Say It So It Sticks: Jeremy Maskel, APR on Leadership Communication That Drives Execution

In this episode of the Activating Greatness Podcast, host Alec McChesney sits down with Jeremy Maskel, APR Chief Communications Officer for Omaha Public Schools, to explore how communication shapes leadership, accountability, and execution. Jeremy explains why teams often leave the same meeting with completely different interpretations of what was said and how leaders can prevent that disconnect by communicating with clarity and intention. Drawing from concepts like the ladder of storytelling and targeted communication strategies, Jeremy shares how leaders can align diverse personalities and communication styles to build culture, strengthen trust, and ensure teams are moving toward the same goals. For leaders responsible for driving alignment across organizations, this conversation offers practical insight into why communication is one of the most powerful leadership tools.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec McChesney. And every episode, we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest. Today's guest is Jeremy Maskell, Chief Communications Officer for Omaha Public Schools, and a leader who believes deeply in the power of clarity, alignment, and internal communication. Jeremy's work centers on a reality many leaders experience every day. You can leave the same meeting with 10 people and walk out with 10 different stories about what was said, what matters, and what happens next. Those gaps in understanding create misalignment, erode accountability, and slow execution. Jeremy brings a disciplined, thoughtful approach to communication using tools like audience targeting, storytelling frameworks and frameworks and message prioritization to help organizations move from confusion to clarity and from activity to action. And Jeremy, um, those who have listened to any episode of the Activating Greatness podcast know that I am fired up about the topic of communication. And here we are recording on March 4th at 9.07 Central Time. And I'm ready to run through a brick wall just by talking about from confusion to clarity and our journalism backgrounds and storytelling has me ready to go. But before we dive in any further, want to give you an opportunity to maybe introduce yourself a little bit further to those who who maybe aren't familiar with Jeremy yet.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Well, good morning, Alec. Thank you so much for the chance to be here. I'm really excited about the conversation we're going to have today. And I've enjoyed listening to the podcasts that you and the team have released so far, taking a lot of lessons from it. So, as you mentioned, I have the privilege of serving now as the chief communications officer at Omaha Public Schools. And it really represents kind of a full circle moment. For 10 years before moving into education, I worked in broadcast news across Missouri, Iowa, and here in Omaha, Nebraska. There's actually video of me as a kid after watching newscasts, interviewing my aunt and uncle, visiting from Chicago about their trip, setting up a little outdoor today show set in our backyard. So, though that seemed predestined in a way, I also almost became an educator and decided it'd be easier to start in a school of journalism and transfer to education than the other way around. So then in the second career chapter to get to support incredible educators, doing great things for brilliant young people. It's just a gift. And so when you talk about clarity, action, outcomes, being someone who has the gift of helping drive that for the people we serve is just such a joy. So I could talk all day about communication across fields and professions.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

And I was finding the videos of me a senior year of high school, no image on the screen, just a black image, and me trying to learn how to have the cadence to call basketball games. And I would it would be like NBA recap night two. And I would go through and I would recap all of the games to try to get my cadence down, to get my confidence down. And of course, watching it back made me uh a little bit ill uh on how far, on how far maybe we've come. And you know, I always find it so interesting. This journalism background, where do journalists end up? And you know, when I was leaving the journal star that after graduation, went down to Tulsa and spent some time in Kansas City and I end up in Lincoln. And I was thinking, I I gotta go, I'm gonna go back to school. I want to teach journalism, or I want to find a way to use journalism to make me more effective. But I knew that the newspaper was not gonna be the place where I stayed forever just because some of the frustrations that I was having and um you know eventually landed in marketing and that led to sales. But I always come back to journalism, the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to write, the ability to ask good questions will make you successful in any field that you are in. And so anytime I go back to talk to high school students or college students, I'm like, go take a journalism course, like go join the student newspaper, learn how to learn how to interview people, learn how to ask questions, and you will learn to be a better communicator. So before we get started, I just want on a tangent. I want to give you an opportunity to add anything else to that. This is not about journalism. We're gonna talk about the real stuff, but um I I could I couldn't be more excited that we share that background together.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Absolutely. And applying it to the podcast and leadership, Alec. One of the things that I'm really thankful for the training that I had is as you know, if you're a reporter, one doesn't have the option to come back to the newsroom and say, I don't understand this story, I don't understand this topic yet. We had to figure it out. Too often, I believe leaders say it is the employees' responsibility to figure it out. I've said it, I've put it out there, I've written the email, it's on employees to figure it out. And really, when you take the systems approach, it's on us who have the privilege of serving in leadership to make sure our audience has what they need to go do in the next thing. Um, so I listen in a different way with that journalism training, and it's really helped me be more thoughtful about how I serve and support the people around me and coach others to do the same.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And I I think that's a perfect segue because we're gonna talk today. The episode is really about why communication isn't just sharing information, but it's about creating that shared understanding, the shared framework, and how clarity is the difference between an aligned team and a team that feels like they are running around, you know, chicken head cut off, chaos, like I can't, I can't put two and two together. And I think the other learning from the reporter's lens that I have found super valuable for me is if I could not explain the story in 350 words to a reader who was either reading it or watching it or you know going through the tweets of it, then it wasn't going to land. And very similarly, if I can't get my message across to all of these different audience members, whether that's a team of three or a company of 2000, then it comes back to me too. And so I might think this story is the best, and everybody it falls on on uh, you know, uh an inactive audience. And so I think some of that communication framework and the clarity is is really applicable to this. And I that's where I want to start because in our prep call, you talked about that concept of you have a meeting as the leader, you think this meeting went unbelievably. You made your point. Maybe you even got excited and and and clapped a couple of times, and you're like, okay, the team all understands what they need to do, but you have 10 individuals who walk out of that room and they're telling themselves different stories, and whether that story is positive, negative, in between is their own right to do because when there is ambiguity, they're allowed to create that story in their head. And so I'm curious, in your perspective, why does this happen so often? And what are leaders maybe underestimating about how people receive and interpret their message on a day-to-day basis? It's a loaded question to get started, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

But it's so important, it's so important, and and we see it across organizations, across professions, right? Four people leave the meeting saying the takeaway is the sky is blue, one says it's purple, another says it's sprinkles. And that's what starts the post-meeting meetings, the Slack channel that leadership isn't a part of, and all of that debriefing and conflict, perhaps, anxiety. A number of things in what I observe and in my experience come into play there. One is we overestimate others' attention span and ability to plug in. So depending on the time of day, depending on what else is going on, the people from whom we're asking for time, attention, and action have had all sorts of things happening to them around them. There's things at work, outside of work, things back home with family. And so we have to flip the script of they need to pay attention to what we're saying, to we need to make sure we're designing an experience, an information sharing two-way communication that gives the people around us what they need to do what we need them to do. So, for instance, what's the point? What's the point of this communication? The communication in and of itself is not the end. Too often we think of it as that piece on the checklist. And once we've sent it out, once we've released it, it's done. Strategic communication is a way to achieve a different future state. So, what's the challenge or the opportunity before us that we want to take on? Who do we need to get there? What do we need them to do differently? And that's where strategic communication comes in. So, do we know the point? What's the outcome? Can the leader explain it clearly? And you touched on that, Alec, that so often you hear people retreat into jargon, complexity, abstraction, and while that feels like a safety blanket in the moment, that is a key to creating uncertainty. So, how would our audience speak about it? Would they use the same terms that we might in the planning meeting, but how do we put it in their terms? And we know in education, once a student can take a topic, put it in their own words, and explain it to somebody else, that's the highest, one of the highest levels of understanding of something. So our leaders need to demonstrate that. And then are there two-way feedback loops? I knew as a journalist, it was my job to keep asking questions until I understood it and could relay it like you did. Is there psychological safety in the space, whether that's virtual or in person, small group or large, for somebody to ask a question? How can a leader check for understanding? Are there key takeaways in that conversation or that presentation that you can get feedback on and make sure? Are we making that explicit for people instead of just throwing all sorts of things out there and letting people pick their own takeaways?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

I am trying to get better at responding to these answers on this dang show because I always say, I love it. I love it, I love it. And at the beginning of the answer, I was like, I'm not gonna say it, I'm not gonna say it. But now here I am. I I love it, Jeremy. It sets the table for everything that we want to talk about. And I think there's uh going back to the beginning of that answer, I asked, How do leaders or what do leaders underestimate? And you kind of flipped it on its head, talking about we're overestimating that they're dialed in, that they haven't been getting text from daycare or from their spouse or from their mother-in-law, and that they are 100% focused on this message. And I think when you start at the whole human level, it allows us to understand how we can communicate more effectively. And what I find really interesting about this is the way that I receive information is way different, Jeremy, than the way that you will receive it and the next individual. And somebody might need that one-on-one time because they're not comfortable, they don't have that psychological safety to ask that question. Whereas, frankly, if I'm in a meeting and there's something that is alarming, I don't even raise my hand. I'm just gonna blurt it out and say, I don't understand, I don't agree, I would love you know more information about this. And that is a pro in some meetings and it's a con in in others. So thank you for for walking us, uh walking us through that. I do have a uh a follow-up question. I'm not sure if I'm gonna use it as my bad podcast question. Uh we'll we'll decide uh maybe as we go through this episode. Um, but when we talk about communicating, there's this balance of transparency as a leader. I just need you to know what you need to know. And so I'm gonna come in and this decision was made. And I think back over the last six years, feels like every decision in schools, in business, healthcare has been crazy. Like it's a big decision from COVID to remote to back to office, work from home, everywhere in between. And there's this balance of I want to over-communicate and be really transparent, and I want to just tell them what matters for the role that they're in. And it's a question at velocity we get all the time. It's come up on this podcast a couple of times. How can we balance this transparency and clarity, but but also we don't give them the farm and we don't tell them everything that went into this decision? We're not taking all of their feedback and incorporating it. Um, I lied. This is the bad podcast question because this is a heavy question right out of the gate. So, Jeremy, uh, um amongst all of that rubbish that I just went through, how do we handle this? How, as communicators and leaders, do we handle wanting to be transparent, but also not opening up the can of worms to include every single thought process that the team has had to get to this final decision?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Alec, two things come to mind as you talk about a very real challenge, both for systems and organizations and also for the employees who are forced to adapt and adapt and adapt when they feel maybe at a lot of times they don't have the whole picture as to why they're having to change their approach. Empathy. So the decision makers have to put themselves in the shoes of people who are executing the decision. And recognizing that some people on that spectrum are going to be able to implement the change and say, This is what's expected of me, I'm going to do it. Others, the way they show care and investment in the organization and its success is to need to know more. The other thing that comes into that, and I know it's also one of the things we're going to talk about more deeply shortly, is the audience segmentation.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

So what a site leader needs to know to make meaning for the people they lead and serve, and to customize the action, uh, the action being taken or the decision being made for that specific location is more than maybe people they support. Yeah. And we know in research that we've done with the audiences we serve and in general, right? You go past a few sentences of information on a single topic, people are moving on. We get about eight to 30 seconds of attention, oftentimes, before the other intrusions creep in. So, how can we deliver the top line with enough context for people to know and trust? This was a thoughtful approach, grounded in data with stakeholder input to the extent it could be. And where can they find more? So make it snackable up front, but have places for people to find more. That could be a tactic, might be a QA that people can go find after the staff meeting. That might be feedback loops, that might be two-way communication opportunities where after getting the initial download of new information, they can come to a subs uh subsequent conversation to learn more. We found both in researching other best practices and what we do, that is a helpful approach because you're right, if you lead through every conversation over the course of a year-long decision process and it's five pages printed when you send it out in the memo, people miss it. And that's again where you're throwing so much out there. People can latch on to different things and find or create their own takeaways.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Oh, gosh. All right, I'm glad I asked that question because it also sets us up for this ladder of inference that we it feels inevitable now that I don't have a conversation about this at least once a week in our conversations here at Velocity. It's something that you were were really passionate about in our preparation for this. And, you know, we talk about the ladder of inference and how people fill in gaps with their own assumptions and experiences. Um, but I just want to throw a general question, Jeremy, because I think you're more of an expert on this than I am, and that's why we have you on the show. Walk us through the ladder of inference from your perspective and and how that takes shape inside organizations. I'd love to start there.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

And Alec, I have to say, far from an expert, but someone who is learning and interested and curious about it. I love that. I love that in a in my own sentence, I would say how I think about it is the process through which we get from learning, that could be data, an idea, an observation, to taking the next step. And each step on the ladder is maybe observing data, selecting data, observing data, checking your own assumptions, checking other context, building that shared understanding that's grounded in the data to be able to make the best possible decision. And when we don't take those steps procedurally and consciously, that's where we can jump to assumptions where we're not getting the open rates on this piece of communication that we want. So it's not working, or the audience doesn't like it, or the product is bad. Those are all big leaps to make, unless you've gone through the process and really there's evidence of that. So I'm always encouraging us to ask, how do we know? We say something in a meeting, there's a conversation, we're making a judgment on whether something was successful or not. How do we know what's observable and what's objective before we start layering in? And so for leaders to prevent information recipients from jumping their own ladder of inference, and you just hit on this, we need to efficiently and concisely explain how we got here.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

I'm gonna let that I'm gonna let that sit for a second because uh one, I'm gonna pull that out for a LinkedIn snippet, and I'm gonna I'm gonna bring it to a real life situation that a lot of teams are bringing us in on, uh, which is the conversation around AI, right? And I think this is super interesting, like the ladder of inference and AI. I feel like you could just there's so much content to be had within those two topics because more and more companies are saying, Hey, we want you using AI and we want this to be effective, and everybody, you know, has the right to do it. One person on that team is going to say, AI is taking my job. They are they are prepping for AI to take my job. Another person is saying, I have no idea what AI is. I'm happy to learn it, but I've got no concept of what is going on. And then a third person is, heck yeah, I'm so glad that I'm getting permission to do this because I've already been doing it on my own and I'm off and running. And that same message that we've given to teams, you know, as we've been brought in to talk about AI and leadership. Than AI and sales is being taken in completely different directions because there is no fine line. It is a gray area. It's it's am it's ambiguous in nature right now. Uh, and I kind of bring that back to kind of the dot-com bubble around journalism. And I joke all the time that if newspapers just bought into the internet, you and I would probably still be working in journalism and at a newspaper, making a lot more money and living healthy lives. But I say that to I use that example because I think that ladder of inference language sounds really fancy, right? It sounds over here, but when you think about it, it's Jeremy, Alec, Jennifer, and and and Joe having a conversation and all of us leaving with different perceptions of that conversation, different perceptions of how Jeremy feels about me versus how Joe feels about me. And I'm taking into account the last conversation that I had. And wait a second, they all of a sudden are pushing AI way more today than they were a month ago. What does that actually mean? Why did we get here? And you can see how quickly it unravels from the data that I do have to your point, but also I'm gonna start pulling in data that probably shouldn't be incorporated into this thought process, but I bring that in to make it mucky, uh, and and frankly to confuse myself as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And Alec, as you were saying that so fantastically, I was thinking about conversations that I'm fortunate enough to have with fellow departments, colleagues who serve in communications roles and other organizations. And it's really in a word about precision. Because if you know what the success measure is of what we're trying to change, if you know what the desired outcome of this meeting, this conversation, this update is, you can then with a laser focus come in and say, does this data speak to that? Is this extraneous? And I want to be careful, especially in a communication role, because we're never talking about manufacturing a story or how we got here, because there's a code of ethics behind public relations practitioners and we speak the truth. Yeah. And it is about saying if we need people to do this to achieve the organizational outcome, they need to know and understand this right now. And so, how can we make that possible for them? It's on us to deliver that instead of them to figure it out. And so it's constantly saying, how can we trim this? How can we make it more snackable? Is this going to that outcome and understanding? Is it not? How can we take that out? Precision and that focus is so key.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Oh, I the the concept of precision and cutting, right? Like I think back to the the days of I would write an unbelievable article and the Kansas City Star Sports Editor Jeff Rosen would come back and it would be 700 words less. And he was like, These are the we only need this 500, right? We don't need this other information. It's those are elements that will distract the reader from the 500 words that we are are trying to put out there. And I think it's a good segue. You you hinted at it in terms of the audience segmentation and who we're going to talk to, because the athletic built a whole program, a a business that eventually gets bought by the New York Times on, hey, let's do more, let's write more because there are enough fans out there that will pay for this concept. And whether that has worked or not is entirely up to you because I I still subscribe. Uh, that's a subjective thought process on whether the athletic has been successful or not. But I bring that example up because they had an ideal reader in their mind and then set out to to reach them. When businesses do this, a lot of times they're giving more messaging to a level of VPs or directors, and then the individual reports, especially as you talk about companies that have thousands and thousands of employees across different regions, they might just be getting that final email or an all-hands meeting where the CEO pops up and talks for five minutes, and most of it is like hip hip parade type of messaging. And so you define this in such an interesting concept about this bullseye target group when planning communication. So um, hearing that that example that I gave and and knowing we're talking both within your world, but also within this world of organizations, walk us through your thought process behind the bullseye target, why why identifying that primary target audience is so critical and how we can actually implement that into our communication.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Absolutely. In the context of the school district where I'm lucky enough to serve, our bullseye, if you think from the very core bullseye, that's our publicly elected board of education. Um, the elected leaders who are entrusted with leadership and accountability of our school district. The next tightest ring of the bullseye is our senior district leadership. Um there, our school leaders. We have a hundred fantastic school communities in our district community. Each of them has its own context, um, group of students that they're serving. So those leaders are really essential. Staff, families, our community at large, students. So we always want to for communication or changes that impact multiple groups. We want to start at the center of the bullseye and go out. Other people may choose kind of an echo diagram, a waterfall, but the bullseye, I feel like has really resonated with people I get to speak with. A couple of things. One, you never want somebody farther out on the bullseye to know something that the center of it does not. The other thing is you talk about the five minutes CEO rah-rah, and then people go back to their local sites. The frontline team member is not going to be able to ask a question of the CEO. And so if they ask the next ring in toward the bullseye, their manager, their site leader, and the site leader says, I found out the same time you did, I don't have any other information, we don't know. That immediately erodes trust in what's to come. And so we have to equip people once they know to then become key communicators in and of themselves to the extent possible for that outward group. Because when what the CEO is saying in the television interview matches what the site leader is telling the people they serve, matches what maybe a newer employee is telling people at book club, that's that's when the company earns the greatest level of trust.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

And to me, that's culture, right? Like another topic that comes up all the time here at Velocity and on the Activating Greatness Podcast is conversations and communication is really what builds and sustains employee retention and culture. And, you know, back in the marketing days, I used to say all the time if I ask five people to give me the value proposition or the story of the company, and I get five different answers, then your audience is also very confused because if your internal people are confused, the external people are confused as well. And so I have kind of fallen in love with this bullseye method, and especially that example that you used, because I've been in both shoes in that situation. I've been the manager and I've been the individual contributor, where I am either asking somebody or somebody is asking me, what the heck is going on? Did you know about this? How does this impact us? And I'm sitting there, you know, kind of hands on my laps, like, hey, I got the email at the same time you did. Let's go find out together. And to your point, it even if it doesn't, you know, sever anything, it starts to crack, right? That that level of communication, that level of trust starts to splinter a little bit. And as an individual contributor, I'm thinking to myself, if my manager didn't know this was coming, how are we going to implement it together? Like, shouldn't they know more than I? And then again, now I go back to that ladder of inference and I start, wow, is my manager's job in trouble? Is my job in trouble? You know, and you start creating stories that were more likely than not easily avoidable. Um, if you just are intentional with how you communicate through this process.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

And that's where the empathy comes in too, because as frustrating as it is for you as a contributor to say, how does my manager not know this? The manager is very likely going home, frustrated at the end of the day, that they were squeezed in the middle of this outward push of information and change. And the team that they feel entrusted with serving, protecting, supporting, coaching, supervising, um, they can sense that the people around them know they don't know. Nobody wants to be in that position. Now, what I'm talking about is ideals, right? And we've seen over the last five, six, seven years, you don't always have time to release information to site leaders, let them grapple with it, come around to it for a week, and then you go to the next group out in the bullseye. At times, we've had to go in 10, 15, 20 minute increments because if we don't go that fast, somebody in the third circle is going to share the news on their own. And it ends up on social media to the farthest group out before you can manage that cascade. So we acknowledge that and we talk openly. Um, I love getting to talk with emerging leaders in our organization and other uh colleagues, coworkers about how they experience that. And I share some of the why. That this is our intent. Can't always let people have a great amount of time with it, but whenever possible, we strive to honor those concentric circles of um employee audiences and community audiences to make sure everyone has what they need to then engage with the next group out.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Group out. And even to your point, if it is 15 minutes before, but you say, Hey, we're gonna have follow-up QAs and everybody's gonna have a chance, then the manager can say, Hey, you know, we just got this communication as well. We're we're we're gonna have QA's next week. We'll have more time and we'll be able to go back and forth. Like even just having a little bit of that clarity on what's next can also put people at ease. And I think uh it's a good segue into our final line of questioning before we get into some rapid fire stuff, which is I believe that great communication also allows us to hold people accountable. And when we talk about accountability, it's a very concrete piece of business. I communicated this, you understood it, we understood each other. Now I can count on you, or I can hold you accountable for that follow-through, for that deliverable, for that project. Without that clear communication, we might think we're aligned, but I'm not holding you accountable. So um, this might be the softball that I'm asking in this, in this, uh, in this recording, but talk me through your thought process on how communication and accountability are so intertwined. And the reason I'm so excited about this is people come to us and they say, We've got bad accountability. And we say, How is your communication? And that's typically the the symptom or the the issue is more often than not the communication. So kind of walk me through your thought process there.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Alec, thank you for that because it really goes back to strategic communication. Communication in and of itself is not the point. Strategic communication is about helping the group, the organization, achieve the desired future state. So, again, what do we want or need to be different? Is there something in the products we offer? Is it a culture difference? Is it um a revenue difference? And how do we need people to change their behavior, to embrace the opportunity or tackle this challenge? And what communication levers can help us drive everyone there together? I think a lot, I grew up in Minnesota, so a lot of my references are about the water and boating, but I think a lot about crew. And when you watch crew, someone is in one end of the craft calling the sequence, and two, four, six, eight, ten people are then moving in precision. And as I think about you talking about alignment versus accountability, if that crew team is rowing their boat without a destination, they're aligned, nobody knows where they're going. What's the point? If when people are rowing towards the destination, there's a competition, right? There's time, that's accountability because we know where we're going. There's a smart goal at the end of it. And by using strategic communication to get people uh aware of and on board for the changes that we need to make together. I love the different approach that a really great colleague uses is holding people capable. What does someone need to do what we want to need them to do as a system? It's on us as leaders to give that information, time, coaching, resources. Communication is a part of all that. And then how do we hold them capable of getting there? So we need to define the success. We need to give people the information and resources they need, and then we need to hold them capable by constantly checking in. And those are where those interim measures of success are really key. So are we putting out communication? How is it being received? An interim measure might be the number of clicks, the number of requests for more information, the number of questions we get back. It's Alec raising a hand in a meeting, showing his care and passion by saying, I've got some concerns. Tell me more. How did we get here? Um, and that lets you redirect, adjust as a leadership team to give more information, adapt messaging, address concerns that you didn't anticipate because people were jumping the ladder of inference to achieve their. So I got out a lot of thoughts on it, but but rowing in the same direction is something I come back to a lot. And the accountability, the capability comes in. What is success? Where are we going? When, and how do we know it?

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Uh, well, I the holding them capable, holding people capable. I've got asterisk and stars all over my my notebook for that piece of the puzzle, and certainly going to pull that out on a snippet for LinkedIn because it's such an interesting perspective when you talk about holding people capable versus accountable. You're also looking at what what role do we as the business have to play to help them get there, right? What tools, what resources do they need? And it's a lot different in my mind than saying, hey, Jeremy, here's this task, go do, versus, hey, Jeremy, here's this task, here's the information you need, here's the contact that you should reach out to, here's the internal resource now, go do. And so there, there's even just a little bit of that framework of how I position that in my mind does make a difference uh in that conversation. But I also come back to your point about strategic communication and knowing your people and how your people want to be communicated to as well, right? And coming back to when you think about that ideal reader, um, you know, that ideal reader within the bullseye, that first group might have we need a board meeting. We need to communicate this through. That second group, they might want video, they might want long, like we talk about it as the personality traits within disc and the eagle and the parrot and the owl and the dove. And each of them, the owl, the owl needs a ton of information. The parrot wants to know that nothing is changing too drastically and the vibes are still right. The eagle doesn't care about anything, they just want to know that it's like they don't want you to bury the lead. And the dove is kind of like, where's that harmonious feeling as we go forward? Are we all on the same page? And even just knowing what types of groups are within that bullseye, um, it's just gonna make that communication more effective. And it's also gonna allow you to hold them accountable, hold them capable as you go forward as a team, too.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

That is so true. And that is a part of leadership is as you get to know your audiences, whether it's your team, the organization, what are the preferences? What's what are some of the lived experiences that are shared? What happened in the organization before you got there? Um, and that varies right by sites that we serve. There may be experiences, history um in one part of the organization that another didn't experience. So there are so many ways to get to that. And that could be its own episode, but it's as simple as asking your team, hey, we do a 9 a.m. everyday check-in. Is that effective for you? We do a lot of discussion-based brainstorming. How is that working for you? Do you need information in a different way? At a more macro level, that can be asking people what platforms they're using, um, what level of information they're looking for. And while you can't maybe drill down to individual people at the macro level in the same way, you get a feel. And so there's any number of ways now where people can either search for that information through other researchers or ask it directly of their own people. And that's something we did as an organization last year. We were seeing since 22-23 some of our internal communications dropping in open rates and engagement. So we asked that question. We said, we're observing this data, help us fill in the gaps, tell us more. We got four or five actionable insights that we leveraged as change ideas for this school year. Open rates jumped 10%. And what that means is by listening, asking questions upon which we can act, making those change ideas. We have about a thousand more people this year engaging with information they need to help us get where we're going as an entity, which is really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

I just want to double-click before we move on to the rapid fire questions on the asking questions that you're prepared to act on. Because we hear all the time in an employee engagement, employee survey world, we ask these questions, you get a ton of feedback, and it's like, yeah, well, we're not going to change that. Well, yeah, we're not. And and then you you almost bait and switch or pull the rug, you know, you're asking for this feedback, and someone's like, Hey, I actually would love this, or they, you know, there's a large percentage of people that that feel heard suddenly, but if it's not acted on, that trust again. We talk about eroding that trust. It takes time to build trust, but you know, one or two decisions can really break it. So, um, Jeremy, selfishly, this is one of the episodes that I have been most excited for um because communication for me is the bedrock of all successful relationships, uh, you know, personally and professionally, not to mention your background, but I I firmly believe that when people listen to this, they're gonna have actionable insights on how to communicate better and more effectively. So I really appreciate you taking the time to share this expertise with us. And uh, I'm excited to to have people listen to it, but I'm also excited to put you on the spot here for four rapid fire questions that that we're gonna run through, and we'll see if you can actually stay in the 30-second time frame for these, because nobody has been comfortable staying at the 30-second time frame through 15 or 16 episodes now at this point. So, question number one What is one leadership habit that you rely on every day, no matter what?

SPEAKER_01 43:44

My mornings. And this is recent, this has been a growth journey for me. Tell me more in the role in which I'm lucky enough to serve, the gift I have is to be able to be there for other people throughout the day. There's a Lot of inputs coming our way. There's a lot of decisions. There's a lot going on in an organization as large as we get to serve it. And so, how can I use the start of my day to energize and charge up to be there for other people? So as recently as the last year, I have really protected that first hour, hour and a half that I'm up in the morning. The things around me, the TV's not on, music's not playing, my phone's not open. I'm getting better at that. But I'm just having coffee and still uh with myself and what I want the day to look like. And that helps me charge up. Um, so the alarm goes off weekdays at 4 50 in the morning, which is really tough. And there are days uh that I would rather delay that, but by giving myself that time in the morning, I feel, in addition to the work product I can produce, I feel how much better I am for those around me throughout the day. And I've already missed the 30-second mark, Alex. So you that's 17.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Yeah, you did, but it's a great, it's a great answer. And it is a recurring theme of the leaders, uh, so much so that I joked my wife, we've got an 11-month-old at the house. And so I used to be more of a morning person, and now I'm like, if Maxine is sleeping, I'm not a morning person. Uh, but today I woke up right and early, took my boxing class, and I do you feel better. And it's just something that um I'm I feel like I can't turn left or turn right and not have somebody hitting me in the face with like, hey, get up a little earlier, have some time to yourself, build it out. So I'm gonna allow, I'm gonna allow the uh extension on that one. We'll move to question number two. Uh, what's the the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to succeed today?

SPEAKER_01 46:00

It is a challenge to think about one. I would say focus because that unlocks prioritization, unlocks stress management, unlocks your ability to be there for the team. And there's so much going on. There's so much we want to do, there's so much we may hold ourselves accountable for that we're not responsible for. So, what is our lane? Where do we maybe have influence to help others achieve their objectives? But we need to focus in on what we're supposed to and let that be.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

That's a perfect answer. That that's coming out on LinkedIn. Uh, you'll you'll see that at some point over the next week or two on LinkedIn. And uh, I'm really happy you said it because I just uh as part of my HBR, uh the Harbor Business Review Review subscription, I get a free ebook every quarter, and they have four options. And one was strategic planning, one was communication. I don't remember the third, but the fourth was focus. And I, as somebody who is very good at chasing shiny objects uh as a leader, said, All right, all right, HBR, I get it. And so I just downloaded it yesterday. So I'm very excited to read that. But also, you know, the way that you positioned that was fantastic. Uh, question number three What is one thing uh on the opposite side of this spectrum? What is one thing that you believe great leaders should stop doing?

SPEAKER_01 47:32

24-7 intrusions, and I'll say intrusions into the team they serve's lives. Part of the reason that I knew it was maybe time for a career change was the 24-7 aspect of my previous profession. And at 23, working holidays, being on call is one thing, but for you as you and your family welcome Maxine and other priorities take place, right? That calculus changes. And so I know the team I get to serve is gonna do better and feel better and stick with me longer if I respect that they need time as well. Um and so that you can feel it when teams are always operating at emergency level and that's not sustainable, that doesn't lead to great work.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I don't I don't need to add anything to that. Everybody listen to that one. Uh, question number four, final question before we get into the the end here is what's the best leadership advice that you've ever received, Jeremy?

SPEAKER_01 48:48

The teamwork is beautiful. And forgive me because there's a story with this. But when I worked in small town Iowa, it was a beautiful experience and I learned so much, and I'm so thankful for it. But because our newsroom was really small, I did a lot of the work to bring something from concept to air. So I was out shooting my own story, writing it, editing it, producing certain aspects of it. They call it a one-person band in smaller towns like that. And as I was looking at different markets that had a more robust newsroom staff, and there were more producers, there were assignment editors that would have things to say about story selection, a photographer would capture the video and audio and edit the story that the reporter might write. I had a really great mentor and leader in that organization who said, you're really used to Jeremy doing it all on your own. And that works for you. And I'm excited for what's next for you, and you're going to have to approach it consciously and differently. And my number one Clifton strength is Activator. And so I want to jump in and put things into action. And so I'm really conscious now. When the process has a lot of people involved in it by design, when we enhance something, when we catch something that somebody hadn't thought about to prevent audiences from jumping that ladder of inference, when we accomplish next level work product because of that, I pointed out that hey, I get that when we have to engage and there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, it can feel messy. It feels like it takes longer, it's more complicated. You might have been frustrated. And look at what we accomplished because of that. And maybe that's healing the version of me that loved doing it all by myself 20 years ago, but there really is beauty in it. Um, and nothing that I get to do today could be accomplished individually. My whole role has transitioned from that one-person band going out and telling stories in Northwest Iowa to doing everything through teamwork with the people, the brilliant people around me. And that's such an extraordinary thing to think back on.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

I uh man, I'm not even going to say it because I I want to, but uh, that's a fantastic answer. I'll allow the story that takes us longer than the 30 seconds. I knew that you and I would have trouble keeping this to a 40-minute episode. But again, you know, one of the things that we pride ourselves here uh on here at the Activating Greatness Podcast is if it's if it's good content, people will will listen. And this has been uh exactly what I wanted it to be, Jeremy. So final closing question before we wrap up is who do we interview next? Who is somebody, you know, in your world or world adjacent that you believe is a great leader, um, that somebody is doing meaningful work that others in our audience can learn from?

SPEAKER_01 51:50

I am thrilled to recommend Kara Voss. So Kara and I met at the University of Missouri, studied different programs, and watching her make an impact from corporate America into nonprofit work in culture building, in training, in coaching, in continuous improvement. And the connections that she's maintained from one industry to the next show her authenticity as a leader, her deep knowledge of values, how she merges that with organizational values. In addition to being dear lifelong friends, I leave conversations so energized about how I can do better, insights she has um that are applicable to what I get to do. So she'd be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Well, Kara's gonna, she's gonna watch that video uh because I'm gonna pull that snippet and I'm gonna send it to her and say, this is what Jeremy said about you. So you have to, I'm gonna guilt her into being on on the show, uh, because that's that's exactly the type of stories that we want to to share. And and Jeremy, even you know, the role that you're in with Omaha Public Schools as a chief communication officer, the reason that I reached out to you was leadership comes from all different perspectives, all different stories. And your ability to communicate so effectively to me over the last 53 minutes has me ready to run through a brick wall. And it also has me ready to change some of my communication style to the sales team that I'm working with here at Velocity because so much of this was actionable. It was easy to understand. And I feel like anybody who's listening to it is gonna take a lot out of it. And as you are listening to it and you made it to the end of this episode, make sure that you are leaving that five-star review, your commenting saying Jeremy is our favorite guest so far. Omaha Public Schools is so lucky to have him. Uh, leave it the five stars, download it, all of the above, because although I think this is episode 16 or 17, uh, we've got 65 planned in 2026. I still got to prove that this works. Uh, and so I would love for for your feedback, uh, would love for you to reach out if you want to be on the show or if you believe that your boss or manager or leader should be on the show as well. Jeremy, uh, again, I can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your day uh to share your expertise with us. I think this is gonna be a great episode because you have been a fantastic guest.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Alec, thank you. I enjoyed it, and thank you for your work in helping leaders learn and grow too.

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Absolutely. Well, as always, to everybody listening, thank you so much for being a part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. And we'll see you next episode.