This episode features an interview with Katherine King, Director of Employee Communications at Etsy. She has been with the global ecommerce company since 2018, serving the internal communications function through Etsy’s massive growth. Previously, Katherine was a dialogue strategist where she developed brands’ customer-facing tone of voice for clients like American Express, Gerber, and Southwest Airlines. In this episode, Amanda and Katherine discuss the spectrum of tone and voice, key business relationships that improve employee communications, and helping leaders develop empathetic messages.
This episode features an interview with Katherine King, Director of Employee Communications at Etsy. She has been with the global ecommerce company since 2018, serving the internal communications function through Etsy’s massive growth. Previously, Katherine was a dialogue strategist where she developed brands’ customer-facing tone of voice for clients like American Express, Gerber, and Southwest Airlines.
In this episode, Amanda and Katherine discuss the spectrum of tone and voice, key business relationships that improve employee communications, and helping leaders develop empathetic messages.
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“A reliable tone breeds familiarity, and familiarity is the precursor to trust. The more that we can breed familiarity with leadership and their authentic voice, the greater trust the team will have and the better the business will be. And I know that that seems like a big jump, but there is actual data backing up how trust impacts your business' bottom line, and its employees’ trust in their employer. And that's everything from NPS to retention and engagement – these are all things that do affect your bottom line.” – Katherine King
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:17): Katherine’s background
*(06:31): Segment: Story Time
*(11:29): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(12:02): Key relationships that help employee comms
*(21:18): Segment: Ripped From The Headlines
*(21:46): How Katherine helps leaders build empathy and compassion
*(25:23): Why tone of voice matters
*(28:01): Katherine explains the spectrum of tone and voice
*(38:17): Segment: Asking For a Friend
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Links:
Connect with Katherine on LinkedIn
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Katherine, how are you today?
Katherine King: I'm wonderful. I'm so excited to be here. How about
Amanda Berry: you? I'm doing really great. I am super excited for you to be here today. I, it's probably worth noting that I'm a huge Etsy fan, so this, this podcast is not brought to you by Etsy, but I will fan girl all over Etsy today. Even as I was preparing for this today, I'm walking through my house just thinking all the stuff I bought from Etsy.
Amanda Berry: There's at least one or two items in every room, so I'm a huge fan. I'm excited to hear about your job at Etsy, but let's start off by understanding a little bit more about you and your career journey. Can you talk about, you know, your career journey and what's led you to where you are today?
Katherine King: Yeah, absolutely.
Katherine King: I'll first start out by saying thank you for your love of Etsy. I also am equally obsessed and am so grateful to work, to work at this company, and we love our buyers, we love our sellers, so thank you for outfitting your house with all of their, their amazing wears. They really are incredible. Um, I also have many, many Etsy things in my house, and I call it field research for work, but it's just shopping.
Amanda Berry: You know,
Amanda Berry: the, you know, the thing about Etsy is Etsy is even if, well then there's like a bajillion things, but even if you, if I have something in mind that I want and I find something similar, this is happened multiple times where I'll contact the seller and I've had things special made and it's, they're just like, absolutely 100% will do that for you.
Katherine King: Completely. They're amazing and so talented, so kind and the, they are true artisans in every form of the word. So yeah, the, the sky is the limit with the stuff you can find on Etsy and the stuff that you can personalize through, through our makers.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, I've never had a bad experience. Oh, that makes me so happy.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, and it's always like when I want something, like one of my brain goes, I want something really cool for this gift or for this wall. I'm like, Etsy, that just comes to my. So you, you've, y'all have a great soft spot in my heart and in my brain. I just, I really think a lot of Etsy and what, what you do there.
Amanda Berry: So I'm, I'm so excited today.
Katherine King: Oh, that makes me so happy. Well, I'm so thrilled to be here, like I said, and I'm happy to share a bit about what I was doing before I got to Etsy. Basically always, I've had a passion for female entrepreneurship and girls education and the economic empowerment of women, so, College years, and in my internships I've focused on that and that really solidified that passion for me.
Katherine King: I interned at a few nonprofits and felt compelled by that, but I also was missing this creative side that I've always had, and so I thought advertising could be a cool way to inform societal conversations. I'm seeing the power of advertising to create really good social conversation, and so I thought I wanted to be part of that, so I got into advertising.
Katherine King: I did some traditional and non-traditional roles. I had a bunch of great clients. I had clients across p and g and American Express, Starbucks, Gerber, Southwest. Those were all companies that I really loved and believed in, so I loved working with them as my clients. But after a few years of being in the industry, I felt like I was getting away from that intention.
Katherine King: The advertising industry that I joined felt different than what I'd expected, and I felt like I wanted to go back in house and kind of practice more of what I. And so then I found this role at Etsy, and I am so grateful to have found it. I didn't really even know what internal communications was, but I knew that I could write.
Katherine King: I knew that I loved Etsy, and the role just seemed like it fit. And so I applied in 2018. I've been here ever since. And what's nice about it is that it kind of feels full circle. It feels like I've returned to my personal mission. Economic empowerment of women. That's what Etsy really stands for. And over 80% of our sellers are women.
Katherine King: And so it feels good to, to be doing work and service of that every day.
Amanda Berry: That's fantastic. And I'm really glad to hear that. It makes me feel even better by how much I love Etsy by hearing that they're doing good and e economically empowering women. So that's fantastic. Talk about what you do in your role as the director of communications at Etsy
Katherine King: yes, I'm the Director of Employee Communications and as many internal communicators probably know who might be listening to this. We wear many hats. Our team covers standard internal comms fair, like our weekly newsletter. We have our all hands, which we call y'all hands, our intranet, which we call the intraknit, like knitting needles.
Amanda Berry: Oh my gosh,
Amanda Berry: I love that. I am a sucker for a good metaphor and a, and a word pun, so, oh, I love intranet. That's, yes, it's love,
Katherine King: it's Etsy. Never shy away from the opportunity for a good pun. So we cover that. We cover also just, you know, general ad hoc communications, and then we also manage the strategy and programming for.
Katherine King: Our senior leadership team, so all directors and above. At Etsy, we also support executive communications, crisis communications, and we also provide support for some of the internal comms functions for our subsidiaries.
Amanda Berry: So let's dive into our first segment story time.
Amanda Berry: Welcome to Story time. Story time.
Amanda Berry: Lemme tell you your story.
Amanda Berry: So
Amanda Berry: before Etsy, I know you were a dialogue strategist at Ogilvy. Can you explain what dialogue strategy is and what a dialogue strategist does? Yes.
Katherine King: So I also did not know what dialogue strategy was or what a dialogue strategist did before I was at Ogilvy. Dialogue strategy is a type of advertising dialogue refers to the conversation between companies and customers.
Katherine King: And so it was a bit of a mindset shift because when you think of advertising, you're probably thinking of how a brand shows up in like TV ads or radio ads or out of home spots. But when you talk to someone who is working at that company, so a customer service agent or a flight attendant or a barista, they also are representing the brand, and so they need to sound like the brand that you know and love, and that's where that strategy part comes in.
Katherine King: The question was how do you translate a brand identity into a tone of voice that could then be used by like hundreds or thousands of employees around the globe? To give more texture to this. American Express is a great example. So if you've watched an American Express commercial on tv, you've seen that they're really obsessed with members since they love talking about their membership.
Katherine King: It's all about being a, a member of American Express and making that feel really special. And that's why if you are a cardholder and you call into customer service, the first thing they do is say, thanks for being a member since 2005 or whenever you. That is dialogue strategy at work. That's bringing through what you've heard in the commercial into the touchpoint that you have with the customer facing employee.
Katherine King: How
Amanda Berry: did you translate that over, like what skills and tactics did you take from dialogue strategy to move into like employee communications?
Katherine King: Oh, so much. And it's so funny looking back because I had no idea that what I was doing as a dialogue strategist would become the career that I wanted to hang my hat on.
Katherine King: Really? There was so. Psychology and pure writing and really getting in touch with what mattered to people, both from a customer perspective and from the employee's perspective. And so first and foremost, understanding how employing a consistent tone of voice is really critical in driving trust. There was such investment from the clients put into ensuring that their customer facing touchpoints reflected their businesses tone of voice and priorities, and that was big in trust.
Katherine King: They were willing to put their money where their mouths literally. Also showing that true brand authenticity didn't stop with the external work. So showing up authentically isn't all about showing up really authentically in your commercials. You also need to show up authentically internally. The more you can live your brand internally, the more it translates externally, whether that's someone who is a customer facing employee, or just someone who works at your company and is representing your brand, ensuring that it feels really cohesive externally and internally is critical.
Katherine King: And then finally, just. Person to person connection is so important. A big part of my role was being on the ground with the employees of my clients, so we would develop the tone of voice that matched the brand voice. We'd then create assets and scripts and exercises and stuff to bring this to life for the field employees.
Katherine King: And then we'd go to the C client's call centers or the customer service vendors and train those frontline employees in embodying this tone of. And being on the ground with the employees of my clients made me realize that like I really wanted to go in-house. I wanted to talk with employees, of which I was one.
Katherine King: You know, I wanted to be part of that employee group rather than being a consultant that would come in. And so that drove me to go in-house on the job at Etsy, and it just felt like st aligned.
Amanda Berry: I have to imagine that those are, those almost are pretty similar roles, like a dialogue strategist and an internal communications, you know, strategist or director or whatever level you're at because you're still taking that, that brand identity and working with employees on what it means and how they can demonstrate, you know, we talk about demonstrating values and what that looks like and they give awards and all that.
Amanda Berry: I have to imagine those are pretty similar. There's a lot of similar skillsets in there.
Katherine King: Yes, absolutely. And like I said, when I was a dialogue strategist, I didn't necessarily seek out that specific role. I knew I wanted to get into strategy. It was something that I loved. I loved brand strategy, and I also really loved writing.
Katherine King: I bring this up because so often in your career you look back at things that it can all seem like it was intentional, but it really isn. And you just kind of take opportunities as they come. And I'm so grateful for the time that I had as a dialogue strategist because it awakened this whole new world of a career for me that I really didn't know existed, and one that I really do love.
Katherine King: So I feel so grateful.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. You know, I, I hear that a lot and I know that's been my experience that when I have had great opportunities, like even the one I'm in now, they just sort of happen. Right? They sort of come up and I, I get interested in it. It wasn't because I designed it a very strict path about where I was going.
Amanda Berry: And it sounds like you've had, yeah. You've had a similar experience. I'm gonna move us into our next segment, getting tactical.
Producer 1: I'm trying to figure out tactics and to be perfectly honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much, here I am in charge of trying to say, why did you sleep through tactics, tactics.
Amanda Berry: So thinking about some of those skills that it transferred over, right? One of the most important skills that internal comms or employee comms can have as a relationship building across the organization with leaders. Would you talk about some of the key relationships that helps employee comms be the best it can
Katherine King: be?
Katherine King: Yeah, for sure. I mean, how much time do you have? I really think we've got
Amanda Berry: day gap.
Katherine King: I really do think that employee comms is, is all about the relationships, and I'll start with the very basic ones. I think a lot of internal communications folks probably sit either within the comms slash marketing function or within hr, and that's for a reason.
Katherine King: Both of those relationships are so critical. Comms and pr, you need to make sure that your voice internally and externally sounds the same, and you need to make sure that you're in lockstep when you're responding to more sensitive issues, especially. And then with hr, internal comms is all about communicating to employees and supporting the employee experience and the core initiative that affect the employee experience come out of hr.
Katherine King: And so having a good relationship with both of those teams is so important because you're gonna be working with them constantly. Both of those teams are like my very best. What's unique at Etsy though, my team sits within our strategy and operations function, which rolls up to our VP of Strategy and Ops and our C O O, and I really love that.
Katherine King: I think it's a really critical relationship, what we call strategy and operations. Other companies might see as chief of staff roles, but each org at Etsy has a strategy and operations function, and those have been some of the most fruitful relationships I have across the business. It allows me to understand what each of those org strategy is, what their priorities are, and having that connection to the full large scale business strategy and company priorities.
Katherine King: You're able to ensure that that's pulled through in all of the communications touchpoints so that employees are focusing on the right things, which are the business, focusing on the right things, and then. There are a couple more that I think I, I would be remiss to not mention, but it, it is a huge one. I think Carolyn Clark has often said that it is like the peanut butter coms is jelly.
Katherine King: I completely agree with that. It is such an important partner to stay close with. Executives, obviously that's super important. Executive assistants are a really valuable relationship to, to build and just generally always looking to make friends like I, I think friends and relationships you have anywhere across the business, across levels or orgs are so critical to be strong in internal.
Amanda Berry: Agreed. At any level, I'm like you. I would just make friends with everyone that I possibly could, like I would often know a lot of people, so then you can use 'em as almost canaries in the coal mine, right? H how did that land, right? You, you must have your own little focus group that you can email people.
Amanda Berry: What did you think about the town hall today? And if, if you're really good work friends, they would probably feel really comfortable telling you how they feel as opposed to, you know, survey, I gave it a five. I gave it a four. Which is so important to get that real, honest feedback
Katherine King: truly. And seeing how, seeing how things make people feel so much is lost in a survey and someone just hidden when you're typing.
Katherine King: And so really having those relationships, you can draw on both for the good stuff and the bad stuff is, is so. I,
Amanda Berry: I absolutely love that you call out executive assistants. I, I think that that's a group that often gets overlooked. Honestly. We do talk about HR and IT a lot and employee com and my HR VP business partner was always, it was like me and her, her and I, every meeting we would be there together and we'd invite her and, and she did the same for me.
Amanda Berry: But the executive assistant, I think is something that's widely overlooked. Can you talk about the value there? I, I just feel as if that one doesn't get talked about as much as HR and I team.
Katherine King: Absolutely. I. When executives are such a key customer for internal comms, their executive assistants are usually the people that know them the best.
Katherine King: They know what makes them tick. They not only know their availability, but they also know how they're feeling about certain topics, things that are on their mind, and. Depending on the skill of your organization or the way that your company is set up, it can be difficult to have that close of a relationship personally with the executives that you're trying to support and ensuring that you have that relationship with their executive assistant.
Katherine King: You're able to just kind of like casually keep in touch on key issues. That way you can help the executives show up in the moments that matter, on topics that are authentically want they care about, and also make sure that you aren't forgetting to consult them on something. Executive assistants have so, so much insight and power and value and it's just been such a valuable relationship for me to have.
Katherine King: I've been so grateful for that at Etsy.
Amanda Berry: Absolutely. You mind if I give an example here, but Yeah. I was working at a company and we were changing the travel policy and how people books travel and the people who travel the most were the executives. And so that was a group that I hadn't been utilizing as executive assistants and, and my boss at the time said, you should get them all together.
Amanda Berry: And I was like, oh my gosh. They're the ones that use the systems the most. They did the expense reports for the executives. And I did. I pulled 'em all in. They gave great feedback and it helped get their buy-in cuz they were consulted and, and they provided value. They gave real feedback and I was able to make changes and work with a project team.
Amanda Berry: But I think that's one of many good examples that, you know, how they can utilized plus when you need to get in to see an executive and their calendars pretty calendars pretty much. And you can be, can be very beneficial to be friendly, you know, friends with the executive assistant to help make your job just a little bit easier.
Amanda Berry: Absolut. So a lot of times internal comms does tend to focus on the senior level executives. When you think about non-senior leaders and even outside of those executive assistant, what about non-senior leaders? All, and I'm talking all levels. Individual contributor could be, you know, first year people leader.
Amanda Berry: Help us understand why building those relationships are just as
Katherine King: important. I mean, just think about your ratio, right? Like the, the people that you're communicating to, they're way more non-senior leaders and there are senior leaders. I thought for a while about what metaphor would makes sense here for how I try to think about internal communications and I came to whatever for worse, like a two-way billboard.
Katherine King: Basically, we need to make sure that internal communications tells employees the key messages and focuses from leadership, but then we also need to make sure that we're telling leadership what's on the mind of employees, and so. Like I said earlier, you're always looking to make a friend. It is so valuable to build those relationships across the company, and then you are then closer to the ground.
Katherine King: You have an ear on the ground for what's going on in your company. You have your finger on the pulse, and that's a huge value that you can provide to senior leaders for those who are trying to develop those relationships as well. And then I've also found it really useful to be. Super org agnostic and level agnostic, tenure agnostic when making friends, A friend is a friend and it helps you be better at your job.
Katherine King: It helps you seem more connected to what's going on. And I've also found it makes your job more enjoyable. Like you have a community of friends, you have a group of people that you like and naturally have, have a flow with, and so it's made my job feel even more fulfilling because of the friendships that I've been able to build across the company.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, it's nice. You can go to, and you can be in any situation lunch in the cafeteria at an ERG group meeting. Out of town Holland, you walk in and you know most of the people there and everyone's talking to you and asking questions. It does make your job a little bit more enjoyable cuz you're friends with most of the employees or a lot of the employees.
Katherine King: Yeah. And bringing that up. I think one of the obstacles right now, remote work has been fantastic and the opportunities from being distributed as a workforce are, are immense. But at the same time, it's hard to build those relationships. There isn't that casual. Happen to be next to L you in line in the cafeteria on a random Tuesday and start up a friendship.
Katherine King: It's hard to just randomly form a bond with someone. And so I think that's been a more focused obstacle for me over the last couple of years, is how can I continue building those relationships with folks who are no longer in my vicinity five days a week that I'm seeing all the time, the same lunch line or water cooler.
Katherine King: How can. Not be weird. Like I don't wanna reach out on Slack and be like, hi, I think we should be friends. So it's
Amanda Berry: maybe it's how we have to do it now. I know. You know? I know. Well, and it's weird when you wanna, when you wanna get to know, even like if you're new at an organization or somebody new comes in, you wanna get to know them, you have to schedule a meeting with them.
Amanda Berry: Exactly. It feels so formal. I very much felt like when I've worked in, in buildings, in offices before where, and even when I go into my, my office now, I, you know, you just walk around and talk to people, oh, hey, you know, thanks for that email. Or you can, you can, during our conversation now you have to schedule time, like it's a formal meeting, even getting to know leaders, right?
Amanda Berry: You can't just run into the C F O in the cafeteria. You have to schedule time, and then it becomes formal like, well, what are we talking about? You wanna have a chat in there, but you also need to have content and, and purpose why you're being there. Not just, well, I just wanna say hello and see how your weekend.
Katherine King: And you still wanna find the time to stop and say, how was your weekend? Build that real interpersonal rapport. But at the same time, with leaders, you need to think about what are those opportunities that you can use to get in front of them to start building those relationships authentically. It will be difficult for you to find time on their calendar or whatever.
Katherine King: So is there, uh, a project where you can show up and it's more about showing your value than, than telling your value? How can you show the value that can provide to a leader that you don't have a close relationship with yet, or who doesn't know the value of internal communications? And I think also people have said it all the time, you never let a good crisis go to waste.
Katherine King: I feel like crisis is where internal communicators can really shine, and so being able to show your value in moments like that and capitalizing a lot to try to forge those relationships helps you in the long term, particularly when you don't have the benefit of catching your c f in the hallway and saying,
Amanda Berry: I'm gonna move into the next segment.
Amanda Berry: Ripped from the headlines. You hear the news, xray. Xray. Read all
Producer 1: about it. Our stories ripped from the headlines, ripped from the headlines, ripped from the headlines,
Amanda Berry: ripped from the headlines. You mentioned tone and I wanna go back to that. It was very early on, so I, I, I wanna go back cause we're seeing a lot about empathy and compassion in the workplace and a lot of that has to do with tone.
Amanda Berry: But I wanna talk. Getting empathy and tone into a leader message, right? How do we do that as internal communicators? How do we incorporate empathy and passion when we're writing something or creating a presentation for leaders?
Katherine King: That's a great question, and I think what's most important is to focus on what makes that leader tick.
Katherine King: And so I think it's useful to find that. Very authentic source of empathy and compassion. Not what they think others would say, or not what they think others wanna hear, but really what feels natural, and I found the most useful way to go about that is prep sessions. Whenever there's an important touchpoint, whether it's a two minute slack video or a town hall presentation, an email, something, I think it's really useful to just have a meeting with them 20.
Katherine King: And just riff. Let them naturally share where their mind is going. I capture copious, copious notes, type really fast, catch everything you can engage with them and push them to kind of refine what they wanna say. What is that authentic message that they feel internally? And let that be your guide. And then it comes down to how do they like to operate from that point forward.
Katherine King: Some people really like to have a script, but we know that we don't want people to feel scripted. And so do you take that long brain dump, turn it into a script, have them review it, and then shoot them off a couple of really quick like brain jog bullet points to help them speak off the cuff. Do they wanna do it a couple of times?
Katherine King: Are they better in a prerecorded forum rather than a a live forum? Working with them to ensure that they can show up really authentically with that empathy rather than infusing. Empathy 1 0 1 messaging into a touchpoint, which will just feel hollow. The employees will feel it. The speaker will feel it.
Katherine King: You'll feel it. It just won't be as impactful as something that really does come from the heart. Well,
Amanda Berry: lemme ask you this. I, there's probably some listeners out there that, that may be having this experience where you have leaders who are more about work and not so much about like feelings. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Amanda Berry: They come to work. So work. A couple months ago we did a podcast with a woman named Layla Turk. That's how she was. She was, Like focused on work. Then she went through some tragedy and it helped her become more compassionate and empathetic. Now, I don't want leaders to have to go through some pretty awful tragedy and to have to feel that.
Amanda Berry: So I'm wondering how do you work with leaders who don't have some of those, like a strong sense of empathy and compassion to help that shine through, let's say at a town hall?
Katherine King: Absolutely. I mean, I'll start by saying, We are quite lucky at Etsy. I think a lot of our leaders are naturally empathetic.
Katherine King: Everything is not being human at Etsy and our, our leaders exemplify that. But at the same time, it can be difficult to get in the mindset of something that you need to address and an issue that someone feels intimately in the company may not be relatable to everybody else at the company. And, In those prep sessions, I found it really useful to try to contextualize it, make it feel personal, use you statements.
Katherine King: Try to make it a story where they can feel the emotion that the person might be feeling, and be reminded of the context in which that person's having these emotions that can usually unlock that empathy muscle if it's otherwise a little bit hidden due to the the context or a stressful environment or something.
Katherine King: There are many reasons why it could be hard to uncover that empathy muscle. Usually contextualizing it in words that will make sense to the person. And just getting back to that like true person to person connection, I think that will go a really long way. And I haven't found anybody that isn't able to understand from that perspective what someone is feeling.
Katherine King: It's, it's just about reframing and helping get into the mindset of the audience that you're trying to.
Amanda Berry: So another key piece of this is tone of voice. It's critical when building trust with employees, right? And employees, you know, we're communicators, people are communicators. We can see through robotic or disingenuous messages.
Amanda Berry: So first, let's talk about and start with why does tone matter?
Katherine King: Ugh, I love this question. You know, I do. First and foremost, just having a consistent and really authentic tone is so critical for trust, and I love to use this example that you've probably heard before. Have you ever gotten an email and it says it's from your mom, and the subject line is like, please help.
Katherine King: And you're like, oh my gosh. Okay, let me, let me read this email from my mom. My mom needs. And then you read it and it says, hi daughter. I'm in a situation. I need you to wire me a million dollars in Bitcoin asap. Please help sign your mom. And the first thing that you think is like, that doesn't sound like my mom.
Katherine King: I'm not gonna wire her a million dollars in Bitcoin. I wouldn't be like, I
Amanda Berry: don't even, like, how do I even get Bitcoin? 10 minutes, mom? I mean, 10 minutes to get a million dollars in
Katherine King: Bitcoin. Yes, no problem. Anything for my. The thing about tone is that when it's reliable, a reliable tone breeds familiarity.
Katherine King: And we all know that familiarity is the precursor to trust. Yes. And so when it comes to that example of the phishing email, I'm familiar with my mom or most people who will email me, especially the way that she communicates. And because of that, I trust her. And I don't trust this person that wrote the email.
Katherine King: Cause I know it doesn't sound like her. And so for the folks at your company, for whoever's listening, like the more that we can breed familiarity with leadership, their authentic voice, all of that, the greater trust the team will have and better the business will be. And I know that that seems like a big.
Katherine King: But there is actual data like backing up how trust impacts your business' bottom line and it's, it's employees trust in their employer and that's everything from NPS to to retention and engagement. These are all things that do affect your bottom line. And I won't bore you with like the details in the numbers, but I recommend checking out the Edelman Trust Barometer study.
Katherine King: They released the report every year and it has a lot of interesting data about the impact of trust on business's performance, particularly for employees and their employers. Yeah,
Amanda Berry: absolutely. It's not that we don't want leaders and our people managers delivering bad news. We want them to deliver the truth.
Amanda Berry: So that builds trust. So even when you get the news you don't wanna hear or something bad happens, the the trust is there. So it don't keeps the bond really strong. You know that, that's what I know, but I, I'll have to look that up. I don't know a bunch about that. Caught the Edelman,
Katherine King: the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Katherine King: Edelman
Amanda Berry: Trust Barometer. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a look at that. Yeah. Well, so let's, let's keep digging into, to tone and, and. I know I've seen you present this before, so I'm wondering if you would talk a little bit about the spectrum of tone and voice.
Katherine King: Absolutely. So it can be a little abstract, but I'll try to break it down as best I can verbally.
Katherine King: And I think I'll start with a basic foundation. Like most internal communicators at some point will need to be ghost writers or editors, and I think it can be hard to keep track of all the different folks' voices that you have to master. And you also wanna make sure that you're not infusing, you know, your own personal voice into the stuff that you're writing for others, because then everything will sound the same and pretty amorphous and, and that's not good for anybody.
Katherine King: So after a lot of field work, I've boiled down most tones of voice into about four main components, and then you can kind of plot your leaders across these on a spectrum. The first being friendly or corporate. So friendly is on one side of the spectrum, and corporate is on the other side. Choosing where you land here, really just first and foremost depends on your company and like what is your leader's authentic vibe?
Katherine King: Are they someone who starts out messages like, hi team, or hey, or do they start out messages with all whatever their natural inclination is, that's where you should start that plotting so you're not forcing them to be someone that they're not. No matter how much you wish the person who is very corporate could be a little more friendly, or the person who's friendly could be more corporate.
Katherine King: You gotta, you gotta lean into who you are, authentic. So that's the first one. The second one is, are they conversational or informative? And that's a sliding spectrum as well. So is your speaker super avan naturally or are they really straight business? Are they more naturally to say something like, you all have heard a lot of the things that we've discussed around X topic and so we've made the decision to move forward with why decision?
Katherine King: Or are they very like because of X we're doing Y? You gotta think about where you plot that. Then the third topic is accessible or advanced. Accessibility means a lot of things. In this context, it means getting rid of jargon and like insider baseball terms that only really senior or super tenured folks would know.
Katherine King: However, it can sound like a dirty word. Sometimes having it be more advanced is important. So say that all of your company, uh, a precursor to joining your company is having a certain technical degree. If you begin to discuss components that are. Basic to that degree. If you start discussing those things in a really elementary way, your employees are gonna be like, I don't think my employer is very knowledgeable on this topic.
Katherine King: Obviously I know what this is. I'm gonna lose some trust in them. So, however, for other companies, if your employee base is really varied, which I think it is in most tech companies, for example, I often suggest starting out with like, explain it like I'm 10 years old and go from there so that you can get to that really optimal level of simplicity and access.
Katherine King: I
Amanda Berry: love that. Just because I feel like that's why I really like to come in is, is for that reason. I know I've worked a lot with it. We, we had talked about that earlier, and when they do something, let's gonna unpack all employees. They'll usually hand me content that's like really technical and I'm, you know, be sitting there and I'm, I'll do what you said.
Amanda Berry: Explain it to me like I'm five. Explain it to me like you're explaining it to your grandmother. Exactly. Um, yes. And then I don't wanna say when grandmother is like five, but like someone who's not very techy, who we'd want to try to bring along in this story and help them understand.
Katherine King: Completely. And I think, you know, the more simply you can convey a message, the clearer it is.
Katherine King: And so it's a great exercise. There's a quote may or may not be attributable, Baltimore Twain, I'm not sure, but it's like, if I had more time, I would've written you a shorter letter. And I think about that all the time because just because you can describe something with a lot of complex jargon and it can make you sound really smart that it can actually be an anti goal.
Katherine King: Like it, it can work against you more than it can work for you. And so to be able to describe, so. Quickly, distinctly clearly with basic language will make you go much farther and will increase your impact significantly. And then bear with me this last one finally,
Amanda Berry: I'm so interested in this, the, the fourth
Katherine King: component of what I think are the theories parts of a tone of voice are fun or serious.
Katherine King: And. This, again, comes down to your company and the speaker's authentic vibe. Are they trying to be fun? Does the company and the speaker's persona lend themselves to being laid back and chill and fun? Or are they really business focused and does your company have a right to be fun? Or is the mission really serious and therefore you need to be serious to match it?
Katherine King: So all of these are the spectrums. I think they can evolve over time and it's something that you play with. It's, it's not set in stone, but it's been a helpful resource to. Context shift when you're managing a lot of different speakers and it can also help you infuse all the different communications touchpoints with the right tone of voice and when you start developing them.
Katherine King: I've had fun with that. I've named a few, like there's one that I call the straight shooter that I use often, and the straight shooter is, they're like right in between friendly and corporate, but they're very informative. They're more accessible and they're more serious. And then there's one that I also love, which I call, Hey, Bestie.
Katherine King: And Hey, Bestie is all about being really friendly, really conversational, super accessible, and also really fun. And that again, depends on the authenticity of the person speaking your company, the message, et cetera. And so I've found that generally having these frameworks are helpful for me to rely on both in like regular run of the mill coms and in comms that are a little more difficult to write, especially on very sensitive or charged issue.
Amanda Berry: As you're going through those categories, I love those categories cuz I, I know where I sit on those. Yeah. And it's probably a bit more fun and conversational and accessible. And then I got to thinking like, have I ever worked with leaders who might appear on that far spectrum of all in the other side?
Amanda Berry: Do you have any advice for people who are struggling because they, they have leaders who are wildly on the other spectrum from them, and how do you. Push yourself a little bit more that way to think like them and to set that tone, to set that right tone. Because that can be tough if you are hey bestie and then, but you're your C F O or your C E O or whoever is really far in the other direction.
Katherine King: Yeah, and I think that happens all the time, but I really do feel that the job of the internal communicator is to be the acrobat. You have to prioritize the natural inclination of the people who are speaking. And what I found for folks who are more technical or who are, you know, someone like the c e o has so much business context that it's not just about tone at that point, once you understand what their tone is, You then need to layer on a significant amount of business context.
Katherine King: And that's why I go back to, you know, one of the critical partners and relationships for an internal communicator are folks across the business in a strategy and operations type role or otherwise that can help you understand business context, business operations, business priorities. Being able to understand those in your own mind can then help you write those communications more strongly in that tone of voice, even if you have your, your own natural desire to make it very, Hey, bestie.
Katherine King: I, I think it's that that business context comes in and, and helps you balance out the two.
Amanda Berry: I wanna take a look at that from the lens of sort of what we've been seeing over the past couple years, right? We have covid, we've got a lot of, you know, really bad things, racial injustice happening across the country.
Amanda Berry: We are seeing layoffs now. There's just not a negative. Times, lot of, lot of trying times happening here. So I wonder if we could talk about how our listeners can use tunnel spectrum maintaining voice when leaders have to deliver these difficult messages.
Katherine King: Yeah, I, this is really the moment when I have found the frameworks to be most useful because in a crisis you.
Katherine King: It can be really hard to respond authentically. Emotions are running high. The the crisis is still unfolding. You don't have all the information and you don't really know yet what to say or how to say it. And I go back to that prep session. I have the framework in mind. I know the voice of the person who needs to speak, but going into that prep session and understanding, you know, talk to them, where does that compassion authentically lie and lean into that, and then use that spectrum to help kind of determine the right framing of the message that needs to be delivered.
Katherine King: I think when it comes to something like a, a social issue or another tragedy, in our heart of hearts, we want to respond to everything. You know, we, we want to say something about everything cuz everything really does weigh on all of us as human beings. But we've, what we've found is, you know, if you say your heart breaks for everything, then your, you're not really saying your heart breaks for anything.
Katherine King: Your, your voice is diluted. Your impact is watered downed, and, Not to introduce you in another framework, but over the years at Etsy, we've refined how we respond to emerging issues like this by making sure that first, any statement that we make is backed up with an action that gives a really tangible reason to be speaking.
Katherine King: It's so hard to just say that you're sad that another thing happened, but to say, I'm sad and I'm doing this thing. That helps give you a little bit of momentum to fill in the rest of your message and. Just to go in a little bit deeper here, I, I referenced the Edelman Trust Barometer and last year's publication said something like 79 or 80% of employees expect their company to take an action on Keith's side issues.
Katherine King: But, and this is where it gets like a little tricky, but the majority of employees want their c e O to stay out of politics. And so those responses are really talking about fueling policy, not politics. When you have a credible voice to add to the conversation and. I said, we have this framework at Etsy where based on how close the issue is to our core business and our mission, we have varying levels of response that we've agreed upon to make sure that we're using our voice effectively, both internally and externally, from a targeted message to an E R G to a much broader scale, public statement or company donation and.
Katherine King: Yeah, I think making sure that you only show up when it makes sense for you and your brand and when there's an action. Otherwise, it's just the more you speak about, the less you may say. And I think having these two frameworks to rely on both the criteria that warrant which response and then the tone of voice for the author, it's just a massively helpful in responding during crisis mode.
Katherine King: In a world where sadly, it doesn't feel like the crises, the tragedies will ever stop coming.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. Yeah. There's so, there's so much, I mean, it is, it feels like it's a constant stream. I feel like if leaders only really respond, responded to everyone, that's all they would be doing is responding Precisely.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. Precisely. Let's get into our last segment asking for a friend who's Destin
Producer 1: for a friend. Hey. Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend.
Amanda Berry: You've had a interesting and and fantastic variety of career opportunities in the past, but thinking about employee communications, what's some advice you have for a first time leader of employee communications?
Katherine King: Well, I would say three things. First, I've said it so many times, but like those friendships, those relationships make friends.
Katherine King: It's the best thing that you can do to be the most effective communicator. You'll understand what employees need to hear. You'll understand what leaders need to say. You'll understand what needs to be done to promote the business. Really make friends across the business level, agnostic, org agnostic, tenure agnostic, everything.
Katherine King: It's just invest in those relationships wherever you. Then saying yes. I think so many things are opportunities. It can seem like it's more work, but saying, yes, how can I help? Even for something that might not immediately seem like internal comms. A lot of people don't understand what internal comms is.
Katherine King: Probably a lot of
Amanda Berry: internal comms aren't employee.
Katherine King: Yeah, it's true. It can really, it can be so many things. Yeah, and so use that to your advantage. Like raise your hand and say yes to participate in things. That's where you can start building those relationships. Especi. In this distributed world and where you can really show your values so people think to you next time they need you, and then also getting to know the business.
Katherine King: I think that's a huge unlock in the value that internal communicators can provide. Understanding the business, understanding the business priorities, the business context, the different parts of the business, how all of them work together, why they're all important, who knows what, what personas each parts of the business have.
Katherine King: All those things I think are, are really useful for first time internal communicator.
Amanda Berry: I love that. I love the second one cuz I've always been a person who says yes and you just don't know what, what you can learn or what you can get out of something. You may make some key contacts, you may learn something about the business that's helpful for you in a year from now.
Amanda Berry: You know, there's just, there's so much opportunity there. I couldn't agree more, Katherine. What challenges do you think internal comms employee comms is gonna face in the future? So let's say within the next five years?
Katherine King: Yeah, I mean, we talked about this briefly. I really do believe relationships are everything and it's just, we don't know yet how to build new, burgeoning strong relationships in this distributed way.
Katherine King: And so when we don't have those water cooler moments, when we don't have those run-ins, you know, how can we create those relationships? Very fateful relationships that help us so much that we love, that make our our jobs exciting. How can we create those and how can we also capitalize on those times where we are together?
Katherine King: You know, if you do have to go into the office, if you do have a team event, if you do have a, a company wide gathering, how can you kind of strategize to make that work for you? Think of that as getting a lot of bang for your buck. You know, I think there's such an opportunity there. And it's hard to create those things out of thin air right now.
Katherine King: So I think it'll be a challenge that we'll all be facing for the next five years. We'll all be trying to take advantage as much as we can, but there's also other folks are gonna be trying to take advantage too. So like, it'll be difficult, but I'm, I'm optimistic that there'll be a way for us to continue building strong relationships like this.
Katherine King: We just maybe haven't cropped that yet. Yeah. It's one of
Amanda Berry: those where we're really rewriting our playbooks, right? Yeah. Everything, how we were doing things four years ago is just not the same today, even. You know, you're primarily back in an office. It's changed because you may be dealing with companies who are all remote, right?
Amanda Berry: And then, so now you may be working with people in other countries that, you know, in wildly different time zones. It's really changed how we do in town halls and it's all just so different how we interact with each other, like we talked about earlier, how to get, how do you get to know employees? Yeah.
Katherine King: Yeah. And I, you. Even with new hire, onboarding being remote for many employees, that too, that's such a critical moment for, for folks to get to know the company and that is also something that affects overall employee engagement, which directly affects internal comms role. So, You know, I think it's, it's something that we'll all be, be facing and navigating over the next few years.
Amanda Berry: Yes. As someone who has been a new employee during Covid, I can tell you, and not where I work now at Simpplr, but employee onboarding is really important to getting employees day one. I'm, I'm glad you brought that up cuz it, if, you know, if you just took, well we used to do this in person, now we put it on Zoom and haven't like given any thought to their experience.
Amanda Berry: Right. That new employee experience and how you onboard. That can really, you know, impact employee turnover rates and, and yeah. Engagement and, and and satisfaction. Yes. Well, Katherine, everyone is trying to get better at their jobs. I feel like you just have a wealth of knowledge to share, but what do you do to learn and get better at your job?
Katherine King: I read a lot. I read a lot. Both books that are fun to get better at writing and also just articles and stuff. There's such a wealth of knowledge that's being published on in the tech sector especially, and so I find that as, as critical curriculum. But things that I wanna focus on too, and I'm not really sure how to do this yet.
Katherine King: I, I'm the last three years or so have just been like 12 Super Bowl quarters, like reactivity, right? Like it's, yeah, we've just had to be on. A lot of the time it's been reactive. It's felt a little like, you know, you didn't know that something was going to emerge again in the midst of another crisis. And so there hasn't been much time to feel like you can pause, take a second, peek around a corner and feel prepared for whatever's coming.
Katherine King: And so something that I wanna focus on is building out frameworks, best practices, playbooks, something that will keep our team feeling ready and prepared should the next crisis event come around the corner rather. Oh no. Start from ground zero. Like how, how do we address this? How do we solve this? Do we have anything that we can learn from?
Katherine King: I think that's a big focus for my team. And then also management. Etsy takes management so seriously. We call it management as craft uhhuh. It's something that's really important and. My team is growing right now as our company scales, which is amazing. I'm so excited about it. And see, something that I'm focused on is how do I evolve the role of internal communications in a company that's growing?
Katherine King: How do I evolve my career, but also cultivate the growth of the members of my team? You know, how do I help them take risks and, and shine in a, in a new environment as it's continually evolving? So I'll be focusing a lot on, on management as well, and that's something that I don't think will ever end, I think, or
Amanda Berry: I.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. It's funny as you say that I, I wanna share this. I'd left a job right before the pandemic started, and one of my last roles was I was putting together like literal playbooks for what happens for one of these 30 crisis, whether it's a flood fire, the corporate plane crashes, but it was about like that being prepared and, and having the communications and who the contacts are and who needs to be in the, the war room.
Amanda Berry: These things happen and it was just really. But I remember one of the tabs was pandemic and looking at that and I, that was kind of my reaction. I just kind of laughed and I was like, yeah, I re, I remember that. That really stuck out to me. Cause like four months later. Pandemic. Wow. Spooky. I know. So super spooky.
Amanda Berry: I think it's so interesting that, you know, you were talking about being prepared and, you know, I highly recommend any listeners out there to be prepared and, and create an actual playbook for this stuff because you just don't know when it's gonna happen. But it's better to be prepared than just sort of running around like, we gotta figure this out.
Amanda Berry: You know, we're building the train tracks as the train is flying out down the tracks. Exactly.
Katherine King: And especially, you know, as, as you said about having those frameworks on hand, it's useful because when the crisis happens, you're charged. It's emotional. You're, you're responding to it personally. Yeah. And also needing to think how your company needs to show up.
Katherine King: It's difficult. And I remember in Covid especially after. The march rush after we got those initial transfer to work from home, all of that, all that transition, once we got those communications dealt with, we moved into the next tier of preparation, which was how this might affect our community in a potentially kind of scary way.
Katherine King: And it was really difficult to get into the mindset of writing the communication. If someone in our company were to fall victim to Covid, we thought through all of the different iterations, and thank goodness our company was good on that front. I remember doing it was so difficult, but afterwards I was so grateful to have that to rely on because imagine the difficulty of writing that in real life when you're processing it, dealing with it.
Katherine King: I think having those things to rely on is so helpful and it's important to create the space to prepare for the worst, even though it's difficult to, to do and to get in that mindset and to write it and to respect that time that you have. But I think it's something that is useful moving forward. And we, like we said, we know.
Katherine King: Tragedies will keep on coming. Crazy events will keep on coming. Hopefully not another pandemic, but something big will come around the corner that we don't know yet. And it's good to have some basis to, to be able to rely on, to move forward effectively. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, it's almost better to ride them now when it's when you're not dealing with a crisis, cuz it's sort of, it does disconnect you from that emotion so that if you are found in that, that's fantastic advice.
Amanda Berry: This has been so much fun. I could talk to you forever. I love Etsy. I love what you do. I think you're amazing. You're great at, in, you know, employee communications and I'm just, I'm really thankful you were here today, but before I let you go, let our listers know where they can find you.
Katherine King: Yes, absolutely. Um, you can find me on LinkedIn.
Katherine King: I'm Katherine King. I'm not huge on social media, so that's the main one I'll use. But I look forward to connecting. And also, thank you so much, Amanda, for the time. I love Simpplr. I'm such a fan of your company and I really am so grateful for being a guest on the podcast.
Amanda Berry: Well, thank you Katherine. This has been great.
Amanda Berry: Thanks.