| Authentic Employee Communication |
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By: Gerard E. Mayers |
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 My colleague Doug Bedell recently blogged about the new world of employee communication. In his piece he quoted Scott Spreier of the Hay Group about how important it is to be credible with employees: "No matter what your strategy, media, or technology, don’t think you can win the credibility battle with communication alone. More than anything else, what this new order requires is emotional intelligence, a major dose of trust, transparency, empathy, resilience, self-awareness and self-control. Without this, no matter how hard we try, what we say will ring hollow."
Amen to that! One of my original blogs on this site mentioned how important it was for any organization to include its employees (I prefer the term internal customers) in its product launch cycle. Spreier mentioned emotional intelligence as one of the key facets of the new method of employee communication. So what is it exactly?
My boss at HODT Inc. published a booklet titled Level Up: Lead with Emotional Intelligence in the fall of last year. In that booklet (published electronically for Amazon's Kindle and on Apple’s iBookstore), he noted what two researchers in the area of emotional intelligence have observed:
“In 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer said emotional intelligence is a separate intelligence aside from cognitive intelligence or IQ. ... They defined Emotional Intelligence as being able to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions in such a way as to be able to discriminate among them and use this information to help guide one’s own thinking and actions.”1
Errigo further went on to clarify what emotional intelligence means to working with fellow professionals:
"Desirable managerial attributes include being able to control one’s own emotions, being transparent and trustworthy, wanting to perform well, taking action and using opportunities, being flexible to changes or in surmounting problems, focusing on the positives, inspiring leading and motivating with vision, developing others by providing constructive criticism and assistance, initiating, managing and leading change, resolving conflict, networking, and working together with others for team development. These abilities are identified within the core foundations of Emotional Intelligence and are key in a leader’s ability to develop his staff. In order to develop the staff, a leader needs to positively influence them in order to facilitate a change in their behaviors which will contribute to their overall professional development. These competencies are also instrumental in developing teams, and working with a collective staff to accomplish larger organizational objectives. It is no secret that the four major United States armed forces academies, namely Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, design all their activities to change individual behaviors and develop teams as well as produce what many would term effective leaders.”2
Sounds like a compelling argument for me for PR professionals who exercise management skills and those who deal with employee communications to possess, as Spreier said in his own blog, “emotional intelligence, a major dose of trust, transparency, empathy, resilience, self-awareness and self-control. Without this, no matter how hard we try, what we say will ring hollow."
1. Errigo, John J. Level Up: Lead with Emotional Intelligence. (2011) Penndel, Pa: Quincentennial Publishing Company. Original quote from Salovey & Mayer, Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 185–211, p. 189.
2. Op. cit., pg. 25.
Note: Gerry is Director of Marketing for HODT Inc., the parent company of Quincentennial Publishing Company; he is also the Director of Publishing for Quincentennial.
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Gerard E. "Gerry" Mayers writes about PR and other relevant topics for PR professionals. A former PR manager for Sensor Products, Inc. (currently based in Madison, NJ), he lives in Milford, NJ.
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