If I had a $1 for every time I heard this!

Over my 25 year internal comms career there were many a time when I had to argue the case for increasing communication during times of uncertainty, be it due to a corporate restructure, redundancy offering, business sale or leadership change.

The rationale for pulling back on the comms from some leaders was always the same: wait till we have more certainty, we don’t have all the answers, we won’t be able to tell people what they want to hear.

And my response was this was exactly why we must constantly update, provide timelines and seek feedback from our people. It is 100% ok for a leader, be they the CEO or frontline team leader, not to have all the answers.

This is probably more acceptable now than in the ‘olden days’ of barrel-chested, hero CEOs who wanted to appear all knowing and all powerful.

Today it is all about being more vulnerable as a leader, being comfortable with ambiguity and leading people through uncertainty – all traits no doubt honed during the tumble drier disruption of COVID-19.

The same goes for the weak argument that you shouldn’t run employee engagement or pulse surveys during times of upheaval. That’s like wanting to ignore where a strong burning smell is coming from your kitchen.

The opposite happened when I worked for Superpartners, an administration company with some 2000 employees that had many major industry super funds as clients.

As the business was undergoing a sale process by its owners, and as with any M&A process, there was widespread employee uncertainty, rumours and fear about the future.

By doubling down on internal communication, especially supporting all people managers to have weekly face-to-face meetings with their teams, engagement levels actually increased by some 10% during the sale period – building on what was already very high engagement.

How did we do it? Click here get my 10 golden rules for communicating in uncertain times.

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