Reaching Your Internal Audience
Kem Meyer
Kem draws from more that 14 years experience in corporate communications to help increase the competitive edge of the church today. She uses a non-nonsense approach to lead a team of communications and technology professionals at Granger Community Church. Using best practices, they live to find ways to remove barriers that keep people from connecting.
With more than 5,000 in weekly attendance, Granger Community Church was recently identified by Outreach Magazine as one of the 100 fastest growing churches of the 21st century.
Granger Community Church’s website.
Kem’s blog.
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There are three reasons people don’t like to work with Communications Directors:
1 – We are controlling.
2 – We don’t have a clue what they do.
3 – We make their job harder and stand in the way of their ministry.
Effective communication requires a common vocabulary. We need to (as Mark Batterson says) develop our contextual knowledge. We need to know our audience and understand that the people coming to our church and the people working or serving in our churches are the same people!
We need to look at everyone as our audience. They are all stressed out, over committed, under stimulated, working hard… not working smart, bombarded by information that could impact them emotionally, and are under constant scrutiny. We need to learn how to be extroverts and not extroverts in how we work. We need to develop trust, tear down walls, and understand their point of view. We need to get in touch with their emotions – we don’t need to give them more policies, rules or guidelines.
Under any kind of stress, the loudest signals your brain sends out is about what’s happening in the moment and how to solve it. What’s important is drowned out. We need to learn the art of stepping into people’s ‘what’s happening right now.’
1. We need to redefine the communications director… from the Logo Nazi (‘NO LOGO FOR YOU!’)
We need to make the form palatable, we can’t put form over function. Our job isn’t about what people can’t do, it’s about figuring out what the message is and how to harness it, removing the barriers and extending the life of the message.
Sometimes, however, what people want to do isn’t right, and we need to balance the tension and help them to do what they do.
Every decision we make on a daily basis needs to go through this filter:
1 – Is it a tool or is it just cool?
Is it going to be a tool in building ministry, or is it just something cool.
2 – What problem is it solving?
What will happen if we don’t do this?
3 – What’s the return on ministry?
We can’t always answer all of these questions because we don’t know all of the answers. We do, however, have the ability to create unity in mission through conversations. Communications is consulting.
We don’t create the message – we protect and defend it. The message is predetermined by our leaders.
We also need to remember that we can’t control how the message is received. Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture when you are stuck inside the frame. We all have different viewpoints. Conflict is a trigger to step outside the frame.
We need to ask, not tell.
Content and information does not create the conversation… world views and first impressions do. We’re not out to change people, we’re out to wrap our strategy around their world view.
We have to remember that we are there to serve and help other people’s ministries, and ultimately, the mission of our church succeed.
Create space for conversations. Ask them what they are trying to do, don’t tell them what they can’t do. It’s about releasing the right responses not the right message. The right response means we are both communicating the right message. We need to raise the bar of our emotional intelligence.
Create less… do more. We need to be communications re-directors. We are listening to people and re-directing where they need to go. We need to do less so we can do more.
Focus on what only you can do and have other people do what other people can do. Don’t over-extend yourself. You lose credibility when you over-promise and under-deliver. The less you say, “yes”, the better you will be. Pick what makes your highest impact and focus on that. Spend 50% of your time in conversation.
Find the yes behind the no.
We can’t say yes to everything. The measure of our success isn’t our output, but our effectiveness. If you talk down to people they will avoid you or work around you. Don’t take anything away without giving something back. Give the answer to what you can do, don’t just say, “NO!” Before we take away, we need to ask ourselves what we will give back. Use tips or guidelines instead of policy. Being controlling is not effective.
Give them tools to keep them connected to the vision
Make time for conversations and focus your time with leaders. Share. Don’t tell them what they need to do. Share ideas. Share books. Share articles. Coach. Train. Equip people. And track expenditures.
Create tools to help people see the bigger picture (i.e. Granger’s sermon series plan), once they see the plan they figure out how to partner with and not compete against it.
You do not need a title to be a leader
We need to change ourselves to the people we are serving. We need to share our knowledge to make others good. We need to share our answers. It’s not ‘us vs them.’
We need to focus on what we need to do differently, not what they need to do differently.
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