The ABC (DE) of internal communications
Internal communicators have never had more tools at their disposal and more ways of communicating with their audiences. Over the course of the pandemic, many internal communicators have felt somewhat overwhelmed with the level of expectation that has been put upon them, but there have also been opportunities that they feel they have wanted to get to grips with. So what I wanted to do was to try and find a way to simplify some of the challenges and opportunities that internal communicators are facing and speak to someone who could help us to do that. So I reached out to Lesley Allman who’s recently written a great book called Better Internal Communication, and asked how we can use her expertise, knowledge and skills to help simplify and crystallise some of the things that we need to be doing as internal communicators. So in today’s episode we’re going to be discussing what the fundamentals are of great internal communications.
Lesley has broken this down into the ABCDE of internal communications and we’re going to work through those together and Lesley’s going to explain what we can be doing. Just to explain, A is audience, B is behaviours, C is content, D is delivery, and E is evaluation. I think it’s a really nice, compact model which helps us to think about our campaigns, about our work and behind each of those ‘letters’ is a much more detailed set of thinking and ideas, but it’s a nice framework to get started with. Obviously, we’ll also be looking at what some of the other areas are that we can be working on as internal communicators that are linked to the ABCDE that we’re going to be exploring in this short interview. So I hope you find this a helpful interview.
I found it a great conversation with a really compelling guest who is truly an expert in this field.
Guest profile
Lesley Allman is an internal communication and employee engagement specialist providing strategic and practical support for special projects or simply to support business as usual. Lesley is also author of Amazon best seller ‘Better Internal Communication’.
Useful links
Link to relevant episode: https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/podcast/empathy-in-communications-s1-e20/
Lesley’s Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allmancommunication/
Lesley’s book: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1781336393
Additional content
This episode also includes a section covering to my visit to the IoIC Conference in Nottingham on 5th July 2022. It features brief conversations with three other delegates and my reflections on the event and what was covered there.