Mike Klein, Founder and Principal, Changing The Terms
Mike Klein is a communication consultant based in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is an MBA graduate of London Business School who currently focuses on internal and social communication.
Podcast
Overview
Effective communication forms the base of every business organization, new or old, big or small. It can positively change the attitudes and behavior of the employees and other stakeholders. However, inefficient communication can lead to unwanted outcomes as the employees if not understood well, may not perform efficiently. The stakeholders might lose trust, and everything might come crumbling down.
In today’s episode of TBCY, we have with us Mike Klein, the founder, and principal of Changing The Terms, which is involved in aiding the businesses by preparing strategic communication plans, tools and measures.
About Mike Klein
Mike Klein is an experienced communication consultant and has founded “Changing the Terms”, a communication consultancy enabling businesses in building strategic internal communication plans. He is also the author of a book titled, “From Lincoln to LinkedIn, the 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication.”
He shares great insight into his work and the challenges faced in the current corporate environment.
DISCUSSION
Mike stresses the importance of internal communication in organizations, be it business or political. He distinguishes between communication consultancy and leadership.
Communication consultancy is about working with people in an organisation who need to engage either a large number of people or a specific number of right people. Communication leadership, however, is about the role that communication professionals play in organizations.
Appropriate Communication vs Inappropriate Communication
Mike explains the meaning of appropriate communication: it needs to be respectful, clear, specific, factual enabling the audience a choice to accept it or not. Inappropriate communication is the wrong use of tone and disrespecting the choice of people.
He feels the major roadblock in communication is the wrong sense of belief that everyone in an organisation has to receive every message.
“Reality is that relatively small number of people need to act on vast majority of information.”
Challenges
Mike explains a common notion that people have is that everyone with a website and a laptop is an effective communicator. He talks about the pressure of messaging, tactics, budgets, challenges of getting the level of access and interaction with the business leaders that are much needed to operate efficiently.
He talks on topics ranging from the impact of social media and managing communication to measuring change with strategic communication. For instance, a professional can gauge the impact simply by observing the behavior and effectiveness of internal communication. He also cites an interesting example of a hospital wanting to bring change by using more sanitization.
About social media, he says: “You don’t manage it but you can avoid being managed by it.” He elaborates on how to monitor and handle social media conversations of one’s business with a combination of right defense and proactivity.
Building Community
Mike is focusing now on identifying, connecting, and promoting your fellow communication leaders. He is doing so to get the attraction to communication leadership, to build a community of like-minded individuals, and to challenge some old-school associations concerning the meaning of communication leadership.
About the Book
He wrote the book in 2011, which is still relevant today. Available on Amazon, the premise of the book is based on the timeless idea about how people communicate politically, which came from Abraham Lincoln but 20 years before he became president when he was a political activist and campaign manager.
He ends the discussion with a powerful statement: “The biggest cause of any business communication fail is to have the wrong message coming from the wrong source.”
Profile
Mike Klein is a communication consultant based in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is an MBA graduate of London Business School who currently focuses on internal and social communication. Before going to business school, Mike managed political campaigns all over the US, and has since worked in six additional countries in Europe. He is the author of “From Lincoln to LinkedIn, the 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication” and is a former chair of the International Association of Business
Communicators for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. He is the founder of #WeLeadComms, an initiative to identify, connect and promote communication leaders at all levels around the world.
Also, have a look at my initiative – to identify, connect and promote communication leaders around the world: https://www.linkedin.com/company/weleadcomms/
