Engaging & Involving Leaders: Creative Strategies & Techniques

Apr 8, 2024

In this episode of Creativity & Compliance, Tom & Ronnie discuss perhaps the most important way to impact compliance & speak up culture - engaging and involving leaders.

Hosts

Tom Fox

Ronnie Feldmen

 Resources

60-Second Communication & Awareness Shorts
A variety of short, customizable, quick-hitter “commercials” including songs & jingles, video shorts, newsletter graphics & Gifs, and more. Promote integrity, compliance, the Code, the helpline and the E&C team as helpful advisors and coaches.

Workplace Tonight Show! Micro-learning
A library of 1-10-minute trainings and communications wrapped in the style of a late-night variety show, that explains corporate risk topics and why employees should care.

Custom Live & Digital Programing
We’ll develop programming that fits your culture and balances the seriousness of the subject matter with a more engaging delivery.

Tales from the Hotline
Fast, fun case studies about workplace behavior gone wrong, brought to life by comedians and storytellers.

About This Episode

Engaging & Involving Leaders
Creative Strategies & Techniques

In this episode of Creativity & Compliance, Tom & Ronnie discuss perhaps the most important way to impact compliance & speak up culture – engaging and involving leaders.


Engaging and involving leadership in the compliance and speak up conversation is perhaps the most fundamentally important thing an ethics and compliance program can focus on, and yet, its often relegated to a “nice to have” versus a “need to have.” This is a problem. There is no greater influence on the organization than your leadership. Whether its the tone-at-the-top or mood-in-the-middle, we need to get these folks actively engaged and championing the cause. Without them, all the other work you’re doing to mitigate risk goes down the drain. If I were designing a compliance program from scratch, I would spend my initial training and communication dollars focusing on winning the hearts and minds of leadership.

Engage leaders about their additional responsibilities

  • Training: educate leaders about the concept of psychological safety, about the support system of resources available, the importance of doing business the right way, and the importance of discussing ethical dilemmas with their teams.
  • Communication: Regularly communicate and remind leaders about the importance of their role in maintaining a compliance and speak up culture within the course of their everyday business.

Involving Leaders to Cascade E&C Messaging Throughout the Organization

  • Make it simple and easy for leaders to share these messages with their teams.
    • Prepackage short microlearning for them to deliver on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly lunch-n-learns or similar).
    • Provide short commercials for compliance and speak up to leaders to play as part of regular department meetings
  • Create vehicles for getting these important messages into their mouths.
    • Talk Shows – Create short interviews with leaders about the importance of integrity. Schedule time to sit down and record these conversations, i.e. make it simple and easy for them to participate. These can me videos or podcasts. Conversations are often easier than asking them to do a talking-head video Dialogues are almost always more interesting than monologues.
    • Integrity Minute Montages – Have leaders pre-tape short messages about the importance of integrity, what integrity means to them or examples of integrity. Edit these together into short montages that can be circulated on a regular basis.

Entertainment is Important

Its important that these communications and trainings are short and have some entertainment value. It’ll increase the likelihood that leaders will participate without the eye-roll. Make your partners look good and they’ll make you look good. Engaging and involving leaders, making it simple and easy for them to participate and making that participation entertaining and perhaps even fun, will help get them to champion the cause.

 


Ronnie Feldman is the President & Creative Director at Learnings & Entertainments, a learning content provider made up of comedians and entertainers with a focus on corporate risk. www.LearningsEntertainments.com

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