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The role of communications has changed. The expectations are higher. The margin for error is smaller.
Earning Your Seat is a podcast for communications leaders operating under changed expectations without a clear playbook.
Hosted by Dino Delic, Stephanie Lerdall, and Genevieve Brammall, the show places the hosts inside an experience many communicators recognize. Smart, capable leaders learning in real time how influence is earned, tested, and sustained.
Each episode features candid conversations with leaders across communications, data, media, and technology. Alongside those conversations, the hosts test ideas in real time, question what they have been taught, and confront where common advice breaks down under organizational pressure.
This is not aspirational thought leadership. It is a practical look at growth as it happens. How communicators earn trust, collaborate across functions, and lead with authority in a world moving faster than the role itself.
Pull up a chair. The work begins now.
Dino Delic: There's a pattern. You start to [00:01:00] notice if you spend enough time around communications leaders. They're often the calmest voice in the room, the one who makes everyone else look polished, prepared, and persuasive.
And yet, when it comes to their own visibility, many of them just disappear into the background, not because they lack impact, but because they assume the work will speak for itself. In this episode, that assumption gets challenged almost immediately. When we ask Natalie Moran, a communication strategist who works closely with executive teams, what an aspiring comms leader should start doing right now to earn a seat at the table.
Her answer is simple, almost uncomfortably simple.
Natalie Moran: Document their wins and put them in front of the decision makers. The work is not going to speak for itself. You have to make the case
and sell
Dino Delic: If you're intrigued, well, you should be, but we'll get into that more in a second. What follows is a conversation that moves well beyond reporting metrics or sending prettier newsletters.
It becomes a discussion about humility in a profession that often rewards in visibility, and then as it inevitably does in 2026, the conversation turns toward ai. There's fatigue around the AI conversation, and yet there's also a risk in tuning it out, but underneath that thread, something deeper emerges.
Trust, Natalie calls it a trust recession. A moment when audiences are increasingly skeptical of corporate polish, recycled messaging and content that feels engineered rather than human, which raises a harder question for communicators
If trust is thinning out, what does leadership look like? Now, for some teams, it means helping executives show up visibly, not as brand avatars, but as actual people. For others, it means rethinking team culture, how standards are set, how failure is discussed, how incentives quietly shape behavior.
So here's where we begin with the question that sets the tone for everything that follows.
Dino Delic: What's the one thing that you would recommend that they start doing now that they're probably not doing?
Natalie Moran: Document their wins and put them in front of the decision makers. I think we talk a lot about having a seat at the table and asking a lot of questions around why people in our profession aren't at the table. And in my experience, generally speaking, the communications professionals I work with are quite humble people they like to be behind the scenes and what I find is they may not be selling themselves as much as they could or should be. And so I always encourage any communications professional to make your case. The invitation isn't gonna come on its own. The work is not going to speak for itself. You have to make the case and sell yourself and connect the dots for executives of why communications work is so important, for the business and the business outcomes that the executive team is looking for you have to give them the receipts, so to speak.
Genevieve Brammall: It's so interesting you say that. 'cause about, a decade ago I was in that, churn and burn phase where we were all just plotting along doing great work, but no one was seeing the outcome, of our efforts. And I got a new boss and she said to me, you know what? You're doing great work and no one knows.
I think we need to start a newsletter that just shows people because she goes, you are getting great results on TV and radio. And it looks pretty, but we need to show people what that looks like. And so we started a newsletter now in our company, about 250 people receive that newsletter. We now do it quarterly.
I used to do it monthly. But, the narrative is better when I, when I'm able to showcase a quarter and we're able to put in, our results. So we put in our PR value score that we've developed with Meltwater. We put in those results. we're able to highlight how, uh, we helped [00:05:00] drive business outcomes, but it's also, it looks pretty and it looks busy, and it looks like, wow, that team's doing lots of work.
So even at a very, very base level, it keeps us top of mind for other stakeholders around the company. and it's also, really great for team culture because it means for every single person in the team, there's a way to celebrate the contribution that they've made to the, to the totality of the work that's coming out of the team.
So, and I think you're completely right. I think most people, think that that's sort of, bragging or, you know, boasting about, their work. And probably they'd be better off just putting their head down and just getting on with the job and why do you need to crow about your success? But the reality is that it's really different, to marketing success.
Sometimes it's a lot harder to demonstrate the exact, value that you've brought to the business, and sometimes the total of those efforts is actually more impactful than the individual effort themselves. So I absolutely endorse that. yeah, recommendation.
Natalie Moran: I just feel this so deeply. Like in many [00:06:00] ways my style. So I've been a Morningstar for, oh, a long time, seven years, and I earned credibility here by never taking the spotlight, right? Like being the best supporting actress. Like that's my vibe. whatever your goals are, those are my goals and we're gonna do them.
Stephanie Lerdall: And then when there's a town hall, I'm gonna put you on that stage. And one day the CEO said to me, Stephanie, we need to up your visibility. And I was like, my visibility, everybody knows who I am. You know, like, what is that? and he was like, well, why didn't you do the town hall with Daniel, a member of our ELT, right?
And I was like, because I'm just the comms thing, you know? He is like, no, no, no. was like a really a light bulb moment for me. And similar to Jen. Of course we do our pretty quarterly look at the numbers. They're up. That's good. but I've also learned that it's like the numbers alone aren't good enough.
and so we're now doing, um, doing a weekly internal newsletter that's much more [00:07:00] about what's going on in the space, how quickly things are changing, not even about the stuff my team is doing, just to show that we know what's going on and we too are thinking about it for Morningstar.
Natalie Moran: I love that. yeah. Two things come to mind. One to your point, Stephanie, is it's how can we use the numbers that we're compiling and tell a story with the data? We don't necessarily have to know exactly how many clients we brought in as a result of this random message that we sent or this, uh, campaign and what the exact yield was.
If sometimes it's hard for us to get that data, but just telling some kind of story about why it matters and why it is impactful that we had, you know, even 20 re-shares of a LinkedIn post, like, why is that so? Valuable. Right. And Jen, to your point, I think this exercise of going through reporting and documenting for comms teams is extremely valuable because we are so reactionary by nature and have to be oftentimes in our roles, right?
And so I think just building that muscle and making that part of what we do as communications teams is extremely valuable and worthwhile.
Dino Delic: It's a practical answer. Document your wins. On the surface, it sounds tactical, almost mechanical, but as the conversation continues, it becomes clear that this isn't just about process, it's about psychology, because for many communicators, especially women in leadership, the hesitation isn't a lack of data.
It's a discomfort with self-promotion. What follows isn't a strategy discussion, it's something more personal. And for a lot of communicators listening, it may feel familiar.
Natalie Moran: do you think that there is anything, um, specific about women in particular in leadership roles that holds us back? from, you know, being, more capable or willing to, to sell ourselves forward?
[00:09:00] yes. So I think in my experience, I've seen women in leadership roles really have to push themselves to brag a little bit, right? And it really just talk about the impact of their work. And there are a lot of women in the communications profession. it's still at the top in leadership levels.
it's majority men. But I do see a strong correlation between kind of these pressures that are gender based and, these hesitations to kind of talk about our work, right? And so I think that's why it's important just to do it and get in the habit of it and build the muscle because, it's uncomfortable and unnatural for a lot of the people I talk to.
Genevieve Brammall: I have noticed two distinct phases in my career as a, as a senior, female leader. And the first was when I got engaged. And whether that was me feeling like, oh, I've taken a [00:10:00] greater step towards maturity or seeing a ring on my finger I don't know.
I, I just, I felt like there was this step change in the way that men and women in the, in the workplace treated me. And then now that my children are almost finished high school, and I'm older now and more experienced than I ever was, but I feel like I'm taken more seriously when I'm sitting at that table than I was 10 years ago.
I'm effectively the same person. I've clearly got 10 years more experience. But, you know, I think that, man in the same position as me would've been taken as seriously 10 years ago as he's today. and it's just takes women a, little bit longer. Maybe it's my own self-confidence has taken longer to build.
but I do think that there's some environmental factors that have come into that as well.
Natalie Moran: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that because it's definitely a culture that, I think is not only preventing a lot of women from speaking up about our value, but guess, you know, we can't put all the onus on women right? To, to speak up [00:11:00] and prove our value is the idea. But that's really interesting about these different milestones in our life.
I actually see a lot of ageism in the comms and PR profession, and I will say as a younger person working in communications, uh, who was quite younger than a lot of my peers, I also felt quite a disadvantage in a lot of ways as, and not being taken as seriously. So I've kind of seen both ends of it, and I think it's interesting.
I was working in nonprofit communications and I was hired onto a team, uh, with two other people. So there were three of us on the team, and within maybe five or six months, both of the people had left. And it was just me on the communications team for quite some time, like several months.
And I really had a moment of like, this is a real opportunity to prove myself and do you know as much as I can, as quickly as I can? I think in a lot of ways that mindset and mentality led me to burnout, which is sort of a separate, maybe not it's, you know, that, that's kind of maybe another topic. But, um, I.
Really realized in that moment, even as I was doing all of this extra stuff that hadn't been on my plate before, I still felt like that work wasn't being recognized as I was grinding, grinding, grinding. And so that I think is where my perspective on, okay, we have to talk about our work and let people know what we're actually doing day to day.
That's where that came from. And that was a big moment for me of growing up and uh, just kind of realizing, oh, okay, I have to advocate for myself in a way that I hadn't really understood before.
Dino Delic: Yeah. There's situations where either there's an opportunity that presents itself like a gap or an opening or necessity, you know? Mm-hmm. Mom and dad are not home, so the kids gotta cook their own dinner kind of situation, you know? this makes me think about [00:13:00] going back to the topic of leadership,
AI and Comms. I don't wanna talk about it because I wanna plug Meltwater. because there's just fatigue.
Everyone's like, I'm not hearing anything useful, not hearing anything that I wanna put into action. I'm not hearing anything clear. I'm just hearing people regurgitate the same thing. So like, let's move on to the other topics. That's basically what happened with this list. this moment of growing up for you reminds me of things I've heard before with like, what is the role of a leader in comms?
Typically, it's a female, and I do find that burnout is a problem as evidenced by a lot of the conversations that I have with people. So then how do you prevent burnout, but also how do you prevent complacency? Because I do think that comms is also a profession where there is a lot of complacency where things just get done the way that they've always get done and the only time that they changed is when there's a disruption.
And like LLMs now everybody has to jump on it, for example. the role for a leader to me seems [00:14:00] like, and this is what I wanna talk about, team structures come up in other conversations, but, well, I'll just give you sort of my thesis. 15 years ago, the youngest person in the room was given the company Facebook page.
Typically. Why? Because they're interns and you know, cheap whatever. We don't know if this thing is gonna be real, but like, you know how to do Facebook 'cause you just came outta college and this thing was born in college, so like you do it. What are those people doing now?
Running marketing departments. Some of them are CMOs. AI today is very similar. Are you using cha BT? No. I don't know. Like there's so many different varying, adoption phases that people go through, but everyone is saying, and this is where everyone's sick of it, like you gotta be using cha BT That was two years ago.
Now it's like, if you're not in comms and you're not using AI in your team, you are, you are behind. There's a different situation now. You don't just have to use it. You have to understand how it works because it's changing the customer journey. And so the [00:15:00] analogy that I've been using is, your car breaks down.
Your mechanic says this is gonna cost you $300 to fix. Who do you call? Do you call someone else who really knows how to drive a car? Very well. You call someone who knows how cars works. Usually it's your dad said, dad, they want $300. Oh, don't worry about it. If you're lucky, dad knows how to fix it. And you go to his house and he fixes it for you.
Same thing with ai. There's so many people now like, oh, you got so Everyone's driving to work. Everyone's hopping in a car. Everyone's learning. Everyone's using ai. But very few people are taking the time to learn how it works. So I'll tie this back to the leadership As a leader. If I were a leader, I'd be like, find someone on your team who cares about ai, who's enthusiastic, who loves it.
Just like interns use Facebook because they came from college and you had to use Facebook if you wanna be popular and have friends. So now I would be resourcing that person and I would be pushing them outside of their comfort zone a little bit, because that's where growth comes from. But to prevent burnout, you have to also support them and put [00:16:00] their stuff to you.
So make sure that they're not just being the person who's tasked with way more than they can handle. So I've given you a lot there, but that's, this is a fresh thought in my mind because it really is annoying to see where the AI conversation has gone. And I shared a couple links that I found on LinkedIn this, uh, over the weekend and sent it to my CEO and he got mad at me.
It's like, why are you sending me this stuff that says our product is shit? So that's not what I'm saying, John. I'm saying that the, the conversation has evolved. Have you not noticed that instead of everybody saying, you've gotta be doing this now, there's people accusing each other of being snake oil salesman openly on the internet, and I'm like, let's join the conversation.
Let's help comms leaders. ' Stephanie and, and Jen actively opted out of the topic in the, in the six things that I shared. Let's talk about that.
Natalie Moran: yeah, it, it's a big topic. I think the way leaders can prevent burnout in general. Uh, I think having, kind of listening and having open conversations with employees. Also employees need to be able to set boundaries that are going to be respected. and also just feel, I guess, comfortable and safe setting those boundaries.
So that's, I think, how I think about burnout and at a high level ways to prevent it. But I see what you mean. I like your, I like the metaphor of, the car and kind of who knows how to actually, use AI and, and how it works and all of that. Something that I think is really an interesting conversation is.
So many people are actually using AI quite well and really benefiting a lot from it, but don't know the inner workings of, you know, how a large language model actually functions. Right. I think that's okay. I'm really more interested in do those people understand the bias, for example, baked into AI systems.
Right. And I don't see those conversations happening enough. I was actually thinking the other day, like, I need to start [00:18:00] talking about that more in my own content. because it's all about what can AI do for me, or, oh, AI is bad. It's creating, you know, AI slop. I know that's, you know, a, a common, term that's used now, I don't see enough conversation around, Okay. AI is dangerous. Sure. Interesting argument, but why exactly. You know, and for me, it really does come down to the bias, baked into the systems. I just think that's an important thing for people to understand, as we're using AI to help build our messaging and, and all kinds of things. And like to be thought partners with. hopefully that answers your question a little bit,
Dino Delic: I don't know. I think everybody feels the way that Natalie here is describing, we hear so much about ai, but are we really learning that much? I personally feel like 90% of what you hear, you've heard before, especially somebody like myself, I, I attend a lot of conferences and events and webinars and so on, and maybe because I'm.
Watching the same stuff on repeat. It feels like it's a little bit too much of the same old thing, but the one thing that keeps coming out is that communicators need to jump on AI. We need to own the LLM narratives. We need to be using it in our teams, but not enough training or resources are being provided in order for everybody to upskill and to get good at it.
And I think there's a lot of fear mongering as well. So it is kind of refreshing to hear Natalie talk a little bit more about how to address those challenges. Yeah. And she's providing a little bit more practical guidance beyond just the surface level. Well, you gotta dive in and start using it.
Natalie Moran: I mean, it's tricky out there and I also think because we are such a reactionary profession, it's really tough to carve out time to embrace something as big as AI in a way that's really useful for us, right?
Like that is, is a really big undertaking. And so I can't imagine, for example, being that solo comms team I was talking about, and like having to set aside time every day to kind of, you know, show, Hey, I'm, I'm learning all about, you know, these different models and how all this stuff works. I was just like, you know, how can this tool help me right now?
what lessons can we learn from when we did it with social media? Like I was just talking to someone today. Do you remember the company Wildfire? Google bought it. We used to compete with it. Because they were, they made I think hundreds of millions of dollars from sweepstakes.
Dino Delic: Remember when Facebook was like, competitions like my page, and you go into a raffle, and that was just a ruse. And it's like, there are rabbit holes you can go down and those things will come and go. And I kind of feel like AI will go through its development, it is interesting to me. And I, I'm specifically picking at a wound here because I know Jen, you use it, but not that much.
And Stephanie as well, like you, we all love to chat. But especially for our podcast transcripts and preparation, but you know, you use the word bias and slop, those are hot keywords that are showing up right now. I cannot open my LinkedIn without seeing someone who's posing as an expert [00:21:00] saying, you should do this, you should do that.
And all they're doing is repeating what you just said, which is like, well, we gotta pay attention to bias. And yeah, there's a lot of slop out there. Okay, but what am I actually gonna do about that? Most people don't answer that question, and I think it's because there's a lot of people who just know how to use ai, but they don't know how it works.
Stephanie Lerdall: And I feel like it's getting harder and harder to find those people, but that's always been the case. Same thing with social media back then. The difference here is that as a chief communications officer, you have the pressure both ways. Yeah. So one, you're in the content creation business and your CEO is looking at you saying, you're getting benefit from this. Right? Like, you know, if I'm gonna expect the company to adopt this, the comms team is where I'm looking first. And if you're not ahead of the pack,
Dino Delic: do people expect comms to be at the forefront of this?
Stephanie Lerdall: I might've built that perception myself, but I think it's a fair one. I'm in the,
Dino Delic: I'm not saying you shouldn't have.
Stephanie Lerdall: like, if anybody should be benefiting from it, it's my team. So I've definitely told people that, and now it's repeated back to me. But secondly, I'm also supposed to be the company's conscience I'm in a business that produces software and a bunch of other things.
And so I. I think the bias point is more acute there, although it's both like one, I'm pushing my team to use it every day for everything, and how am I guiding them to check biases so that I'm not part of the problem. But then bigger, like what am I telling our software developers? What exercises are they supposed to be running to check
out for biases. It could really hurt humanity. Okay, well literally tell me what results I'm supposed to look for. That tells me I have a problem.
Natalie Moran: It really just points out like how much we don't know about how these systems are created. And I, it certainly can't only be the communications leader's job to know that. Right. But I think that's part of the problem, and I think that's why a lot of, advocates in this space call for transparency with what data these models are being trained on, because [00:23:00] that's really important for people to understand.
Dino Delic: And now, we've covered everything from AI to women in leadership to burnout, but the core issue for comms leaders hasn't changed how to lead with integrity, accountability, and vision. It's one thing to manage the tools of the trade. It's another to manage the people who use them. So as the conversation pivots, we step back into the real work that happens when you're not drafting emails and typing, I hope this finds you well.
Or, in other words, what happens when you're building a team culture that thrives on innovation and accountability. It's about how to set standards without suffocating creativity, how to embrace failure as part of the learning process, but still maintain the high bar for success. And how as a leader, you don't just expect results, you inspect them.
In this next section, you'll see that leadership is really more of a balance than a battle for a seat at the table.
Natalie Moran: yeah, if people don't understand that that's important, then [00:24:00] people aren't gonna know to even look for that or ask that question. So, it's asking a lot of comms to be, you know, the investigators of this stuff and the conscience of the organization. And, and, and you know, it's, um, I think that is part of the reason why we tend to burn out is because it does, I think in some ways get us away from what we're, really, really good at doing, which is telling the story of the organization.
but I do think there's a lot of invisible work in communications and I always say, well, okay, if not comms, then who, you know, who is going to do it? And um, so I think that's how, you know, we end up on these different paths, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but, um, it's worth kind of asking and pondering.
Genevieve Brammall: I hear you and I, I read a, a phrase that you were using around career insurance, and when I was reading it earlier, it really, alluded to that piece we spoke about earlier, around. Your personal brand and your personal visibility within the workplace. But I feel like adoption of AI in comms teams is also career [00:25:00] insurance because, I think it's a little bit different to, uh, 15 years ago and the introduction of social media where everything was pushed down to the lowest common denominator in the team, or the, the new kid on the block who was a more of a digital native.
Oh, that's in your wheelhouse. You go look at that. I think everyone is now aware that it doesn't matter where you are in the, in the hierarchy or the, the chain of responsibility in a team. It's everyone's responsibility to learn how to use tools effectively. And as comms leaders, it's really important that we understand how to use the tools to our advantage because a lot of people are using them to, to try to circumvent the comms role.
and we all know that there is a lot more to our role you know, a lot more skill involved in, overarching strategic communications than just. Punching in something and having it rewritten for you in a better tone or, you know, what have you. as a leader, I don't see it as something that I would push down to the newest team member.
It's more something that I want to create a culture. [00:26:00] Where we are all learning simultaneously, and if someone learns something new, they're sharing it with the team so that we're all on that journey together. and all of us learn differently as well. So I don't wanna, I don't wanna necessarily say, right, every Monday we're gonna have a session and we're just gonna use a different tool.
Although I do think that there is some method in the madness of setting aside a little bit of time within your team to have the discipline to learn, and give people that space to learn. But at the same time, I'm like, you know what? just keep iterating, keep learning, keep having a crack, you know, make a few mistakes here and there.
Not at the company's expense, but just, you know, let's just fiddle and, and have fun with it. there was an example just here in Australia recently where, Deloitte was commissioned by the Australian government to do a big report and, they were paid $400,000 for this report, and it had citations in it of, you know, footnotes.
Citing sources that did not exist. and they were caught out. And it turned out that one of the most [00:27:00] junior team members in the team had been assigned this work, had punched it all through, an AI tool and, copied and paste it into a government report with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And it just, it made a mockery of how much we are paying consultants, at that government level. it made a mockery of senior leaders at one of the world's biggest, you know, big four consultancies to, to say, well, what are we doing getting juniors to be using chatbots to, to write reports? I think it exposed the biases and the, fallibility of, AI systems.
but through all of that, I still don't know what's the lesson beyond that? how do we prevent for that? How do we work to, to ensure that that doesn't happen again? rather than just wrapping someone over the knuck knuckles and pointing the finger and saying, you know, that's no good.
Natalie Moran: You know, generally speaking, when using an AI tool for, for any project, especially at that, in that level of kind of depth, right? It's like human ai, human starting with a human mapping it out, putting together an outline and then certainly using a large [00:28:00] language model to help flush it out.
but then making sure at the end a human is double checking the work. Like that was what was so wild to me about that. That instance is a human clearly hadn't. Checked through this report that was, you know, they were being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, uh, before handing it over to the client.
And that's something like playing with these tools enough, that is something I would never not do. Like I would always make sure it's been checked by a human in the end because everyone knows that these tools can hallucinate. Everyone knows, you know, lawyers have gotten in trouble quite a bit for citing cases that don't exist.
And so to me that was kind of like a oh my God. Yeah, they should have known better. And um, and that's a good example I think actually of, of people not understanding how it works.
Dino Delic: one of my favorite tools, I go to use it. My company just turned off the ai and I went through so many stages of grief. Immediately I was like, I use this tool religiously. Like I've got my framework, I wanna create a presentation. I'm not gonna sit here and do all the graphic design.
And [00:29:00] then I started typing in, yelling on at someone on Slack, like, why would you turn this off? We're an AI first company. But, and then I thought, how would they receive that? Because, yeah, okay, they should develop some safety systems. Maybe somebody can abuse it. Not just because, you know, for security protocols, but like, maybe, I don't know.
So there is an element of convenience, privacy, security, all that sort of stuff that, that you'd associate with like things like TSA and travel. But also in this case, you wanna travel freely and, and, uh, expeditiously. But you also have to make it safe. And I don't wanna get into a discussion about regulation, but it does also like.
I guess I wanna go to the phrase that you said, uh, Jen, everyone's responsibility. So this is now back to a leadership topic of culture. I actually think that phrase is fraught with disaster because as we all know, I expect it's everyone's responsibility in this household to clean up after ourselves.
Do you want me to turn the camera around and show you what I'm working with over here
Natalie Moran: Sure. Right.
Dino Delic: in our company as well? From a [00:30:00] sales element, you know, when we roll out new things, we've invested so much in sales training, and then we expect that everyone is following those protocols or doing things the right way or entering the right information, or, collaborating with their colleagues in a particular way.
But like, guess what? People don't do it. So somebody said, we inspect what we expect. So there's an element of policing that needs to be done. That's good culture too, is like sh enforcing, uh, standards, not necessarily policing or cracking people over the knuckles, but. we inspect what we expect, but then also culture is closely tied to incentives, you know, expecting that it's everyone's responsibility to learn AI versus maybe, maybe there's another way want to turn this into a question for all three of you.
When you want to change the culture of your team in any way, what are some tricks? What are some tactics? What are some workshops? What are some ways that you've done that? I'll just throw out one for example, where like, we've noticed that when there is a bunch of [00:31:00] people who are sitting on the sidelines afraid to, to do something, the best thing we can do is to talk about all the failures and all the mistakes of other people that have tried it versus all the success stories.
Because when they see the success stories, they just hear like, oh, that person's perfect. That's why I haven't tried, because I can't even do that versus everybody. You know, we used to do this in the Chicago office. It was pretty cheesy, but like on a Friday we would all be sitting around and we'd have a little soft toy that somebody had and we would throw it around and you would've to throw it to somebody else next after you finished telling a failure story.
And then pretty quickly you notice that all the junior people just felt way more comfortable around someone intimidating older like me. 'cause they're like, this idiot just did that and he still has a job. Great. Let me, let me go give it a try. What are some other tricks? Um, you know, you do a lot of workshops, uh, Natalie and you talk to a lot of experts.
I'm wondering what each of you does as a leader or as somebody who, who advises people to build the right culture on the team.
Genevieve Brammall: I would say in the example you just gave, that, [00:32:00] um, for me that is leading with empathy. So understanding that other people, have failings or, any kind of Achilles is a way of showing that, are not perfect. But, it's being empathetic and understanding, uh, another person's perspective.
And so I bring that, into the way that I lead, um, by showing vulnerability as a leader. possibly sometimes oversharing, bit of my personal side, uh, so that people can understand where I'm coming from. Some weeks I might be more, uh, short, short of time. Sometimes I might be more short tempered.
but if they can understand a little bit around what's going on in the totality of my life,
Dino Delic: You know what empathy is, I mean, vulnerability certainly helps as a leader to show up authentically and to be honest with people and to be a bit more transparent and let them in, into your personal life so that they understand a little bit more about what you bring to your business life. Sure.
But empathy is, as [00:33:00] Jen said, yeah. Understanding someone else's perspective, but it's also understanding someone else's interests and self-motivation and putting that into your decision making framework. So often as bosses and leaders, empathy is confused as being, just being understanding, but actually identifying and helping someone else identify their own interests and motivations and intentions is actually really helpful to build comradery and a team.
And I think authenticity will get you so far, but understanding what someone else wants and putting that at the center of your decision making and your work is very key to being a good leader.
Genevieve Brammall: I hope to be better understood as a leader. And likewise, I try to provide, By doing that myself, an environment where others feel free to share a little bit of their personal side with me, whatever they're comfortable with.
But I know that as a leader, I, I lead better when I [00:34:00] understand where people are coming from. So if someone needs time off from work, I've got a team that feels very comfortable telling me why. and that's particularly important when people get quite unwell. And in some roles, and some bosses, in some workplaces, they just apply for a day off with a medical certificate that just says unfit for work.
And as a, a leader, that's really hard to navigate because not knowing means you can't show up for them, in the way that might be best for them. And so if you create an environment, of vulnerability and empathy, I really do believe that, employees actually get the best work experience.
with my team, and I think in most cases I get it back. and that's what I'm looking for. But more specifically, like I'm a big fan of just visibility opportunities. Now that I have this well-read newsletter that goes to the CEO and the whole executive leadership team every week, you know, you can bet that my positive reinforcement efforts are all directed there.
Stephanie Lerdall: Like, [00:35:00] one of the things we were trying to do. Was get more traditional media relations professionals to think more socially and to get the social team to think a little bit more. Like, how could I use these stories for content creation that the media team is already thinking of? 'cause they're more trained that way.
And so like, not only did I have to ask people to restrain themselves, which I think is the hardest part is just like making more room for people to contribute and not filling, the void with somebody who already knows. And then also just like all of the positive reinforcement when when a little baby step is made.
Natalie Moran: For me, it's having a set of three or four standards and actually writing those out for the team and making sure that there's buy-in across the team for what do we care most about. So one of my first jobs was as a hostess at this pretty nice restaurant here in Kansas City and.
The [00:36:00] very first thing was like, the customer's always right. And that isn't unique to that restaurant, right? That is something a lot of companies and organizations live by. But they meant it, they were like, you make the customer happy no matter what. If the kid asks for a happy meal from McDonald's, like, you run and go get one.
You know, like if they want, goldfish for dessert, you go and grab them a bag, like that kind of love and it's like, oh wow, okay, so you really mean that, right? like make it, make it, um, kind of inconvenient for us is, it was kind of my takeaway there. I worked at another organization where. As a comms professional there.
And, uh, the, first kind of, um, uh, standard was do no harm. And so I would say in a lot of ways there was a culture of experimentation and play. And failure was okay to some extent, but really needed to maintain the reputation of our brand. And so every sentence I wrote, every message I put out, I was constantly thinking of the 30 different ways this could be interpreted.
[00:37:00] And so I do think having some buy-in and a common agreement on a few standards can really help set everyone's compass, uh, and kind of identify, okay, what is our true north in terms of what do we really prioritize and
Dino Delic: If you're trying to be a leader and you're trying to create a culture, then obviously the first step to creating a narrative and a culture is to create an identity.
So sitting down and writing down some non-negotiable core tenets is a great step to helping people identify what good looks like. What kind of behavior you wanna model and what you want people to do when they're thinking about the little things throughout their day that ultimately roll up into the big impact that your team has overall.
Natalie Moran: what do we really like? Take a pause for and what do we just say? Eh, it's okay. We can keep going.
Dino Delic: To me, that sounds pretty. Profound meaning, I think that could have a huge effect. I'm curious, Jen and Stephanie, if you guys have that with your [00:38:00] team, cause I know in our team we had a leader once, it was a great visionary leader and he had wit world class impact trust,
Let's go back to the first question, how that applies to it. Like, let's increase the visibility of you, Stephanie.
You know, your standard might be, we're humble. We eat shit when it gets thrown at us and we deal with it and you know, we just, we we do the work and whatever. Maybe that's just implied. I'll add one, one extra little bit to something that really hit me with my daughter over the weekend, my daughter loves soccer.
She's very athletic. I love soccer, I love playing it, but I never really watch it. Every now and then in the morning I wanna watch Premier League and I hate those weekends where they have the international break because I don't get to watch my regular best teams in the world. So I flip around, I go, there's gotta be some soccer, women's soccer.
And my daughter comes in and she goes, is this club or country? So I go, this is the club. You know that biggest club? This is the women's team. They have a women's team. Yeah. They're playing in the same [00:39:00] stadium. Yeah. How many people? I don't know. Like 50,000. I can do that. you could tell that something clicked. This is a story about women in leadership and, uh, bias and all that sort of stuff, but it's also a story about culture is what you observe and if what you observe is that the men get to play professional soccer and we get to play, uh, soccer as well, but like, there's just no, and I thought, oh my God.
The amount of things that she has just assumed incorrectly, but she was gonna be a good little girl. And just that's how it is. I'm not gonna challenge it. Like, so be it. And then I think about the new people on the team and uh, when somebody gets added to a team and it's like, that's just the way it is.
And there's a fine balance between challenging the rest of the team and being, there was one guy on our team who was recently let go, who was the most abrasive challenge, but he was really smart. And I, I, I'm not proudly saying he was let go of the team. I think he just did not survive. 'cause he didn't build enough allies, couldn't figure out when, to conform and when to challenge.
But too many people conform. And so then I'm thinking [00:40:00] about if you have a team that is a solid team, but then when they need to step it up, it's, you have to then break the culture of the team and get them to to be different. So what do you do? Do you bring in an outsider? I know I'm going off on so many tangents, but I'm thinking about a comms leader who might be in a position where they're doing great work, everything's fine, but they need to push the team and they need to change things.
How do I push them without breaking them
Genevieve Brammall: I think you can push a team like I, I say to my guys, we've got to do things differently year on year. We always have to push the boundaries, reach new heights. Like that is the culture. The culture that that is of my team is, I can't just do it the same way I did it last year.
I'm not gonna, expect the same result, like near enough is not good enough. And, and we are actually inspired To better our performance year on year. That's the, that's the culture. The standards are not written down, [00:41:00] but we speak about who we are. We are connectors in our business.
we understand an umbrella perspective on what's happening. We connect the dots, we connect the teams. We create the narrative that draws things together. I lead and, and my manager leads by example in that regard. So people see us in a room, they expect us to know more than just what's in our lane.
My team expects me to know, I expect them to know they're watching me. They're learning that as they go, so I can see them in a room and someone will ask a question or make a statement about what's happening. And I will see my team go, actually, I was just in a meeting down the hall before and someone in that meeting said this.
And I don't think that if you do that, that's gonna work because I'm joining the dots. And they're the moments for me where I go, hallelujah. Like, this is amazing. Because you don't need to have 30 years experience to be able to connect the dots at whatever level. culturally, that's, that's what we do.
I love your example of effectively you can't be what you can't [00:42:00] see, you know, for your daughter. She had not seen the, The women's team play for me as I was growing up, women in leadership, like in really senior leadership roles in our company, and many companies, you know, around me, were childless women.
And in order to have made it to the top of your tree, on the top of your game at that time, it was a choice. Often, like nine times out of 10, you know, the first editors of our newspapers were incredible women, but they just happened to, sometimes they were married, but they, they just didn't have children.
So they hadn't, they quite done the juggle. And I remember a, a male leader said to me once, I had children and, I was working a four day week and he said, when are you gonna come back full time? And I was really struggling with that notion of how do I do all this? How do I fit it in? And I said to him, you know what, I don't have a wife. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well. Your wife, she doesn't work. So [00:43:00] she's, she's literally existing to support pushing you forward. And when you go home, you don't have to think about, you know, the soccer uniform, is it washed for tomorrow's, the birthday party planned is, you know, have we, cleaned the house, whatever, or had someone else prepared to clean it.
Whatever the, the thing is, you've got someone else doing all of that, the mental load for you. I don't have that. So, I felt like there was no one to look up to, that was inspiring me. And so I kind of was like, well, I've just gotta be that person for the next generation.
I've gotta make sure that my children are visible in my workplace as in, not necessarily physically coming to work with me, but, you know, put a, put a photograph of them. On my desk, talk about them as part of my journey and have people understand that, it is possible to actually be ambitious, be good at your job, juggle a family, raise incredible kids.
but do that within the boundaries. You know, set set boundaries for yourself. Be that person that needs to walk out the door at 5:00 PM and [00:44:00] have a male walk past and say, oh, you're leaving. You're leaving, are you? And I go, yeah, I said to this guy once, don't worry.
By the time you are home tonight, sitting down with a red wine and eating the dinner that your wife prepared for you, I'll be logging back on having fed my family and put two children to bed. So, yeah, I'm leaving. I'm just gonna go get them. I've grown up in, an era that has been really supportive of women in the workplace, and certainly my workplace has been really supportive of me, but It hasn't necessarily been a smooth ride, and certainly at the beginning looking up the line, there wasn't as many women as there are today. Who, who inspired me back then? Yeah.
Natalie Moran: love the line. I don't have a wife. Like, I can only imagine how scared that guy was after that. if I see Jen walking down the hallway, I'm not saying anything. But it is so true. It's like you just take some things for granted. So I'm not gonna try and be a nerd here, but I do want to tie it back to a lesson.
Dino Delic: For people, for us is what can we learn from what we've [00:45:00] just discussed? Because you were kind of saying, I'm, I'm looking at the themes, you know, cobbler's children problem of the core identity issue. That's, that's one of the themes. And then also this like, promoting our work and inspect what you expect and all that sort of stuff.
Dino Delic: It makes me think about love languages of different execs. some are motivated by power, some by money, some by accolades, some just by doing a good job. Some are competitive. everybody's a little bit different and you never really know. But that speaks to like, maybe these people felt like together we're doing a great job.
Maybe they thought like, look at us. We're we're so, maybe they were like wholesome about it and thought nine people doing what a company or a brand could do. Like, you know, or maybe they were competitive. They were like they were competitive. There's no way Steve is gonna get,
Stephanie Lerdall: We had a great leaderboard shared every week, and it was like, oh no, he's gotta get down on the top, you know? Yeah.
Dino Delic: which gamifying things definitely works. So I wonder then what are we take away from this? '
Stephanie Lerdall: you know, be [00:46:00] authentic is like the first and foremost in terms of representing the brand, but then also leading your team, be visible and something about incentives.
Dino Delic: incentives create culture? That was mine. I don't know if that's, that should be your takeaway. Create an incentive scheme for your team. that's interesting. Well, I will just critique it. To be rude, be authentic and be vulnerable. Haven't we heard that before? What? What was different about it this time?
Or I guess what, if anything, would you do differently based on the conversation that we had about it today? Have you seen it from a different perspective?
Stephanie Lerdall: Well, I think Jen was talking about leading her team very authentically. And, for me, I think about that in a way of I just need to show up as authentic to myself, or the cognitive dissonance, just, it's gonna bother me, right? Like it's, I'm doing this for me and Jen's talking about why she does it for her team.
So if you can get those two things in alignment, you're doing well.
Genevieve Brammall: Natalie made a [00:47:00] point, in relation to, you know, social media and people wanting to hear from people rather than from brands. That's certainly a, a big part of, you know, my work. currently and into the new, the new year. But I think that point that trust recession isn't isolated to social media.
I think generally speaking as a community, as a society, there's a real issue with trust, which makes being authentic wherever you are on every platform in real life, in your work, in your home, wherever you are, if you are your true self and you show up as your true self, and you can bring that into the executive leadership suite as well.
And if everyone is empowered to be their true self, ultimately, if you love what you do, you're gonna show up, you're gonna be proud, you're gonna be inspired, you're gonna be inspiring because you are being true to yourself. So if you're in a role. [00:48:00] Your values don't align with your business. Walk away.
If you are in a, team and you are leading people, but half the team is slacking off, not doing a great job, lead with authority and make sure that you are performance managing those people to either stay or, or go. 'cause that's having a negative impact on your culture. if you are able to identify the things that really matter to you and the things that really matter to the business that you work for, and if there's alignment there, you are going to be able to do a much better job, an inspirational job for other people around you as well.
And so that in and of itself will help build trust. And trust will ultimately then flow right through to your customer base. Because there won't be any smoker mirrors, there's not gonna be posts that, you know are written by chat GPT and no one really understands what this brand stands for or what it's people stands for because Or authentic, connection with the brand or the company that you work for. We'll see. You show up, like literally, I'm so [00:49:00] excited by this campaign. we just had a, a campaign recently all about dementia and I couldn't have written a post on chat JBT about that. I was so inspired by a colleague who, we actually lost her husband, in launch week of the, of the campaign, which was her idea, absolutely profound, contribution that she has made to our company and to, and to that campaign and to the Australian population as a result.
but I could not have posted about that without just being my true self. and I think every post that I read that was, by a colleague or even our CEO, was actually just really personal and really truthful. So yeah, that trust recession and, and showing up with auth authenticity, I think big takeaways for me.
Dino Delic: I have to disclaim, I mean, I didn't give our transcripts to to Natalie before this, but you were probably thinking like, hang on a second. Does she know every conversation we've had thus far? Because a couple of the things that you talked about are exactly what, what we have spoken about trust and, and when you said the trust recession thing, I was watching Jen's [00:50:00] reaction and then also the executive visibility.
Again, I think this is just, it's validating that we talk about some of the same stuff. Some stuff that's been around for a long time and some stuff that's kind of new. forgive me for going down that AI rabbit hole so much. I know we didn't want to touch on that topic, but I think that was, to me, that was really interesting just to watch admission that it's just getting really annoying and we're not hearing anything.
But I think. If that causes people to just like, pay less attention to it, I think that's gonna cause more problems because it is gonna get bigger. But yeah. I wonder if you guys feel like you have people on your team that are excited about diving into it. 'cause I, I think about what happened with social media and there are definitely some teams that like just weren't good at it because they didn't have anybody on the team that wanted to be good at it.
Natalie Moran: Something that does come to mind for me, Dino is. I really built my LinkedIn audience at first because I was talking a lot about AI for communications and people were really [00:51:00] interested in that. I, this was starting, you know, in June of 2024 is when I really started posting and I really became a voice, I started to get really nervous because I knew there were other things I wanted to do and other things I wanted to be known for. And I was also seeing all of these, we've talked about like the AI kind of snake oil salespeople, right? And I was really nervous about even just talking about ai, like being grouped with that, kind of population.
but I realized that regardless, you know, people are gonna be asking questions, people are gonna be trying to figure out how to navigate this stuff. it's a silly reason not to talk about it, you know? And so, but it did make me much more intentional and thoughtful around, okay, what is my point of view on this stuff and how do I really wanna show up?
Because, you know, there is a lot of kind of snake oil out there around it, to your point.
Dino Delic: thing for me that I'll finish on is they say, if you wanna be good at something, teach it. And if you just like the visibility thing when you put [00:52:00] yourself out there, then you've gotta start adhering to your own standards. Mm-hmm. And that's maybe a nice reminder that like, it's kind of easy to hide if you make it for yourself.
Like comfortable. Like, we don't, I'm not saying that's what you did, Stephanie, but like, no, we are humble. But once you start putting yourself out there, then you know there's even more eyeballs on you and then actually lifts your game. It makes you better, not just at LinkedIn content, but it also makes sure that you're always living those standards, so.
Mm-hmm. I
think this is a perfect place to end the episode, but before you press stop, lemme give you a little more. As we come to the end of the episode, it feels like we've uncovered a map, one where we've explored the challenges of leadership, self-promotion, and the invisible work that communications leaders often carry in a profession where so much of the work happens behind the scenes.
Natalie reminds us that we have to advocate for ourselves. We can't afford to let the work speak for itself. It's on us to make the case and connect the dots between what we do and the business outcomes that matter. [00:53:00] But as much as leadership in comms is about strategy and execution, it's also deeply personal.
Scroll up, I'll start that again from that paragraph, but as much as where your finger is, go up, that's it. Yeah. But as much as, yeah, yeah. There you go. But as much as leadership in comms is about strategy and execution, it's also deeply personal. Natalie's reflections on the gendered experience of leadership, especially for women, reminds us that self-promotion can feel uncomfortable, even unnatural.
Are you nodding your head now? Good. That's what we want. This conversation isn't just for comms leaders, it's for anyone grappling with how to show up authentically in their work. It's for anyone trying to balance humility and visibility, striving to raise the profile of the team while still keeping the focus on the work itself.
And at the end of the day, the most powerful thing we can do is own [00:54:00] our narrative, not just for ourselves, but for the people we lead as well.
Dino: Earning your seat isn't about passively absorbing. It's about executing. So take a moment and reflect and think about how you can use what you've just learned in this episode to grow, recalibrate, and improve. Thanks for listening. I'm Dino Deli. We'll see you next time on the next episode of Earning Your Seat.