Forbes Communications Council: Why Internal Communications Either Build Culture—or Quietly Undermine It
Internal Comms Don’t Fail Because Teams Don’t Share Enough. They Fail Because They Don’t Invite Enough.
Most organizations communicate constantly.
Updates.
Announcements.
All-hands decks.
Slack posts.
And yet, many leaders still wonder why culture feels fragile, trust feels thin, and alignment erodes during moments that matter most.
The issue isn’t frequency.
It’s intent.
When internal communications are treated as one-way broadcasts, employees experience them as transactional. Information is delivered, but meaning is missing. Context is withheld. Dialogue is optional.
Culture doesn’t grow in those conditions.
Culture Is Built in the “Why,” Not the Announcement
One of the clearest throughlines in this discussion is that effective internal communications behave less like corporate messaging and more like leadership.
That means:
Explaining why decisions are made, not just what changed
Sharing trade-offs, not just outcomes
Treating employees as stakeholders, not recipients
When teams understand the reasoning behind decisions, they don’t just comply—they engage. They begin to think like owners. That shift is cultural, not cosmetic.
Participation Is the Difference Between Noise and Trust
Another quiet truth: culture is not reinforced by perfectly worded updates. It’s reinforced when people can respond, contribute, and see themselves reflected in the message.
Internal communications that work tend to:
Invite conversation, not just confirmation
Amplify employee voices, not just executive ones
Create shared experiences, not just shared calendars
When people participate, culture becomes something they help shape—not something they’re told to absorb.
Listening Is a Leadership Skill, Not a Soft One
Many of the strongest strategies shared center on listening systems:
Pulse surveys
Open forums
Q&A formats
Feedback loops with visible follow-through
Listening isn’t about optics. It’s about surfacing friction early, understanding how messages land, and adjusting in real time.
Culture breaks down fastest when leaders assume silence equals alignment.
It doesn’t.
Why This Matters Now
As organizations scale, go remote, restructure, or adopt new technologies, internal communications often carry more weight than leaders realize. They signal what matters, how power flows, and whether people are trusted with context.
The companies that treat internal comms as a culture driver—not a delivery mechanism—are the ones that build resilience, clarity, and belonging over time.
I was recently featured in Forbes as part of the Forbes Communications Council, sharing one of 18 practical strategies for turning internal communications into a participatory, culture-building function rather than a top-down broadcast.
You can read the full article here.
