From ‘sign spotting’ to drag racing, CBRE’s head of comms keeps it interesting

By Diane Schwartz
@dianeschwartz
Sept. 23, 2024

As told to Diane Schwartz, CEO of Ragan Communications.

It was a happy accident that Wendy Sherwood entered the world of communications. Now, in her 28^th year at commercial real estate giant CBRE, it’s no accident that she’s in the esteemed role of global corporate communications vice president. Sherwood has been at the forefront of dramatic changes in the employee communications discipline, standing up one of the first corporate intranets and understanding how to find the signal through the noise to keep the company’s 130,000 employees informed and engaged.

Sherwood, a Phoenix, Arizona, resident, is a longtime member of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council and was named a 2019 Ragan Top Woman in Communications. In the many years I’ve known Wendy, she has proven to be a humble leader with a kind soul and passionate about the positive impact of communications. What I didn’t know until this interview was her love for the smell of nitromethane. Read on to learn more.

Wendy Sherwood and Clay Millican, one of her favorite Top Fuel Drivers, at the NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird Motorsports Park.

Origin Story

DIANE: How’d you get here? Share some significant stops along your journey to CBRE communications.

WENDY: After college, I got a job in marketing and spent the first 10 years of my career doing a lot of writing for advertising, proposals and other business development work. At CBRE, I started working for a single sales team in Denver, then I got promoted to a role working with the entire Denver market. My next promotion brought me to California where I helped lead marketing for one of our business lines. When the internet came along, I helped our corporate team write content for our first .com site and launch our first intranet.

DIANE: What did you learn early on about communicating to employees?

WENDY: I’d teach classes on both and doing that made me realize, at least at that time in the early 2000s, most of our employees didn’t know everything the company had to offer—the breadth of our services, the depth of our expertise, how to take full advantage of their employee benefits, etc. That’s when I pitched the idea of changing my job to focus on employee communications and I joined the Corporate Communications team.

For a while it was basically just me doing internal comms full time, but CBRE has grown so much over the past 25 years, we now have a whole team. Every day, we hustle to provide our 130,000 employees in more than 100 countries with the information, tools, resources and connections they need to do and be their best.

DIANE: Did you know you wanted to be a communicator from early on in your career?

WENDY: I actually wanted to be a speech pathologist and sign language interpreter, but my college counselor accidentally enrolled me in the wrong type of communications for my major. Before I realized the mistake, I had passed the exam to get into the brand new and highly competitive School of Communications. When I explained I was in the wrong program, the counselor said, “but you’ve been accepted…” and so I made a spontaneous, on-the-spot decision to go with a different major — and that decision completely changed the course of my career.

Leadership

DIANE: What’s the most important quality a comms leader must possess?

WENDY: Empathy. It’s an important human quality, leadership quality and frankly, I don’t think you can produce meaningful and effective employee communications without it.

DIANE: How would you describe your leadership style?

WENDY: I aspire to be a leader who sees each member of my team for the person they are, with their own unique talents, skills, strengths and personality. One of the best and most rewarding parts of my job is listening to what everyone is working on and making connections across the team and the company. Mixing, matching and putting the puzzle pieces together to create ideal combinations is what motivates me every day.

I want to be empathetic and patient, but also have a hard line when it’s time to push someone out of the comfort zone and into the growth zone — whether because it’s what they need to achieve their next goal or it’s what I need so my team can continue to flex, evolve and grow alongside our business.

Culture

DIANE: How would you describe CBRE’s work culture?

WENDY: We recently did extensive research to answer this question, so the answer I give is not just my opinion. CBRE’s culture is forward-thinking, impact-driven, dynamic, entrepreneurial, collaborative, respectful and friendly. As someone who has been with CBRE since 1996, I can tell you that all of that is true. And while many things have changed in 28 years, our culture hasn’t. It has evolved, but it hasn’t changed.

DIANE: Describe your relationship with your HR and marketing.

WENDY: At CBRE, our Corporate Communications team works very closely with HR and marketing. And I would add our Digital & Technology (IT) team to that mix, too. Together, these four teams can do so much to enhance the employee experience. We each bring important perspectives and oversee essential elements that come together to create the many employee touchpoints that define employee experience.

The Work

DIANE: You’ve been involved intranets since the early days of the technology. Take us through how these have evolved and what you anticipate the next-gen intranet to be like, in say, 10 years.

WENDY: To me, one of the most intriguing things in employee communications is personalization, including hyper and preference-based personalization. We’re taking the goal of “more signal, less noise” very seriously. Working with our HR team and our employees themselves, we’re evolving from one-size-fits-all messages and channels to ever-more tailored employee experiences. Today, we can target messages based on where an employee is based, the part of the business they work in, their job title, time with the company, etc. Then, for employees who share their preferences, we can personalize even more.

If an employee is working toward their next promotion and they’re focused on taking advantage of our learning and development programs, they can get that information delivered as a priority in their newsfeed. They can also choose things like the frequency, day of the week, time of day and preferred layout of their news digest. On top of that, we pay attention to what they’re paying attention to and suggest content. So instead of telling our people “everyone needs to know everything all at the same time,” we’re creating more personalized and therefore, more meaningful and relevant, employee communications. We’re doing this now, but I’m hoping to do a lot more of it in the future.

DIANE: How is generative AI helping you and your team to be better communicators?

WENDY: AI is part of the employee personalization process. But another interesting way we are using our company’s AI platform is to help our leaders define their personal tone and style. AI can analyze sample communications and generate a report of that leader’s favorite phrases, frequently used adjectives, a description of their tone, style, etc.

It’s pretty remarkable but not always spot-on, so we’ll share the result with the leader and work with them to refine the report so it’s just right. That becomes a helpful resource for generating a solid first draft. So in this case, the AI isn’t writing the message, but it’s helping us and our leaders communicate with employees more authentically, consistently and efficiently.

DIANE: What are some unique ways you’re able engage employees?

WENDY: As a commercial real estate services company, our signs are on buildings (and other places) all over the world. A few years back, we started encouraging employees to take a photo with a CBRE sign while on vacation or even just running errands in their own neighborhood. We received so many great photos with wonderful stories and we’d share them on the intranet.

Today, we’ve evolved “Sign Spotting” into a Microsoft Engage community where employees can post and share their own photos and captions. It’s one of my favorite things! I love seeing where employees find our signs, hearing about their travels, even seeing their family, friends and pets in the photos. It creates opportunities for employees from around the world to connect, swap stories and bond over something we all have in common — CBRE.

Self

DIANE: Take us through a typical workday – what time do you wake up, what’s your morning routine, how many meetings, best part of day? How do you close out the day?

WENDY: I’m usually up around 5:30 a.m. I like to watch the news and, I know some people will cringe, but I always check my phone and email. When you’re in Corporate Communications for a global company, things can happen overnight. I’d rather know the day’s headlines and if I need to rush to be online or if I can enjoy a little quiet time in my morning.

If things are calm, I’ll often go for a walk and listen to music or a podcast. This is the best part of my day, and it helps me feel grounded and motivated. When the workday kicks in, I always have a lot of meetings and emails. It makes the day go by quickly because there’s never a dull moment — and I love that. I try to make an evening Pilates class a few days a week but I also enjoy going out to dinner or just staying in and catching up on reading or the movies and TV shows on my watch list.

DIANE: How have you kept your book club going for 16 years? That’s an amazing feat!

WENDY: We’re a multi-generational group with varying preferences for fiction vs. non-fiction and favorite genres. I think that diversity is what keeps it interesting and keeps all of us coming back for more. Together, we’ve read well over 100 books and had some lively discussions. I appreciate it because it forces me to read books I’d never choose on my own. Some of them have become favorites. Plus, I think reading keeps my writing skills sharp.

DIANE: What are you still working on improving?

WENDY: I have a sign on my desk that says, “Everything is Figureoutable.” I’m still working on bringing that mindset to everything I do. It’s a philosophy of relentless optimism.

DIANE: There are probably not many communicators who are superfans of the sport of drag racing – what is it about the sport that appeals to you?

WENDY: I’m a fan of top-fuel dragsters and a proud member of the National Hot Rod Association. I love the science involved — physics and chemistry — but all of that can be perfect and you can still lose a race on reaction time, so it’s very human too. You truly never know which team is going to have the winning combination for any given race and that keeps it exciting. In my book, it’s hard to beat the thrill of watching a top-fuel dragster do a burnout.

The sound and rumble you can feel in your bones, the smell of nitromethane and burnt rubber… to me, that full takeover of all your senses is exhilarating.

Other Tidbits

Favorite quote:“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” – Tom Stoppard.