Leading internal communications
We really enjoy speaking to leaders of internal communications on the podcast and finding out about their career histories and some of the things that they’ve learned over that time. So we’re very lucky today to have a guest with more than 18 years experience in internal communications. They are going to share with us the experience of building their career within internal comms, starting off just as themselves, but then moving through to now having a team of seven people serving 6000 employees across the globe. During that journey we’re going to find out some of the tips of how they’ve built up a team, some of the challenges along the way and some of the key lessons from that journey. We’re going to find out about how the role of being a leader in internal communications can sometimes be quite a lonely role. There is often a dependency or an expectation on you to be the one who has all the answers, to have all the experience, to have all the knowledge.
As part of that, we’re going to explore the importance of building a really diverse and sustainable support network that can help you to bring some perspective to your work. It can be one person or a group of people who can give you advice and mentor you because even though you’re a leader, you still need that help and support and advice. We’re also going to talk about how the role of an IC leader can sometimes be very busy, with very diverse days that have lots of things going on. We’ll discuss how we cope with those different demands and how we smooth over the water that is sometimes very turbulent within our organisations given the volume of work and the expectations that are thrown at us. And finally we’re going to finish off by looking at some advice for anyone who’s newly joined the profession, looking to join the profession or who’s been in the IC profession for a while. We’re going to talk about three different pieces of advice that our guest is going to share with us as to how you can look to develop that support network and be really successful in your career.
Guest profile
Sarah Turton is a trusted CIIC (Chartered Institute of Internal Communications) accredited communications and engagement leader, with a formidable record of delivery extending over 18+ years with one of the largest UK headquartered software companies. Sarah is curious, creative and innovative by nature, and demonstrates a ‘can-do’ attitude and genuine passion for ‘the written word’ and ‘all things culture and communication’.
Useful links
Link to a relevant episode of the podcast: https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/podcast/becoming-a-trusted-advisor-s2-e2/
Sarah’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-turton-ciic-74487a4a/