an exercise of just like, Okay, here’s four sentences that I just made up in 30 seconds or less, and you tell me how it could be more inclusive. I’ll always put in something that has historical roots that are problematic, and find out how well versed is this audience on knowing that grandfathered or other terms, cake walk, other peanut gallery have very problematic terms, you know, as far as their history. And then there’s the casualness with some things like open the kimono or let’s pow wow about this on Tuesday. So having a Native American background, so I’d be like, Can I introduce a suggestion here? And again, no judgement. How would people know? Unless there is an opportunity to learn. It’s a different behaviour if they just continue to use and they know about it, that’s a different thing. But if we’ve never been exposed to the definition and the understanding of the roots around grandfathered, or pow wow, or, I heard a webinar on Friday from somebody who was talking about saying things that were problematic and having to apologise. And he’s like, there’s many times that I’ve said things that I’ve been scalped for. And I’m like, he he was just talking about how not to do this and how to apologise, and then he said another racist term. Unconscious bias is real. He didn’t even hear himself commit the very thing he was suggesting on how to remedy. And I’m sure I’ve done it too. So introducing these opportunities, can I make this suggestion that instead of saying pow wow, which belongs to Native Americans and indigenous peoples, can we say what we mean, especially for those where English is not a first language, will meet or will huddle on Tuesday, let’s use business terms. Let’s be using more clear language, rather than appropriating something that belongs to another community that actually has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. We’re just talking about meeting up on Tuesday.

Kim 45:38
What comes out of our mouth and what we write in our communications is within our control, so just gut check ourselves and say, Is there anything here that belongs to another community or culture and we’re using it out of context? We actually don’t have the right to do that. That’s part of the privilege mindset that we need to get out of and recognise that this belongs to that culture. What we are going to talk about here is meeting up on Tuesday. It really helps people who don’t have English as a first language to speak in plain language and say what you mean very clearly. It’s one of those curb cut effects that you actually are benefiting way more people than you realise. It’s not tone policing. It’s about clear communication, and our point in communication is to build connection. Katie, may I suggest that every organisation needs to have an inclusive communications guide. I custom write them for clients. This is so helpful, not just as an accountability buddy for us as communicators with our partners in marketing, sales and brand, I always put in a decision making tree on if you’ve got a word or a phrase that comes up. This is how you can navigate that conversation, to decide if this is something that you’re going to continue to use or not. Any kind of guide is not going to be exhaustive of all the phrases there are, right, but it is going to be effective. It’s a start. The other purpose to it. It is so helpful for managers and employees, because managers will slip up. They don’t know. How would they know unless we introduce this and so much of the polarisation and the microaggressions that occur within workplaces, this is all very preventable, and a lot of it is education, raising awareness, and of course, you have to follow through with accountability. Our differences are actually not the problem. It’s us choosing to polarise around those differences that becomes the problem. These inclusive language guides, or inclusive communication guys, if you want to call it that, that’s fine. People want to say the right thing. We think of ourselves as really nice people, and that we would never make mistakes. We would never say, you must be too sensitive. The guide I put together is not just a glossary of terms, but there’s a behavior with our language. Because that’s, that’s my thing, is where I talk about language leads to behavior. So the guide is talking about language, but it’s about the behavior we’re creating through the language we use. All it’s doing is helping us be better communicators in the workplace, and therefore we treat each other better, therefore there’s better innovation and more psychological safety, and ends up benefiting everybody.

Katie 48:15
That neatly leads me on to, how do we best advise our leaders around these issues? You’ve talked about majoring on the business benefit. There are many business benefits. This isn’t just morally the right thing to do. It’s good for business. Any other message or advice or support we should be giving our leaders in the space?

Kim 48:41
DEI is brand new to leaders. They are not having the experiences that somebody at an entry level or mid range is having. They are primarily made up of a demographic that has not had experiences of inequality. So it’s hard for them to believe it. It’s hard for them to validate it. It’s hard for them to understand it. Unfortunately, they feel like they need to have those things in order to green light funding for actual change. But that’s actually not a requirement. So there needs to be this collaboration, whether it’s your DEI councils or your employee resource groups, whatever it is, the folks who do have these experiences and know what can be done, have ideas for solutions, they are on the receiving end of these inequalities and inequities. They are your partners. I’m speaking to leaders now. They are your partners, right? Because you don’t have the experiences, but what you do have is decision making power. You have that power. You have that leverage. It’s not a requirement for you to understand their experiences, but you do have to believe them and that they have the answers. So leaders don’t have these experiences, so they don’t have the answers. They don’t know what to do, because they don’t understand the problems in the first place, and they’re in over their heads. Going back to the summer of 2020, they approved those black squares. They’re trying to be leadership like, yeah, okay, let’s do something, put something together, Chief Comms Officer and the Chief Comms Officer typically looks like me, so they didn’t really know what to say, but so they said nice words, and they meant it, right? But they didn’t understand the work that goes into making those 10 words alive and real. They didn’t understand what the resourcing and the change management, everything that we spoke about earlier that it takes to make those 10 words of solidarity real.

Katie 50:53
Could we talk about that pushback? Because you said earlier, you don’t even have to call it DEI. Just get on with it. And I’m wondering about the pushback. Do we even need to start calling it something else, rebranding it, or are we not at that stage yet? And would that not be helpful? I’m just wondering what your observation is on the pushback.

Kim 51:16
So much, there’s so much we did just that. That topic, gosh, where do I start? We thought we understood what DEI was. But when you build your house on the sand, the biblical saying, it’s going to go the way of the weather. A lot of organisations did. Some have been learning since 2020 and have done some more bolting down. They have gotten more serious in understanding what the actual work is, tying it to their business vision, values and strategy, and integrating it better into their organisations. They’re building the pieces on the rock that can withstand storms. So here we are in the storms which Janet and I and many other DEI folks saw, that the pendulum would swing after the summer of 2020, it was just a matter of the test of strength and stickiness. Is this gonna stick? Unfortunately, one of the things we did, because we’re in a performative system, if we were trying to do the right thing and thought we were doing the right thing, some of our messaging as communicators unintentionally remarginalised. It was the wrong people to remarginalise, which is the people who make decisions and have budgets that they control. If you remarginalise the demographic with that much power within the workplace, they’re gonna push back. There’s a change happening without them that they are really struggling with. Our organisations are going through an intense identity crisis, because our societies around the world are going through identity crisis right now. And what happens during an identity crisis? You thought you were this and you thought the world worked a certain way, yeah, then someone else is changing the rules on you, and you are insecure. Well, you’re afraid of the change. Maybe you don’t even see yourself in the change at all. So you’re going to be a wounded animal. You’re going to try to control and reassert power. We have to accept that we’re asking people to change, by integrating DEI into our organisations and our communications, that’s our job as communicators, to tell the greatest story that an organisation has, which is the vision of what our organisation can look like when DEI is the outcomes of the work that we put into place. DEI… diversity is a series of decisions that lead to a diverse workforce. Inclusion is a series of decisions that lead to everyone feeling included. Equity is a series of decisions where our systems and our processes are equitable. Everyone has opportunities, the barriers are removed.

Kim 54:19
There’s been research where people were asked, without the terms, they were asked, do you agree that in the workplace everyone should have opportunity? It was like, they didn’t use the terms, but they were saying, like, these are the outcomes of DEI. And overwhelmingly, people were like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But as soon as they use the terms, it was just like, Well, no, I, you know, I don’t like the DEI stuff, but I want this. So that’s our job as communicators. Tell that story, that it’s actually the same story, it’s the same outcome, and everyone benefits from it. Now, not everyone believes that. There’s a lot of people who believe in the zero sum game that you’re taking things away from me. We have to manage people through the change. We’re asking people to change. So we need to be there for them as they do. Let them know that they are a part of this work and that this benefits everyone, and help walk them through what that looks like. Help them see themselves in this work.

Kim 55:18
When I’m working with clients, I said, I want to talk to your dissenters. The people who get the Pride email say, unsubscribe me from this email, or they make a post on the internet saying, I don’t think we should be a part of Pride parades. This is against my faith or my religion, or whatever it is. It’s like I want to talk to those people. I want to hear them. They have a legitimate motivation and worldview that they’re coming from that means something to them. There’s something they’re afraid of, and that is an opportunity for us to work with them, to help our messaging. Push back is feedback. We have an opportunity within our workplace cultures to make a different decision than what is being role modeled outside of our organisations. What’s being role modeled in the government and in other large, influential entities is division, and us versus them. As organisational cultures, we can make a different choice. We are empowered by our values, which typically says respect or integrity or care. We are inclusion. Look at your values. They do mean something when you enforce them. We have the power to make a different decision than what’s being role modeled outside of our organisation, and it changes the dynamic completely. But as communicators, let’s tell that story. This is a great story. It’s not fluff, it’s real, real and true, but we have to get more educated as communicators to understand what DEI actually is, so we can tell that powerful story.

Katie 57:01
And it’s a story where everyone can and should be a part of, that is the point. Yes, if you’re a person, it touches you.

Kim 57:12
Yeah, exactly.

Katie 57:13
We we are fast approaching the elections in the US. And you talked about polarisation. I’m just curious you talk about going into organisations, actually helping them have this open, respectful dialogue. Are there any particular tactics or techniques you use to enable that conversation to take place?

Kim 57:35
Yeah, and there is research that says that most employees do talk about politics in the workplace. Remember, we spend more time with each other than anybody else, so it’s going to happen, after a debate or whatever news cycle is going on, it’s going to happen. It’s natural for us to want to connect with people, and there’s research that talks about severe increase of anxiety and fear as elections approach. So we’ve got a great opportunity for things to really go sideways in the conversations within the workplace. I remember in 2016 I was in house running internal communications for a global tech company. That’s when in the US, Trump was elected, and there was a significant, I heard from HR, there’s significant amount of employees who called in sick, need to take time off. And then something that I did not have on my radar at all was that there was a fist fight that broke out in one of the cafeterias because of somebody wearing emblematic messaging on their hat or shirt. There was this us versus them that translated from the outside our walls into the cafeteria that resulted in violence. So we cannot take it for granted that everybody’s just gonna get back to work. That is naive, extremely naive. Because especially this election and the upcoming elections in other countries as well, it’s about social ideologies. So it’s not just policies like foreign policy, but even when it’s foreign policy, we’re still talking about human beings being impacted by these decisions. There’s a human element that we downplay. We don’t take seriously. The legislation that’s anti LGBTQ+, specifically, trans rights, women’s reproductive rights within the United States, for example, these things are being legislated by politicians, but it’s about human beings and the promise in the United States of equal opportunity, certain, you know, inalienable rights, right, freedom, right? Happiness, pursuit of happiness. There’s a promise in this country and other regions of the world that we are grossly out of integrity that’s baked into the Constitution, that’s baked into the country’s founding. There’s this narrative we want to believe in, but it’s not happening when we have to get through the government situation. This is about social identities, about me as an LGBTQ+ person, a person with disability, a woman and all of the things. So when we are wanting to have these conversations, that’s typically where it’s coming from. Do I feel safe at work? In the United States, there are more protections for women in the workplace from harassment, assault, violence, et cetera, there is more protections in the workplace for women than in their own homes. Some crazy isn’t it? Talking about the role of business in this work, it’s typically the companies and organisations who have led these protections. The way we talk about race and ethnicity has far more options than how the government does that census, for example. Business is more reflective, and it becomes this kind of town hall space, this public square, kind of space, I’m not going to go down the road of the organisations and their relationship to government and the donations of PACs and PACs and what that policy and those processes mean as far as money and politics, that’s a whole other conversation. But colleague to colleague, Katie, if something happens that is impacting my community, because I’m a part of that identity, faith tradition, geopolitical area or ideology… I am at work. What are my options? Sometimes I want to talk about it. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about it, but now I’m feeling a lot of pressure people looking at me because they know I’m a part of that community. Yeah, and that’s on top of the grief that I’m dealing with. That’s when we need to really be support. We acknowledge. We know that this happened. We’re not gonna ignore it. We’re not gonna pretend it’s not there. And allowed that person to take the lead on what support looks like for them. Give them the space. They need to take off? They need to be gone for half a day for the next week? They need to go into counseling? They need to be in their faith traditions? What does support look like for you? Nobody should be talking politics with that person, unless they engage the workplace conversations. When we get into politics, it’s not the same as the kitchen table with family and friends who can debate with one another. When we’re at work it’s called adult to adult inquiry, right? That’s the approach that I recommend with a nice side helping of what Professor Loretta J Ross teaches, which is called calling in. The adult to adult inquiry is changing the reason you get into conversations with your colleagues, and it’s about listening and learning from someone else, because we’re all coming from our world view. We only know what we know, but when you start with the acknowledgement that somebody else is having a completely different experience than you, yeah, and that you are not threatened by their experience because they’re having theirs not yours. Now, any kind of dehumanisation of individuals, identities or communities that’s off the table that is not in accordance to any of our company values. That’s a no. That’s a big no. But if we want to talk about issues, it’s about listening to where somebody else is coming from and learning, it’s not about being right. It’s not being about defensive. It’s not about being offensive. So the workplace, this is about collegial relationships and building psychological safety and trust amongst team members. So those are the kind of conversations that happen the workplace. If you want to be right, you got to go somewhere else. If you want to go off on something that somebody said, you do deserve to have those outlets. We have to have ways of expressing. We have to have outlets in safe, healthy, productive, constructive ways. But the collegial relationship, what’s most paramount is holding each other’s human dignity intact, recognising that you deserve to be safe. I deserve to be safe. Equal amounts of speaking room. We’re not talking over each other. We’re not telling each other how dumb they are because they believe something. What’s our goal here? According to our company values, if respect is in there, that means that I respect you, see you as a human being, and I want to listen and learn. That’s the point of collegial conversations within the workplace, but the other styles of communications find other outlets that are constructive and productive to express that. Because we have different ways of responding and reacting to what’s going on, we have to be more thoughtful of where we’re going to express those kinds of energies.

Katie 1:05:25
I love that so much, because if you go into those conversations with an intention to learn, be curious, there’s no need to say, we must agree. But actually, just through that open inquiry, you will probably find there is actually more that you agree on than you disagree on. Can you talk a little bit about calling in? You mentioned calling in? What does that look like?

Kim 1:05:51
Oh my gosh. It is such profound work, and it’ll change how you do communications Professor Loretta J Ross has a TED Talk where she introduces calling in and calling up. So for example, if a family member were to say something racist about a particular demographic or identity, you want to invite them into a conversation, not a fight. That’s what calling out does. There’s the spectrum, so you’ve got the silencing somebody says something rude or sexist in a meeting, especially if there’s a client or if there’s a leader there, and they’re the ones. So the silence thing. You may not say something in the moment, but you’ve got to find a way to get back to that person, to give them the opportunity to learn that that was not an okay thing to say and help them learn and make a different choice. Ultimately, the person has the opportunity to learn and correct. The silence in the moment can make sense in some situations, but there still has to be some sort of influence on that person afterwards to help them learn. Sometimes we have to stop this right here, right now. It’s getting out of control, right then. There’s a follow up also. But calling in is that kind of where, actually most situations that we want to employ this technique, especially in relationships that we value, that we want to keep, like collegial relationships, I gotta work with you, Right? Yes, yeah, the way you approach it is staying in your own integrity, not losing your cool, but also not being silent. Saying, Hey, Ben, you helped Sally with that project last week. And I know that you give to that favourite charity all the time. I know this about you. These are the kinds of things that I just appreciate and respect with you. So you saying X, Y and Z about X, Y and Z, I can’t reconcile that. Help me understand what you meant by that and where you’re going with that, because I know you as this person. So help me figure this out. It’s a reflection opportunity on the speaker, who then has given the choice on how they want to show up, what is their next move, they get to decide their own behaviour. And so you’re not taking on what they said. You’re not taking it personally. You’re recognising that they’re coming from their worldview, and you’re giving them an opportunity to hear what they just said and choose who they are from that moment moving forward, you’re not tearing them down. You’re giving them a chance to build up. Yeah, you’re supporting them through it.

1:07:38
I have one final question before those quick fire questions, and I’m going to give you the magic wand, Kim. You’ve got every resource at your fingertip, whatever resource you need, and it’s worked, DEI is deeply integrated into every aspect of a business. Tell us what it looks like. Tell us what it feels like for employees, what’s happening?

Kim 1:09:05
I love this question, Katie, and I’ll start my response by quoting my mentor, Rev D, where she says, pain pushes until vision pulls. What that pain does is it pushes us saying the status quo isn’t okay anymore. We can’t put this back in the bottle or back in the box. We can only go forward from here and learn in all of the awkwardness that that’s going to take and the mistakes that we’re going to make along the way. Ultimately, the vision, I use different words for it, but really what it comes down to is that what the company purports that they stand for, we are making that real. We’re making that true. We’re putting the company in integrity with what it says by what it does.

Kim 1:10:01
So what does that look like? We’re living up to our highest ideals, such as equality, opportunity, dignity for all people, personal liberty. There’s a nonprofit co founded by Stacey Abrams out of Georgia that it’s, it’s the whole purpose is to basically save DEI, and they’re spending a lot of time on the narrative. We have to figure out the narrative here and tell this great story. American Pride Rises iss the name of the organisation. I’ll use some of their definition on how they see it. It’s making Well, in America, the dream, the social experiments, the you know, promise, a reality. But this is true for every organisation. Just look at your mission, vision, values, and say, what does this look like across the board for all employees, regardless of what level, regardless of background and identities and faith and traditions and disabilities and sexual orientation and gender expression, everyone gets the fair opportunity to pursue their goals and enjoy the rewards of our hard work and contribute to our community, to our workplace, to the solutions and products that we deliver to our own families. So it’s really this sense of promise, of freedom, dignity, opportunity, prosperity, happiness for everyone, no exceptions, no exceptions. And that’s where our heads need to go. Is this vision. Yeah, we’re not going to restrict people from this. We’re not going to… we want to hear the feedback of where these barriers that we don’t even realise are there. Yeah, going back to your council and your employee resource groups, giving this information to the folks who can make decisions and have budgets and resources. That’s the collaboration, the partnership and the connection. That’s the story we need to tell so we can raise more awareness across our organisation. Tell the greatest story that you can ever tell about your organisation, which is this story, this story right here, of what is possible. And then let’s get to work and incorporate people to be a part of the work so they can be a part of ushering in the change that will benefit everyone.

Katie 1:12:30
I’m so glad I asked you that question that is so inspiring. Thank you. Thank you.

Katie 1:12:40
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. Now, 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 1:14:15
Let’s hop over to those quick fire questions. What would most surprise people about Kim?

Kim 1:14:22
I am more introverted than people realise. But when you get me talking about things that I’m passionate about, my kids, DEI, communications, opportunity for everyone. I’m a teacher at heart, I think I also have a lot of introvert sides to me, so I guess I consider myself an ambivert. Situationally, the extrovert will come out when it’s needed and necessary. I love it and I enjoy it, but I also like sitting in my backyard hammock chair putting on some headphones and working.

Katie 1:15:00
Yeah, you and me both, that sounds perfect as well. What’s one piece of bad advice or unhelpful thinking that you think might have consistently dogged the communications profession?

Kim 1:15:17
I’m gonna say two. One is being an order taker, that we continually be boxed in. After Covid, and us as internal communicators being on the front lines, our own version of being on the front lines as essential workers, and our own version, in our own way, being there for leadership to make hard decisions and to disseminate really important information that impacted business and employee welfare and safety… You’d think that we would have better resourcing, more respect, but it’s just like this memory thing that seems to erase how integral we were, and we still get boxed in as order takers, and it’s really freaking frustrating. Yeah, because we’re this bridge between employees and leaders. We have the pulse if we’re really doing our jobs. Like when I was working in house, every year I would visit every office in the US. I wouldn’t necessarily go to the international offices for a variety of reasons, but once a year, I would go to all the US offices. Hey, I’m coming to town, come and talk to me, and I would build relationships. I had a pulse. I would go on the app Blind, where employees voice how they really feel about their CEOs or leadership. I would turn what I would see on that app into town hall questions. So there’s this beautiful way of not asking permission, but out of that box of being order takers and being strategic thinkers and advisors through the communication strategies that we put together, just put a DEI lens on your work moving forward. Don’t ask for more permission. Don’t announce it. Don’t put together a fancy deck. Just do it. Do it within your power. Do what’s in your control. Break yourself out of that order taker thing so you can find meaning within your own work.

Katie 1:17:09
Well, perfect. How would you complete this statement? World Class internal communication is…

Kim 1:17:19
…having a DEI lens on your communication strategy and your day to day work on a regular basis. It is literally the way communications is being done moving forward. And if you don’t get more educated on a daily basis about what does DEI mean for us as communicators, and what does it look like on the work that we do on a regular basis, you’ll be falling behind, just as like, there’s so much pressure on us to learn and adopt AI like that came out of nowhere and almost kind of pushed DEI to the side. And it’s like, but you still have to have a DEI lens on AI. DEI is this overarching lens that we have to have on everything we… it’s literally changing how communications is done moving forward, and it’ll help save our company’s reputation, build trust. There’s so much good that can come from employing strategies, thinking, planning and implementation of having a dei lens, not just on our strategies, but on our daily work as well. It is the current and future state of communications.

Katie 1:18:26
Perfect. Thank you, Kim. And finally, a bit of a tradition on this show, we give you a billboard for millions to see any message you like on that billboard, what’s going to be your message?

Kim 1:18:40
Language leads to behaviour.

Katie 1:18:43
Perfect a lovely summation of this conversation. Thank you so much. This has been a really inspiring, educational, moving conversation for me. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you for your time.

Kim 1:18:55
Oh, Katie, thank you. Thank you for your work. It’s so important, and I’m so glad listeners can count on you to bring the conversations they need to make them better and more effective communicators.

Katie 1:19:08
Thank you, Kim. And that is a wrap for episode 109 of The Internal Comms Podcast. If you did enjoy this episode, I have a small favor to ask you, please. Could you give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That way you are giving the algorithms a little nudge and helping your fellow comms professionals around the world find our show. Thank you. For links to the TED Talks and other resources mentioned in this episode, head over to AB’s website that’s abcomm.co.uk/podcasts. You will also find a downloadable transcript of this show and our entire back catalogue.

Katie 1:20:03
If today’s conversation with Kim sparked your interest in creating more compelling content for your internal comms, then check out workstream six of my Internal Comms Masterclass, at icmasterclass.com. My thanks to Kim, our producer, John, sound engineer, Stu, Content Manager, Madi, designer, Rob and the rest of the amazing crew at AB. Thank you to you all for keeping this show on the road, and last but definitely not least, my thanks to you for choosing the internal comms podcast. The show would be nothing without you. So until we meet again, lovely listeners, stay safe and well and remember it’s what’s inside that counts you.