Mel: [00:00:00] How is AI going to impact your business or your job? How is the fuel crisis affecting your family or your business, or even your travel plans right now? How are the conflicts, unfortunately going on around the world right now impacting you? What about closer to home with politics in your country, your state, or your city?

The reality is that we live in very uncertain times and also times of constant disruptive change. According to Gartner, more than 50% of organisations have redesigned or redefined roles in the past year due to AI integration. Deloitte reckons that one third of all workers have experienced 15 or more major organisational changes just in the past year.

According to the World Economic Forum, 50% of global experts anticipate a turbulent or stormy world over the next two years. And there are 30 active potential or ongoing conflicts that pose a high [00:01:00] risk to global stability. And in Australia, 77% of households are under financial stress. All of this is of course, having an impact at work. Our workplace is not a bubble. It does not shut itself off from the outside world. Businesses of all shapes and sizes get pushed around by conflict and uncertainty, and people can't just block those things out either when they log on in the morning.

So in uncertain times, how do we communicate to people in a way that still gives them some certainty? Well, that's what today's episode is all about.

Hello, friend, and welcome to this week's episode of Less Chatter, More Matter, the Communications podcast. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people, here in Meanjin, also known as Brisbane. And like I said in the intro, we are living in extremely uncertain times.

I'm sure you know, and this is a time that has become known as [00:02:00] a poly crisis. So that's a situation where multiple global emergencies are tangled together. It's also a time of a lot of geo-economic confrontations like trade wars and sanctions. And those things have overtaken climate change as the primary immediate risk to global stability, followed by interstate armed conflict and societal polarisation and it's having an impact at work. The latest Gallup state of the workplace report found that in Australia and New Zealand, 49% of workers report they are experiencing significant stress at work that ranks us as the second most stressed globally. 55% of Aussies and Kiwis say they are striving in life, which is great, but it leaves 45% not thriving.

And engagement work at work has dropped to 21%, just slightly above the 20% global average. 66% of workers in Australia and New Zealand are not engaged, and [00:03:00] 13% are actively disengaged. So from an internal and external comms perspective, what do you even say in a world like this? Well, firstly, what do you say when talking about the broader uncertain environment, so the macro level, and then about the uncertainty within your own business, and also why talk about it in the first place?

Well, let's start with your brain. If there's one thing about humans, we hate uncertainty, the status quo bias is strong with us because it represents comfort and safety. It's low risk. Even if taking that risk could result in much better outcomes, many people will be reluctant to do it, especially if that outcome is not guaranteed or uncertain.

The second thing to remember is that our brains are prediction machines, which is actually really, really helpful a lot of the time. So with experience, we learn to predict things that can help save our skins, like how far a cast is, a car is moving towards us if we're going to cross the road. [00:04:00] So it's fine for things that are known or experienced before we can use those experiences to then make predictions.

But when we face a new or uncertain situation, there's no autopilot response for that, and because we can't predict what will happen, that leads to a lot of mental fatigue. Now, also, there's the amygdala part of the brain, which you might have heard of as like the flight or fight response centre, and the amygdala sees uncertainty as a physical threat.

Even very neutral social cues could be interpreted as negative or aggressive. Then there's another part of your brain. There's lots of parts of your brain, but this one's called the mediodorsal thalamus , which is essentially like your brain switchboard. So it takes a lot of information in, sorts it out, sends it out.

Now the problem is in uncertainty. It becomes overwhelmed by a lot of competing information, which essentially leads to what we call analysis paralysis. You just can't make a decision. It's really, really hard to clear through the fog and find where you want to go. And I'm sure you've [00:05:00] all experienced something like that before.

And then you've got your prefrontal cortex, which can also be thought of as like your brain's CEO. It's going to work really hard to try and rationalise what's happening and plan ahead, but when you are experiencing a lot of stress, that part of your brain gets drowned out and shut down. And it's why people do and say stupid stuff when they're under pressure and feeling a lot of stress.

And then finally you have the anterior insular, which is what they call the anticipation hub of your brain. So it is tracking the probability of bad things happening. Not always accurately. It might be said, okay, it's not always accurate, but it does give you that gut feel of dread when you're faced with an uncertain situation.

So essentially, unfortunately, your brain is working against you when faced with the unknown, but only because it is trying to keep you alive. And I'm telling you all of this so you can understand that when faced with uncertainty, there's a lot that's going on in people's reactions that are purely biological and largely [00:06:00] out of their control, especially when they're not actually aware of how their brain functions.

So we need to recognise that we need to communicate in a way that just helps the brain navigate through all of that and settle down a little. Now from a communications or change management perspective, how do you even do that? So I'm gonna share five tips. Tell your brain you'll be hearing five tips.

Tip number one, acknowledge the uncertainty. There is no point putting your head in the sand. Your people and your customers know the world is topsy turvy, and sometimes saying nothing says more than saying something. In this case, it could be sending a message that you simply don't care about people, and that's not a great message to send.

The reality is that people can't just shut off the state of the world or the uncertainty in their own workplaces just because they're at work. You are one human being and you are the same human being. No matter where you are on this planet or where you're going, or what you're doing or what work you do, you are the same person.

So acknowledging the uncertainty [00:07:00] is key. It recognises that you being the team leader or the business, the CEO, might not have the answers either, and that's okay. And it also recognises that you truly understand your audiences. People want to feel like you care about them, but also remember that sometimes people don't want you to jump into solutions mode either.

That can be really easy to do when people are worried about stuff. Sometimes people just want to be heard and they want to hear that what they're feeling is valid. So don't be afraid also to provide space or provide ways for people to be heard and have those genuine two-way conversations. So this could be like an online forum or maybe there's a special team meeting that you set up to discuss these things.

Maybe it's one-on-one conversations, whatever that needs to look like so that people have space to talk about the things that are worrying them. So that's tip number one, actually just acknowledge the uncertainty. Tip number two is to eliminate as much friction as you can. [00:08:00] We are living in a high friction world out there where there's a lot of complex, intertwined forces that are making life go upside down and inside out.

It can be really hard to navigate that outside world with all those friction points in the way. If you think about things like cost of living, access to healthcare, interpersonal conflict, ideological differences, et cetera, et cetera. So when we know that the outside world has a lot of friction. We can support people to create a more low friction zone at work, and that can be for themselves and for your customers.

So they're a key part of this as well, and this is where really listening to your people and to your customers is key. Ask them. What could we do to make life at work easier for you? Or what could we do to make your customer experience easier? It's all about making it easier. Deep listening is key to good business, and it's key to great communication because once you have that information, you can communicate about how you're working [00:09:00] on reducing those friction points to make things easier at work or as a customer.

So for example, you might be, you know, writing something for the CEO that's going out to the whole organisation. And that CEO might say, you know, you told us that it was really hard to find the information you need to do at your at work, and that's causing a lot of frustration. We get it. So we're gonna work with you to come up with a solution, starting with our online systems like Teams and OneDrive and SharePoint.

So in that example, we've acknowledged that, hey, we didn't get it right, that things are hard, but we want to make it easier and co-creation. So I've talked about that before on the podcast as well, how powerful that is in driving change. Yeah, because the thing is, if we want to build engagement in an uncertain world, then creating a more certain environment at work and talking about it is a big step in the right direction.

So that's tip number two. Eliminate as much friction as you can. Create low friction zones at work by using communication to help coach leaders to do that, but also to [00:10:00] really listen to people and respond. Tip number three, talk about what is certain oftentimes in. Times have changed. We talk about what's actually changing or what is it known, of course, makes sense.

But when we only focus on those things, we ignore all the things that are staying the same. And it's those unchanging things that can provide an anchor and keep some semblance of certainty in people's working lives. So while you might talk about uncertain things and what you don't know yet, you can also mention the things that aren't changing.

So for example. It might be along the lines of a message like this. We are temporarily halting all into company travel as the cost of flights has increased while at the same time some routes are no longer operating, but while the travel may stop for now, everything else remains the same. You can keep meeting with your colleagues via teams, and we'll let you know as soon as the situation changes.

In that example, particularly if you've provided some good reasoning and some answers to [00:11:00] questions like, what about travel I've already booked, et cetera, et cetera. Most people are going to be understanding. We do need to remember that for the most part, people are fairly reasonable creatures. There will always be a few outliers who might kick up a stink and look, when we do cost cutting to things like travel, that can be annoying.

But when people can see the logic, they'll be okay, even if it's somewhat begrudgingly. So that's tip number three. Talk about what is certain tip number four. Is to help make some mindset shifts. Ultimately, this uncertain and unsettling and changing world that we live in is the normal. It is not changing anytime soon.

So we could keep fighting against it and hitting our head against a brick wall and we'll end up with a sore head and the brick wall will still be there. Or we could shift our mindsets to work with it. And, uh, this is where communicators and the stories we tell come in. Some of the key mindset shifts I think we need to make, and this is always a world according to [00:12:00] Mel, but one of the key ones is moving from building resilience among people to helping them become more adaptable.

We need to build from fear-based or feeding fear, so that might be a question like, how's that project going through a mindset shift to support? What do you need from me to help you move that project along? Okay, we need to move from focusing on failure. So we've tried that before. That didn't work. We could try that, but it won't work to reframing things as experiments, we test and try and we see what lands, we see what doesn't.

And we learn from both. And we also need to move from, like I said earlier, jumping from solutions to just listening. So let's look at that shift from resilience to adaptability as an example. Resilience, I'm really not a huge fan of this term because. What it does is it puts the onus on people to just put up with it or tough it out.

It can also show up in thought patterns, like, I can't change anything. This is impossible situation, et cetera. It's very, um, I've just gotta ride it [00:13:00] out. Adaptability, on the other hand, looks at the situation and instead of toughing it out, a person thinks, well, what can we do differently now that this is the situation?

How can we make this work for us? What is within my control? What opportunities does this present? We saw a lot of really good examples of this kind of shift in thinking in the COVID era. If you remember, people got really creative while others just kind of languished and waited it out. So from a comms perspective, in the messaging you're writing for others and in these stories that you are collecting and sharing, think about how you can help people see a shift to an adaptable mindset is possible.

So, for example, maybe there's a team in the business who used to travel a lot to see clients, they've now thought differently. And instead of just reverting to a boring old teams meeting, they're posting some fun things to their clients ahead of meetings. They're arranging group calls that always have some sort of fun icebreaker activity.

They're setting up an online chat to have real time, uh, question and answers, all that sort of stuff. [00:14:00] So these are the stories that can help show other people what is possible and motivate them to think differently. So that's tip number four, which is helping to make some mind shifts. And the final tip today, tip number five, is amplify the voice of leaders.

When in a crisis or an un uncertain situation, people automatically look to leaders to help navigate the way. This is your job as a leader. Leaders have to show up and actually lead. And as comms and change professionals, we have a role to play in coaching leaders to do just that. Now, like I've said previously on the podcast, the challenge we have with many leaders is they're put into a leadership role for the first time, and they're just kind of largely left to figure it out for themselves.

They don't get a lot of training or the mentoring they need, and so they just have to wing it. And in times of uncertainty or crisis, we can't afford to wing it. Saying the wrong thing could trigger a whole lot of headaches. So what is the role of [00:15:00] leaders during uncertainty? Well, number one, acknowledge how your people are feeling.

Number two, listen to what they are worried about. Number three, share what you do know within boundaries, of course, but being as transparent as possible. Number four, escalate the concerns when you need to help remove some of these blockers. Number five, find the answers. Don't wait for the answers to come to you.

Be proactive, and it's okay to say you don't know the answer to a question, but commit to finding out. Number six, help people navigate that uncertainty by pointing to the unchanging things, like I said. As well as adapt, encouraging adaptation and creative problem solving. You have to role model that mindset shift or it's just not going to happen.

So you need to encourage that. And number seven is, in all of this, communicate. Again, don't stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away; at the same time, there is absolutely such a thing as too much communication. I've heard this myth before. You know there's no such thing as too much communication.

Yes, there is. Very [00:16:00] noisy world out there. Don't think it that way. So you do wanna be on the front foot and acknowledge what's happening, but then just keep people up to date as things progress or to respond to specific concerns that are being raised. Right? You don't have to then have a, every day, have some sort of, you know, something go out when there's no need for.

So it's, it's time for your episode recap. So we talked about what happens in your brain when we go through uncertainty and basically your brain is trying to protect you. It's trying to keep you safe, but in that process, it can really stop you from moving forward and thinking logically. So you need to really think about, okay, this is just my brain doing this.

I'm gonna let it do its thing and then have some time to kind of settle and, uh, have that clear way forward from there. And it's also helping other people to understand that as well. And then I shared my five tips for how you can communicate during uncertainty. And the first one is to acknowledge it.

Again, no heads in the sand. We actually need to show people that we care about them and give a damn. [00:17:00] Tip Number two is to eliminate as much friction as you can. So use your communications to help identify pain points that are making life harder at work and work with people to make things easier if we create an easier, uh, experience at work.

So low friction. It becomes a bit of, a bit of a reprieve from a high friction world outside. Tip number three is talk about what is certain, so what's not changing or what is certain, and help anchor people to that. Tip number four, make some mindset shifts. So as communicators, uh, helping people to understand the shifts that we can be making during these times to live in this new world, that is always going to be uncertain and it's always going to be changing.

And tip number five is amplify the voice of leaders. So that means putting them at the forefront of all the comms work you're doing, but also coaching them to actually lead effectively in uncertain time. Now I'm running a workshop on this very thing for a client coming up in a few weeks. So we're going through, okay, well, what does it look [00:18:00] like to communicate and work in uncertainty?

How do we work together better as a team, as well as we cover off how people respond to change, what that means for us. We also talk about how to have challenging conversations, and if that's a kind of workshop that you think might be useful for your team, please get in touch. Happy to have a chat, but in the meantime, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.