Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#132 Listening, and how it can change your internal comms (ft. Howard Krais)

• Season 1 • Episode 132

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When we think of internal communication, we often jump straight to emails, intranets, and town halls... but what about listening? How do we truly hear employees and act on what they share?

In this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we're joined by Howard Krais, co-founder of True Communications and co-author of Leading the Listening Organisation. With decades of experience in global change communications, Howard has pioneered research into how organisations listen and why it matters.

We dive into what makes a 'listening organisation,' the role leaders play in shaping culture, and how to move from hearing to truly listening. Howard also unpacks the barriers businesses face, how listening can become an early warning system for risks, and the surprising role AI might play in transforming how we listen.

If you’ve ever felt like your surveys disappear into a black hole, or wondered how to build a culture where employees feel heard, this episode will change how you think about internal comms.

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When people think of internal communication, their first thoughts are often things like emails, intranets and town halls. It's all about how a message is sent, what is sent when, and to who. And those things are important. But what about listening? How often do we stop and think about how we should integrate listening to our audiences, into our strategic comms plans? And what could change if we did that? On today's episode of the podcast, I have just the person to answer those questions. Howard Krais is the co-founder of True Communications, which was set up with the principal of helping organisations take a people-centred approach to change. This means delivering change with employees rather than to them recognising the power that comes from truly connected people. Before True, Howard worked in senior global change communication and engagement roles at businesses, including NatWest, Ernst and Young and GSK. In recent years, Howard has become known for his groundbreaking work focused on how organisations listened to their employees following the publication of four Reports. This work culminated in the publication of the book Leading the Listening Organisation in December, 2023. How it's impact on the communications world was recognised as he was awarded a fellowship of both the Institute for Internal Communications and the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence in 2025. Howard is a speaker in demand at a range of global events and podcasts. He was also president of the UK chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators from 2019 to 21. In this episode, Howard tells us about the important role of leaders in a listening organisation, why we should invest in listening to our audiences more and how to do just that; it certainly got me thinking differently about my own comm strategies, and I'm sure you will also feel differently too after listening to this. So, without further ado, here's Howard. Hi Howard and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter.. Thank you. Lovely to be here Mel. Lovely to have you here. So before we get into the topic of today's podcast, tell us a little bit about you. Who are you and how did you come to develop your expertise in this space? Yeah, well, I've been working in the employee communications area for maybe more than 30 years now. Uh, it feels like forever. Started off in a, in a big bank in the uk. I'm based in London, and, uh, and like most people, I guess just fell into it. Um, it wasn't something that was a, a choice, um, that I, I had, you know, pre-made. But, uh, having got into it, I've stayed in it, in it ever since. Uh, spent a lot of my time working for big companies, people IS and young blacksmith clients, GSK. Worked for a company called, um, Johnson Matthew. Um, and then about two and a half years ago, uh, together on with my business partner Anne Marie Blake, we set up True Communications. Um, you know, we, are a sort of small consulting business, we really focused on what we call people centred change. We've been talking about that for since we started two and a half years ago, and it's great, More and more people are talking about sort of people centred sort of things. And, uh, yeah, so doing change with people rather than to people. And, uh, part of that really is, has been my, uh, work on listening. Um, and about, uh, about eight or nine years ago is an IABC event, um, where we had the chance to talk about anything. And I, I just had this thought around how are communicators listening, you know, I was worried about this is pre pandemic and I was worried about. Um, that we were getting increasingly sort of stuck at our desks. Travel budgets were disappearing. Uh, this is before working at home. Um, so we was, you know, just in our head offices, and I, and I was very aware that, you know, when you are in a head office, you tend to get one sort of sense of what, what things are like. And so if you're not getting out into the organisation, if you're not seeing the different parts of the organisation, the people you are communicating with, how do you know what's on their minds? How do you know how they're responding to the things that you are producing? Um, and yet, you know, it's becoming more and more difficult for people to say, uh, particularly if you're in a global business, oh, I'm gonna go to New York next week, or I'm gonna go to Singapore next week. Um, and someone would look at you as if you're mad, well, why would you do that? Well, just to go meet some folks, you know, just do some listening. Um, so I started talking about it then and, uh, a couple of people when we came back, the, it was an IABC event in, uh, Copenhagen, actually a old IABC um, Amina region event. We came back to the UK and, uh, we started, um, doing some work on listening. And over the next few years we, we did some reports and then eventually that, um, morphed into a book, uh, which, uh, was produced, or, or I should say, published. Um, just, uh, at the sort of beginning of, uh, last year, beginning of 2024, a book called Leading the Listening Organisation and three of us, uh, together with... with Kevin Ruck and Mike Pounsford. Uh, you know, all of our work was sort of put into this book and, and what we found, you know, in terms of how organisations listen, it's not just about what communicators do. Uh, it really starts with the leader, and I'm sure we'll, we'll get into all of that. Thank you. And yes, it's, it's was super exciting to see your book come out actually. And I always love it when other communicators publish books because I think, uh, you know, there's so much we can talk about as communicators. That's one of the brilliant things about this profession, right? There's so many things that get wrapped into communication. So, and listening is something I've been wanting to talk about for quite some time on this podcast. So after meeting you in London, it felt like it just has to happen. So let's start with the basics. How do you define listening and why does it matter? Yeah, so I, I define it in a particular way, um, because actually it's interesting at the moment, I'm, I'm listening's on so many people's minds and. Um, in the book, the first chapter of the book is called The Advent of the Listening Age. And so when I'm presenting, I say, welcome to the age of listening. And I started doing that 18 months ago. And I think people looked at me as if what's he talking about? And I think it's happening. Um, it's a lot of research out at the moment. Um, the, the sort of state of the sector Gallagher Report, which came out earlier this year, made a a point of saying how... more and more communicators, I think a third of communicators were naming listening in their top three, and that the trend is going upwards at the moment, and it is on so many people's minds. And yet when I listen to events or um, seminars or or whatever, and people talking about listening, what I hear often is what I call hearing. It's, we are doing the survey, we're doing the exercise of asking for people's voice or, or for people's views. The key for me, what turns I call that hearing. And what turns hearing into listening is, is in essence doing something with that information. So when I define listening, I, I, in essence, I say it's the hearing bit, uh, but we respond appropriately. And both of those words have to work. So there's a response thing. But, you know, I, Mel I, I've worked in organisations where we would do our survey and it would take three months before we would be ready to respond, you know, just for reasons it just took forever, you know, to get through leadership and holidays and various things. I don't think that's appropriate. So I think that you have to have an appropriate response. The other thing I want to always say when I talk about responding appropriately is that it doesn't mean you ever have to do something specific with the information. So I'll give you an example. When I used to sit with, uh, CEOs, for example. One CEO in particular at Johnson, Matthew. And we, you know, we were traveling to different locations in, in the business and she would sit with the, uh, say 15 people and we'd have a very frank, open conversation and they would come out of that room, not necessarily with her having taken a list of actions, maybe if there were any actions. The individuals had taken them away themselves, but she'd helped 'em to understand, she'd listened to what was on their minds and had a direct conversation with them, so she had responded appropriately. So listening doesn't mean you have to do something necessarily. It often will mean that, but I think listening means in essence, you feel listened to. And, and I think the final thing that's worth saying on this is that the, the word listening, you know, we start listening when we're small children. Very small children, the smallest of children we listen. It's a, it's a core human behavioural thing. So we know as, as we get older, we know when someone listens to us, we know we feel it. It's an emotional response. We know when someone actually seriously listens to what we have to say. We know when they're not listening. And I think the same's true in organisations, you know, we hear the term increasingly, um, oh, you can't do that because we've got, um. Uh, you know, we just do too many surveys. We've got survey fatigue, and what people are trying to say to you is, we're just doing it too many times. What they really mean is, we're doing too many surveys when nothing happens as a result. So listening is doing something with what you hear, and that's the really key thing around when we're talking about listening. It's not around the processes and systems. It's not asking for people to, to contribute, which is all good, and you have to do that. Is doing something with it. I love that distinction between hearing and listening. Um, but you've also touched on something there that I'm curious about. You know, sometimes I feel like we do internal comms audits, for example, and so a lot of it is focus groups and literally just sitting there listening and, uh, you know, sort of asking curious questions to try and get more detailed information out of people. But I do feel like there's an expectation that, well, I've, I've shared my feedback and I've shared my ideas, so therefore they. That should be acted on, like in the way I want it to be acted on, not necessarily the way it ends up being acted on. How do you balance that? I think, I think for me it, it's, it's how the organisation, um, demonstrates on a consistent basis that it listens. So the, the way I think about it in terms of, let's take a survey and in our research. Surveys were the number one thing that organisations said they used for listening. Um, many other things they used, but surveys were the topic. Um, I, I, I have a view that, um, if you, if you said we are going to take the number one thing that you raise in the survey, you did the employee group raising the survey, we're gonna fix that. Just the top one. Then and, and people can see that you do that and you communicate that you are doing that and you demonstrate that you're doing that. And so when the next survey comes along, you say, we'll take the next thing and the next thing, and people can see it and they can sense that even if it's not their own thing, they can see something is done with it. Then I think people will come with you and they'll say, I understand your process. I understand how you're thinking about it. I can see you're making change. And it may be that my thing will come up in two or three terms, and that's probably fair. I think people are reasonable. The trouble is, I think we can't, we never, we never get that far. We never really show, I mean, about a year ago, I guess I wrote a, a, a LinkedIn article. I wrote uh, two. In two days. I thought I'd better do a second one. But the first one was why I hate, why I hate surveys. And you know, as someone who's talked about listening a lot. There's so many reasons why, why surveys don't work, and I've experienced them because it's about process. It's about, you know, it's about response rates. It's about asking every question that people in the head office want asked, even if they're not relevant and you're not prepared to really do anything about half them and then, and so on, and so and so on, and then you try and create all of this energy at the end. In, in teams, you know, we going to, people are gonna get together and they're gonna do little focus groups, and then they're going to put their action plans together and nothing ever happens. You create a lot of noise and then it just goes away. And then often 11 months later, you come around to it again. What do we say? What are we gonna, you know, quick find out what we promised to do. And I think that, you know, it, it's a process that people have found themselves in that they don't really buy into. Leaders don't really buy into because they don't really see any great benefit from it. And yet. The, the next day I did a a, I did an article, which is why I love surveys, because surveys can be obviously very, very good. I mean, you know, and if they're simple, quick and you can de, you know, demonstrate action on the back of them. So I, I think that, um, you know, the, the key is demonstrating transparently is you can really, that you are doing something with what people say. And it's when people can't see that, that I think they think, um. Well, yeah, my thing's the most important because they don't, they're not seeing the full picture. You're not sharing the full picture. You're not really making it clear what you're doing with the information. So, I mean, I think, um, you know, I'm a big believer in conversation. I think that the key thing that, you know, one of the, the most important things that we as communicators have to get people to do in, in organisations is to understand, understand why things happen. Not agree necessarily, but understand. Understanding in change, you know, you carry on, you go on with it. It's when you don't understand that you have the problem. So if we can build understanding, understanding of why we're asking for this information, understanding what we're going to do with this information, and people can see that you are doing what you say you're going to do, then I think that people will come with you on that journey. That's very good advice. Thank you. So you touched on something over there about leaders, and in your book you talk about leaders having that responsibility to listen. Why do you think that should be part of their responsibilities? Why is that important? Well, I think the lead, what we can, we, we, we actually started the work thinking that the key person in the, in the organisation for listening was going to be the line manager. That was our going in, uh, um, guest. But the research was really clear that it was the leader who, because leaders create, well, whether you use the word culture, we used in the book, we used the word climate as a sort of a very thin distinction. Um. Let's just say culture because more people I think are familiar with that word. But leaders create the culture is that people look at the behaviours of the leader and say, if those leaders are prioritising that behaviour, then it must be important. So if leaders are listening, then it's likely that other people will listen too. And one of the most important benefits I think you get from listening, and we can talk about other benefits in a in a moment, but one of the most important benefits from listening, I believe, is that leaders make better decisions, um, when they're listening. Because I don't think that leaders these days. Know everything. I think that's an old fashioned model, the hero leader. And I think leaders, you know, if they're honest, they don't know everything and yet they have their I'm, and I'm not saying at all, uh, that when I talk about listening or talk about transparency, I'm not suggesting for a second that it's not leaders who have to make decisions. It is a leader. It's not to make democratising decision making. It's still leaders who have to make the big decisions, but they make the better decisions when they talk to the people who know.. The area where they're making that decision. You know, if it's a process that talks to the process experts, if it's a customer related thing, talks to the people, closest to the customer, and I think, you know, still the leaders make the decision, but they make better decisions when they listen to the right people, not to the two people that they've always listened to for the last 10 years. But to the right people in the organisation. And I think that's a, that's one of the most important benefits of listening. So I think it's, it's because leaders set that culture, set the agenda, and, and more than that, you know, leaders who believe in listening, they're probably believe that we, we will be more successful with our change if we bring our people with us, they're more likely to invest in things like listening tools or channels or technology or, or whatever to do better listening. You know, they're more likely to take an active interest. That said, one of the things that's quite alarming in our research was that, um, someone did some work for us, a a Canadian, uh, academic, uh, did, Elizabeth did some research for us and, and looked at the top 20 or so business schools in the world at their, of the courses that were offering for like MBAs and future leader programs, and looked at how many times listening came up as a course. Um, and in 20 schools the answer was one, one course. And, and that was a customer listening. Um, course as well, so, you know, the where, where leaders were being taught or are being taught to communicate. It's about me to them it's one to many, not surprisingly, perhaps. Um, and, and so we've got a big job to do. You know, leaders who don't get this naturally and, and obviously many do and I've worked with some brilliant leaders. I'm sure most people listening to this will have done, but that we also work with people who are not natural with people and what they're being taught in schools doesn't teach them that listening's important. So, you know, there is a challenge. So you've touched on something there that leads me to my next question, which is what are some of the barriers to deep listening in a business? Yeah, I think there are, um, there are many barriers, unfortunately. Um, so that leader barrier I've just talked about. You know, an appreciation, whether it's the leader, the communicator, or the HR person. Um, it's interesting, you know, where's listening, you know, I talk to a lot of communicators, I talk to some HR people, but a lot of the listening channels, of course, are owned by HR. So we shouldn't just say this is a communications thing, but, you know, appreciating what we're trying to achieve with this thing. So if you, if you're just doing it as almost like a process because we think we ought to, and not really,'cause you see the benefits, um, that's, that's gonna be a problem. People are always gonna say time's a problem, budget's a problem, all the usual things. Um, limited understanding of, of, if you like, leadership, listening. Um, capabilities required in modern organisations. Um, a narrow view perhaps of, of the sort of systems or processes that are either required or available. Um, but also things like, um, you know, lack of appreciation of of, of, you know, the importance of things like psychological safety, which is a big issue in itself today. Um. We, we've all, we've all done those town halls where you, you say Right question time, and there's tumblewee comes across because no one's going to ask a question. We know that people are thinking, I've got a lot of questions, but I'm not going to ask them here. So, how do we create the environment where people are prepared to speak up, where people are, you know, feel comfortable that they can ask those questions. Um. There, there's something called the, the, um, the power gap that we identified as well, which is, you know, if I sit next to or in the room with a senior leader, I know they're a senior leader, and I'm going to choose my words very carefully, and I'm not going to say. Ask my question necessarily in the same way as if I'm just chatting with a, a colleague and so, you know, is the leader capable of making me, feel comfortable and me feel able to ask that question? So I think there's, you know, all of those sorts of things. A willingness to want to listen is, is, is often the biggest barrier. I've definitely seen those situations, like you say, well, we had a town hall, but nobody asked any questions. I'm like, well, would you, if you're in that situation and... That psychological safety. You know, you ask, somebody gives feedback and you're like, well, did you raise that with. You know, bugalugs in the seat. Oh no, because I worry about retribution or whether that's real or perceived worry, doesn't matter. The, the fact that perception is there is, uh, enough of a barrier and yeah, it's just interesting seeing that coming up over and over again. There are some businesses, as you say, they're doing it really well and leaders are creating those really safe spaces and genuinely interested in hearing what people have to say. And then I've seen others that have, you know, the complete other end of the spectrum where it's all just, you know, well, I did my ticker box, I did my town hall, nobody asked any questions. Everything must be fine. I'm moving on. Um, but you do talk about, and, and this then leads to the next question in your book about a listening audit. So when you have those barriers, can, can you give us a high level outline of what a listening audit would entail? Yeah, I think a lot of people will have done communication audits and, uh, looked at their channels, looked at how they communicate, look to messaging, potentially talk to leaders, talk to members of the audience. It's not that different. Um, in the book, we sketch out a very basic listening audit, but actually we've done some work, uh, myself and, and one of the other, uh, among the co authors, Mike, we, we created, we'll call a i, I guess we'd call it a product called Echo. We think this is a, a deeper listening audit and it, but it's a very simple thing. You know, in a sense what, what we would do is, um, triangulate, if you like, between the leaders, you know, a leader's view of listening, you know, and, and you might expect in many organisations, how do you, you know, how, how, how important is listening in your organisation. Leader might say it's very important and we do surveys and we've got networks. I get what I need and, you know, I think it works really well. And then you, and, and you've got the views of there. The comms person or the ex person or the HR person in terms of, you know, how, how they see things. And then you ask the employees and do you feel listened to? And suddenly you'll get a whole different perspective. Now I have no idea what happens. They ask me all these questions, I dunno what happens to my answers. And you play that back to the leaders and they would be, oh my god, you know, I never realized because why would they necessarily, and then you know, when you can do that, then you can see. Something changed. So I think, um, listening orders are pretty simple and, uh, um, you know, in the concept, um, looking at the sort of listening tools and channels that you have, looking at what you do with that information, um, you know, we'd also talk about having a listening strategy. Now that pretty much is part of your, increasingly, in fact part of your communication strategy, I would say. Um, or, or people strategy. Um, and so the, so the listening audit piece is, is just really making sure you know, how well the organisation's currently listening at, at this point. And it doesn't have to be too detailed or complex, I think, but you can very quickly get a sense of how people feel. And it goes back to the definition I had at the beginning. You know, do you feel like you've been listened to? Well, that's the first question to ask. Do you feel that when. When the organisation asks you for information, asks you to complete surveys, do you feel that it's worthwhile? Um, and it'll be, and it's really interesting when you ask that question and what people tell you. Yeah, those are very telling questions. Uh, just a side note here, do you find, uh, just this is my own, uh, experience, but I'm not sure whether it's universal, that when you bring in an external party to do this work, you tend to get more, uh, honest answers and, and better... Responses than you would if you were like the comms person who decided to go do a listing audit. Have you found that experience as well? Yeah. Yeah. I think, and I think it works in a couple of ways actually. I, I agree. Um, the, hopefully, uh, the skill of the external person will get the trust of the people they're speaking to. Um, sometimes the people that you speak to are sort of just bored with being asked the same thing, so you, you know that that's not gonna go very far. You know, I think as a, as, as an independent person, you, you can ask, you can, you know, promise a bit of, uh, that psychological safety that we talked about.'cause you're not gonna give names, you're not going to, you know, sort of share who said what type thing. And, and I think people are happy to believe and you can, you can have that, you know, pretty good conversation with people. Um, but I think it also works sometimes for the per, for the person who brings you in. And, and I know from my own in-house experience how this works. Very often, you know, as an in-house person, you've been trying to get a point across to, to your leaders, and for whatever reason, it's just not landing. And then the external person makes the same point. Suddenly it's like they've just heard this amazing pearl of wisdom. And so I think, you know, if you, again, if you're doing a, an audit and you come back and you've got, it is a, it's a good opportunity if you're an in-house person to work with you. It's almost like, what, what do you want me to say that you've struggled to get across? Um, so that, that role of the internal, of the external person, um. You know, can have both of those benefits. I think I totally agree. One of the things I often say is organisations are great at hiring experts and they're not listening to them. So yeah, you come in as a consultant and your word is gold, which is ridiculous, but that's part of our biases as humans. So look, um, next question. So a lot of people who listen to this podcast, they're mostly Comms people change professionals, they're consultants, they're leaders. What advice would you give to them if they want to cultivate that culture of listening that you talked about? Yeah, so look, I think, um, one of the things I've found is that since I've been talking about this topic, and there's been a lot of interest, um, and I've talked to groups all over the world actually, and, um, and it's a realisation. I've been in the sort of consulting game now for two and a half years. Um, so I've opened my, my eyes have been open to that. There's a lot of cons, speaker. And not just comms people, as I've already said, you know, HR and ex type people as well, um, who get this, but then look at you as if to say, I'd love to do some of this, but I just, there's me and one other, or whatever it is. Just me. And it's really hard to, um, you know, to change what we're doing. Um, I think, you know, I, I've written quite a bit around how I think that. The current model of employee comms is, is broken. Um, you know, if, if we are going down the route and continuing to go down the route of just telling people stuff that they're broadly not interested in, we shouldn't be surprised that we're just gonna struggle for relevancy. Um, and, and what we're doing increasingly, I think is, is we're making senior people feel good, but, but not the people we're trying to actually impact. If we wanna get that right, we've gotta have a balance. And I would go completely the other way, but I recognize that's not practical. So we've got to have a balance. You know, you've got to be able to say, and it puts you as a communicator, particularly in a really strong position, when you can say, you know, change situation or something's coming up that won't work. How do you know that won't work? Well, I know because I've spoken to people, I understand why it doesn't work, this is why it doesn't work. And I understand what will work because I talk to people and this is what they tell me. Or, or stuff like that, you know, you can bring, um, issues and challenges of, of, of, you know, very important things, um, as well as demonstrating real business value by showing that, you know, you, you have the, the sort of pulse of the organisation that you are the person who understands that. So I think, I think listening puts the people who listen and who are responsible for listening in a very strong place in the organisation to have impact, have relevance. To have influence. Um, so it's not easy. Uh, and I'm not suggesting that you stop everything that you're doing. I mean, I'd love you to stop everything you're doing and start doing a lot more of this, but you can't. Um, but I do think that the more that you can demonstrate that you are listening, the more that you can demonstrate, that you can really, um, show that you understand how people are thinking, what's working, what's not working. Maybe it's what customers are saying. Because we're listening to customers, are those messages really getting through, you know, how can we improve what we do for a customer? Um, in customer situations you can support things like risk management, you know, which as a communicator you might wonder, how do I ever impact that? It's such a big topic for organisations. But you look at companies in the UK here with the post office, our post office, very famous Story over the last few years, um, in America with Boeing and their safety challenges of organisations who willfully decided not to listen. They were being told we've got these problems, and they said, fingers in the ear, you know, we are not going to listen to what people are telling us. And what happens is they get huge, um, reg, you know, regulatory, financial, reputational damage to, to their organisations. And, and I think that, you know, we, we can. We can help to demonstrate this is there are problems, there are things going on that people need to know about, help, better decision making, and that improves a lot of, uh, of the communicator or whoever. So, yeah, I think that there's, it's not easy, especially. Mm-hmm. You know, the other thing is talking to leaders about it, engaging leaders in conversation.'cause that's where the change will happen. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm always, you know, anyone who's thinking. How do I do that? You know, I'm always happy to have a chat to someone about it because I think it's such an important thing. Thank you for that offer. And I think what you've just described there, like what went through my mind is, you know, communicators, we do tend to wear a risk hat, you know, a lot of the time, but very much from that reputational perspective, right? Uh, it's almost like listening as you've described. It is the early warning system. It's how we stop. We, we raise the red flags before they become. Mountains of issues. And I really like that idea of, you know, listening can be the early warning system. It's, it's, you're starting to set the alarm bells before they become a, before an issue becomes a crisis, basically. Um, now I have one more question for you. Ai. Everybody's talking about it. And you talked before about, you know, maintaining our relevance as communicators as well. How do you think AI could be, or maybe already is changing how we listen to others and or embed listening as a practice using AI tools? Yeah, in many ways actually. And, um, I'm doing some work with the guy Denmark at the moment around this just to sort of build some. Solutions, I guess, for AI and listening, and it is very exciting. So let, let me give you two or three examples. Um, an obvious one, I think again, uh, talks about surveys and, and you know, many people I'm sure listen, um, listening to this podcast have done, will have done surveys before. And, you know, there's often almost always a question at the end of a survey, which is the freehand question. You know, give us one idea or something that we could improve this, you know, situation or this organisation or whatever it is. Um. You might end up with hundreds or thousands of freehand things that you've gotta, you know, you've gotta work your way through. AI does that in a second, you know, so being able to do, we're seeing now some of the big corporations, particularly in the us, uh, but not just in the us, you know, um, of. Where you can listen in a sense to things like Viva Engage and even emails and other written, you know, communications to sort of understand how, what people are saying about particular topics. So AI's doing almost, you know, sort of sentiment analysis on a, on a sort of real time basis now that, that we flagged in the book. And you know, I think already, to be honest, 18 months on from the book, you can almost write the second volume because things have moved on so far. Um, but you know, it's an ethical issue there. You don't want to be snooping on people. You need to be upfront about telling people that you are using the tools to do that. But there's a, you know, technology listening to something like Viva Engage, see as a real opportunity. Um, I think, you know, um, I saw this a bit in, in, when, when I was working at um, GSK Glass Smith Kline. We used, I suppose before what we called ai, we used the term big data, but you know, pretty similar, um, to take the survey scores and, and mix them with other hr, uh, people sort of measurements and, and metrics, uh, as almost early warning signs, you know, because you could, you could, um, just so using data. Analysis and, and you know, we were employing, um, you know, real data experts, data mining experts to, to be able to understand the data that we were getting in a, in a much deeper way than just, you know, oh, you've just got to do something on, on whatever, you know, bit of the survey that was scoring a bit less than somewhere else. So that, that's, that's very exciting, I think is using, you know, proper data mining to, to use, you know, across all your different metrics. Um. I think that could be interesting. That's something I've, I've been looking at recently. I, I, I'm not saying this, I don't think this is new at all, but I I, it fills me with excitement is things like virtual focus groups. Um, so when you, when you do, um, you know, if you are, if you are getting, if you are the comms person on a change program, for example, and you've gotta put a strategy together and you can create some personas, uh, we do that. You put that into, whether it's chat, EPT or or whichever, your AI tool of choice is co-pilot in many cases, I guess, for organisations. Um, and you actually have a, you set, you know, some parameters and get the, uh, AI to run a focus group, you know, with some questions. And it, it's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna give you a real head start in understanding how different groups might react to different parts of this change and that that could give you a massive. Sort of start from, from where you'd otherwise be because you'd have to go and do some primary research or go out and talk to people, and you might still wanna do that, but you'd be much more informed about the questions you'll ask and and so on. I think there's, so again, I think AI playing a really good role in, in helping you sort of listen because you're, you're running a focus group and taking that into how you then put your strategy together, even if that's just the first step of more listening to come, but you're gonna be more informed. To sort of proper listening with real people is gonna be, uh, I think even, even deeper and better. So look, there's just a few. Um, I think that it's evolving all the time that there is. Um, I, I'm excited about some of the things that we can do in this space and, and, and I just say, watch this space, because I think there's, there's sorts of things that can happen. I imagine if we talked about this again in six months time. We'd have even more to say. So, yeah. But I think those are great ideas and certainly I've used that just in the last couple weeks as, um, saying one of the things we do is internal comms audits. And I did 15 focus groups in two days for a client, which was, you know, my brain melted. Um, but I had pages and pages of notes I'd typed away while I, while I ran these groups. And yeah, just using copilot to go. Can you just summarise, you know, what are the top five key themes that keep coming through? Is it perfect? No, but it just helped me kind of go, yeah, you're right. But, but there's also this other stuff, so it was just able to sort through, you know, my, my shitty notes to be honest. Um, but it came up with some pretty good stuff, which was great. Now Howard, I have three questions I ask every guest on this podcast. Are you ready for those? Yeah. Alright, let's do it. What is one of the best communication lessons you've ever learned, and how did it change the way you approach communication? So I was thinking about this and, and I thought actually the, the lesson I'm gonna give is, is probably something I learned before I was in, while I was a student. Actually, I studied history, uh, at university and, um, the best lesson I got, and I, I also think it's a lesson that we can say that, you know, if, if you, when you've got young children, they always tell you, show you this lesson, is the, is the sort of asking why never accepting what you're being told. So you know when a leader says, right, we're doing this, this is why. You know, your job, particularly if you are, you know, doing employee comms, your job as the sort of person on behalf of the audience is, is to really understand it. It's to keep asking why it's not necessarily to trust what you're being told as being the gospel truth. And I think that, um, one of the great things about sort of studying history at, uh, degree level was that you would go back to original texts, um, and you'd make your own mind up.. You when I was at school and reading his doing history, you just, here's a textbook and that would tell you what it was. So that, that's the difference really. And I think, you know, in, in, as a communicator, it's so important to make your own mind up, to be really clear of why you think this is the thing it is. And that might not be the same as the way the organisation wants to portray it, in which case you need to just be really clear what you're gonna say. So, so yeah, I think just being just. Really asking why. Keep asking why. And then why again, and why Again, until you are really satisfied, you, you answer, answer. That's great advice just in life too, to be honest. Uh, second question, what's one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating? I think listening's obviously up there. It could be that that would be the easy answer, but I'm not gonna give you that. Um, love it. Actually, I, I'm gonna go back to what I said around, uh, you know, when we set True up, we. Use this phrase, people centred change. And I'm not claiming that we are far from claiming that we came up with that phrase. I'm sure it was around, uh, before us. It, it, a lot of people using people centred and human centred now, which makes me very happy. And I think the key for me is, um, people say, sometimes say to me, you know, if you, if you were doing your thing again, you know, what, what would you study or what, what qualification might be the best thing? And I, I think it's some sort of... Occupational psychology type qualification. Yeah. Understanding people. For me, one of the reasons that I think things like listening is so important is just observation. It's just watching people is that I think people are the most interesting thing anyway, and so. Trying as a communicator, trying to understand people, trying to understand why people do the things they do. You know, Mel, you talk about change a lot, and, and I think we, we, we have a, we, some of our messages are broadly similar, which, which makes me happy. And just understanding how people react. Not not, I mean, you know, do the neuroscience research and read the books and Hillary Scarlet's stuff, that's fantastic. Read all, do all that. But then just watch people and see it come in. You know how it works in reality because when you understand that. Then I think when we're communicating, we are not just gonna say, all right, you know, let's just put more into the internet. Let's just do this because it's the way we've always done it because we're just on the treadmill and we've just gotta keep feeding the channels. You know, you start to... Recognise that's not how we're gonna deliver change or ultimately on value, you know? So yeah, that's it for me is, is just try and understand people take a people's sense of approach. Love it. And last question, who do you turn to for communication advice? And a, an ex CEO of mine she said something like she had, you know, didn't have one mentor, she had several mentors and she'd kept them throughout her career. And I just thought, it's such brilliant. Um, things, you know, I, I've done mentoring, I have, I dunno if I have like, official mentors, but I think you just have net, you know, your network is so important. Um, you know, you and I met in London two or three weeks ago and, and I, I think it was great that we did that and then this has happened and you know. I would, I would come to you or I'd come to sort of people, and I know, you know now from in, in Australia, in, in Europe, in the us, in Canada, in UK elsewhere, because that's, that's, we just grow, we, we, you know, we cultivate a network of trusted people and there'll be things that sometimes come up and say, really, like, someone's take on this. And, and I think that if you have. Good network with, with people that you trust, that trust you and like you, and you like them, then, then you, you're never gonna be short of good advice and you can never have enough good advice. So I think it's, it's not one person, it's not two people. It's just having the right people that you, you, you know, over time you, you collect almost. And you know, don't ever underestimate your network. Don't, don't leave it. You know, people who are valuable to you, you know, even if it's every now and again, just say hi and. See how they're getting on. Um, because you never know when that's gonna pay dividends. And I don't mean that in the sort of, you're only doing it for benefit. Paying dividends can mean any number of things, you know, so let alone all the good friendships you get from it. So just, just, you know, grow. Just talk to people, get to know people, go to events, you know, go to. Networking things. Just, just meet people and, and just grow. And, and I think then you'll, you'll, you'll never be sure of people you can turn to when you need to. Love that advice. Thank you so much. Well Howard, if people want to learn more about you, connect with you, what's the best way to get in touch? So, um, obviously connect with me on LinkedIn. I was happy to do that. Um, and I don't think there's any other Howard Krais so should be able to find me easily. Uh, more than happy people to connect me via True. So the company's been True communications, uh, UK based, London based. Great. We'll pop all those links in the show notes as well, as well as a link to your book. Let's not forget that. Howard, thank you so much for joining us on Less Chatter, More Matter today. My pleasure. Lovely meeting you.