Leadership communication

Leadership

Communication

How Leaders Communicate

and How Communicators Lead

in Today’s Global Enterprise

E. Bruce Harrison

Judith Mühlberg

Public Relations Collection

Don W. Stacks and Donald K. Wright, Editors

LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION HARRISON • MÜHLBERG

Public Relations Collection

Don W. Stacks and Donald K. Wright, Editors

Leadership Communication

How Leaders Communicate and How

Communicators Lead in Today’s Global

Enterprise

E. Bruce Harrison • Judith Mühlberg

My graduate students like this book’s real-world focus on public

relations as a strategic role in the C-suite. —Ron Culp, professional

director, Public Relations & Advertising graduate program,

DePaul University; former Senior Vice President, Chief Com￾munication Of cer, Sears

Leadership in Communication is a cogent, bright, easily readable

de nition of what corporate communicators do. More than that, it’s

an uncommonly careful look at how strategic communication de nes,

drives, and creates value for a commercial enterprise—its employees,

its owners, and those whom they serve. —James S. O’Rourke, IV,

PhD, Professor of Management, Mendoza College of Business,

University of Notre Dame

The quality of leadership in any organization—business,

social, military, and government—is enhanced or limited by the

quality of its leadership communication. The authors assert

that leader ship is given force by strategic communication that

produces results required in competitive conditions. For the

professional in enterprise communication, this brings into

focus two questions: What is the relevance of com munication

in the leadership process of reaching best achievable outcomes

(BAOs)? And, how does the primary communication professio￾nal attain expert in uence and success in a leadership position?

This book provides insights and guidance on functioning at the

highest levels of the corpo rate communications profession.

E. Bruce Harrison teaches business leadership communication

at Georgetown University.   He holds  the 2009 Distinguished

Service Award from the Arthur W. Page Society; the 2001 Betsy

Plank Distinguished Achievement Award from the University

of Alabama; and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Distin￾guished Service Award for his work on media freedom.

Judith Mühlberg holds a JD from Michigan State University,

and was recognized in 2012 as A&S Outstanding Alumna by

the University of Wyoming.  She is an adjunct professor at

Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and is an expe￾rienced leader in key  elds of communication advocacy, in

aerospace, automotive, and in strategy execution consulting

with Fortune 500 companies.  She is also a member of the

Arthur W. Page Society and Women Corporate Directors.

For further information, a

free trial, or to order, contact: 

[email protected]

www.businessexpertpress.com/librarians

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ISBN: 978-160649-808-8

Leadership

Communication

Leadership

Communication

How Leaders Communicate and

How Communicators Lead in

Today’s Global Enterprise

E. Bruce Harrison and Judith Mühlberg

Leadership Communication: How Leaders Communicate and How

Communicators Lead in Today’s Global Enterprise

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2014.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other

except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior

permission of the publisher.

First published in 2014 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-160649-808-8 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-160649-809-5 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Public Relations Collection

Collection ISSN: 2157-345X (print)

Collection ISSN: 2157-3476 (electronic)

Cover and interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd.,

Chennai, India

First edition: 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

To CCOs and future CCOs: Knowing that it’s about leading

and communicating, in the realization that you can’t do one

without the other.

Abstract

The quality of leadership in any organization—business, social, military,

and government—is enhanced or limited by the quality of its leadership

communication. The authors of this book, both of whom are experienced

in the practice and study of enterprise communication, assert that leader￾ship is given force by strategic communication that produces results required

in competitive conditions. For the professional in enterprise communication,

this brings into focus two questions: (1) What is the relevance of com￾munication in the leadership process of reaching best achievable outcomes

(BAOs)? and (2) How does the primary communication professional attain

expert influence and success in a leadership position? This book provides

insights and guidance on functioning at the highest levels of the corpo￾rate communications profession. This function by an individual identified

in many companies as the chief communication officer (CCO) has risen in

importance in free-enterprise economies, coincident with the evolution of

social media, journalism, data analytics, government engagement, change

management, and other factors shaping enterprise strategies and success.

The book examines the enterprise CCO at three levels: the communicator

rising toward, or newly positioned in responsibility for, enterprise commu￾nication; the CCO as a collaborator in leadership with others (chief execu￾tive and chief financial officer are examples of those with whom leadership

communication is structured and driven); and the developed, influential

communication chief dealing with missions, strategies, and the execution

of enterprise vision. A detailed guidance is given on information flow that

takes advantage of stakeholder perception management and the produc￾tive, enabled employee culture. Crisis communication in modern contexts

is explained, with emphasis on precrisis intelligence gathering through

social conversation analysis, and procedures for crisis communication man￾agement are drawn from cases provided by CCOs in author interviews and

lectures in the authors’ graduate classes at Georgetown University.

Keywords

advocacy, Arthur W. Page, best achievable outcomes, business pur￾pose, CCO, chief communication officer, chief executive officer,

collaboration, communication consulting, corporate character, corporate

communications, corporate governance, corporate reputation, crisis com￾munication, C-suite communication, culture change, employee value

proposition, enterprise culture, influence, information flow, leadership

communication skills, leadership presentation, leadership traits, leading

change, shared value deals, social media analysis, stakeholder perception

management, strategic communications, strategic leadership, strategy

execution, strategy implementation, transformational change, vision,

WIIFM, workplace motivation

viii ABSTRACT

Contents

Advance Quotes for Leadership in Communication..................................xi

Preface ................................................................................................xiii

Part I The New Model CCO: Grasping the

Opportunity ............................................................... 1

Chapter 1 What’s In It for You?........................................................3

Chapter 2 Leadership Is Communication.......................................23

Chapter 3 Leadership Traits............................................................39

Chapter 4 How Communicators Lead in the C-Suite.....................53

Chapter 5 Influence: Replacing and Reasserting “Control” ............71

Part II The Influential CCO: Skills and Competence ........... 89

Chapter 6 Listening: Where Communication Begins.....................91

Chapter 7 Culture: Understanding and Influencing .....................111

Chapter 8 CEO Letter: Leadership’s Cardinal

Communication..........................................................133

Chapter 9 Language and Presentation ..........................................151

Chapter 10 Limits: Corporate Governance.....................................173

Part III The Working CCO: Leadership in Context............. 181

Chapter 11 Crisis Basics: “Topic A Bad News” and the CCO ........183

Chapter 12 Crisis Communication Strategies and Execution .........201

Chapter 13 Pre-crisis Intelligence: SEC Risk Factors ......................223

Chapter 14 Sustainable Business Communication: Financial,

Social, and Civic..........................................................233

Chapter 15 Continuing the Trustworthy Deal................................251

References ...........................................................................................263

Index .................................................................................................277

Advance Quotes

for Leadership in

Communication

Two of the greatest communication pros have taken on the biggest chal￾lenge of our field and of industry in general—the paradox of leading with

no illusions of being in control. In Leadership in Communications, Bruce

Harrison and Judith Mühlberg walk us through their experience, share

insights and stories from fascinating leaders, and lay out a point of view

that is rich, fresh—and thought-provoking.

—Maril Gagen MacDonald, CEO, Gagen MacDonald; Founder,

Let Go & Lead; Former Chief Communication Officer,

Navistar International and Pitman-Moore

My graduate students like this book’s real-world focus on public relations

as a strategic role in the C-suite.

—Ron Culp, professional director, Public Relations &

Advertising graduate program, DePaul University; former

Senior Vice President, Chief Communication Officer, Sears

Bruce Harrison and Judith Mühlberg’s experience as CCOs, leadership

counselors, and university faculty yields this book’s immensely useful

insight. Anyone—student or enterprise leader—seeking to understand

the requirements of leadership communication can find the answers here.

—Roger Bolton, president, Arthur W. Page Society;

former Senior Vice President, Chief Communication Officer, Aetna

Leadership in Communication is a cogent, bright, easily readable definition

of what corporate communicators do. More than that, it’s an uncom￾monly careful look at how strategic communication defines, drives, and

xii Advance Quotes for Leadership in Communication

creates value for a commercial enterprise—its employees, its owners, and

those whom they serve.

—James S. O’Rourke, IV, PhD, Professor of Management,

Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame

Harrison and Mühlberg bring practical experiences to the Georgetown

classroom, and here they share cases and frameworks that can guide many

of us in the profession for years. In a world that is 24/7, more wired, more

engaged and more contentious than ever before, communicators are pro￾vided ways to navigate these treacherous waters—and win.

—Mike Fernandez, Corporate Vice President/

Corporate Affairs, Cargill

Preface

Communicating to Create

Communities

How do you keep producing?

“There’s a four-part mantra: idea, vision, execution, follow￾through. I do that over and over and over. I think it’s important

to distill things down to the simplest idea with the biggest impact

and the most originality.”

—Cynthia Rowley, American fashion designer, as told to Spencer

Bailey, New York Times magazine, November 10, 2013

“Effective leaders put words to the formless longings and deeply felt needs

of others. They create communities out of words.”1

When leadership

analyst Warren Bennis made this observation in 1995, he touched on a

basic goal of corporate life: communities of individuals and groups that,

because of shared values, hold stakes in the business leaders’ success.

Community creation certainly involves more than words, but Bennis

points us to the essential reality that the source and sustenance of con￾nectibility is communication. This book focuses on that reality. We posi￾tion communication as the starting point, and the chief communicator

as the active C-suite-level agent for understanding and connecting the

mutual or shared interests of business leaders and their supporters.

This reality shivers in winds of uncertainty. We are moving through

profound changes in how people communicate with each other and with

1 See: Bennis (1995). See also by Bennis, The Leader as Storyteller (1996), On Becoming

a Leader (1989), and An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change (1993).

Warren Bennis is a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

He is the founding chairman of USC’s Leadership Institute.

xiv PREFACE

businesses, how technology enables, invades, and creates multiple chan￾nels in the flow of information, shaping how participants and would-be

participants in shared-value communities form opinions and ultimately

how they act. Data mining and analytics are now integrated as both a

disconnecting disrupter and a facilitating connector in corporate commu￾nication. Companies are examining the constant stream of stakeholder

opinions, experiences, and choices, as well as waves of resistance from

critics, for insights that can shape future value-influencing decisions.

The good news, and the focus of this book, is that in the world of

business in a free-enterprise environment, the situation is manageable and

transforming. Disruption can stimulate new thinking and competitive

opportunities. Corporate communication transformation is enabled by

modern, 24/7 flow of news, social, macro- and micro-blogging platforms.

And this dynamic has stimulated new ways of connecting inspiration and

ideas, storytelling and freelance publication, creating conversations, and

providing graphics in innovative ways. The force multiplier of Twitter,

Yammer, Instagram, Pinterest, et al., enlarged possibilities to corporate

connectivity—bridging cultures, continents, communities, and genera￾tions. As the Boston Consulting Group has observed of the forces for suc￾cess in high-performing companies, “Digitization has played a part, and

so too have the spectacular advances of engineering, which have bridged

the seemingly unbridgeable. As a result, organizations now need to be

connected in the broadest sense with employees, customers, suppliers,

shareholders, and a wide range of stakeholders.”2

Corporate communicators are creatively engaged in the current and

future shape of corporate–stakeholder community. To align corporate

communication to strategically advance, transformational business reali￾ties, the Arthur W. Page Society (an organization of executives—top-level

2 See Richard Barrett’s (2013) commentary, at http://www.the-decisionfactor.com/busi￾ness-analytics-strategy/thrive-while-others-survive-with-epm-and-bi/ Barrett found

that the most successful sustainably transformed organizations follow these four pil￾lars of conscious capitalism: higher purpose (beyond making money) supported by

employees linking them to the common good of society; equal dignified treatment of

all stakeholders (employers, suppliers, customers, shareholders, local community, and

society); conscientious leadership (self-aware leaders living their values); and consci￾entious (company) culture (that can be measured).