How Can Little Jingles Impact Your Leadership Communication?

Finish this jingle: The best part of waking up…

…is Folgers in your cup. Why was that so easy to remember? How many times did you hear or see that commercial before you could recite it yourself?  Is it possible to make your internal communications as catchy as a jingle?

An entrepreneur I’m mentoring recently asked to meet and discuss a problem he was having. His company had some exciting growth but he was noticing that his employees were trying to do too much at once. Multi-tasking was destroying their focus, and he worried that the loss of focus would result in decreased growth and productivity this year.  Sound familiar?  

I then asked him the following question: “How are you communicating this problem and how often are you discussing it with your team?”  I could immediately tell by his pause and the stuttered response that he was confused.  He answered: “Well, I’ve discussed our company mission a few times with my leadership team, and at the beginning of the year I informed every one of our mission on a company call. Everyone knows.”

It was almost halfway into the year so I asked him what his plan was to re-communicate and over-communicate.  Crickets.     

I knew he was flustered so I offered a different question. “How often do you think people need to hear the same message to believe it?”  He responded: “Not sure.”  I told him that experts say you need to hear the same message at least 7 – 8 times before you begin to believe it.

Although many leaders see redundancy as patronizing, great leaders get past the discomfort of thinking they’re insulting someone’s intelligence.  You need to communicate your important company message just like a popular jingle; repeat it and through different channels so that your employees remember it.

Here is one of my favorite jingles I bet you know:

“Scooby Dooby Doo, Where are you? We’ve got some work to do now”

Do you want to learn from one of our guides? Click below and watch principles of effective communication with Patrick Lencioni.