Summarize Leadership Chapter 9: Establishing Leadership Strategic Internal Communication

This chapter focuses on how to establish leadership through strategic internal communication that include recognizing the strategic role of employee communication, assessing internal communication effectiveness, establishing effective internal communication, using missions and vision to strengthen internal communication, and designing and implement effective change communication.
One of the major responsibilities of an organizational leader is communication with employees. Effective internal communication provides organization direction and employee motivation. The leader must realize its importance in accomplishing the company’s strategic objectives and performance goals and integrate it into the company’s overall strategy and business processes. The communication objectives would be
1. To ensure all business units receive the same corporate message that joint decision-making is now a priority.
2. To establish forums (meetings if appropriate) for the joint decision making to occur.
You first responsibility will be communicating your message clearly; your second will be persuading the managers to act it and seeing that they do.
The leader should use the scorecard of current employee communication to uncover how your organization stands in relation to the best practices for internal communication. If you find key managers are uninvolved and unsupportive of communication efforts, you may need to coach and encourage them to accept responsibility and accountability for the success or failure of employee communication.
The effective internal communication consists of the following:
1. Supportive management.
2. Targeted messages.
3. Effective media/forum.
4. Well-positioned staff.
5. Ongoing assessment.
Missions, visions, values, and guiding principles make up one category of major strategic messages that most organizations convey to their employees. Mission is a statement of the reason a company exists that is intended primarily for internal use. Vision statement establishes the company’s aspirations. It describes an inspiring new reality, achievable in a well-understood and reasonable time frame. Leadership communication must include how best to create and deliver these core messages to ensure they are strong and meaningful and not simple feeble slogans good only for adorning coffee cup.
Good internal communication provides the direction needed to reach strategic and financial goals and encourage productively. It enables the smooth operation of the organization when interwoven seamlessly into all other processes of the organization. You will need all of your leadership communication skills to inspire employees to support you in achieving the organization’s strategic and financial goals, and it is through skilled, strategic internal communication that you will accomplish leadership.