This episode features an interview with Tina Hawkins, Senior Director of Internal Communications at the NBA. Tina partners with business leaders to enhance employee performance through change management with a focus on workplace experience. In this episode, Amanda and Tina discuss aligning values externally and internally, keeping communication casual, and how to hold space for employees and leaders to have critical conversations.
This episode features an interview with Tina Hawkins, Senior Director of Internal Communications at the NBA. Tina partners with business leaders to enhance employee performance through change management with a focus on workplace experience.
In this episode, Amanda and Tina discuss aligning values externally and internally, keeping communication casual, and how to hold space for employees and leaders to have critical conversations.
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“Don't over emphasize the writing. Things like the wordsmithing, the grammar, et cetera. That's table stakes. It's the strategic thinking that's the most important. What are we trying to achieve with this message or with this initiative or with what we're doing? What's the best way to reach people? How can we do something that'll have the most impact and influence? [...] And then personally, I try to concentrate on the business and connect with business leaders and understand our goals and where we're trying to go and what you want employees to do, what behavior changes we need from employees.” – Tina Hawkins
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:37): Tina’s background
*(03:08): Tina’s role as Senior Director of Internal Communications at the NBA
*(05:35): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(07:34): How Tina aligned the NBA while revamping the mission statement
*(11:21): Segment: Ripped From the Headlines
*(12:59): How the NBA helps leaders and employees have critical conversations
*(22:47): Things to avoid when holding tough conversations
*(28:01): Segment: Asking For a Friend
*(31:29): Tina’s advice for keeping communication casual
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Links:
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Tina. How are you today?
Tina Hawkins: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Amanda Berry: I wanna first start
off and learn a little bit more about your background.
Can you talk about your career journey and how you became interested in internal communications?
Tina Hawkins: Sure. Well, I have always been a storyteller, so, you know, it started early. I was the editor, high school, yearbook, college newspaper, all of those things. And after college I was a teacher, I was an English teacher.
And during the summertime I would work in the district office putting together their marketing materials. So like the reports of how the district did for the past year, what's coming up for the upcoming year. So that involves, you know, Using what was called PageMaker at the time, I think, you know, Adobe bought them and it ended up spinning off into different products, but creating, you know, all these sort of glossy brochures and these, uh, messages to market the district.
And based on that work, I met, you know, a lot of different like PR firms and got exposed to that world. And at that time I discovered there was a master's degree I could get called technical communication. So this will kind of age me because it was about communicating, using technology, so how to communicate on the internet, how to do effective emails, things of that nature.
So it was all about communicating electronically, which was, you know, new at the time. And I was in the first graduating class with. And I went to a startup software company, built their first intranet, and the path launched from there.
Amanda Berry: Talk about your current role as a senior director of internal communications at the nba.
Now, obviously the NBA is really well known around the world. Even if people don't watch the nba, they still know what the NBA is. Can you talk about what you do and how you got this opportunity?
Tina Hawkins: Yeah, so I help the NBA navigate the emotional and behavioral component of employee engagement. And what does employee engagement mean?
It's not just like the feeling of belonging, but it's also performance. So I'm responsible for the people communications. I do employee engagement and change management as well. So I translate the value of benefits and programs. Um, and I, I. Initiatives to employees and help them manage change. And the way I got the position I worked for a couple of decades in consulting.
So I did change management engagement and communication consulting. Um, starting with Deloitte, uh, that's where I went after the startup that I mentioned earlier. And I also worked for Mercer, which is human Resource Consulting. So after that, I launched my own consulting firm. And as a part of my regular practice, I would reach out and network with people and I reached out to someone I, you know, a colleague I'd worked with before and he told me he was now the C H R O of the nba.
So I was really excited for him. He was a former college basketball player, so it was like a dream job for him. I come from a basketball family. I was born in Indiana. You know, grew up near Chicago and then I went to high school and college in Texas. So basketball, you know, was sort of a part of my life.
My dad and my brother, like the, at the table, all the conversations are around basketball. So it was, you know, it was fun and, and stay in contact with him. And he was like, Hey, can we be your client? I was like, Sure, you know, let's talk about what you need. I'll put together something for you. And he's like, No, we wanna be your only client.
So we talked for several months. Cause I was like, I don't see how you would need that much from me. Um, I'm not sure I can, you know, that you can just be my only client. But it turned out the organization, you know, as it grew, it's less of a family and like, you know, a paternalistic organization. It's a more of a global organization.
They were bringing on different skill sets, you know, as, as things advanced. And so there was a lot that they needed to bring to employees. They needed to engage a whole. Set of employees, like technology employees wasn't something you'd think about for the nba, but that's a big component for us. And so there was enough to do in terms of change ministry and communication, and it became a great fit.
Amanda Berry: I have some follow
up questions to that, but first I'm gonna move us into our first segment called Getting Tactical.
Producer: I'm trying to figure out tactics and be perfectly honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much. Here I am in charge and trying to say, Why did you sleep through tactics, tactics.
Amanda Berry: You mentioned employees at NBA and the different kinds of employees, can you break down who the internal audience is? Does that include employees for, let's say, example, the Milwaukee Box? Can you just give us an overview of what you mean by employees for the NBA? Sure.
Tina Hawkins: That's a really great question and definitely one of my first questions too, when I first encountered this opportunity.
But our core audience is NBA employees around the world. We have 14 offices. The largest is New York, New Jersey, London, and Beijing. And these employees, you know, support streaming, uh, live entertainment and games, emerging technology, law, marketing, security, and so on. So for the most part, that does not include NBA players, but it does include referees and players from some other leagues like our NBA two K League, and our G League.
So all the, those would be a part of who I. To when it comes to the teams, the teams are independent organizations, so each team is a separate entity. But we do share our communication with business leaders at the teams, because often they wanna leverage them because they have, you know, similar employees and there's an employee experience they're trying to provide.
So we do a lot of collaboration with the teams and then reach those team employees as well.
Amanda Berry: How many employees do you communicate to as being a part of the nba? Just that initial core group, Not so much about the teams.
Tina Hawkins: Right, So the initial core group is a little over 2000. Okay. Well
Amanda Berry: you said uk, New York, Beijing.
I'd imagine it's, you gotta get 'em all aligned around mission, vision statement, what's going on? And I mean, guess part of your role is, you know, working with external comms or marketing to translating what's going on sort of in. Corporate office, what's our vision mission? And I know you all just recently revamped your mission statement.
How did you get everyone aligned in this very global company?
Tina Hawkins: So I sit in what's called People and Inclusion, which is also known as hr, and we also have a separate like communications department, which would include some internal communication as well, but also external communication, things like pr.
Then there's also a marketing department that drives. Many of our messages. And then there's social responsibility and player programs, which things like junior nba, like this. So that drives a lot of our messages as well, because that's our work in the community. So my first goal is to stay in block step with those colleagues to help influence the messaging and also get some insight into what I need to prepare our employees for in terms of those messages.
And so that we're doing things alongside each other. So our NBA leadership team meets regularly, and one of those discussions is always communication. And so the chief people and inclusion officer sits in those meetings and will bring back those emerging topics to all of those teams that I just mentioned, so that we're all sort of in lockstep with what the messages are.
So in terms of how we rolled out our new mission, so it's less than a year old, so that rolled out is still underway. And when we initially rolled it out, we did it internally first. So, although it's being, you know, seen now externally, the rollout happened first internally, what we did was we connected the new mission to our OKRs.
So we sort of rolled out, here's our mission, and then, you know, the next thing was we revised these values and here's how, and here's our OKRs and how they're connected. So like how we wanna do, what our goals are, how it connects to this mission and value that we have. The rollout was from leadership. Um, it also involved like a road show for marketing.
and we embedded in everything that we do. So, for example, in our corporate PowerPoint template, which people use, you know, anytime they're putting together a deck, the very first slide is our mission and values. And so in any discussion, the first topic should be how is what we're about to talk about, connect to our mission and values.
Another example, when we talk about work, Flexibility we talk about where people work, tie into our values. So one of our values is create community. So if we're talking about workplace flexibility, how does that tie into what we say we wanna do with creating community? Same thing with innovate with intention.
That's one of our values. So when we're talking about workplace flexibility, how does innovation look different now that we have hybrid employees and now that we have more remote employees? Um, another example is be the. As a part of being the fan, you know, we wanna make sure people have the opportunity to actually see our game.
So how do we still offer that when people work remotely? So those are some of the conversations that we have. So we try to embed it into everything. And our next stage, I mentioned this, this one was sort of top down from leadership. The stage we're moving into now is bottom up. So how do we get employees more?
And so we're working through having employees help us define what behaviors attached to each, each of those values. What does it look like? How does it show up? So are you
Amanda Berry: starting to get some of that bottom up back in now to demonstrate what the mission and vision and values look like in practice?
Tina Hawkins: Yes.
Yeah, so we did the initial rollout so that everyone understood here's what they are. We started embedding and making the connections and some, the connections happened naturally based on the work that we do, who are audiences, you know, our goals, but the other pieces, employees, How does that show up for them?
And so now we're getting the employee feedback and you know, working with employees on activities to have them start defining those behaviors and that rolls into our next stage.
Amanda Berry: I'm gonna move into the next segment called Rip from the headlines.
Producer: You hear the news Extra. Extra.. Read all about
it. Our stories rip from the headlines.
Rip from the headlines, rip from the headline.
Amanda Berry: Because I wanna tie a conversation back to the values you said, but I wanna be honest, there are three things I love about the NBA, the sport itself, it's fun to watch. Two is Giannis from Milwaukee. He's just a fantastic player. Third is the NBA's willingness to hold space for tough conversations about important topics like social and racial equality.
I assume you're having those conversations as well. Is that correct?
Tina Hawkins: That is correct. Social impact is part of the dna. Of our
Amanda Berry: league. Yeah. It feels very much like it's tied back to your values of community and intention. I love that cuz that's actually seeing it in practice. I wanna ask, why do you think these conversations, these tougher conversations are important to have in the workplace?
Tina Hawkins: I can connect it directly to one of the values, as you assumed we definitely could. So let me just read sort of the expanded of what we mean by create community Basketball is inherently inclusive. Anyone can play it. The diversity in people background and experience is central to our success. So that's foundational for.
So we believe in the power of sports to be able to create connections with people, different cultures and backgrounds. And in order to do that, you know, of course internally, we have to be willing to have those conversations that help make that possible. If you
Amanda Berry: don't mind kind of opening your playbook, cuz again, I think you all do this very well and just sort of talk about like, how do you do this?
How do you work with leaders? Let's start with that. Like how do you work with leaders to bring them along or bring them into the conversation before you even go? Employees.
Tina Hawkins: So I think for leaders that we do make sure for any conversation that needs to happen or for any initiative we're rolling out, even we make sure that they are prepped first.
So I mentioned that we have those, you know, leadership meetings that happen frequently and that is a topic that they have in there. And we, from there, figure out what are our key messages, and then they cascade that to leadership. But one of the things is that our leaders have to be prepared to. Support messages, but we also go directly to employees.
So one of the things that we do to create a safe space so employees can share their opinions or have conversations about their opinions, and it's really in support of our leadership and our, you know, people, managers as well, is we hold community conversations. And so there are forums for having critical conversations.
Sometimes they can involve like an expert presentation, you know, or maybe leadership messages. But a core component is really the ability to speak on our concerns. So that could be through, you know, maybe there's a message at the front. You know, from a leader, Hey, we see this just happened. Here's our thoughts, here's what we're doing.
That can open the floor and conversation happens and employees speak up. Or we can have facilitated breakout groups. We've done this both in person and virtually, so not only, you know, do employees speak up, but they do it in real time. So there have been events that occurred in the community conversations the.
Stay. So when it comes to leaders, like they're not on their own, they don't have to have a list of talking points that they're chaly, you know, , you know, reading in the next staff meeting, we opened it up as an organization and, and you know, the message can come top down. Hey, we know this is happening.
Here's how it affects us. Here's what we're doing. Here's your opportunity to, you know, either ask questions or to talk about it more. And then of course, before that message has gone out, we. People, managers, some talking points so that they're ready to support it. We let them know about resources they can offer employees and so on.
But we really open it up so you know, to speak directly to employees. So the managers aren't just like, you know, we don't just dump it on them and let them go on their own.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. How is the employee engagement in those community
Tina Hawkins: conversations? It is surprisingly good. I know in some of them I was surprised at how people are willing to speak up, and sometimes that's even sort of with an opposing opinion.
Like, I, I don't understand why we're doing this, or I don't live like this, so why are we having this conversation? Or you know, like people are willing to say how they really feel and I think we've. You know, a great network where those conversations are managed in a way where people can feel heard, but also at the same time can't be abusive in any way.
You're welcome to share an opinion, but then here's what we believe in, here's how we are proceeding, and we can, you know, further discuss if we need to, or, you know, whatever the message needs to be. But people are very much willing to speak up. And actually it shouldn't have surprised me because when I joined the NBA, one of the first things was a town hall, you know, with the commissioner.
And employees can submit questions to town halls and they can do it in real time and they can also submit it in advance. And one of the questions was about, Whether the frozen yogurt was actually ice cream ,
Amanda Berry: and I was thinking, who would the hot topic of the day,
Tina Hawkins: Right? Who would ask the commissioner that?
Was it something I was like, ok, this is a different kinda organization. Like people ask what's on their mind and there is a forum. For each type of question or concern.
Amanda Berry: I guess That's an interesting thought that they were asking about the frozen yogurt slash ice cream, the comfortability to put that on, let's say like the commissioner and say, Hey, is it
And expects you know them to answer it,
Tina Hawkins: right. So I was like, okay. So I guess he's, you know, involved in it every aspect. Cause that's not a question you think to ask, you know, someone that level. But yeah, people, people are not afraid and we, you know, have opportunities for people to. You know, submit feedback.
We do engagement surveys where people can give feedback, so people are used to speaking their mind. Do you
Amanda Berry: make sure you continue to follow up? And I know you talked about getting feedback and asking questions. Is this an ongoing opportunity for this conversation to continue within the nba? What does that look like?
Tina Hawkins: It is, and it also depends on what the issue is. Sometimes it can be a one and done, but other times it spins into something else. So for example, in 2020, we were mostly working virtually and there were like, you know, the George Floyd protests and other social justice movements and so on. And so we had several community conversations and that actually ended up based on the employee.
Investment, you know, and that is a topic and what people were willing to do, and we turned it into a foundation. You know, at first it was, here's what we're doing. It would be like an email that kept providing updates and you know, when the next community conversation was. But it was a big enough thing that we created and launched a foundation, and now they're employees who work for that.
And there are ways that you can get involved. Um, in here more recently with when the role versus Wade decision was released, we had an immediate community conversation. This one was sort of from an expert in the field, so there wasn't as much opportunity for people to have conversations, you know, amongst themselves.
And we also had some thinking like, is that the kind of issue, you know, where the breakout groups for conversations are, you know, warranted are the same. But we did do a follow up several weeks later where there. Another community conversation with the opportunity to have breakout groups and there have been additional, Okay, here's what we're doing, You know, to support employees.
There have been additional follow up messages, so most of the time it's not a one and done. There are additional things that happen as a result, and a lot of that comes from employees. It's employees who are emailing us saying, Hey, I wanna talk about this, or What are we going to do about. Or what are our thoughts about this?
And we have employee resource groups. So you know, there's like the women's network, there's the dream in color, which is the black and African American network and so on. And so they'll come together and then say, Hey, you know, can we have Adam speak to this? Or whatever the request is. And so things, you know, move forward that way.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, that's, that's awesome. That's so great to hear. I'm envious. You know, I, I've worked at companies when something big happens and it may take a week to respond, so to hear the NBAs turning that around in a day, that's incredible. And it's really impactful because when, like George Floyd, when, when those things happen in the moment, you know, the motions are incredibly raw immediately.
And to have that, have leaders immediately speak out and say, We're coming together. And it sounds like it's like leaders are interested doing, employees are interested, so that's makes it happen. I'm thinking about our listeners who maybe want to implement something similar. Is there a way that you're helping leaders?
If. If they're not doing it the day, like push them toward like, We need to speak to this, that why this is important. Is there something you're doing differently? It sounds like you have just like this incredible recipe of good leaders, good employees, and then you in there as well. Is there something that listeners can do to help bring their leaders into these conversations and talk about the importance of why they should be having them?
Tina Hawkins: So, you know, I have to say we have many great examples of where it did happen in a day, but it's not always, you know, so there's still work for us to do. I think there have been some major thing that happened and we were able to pivot and get it done in a day, but there are times where maybe we should have addressed something and we didn't.
And so we actually have been looking at how can we create like a quadrant where we can get this out to leaders very quickly, even if we're not having in some kind of immediate event, like to, you know, make sure that they're supported. So that is one. Piece of advice that I would suggest, and one that we're trying to follow right now as we, you know, further develop our process.
Because things happen so quickly, and if you try to respond to everything, you're, you know, not gonna be able to get any work done. So we need a bit of like a triage where we say, Okay, let's evaluate what happened. And so we're envisioning something that's kind of like a four quadrant thing where it's like, okay, what's the issue?
Who is it impacting? How does it impact us? What do we want our employees to know? What do we plan to do? Which leader is sort of going to be like the voice of this issue? Which resources are available to employees that are related and to help them deal with this? And so that could be like a one pager that goes out to all of leadership.
To help them if they're in, you know, staff meeting, they're seeing people seem like a day or something, they're like, Hey, what's going on? If this was on people's mind, here's how you could facilitate a conversation if you needed to. So that's not something that we have right now, but it's something that I'm developing.
And I have talked to, you know, some other communication practitioners about, Hey, we've done a good job on some of these things, but I feel like some stuff is falling through the cracks. What else could we do? And so this, I think, is the direction we'll be going in that that would be something that would be.
Really helpful for organizations where they're not used to having these open conversations, and you have to now convince leaders it's about wellbeing, you know, employees' wellbeing as far as their emotional wellbeing, but it's also about performance, because if you're not in a good place, You're worried about something that's happening in a world event or a cause that you care about that can affect your performance.
And so even for those leaders who aren't necessarily thinking about how people feel, they are thinking about performance. So if you sort of figure out a way to balance messaging to help them understand, then that should be pretty effective.
Amanda Berry: You'd mentioned, you know, so you're still working on your strategy, which I love it.
I think it's fantastic. What are some don'ts, what are some things to avoid for our listeners out there when setting up these conversations?
Tina Hawkins: I would say before you speak to the public, um, speak to your employees. So I understand that most of the time when you're developing messages, whether it's, you know, a statement that the company's going to release, or a tweet that you plan to publish, to make sure that employees get that information first because they are the representative of the company and have to support it, and there's nothing.
You know, a statement being released that you know nothing about, and you get that phone call from a partner or something asking you to speak on it. It just puts you, you know, in a difficult situation. It also doesn't have that feeling of belonging like, I work here, I need to get behind this, so I need to know what we're saying.
Um, so that'd be one thing, whether it's an issue, a celebration, achievement, aim to communicate with employees first before you release something externally. Also providing employees with an option to hear directly from leadership. So I think when it comes to things like town halls, you know, those are kind of come in and out of favor, but the opportunity to hear things directly from leadership along with the opportunity to be able to engage as far as asking questions or even interacting are really important.
And that's important, not just once a year with the earnings, you know, report or you know, something like that, but on a regular basis. So even if you now do casual leadership videos, you know, short leadership videos, that can be effective. But always offer an option for people to ask questions and for them to hear their question from that leader.
Like even if there's not like a town hall where you're sort of going live, there's other ways that you can make sure. People are hearing from leadership. And I would say the other thing as far as uh, something you can do is to make sure that what's being said externally aligns with what employees are experiencing internally.
So I mentioned it's important that employees see the messages first or understand the position or what you plan to say first, but not only. You should align with what they're experiencing too. So for example, you know, a couple of years ago we had a campaign around mental health and mental wellbeing, and we had some spots from some of our players and there was probably hashtag.
So if we had that feature where we're saying the NBA focuses on mental health and supports mental health, we have to offer that focus internally as. So we wanna make sure it's not just communication, but it's also involvement from the other functions. So like, what's going on with our benefits? Does that align?
Do we need more messaging around that so that they know what's available? Are we offering the types of benefits that we're talking about? We say that we're offering, you know, when we're saying it to the public, So those are I think, three things to keep in mind. Let
Amanda Berry: me ask you about that, cuz I know with your role being focused on internal communications, you mentioned working, align in line closely with external communications on, on any topic.
And I think that that's a good call out cuz I think sometimes internal external can be, well they are usually pretty separate and they're different islands and sometimes there's not a lot of. Communication between them. You talk about your relationship with external marketing, external communications, and how you're making sure that you're both on the same how, How both groups are making sure that you're sending the same message internally and then externally.
Tina Hawkins: So I think the key to that is that the leadership meetings where the leaders of those groups are sitting at the table together, and so when it gets filtered down to me and I hear, Here's what we talked about in the leadership meeting, then that's when I know. Oh. There's something going on with this topic, and then I know to go to my colleagues in marketing or social responsibility or whichever topic is related, I'd like to see it to us get to a place where we're having that conversation naturally.
And sometimes it does happen, but when it doesn't, it's that what are the leaders talking about and saying we're concentrating on. And then I take the initiative to, Hey, I heard about this. What's going on with this project? I also look. Anything that's sort of posted on the intranet, which our intranet is called home court, but sometimes, you know, departments will say what they're working on and for example, you know, let's say a department says, Hey, we're working on something related to virtual reality.
I will reach out to them to learn more about it so that I'm, my wheels are already turning and thinking about how could I offer that internally? So even though there's no reason for us to be aligned just yet, it's already on my radar, on my roadmap that, hey, can we offer that in new ation? Like, you know, how's there way that I can leverage what they're doing with vr?
So I would say as an internal communication person, just keeping my eye on what other people are talking about and what other people are doing, and just sort of asking more questions about it. Helps me stay on top of, Okay. Employees may need to know that, or employees may need to use that. I do get surprised though sometimes where you know, something new is released and it's sort of like a back pedal where it's like, Okay, so this is what we're doing.
All right, let's now figure out how we can align. And so we fix those things when we have to.
Amanda Berry: I'm gonna move to our next segment, asking for a friend who's
Producer: for a friend. Hey, Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend, for a friend. You
Amanda Berry: have a great career. You work for the NBA. They had a great organization.
You clearly are killing it at that job, but I wanna know, do you have any advice for a new internal communications practitioner who doesn't really know where to start when working with leaders? Making sure that you're brought into the loop and getting a seat at the table, what advice would you give to someone who wants a seat at the table and doesn't know how to get it?
Tina Hawkins: So this might sound odd coming from a communication professional, but don't concentrate too much on the writing. Like don't overemphasize the writing. Things like the wordsmith theme, the grammar, et cetera, like best table stakes. It's the strategic thinking that's the most important. What are we trying to achieve with this message or with this initiative, or with what we're doing?
What's the best way to reach people? How can we do something that'll have the most impact and influence, you know, in terms of our career security? Like everyone in the room with a degree. Even if they don't have one, think they're a writer. You know, I wrote all those text messages, or I write emails all day.
Like, so they don't really see necessarily a reason for you to be there if you're just there, you know, saying, Should we use a serial comment or not? Like the, I understand why we discuss those things, but let's just do that in our rooms. Let's sort of have our GS go a little bigger and our value is more connected to influence than the words.
As communicators, we know there's a big difference with, you know how you may choose to position something based on the wording and everything that were using, but not enough people do. And not enough people see, Oh, that did make a difference, or changing up that headline did get us more engagement on that email.
Like metrics can be our friend. And then personally, I try to concentrate on the business. And connect with business leaders and you know, understand our goals and where we're trying to go and what you want employees to do, like what behavior changes we need from employees. And then I find. A grammarian somewhere, you know, on the team that I sort of have on Slack where I'm like, Hey, does this sentence meet this or that?
Like I don't spend the time like to look it up or to remember all of this so that I can spend the time on the things that make them wanna invite me to the room. So I had people, I'll call like my com coach, you know, I'm like, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I could think through this to figure out this needs a com, but what do you think?
And they love it. So they're fine with like, Yep, that needs one or no outta here, you know? But that's not when I'm in the room to talk about.
Amanda Berry: I love. Focus on things that makes them want you in the room. I think that's such an important lesson cuz as you're, as you were talking and listening to you and I'm thinking like, oh yeah, how many times have, you know, internal com folks get stuck, like just making PowerPoint slides, you know, and that, that level of detail.
And I think that that's such a great lesson to take
Tina Hawkins: from them. And how about when they come in with those slides and people look at and they're like, I think it should be blue. It's always blue, right? I think it should be blue. And it's like I just labored over all those words and all of that, and that's the feedback.
Like that's what happens to us. Like I think sometimes, you know, what we bring is undervalued, so let's find what is valued and how does that connect with what we're really great. Yeah,
Amanda Berry: that's a great call out. Do you have any other pieces of advice, stories you'd love to share that maybe we haven't covered today?
I, I feel like you've got a lot of great stories and, and very focused ways of thinking about internal com. So if there's anything else you wanna share with our listeners, I'd love to hear it.
Tina Hawkins: Yeah, I think we're all, you know, internal communication professionals and I think communication is becoming more and more casual, which, you know, means a couple of things to us.
One is that we have to stay flexible and constantly find, you know, new ways to reach employees. I think. Some ways that we reach employees have been the same for a while. It's interesting cuz I had speaking engagement and I sent like an outline of what we plan to do and they're like, Well I don't know why you're talking about email.
Like that's been around forever. And it's like, yeah, but that's still what a lot of organizations, you know, use primarily. How has email changed though? It's changed a lot. Like if you're still studying paragraphs, you're not changing, like you need to switch it up and do bullet lists that are just phrases like that's where we are now.
So just remaining flexible and even if it's a, you know, the typical format, how do you need to change it to reach people? I think another part of that is realizing that non-professionals are now a part of our competition. So bloggers. Influencers, even offshore writing companies reach out to me, you know, on a daily with, hey, we'll, you know, write these stories and this and that.
There's so many people that are offering a way to get messaging quicker or to get messaging out there. And so of course we look at it and we're like, Okay, this is an influencer. Yeah, that's cute, and I enjoy that when I'm on Instagram or TikTok, but what does that have to do with what I'm doing? Well, no.
Somebody who, you know, in another department who can be convinced, they're like, Oh, this person, they have a lot of people following them and this is what we're gonna do with that budget instead. And so then now you're out of the loop, you know? So you just have to be aware that it's, the people who are carrying messages now are not just communication professionals.
Um, so just staying abreast of that and being willing to constantly change and. In a way that you know, is good for your career. You're getting to learn new things, but also you're keeping employees engaged and working at the nba. I mean, our media is amazing. These people are creating amazing photos, videos, um, you know, social media campaigns.
And here I am with. A message on our 401K match, like how like , how these people, this stuff they've created. I can't go to them with an email, you know what I mean? Like in the email with three paragraphs on what's going on. So yeah. Benefits,
Amanda Berry: changes or
Tina Hawkins: something. Yeah, benefits or something like there is time to do your performance goals, , you know, like we have to do it in a different way.
And I get a lot of pushback. Sometimes people are like, This is not a sentence. It's like, yeah, I don't want it to be a sentence. Yeah,
Amanda Berry: no, I think that that's a good call. Like communicate, like writing internal communications has gone and I've seen it from pretty formal to like really informal and I kind of dig it.
But that transition has been hard.
Tina Hawkins: It's hard and, and I work in a company that has a ton of lawyers and so when I send things around, they're changing it to sentences. And so I don't always get there. And I definitely wanna see us get, you know, more and more casual, but, You know, definitely what I encourage everybody to do.
Like, and I think it's hard for us as communication professionals cuz we're used to doing things a certain way and that's what's made us great. And I just think that we have to be willing to flex that.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. Take the risk, try it. Be creative. I agree. Mm-hmm. ? Mm-hmm. . Tina, this has been so much fun. Big fan of yours, big fan of the nba.
Before I let you go, will you let our listeners know where they can find you?
Tina Hawkins: Yes, I am on LinkedIn, so under Tina Hawkins National Basketball Association, and I live in New York City.
Amanda Berry: Thank you so, so much for joining me today, Tina. This has been
Tina Hawkins: great. It was great to be here and uh, it was a fun conversation and you've made me think through some things too, so it's been great.
Thank you. Thanks, Tina. Thank you again for listening to this episode of The Cohesion Podcast, brought to you by Simpplr, the modern internet software that simplifies the employee experience. Learn more about how Simpplr can help you build a future of your employee experience@Simpplr.com. That's S I N P P r.com.
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