The Quantified Communications Blog

In any large institution or organization, programmatic change is often met with resistance. And this is especially true in the tradition-oriented higher education world—and especially when the proposed change is adoption of a new technology platform. This may come from fear of how new systems will impact everything from day-to-day work to policies and procedures to jobs, themselves. Resistance may also be rooted in inertia—after all, learning a new system or process adds more items to already-packed to-do lists. So if the status quo is working, more or less, why take the time to do something different?

We talk a lot about building trust here at Quantified. As communicators, we’re most successful if we can convince our audiences to trust us. They’re more likely to focus on what we’re saying (rather than sifting through our content in search of ulterior motives), more likely to internalize our key points, and more likely to act on our messages.

We’ve written about trust in the context of media, of politics, and even of corporate activism. But let’s focus now on everyday leadership, on the importance of trust between an executive and her team. What does employee trust enable leaders to achieve, and how do leaders build that trust?

It seems learning and development executives are in a constant struggle to identify and implement programs that are cost-effective, provide measurable ROI, and move the needle in retaining and developing top talent. For example, a 2017 report from LinkedIn found that, while 90 percent of business leaders believe L&D programs are key to closing skills gaps, only 8 percent said they’d seen a business impact of these programs, and only 4 percent had seen a clear ROI. 

Whether they’re developing a standalone online course or a digital supplement to a traditional, 300-person seminar, creators of online courses face one critical challenge: how to motivate students to participate fully, internalizing the information and honing the skills these lessons intend to convey.

One of the privileges of leadership is that, with an executive title comes an executive platform—a reason and a place to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. 

Whether you’re writing a corporate blog post or an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, you’re suddenly expected to share your perspective and insights. Why? Because a strong foundation of thought leadership helps build your organization’s reputation—and your own, as its leader—as a credible expert in a competitive field. Prospective customers have countless choices for any service or product they could possibly want to purchase, and they want to know their vendor is knowledgeable, ready to meet their needs, and on the cutting edge of innovation.

So how do you go about it?

While geography once defined a business’s boundaries—who it could hire, who it could serve, and who could invest—today it’s almost more common for customers, investors, and often even employees to be scattered across the globe than to be locally situated. Phone and email initially empowered the dissolution of those geographical boundaries, allowing us to communicate quickly, efficiently, and cheaply with colleagues and clients in any location.

In November, Patagonia announced it was going to donate the entirety of the $10 million it had received in GOP tax cuts to fight global warming. A couple months before that, Nike released an ad featuring Colin Kaepernick (a precursor to its February “Dream Crazier” ad calling out gender-based double standards). And In January, Gilette called out toxic masculinity in its “The Best Men Can Be” commercial.   

Every one of these decisions—and many more corporate statements on social and political issues—has inspired equal amounts of support and criticism, but they’re part of what looks to be a new wave in a long-growing trend of corporate activism.

Last year, we predicted that 2018 would be the year of the voice, and in many respects, we were right. Voice-activated virtual assistant usage grew, voice and video continued to explode in social media, and we continued to see evidence that talking may be on its way to winning ground back from typing.

But one area in which voice really took off? Podcasting.

Here at Quantified, we spend a lot of talking and writing about how to deliver less-than-stellar news. How do you frame it when you have to disappoint investors? How do you keep your message optimistic and future-forward while still being clear and candid about what went wrong? How do you ensure your voice and body language mirror the gravity of the situation without being overly negative? 

Here at Quantified, we take every opportunity we can to remind leaders that what they consider “soft” skills—teamwork, critical thinking, persuasive writing, and (most importantly) communication—aren’t that soft after all. Skills like these may seem, at first, like “nice to haves.” They’re a little wishy washy and hard to measure, but if an employee with great technical skills can also captivate a room, more power to her.