Are You Talking or Actually Communicating?

Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders Podcast. My name is John Mahalio, the president and founder of Elementary Advancement Solutions. The goal of this podcast is to connect Catholic school leaders from across the world to grow Catholic education. Visit us at elementaryadvancement. com to see how we can help you make advancement seem elementary at your school. Well, how are you doing today? Uh, how's things going at your school?

It's always great to be able to check in with people and hear from people all over the world and hear, things that they're doing and things that they're taking on. Um, hearing just from different people about challenges they're facing or, you know, things that they're looking for, especially here over the summer months. And so today I want to, wanted to jump into a topic that He is so

important as a Catholic school leader. I don't care what role you play, whether you're a principal, assistant principal, advancement director, recruitment director, athletic director, dean, any position that you have as a Catholic school leader, Um, the difference between talking and communicating in the role that you play is so critical.

And I think communicating with your faculty, your students, your parents, your community members, your donors, your parish communities, it's so crucial, it's so critical to the success of the role that you're going to play in your school and in your school community. And you know, I think about the game of telephone that we've all seen.

When the message starts out as one thing, but by the time it goes through a whole bunch of other people, it's It's a completely different thing than it started with, and that's why the information that you're conveying needs to come through, needs to come from you. It needs to be consistent, it needs to be thorough, and it needs to be accurate. So we're gonna get into some of those things today. Before we get into that, if I could just take a quick second here to ask you for a huge favor.

If you're enjoying this podcast, if it's something that you're finding beneficial, if it's something that you're finding is meeting that goal of giving you some new tools as a Catholic school leader, if I could just ask you to like the podcast, subscribe to it, leave a quick review if you have the chance, give it five stars, it would be amazing. and share it with others.

Share it with other leaders, and, and by doing that, it's just going to help reach other Catholic school leaders just like you, which in the end is going to help us grow Catholic education. So, appreciate seeing everything, and appreciate, uh, hearing from everybody out there. So let's get into, to talking versus communication, and because we all know that there are, people out there who talk a whole, whole lot, and they don't really actually say anything.

So, And so when we're going to be talking to people and when we're going to be communicating to people, we want to make sure that what it is that we're trying to convey is coming through.

So these are some strategies that I've found to be helpful for me, in terms of, of communicating with the, the respective audiences that we were trying to reach, and I hope they'll help you in your job. First off and foremost is let your families, let your teachers, let your faculty know, How you're going to be communicating with them, and when you're going to be communicating with them. Uh, I'm going way, way back to my days at Broadview Elementary School, which doesn't even exist anymore.

and, and the newsletter would come home on a yellow piece of paper each week. Uh, you know, it's a one page document that told everybody everything. It was probably run through the Xerox machine, uh, you know, a couple hundred times. Uh, it would have everything in there from, you know, the calendar of the week, when report cards were coming out, and and even the scores of like the The PE events that had taken place that week, if it was a hockey week or things like that.

it would tell everything in there and it was a really big deal for the kids to see this. the school would let the parents know when it was coming out and how they were going to get the information to them. And sure enough, every Friday this yellow newsletter went out from Broadview Elementary School. We were the roadrunners, uh, and so it went out each and every week. Now, I recognize times have changed.

Schools have so many different options for what they're going to use in terms of communication now. You have, Thursday folders or things that actually go home in paper format. You have, um, online services that you can use. There's a lot of different services out there that Schools can, can use to deliver their, their information each week. And social media is also a game changer. It allows you to get something out quickly, uh, and to a lot of people all at once.

you know, I guarantee you, you put out there that uh, if you wanna see the

power of social media and actually. Put out there that on social media that it's, it's snowed and that you're going to close and see how many likes and reposts you get in about, I don't know, 15 minutes and then you're going to understand just how powerful, uh, social media can be. First and foremost, you've got to let families know how you're going to be

communicating with them and when you're going to be communicating with them. And whatever you choose, it's up to you. Whatever fits your school community. Let them know how this is going to happen when they tour your school, when they enroll in your school. Let them know at the beginning of the school year, because this allows you to get their contact information.

Maybe somebody's email address has changed, or they've added a different email address, or they want Add their work email to the, to their home email, whatever the case might be, you know, even if the family is in the stages of, of thinking about enrolling in your school, you want to capture that information so that you can add them to your communication list, because this is really a way for you to continue marketing yourself to these

new families, um, showing them what's happening at their school to let them get excited about what's happening so that it makes them want to be a bigger part of your school and make that decision to enroll in your school. So. First and foremost, you've got to let people know how you're going to be communicating with them, and then you've got to let them know when that's actually going to be happening. I guess the next thing to do with that is, then you've actually got to do it.

You've got to do what you say. if you say that you're going to do something, if you say, Hey. We're going to put out our newsletter at Thursday at three o'clock every day or whatever the case might be. Whenever your school has decided that's the best time for you to send out a communication to your families, that's what you've got to hold to, and that's what you've got to adhere to.

If you tell everybody that your newsletter is coming out Friday at noon, and instead of Friday at noon, it gets there on Sunday morning at nine o'clock in the morning, families are gonna get frustrated with that. it's inconsistent. They're gonna get frustrated. They're gonna stop reading it. They're gonna stop looking for it. If you say the newsletter's gonna be there at a certain time, publish it at that time. It just speaks to your integrity as a leader speaks to your integrity as a school.

Uh, when it says that it's gonna release something that, that it actually happens. Now I get it. We've all been there where you're trying to log on to whatever, format you use with constant contact, MailChimp. There's, hundreds of them out there that you can use in terms of communication. And the system is down. Uh, and you can't get on. It's crashed. It's not letting you log in. There's a problem with something. There's a glitch. that happens sometimes. I get it.

You want to make sure that's the exception and not the norm. And when that happens, I tend to just put something on social media just to say, hey. We're having problems with our system. Our newsletter is going to be a little delayed today. we apologize. And people understand that. People will give you the benefit of the doubt once. But if it's happening every single week, then it kind of says that, hey, The problem might not be the problem here. So, do what you say you're going to do.

Publish whatever communication you're going to put out in a timely manner. Make it a consistent manner. so that's something that your parents and your community members are going to be looking forward to and know when they can expect that. When you do put out that communication, whatever method you choose, whether it's a paper method, whether it's a digital method, whatever the case might be, we need to be clear in what it is that we're trying to communicate.

you know, I talk a lot about rambling on and on and on and on, and who knows, maybe I'm rambling on and on right now. But, the same can be said when we're talking in our newsletters, that we try to make them way too long, and communicate way too much information. And we're never really getting to the point of what it is that we're trying to say to the audience. I see a lot of schools that face challenges with this, especially when they have to convey something that might not be popular news.

maybe it's a tuition matter. Hey, we've got to increase our tuition and, uh, it's, it's, it's a little higher than we had hoped it to be. when you're going to create things, when you're going to convey things like that, Uh, I get tuition increase. You want to talk about why it is that the, the tuition needs to be increased.

I think if you share with people the reason behind, matters like a tuition increase or, or things like that, the more information you can provide, the more straightforward you can be, and the more that you can give people in terms of understanding your reason for the information that you're conveying, the It's easier for them to swallow. I think one of the things, I did a podcast a few weeks ago about communicating and conveying how funds were used.

if you're communicating things like how your funds were used, for a particular fundraising event or for an annual fund or things like that, the more information you can provide, the more straightforward that you can be with people in terms of what it is that you're trying to convey. It's gonna lead to making sure there's no questions and confusion in the information that you're trying to present to them.

Now, last thing I'm gonna say about this is when you're putting out information, you gotta make sure you, you, we all have those one or two people on our, on our team. who are just, you can call them the grammar police, you can call them, but they see things. They see things that we, we can look at them a hundred times and we would never see it. And they read it one time and they go, hey, there's a spelling error there. Hey, there's a punctuation error there. Hey, there's whatever.

As you're communicating things, and you're communicating a newsletter, for example, out to your community, you need to make sure that your grammar's on point, your spelling's on point, just the, the, the presentation of whatever it is that you're putting out is on point. we're educators, and so if we're putting out things that are spelling errors, or look sloppy, or things like that, it's just not good. not good at all.

And so, the principle for the principal is to make sure that things are looking good and that they are free of any grammar errors or anything like that, to make sure that you're putting out a great product when you're communicating things to people. Now, families are going to look forward to your communication when the information in

these communications is relevant to them. And so if you're just putting a lot of fluff and stuff in there, that people are, have no interest in whatsoever, it's really going to make it so that your reader rate goes down a whole, whole lot. it's a great way for people to skim over something. even worse, it's a great way for them not to even open what it is that you're sending.

So you want to make sure that whatever you're communicating, whatever method that you're putting out there for people, make sure your content in there is relevant. I recognize that there's some maintenance things that you have to include in communications, but the more you can spend your time on mission over maintenance, uh, it's a powerful thing, and people will start to get excited about things that are happening.

A lot of the programs used out there now can track things like what people clicked on, how many people opened them, what links they were interested in, things like that. If you pay attention to that, that's going to give you a lot of information, a lot of information about what types of things interest your community, and what kind of things that maybe say, hey, We put this out there. We did not have a very big click rate on this particular item, and this is important.

So let's make sure we revisit that again. Putting that out there together, exploring those options to see what type of information is relevant and what type of information that you want to put together is so important for your newsletters. Pull a group, a great way to do it is pull a group of parents and teachers together. And do a communications audit over the summer.

Uh, maybe I'll do a podcast on that just alone, but if you review the communication methods and what you're hoping to obtain for them and you're not meeting what those expectations are, then you gotta ask yourself, why are we doing this, or are we really working harder instead of smarter as it pertains to this particular communication method. So, Think about the feedback that you get. Look at the data that you're getting.

Um, so many things anymore can provide you with so much instant feedback, in terms of, of what an open rate is. I send a newsletter out each, Tuesday and Thursday. If you're not on that, newsletter list, you can, you can get on that, by visiting the website elementaryadvancement. com. I'll be happy to add you to the newsletter. Send it a lot of helpful information and, you know, I can see, uh, how many people opened it.

If this is something that people want to know more about, then okay, let's put something else out about that. It's just about telling people what it is that, that you're wanting to convey to them. And so it's a powerful tool. You have a lot of data that's, that's at your fingertips. Make sure you use it. Work smarter and not harder. One thing that I'm going to recommend to you in terms of communication is thinking ahead.

Thinking ahead and sometimes there's slower weeks for information that, that You know, we're just having those weeks, especially sometimes in the summer months where slower weeks for information that has to be conveyed or taken place. Okay, and I know it doesn't happen often during your school year, but it does happen. So this is where thinking ahead can be tremendous for you.

one of the things I had is a, is a, is a leadership team and a leadership role that would come together every week, once a week for 30 minutes to just discuss what's coming up over the next four weeks. Okay. What type of information are we going to be conveying to this week as week one, next week as week two, next week as week three and four? Let's look four weeks out. What information are we looking to convey to people on social media? What are we looking to put in newsletters?

What are we looking to put in teacher communications? What are we looking to put in our church bulletins? Whatever the case might be, what information is necessary to go out in that particular form of communication and that avenue of communication? If there was something that we felt carried extra importance, it might be something that I would highlight in my own section of the newsletter.

I would always tend at the beginning of the newsletter to write a quick blurb that was maybe a paragraph or two just for our community to know about. Might be something that I highlight in that section. It might be something that we highlight multiple times. This was really a great opportunity for us to come together. We focused on this, nailed it out in 30 40 minutes. But it also kept us always looking ahead of what was coming down the road.

Because the last thing in the world you want to do is to go, Oh my goodness, we forgot all about this, or we didn't communicate this out, or whatever the case might be. And then you're playing on defense and not offense. So it's a great investment of time. I know all of our time is valuable.

But investing that 30 minutes of time each week And honestly, when you get to week two, the things from week two move to week one, the things from week three move to week two things, half of it is already done for you. So it's just, okay, what, what do we need to add? What are some other things that are coming up to this?

Whatever the case might be, you've already got it there and it's all front and center in terms of what's being communicated, by whom is it being communicated to, and what methods are you going to use to communicate those things. Now, two mistakes I see schools make all the time is they try to be too many places and they try to be not enough places. So the thing I always advise to people is you can't be everywhere. But you gotta be somewhere, okay? Uh, social media is part of our lives now.

And whether you decide to be on Facebook or LinkedIn or X or Instagram or whatever, insert whatever site you wanna be at, you gotta pick where you're gonna be and you gotta go with it. If you try to be everywhere on social media, number one, it's hard to keep up with all of it. but number two, it can lead to inconsistencies in your messaging and information.

If your Facebook page says X, but your Instagram page says Y, that's a problem and that's going to lead to inconsistencies and people having problems or leading to more questions. So it's, it's a way to look at what is it that we're going to do? I know there's a high school in our area. They say, listen, everything we're doing is going to be on X. It's going to be on Twitter. every club, every organization has a Twitter account.

And if you want to know what's happening in our school, you better have a Twitter account too. And that's what they go with. And it works for them because everybody understands what they're using. They're not trying to be everywhere. But they've told everybody exactly what it is that they're gonna be. You gotta pick and choose what your spots are, and focus on those. Uh, Andrew Carnegie once said, Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket.

And as it comes to social media, trying to be everywhere just doesn't work. Now, here's the flip side of that. You gotta be somewhere. Uh, if the only social media platform that you're using right now is Myspace, with the utmost of respect to Justin Timberlake, We need to have a conversation. You should reach out to me at elementaryadvancement. com so that we can talk about a communications audit for your school.

Hopefully that's not the case, but, uh, if you're using a MySpace or that's the only social media you've got, let's press pause for a minute. You have to be somewhere online. One of the best ways to do this is, is look at what audience you're trying to reach through each avenue of communication. if you use your website as your only means of communication, you're probably going to be missing a large portion of your community from getting that information.

Your websites tend to be something that New families are going to look at to learn more about your school. Your current families may only go there if they need a calendar or if they need to, do a payment or if they need to, get a physical form or something like that. Know what the purpose of each communication is. method that you're using is. Now, something to look at when it comes time for your website, and this is something that I see way too much, especially with our Catholic schools, okay?

If you're going to have your website, and that's going to be the first thing that people who are considering your school look at, please make sure it's up to date. if you're talking about something on your front page in your banner section that is from 2020 21 school year, you need to take a look at that right away, because that's the first thing and maybe in some instances the only thing people are going to see about your school. It says that this is not something that's a care for you.

It also says that you're not real keen on paying attention to details, and so there are things that are very useful to be on your, your webpage and your, your landing site for that. But I think the things that people really are going to look for that are your current families are things like I said about the school calendar, your handbooks is another great one to have on there, physical forms, things like that.

If you're relying on parents to just visit your school website to see a newsletter, I think you're probably going to be missing out on a lot of your audience that you're intending to. So. Pick what it is. It may cost you a couple of dollars, uh, but it's well worth it at the end of the day to, to communicate and, and also it looks a whole lot better from your school, presents very professionally.

Now, something I say often, work smarter and not harder, we could spend probably 20 hours of our week trying to keep up with newsletters and social media accounts and websites and just go on and so forth. Uh, you would chase your tail all the way and, and it's in, it's just not possible to do. So when we talk about working smarter, not harder, there's ways you can do this.

I mentioned to you about the communications team that we brought together each week, and, and that was so helpful for us to know what our main focus was that we were going to be communicating. But maybe pick a time, if you're the person at your school who is responsible for a particular communications outlet, Pick a time each week where you're going to put out things on your social media outlets.

Maybe it's 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock on Monday, and you're going to schedule things out for the whole week ahead. Things that you already know are coming, because you've had that communications meeting, you can put out there. You probably already know what your hot lunch menu is, if that's something you want to convey. If there's a faculty member that you're going to recognize for that week. Well, you probably already know it.

You probably have their picture and their bio or whatever information it is that you're going to recognize. I understand that when the basketball team plays on Tuesday night, that on Monday, unless you're in the movie Back to the Future, you probably don't know what the score is going to be the following night. So when those things happen, yeah, then you have to go on and do a quick addition. Hey, the basketball team won by this score over such and such team. Great job to our team.

And maybe put a picture. Absolutely. But that should be the exception. A lot of the information that you want to put out there and you're going to communicate to people is can probably be done in advance. You can schedule when a post goes live in advance. I'm using, for example, Facebook Twitter. You can set up when that thing is, when the particular, uh, post is gonna go live. there's tools out there that you, that are free or you can purchase for a very low cost.

And you have to just ask yourself, if I spend ten to twenty dollars a month and it saves you five to ten hours a month, is that worth it? That's a phenomenal investment. Uh, your time is worth more than that. So think about ways that you can work smart. Don't be afraid to invest a couple of dollars To make your life easier, but also to make your school communication look sharper and more effective. So, as I talked to you about, communication, it's a great asset to your school.

And unfortunately, you know, when we see it, and it's done well, it stands out more than the opposite. So, if you're there, and you're doing it well, it's a great asset to you. If you're not doing it well, It's really a big liability for your school. So, be consistent, be clear, and if you do this, you're going to keep your community not only informed but engaged, which is only going to help you move forward for years to come.

So, if we can help you at Elementary Advancement Solutions with your school's communication plan or other strategic goals that you might have, let's set up a time to talk. Let's set up a virtual cup of coffee to discuss your goals. There's no contract, no fee, no obligation, anything like that. pick a time on the website, elementaryadvancement. com, uh, let's set up a time to talk and see how we can help your school grow and how we can move Catholic education forward at your school.

And as I said before, if you enjoyed this podcast, if you think you know somebody who could benefit from this podcast, Please feel free to share it with them, like this podcast, uh, give it a rating, give it a, a, a good review. It just helps us reach more Catholic school leaders, not only in the United States, but across the world. And that helps us grow Catholic education. So, hope this is helpful to you. I hope you find this helpful in terms of your communication at your school.

Maybe introduces some new ways that you can be more effective and efficient in your communication with your community in this coming year.