Why CEOs Should Take a Meeting with Marketing

Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry. 

In a recent GE and Ipsos poll, 40% of entry-level employees reported that their CEO’s don’t "walk the walk" — authentic communication is something they want more of. While email continues to be the most used communication channel, roughly one-third of corporate memos are left unread. Workers describe these communications as boring or irrelevant – long messages that don’t seem to convey the heart or meaning individuals and teams are longing for.

This is a far cry from the marketing emails most companies send – communications they spend thousands of dollars designing to the wants, needs, and desires of their consumer audience. Marketing experts know that in order to talk to customers, you need to listen to them first. Knowing what your audience values and how they will relate to a message is what strong advertising is made of: Good marketing communications are personal, concise, and engaging and they inevitably get to the heart of what a buyer really cares about.

Whether it’s an email or a speech, if leaders want to convey a sense of meaning and purpose in their communications, they may want to take a lesson from marketers and start by listening.

One example comes from Nissan. When asked what raised their employee-survey scores over the past three years, the automaker shared various ways their employees are heard from and leaders get to communicate face to face. In addition to an open-door culture where leaders make themselves available, Nissan engages their employees in intimate one-on-ones and skip-level meetings. In the factory, leaders regularly walk the floor, creating opportunities to connect and hear what is on the minds and in the hearts of their workforce.

“We don’t rely solely on surveys for success,” shares Laura Gillespie, director of talent management for Nissan. “We believe in adapting to different situations and audiences and maintaining proximity with our teams.”

When asked about the importance of the employee voice, Jérémie Papin, chairperson for Nissan, Americas said it “shapes our culture.” Nissan’s focus on listening has resulted in a giant uptick in employee engagement. According to Great Place to Work, 83% of Nissan employees say they are proud to work there and each year more and more workers say they plan to stay with the company over the long term.

“Instead of ‘quiet quitting,’ I see active engagement and enthusiasm that is very contagious,” reports Papin.

While we often think of purpose at work in the context of bigger things like climate change, a more immediate opportunity is to think about how everyday communication supports a sense of meaning.

Talking to employees—not at them—is one way to show you are invested in something beyond their compliance and productivity.

When the professional-services firm Accenture pivoted away from a mass-email model and embraced a very curated and personalized approach to weekly communications—only communicating to employees things that they knew really mattered to them and their role—email engagement shot up from 6% to 80%.

"You hear people talking about the proliferation and personalization of content, but they're always talking about it externally,” says Jill Kramer, Accenture's chief marketing and communications officer. “You can customize for internal audiences too."

According to one study, 85% of top leaders believe they effectively communicate their company's values, but only 62% of junior employees agree. Not only are leaders communicating values less productively than they think, but chances are, they aren’t connecting them to the employee experience in ways that resonate.

When it comes to making work more meaningful, open ears and authentic, targeted communication are two of the greatest tools leaders have at their disposal. Underneath an employee’s thoughts, observations, wants, and opinions are big hints as to what they value. Knowing this helps leaders draw a clearer line of sight between organizational mission and what people are doing and thinking about in the day-to-day.

This is one way purpose becomes embedded into how a company operates.

Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon

Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.