Tag: communication

  • The narrative firewall: Protecting your team from the election vortex

    The narrative firewall: Protecting your team from the election vortex

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    Liam Baldwin

    As a former journalist, I know exactly when the ‘election fog’ sets in. It usually starts about six months out from polling day – right about where we are now.

    In newsrooms, this is the moment the economy of attention shifts. Editors stop looking for gradual trends and start hunting for binary conflicts – those that get the most clicks, especially. It’s also a time where it’s much easier to stumble across an ‘exclusive’, which is loads of fun when you’re in the game.

    Every story is suddenly weighed against the political horse race where form is carefully considered along with the state of the track on the day. If your message doesn’t have a partisan hook, it risks being treated as background noise.

    But there is a greater risk than being ignored. Being hijacked.

    We’ve seen a masterclass in this recently. The headlines surrounding TVNZ’s political editor Maiki Sherman – from her suspension over parliamentary rules to the resurfacing of allegations from a pre-Budget function – show how quickly a professional can become the story. 

    When that happens, the original intent of the communication vanishes. The ‘what’ (the news of the day) is completely swallowed by the ‘who’ (the controversy). Pointless, unfair, possibly even ridiculous – but we all heard about it.

    If a seasoned political reporter can find their narrative pulled into a vortex, where does that leave your team?

    After leaving the fourth estate years ago for the dark side of the force, my advice as a comms guy to leaders is often counter-intuitive… during an election year, the real battle for visibility isn’t happening on the news – it’s happening in your office kitchen. 

    How do the messages you need your team to access, process and action cut through the noise?

    An extreme example was the near-zealous focus we all had on the 1pm briefings during the Covid pandemic. How much discussion around the, then, virtual water cooler was about work stuff? 


    1. The internal audit: Is your team’s focus ‘vortex-proof’?

    The ‘election fog”’ doesn’t just cloud the media, it seeps into your workplace culture. It creates a natural sense of ‘wait and see’ that kills productivity. People start to hesitate, waiting to see what the government does before committing to projects – whether it’s related to your industry or the personal position and impact on any individual employee.

    • The pivot: As a leader, you must ensure your internal messaging isn’t accidentally feeding this uncertainty. Instead of letting the team’s focus drift to external policy shifts, anchor them in Operational Utility. While the country talks about ‘what’ might change on 7 November, your internal frequency must stay laser-focused on ‘how’ we are delivering for our clients today and preparing for tomorrow.

    2. Guarding the kitchen table: Maintaining team cohesion

    In New Zealand, we pride ourselves on being a village, but that village can get pretty tense when the regulated period kicks in. Political debates at the water cooler (or on Teams) can quickly turn from healthy discussion into a cultural vortex.

    • The strategy: Position your leadership as a Safe Harbour. This isn’t about banning politics, it’s about providing a clear frequency that stays above the fray and, often, bullshit. Reiterate your shared values and common goals. When the external environment is high-tension, your workplace should be the one place where the narrative remains stable, respectful, and focused on collective results rather than partisan friction. It’s likely impossible to ban ALL the bullshit, but at least ensure the shovel is up to the job of clearing it and dumping it on the vege patch.

    3. Cutting through the static for your people

    As we approach the election, the external volume will only increase. Your role is to act as a ‘signal filter’ for your people.

    • The action: Don’t let your internal agendas be hijacked by the headline of the day. If a news story doesn’t impact your core mission, keep it out of the tent. By maintaining message discipline inside your organisation, you ensure that while the country is shouting, your team is still moving forward on the tracks you’ve laid.

    The Bottom Line

    You can’t stop the election noise, but you can decide not to let it inside your walls. In a season of high volume, the leader who stays focused on the ‘how’ will always outpace the team caught up in the ‘what-if’.

    Ready to protect your team’s focus?

    The next six months will be a test of leadership clarity. If you are worried that the election cycle is starting to distract your people or muddy your message, let’s talk about a Leadership Communications Health Check. What are the imperative messages that must punch through?

    We help leaders cut through the noise, resolve internal friction, and build a narrative firewall that keeps your team productive through to November and beyond.

    Need some help framing your messages up? Reach out to me by email or call on 021-277-2118.

  • The ‘winging it’ myth

    The ‘winging it’ myth

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    Liam Baldwin

    I was on the speaking list, and it was my turn to walk up to the podium. Peers from other parts of the company had already delivered their addresses covering a range of learnings and successes from the past year. They looked cool and calm, even relaxed, from my perspective in the darkness of the conference room of the (then) Swiss Grand Hotel on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

    As I listened to the speaker on the list just ahead of me, a glance at my watch revealed what I already knew – the schedule was running a little late. However, the plane taking me home to Auckland for work the next day was on time. 

    Within the next few minutes, I didn’t have the perspective of sitting in the dark looking at the well-lit stage. Instead, I was standing at the podium battling the glare and heat of seven suns. It was impossible to see where I had been sitting, with only a few rustles and murmurs as proof the audience of peers and leadership were still there.

    Until that moment, I had the assumption that if they could all do it so effortlessly, then I could. 

    I got through the presentation, which was saved only by the strength of the success I had achieved managing a significant transition which put my part of the business – by at least one measure – ahead of all the others represented in the room. Question time at the end of the presentation went well enough too, because I knew how to respond from practiced delivery explaining and defending my approach.

    My awkwardness and lack of fluency diminished the power of the story describing the journey taken to reach success. Afterwards, in the taxi rushing to Sydney airport to catch the on-time plane, I felt like a failure.

    I was a textbook victim of the ‘winging it’ myth. And it was completely my fault.

    Structure is freedom

    It doesn’t matter if you’re delivering what you think is a snazzy report to a crowd of people with results that speak for themselves, or if you’re trying to sway a single decision-maker in a corner office—if you haven’t built the scaffold, you’re just improvising. And improvisation, while charming in jazz, is a dangerous strategy when your reputation is on the line.

    The technique I eventually learned – and the one that saved me from ever feeling like that ‘failure in a taxi’ again – is a simple, top-down structure. Think of it as:

    The architecture of influence

    The 3×3 Framework:

    The Subject (The Foundation): This is your top line. It’s the single, crystal-clear objective of your communication. If they remember only one thing from your delivery, what is it?

    The Three Pillars (The Load-Bearing Walls): These are the three distinct arguments or themes that support your subject. By forcing yourself to limit them to three, you guarantee you won’t ramble. Think of each of the pillars as a standalone component required to explain or prop up the subject.

    The Supporting Points (The Detail): Under each of those three pillars, you list three specific pieces of evidence – a metric, a story or a fact. This is where your authority lives and breathes.

    The Conclusion (The Final Door): This is your exit strategy.

    Here is the secret: The top line and the conclusion should be two different ways of achieving the exact same objective.

    If the Top Line is your ‘vision’ – the ‘what could be’ – then your conclusion is your ‘tactical reality’ – the ‘what we do next’ or ‘what has been done’. You are essentially opening the presentation by painting the dream and closing it by laying the bricks.

    When you work this way, you’ll relax. You stop worrying about what you are going to say next because you have already engineered the room. You know exactly which pillar to lean on if a question comes from the floor. You know exactly how to guide the audience from the front door of your vision to the exit of your call to action.

    It turns out, the ‘effortless’ speakers I watched in that dark conference room weren’t winging it at all. They were just the only ones in the room who had bothered to build the house before the guests arrived.

    And once you’ve learned how to build it ­– you’ll never want to go back to wandering in the dark again.