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What You’ll Learn
Communicators are used to communicating outward. However, taking a few key steps can help them improve their organizations by communicating upward to the board and upper management.
Guest Speaker
Richard Fagerlin
Show Notes
Transcripts are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: StoryConnect, a Pioneer Podcast, helps you discover ideas to shape your stories and connect with your community. Love this episode? Follow StoryConnect on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube so you don't miss your next great idea.
Andy Johns: What do communicators need to know when it comes to communicating with boards and executives? That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of The StoryConnect Podcast. My name is Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer, and I'm joined on this episode by Richard Fagerlin, who is president and founder of Peak Solutions. Richard, thanks so much for joining me.
Richard Fagerlin: So excited to be here, Andy. Thank you.
Andy Johns: We are excited you're here as well. You guys have probably seen out there, the listeners have probably seen the press releases and the exciting news that Peak has joined the Pioneer family. And we're excited to have Richard on board and everything that Peak has to offer our members. So Richard, we're excited about all the experience that you bring.
Richard Fagerlin: Well, it's been a long road to get to this place. And it's amazing to be a part of this family. I don't know if you are familiar with my story, but I grew up in the co-op world. My mom was a co-op communicator. My dad retired from an Ag co-op, and it's just in my blood. So I'm very excited to be a part of this Pioneer family and to expand the great work we've been doing.
Andy Johns: Yeah, Richard has, like you said, a lot of co-op experience. He's also the co-host of a podcast on board governance and the author of a book called "Trustology." So I'm excited. We'll probably do Trustology on another podcast episode because I think it's a great topic.
Richard Fagerlin: That's great.
Andy Johns: To get into trust there. But today we're going to be talking about board and executive communication. Richard, why and how is communicating with boards and executives a different kind of communication than folks – I believe that I saw you'd written, folks are on the communicator level, normally they're used to communicating outward, but they also need to be prepared to communicate upward as well.
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah. Well, you know, communication is probably the largest word in the English language in terms of its meaning, its impact, its misunderstanding. And boards are brought together differently than any other group that we're used to working with. You know, most every group that we're used to working with have been brought together for a specific purpose and have been pretty intentional about that. So if you think about a team that you're on, you know, you don't just randomly get a team. You don't just get people who say, I want to be on that team. And then enough people outside say, yeah, you should be on that team. And then they're on that team. So most groups of people that you work with are brought together intentionally. A friend group, you know, a social group, church group, a work group. A board is brought together by a, you know, elected representative, you know, voting. And so they're brought together based on their representation more than on necessarily fit or with great intentionality. So you have a group of people that have a purpose and a job, and that job is to operate at a level that should be always at that 20, 30, 40, 50,000 foot elevation, and the frequency at which they meet together is different. So, you know, on your team, if you you would never do this, Andy. But if you happen to mess up or say something, you know, forget something or say misspeak something, you get a chance multiple times throughout that day, the next day, the next week to continue working with that group of people and to correct that or to, you know, do something about it. A board, at best is going to see their fellow board members the next month. And if nothing said, then it could be two months. And then next thing you know, it's six months down the road, and there's just not the same cadence with the board as there is with other groups. So just one kind of accentuating point for that. Last week I was working with a board and in preparation for it, I was talking to their governance committee and one of the members said, I don't think there's ever been a more important time than right now for us to be able to speak with candor and to communicate well because of, you know, all that seems to be going on in our cooperative. And I think that's a fair statement. I think that's probably an evergreen statement. I think like probably as long as you and I are living every month, some director is going to be able to say that, and it's going to be true.
Andy Johns: That's a good point. That brings brings me to where I was headed next, so that was a good transition. I recorded a podcast recently with Kasey Krueger, who is the CEO of DTC, and he's a communications guy. We've done a few podcasts over the years. They're always really well listened to, really good listener numbers, whenever we have communicators who have become CEOs and kind of follow that career track. And one of the things that he said, he sees it more and more of communications, marketing, customer service folks playing a bigger role in those executive decisions, particularly on the broadband side, but on the electric side as well. Is there a sweet spot, or what do you see at the different boards you've talked with as to how involved communications and marketing is, how early in some of the decisions and the processes communications comes in? Is there kind of a spot where you've seen, you know, does comms have a seat at the table when it comes to board meetings in a lot of places?
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah, I think the Pioneer, you know, motto "we serve so others can shine" is applicable here. And I think it's when the communicator's fingerprints are not on the weapon of communication. You know, when the communicator is doing things behind the scenes supporting the fellow executive team members and leaders so that they're able to communicate more effectively when they're actually doing things with the board so that the board is learning how to communicate better. So it's less about communicators going out and teaching the board or teaching their fellow leaders in the organization how to do this. But they're doing, they're helping set, for example, they may help set up a series of slide decks on a presentation. They may be involved in making presentations themselves. And so seeing, wow, this is how this clearly is done, I think is a good example. I think another sweet spot for communicators is being the translator in the room. You know, assuming that a communicator is in the actual boardroom, there's times where, you know, you don't have to be so blatant as to say, well, I don't think you all are understanding. What's really being said is I don't know that that's the great thing, but I think.
Andy Johns: That's not always going to go over great. Nope.
Richard Fagerlin: Well, it's not, and it shouldn't go over great. But I think instead, you know, things like, well, let me, I want to understand, help me understand. And they ask a really great, thoughtful question that's powerful. Or they take something that was said and say, let me add a fine point on that. And they're, you know, kind of helping to restructure that. Every executive leader I know and every board member I know, if someone could re-articulate what they meant when they didn't say it very well, I think that they all appreciate that. And so that sweet spot is less in leading all of that, but more in modeling what that looks like or helping others to be in a position to do it themselves. Does that make sense?
Andy Johns: It does. It does. That's a good point. And that kind of touches on another topic that flipping it around, not from the communicators perspective, but from the board and the executives perspectives. Are there some hallmarks of a good communications organization that you can see from the board and the executives. For instance, you know, if there are the co-ops that you work with that are better communicators. Are there some things that are consistent with their boards and their executives?
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah. It's interesting. Just this last few months, we started doing some research with the data that we have from boards. So for a number of years we've been doing board evaluations and board assessments where the board's evaluating itself about itself. And in that process, we do one-on-one interviews. We have an online assessment. And then we'll sit with a board for, you know, as little as a couple hours, as much as a day and a half or two days in a retreat. And so, we started dissecting that data. And what we realized was there was really only two factors that, at the end of the day, identified whether the board was healthy in this realm that we're talking about. And those two factors, think about them on a two-by-two matrix. Those two factors are the board's level of engagement. Do they show up? Are they prepared? Do they stay informed? Do they do the real work that the board needs to be do done? Do they, you know, when they prepare in advance, do they have a really great focused agenda? Are there clear action steps, all of that. That leads to engagement? The other section, on the axes is about their candor. Do they, does the board tell itself the truth? Are they open in their debate? Are they willing to challenge themselves? Are they willing to challenge management? And are they willing to give themselves an honest self-evaluation? So if you think about that on a two-by-two matrix, Andy, that starts to give you some different types of board member or different types of boards. So we have this data is really interesting. We're able to plot all of the boards we've worked with on this two-by-two matrix. And we're also able to plot all of the individuals on this to see. So for just to play this two-by-two out. If you're both engaged and have high candor, those board members and those boards, they're good stewards. But if you're low in engagement and low in candor, you're just a bystander. Now you can have high candor, but low engagement, and that's just a board that's full of skeptics.
Andy Johns: Right.
Richard Fagerlin: But if you have high engagement, but then low candor, these are harmonizers. So if you just think about that, the healthiest boards both are engaged and have candor. And I think at the heart of that, if you're going to put a bull's eye in the middle of it, communication is in the bull's eye.
Andy Johns: Excellent point. Yeah. Show up and don't be afraid of a little bit of conflict. I think that's good rules there for a board. What are some of the topics that you see communications playing a role when it comes to board? Obviously a big one that I know a lot of folks are dealing with; I kind of want to set an executive succession in a different category. We'll get to that in a minute. But, you know, there are organizations where the only real time communicators may be interacting with the board is that annual meeting when there's, you know, elections or, you know, maybe a board president speaking or something like that. But what are some of the other areas that you've seen aside from succession and annual meetings, when the board does have things to say and that the communicators can play a pretty big role there? Are there any particular topics that come up over and over?
Richard Fagerlin: Well, a couple of years ago I started saying, when I pull out my crystal ball, I think the role of board members is going to turn more into spokesperson than any of them want to have that be the case. And part of it is the world that we live in. You know, everyone's a journalist. You got all these citizen journalists, and all they have to do is, you know, open up their recording device, put something out on social media and next thing you know, they're a citizen journalist out there putting information out. And so board members paying attention to literally every moment they speak on behalf of whether they're intending to or not, the organization, they have become a spokesperson. And so I think.
Andy Johns: Whether that's at the baseball field or the grocery store or I mean, anywhere that could happen.
Richard Fagerlin: And actually, those are the most common places. You know, you're not going to, you're likely not to do this in a forum. And if you're in some sort of forum that's related to the cooperative, if you're in that, you're more prepared. But you think you're talking to your cousin or your friend's friend or, you know, one of your kid's parents, and instead you're talking to a member, and they're taking what you're saying. And now they could they could do a lot with that. And it's not all nefarious. You know, sometimes it's, you know, great intention. So I think that I'm seeing more and more communicators playing a role in that post board discussion. What did we talk about? What did we decide? How do we communicate that? What are some talking points? What are resources for directors in terms of what to talk about, what not to talk about? I think that it makes great sense to me that a board member should have some sort of an open door to a resource. If that resource is the communicator, great. You know, some organizations want them to follow a protocol to, you know, maybe the board chair reaches out to the CEO, who then gets back to them so that, you know, they're not going and managing staff or having asks of staff. Then there are some organizations that are like, you know, the red phone goes to our communicator. And if you need anything, you call them, they'll help, you know, shape that for you and have a resource available. So, you know, the more that you practice that, the more that you show, okay, you're asked this question, you play, you do a little role play. You have some scenarios, you give some talking points just like any of us. The more we see it done well, the better chance we have of doing it ourselves. So it goes back to my initial comment about, you know, the best sweet spot is when their fingerprints aren't directly on whatever's happening.
Andy Johns: And that's a tricky relationship. I'd like to dig a little deeper there. That's a tricky relationship because the board, you know, if you're a communicator, the CEO is probably your boss's boss or boss's boss's boss.
Richard Fagerlin: Right, right.
Andy Johns: And then the board is the boss of that person, the CEO. So I guess that kind of, having those talking points, having those resources, that's got to be something that is what brokered by the CEO or the general manager to make that. Because that's a tricky spot to tell your boss's boss's boss's boss what to say with some talking points.
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah, I think if you just alter that, if you alter that to instead of I'm telling you what to say is I'm providing resources. I think resources can come from a lot of different ways. And so it's, I think it's as much where you're coming from. And some of this ultimately is a reflection of your culture. So some cultures are fully bought into resources from any direction are helpful, valuable, and we want to do that. And the hierarchy doesn't matter because the resource is going to come from where the best resource is. And some have a culture where, boy, we've got to really follow this command control and this hierarchy. And then there's everything in between the two. So I think it's less that a communicator is telling the board what to say or what to what to do or even how to communicate. And it's more that they're resourcing the conversation, so this goes back to the fingerprints comment. You know, that may be that they provide that to their boss who might, you know, sit on the senior team and might sit in a board meeting and can represent that. Or it might be a situation where, you know, the, you know, at the end of every meeting, the board decides, what did we talk about that nobody can know? Like, where's our confidentiality in today's meeting? What of what we talked about does everyone need to know? And what of what we talked about do we need to figure out the answer to those questions, so let's put it in a holding pattern? And so you find this out when you see some lack of confidentiality by board members, this happens where board members start saying things that they shouldn't. And there's, you know, there's only one way that this community member could have found out about this, and it's from someone in the boardroom. And the problem is, I think most of the time those board members aren't going out sharing willy nilly and not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility. I think they're just unaware, didn't remember what they should or shouldn't talk about. So the formality at the end of a meeting of, you know, those three questions, what do we talk about that everybody needs to know? And if that's the case, what's that communicator, how can they help in that? How can they resource them? Second one, what did what we talked about nobody should know? And then what of what we talked about, we need to decide, you know, it's still in progress. And by the way, that is a great best practice for boards is to, at the end of their meetings, do several things. What did we decide? What action do we take? What's my responsibility? And then I'll throw something else in here that maybe isn't as related to communicators. But I think it's important for boards to evaluate how successful were we? And if your success is related to your candor and your engagement, and at the center of that –
Andy Johns: That particular meeting, how successful that meeting was? Or you talking bigger picture?
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah, yeah, that particular meeting, let's talk about that meeting right there. Because of the cadence at which boards meet, it could be one, two, three months before they reflect on that. And, you know, it's hard to remember what you said or did three days ago, let alone three months ago. So.
Andy Johns: Right.
Richard Fagerlin: You know, back to this communication, I think that the role of communicator in resourcing staff within the organization is important. And, you know, we do strategic planning. Wouldn't it make sense if we're doing strategic communication planning as well?
Andy Johns: I said we'd come back to succession planning. That's an area where with the boomer generation retiring, there's a lot of communicators that I know in the last two years or coming up in the next two years going to be working through that whole process of finding a new top executive announcing that, rolling that out. I know you do some work there as well. Are there some things when it comes to the chief executive turnover or switching that person out that communicators particularly need to focus on? Because that's a major time when they're going to be interacting with the board, the board, president, probably more communication back and forth at a moment like that than any other time.
Richard Fagerlin: Well, this is kind of a tricky, it's a tricky question. The answers aren't as tricky. The question is more tricky because, you know, again, I think this goes back to the culture, both of the board and the organization, of what role those communicators are going to play in a situation like that. But I think it's fair to stereotype that communicators are often considered the truth see-ers and the truth tellers inside of an organization. They may be responsible for some of the surveys and assessments about what does what do membership think? What do the employees think? Their job on a regular basis is trying to be the, not just the mouth and the eyes of the organization, but many times the heart too, because they're not disconnected. And so I think that there's some truth that lies within the eyes and minds of communicators that if it's not shared, it's unfortunate because no matter if you had the single best CEO, general manager in the history of time, or you're super excited, everyone is to have this CEO turnover, on those two spectrums. What you need in the future is probably not what either of those two individuals were. It's something new and different because you're in a different time. And so, you know, hearing from, you know, communicators, being able to share that insight that they have that truth that they have more of what the current state is. And a little bit then of, you know, what maybe is anticipated or needed in the future, I think that's a wealth of information to gather that in a thoughtful way.
Andy Johns: Definitely. And some of that will come from the board. Some of that will come from being around the organization, for sure.
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah.
Andy Johns: Well, Richard, as we're closing here, what advice do you have for somebody who's listening to this and they're thinking, you know, we really don't do a great job communicating upward, and there's more I can do. Where should those folks start? What advice would you have to pass on to somebody maybe who's just kind of, just kind of thinking about that communicating with and about the board.
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah. The statement "ommunicate in terms that they understand" is very important. And so whoever they is, they can be, you know, up your organizational chain. They can be on the board and understanding what are the terms at which, not just the terms they use, but how is it that they are communicating? How are they thinking what's important to them? And you need to meet them where they are at so that they can understand in a way that's helpful. So you can't just talk louder more often in ways that are comfortable and familiar for you. I think you have to figure out what that is. And if you're unfamiliar with what that is, that's difficult. That's difficult to figure that out. So paying attention, you know, if and when you are in a board meeting or listening to your executive leaders and paying attention now, not to necessarily what they're saying, but how they're saying it, and the tone and tenor and the elevation. You know, a lot of times, you know, communicators job is to be 5,000 to 0ft and doing, doing, doing, living in that world, trying to galvanize folks to make things happen. And at the board and executive level, this is, you know, much higher 50,000-30,000ft where you're wondering and inventing, and you're trying to discern. And so, you know, being able to speak in those terms, I think, is an important thing. And then the other, this is simple advice. I got this from this CEO of the first organization I ever worked for. So in this case, he said the best way to get promoted, the best way to get promoted is to do the current job you have to the best of your ability. So I think results cover a multitude of sins. And when you continue to show up, do good work, perform well, be helpful, resource folks when you just. Like when that's what you're concerned with, it's really interesting how much more, your responsibilities expand. So I think those are two areas of advice I would offer.
Andy Johns: Yeah. Those are, really good points. Your first one in particular, I'm thinking communicate in the way that they want you to communicate. You know, a lot of the times and these are painting with a broad brush here for sure. The communicator may be in their 20s or 30s. You know, the board may be several generations older, maybe 40, 50 years older, many of the board members. So I think there, I think there could be generational challenges there as well, just making sure that communicating back and forth in ways that the folks understand. I think that's a really good point.
Richard Fagerlin: Yeah. And by the way, on a board, you may have, if you've got nine board members, there may be seven different industries that they come from or walks of life. And in those, it's, you know, different mindsets. So you've got, you could have 3 or 4 generations on a board or heavy distribution in a generation or two. You have different mindsets, different thought process, different background, different work that they're used to doing. So yeah, it's complicated as I think the best way to say that.
Andy Johns: To say the least. Yeah, for sure. Well, Richard, thanks so much for taking the time to join me on this episode. And we're really excited to have you and Peak on board here at Pioneer.
Richard Fagerlin: Thanks, Andy. It's my pleasure.
Andy Johns: I'm your host, Andy Johns. He is Richard Fagerlin, founder and president of Peak Solutions and a new teammate here at Pioneer. Until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro: StoryConnect is a production of Pioneer Utility Resources. Send questions to hello@pioneer.com and learn more about our member-owned marketing agency at pioneer.coop.