How to boost manager accountability with clarity and consistency

A good manager is their direct reports’ most effective touchpoint to the rest of the organization. This happens when each manager is encouraged to personalize how they deliver employee comms to their reports, while still working within the parameters set by the wider comms function.

There’s often a lot of information coming downstream for them to share, and if it’s not organized effectively, it quickly becomes overwhelming. That’s where you come into play.

By creating an organized messaging strategy, setting clear expectations for interactions with reports, and soliciting feedback to share with leaders, you make a manager’s job easier.

Stay organized to cut crossed wires

Knowing how and when to share messages with managers is a foundational element of this process, as an organized process keeps managers accountable—not only to leadership but to the teams they run. Sara Ng, vice president of communications and brand experience at ING, said that her team typically begins the manager accountability cascade with an email for awareness and expectations.

“We also provide links to resources and attach relevant material to provide ways in which they can communicate with their teams, including drafted email templates or posts for Viva Engage,” she explained.

Ng follows three main tenets to follow when creating comms messaging that emphasizes manager accountability:

• Clarity: “You need to focus on clear and concise messaging that can be understood by all levels of the business, no matter where a person is on the org chart.”
• Context: “Providing background information and the purpose of said messaging stresses the importance that such communications need to be relayed It answers questions surrounding why we are sharing the information and what takeaways we want managers to have.”
• Action: “Be decisive in telling managers what the ask is from them and what next steps they need to take.”

Structures and opportunities for learning make a difference

Accountability is easy to talk about but can be a little more difficult to pull off in reality, especially in large or geographically dispersed organizations. But by allowing managers to learn from the experiences of communicators, directors, and most importantly, one another, a sense of accountability can be easier to foster.

Ashleigh Pollart, manager of editorial strategy and communications for The Hershey Company, told Ragan that the famed chocolate maker holds monthly manager learning sessions. Instead of just an information dump from on high, the focus is a bit different than a normal meeting.

• Peer-to-peer education. Hershey’s monthly manager-led sharing sessions focus on shared manager experiences rather than strict directives from leadership. “We (the comms department) give the managers the space to be themselves,” Pollart explained. “We offer the best-in-class examples (of how we run things) with their peers, which resonates differently than if a C-suite leader was running the meeting.”
• Manager toolkits. Pollart’s team shares PowerPoint decks that address manager FAQs and hot topics among employees. “We try to set our managers up for success because we know they’re so key to what we do, and providing those toolkits helps them feel more confident in addressing team concerns.”
• Learning from mistakes. “A lot of those conversations are grounded in the mistakes that managers have made and learned from,” Pollart said. “This makes the discussion inclusive and understandable.”

Roadmaps and feedback loops create a path to success

Creating a manager comms pathway that prioritizes feedback minimizes the likelihood of managers feeling overwhelmed, charting a road that they understand how to walk down.

Kathryn Metcalfe, visiting professor at NYU, outlined a few methods that comms pros can help create pathways for managers to be accountable to both their leaders and reports.

• Mapping it out. Metcalfe recommended that communicators provide managers with a roadmap of priority items so they know what to prioritize. “Give all of your managers a map at the start of the year that says there are a given number of things you need to communicate, and here’s when they will arrive at your desk.”
• Take questions and provide answers. When communicators round up the big ideas talked about in manager meetings and provide them in a concise email, they can avoid flooding inboxes with directives and creating confusion. “You can grab three of the most popular questions that you didn’t get to talk about and send an e-mail afterward.”
• Use the feedback loop as an exercise in clarity. Just as comms can help hold managers accountable by giving clear expectations, managers can also respond with asks for resources they require to do their best work. “Having a feedback loop, talking to your manager, listening to what they need — these are all things communicators can do to help managers be more effective.”

The modern workplace sees information coming from all directions at all times, creating fresh challenges for managers to sift through and relay to their reports. But your skills in creating organized communication structures and paths help them stay accountable to their employees, their leaders, and themselves.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.