By Kristy Grant-Hart
KristyGH@SparkCompliance.com
“Have you got your tutu and your copy of Fifty Shades of Grey?” Jane Mitchell asked me on my way to the airport. Perhaps this seems a strange question on the way to a compliance conference, but when your topic is making compliance communication relevant and personal to your audience, it nearly made sense.
Communications consultant Jane Mitchell and I set out six months ago to create a presentation about how to make compliance and ethics communications interesting and absorbable to the audience. When we were drafting the presentation for the European Compliance and Ethics Institute in Prague, she told me the true story of a top scientist at an organization who started wearing a tutu to work. His behavior was alarming to his co-workers, and the compliance officer had the unenviable task of deciding what to do about it. Wearing a tutu was against the company dress code, but the managers didn’t want to upset the scientist. They talked to the employees and agreed that one day a month the man could wear his tutu to work. The compromise and communication made everyone comfortable with this unusual situation.
Jane and I donned our tutus halfway through the presentation to the delight and confusion of the audience members before telling the story. During the section about humanizing yourself so that you’re more approachable, Jane wore her cycling helmet and I wore an American baseball cap. We also got out our reading material – a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey and my book, How to Be a Wildly Effective Compliance Officer. We also picked up our whisk and dog bone. Our point was that when people are used to talking to you about the things that they enjoy in life – kids, sports, cooking, pets, vacations – that they are much more likely to talk to you when things are hard or going badly. Being a good communicator isn’t just about corporate communications, it’s about the everyday conversations that help the compliance officer to be both a friend and protector of the people in the business.
We showed a short video midway through our presentation about the corrosive effect that blame has on individuals, organizations and relationships, and the audience shared marvelous anecdotes about their own experiences of good and bad compliance communication.
As I get ready to leave later this afternoon, packing my tutu back into my carry-on, I’m filled with warmth and good memories of a truly terrific conference. Thank you SCCE. I never thought I’d enjoy wearing a tutu on stage after the age of 7 in my ballet performance. Who says dreams don’t come true?