As someone who’s worked as a comms manager for a decade or more, you already know that the constant approvals from waaayyyy too many stakeholders and everyone redoing your comms strategy never changes.
So since we’re still in the room, let’s talk about the dos and don’ts that will help you actually survive it. Because the comms meeting is where most of a comms manager’s pain either gets handled well or completely falls apart. And these, when followed, will genuinely help.
Do: Own the room before it starts
The meeting is already half lost if you walk in without a clear ask. Know what decision you need before you sit down. Are you seeking approval? Alignment? Just input? Say it out loud at the start. When people know why they’re there, they’re less likely to derail things. The stakeholder pile-on feeds on ambiguity.
Don’t: Show them everything at once
In fact this is my favourite. A full strategy deck in a room full of senior stakeholders is an open invitation to rewrite your work. People will engage with whatever catches their eye, not with what actually matters. Lead with the problem you’re solving. Let the strategy be the obvious answer to it. Make it harder to argue with the destination than the route.
Do: Learn how to say no without actually saying no
This is the skill that takes years and nobody teaches you. The most effective version isn’t a flat refusal. It’s: “We can absolutely do it that way. Here’s what we should expect from it.” You stay collaborative, you stay on record, and you let the outcome do the talking. Over time that builds more credibility than winning any single argument in the room.
Don’t: Let the meeting become the strategy session
When a comms strategy gets built in real time across a table of twelve people, it loses its shape. A comms manager’s job is to bring something to the room, not build it there. The moment it starts turning into a free-for-all brainstorm, name it. “I think we’re moving into ideation territory. Can we take that offline and come back with a revised draft?” That one sentence will save you hours if not days.
Do: Document what was decided, immediately
Nothing reopens a comms debate faster than ambiguity about what was agreed. Send a short follow-up within the hour. What was decided, who owns what, what’s next. This isn’t admin. This is how you stop the same conversation happening again two weeks later with someone who wasn’t even in the room.
Don’t: Fight every edit. But know which ones matter.
Some feedback you let go. Someone swapping a word here or there is not the battle. Someone gutting the strategic framing is. Every experienced comms manager learns to know the difference. Save your energy for the things that actually affect the outcome. The goal isn’t to defend every line. It’s to make sure the work still does what it was supposed to do.
Now, if every strategy gets relitigated, trust your gut as a comms manager, that’s not a comms problem. It’s an organisational problem. And knowing that won’t fix it overnight, but it will stop you from carrying the weight of it as a personal failure.
What you can control is how you show up. Prepared, focused, and clear on what you need from the room. The rest is noise.
And when you need a hand building the structure that makes all of this easier, we’re here for that too.