Communications Needs a New Compass

As a communications professional you’re operating in the most complex information environment in history. Misinformation. Disinformation. AI generated deepfakes of executives saying things they never said. Audiences who have stopped trusting what organizations tell them. Employees who can't tell what's real. And somewhere in the middle of all of that noise you’re still expected to move people. To make them understand something, feel something, and do something. With the same frameworks you have always used.

Dianne Chase has written a book that argues the profession needs a North Star more than it needs another tactical playbook. She’s the past International Chair of IABC, past Chair of the IABC Southern Region, and current president of IABC Charlotte. Her book is called The Seven C's of the New Communications Compass. And the argument she makes is both simple and urgent: in an era of collapsing trust, the communicators who will matter most are not the ones with the best tools. They’re the ones who remembered to be human.

This episode was recorded on location in Toronto in June 2026 at IABC World Conference

Listen For

3:16 What Are the Seven Cs of the New Communications Compass?

6:16 Why Should Organizations Build Relationships Instead of Transactions?

8:19 How Does Compassion Become Empathy in Action?

13:09 Why Does Community Matter to Purpose-Driven Brands?

17:10 How Should Communicators Measure What Really Matters?

Guest: Dianne Chase, President IABC Charlotte, past International Chair IABC, past Chair IABC Southern Region

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Transcript

Lady Emily (00:00):
This episode was recorded on location in Toronto at the IABC World Conference in June 2026. The oldest trust signal in the world has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with what you say and what you do and if those two are the same thing.

Doug Downs (00:21):
In 1883, an Italian writer named Carlo Collodi published a story about a wooden puppet who wanted to be real. You know the story. Geppetto carves him, the Blue Fairy brings him to life and Pinocchio wants desperately to be a real boy. But there's a problem. Every time the words coming out of his mouth don't match what's true, his nose grows. Longer and longer, visible to everyone in the room, everybody knows. Not because lying is uniquely wooden, humans lie all the time. The difference is that Pinocchio couldn't close the gap between what he said and what was real. He had no integrity between his inside and his outside and the world could see it on his face, whether he wanted them to or not. He had a tell signal. In our world, we've spent the last three years building technology that can fake everything. A CEO's face, their voice, their exact words in a video so convincing that employees watching a Monday morning briefing can't tell whether their leader actually said that or not.

(01:23):
 We have essentially tried to remove the tell, but it hasn't worked. They watch what organizations say and they watch what organizations do. And when those two things don't match, they feel it. They can't always name it, they can't always prove it, but they feel it. The leader who preaches work life balance and then sends emails at seven o'clock on a Friday night, their nose is growing. The company whose values poster says people first and whose layoff email goes out on Christmas Eve, their nose is growing. Today on Stories and Strategies, Seven Ways to Keep Your Nose from Telling on You. My name is Doug Downs, my guest this week, Diane Chase, up from North Carolina. How are you?

Diane Chase (02:20):
I'm doing fabulously well. How are you?

Doug Downs (02:23):
Have you been in Toronto before?

Diane Chase (02:24):
I have. It's a beautiful city.

Doug Downs (02:26):
It is.

Diane Chase (02:26):
It's really something. I'm hoping I can find some time to explore more than I have so far.

Doug Downs (02:33):
Okay. Okay. I've been here a couple of times. So if you can do a walk by the waterfront at the very least.

Diane Chase (02:39):
Yes, absolutely. Everyone's saying, "Go to the water. Go to the water."

Doug Downs (02:43):
It is. It's beautiful. And across to the Centre Island at some point.

Diane Chase (02:48):
Yes.

Doug Downs (02:49):
Diane, you are the past international chair for IABC. You're the IABC North Carolina chair and the past Southern Region chair. Yes,

Diane Chase (02:57):
I am.

Doug Downs (02:57):
And folks in the Southern Region, when they hear Southern Region, I go, ding, ding, ding. They like that.

Diane Chase (03:03):
Best region ever.

Doug Downs (03:06):
I love the title of your new book, The Seven Cs of the New Communications Compass. Walk me through what those seven Cs are and then let's go through

Diane Chase (03:16):
Them one by one, figure them out. Got your notepad ready? Collaboration, connection, compassion, cohesion, community, congruency and calibration.

Doug Downs (03:32):
Okay. Let's start with collaboration. Obviously you're trying to say we need to interact more with one another or with our audiences, with leaders.

Diane Chase (03:42):
All of it. And silos are anathema to communication. We have to collaborate across business units, across teams, across the organization, and really outwardly to our stakeholders. Our stakeholders are the reason we exist internally and externally as businesses. So I had a remit, Doug, for each of my Cs and the remit for collaboration was the outcome of building successful teams for greater results in an era of ever increasing distractions and demands. And back to breaking silos and fragmented messages erode trust in this era of a lack of trust. And if you are not collaborating and working together and making sure, I call it a one voice policy when I'm doing my training and consulting, let's have a one voice policy so that we build trust because if people are hearing a slightly different message and a different tone from one leader to one employee to one manager, they're like, "Well, where's the truth?"

Doug Downs (04:59):
Yeah, this is hard because we live in this multi channel universe where there's video, there's written word, there's print, there's all kinds of digital ideas, there's infographics. We're doing a podcast so there's audio and you do design your messaging slightly differently for each channel to tailor

Diane Chase (05:19):
Absolutely.

Doug Downs (05:19):
Okay. So this is a great title, but this is hard to do.

Diane Chase (05:23):
Right. Well, I think if you keep a touchstone, which is really the seven Cs of the new communication compass, I want to have this serve as a North Star. So if you're touching back to your values and you're developing your value purpose centered messaging, that's going to be the infrastructure, if you will, to your communication. And then you nuance it to resonate with whatever stakeholder group you're talking to, but you're not changing the essence of the message or the essence of the communication. But you're using different language which will connect to different stakeholder groups.

Doug Downs (06:08):
Okay. Connection. I think you called it a remit that you had. Yes. Okay. I'm going to have to look that word up by the true confessions.

Diane Chase (06:16):
Okay. The word of the day. Connection, the outcome of building a positive culture for greater engagement, loyalty, productivity, and retention. So this is about building relationships, not transactions. In this day and time with AI, AI is going to do all the transactional pieces. And as humans, it's our obligation, role, and responsibility to build relationships if we really want to have a sustainable organization and a sustainable business. We do business with humans. Humans don't do business with inanimate, unfeeling organizations. One hundred percent. Absolutely.

Doug Downs (07:10):
I still phone customer support. I have a hard time using the apps.

Diane Chase (07:14):
Oh my gosh, yes. Because you feel, well, first of all, they don't care about you. And so then there's no, talk about trust, there's no trust there because there's no relationship there. So if you want to stand out and make sure that you are building a value proposition that others can't steal, so to speak, or mimic, be a human and set your personality into your work.

Doug Downs (07:45):
So that leads into the next C, which is compassion.

Diane Chase (07:48):
Yes. And this is really critical now

Doug Downs (07:53):
Because

Diane Chase (07:54):
Of the era of lack of trust and misinformation and disinformation and skepticism, and rightly so because it's hard to know what to believe when you see videos allegedly of a CEO. The face is the CEO, the voice is the CEO, the words sound like the CEO. It's a robot. It's AI

Doug Downs (08:17):
Generated.

Diane Chase (08:19):
How do we know what to believe anymore? So compassion is the outcome of building a people centered culture based on the key leadership skill of empathy. And compassion is so misunderstood, I believe. Compassion is action. It's empathy in action, but it's basically human to human connection and building those relationships. So compassion isn't about having a pity party for someone. It's about understanding them and taking action to level them up if they're going through a hard time, so to speak. Or if they're coming to work with a whole different set of realities than we are, how do we work with them in a compassionate way? As we know, leadership, in my view, is helping people be the best version of themselves. So as a leader, we have to have compassion to connect with another human and help them be the best version of themselves.

Doug Downs (09:22):
That whole sense of caring. I had to call Air Canada for the flight out here. I live in Calgary. I was flying to Toronto for the conference. I was traveling with batteries for the microphones that we're using and I know from firsthand experience they will confiscate batteries under certain conditions if they're above a certain wattage. And I called Air Canada to find out, can I travel with these? Here's the wattage output. First of all, it took me an hour and a half to get through to a human. So that's

Diane Chase (09:51):
Ooh, you're already right there.

Doug Downs (09:54):
Right, right, right. I'm already, okay, this is not

Diane Chase (09:57):
Cranking

Doug Downs (09:57):
Up. But the person that I connected with pulled up the documentation for what Air Canada would accept and then actually proceeded to research with me exactly what is the wattage of the batteries that I've got, what year, what model have you got? You're well under, you're absolutely fine. And then emailed me a link so that if I got stopped by the Canadian

You could prove it. Oh, wow.

I could say, "No, no, here's what the battery is." And sure enough, I had no problem with the border. So my end feeling about Air Canada is from that one person, that frontline person. There was a lot of compassion there.

Diane Chase (10:37):
Yes, absolutely right. They weren't just trying to shut you down and say, "Well, go to this website and figure it out."

Doug Downs (10:45):
Move on to the next call who had also been waiting an hour and a half.

Diane Chase (10:48):
Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. And that takes such skill. I hate to generalize, but I see a real opportunity working with Gen Z and even Gen A in terms of helping them develop that sense of compassion in their communication.

Doug Downs (11:07):
Is it missing because they live in a texting world?

Diane Chase (11:09):
Absolutely right.

Doug Downs (11:10):
Yes.

Diane Chase (11:11):
They're interacting and communicating, I use that term loosely, with an inanimate object. They don't have to listen to. They don't have to try and understand. They don't have to be ready to interact and look at someone else's point of view, which is what this person did, putting themselves in your shoes, right?

Doug Downs (11:38):
She sure did.

Diane Chase (11:39):
Concerned and trying to do the right thing ahead of time.

Doug Downs (11:41):
Okay. Next C is cohesion.

Diane Chase (11:43):
Cohesion is the outcome of building greater alignment to increase results and reduce disconnections, which equal lost time and money and productivity and engagement and all of that stuff. So if we feel we're part of something greater than ourselves, that cohesion piece is so powerful and that is what is going to attract and retain Gen Z because there is a new sense of prioritizing being involved with something greater than themselves.

Doug Downs (12:21):
Is that why folks in the Southern Region, when they hear Southern, "That's my region. That's it. I identify there."

Diane Chase (12:28):
Sold. Yes. There is a humble pride in, well, we find our people that we relate to, whether it's culturally, geographically, professionally, whatever it is, and we're elevating each other through our cohesion and how we communicate and how we support each other.

Doug Downs (12:57):
Yeah. It's that place where everybody knows your name, right?

Diane Chase (13:02):
It's kind of like a bar, but not. Yeah.

Doug Downs (13:03):
But without the alcohol maybe. Until later. Sometimes. Right. Okay. The next C is community.

Diane Chase (13:09):
Community is the outcome of creating a purpose driven brand, which is vital for Gen Z, as we just mentioned, and beyond, who want to work for, buy from, support, invest in companies who do well by doing good in the local community and the global marketplace. So leaning into understanding our stakeholders and their interdependencies. So what are the interdependencies that we have in our stakeholder groups, whether it's our clients, our vendors, our resources, our sponsors and how do we fit in? How do we facilitate that sense of community as communication professionals? There's a lot of power there that we have with our communication expertise to build and nurture community.

Doug Downs (14:04):
There's such an opportunity to overlook something, a link in the chain that suddenly exposes the whole program.

Diane Chase (14:12):
Right, right. And you see it. I mean, even in supply chain, logistics, whatever it might be.

Doug Downs (14:19):
That was what was running through my mind.

Diane Chase (14:20):
When you talked about it. Yes. The interdependencies. And all of a sudden, I do a lot of crisis work as well and there's a lot of interdependencies there, not just within that sort of bubble, if you will, but when someone else's issue, risk, or crisis impacts your industry, that kind of guilt by association or guilt by connection. So thinking about interdependencies that maybe we haven't even thought of before that could impact us personally and professionally and organizationally.

Doug Downs (14:58):
Okay. Congruency.

Diane Chase (15:00):
Congruency. The outcome of establishing a positive company reputation built on having leadership and internal stakeholders live their business values in every aspect of their roles and responsibilities. It's walking the company values talk. It is closing the say do gap. So statements versus real policies and role modeling your values. Values are meaningless if they're on a beautiful poster in the lobby and everybody sees them.

Doug Downs (15:38):
They all kind of sound the same thing.

Diane Chase (15:40):
They sound the same, exactly right. If you could take one logo and

Doug Downs (15:44):
Better planet, diversification, fair opportunity, peace and love. Best

Diane Chase (15:50):
Customer service.

Doug Downs (15:51):
That's right.

Diane Chase (15:53):
I mean, so how are you going to set out your unique value proposition by really drilling down into your values, but most importantly, how are you living and role modeling those values in your workplace and in the community as well? Because we're all walking, talking brand reputation people for our organizations. So especially leadership in their visibility. But just, I do a lot of strategic business storytelling and I talk about role modeling a lot and how we can turn values into real personal stories that convey a business message. So making sure that if you are a manager or a leader who's always preaching work life balance, but you're sending emails to your employees at 7:00 PM on a Friday,

Doug Downs (16:54):
Not

Diane Chase (16:54):
Really role modeling that.

Doug Downs (16:55):
Okay. Calibration.

Diane Chase (16:58):
Calibration.

Doug Downs (17:00):
Okay. I was making sure all the pieces are fitting together.

Diane Chase (17:04):
That was number one, but now we're at calibration.

Doug Downs (17:06):
Collaboration was number one. Calibration's number seven. Yeah.

Diane Chase (17:10):
It's the outcome of using wise measurement, measuring what matters and setting out why it matters.

Doug Downs (17:15):
This is the measurement. Got it.

Diane Chase (17:17):
Right. And establishing how and why strategic communication is critical in the near and future term in new and important ways. So it's adjusting and evolving communications to stay relevant and agile and in real time, so to speak. It's not set it and forget it kind of measurement.

Doug Downs (17:41):
Like,

Diane Chase (17:42):
How are we measuring sentiment, for instance?

Doug Downs (17:44):
Yes. Sentiment analysis. Yes.

Diane Chase (17:47):
And how are we making sure that whatever we're setting out as our KPIs or our net promoter scores or whatever it might be is really where we need to focus.

Doug Downs (18:01):
So important.

Diane Chase (18:02):
Yes.

Doug Downs (18:02):
So important. Because I'll ask companies, "Okay, we make podcasts. Why do you want a podcast? What are you hoping to do?" And the measurement of the downloads or the listeners, that's actually not it. It's what do you want them to do?

Diane Chase (18:15):
Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And so in communication it comes down to what do we want people to understand, feel and do.

Doug Downs (18:27):
Sorry, that's a big statement right there just to capture that. Think, feel equals do.

Diane Chase (18:36):
Right. Because the superhighway to the brain is through the heart and by the heart we mean the humanity. Are we connecting again emotionally? And when I say emotionally, I don't mean like boohoo or dark and stormy night or whatever. It just means humanly because the neuroscience, if you want to ever geek out, is fascinating with strategic storytelling, how our brains start mirroring each other.

Doug Downs (19:06):
They do actually.

Diane Chase (19:06):
It's incredible.

Doug Downs (19:07):
Yes. So the synaptic connections physically start to resemble one another. That's through fMRI technology.

Diane Chase (19:14):
Yes, absolutely. Very, very cool. And it just really reinforces the fact that the way we communicate has to be as human beings.

Doug Downs (19:26):
And use stories.

Diane Chase (19:27):
Yes. Stories.

Doug Downs (19:29):
Absolutely. To get to the 7C, I mean, this is so well codified and put together.

Diane Chase (19:41):
Thank you.

Doug Downs (19:41):
What was your process to get to these seven Cs? Where did you start and how did you get to this point?

Diane Chase (19:41):
Well, I started just with the idea and the motivation that we're in a whole different era with communication. And as communication professionals, we need a North Star to keep us focused, to keep us grounded, to help us remember what matters and how we can, as professionals, elevate the conversation. Elevate, it sounds corny maybe, but one of my mantras is communication should be, can be and must be a force for good in business and society. And this was meant to be a touchstone when all the things are swirling around and everybody's head's blowing up and we're in an age of, again, mistrust and misinformation and insecurity and skepticism. How do we go back and find a touchstone to go, okay, reset, regroup and keep going.

Doug Downs (20:45):
I share that. There's this old adage that what separates us as humans from everything else is our ability to collaborate, which I don't disagree with. It's just collaboration, as you've listed, fits underneath something and that's our ability to communicate.

Diane Chase (20:59):
Absolutely right. And there is a through line through every chapter, through every C. They're intertwined, they're integrated, they work together. But if you are struggling with cohesion, here's a chapter that maybe could provide a compass. So the subtitle is Insights, Inspiration, and Strategies for Future Forward Success. So keeping our feet on the ground while we're keeping our eyes on the future.

Doug Downs (21:31):
Awesome. So good to spend time with you. Thanks, Diane.

Diane Chase (21:34):
Thank you, Doug. This has been a pleasure. I appreciate it.

Doug Downs (21:38):
Here are the top three things today we got from Diane Chase you might bring up in conversation later. Number one, the nose is always growing. Every time your organization says one thing and then does another, your audience feels it even when they can't name it. Number two, AI got the transaction. You get the relationship. The machine can answer the phone. It can't make someone feel heard. That part is still yours. And number three, the superhighway to the brain runs through the heart. You cannot think your way into changing someone's behavior, you have to make them feel something first. I like that. If you'd like to send a message to our guest, Diane Chase, we've got her contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a production of Stories and Strategies Podcasts. Thank you to producers, Emily Page and Jocelyn Floralde. And lastly, do us a favor.

(22:29):
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