The 4 Cs of Manager Communication: How to Build Trust, Clarity and Engagement

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (0:06)
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Welcome to Gartner ThinkCast. I'm Karen Stokes-Lockhart. Managers remain the most effective channel for employee communication, but they're also the most overburdened, juggling return to office policies, pay concerns, and even company politics. In today's episode, we're discussing how leaders can equip their managers with the tools, skills, and confidence to communicate more effectively. To help us break it all down, we're joined by Alexandra Earl, Vice President in Advisory for Gartner's Marketing and Communications Practice. Alexandra, welcome in.

**Alexandra Earl** (1:25)
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (1:27)
So, to start off at a high level, as we usually do, could you give a quick overview on why we need to focus on good managerial communication?

**Alexandra Earl** (1:36)
Absolutely. So, Gartner has just completed its latest Internal Communications Channel Bunchmarking Survey.
And once again, we're saying that managers continue to be the most effective channel. So, that's despite the fact that we've got an increase, a proliferation of digital channels in most organizations. But there's a lot of information overload. There's a lot of noise trying to cut through, and those digital channels don't always achieve that. And so, managers continue to be the most effective channel for achieving four of the most important communication goals. So, connecting employees to resources that they need to do their jobs. Helping employees understand the link between the overall organizational strategy and their daily work. Also helping them understand the broader operating environment. And also helping them connect to each other to connect to their colleagues. So, there's a lot of benefits of having effective managers as communicators. And in addition to that, if you have strong managers, then your employees are 15 times more likely to be high performers. They're over 13 times more likely to be engaged. They're over three times more likely to have that high intent to stay. And they also have over 12% higher physical and mental well-being. So, lots of benefits of engaging managers to reach and engage our employees.

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (3:01)
Huge benefits, and it's especially important that you're able to quantify them too. So, as important as this is, it seems also that pretty much every manager though is overburdened too, right? So, what are some of the other challenges that they're facing?

**Alexandra Earl** (3:16)
Yeah. Managers are hugely overburdened. I think organizations think, oh, we need to do this. I know we'll leverage our managers, and so they're on the hook for so many different responsibilities. And in addition to motivating and engaging their employees, they're also having to deal with, like you say, office politics, return to office mandates, political issues that are happening within and outside of the organization, addressing pay concerns, and then also having to deal with the issue of quiet quitters. So, there's a lot that sits on managers' plates, and yet we know that they can be the most effective channel to reach and engage our employees. We really have to try and sift through that and make sure that we're using them in a strategic way, and not just for every piece of messages or communication that needs to go out. We need to be very mindful of their time and use them in the most optimal way.

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (4:15)
Yeah. So, we've talked about how important they are, also about how overburdened they are. And I would love to jump into what we're calling the four Cs of manager communication competencies.
So, if you can tell us what they are and then break down that first one for us, that would be great.

**Alexandra Earl** (4:31)
Of course. So, the four Cs of manager communication competencies, we've got championing, we've got coaching, conversing, and connecting.

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (4:41)
Okay.

**Alexandra Earl** (4:41)
So, that first one is around championing. So, that's around motivating, motivating employees and their teams to want to work towards their goals to help the organization move forward. But it's often around motivating them to keep going even through times of change. And most organizations are going through some degree, if not a huge degree of change and transformation.

**Karen Stokes-Lockhart** (5:04)
Right.

**Alexandra Earl** (5:05)
And so, being able to lead employees through change and help them navigate that complex landscape, but understand what does it mean for us and our roles, you know, break down the monster noun of and the concept of just change, but talking about, well, what does that mean for us? What do we need to kind of start, stop or do differently as employees? So that championing is helping them kind of see the vision, the strategic direction, helping them take their employees on that path.