For the first time in more than sixty episodes, Chuck and Jenni are in the same room — recording in Toronto, straight off IABC World Conference and Comms Reboot — and the four reports they work through all turn on the same idea: the number on the slide is rarely the story. Workshop resets the internal email benchmark to a 73% median and quietly contradicts most of what comms teams actually do. The Wall Street Journal finds chief communications officers finally in the C-suite, paid $400,000 to $450,000, and drowning. Culture Amp puts up to 40 points between how the C-suite experiences work and how everyone below them does. And a Harvard Business Review study on headphones turns into the most argued-over segment of the episode, because what coworkers punish is not the music, it is the story they invent about why you are wearing them.
Chuck opens with Workshop’s 2026 internal communication benchmark report, drawn from 186 million emails across 580 companies and 13 industries, which resets the median open rate to 73%. The shift from last year’s 76% average to a median this year is the point: it keeps AI bots and filtered inboxes from skewing the figure, so the headline reads as a recalibration rather than a fall. The findings underneath cut against what comms teams actually do — sends under 500 recipients open at 73% against 58% for sends above 5,000, text-only email beats image-heavy email on click-through at 19% versus 15% even though 97% of emails carry at least one image, four to six sends a week is the engagement sweet spot with click-through dropping sharply past eleven, and personalization is worth a steady three points (71% versus 68%) while fewer than one in eight emails use it. Jenni has already run the experiment on her own list — pulling the images out improved response rate and open rate together — and her frustration is that other business owners look at the same data, agree, and then change nothing, because communicators have been taught that an image is compulsory. She is less convinced by the small-send finding, which the report treats as proof that relevance matters: a list under 500 may mean a carefully segmented audience, or it may just mean an organization with fewer than 500 people. Chuck’s version of the same question is whether a highly personalized send to 5,000 would beat the recurring all-company blast, and he notes that a CEO email announcing bonuses will open beautifully regardless. Jenni also benchmarked internal email against marketing email, which sits between 26.9% and 42.35%, and concluded internal is comfortably ahead. Where they land together is SMS, clicking at nearly three times email’s rate, a channel Chuck says communicators have opted out of on employees’ behalf when the honest move is to let people opt in — while Jenni notes that data protection rules in parts of Europe make texting personal phones genuinely hard, and that SMS may be stuck at the crisis end of the channel mix because that is the only place it has ever been used.
The Wall Street Journal’s account of the CCO’s rise has nearly half of chief communications officers now reporting directly to the CEO, up from 40% in 2023 and 37% in 2015, with median base pay of $400,000 to $450,000 after a 12 to 14% climb in two years and roughly one in seven CCOs earning $2 million or more. Gap, Peloton, State Farm, Accenture and Reddit have all hired their first-ever CCO, and the stated driver is fear of becoming the next Bud Light. The satisfaction numbers are where it curdles: only 33% of CCOs feel well equipped by their budgets against 50% of CMOs, and workload satisfaction cratered from 52% to 34% in under a year, which The Conference Board summarizes as going from wanting a seat at the table, to having it, to being overwhelmed by it. Goodyear’s Travis Parman calls himself chief truth teller so he can push back on his CEO. Jenni’s objection is not to the pay but to what the role is being asked to absorb — the article reads to her as leadership creating a position it can hand reputational risk to, which is neither fair nor legally true, since directors carry that responsibility too. Chief truth teller lands the same way: noble as a title, damning as a job description, because in a healthy leadership team everyone tells each other the truth, and if one person has to be designated for it something has already gone wrong culturally. Her verdict is that the role has swung too far too fast, arriving with a large pay packet and not enough budget or resource, and that it now needs to settle. Chuck is unsurprised by the money and unsurprised that nobody thinks their budget is sufficient — CMOs have said the same for years — but the reporting line stops him: if nearly half report to the CEO, where does the other half sit. Both hosts flag the same limitation for listeners, which is that the piece is almost entirely about external comms and corporate affairs, with internal comms barely in the frame.
Culture Amp’s leadership report, built on 1.7 million employees and 22,308 senior leaders, finds C-suite executives rating their workplace experience up to 40 points above individual contributors — 78% favorability at the top against the low sixties below — with perception of leadership declining every year since it peaked in 2021 and drifting back toward pre-pandemic levels. Employees under high-performing leaders are 4.5 times more likely to be high performers themselves; under low-performing leaders they are three times more likely to underperform. Leader turnover drives 40% higher attrition six months out, confidence drops further for indirect reports than direct ones, and the trusted leader profile is both the most common at 38% and the most effective, with 71% of those employees rarely looking elsewhere. Chuck’s cause-or-correlation question gets a flat answer from Jenni: leaders make people great. Not entirely responsible, but a significant share of team performance, because a good leader nurtures talent, listens, supports, and has the difficult conversation with the person who is not performing instead of avoiding it — and yes, great leaders also attract and keep people who want to do good work. Chuck’s addition is the cascade: a weak leader produces a weaker layer beneath, which produces a weaker layer beneath that, where a strong one builds a pipeline other people want to join, and organizations keep promoting into leadership the people least able to do it. Jenni pushes on the report’s leader profiles and on what she has argued before, that a leader cannot be everything to everyone, and adds the pattern she sees most often: rubbish at the top does not automatically mean rubbish all the way down, because there is usually brilliance in the middle holding it together, overwhelmed and burning out, and eventually leaving. Chuck names that directly — the shield those people create has a limit — and Jenni’s answer is the shortest line of the segment: just be better.
The last story was meant to be a throwaway and becomes the longest argument of the episode. Harvard Business Review’s write-up of research across more than 2,700 employees, published in Personnel Psychology, found that when coworkers read someone’s music as leisure they rate that person as less engaged, offer less help, and treat them more rudely — and when they read it as productivity the penalty disappears. The catch is that being seen as focused earns no extra goodwill; it only cancels the penalty. It held even when the listener genuinely was focused, because people were judged on the story their coworkers invented, with visible leisure cues like head bobbing or singing along triggering the bad read and a quick social account (“heading into a deep-work block, music’s going on”) shifting it. The researchers tell managers to treat it as an attribution problem rather than a discipline one and to default to assuming productivity. Chuck’s position is zero judgment, grounded in the open-plan office most return-to-office employees are walking back into: noisy neighbors on sales calls, meetings held in hallways, and no realistic alternative, since the focus booths Jenni suggests are, by his account, not built for him. Jenni finds headphones at work genuinely odd and says so — to her they signal “I don’t want to talk to you,” and work is a social thing. Chuck’s rebuttal is that she is doing exactly what the study describes, inventing a story, and that the person might be listening to nothing at all. Her real argument survives it: even if the fair reading wins, someone in the office two days a week with headphones on the whole time is not building the relationships that hybrid work has already made harder, and no manager can or should police that — a quick word to colleagues does more than any policy. Chuck’s counter-test is whether she would rather have someone working in headphones at their desk, still in the room and approachable, or working all day sealed inside a booth. Jenni concedes the booth is worse, then lands the point she came for: things that are best for you can still have an unintended cost to the relationships around you.
What is the internal email open rate benchmark for 2026? Workshop’s 2026 report puts the median internal email open rate at 73%, with the top quartile at 83%, based on 186 million emails across 580 companies and 13 industries. It moved from a 76% average last year to a median this year specifically to stop AI bots and filtered inboxes from inflating the figure, so the lower number is a recalibration rather than a decline.
Do plain-text internal emails perform better than image-heavy ones? On click-through, yes. Workshop found text-only emails hit 19% click-through against 15% for image emails, even though 97% of internal emails include at least one image. Jenni ran the same experiment on her own mailing list and saw open and response rates both improve after the images came out.
How many internal emails should you send per week? Workshop’s data puts the engagement sweet spot at four to six sends a week, with click-through dropping sharply past eleven. Jenni’s reaction on air is that four to six still sounds like a lot, and is worth checking against what your audience actually receives from every other function too.
Why does SMS outperform internal email? Workshop found SMS click rates run at nearly three times email — 29% against 11%. Chuck’s argument is that communicators have opted out of the channel on employees’ behalf and should let people opt in instead. Jenni’s caution is that some European data protection rules make texting personal phones difficult, and that SMS is still widely treated as an emergency-only channel.
How much does a chief communications officer earn? The Wall Street Journal reports median base pay of $400,000 to $450,000, up 12 to 14% in two years, with roughly one in seven CCOs earning $2 million or more. Nearly half now report directly to the CEO, but only 33% feel well equipped by their budgets and workload satisfaction fell from 52% to 34% in under a year.
Do coworkers judge you for wearing headphones at work? The research in Harvard Business Review says they judge the reason, not the headphones. Read as leisure, you are rated less engaged, helped less, and treated more rudely; read as focus, the penalty vanishes but you gain nothing extra. It held even when people genuinely were focused, which makes it an attribution problem for managers rather than a discipline one.
Jenni: Welcome to Frequency. I’m Jenni Field.
Chuck: And I’m Chuck Gose. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture and employee experience. Beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters. Jenni, this week we’re going to be talking about a few reports. One from Workshop, all focused on email, another from Culture Amp about leaders, plus the lives of CCOs and what employees are signaling by wearing headphones. But it’s a bit different for us this week. After 60-plus episodes, we are now recording in person.
Jenni: I know, it’s so weird. You’re here, and I’m here.
Chuck: I’m just glad I’m outside of arm’s reach. You would have to make an effort to come after me.
Jenni: We’re not going to get punchy today. But we’re in Toronto because there was IABC World Conference, which you were speaking at, and then we had Comms Reboot, which I was running with the folks at ContactMonkey. How was IABC World Conference?
Chuck: The highlight was getting to see old friends, right? That’s always the benefit. And I think I’m not alone when I say that the overall experience people had was probably a bit lackluster. Not very impressive for a world conference. And I think especially for people who have attended world conferences in the past, they’ve seen this decline. It was obviously still great to speak at the event, and not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but I’m always happy to do that — I know that people gave Panaki Kathyara and me some really great feedback about our session. We had a lot of fun doing that. So that was really the highlight, just getting to see friends. It was the first chance Panaki and I have had to actually co-present in the same session. Of all the times we’ve known each other, all the events we’ve been at, we’ve never co-presented. That was the first time. So it was worth the trip. It was good to be a part of. But there’s also this cloud over it when you understand this event just isn’t what it used to be.
Jenni: I mean, I was around in the hotel just sneaking about, and it did feel smaller. But then I remember Vancouver in 2019, which was 1,500 people and it was just out of this world. But I did manage to bump into loads of people in the lobby and stuff, which was really cool. And we had Comms Reboot, which was good — that was yesterday now, as we’re recording. So we’re both still full of beans after three days of networking. But Comms Reboot was great. We had a really good bunch. It’s an unconference. I loved it. Second time doing it.
Chuck: It’s a great event because it’s a very unique event. And I know that this year there was a slightly smaller attendance than in the past, but I think that made it a better event and a better experience for everyone, because there were deeper connections made. There was a chance to have more in-depth conversations. I think everybody then got a chance to participate. When you’ve got too many people in a room, it’s hard for everyone to find their voice in there.
Jenni: Yeah, I’m excited for you to come to London, where there’s going to be about 150.
Chuck: I look forward to that. That’s October ninth. Comms Reboot is there. Well, let’s get into our articles for this week. First up, Workshop’s 2026 report draws on 186 million emails across 580 companies and 13 industries, with a new median open rate benchmark of 73%. That’s a move from a 76% average last year to a median this year. So they’re comparing the numbers a bit differently, really to keep AI bots and filtered inboxes from skewing the number. That’s the focus. So the headline figure is best read as a recalibration, not really a decline, which I think is important to point out.
Chuck: The findings that matter most in this are the ones that go against what comms people most often do, Jenni. Smaller sends beat mass blasts decisively. Under 500 recipients hit 73% open versus 58% for sends to 5,000-plus. I think we’ve all been in those spaces where we’ve sent emails to sometimes even more than 5,000 people. This is the part I found really interesting though. Text-only emails outperform image emails on click-through rates, 19% to 15%, even though 97% of all emails include at least one image in there. The engagement sweet spot is four to six sends per week, with click-through dropping sharply past 11. Please do not send any more than 11. And personalization delivers a steady three-point open rate lift, 71 to 68, yet fewer than one in eight emails actually use it. Channel mix in the report shows up too. SMS click rates run nearly three times email, 29% to 11%. And Journeys, these automated campaigns that people create, average an 83% open rate. So my question to you, Jenni, is if text-only emails are beating image-heavy ones on click-through, but the vast majority, 97%, have an image in it — what are we designing for? Are we designing for us, or are we designing for the employee?
Jenni: This made me laugh, because when I was looking at my marketing emails last year, I heard this about just drop the images, because you don’t need them, because they feel like sales emails. So we took all of our images out of the emails that we sent to people that sign up at Redefining Communications, and it improved everything. The response rate, open rate, everything. So I’m a big fan of text only. But what’s fascinating is talking to other people that run businesses and saying to them, take the image out and do that — and they all go, yeah, makes sense, and then they don’t do it. So I’m like, the data is telling you to do it, just do it. So I don’t know why there’s still images in them. I feel like as communicators we’re told that an image tells a thousand words. What’s the phrase? There’s some phrase like that. So I feel like we just can’t not do it. It’s like a compulsion of, I need to put some sort of image in there.
Jenni: The thing that terrifies me about this report though is that people are sending four to six emails a week and that that’s the sweet spot. And that made me think back to when I would send an all-company email — I definitely was not sending four to six emails a week. And that just made me think of the volume that people are having to send, and how much stuff is out there. And then I did have a look, because I was interested in how internal email compares to external email. I thought, I don’t know what the benchmark is. We’re saying that this is a 73% open rate — so what is it for email marketing? So I had a little look, and it is 26.9 to 42.35% open rate. So they’re saying it’s probably going to settle at about 31 to 34%. So internal email is way outperforming marketing stuff, which I just thought was quite interesting. But my other question on the report was this 5,000-plus versus 500 recipients, because I feel like there is a causation-correlation thing here. Does that mean that you have segmented your list by some sort of audience segmentation, or does it just mean that your organisation has fewer than that?
Chuck: Could be a bit of both.
Jenni: Yeah. And I just thought — in the report it says which proves that relevance really matters, and I was like, I’m not sure that is what that proves. I’m not sure that’s a relevance thing. I think it’s more, this is how many people we’re sending it to.
Chuck: Yeah, I’m curious on that. Let’s say if it is the 5,000-plus, which is a lot of enterprise, a lot of Fortune 500 — if it’s a blanket email to everyone, and it’s a recurring blanket email to everyone, what happens? Versus perhaps a 5,000-plus email send that is highly personalized, highly targeted. Everybody gets an email, but everybody’s is going to be a little different. And if you’ve done that for long enough, would your open rates be higher than the blanket email? But also I imagine if the CEO sends out an email to 5,000-plus people with, hey, here’s your bonus this year, you’re going to get a pretty high open rate for that.
Chuck: I think what’s also interesting, and this is an area that I believe internal communicators have strayed away from, is SMS. The fact that that has such a higher rate — we have to stop ignoring that. We have to give employees the choice. If employees want to receive communication via SMS, by all means, let’s do that. Not everyone’s going to opt in. It has to be opt in, I think. But if you opt in, there’s a return on that.
Jenni: But I think also there are different laws about that in different parts of the world. I think there are certain parts of Europe where you’re not allowed to send things to people’s personal phones and stuff like that, which makes that very difficult. But I do think — I was just going to say I’m quite old then — I was thinking about SMS when I was working in house. And for me, and I don’t know if it is because I’m old, it was used for crisis. It was used for the emergency stuff. It was used to cut through all the noise and be like, there’s no supply of milk, or there’s something going wrong. I wonder if that’s still the case, and that’s why it hasn’t caught up with other channels — it’s still seen as a crisis and emergency channel.
Chuck: I would love to have communicators go to employees and ask them that question. Because I think for a lot of employees that’s a more natural place and an easier place to sometimes look for communications, especially whether it’s true urgency. I don’t know what the case is you just said — there’s no milk. Is that what you just said? We have plenty of milk, I think, here in the States.
Jenni: Yeah, we had like a supply thing.
Chuck: But is it that, or is it under-indexed because of that? Are we missing out on engaging employees in a new platform just because we have a predisposed view of what it should or should not be out there? And I would rather employees opt in or opt out than us just opt out for them.
Jenni: Well, yeah, that doesn’t make sense.
Chuck: All right, next up, this is from the Wall Street Journal, sent to me from my former boss, Sonya Firenza. Thank you, Sonya, for sending this along. Nearly half of chief communications officers now report directly to the CEO, up from 40% in 2023 and 37% in 2015. Pay is climbing with the title. Median base is $400,000 to $450,000, up 12 to 14% in two years. Roughly one in seven CCOs say they earn $2 million or more. Gap, Peloton, State Farm, Accenture and Reddit all recently hired their very first CCO. The driver behind this is fear — that everyone is trying to avoid being, quote unquote, the next Bud Light.
Chuck: The catch is in the satisfaction numbers. Only 33% of CCOs feel well equipped by their budgets, against 50% of CMOs, and workload satisfaction cratered from 52% to 34% in under a year. The Conference Board’s line is that comms went, quote, from wanting to have a seat at the table, to having it, and now being overwhelmed by it. Goodyear’s Travis Parman calls himself, quote unquote, chief truth teller, so he can push back on the CEO. This is worth flagging to our listeners here: almost all of this is really focused on external comms and corporate affairs. Internal comms is barely mentioned in this report. Jenni, chief truth teller sounds quite noble — until you’re the one telling the CEO what they don’t want to hear, perhaps even during something like a layoff. Is the value of comms now being honest, or controlling the narrative? And can it genuinely be both?
Jenni: I think it can be both, but when I was reading this article, what stood out for me was what felt like a leadership need to not have any accountability or responsibility. It’s like, let’s create these chief communication officer roles and they can be in charge of making sure that we don’t do anything stupid. And then it’s all on them, which is why I think everyone feels very overwhelmed. Because that’s how it feels when you’re reading the article. I was like, this isn’t fair. It’s not a case of, let’s have a chief communication officer and then they’re responsible for the entire risk and reputation of the organisation. Because that’s not fair or true. As a director of a company, you are responsible for that as well.
Chuck: This is now your job.
Jenni: Exactly. I didn’t like that. It felt like leaders were creating these roles to kind of go, this is on you. And I just thought that was a bit horrible. And I think that chief truth teller is unfortunately what communicators feel like they have to do. It’s a bit like being the ethics police or whatever it is. You said it sounds very noble, but actually, if you’ve got a strong leadership team, they should all be telling each other the truth. And if you’re the one person doing that, then there’s something very wrong kind of culturally. But you should have a good enough relationship with your CEO to be able to say, that’s a stupid idea, we’re not going to do that, and this is why, and this is what we’re going to do. I think you can do both, to answer your question about controlling the narrative. I mean, control is an interesting word there, with social media and stuff. But I think that the role of the CCO still feels so new that it’s almost like it’s swung so far the other way with a massive pay packet. And now it needs to find somewhere to settle. It needs more budget. It needs more resource. It needs to settle. And I don’t think it’s there yet.
Chuck: Yeah, I don’t think there’s ever enough budget. So I wasn’t surprised by the fact that they said they didn’t think they had enough, because like they said, CMOs don’t feel like they have enough, and CMOs have been around for quite a while. What’s interesting to me though is the reporting structure — that nearly half report to the CEO. I’m curious where the other half of the CCOs report into. Because I think a lot of C-suite, you think it’s like the CEO and then you’ve got your C-suite. I hadn’t really thought of it as, are there C-suites that report to other C-suites who then report to — which one is it?
Jenni: And then are you in the C-suite or are you in the D-suite?
Chuck: Is it the C-suite, the D-suite, the E-suite? I don’t know. The pay doesn’t surprise me. I think this is a big job. It’s a lot of money. While the two million is a bit — I think that’s the extreme. But when you look at some of these executive pay packages, it is extremely insane.
Jenni: That’s insane.
Chuck: You know, the four hundred, four hundred and fifty thousand — that’s a good job, that’s a great salary. So I’m not surprised by that. I’m not surprised by the disappointment in budgets. Again, nobody’s happy. Everybody wants more. It was the reporting structure that caught me a bit off.
Jenni: Yeah, where are you?
Chuck: All right. Next up, Culture Amp analyzed 1.7 million employees and 22,000 senior leaders and found a canyon-sized sentiment gap. C-suite executives rate their workplace experience up to 40% higher than individual contributors — 78% favorability at the top versus the low sixties below. Perception of leadership has also declined every year since peaking in 2021, drifting back toward pre-pandemic levels. Also worth mentioning in this: employees under high-performing leaders are four and a half times more likely to be high performers themselves. Under low-performing leaders, they’re three times more likely to underperform. Leader turnover drives 40% higher attrition six months out, and confidence drops more for indirect reports than direct ones. The damage travels throughout. Their trusted leader profile is the most common, 38%, and the most effective, with 71% of those employees rarely looking elsewhere. Jenni, employees under great leaders are four and a half times more likely to be great performers. Cause or correlation? Do great leaders build great employees, or do they attract and keep the ones who are already great?
Jenni: It just feels like this doesn’t feel like there’s anything massively new. I feel like that’s just common sense. If you’ve got a really great trusted leader, then you’re going to have a high performing team. There’s so much data out there about that. So it just makes me laugh, because I just think, yes, when I was reading it. I think that the leaders make people great. Like I do. I don’t think you can say, you’re all just brilliant, and I’m also a great leader, and isn’t this just lovely how we’ve all come together. I don’t think that’s true. I think that a really great leader is going to nurture talent. They’re going to listen. They’re going to be supportive. They’re going to create a high performing team. Otherwise, what’s the point of the leader being there if they’re not doing that? So I think that the leader is not entirely responsible, but I think they play a significant role in that team performance. Because I also think if you are a great leader, you’re going to have those difficult conversations with the people that aren’t performing, and you’re going to address that and deal with it in the right way and not avoid conflict and all of those things. I think they probably do attract them, and I think they keep the ones that are good. I think that great leaders just attract the people that want to do good work as well.
Chuck: I agree with you. It seems obvious, but I think it’s worth reminding all of us and repeating to all of us the value of great leaders. The downstream effect, or upstream effect, of that. So if you think about — let’s go to our CCO, let’s say they’re not a great leader. Well, then that next row is going to struggle. So then they’re not going to be great leaders. Well, then the next level. It’s going to be a down, versus the possibility of building a pipeline of people where these leaders are elevating people to greatness. And then there’s other people who want to be elevated, because they see, wow, look how great everybody’s doing. They then want to become a part of that. Yet companies often put people in leadership positions who are not great leaders and who underperform. So that’s where these numbers are just a reminder to everybody of the impact they have on everyone’s success — not just the bottom line, everyone’s success throughout an organization.
Jenni: The report has the different types of leader in it as well, in terms of the trusted leader, and I thought that was quite interesting in terms of the different types. And we’ve talked on the podcast before about some other research that was like, a leader can’t be everything to everyone. I think it was off of Bruce Daisley’s podcast. And it was sort of saying you can’t expect leaders to do it all, and you were like, well, you can’t. But I thought this was interesting about the different types. And I do think that, to your point of as you go through an organisation, there are probably different types of leader going through that organisation, that you need to show up slightly differently depending on where you are and how you’re nurturing and what you’re doing. I don’t think if you’re not a good leader at the top you can then have rubbish leaders all the way through your team. I think you could be rubbish at the top and have some brilliance in the middle that’s probably overwhelmed and burning out and trying to hold it all together. And they will eventually go, because that’s obviously what’s going to happen. But I think you can have different levels in there. But I think that’s what makes organisational culture hard. I think that’s what makes so many things hard. And we talked about being at Comms Reboot this week, and we all heard conversations from people talking about lack of recognition in organisations and things like that. And that all links into line managers and leaders and doing all that really great stuff. People still stay, you know, miserably, but they do stay. So I think there are just lots of different elements to leadership all the way through. And I liked that in the report, the different types.
Chuck: I think you bring up a good point though about the burnout side. Is this one of those indicators of it, where you’ve got underperforming leaders and you’ve got great people below them who have to put forth one, two, three x, whatever, the effort to battle against that? And they’re maybe creating a bit of a shield for it, but eventually they have a limit.
Jenni: Yes, everyone’s always going to peak, aren’t they? You can’t do it forever. But it’s just rubbish when you get that. I just think, just be better.
Chuck: Right. Well, we would all want people to be better about that. And our last article for the week: across studies of more than 2,700 employees, the same sentiment showed up every time. When coworkers read your music as leisure — quote unquote, just passing the time — they rate you as less engaged, offer less help, treat you more rudely. When they read it as productivity, the penalty disappears. So this is employees wearing headphones while they’re at work. But here’s the kicker. Being seen as listening to focus earns you zero extra goodwill in the workplace. It only protects you from this penalty. And it even held when the listener was genuinely focused, when they were doing the work. People weren’t judged for what the music did to them, but for the story coworkers invented about them. Visible leisure cues — quote unquote, things like head bobbing, singing along, dancing in your seat — triggered this bad read. And a quick, quote unquote, social account, like heading into deep work, music’s going on, shifts the perception.
Chuck: The researchers’ advice to managers is to treat it as an attribution problem, not a discipline one, and default to assuming productivity. That employee is doing what’s best for them. For our audience though, I think this is a bit of a culture problem, literally wearing headphones. It’s the same ambiguity-fills-with-assumptions dynamic that runs riot in remote and hybrid work, and the same productivity theater trap companies fall into. This is really about coworkers filling ambiguity with assumptions and making up stories, and remote and hybrid work is nothing but potentially ambiguous signals to people. Are we quietly asking employees to spend energy managing perceptions that have nothing to do with their actual output?
Jenni: Okay, we need to go back a little bit with this story, because I have questions. So what’s your view on headphones at work?
Chuck: I have zero judgment if people are wearing headphones.
Jenni: I find it really weird.
Chuck: Really?
Jenni: Yeah. I don’t know why you would need to wear headphones at work.
Chuck: Have you heard of an open office environment?
Jenni: I’m not that old!
Chuck: I just didn’t know if you’d heard of it. Because when people are going back to the office, this is the environment most of them are going back into — this open office cubicle world environment. You need your space.
Jenni: But why would you not just book a meeting room, or one of the little booths or things like that, to go and do the work that you need to focus in on?
Chuck: Have you seen me try to fit in one of those booths? I do not fit. I do not fit. You want to be in your space. What if they’re not listening to anything? What if it’s just pure noise cancellation? You’ve got a noisy coworker over here doing sales calls. You’ve got something else going on here. You’ve got people holding meetings in the hallway that shouldn’t be in the hallway. I don’t see the problem.
Jenni: Do you think people did it before the pandemic? Do you think it’s now since the pandemic? Because people did do it a little bit before, but it was always like, you don’t need headphones in.
Chuck: I guarantee people did it before.
Jenni: And then it just — no, it wasn’t okay. I always thought it was rude. So if I saw people with headphones in—
Chuck: You are making up a story.
Jenni: I wasn’t making up stories. I just felt like work is a social thing. You’re here at work, there’s people around you, there’s elements of chit chat. If you’re there with your headphones in, to me that’s like, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to be anywhere near this. It’s a real signal to me that you don’t want to be any part of this social element of work.
Chuck: What if somebody went in with blinder glasses on and they just couldn’t see around them?
Jenni: I’m okay with that. But I also wonder whether this is something to do with this sort of multitasking world that we live in now that we didn’t have probably 10 years ago, whereas it’s like, I can be listening to music and doing that. We’re all trying to do too many things all at once. I just wanted to talk about your view on it, because I clearly think quite strongly.
Chuck: I bet truly it is a bit of a noise cancellation thing for people, where it’s loud in a lot of open office environments. There’s a lot of distractions in it. And if you’re one of the people where — maybe it’s music, maybe it’s white noise, maybe it’s pure noise cancellation — you’re doing what’s best for you. You can make that choice and manage your life. And if it’s listening to a little Duran Duran while you’re working and it helps you be more productive, great. If it’s noise cancellation, whatever it is. To me, the funny part is the perception. That even if it’s best for you, and even if it’s best for the company, the perception is something’s wrong.
Jenni: I think that for me, it’s what it signals to the relationships at work. And we know that relationships at work are hard because of remote, hybrid — people are struggling to navigate how to have relationships at work, in the sense of having difficult conversations or building relationships, whatever it is. So if you’re coming into an office and you’re in two days a week, and the whole time you’re in there you’ve got your headphones in—
Chuck: It’s not saying the whole time. You’re projecting.
Jenni: Then what does that mean for how you’re going to build relationships? For me, it’s a bigger thing. I think it’s weird that people have this sort of judgment of, okay, I’m going to think that it’s productivity, it’s fine, or it’s this. I think that is a bit strange, and I don’t think managers can police that. But I think people could say, look, I’m going to wear my headphones because I’ve got to get some work done and I just need to cancel out the noise. But if you need me, or you’re going to make a cup of tea, give me a nudge.
Chuck: Maybe that’s what people do.
Jenni: Yeah, well, okay, maybe that is what people do. But I just think of the bigger issue — relationships at work. How is that helping you maintain and keep those relationships?
Chuck: Would you rather have someone sit in their cubicle with headphones on getting work done, let’s say all day — let’s go to the extreme — versus someone sitting in one of your fancy little cubicle booth things all day getting work done?
Jenni: I don’t think it matters, because they’re just getting work done.
Chuck: But the other one, the person is immersing themselves in the environment. They are approachable, versus the other person in their weird little tiny booth.
Jenni: Yeah, and I suppose it depends on whether it is all the time. If you’re coming into the office and you’re always going to go and sit in a booth and you’re away, then why are you coming into the office anyway? That’s ridiculous.
Chuck: I feel like this is a bit too judgy on people. They’re doing what’s best for them in that environment, whether it’s noise cancellation, whether it’s music. Maybe they’re on a phone call and they don’t want to be on speakerphone.
Jenni: I love you, a bit too judgy. It’s not like us at all. I’m not against people doing stuff that works for them. What I’m worried about is that sometimes we do things that are best for us that have an unintended consequence on the relationships we have at work. And I think that’s the thing I’m mindful of. Yes, it might be best for you, but what’s that doing for your relationships and everything else that’s going on?
Chuck: I had no idea we were going to spend this long on this. I thought this was a bit of a throwaway piece. I’m not going to lie. Jenni, that wraps up our content for this week. Sorry for those that lingered through that headphone story. So what are you freq-ing out about this week?
Jenni: So I am freq-ing out. What am I freq-ing out about this week? I think I’m freq-ing out about doing this with you in real life. It is amazing. It’s really cool. And I think that I’ve just spent a lot of this week talking to lots of different people in comms and different parts of the world, and connecting while being here. And I think it’s made me freq out a little bit about the future of the industry. Where is it going? How people feel about stuff, the overwhelm, the burnout, all of those things. So I’ve got a lot going on from the conversations this week, but I think that my main thing is trying to go forward with quite a lot of positivity and a sense of community. And I think I really feel that this week.
Chuck: Yeah, it was cool this week when I was telling people what we’d be doing today, recording live, and that this is our first time recording in person with each other. And they were like, how many episodes have you guys done? Pretty amazing. And I think people are starting to recognize the commitment we have in the industry for that. I had a freq-out, and now I’m changing it based on what happened on our ride over here to the studio. Thank you, Toronto Podcast, for hosting us today. My freq-out was going to be Flyover Festival, my next big thing, August 27th in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s going to be amazing. That’s what my freq-out was going to be. Now it is going to be about Ubers, Jenni. Because there’s a bit of a stigma, or behavior pattern, happening out there. I am often — and I’ve noticed this on this trip as well — we are people that get the Ubers. We don’t wait typically for someone else to get it. We’re like, I’ve got it, we’re going to pick it up. So I’m often that person. If it’s a couple of people, I just usually get an Uber X, or whatever the Lyft version of it is, and you get in a normal car. But if there’s more than two people, I don’t like to be too crammed into a spot. So I’ll always get an Uber XL. Everybody then assumes that because someone is tall, they want to sit up front. No one wants to sit up front in an Uber. Literally no one. So I got us a big SUV, and I end up sitting in the front. Because here’s what happens — people that don’t sit in the front of Ubers don’t know this. The Uber driver always moves the passenger seat up so that people can get more easily in and out. So there’s actually less room in the front seat. So people, stop sending the tall people to the front seat of an Uber, especially if they ordered the Uber.
Jenni: He was very angry about it.
Chuck: Not angry. I huffed.
Jenni: It was. It was a hard huff.
Chuck: 100% huff on that. Absolutely. So please respect the tall people in the Ubers. Anyway, that’s what we’re freq-ing out about this week. Thank you all for joining us. The show notes have all the articles and links from today’s conversation. If Frequency is a regular part of your week, a quick review goes a long way. Subscribe wherever you’re listening, and share this with just one person who’s interested in what we talked about. Thank you to my friend Poet Ali for the music. We’re back every Monday. See you next week.
Chuck is a US-based internal communications strategist and the founder of ICology – a community and resource hub for IC professionals. He brings a practitioner lens to every conversation. Chuck is a recognised voice in the industry, a regular speaker and event host, and one of the most connected people in the North American IC world.
Jenni is a UK-based leadership and internal communications consultant, author of two best-selling books, and international speaker. She runs Redefining Communications, a consultancy working with organisations around the world to help them communicate better and close the gap between what leaders say and what employees experience.
