Internal Comms Has a Lot of Contradictions. It Also Has a Hidden Superpower.  

Years ago, when I worked in internal comms, I noticed strange things about the job that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the work; I loved communication—and still do. But there were aspects of the job that were deeply frustrating, and sometimes, on a really bad day or a really bad week, even felt a bit soul-destroying.

I couldn’t reconcile the disparate threads. Ones that I fully embraced and that were consistent with my personal values—like transparency, kindness, and optimism about what’s possible at work. And others that I thoroughly wanted to disown. And there were a lot of those.

In my work now as a consulting psychologist, I know that many of the things I experienced then not only have names but have been extensively researched and studied. I want to share a few of them here with you. My reasons are twofold.

Firstly, I’d like to help internal communicators like you feel a little more seen and a little less alone. And secondly, I’d like you to know that understanding workplace dynamics is a kind of superpower. When we get curious about why our roles are so challenging, we take a huge step in figuring out how we can make them better. And, as a not so small bonus, we also glean potent insights that can help our organizations become more empathetic and humane.

Two key things stand out to me about internal comms in the present moment: being caught between prevention and promotion, and what I call “the muddled role dilemma.”

Prevention vs. Promotion

 One of the biggest conundrums that internal communicators face is prevention versus promotion. And by that I mean the tension between the two faces of corporate communication: reputation management and transparency.

 External communication is, at the most basic level, about prevention strategies. This includes stewardship of an organization’s reputation, as well as that of its leaders. External communicators learn to be very, very discerning with how information is communicated. They are cautious, particularly when managing the media. They often have political cunning. The best among them are masters in the art of chaff and misdirection.

Employee communication is, on the other hand, primarily about promotion strategies. The goal is usually about fostering transparency and the flow of information, ideas, and energy.

Employee communication is tasked with increasing buy-in of the business strategy, enabling two-way communication with leaders, and motivating to perform. To do this, it’s important to have a nose on the ground, understand what’s on the mind of employees, access the intellectual capital they possess, and create a shared sense of vision and purpose.

The problem is that there is an undeniable tension between prevention and promotion. And internal communicators are at the front and center of this. How do we promote transparency while guarding and protecting information? How do we enable open conversations while controlling the narrative? How do we address the gap between an organization’s espoused values and what the reality is? Is it even possible?

There is, at its core, a big hairy problem. We know that to tell the unvarnished truth—about business conditions, competitive threats, leadership challenges, redundancies, restructurings—isn’t so easy. Or wise. So internal comms can sometimes feel like a stark choice: working for “the man” and toeing the line, or leading the workers’ revolution….

As if that’s not tough enough, there’s an even thornier issue: how comms roles are structured.

The Muddled Role Dilemma

Organization development experts have been studying the causes of workplace stress for a long time. And, at least in normal, day-to-day life, the most common offenders are the big three: overwork, role conflict, and role ambiguity. Let’s take a look at them.

Workplace Stressor No.1: Overwork

All of us know what overwork is, so I don’t need to explain it. Many of us have experienced it or are experiencing it now. All signs are pointing to it getting even worse, particularly in organizations where there's been significant job cuts and redundancies. Teams are continually being asked to do more with fewer resources. And sometimes this reaches unbearable levels.

It’s especially bad for PR, Corporate Comms, and Corporate Affairs professionals. New research shows an alarming trend: the number of PR professionals diagnosed with a mental health condition has risen from 25% to 33% over the past 12 months.

Workplace Stressor No. 2: Role Conflict

Role conflict occurs when we have competing and/or incompatible demands placed upon us. This is a common condition of supervisory and control functions, where, for example, a person may want to be a team player and their job requires them to be a “bad cop.” It can also happen when one person or team has a very different view of what a role is than another (e.g., HR may see communications through a very different lens than the leadership team or employees). On a more personal note, it also happens when we are working in a role that runs contrary to our core values, self-esteem, or identity.

Internal comms roles are rife with role conflict. It helps to think about it in terms of the many paradoxes practitioners must contain. They must deliver timely, effective, and business-critical information—but reduce information overload and its associated stress. They must enable dialogue and frank conversations, but also reinforce confidence in leadership. There are many other examples. 

Workplace Stressor No. 3: Role Ambiguity

Role ambiguity is a slightly different beast. It refers to a lack of clarity on what our role actually is. Now, bear in mind that all of us have different tolerances and preferences for structure, so some of this is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s also true that the most effective and high-performance organizations, at least the mature ones, usually have clear hierarchies, structures, procedures, or frameworks—and a key part of this is well-defined roles.

However, with role ambiguity, that’s not happening. It can be a poorly crafted job description or being given hazy performance expectations—or when the role we move into looks nothing like the one on paper. We may experience absentee leadership, where our bosses fail to fulfill key functions, or don’t provide support or protection if it all goes pear-shaped. We may be unclear on what tasks should be prioritized, what is politically sensitive, and where one job ends and another begins.

Like overwork and role conflict, there are signs that role ambiguity is becoming something of an epidemic, a feature and not a bug of the modern workplace. There is a growing trend in recruitment for candidates who can “cope with uncertainty” and “manage ambiguity,” which are often also performance management criteria.

While there’s no doubt that these are important skills, it’s also true that their ascendancy suggests that organizations are increasingly devolving in uncertain and ambiguous places. And, perhaps more importantly, that many are unable or unwilling to tackle the underlying challenges that create so much uncertainty and ambiguity in the first place.

 I would argue that role ambiguity is one of the most invisible but critical issues for workforce planning today. This is because role ambiguity is enormously stressful. What is actually a systemic issue is instead characterized as a personal one, for each employee to manage on their own.

This can make people feel alone and unseen. And role ambiguity contributes to inequality. This is because it often leads to individuals with less status being saddled with additional responsibilities, forced to occupy the “grey areas” between roles, or take the blame when unassigned work is not completed or performed adequately.

If all of these sound familiar, it’s for good reason. Internal comms roles usually have a huge amount of overwork, role conflict and role ambiguity baked right in. It’s the whole terrible triad!

What Can We do About all This?

Well, first of all, we can breathe a big sigh of relief. I encourage all Comms professionals to think about their experiences at work, especially the unpleasant ones, as less about being neurotic and high maintenance, and more about the systems that we work in and the operational issues with how our roles are structured. That gives us a concrete framework to understand how we can make positive changes.

Second, knowledge is power. Comms professionals know how important a good turn of phrase is, so for us, it’s especially empowering to learn a vocabulary to describe our experiences, and the experiences of so many others.

Concepts like role ambiguity have been around for a while, but they aren’t usually talked about in everyday work conversations. Instead, they are only felt, and often in solitude. Comms people can help change that.

And last but certainly not least, we need to honor our own inklings and wisdom. Psychologists have a concept called “use of self” which involves harnessing our unique knowledge, training, experiences, impressions, and vibes, and using that as a tool to get curious about what’s going on.

In fact, when we learn to appreciate ourselves as a kind of sensitive instrument, we find that we can pick up on subtext, unease, and unspoken realities. And that can lead to the most liberating and transformative conversations.

© Dr. Laura McHale 2024