Okay, we're getting a little bit spicy with today's episode and we're just going to go all in. And that is if you feel like your team has to be in every meeting or constantly asserting your presence, because if not, you're going to be left out of something. The reality is you haven't done a good job of building a need for your function.
If you simply have to assert yourself into everything, then you haven't done a good job of building a need, a desire for your team. And let me tell you, That's a very stressful place to operate from, is feeling like you have to be constantly on alert of like, Oh gosh, well, did they include us in that meeting?
Are we in that? We need to have a seat in that. We need to make sure we have a voice in that, but like forcing yourself into the room. And let me tell you, if you forced yourself into the room, it still doesn't mean your voice is going to be respected or heard in that room. Simply by forcing yourself to have a seat at the table, doesn't guarantee your voice will be heard.
You actually have to be able to communicate the value that your team provides and why the heck the people in that room should care. I see this a lot with internal service based teams. So teams whose role is to serve somebody within their organization. So think like, um, a communications partner, an HR partner, a finance partner.
Um, reporting organizations, anyone who's end quote unquote customer is another department or a group within the company, like employees themselves, leaders themselves. We feel like the. In order to justify that we are doing our job, we have to push ourselves on to everyone because, Oh, if we could just push ourselves on to everyone, if we could be in the room, we'll be able to jump in and say like, no, no, no, that's us, we're going to take that.
And like, We'll have control and be able to prove our worth. But I want to offer a different way of going about that. And that is about truly understanding your team's unique value that it brings to the organization and how to communicate that value in the way that other people actually give an ish. So how do we do that?
I want you to start by saying who is. The ideal like end state customer for your team. And because you guys know that I'm all about with them, not to them. Let's include our team in this, bring your team together and ask them at the end of the day, who does our team serve? Have them write it down on a piece of paper in front of themselves.
No conversation. And then go around. Did we all say the same person? You would be surprised by how many times people get that confused. Like let's take a communications team, for example. Who do they serve? Do they serve the employees? Cause they're all about sharing information out to employees, or do they actually serve the leaders?
Cause a lot of the times they're on the hook for helping come up with communications for the leader that then goes out to the employees. Who is it? You'd be surprised by how many people are confused about who it is they actually serve. And if I'm serving the leader versus the employee, that's a huge gap there.
And now for some of you guys, you're going to say, well, the answer is both. No. Who is the main person that you are on the hook for supporting? Sure. At the end of the day, your goal is to provide clear communications for the employee. That's, that's your goal. But on a day to day basis, you are serving the leader who you are developing communications for.
So that is your customer. Okay. So once we understand who we actually serve, I want you to ask your team what that person needs, write it up on a whiteboard, virtual whiteboard. You can use mural or Miro, give everyone on your team a pad of sticky notes and have them write down as many things as they can think of.
What does your customer need? So if that's our communications team, we decided our customer is the leader. What do they need? What do they need from us? What do they need in general, when it comes to communications, not, not just us in general, have them write down as many responses that they can think of, and then put them on the board grouping together, common responses.
And now talk through those, what, what did we come up with? What are all of the needs? And then I want you to ask the question, this is the kicker, who else, or what else can they go to, to meet these needs and not just internally to your organization, think outside of your organization. Think other tools, systems.
So yeah, you're a centralized communication team, maybe. Well, they have a person inside their own organization who has a comms degree and can do what they need done faster because they don't have to go through a centralized resource. So that's an alternative and they could go to a communications or copywriting, external kind of consultant.
They could use chat GPT, like truly what are, I want you to brainstorm all of the other alternatives to using you and your service, because guess what? The reason why you're not getting brought into the room is because they have an alternative. There's some other way that they are fulfilling that need.
And maybe it's because they don't know they have that need. Maybe they think their communications are awesome and they're garbage, but there is some other way that they are fulfilling what you do. So we need to get clear on what those other options are. So again, have your team brainstorm them, look for common themes, stick them up.
And then the last question I want you to ask your team is what can only our team achieve? What can only we do? Sure, you can go to that person in your organization who has a comms degree, but they don't understand the employee population like we do. They don't understand how to communicate from an executive tone, a tone that's going to be Um, have more clarity and understanding the type of tone that's going to get you promoted Sure, you can use chat gpt, but you're gonna sound like a freaking robot.
We are able to actually fine tune your inner voice and craft communications that really embody who you are as a leader Do you see the difference there? If you're like, Oh, you need to give me a seat at the table and invite me to those meetings so I can write communications. They're like, Meh, I'll jot it up an email real quick, and we're good to go.
You have to explain how you can do something for them that they can't do themselves. That those other alternatives that they perceive as being easier are not actually going to help them. You need to start thinking like an internal business. And actually start selling your services instead of just, Oh, you have to use me.
Oh, you have to bring me to the table because they don't. The reality is they don't. And you can sit there and chase every single meeting invite, but that's freaking exhausting. And at the end of the day, it's It's probably not going to be enough. You're not going to be able to get ahead of everything, but if instead you really tap into what are their needs, what are their other sources they can go to, and how can we provide unique value to them that no one else can do and double down on that, that's, what's going to get you in the room, not because they quote unquote, have to not because you.
heard that they were having this meeting and finagled somebody else to get you an invite at the table. But because they're like, holy crap, I understand what you can do for me and how it solves my innate needs. I want to tap into that. I understand your value. That's what you need to be doing is focusing on your unique value.
And if you want to go more in depth in this, this is exactly what we start with in activating strategy is getting clear on your team's unique value. And we go further into how you need to be focusing on driving impact within your organization through that unique value. We'll link that in the show notes below.
So now I want you guys to go bring your team into a room together, have this conversation and pinpoint your unique value. And then I want you to DM me and tell me how it went. Okay guys, go do the work.
