Say goodbye

Have you fallen out of love with your internal communication role, or did you never love it in the first place?

I think there are many reasons why we end up falling out of love with internal communication roles and move on, but for me there are a couple which stand out, and which have ended up in me ‘saying goodbye’ and leaving the role and the organisation.

The ‘bad fit’

Have you ever applied for an internal communication job and not been successful? In such situations it is not unusual to be told by the hiring manager or recruiter delivering the bad news that you were not a ‘good fit for the role.’  

I always think that this sort feedback is a bit of a cop out, and it avoids them having to tell you why you were really unsuccessful. Maybe they had somebody else lined up for the role, usually someone already in the organisation, and they were benchmarking against the market. That has happened to me quite a few times, and frankly, it’s a huge waste of everyone’s time, but I digress.

The bad fit can also emerge after you have been offered, accepted and started an internal communication job. Sometimes the realisation that you are a square IC peg in a round organisational hole can happen in days and weeks, or many months and sometimes years into the role.

Often it happens early, because the job description was opaque or inaccurate, the recruitment process wasn’t transparent enough, or the recruiter simply didn’t know what they were looking for.

The unfortunate outcome of this is that you end up in an internal communications job that really isn’t a good fit for your skills, expectations and experience. This can come as a shock and be a source of instant stress and frustration.

I’ve written before about why internal communication recruitment is like the lawless Wild West. How the confusion about professional standards, meaningless job titles and no clear universal benchmarks for what an internal communicator is, or does, increases the risk of mismatches between successful applicants and IC roles. This has happened to me a couple of times in my career and has resulted in me leaving the organisation much earlier than I anticipated.

The ‘bad fit, can also gradually creep into your relationship with your IC role as you develop, become more experienced or perhaps become qualified. This has happened to me, and I’ve also witnessed it happen to others, including some of the students I have taught on the CIPR Internal Communications Certificate Course I lead, when they have become qualified. I, and they, simply grew out of our IC roles, and realised that they were no longer the right fit for us.

Whichever way the ‘bad fit’ emerges, I think it’s important to take a step back before moving on, and really try to understand what sort of internal communicator you are or want to be.

In every organisation I have worked in, internal communication, and what it is for, has not been the same. Sometimes those differences have been stark, in other places quite subtle. So, it’s important to try and do some research when applying for IC roles to try and understand what that organisation thinks internal communication is for and compare that with the sort of internal communicator you are, or want to be.

In the first chapter of their book ‘Successful employee communications’ Liam Fitzpatrick and Sue Dewhurst helpfully set out the value of internal communication and the four value spaces it can occupy in organisations.

Is the value in your organisation about being a ‘Content Producer’, a ‘Behaviour Driver’, ‘Supporter/Facilitator’ or ‘Asset Grower’? Is the value of IC related to ‘Getting the basics right’, ‘Driving Outcomes’, Supporting others’ or ‘Building intangible assets’.

For your organisation, and perhaps for you, it’s likely to be a mixture of these things. To really love your IC role, achieving an alignment of that organisational mix with your personal desires and skills is crucial.     

Toxic organisational cultures (and the internal stakeholders that drive them)  

The second reason I have most often left an internal communication role has been because of toxic organisational cultures, or more specifically because of the internal stakeholders who drive these cultures.

As an internal communicator, have you ever been shouted at, publicly humiliated in meetings, overruled, undermined, micromanaged or completely ignored whilst trying to do your job? Unfortunately, I have in some of the places I have worked, sometimes by very senior managers and leaders who should have known, and been, better.

Now working in communication roles can mean that you end up developing a thick skin. In job adverts this is often articulated as ‘being resilient’, but having this quality is not an excuse for our stakeholders to willfully abuse us.

I know of many internal communicators who have been on the receiving end of such behaviours. I’ve often speculated that this happens more often to people like us because of the ingrained perceptions amongst some of our stakeholders and colleagues that communication is a soft skill and anyone can do it. For the record it isn’t and they can’t.

I’ve also heard it said that culture is the behaviours you tolerate. This couldn’t have been more true in some of the places I have worked which have had toxic cultures.

Bad behaviours directed at anyone in organisations, including internal communicators, should be challenged, eradicated and never tolerated. If they are, for me, there is only one thing to do.

Say goodbye.

Martin  

References:

2022 Fitzpatrick, L and Dewhurst, S – ‘Successful Employee Communications – A practitioner’s guide to tools, models, and best practice for internal communication’ 2^nd Ed. Kogan Page  

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay