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Share Your Story

Organize an Internal Speaker’s Bureau

ARE YOU GETTING THE HANG of this leadership thing yet? How are your people feeling? Are they engaged, motivated, ready to take on the next challenge? Is everyone empowered, working on the right big things? What about you? Do you feel good about your strategy? Is the boss satisfied with where things are? Do you feel like you’re adding value and making all the right moves? Yes? Good! Because if that’s the case, if everything is good at home, it’s time for an “inside the company” road trip. That’s right—you’re ready to take this act on the road, my friend. Don’t worry, you don’t need to ask the boss to boost your expense account because you don’t need to leave town; you probably won’t even leave the building because this is a different kind of road trip, although one that has you very much in the driver’s seat. You see, you’re going to take your team’s story on the road, to other departments around the company. And you’re going to create a way for others to follow your lead, too.

Double Your Development

Your team is doing great: You’ve got the right strategy, everyone’s working hard, you’re moving the ball forward. But has anyone noticed? Does the organization really know what your group does? Let’s say you’re in a line function, where the money’s made. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in the organization had a good working knowledge of how your team interacts with suppliers, partners, and customers? Is it worthwhile to have different departments around the company understand how your team supports the organization? The answer is yes on both counts. And that’s where you come in. Are you ready to lead beyond your own team? Are you ready to do something to remedy the lack of knowledge of what everyone’s doing across the company? An easy way to make everyone smarter about the organization is to create an internal speaker’s bureau. That’s right, not only are you going to take your story to other departments, but you’re also going to organize the whole process of executives sharing their stories across the company. You’ll develop your speaking prowess and your networking skills, while providing a valuable service for the organization. What do you say—are you game?

First, make a list of all the departments in the organization. List any group that makes a significant impact on the business. Then, invite one leader from each of these teams to a meeting (yes, we’ll forgive you this one bureaucratic meeting) where you will lay out your plans for the speaker’s bureau. The key here is that the representatives from each department don’t need to be top leaders; in fact, it’s a better development exercise if they’re not. If you really want to emphasize this idea, ask HR to recommend the leaders in each department who most need public speaking experience. That way, you can be responsible for several leaders’ self-development in addition to your own.

Next, because most departments have all-hands or expanded leadership team meetings periodically throughout the year, target these events for your internal “concert tour” of speakers. Suggest a loose format for the presentations, so audiences can get used to the same rhythm. A flow that works well is:

1. Who are you? Share your organizational chart and the key players’ roles.

2. What do you do? Present your vision, mission, and strategy.

3. How are you doing? Show your goals and objectives for the year and progress to date.

Recommend that your speakers spend about forty minutes with slides or other multimedia presentations, and leave twenty minutes for Q&A. Encourage creativity, and suggest the leaders have some fun with this activity. After you’ve recruited the participants, it’s time to build the master calendar. This is where you become an amateur booking agent as you match leaders to speaking engagements. The goal is to have every major group in the organization hear from at least four leaders throughout the year. If you map it correctly, you’ll find plenty of opportunities for leaders to tell their stories, spreading the word of how their teams serve customers or other functions in the company.

I’ve seen this work, and it does have the desired impact. At my last company, about every eight weeks, a leader from another part of the organization spoke to the HR department. Everyone agreed they gained a much better understanding of what the featured group did after these sessions. We also learned about the group’s leaders, what their unique challenges were, and sometimes, how we could leverage that team to help us accomplish our objectives. The experience was worthwhile and required little effort on our part: A tailored presentation about another aspect of the organization was brought right to our doorstep and we only had to listen and engage.

I was one of the leaders who traveled around the company telling my team’s story. My team had just founded the new corporate university, so this gave me an opportunity to market our programs, answer questions, and generally get people interested in formal learning. My team helped to build the presentation (a good team exercise in its own right), and I acquired much-needed confidence as a public speaker over the course of several speeches. I also used this program as an opportunity to meet a lot of new people across the company and build my network.

You can do this too, no matter how small or large your organization. Even if you just get “on the road” yourself, this can be a valuable learning experience. Craft a story, and volunteer to share it with groups around the company. If you’re ambitious and have the time, take the idea to a larger stage. Identify departments you know others would be interested in, and persuade leaders in these groups to participate. Then start brokering speaking opportunities across the company. If you set your mind to this, you can develop your own skills as a speaker, share your team’s story, meet a lot of fellow leaders, and most important, be responsible for knitting the organization together. That last item is a worthy objective indeed. Who would have thought that by developing your own leadership skills, you can actually raise the level of working knowledge and awareness across the entire company? Pretty cool, huh?

Bootstrap Takeaways

Organize an Internal Speaker’s Bureau

1. Take charge of your own public speaking skills development—create a presentation about your team’s contributions and share it with other groups inside the company.

2. Recruit other leaders inside the company to join you, and set up an internal speaker’s bureau.

3. Broker the match between speakers and audience, working to build awareness of what different departments do across the company.