Christine Armstrong describes herself as an “aspiring IC Manager” and is the first person to sit in my new All Things IC hot seat.
Regular readers of my blog may remember I first ran this series back in 2017. It’s now back and Christine is the first to answer the questions, which include the best career advice you’ve been given or read and your top tip to make sure internal comms is inclusive.
Thank you to everyone who has sent their answers in so far, 20 people sat in the hot seat over the weekend. I invite you to share your views too. Whether you’re looking to raise your profile or simply fancy giving it a go, this is the link you need to answer the questions.
Here’s Christine…
Q) What’s the best career advice you’ve been given or read?
Attitude determines your altitude – keep your attitude sweet even when it’s tough.
Q) What do you love most about working in this field?
Connecting to people and helping their voice to be heard.
Q) What is the biggest challenge internal communicators face?
Miscommunication – we all have filters when we hear a message, these can be due to culture, past experiences or even expectations.
Q) What phrase or statistic do you repeat constantly in your work?
The prolongated application of a polysyllabic vocabulary infallibly exercises a deleterious influence in the fecundity of expression – use too many big words and you won’t be understood.
Q) What advice would you give someone thinking about starting a career in comms?
Yes please… tell me. I’m guessing just dive and learn everything you can from others. (See below for some blog posts – Rachel).
Q) What does a typical day or working week look like for you?|
Varied, busy.
Q) Name a book or podcast you think every communicator should learn from, and why you’ve chosen it.
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. It just explains so much about how messages get lost in translation.
Q) What’s your top tip to make sure internal comms is inclusive?
Understand culture as much as possible, think about messaging from different angles, think outside the box, work for different learning styles (eg include visuals, video as well as text).
Q) Where can people find you online?
On LinkedIn.
Thank you very much Christine.
Looking for advice about starting a career in Comms? See my blog articles for more info:
- Diary of communicating in a pandemic – featuring Nicola Rowland
- Diary of a graduate – featuring Harriet Dawson
- Why should you consider a career in IC?
- How to start working in IC
- How to start out in internal communication
- What is internal communication?
All Things IC Online Masterclasses
I’m getting ready to launch my Online Masterclasses and shared this video with people on my wait list last week.
Add your name to my wait list if you’re not on there already, to discover the news first.
You can get a peek at one of them via Debbie Aurelius over on Twitter, who has been helping me bring them to life:
A good week ahead for me, as I get to work on the All Things IC Masterclasses with the inspirational Rachel Miller.
Add your name to the wait list if you want to be first to find out more: https://t.co/2bFmxf5Y5O#InternalComms #OnlineCourse @AllthingsIC pic.twitter.com/qflTVJsYrt— Debbie Aurelius (@DebbieAurelius) June 8, 2020
I’ll be sending my email newsletter out this week, make sure you’re on the distribution list for The Water Cooler to come and join me in conversation there.
I hope you have a great week
Rachel
Post author: Rachel Miller
First published on the All Things IC blog 8 June 2020.
