Empowering your managers to lead effectively

During Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference this April, Mary Olson-Menzel, founder and CEO of MVP Executive Search & Coaching led a conversation on how organizations can empower managers with the leadership and communications skills needed to succeed in today’s workplace. Joining Mary on the stage were Sean Langston Jr., head of internal communications at Reddit, and Matthew Goebel, vice president, internal communications at Infor.

The discussion touched on several topics, including how it’s on communicators to provide managers with the resources they need to communicate effectively and to the channels needed to reach different internal audiences. Langston and Goebel agreed that it starts when communicators listen to what managers need.

“The notion of listening is so critical,” Goebel said. “Getting that fundamental understanding of what is in people’s minds and hearts, what they’re thinking and what’s important to them — that enables us to be better in our guidance to our senior-most leaders as we help them navigate beyond the chaos that we know happens every day in an organization.”

The duo also went deep on how managers are a vital conduit to reaching employees at all levels of an organization whose time should be treated with care, especially by leadership and the C-suite.