Leadership’s Missing Link: The Case for Integrated Communication

15 April 2025 Reading Time: 5 minutes

by Rebecca Self, PhD.:

When Strategic’s new Editor-in-Chief Mike Klein and I started discussing writing a column, I asked, “How are you defining communication?” 

I wondered if the audience was comprised primarily of in-house comms folks like the role he played years ago when we met, or if you’re primarily PR practitioners like founder Orla Clancy, or something else. I started in TV and print, then moved to teaching, then to internal comms and learning and development with a side gig freelance writing. To me, it’s all communication.

That initial exchange got me thinking:

Are we being Strategic?

When I first went to work with enterprise clients—Fortune & Global 500 firms in tech, telecom, financial services, auto makers, manufacturing— I was working with a small but mighty team of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. 

We were Swedish and American, social science PhDs and programmers, MBAs and comedians (really!); we were asked to do amazing work. Here are just a few examples:

* Conceptualize & build a video game-type simulation that trains thousands of customer-facing financial services employees on asset allocation and customer service skills at the same time

* Create a training program + regular product updates that tech salespeople will enjoy listening to every month. (We created a sports radio/game show format with their own execs as characters.

* Design and conduct research to benchmark global PR and advise how to improve in industry rankings

We worked with Sales Departments and Learning and Development, Heads of PR and Marketing, and many other leaders across organizations, but we didn’t only work on PR, Marketing, LnD or Sales. We worked on strategy, mission and execution. We helped our clients get things done, and it was all communication.

We worked creatively with demographic data to invent formats that would appeal to the audiences clients needed to engage. We learned their terminology, technical specs, and methodologies; their values, goals and ways of working—because it’s all communication.

Later, it wasn’t difficult to make the leap to leadership development; it was always clear from organization to organization how strategy, targets, performance management and learning fit together, and it was all an arm of leadership communication—it should work together to serve a common vision.

In The Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook, co-authors Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville organize the book around six leadership essentials:

* Building a Unifying Vision

* Developing a Strategy

* Getting Great People on Board

* Focusing on Results

* Innovating for the Future

* Leading Yourself

Success in each of these six essentials depends upon compelling communication—and aligned, unified, connected people are the key to positive impact.

Of course, it doesn’t always work smoothly in practice.

When Internal Communication Breaks Down

In large organizations communication can break down. Sometimes:

* Customer Service badmouths Sales, claiming they routinely overpromise.

* Parts of the organization act as independent units—mini-kingdoms communicating only as necessary

* LnD becomes a check-the-box exercise, with junior staff buying off-the-shelf products that have limited organizational impact

* Individuals are promoted for technical prowess and have little appreciation for or expertise in strategic leadership communication.

* Senior leaders create more, smaller divisions and siloes because they have not yet developed the skills needed to listen and communicate at scale.

In any large organization (or country or culture), it is easy to become so siloed that we do not see ourselves as one—creating that unity comes down to communication.

The Case for Integrated Communication

In the HBR Leader’s Handbook, co-author Ron Ashkenas says, “Working in silos is more natural than working collaboratively. It’s a tribal mentality.”

It still surprises me that years later there are so many leaders who silo and limit communication across functions, teams, and projects; leaders who don’t connect marketing, sales, learning, and internal communication—including learning—in service of their vision; leaders who generate more divisions instead of greater unity.

To be sure, in times of rapid growth, creating new divisions may be appropriate. In those situations, it is even more important that leaders maintain a shared vision and consistent communication across those units.

Often, though, leaders create smaller units because it seems easier to manage than to listen and communicate, to build alignment, to oversee results at scale. Very few leaders are taught to listen and communicate strategically at the level of the organization.

So we divide when we should be integrating.

Strategic Communication Drives Positive Impact

The paradigm becomes management, not leadership, and the consequences for communication are significant. In many cases, each silo in the increasingly divided organization becomes more tactical, less strategic, more task-focused, and less people-centered.

Spreadsheets, technical results, formats/templates, KPIs and tasks become the focus, not the people who produce them.

That’s a huge leadership mistake. Success or positive impact—no matter what tools, templates or metrics we use to measure and report it—is dependent upon achieving results through communication with people. 

What good, for example, is a vision if it remains your own? 

Likewise, in one of my favorite articles to cite and share, “No One Knows Your Strategy—Not Even Your Top Leaders,” analysis of 124 organizations revealed that only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company’s strategic priorities. And it all comes down to communication.

How to Drive Strategic, Integrated Communication

Sometimes communication leaders say, “Yeah, but how do I get my leaders to understand this?” or “I don’t have a seat at the strategic table.”

Here’s what we’ve seen work in practice, and a published example, too: making the move toward more integrated communication often starts with one person. How could that be you? 

In the example, Cabot Creamery CMO Roberta MacDonald stood for and drove a sustainability agenda far beyond the discipline-specific tactics and existing mandate of her Marketing team. She made the business case (perhaps repeatedly for years), and it made a difference.

Whether your organization is implementing a new robotic solution in a manufacturing investment project, designing and rolling out a new electric car, in the midst of profound organizational transformation, or even combatting environmental degradation in your local community—the same kinds of initial questions apply:

* Who are the stakeholders? Why? What are their backstories, priorities, goals?

* Is there a shared understanding of the situation, challenges and benefits?

* What’s the history or story here? What are we communicating into?

* Where are we headed? Is everyone on the same page?

* How can we unify, integrate, and share more consistent communication?

And anyone can answer those—we should all be able to!

I tested this idea with a financial services leader. He said (of his more junior direct reports), “This works both horizontally and vertically in our organization.” His instructions are:

* Don’t wait for permission or someone else to become more strategic.

* Cultivate connections and build working relationships.

* Think more strategically.

* Learn how to communicate complexity compellingly.

* Then make your business case.

* Build a coalition if you have to.

Becoming more integrated and strategic in our approach to communication can come from anyone, anywhere, in any organization. It just can’t happen soon enough.

Image by Ideogram.ai

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Rebecca Self is a global strategic communication leader with 20 years of experience aligning leadership, culture and organizational strategy. She has worked with Fortune 100 firms, universities, and non-profits, helping leaders drive organizational influence and impact.

Written by: Editor