Image of typical corporate town hall meeting

Town Halls: Are they worth the paper they’re printed on?

Mike Klein:

One quote famously misattributed to Hollywood titan Samuel Goldwyn was “a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Now, town halls are a primary official form of corporate verbal communication. They are where senior executives speak to large crowds of employees – either in person or dispersed throughout the remote and hybrid universe – and are such a stable fixture in the internal communication world that they might be a contractual requirement of sorts.

But are they worth the effort to organize, much less the total hours of attendance that they mandate from those in attendance?

I admit that I haven’t done exhaustive research, but I have organized and participated in these events for a double-digit number of years. It has struck me that these events can often suck more value out of an organization than they add to it.

Here’s why:

  • High execution risk: A mistake in the execution of an event – a dead microphone, botched Zoom connection, out-of-sequence PowerPoint slides or inappropriate snacks – may prove far more memorable than the actual content that is shared, or even than the presence of the leader(s) themselves.
  • Low audience relevance: Unlike those face-to-face events that are aligned with major organizational change activity, traditional town halls tend to be timed to align with quarterly or annual financial results. I have seen many organizations take the view that all employees should be motivated by and interested in the overall financial numbers, and use the town halls to force-feed the numbers to the assembled throng. But the discussion of the previous quarter’s numbers that the financial markets require often offer little of relevance to employees, who tend to be more interested in what to do in the next quarter and beyond.
  • Limited and stifled dialogue: Although I have never been to a town hall that doesn’t have a Q&A section, I don’t remember when many questions were asked. Indeed, as the communications “bod,” I found myself doing the asking, to the point where the CEO would see me in the elevator afterward and thank me for the question. As much as I enjoyed the fifteen seconds of fame such encounters offered, it underscored the reality that town halls are lousy environments for stimulating leadership-employee discussion.
  • Something more disempowering happens afterward. Most town halls end with little left to discuss, and generate little post-event conversation about organizational momentum and direction. The CEO or leader presents a view, it lands undiscussed, and employees are left to accept it as given or treat it as marginally relevant
  • The royal box tick: In some cases, the CEO sees his quarterly performance at the town hall as their ticking of the “communication box,” and isn’t seen until the following results town hall.

What’s a better alternative?

I’d like to see leaders have smaller meetings with well-chosen groups of influencers and/or randomly selected members of staff, with no direct managers present.

This makeup would drive two things: channeling real feedback to leaders from real employees and stimulating those employees talk about their experience with their peers and colleagues.

The tricky thing about town halls is that they are but one of the many tasks of the internal communicator that has little to do with strategy or outcomes, but exists to meet stakeholder expectations.

When communicators can effectively make the case that town halls don’t actually help the cause in their current form, there will be some leeway to change the script or even to take them off the schedule.

Otherwise, they will persist, even if they aren’t “worth the paper they are printed on.”

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Mike Klein, IABC Fellow, is Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine and a consultant specializing in internal and social communication.

One thought on “Town Halls: Are they worth the paper they’re printed on?”

  1. Well said, Mike. When companies treat an employee town hall the same as a college lecture, a sermon or an annual shareholders meeting, then a town hall can be unengaged, tedious, boring and unhelpful. Staff sit in silence because they innately know that questions that are poorly-worded, that challenge company norms or advocate for change will likely be met with dismissal, resistance, scorn or ridicule (by management or peers or both). No one wants to be “that person” who is singled out as a complainer or trouble-maker. Forums for real discussion are a different animal, and smaller group meetings are great alternative. There are techniques for large meetings to create dialogue, such as polling employees in advance about the topics of most concern and soliciting advance questions from staff. At the event, instead of having the CEO ask for random questions from the audience (which rarely works), have a moderator manage the flow of questions and answers, more like a talk-show host. If an organization is serious about and devises opportunities for listening, people will engage.

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