When communication breaks down in housing organisations: it’s not what you think, it’s what you feel

Tracey McEachran, Associate Consultant

Every time we run our CultureScan in a housing organisation, one theme almost always appears in the “top three things to improve”: communication. People at every level say it, but what is experienced varies across organisations, teams and individuals.

Recently, I was speaking at the NFA conference about resilience at the operational level. During the Q&A, someone asked me a simple question: “What do you actually recommend to improve communication?” I gave a simple answer in the time we had; however, I didn’t answer as fully as I’d have liked. This article is the fuller answer I wish I’d given.

We often talk about communication as if it’s a simple matter of sending the right information to the right people. But communication is not just what we say, it’s what people hear, what they think about it, and how it makes them feel. It’s always a thinking‑and‑feeling process.

What I have come to understand through the work I do with the Campbell Tickell CultureScan

The first step in the CultureScan process is to send out a survey asking colleagues a range of questions about how it feels to work there, what works well and what they would like to see improve. We typically see over 70% response rates in larger organisations and often over 90% in smaller ones. In other words, this isn’t a handful of loud voices; this is almost everybody’s voice we hear.

Among the questions, we invite people to name the three things they would most like to see change. More often than not, “communication” features prominently. It’s easy to dismiss that as a vague, catch‑all complaint. But when you pair it with the depth of participation, it becomes hard to ignore. Communication is not a minor niggle; it’s a systemic pattern.

The survey is only one part of the process. The next stage is focus groups, where we dig beneath the numbers and listen for the stories and experiences behind them. When we ask, “You’ve said communication needs to improve, what does that actually mean for you?” the conversation starts to get interesting.

When people say “communication”, what do they actually mean?

“Communication” is a convenient word that hides a lot of different frustrations. In focus groups, three themes emerge again and again.

1. Consistency of message People notice when messages contradict each other or change without explanation. They are told one thing one week and something different the next. Different teams receive different versions of the same update. Over time, this erodes trust. Colleagues begin to ask, “What’s the real story?” or “Who should we believe?” When leaders hear “we need better communication”, they often think “we should say more”, but consistency often matters more than volume.
2. Seeing the workings behind the decision Colleagues will frequently say, “We get told what is happening, but not why.” Decisions arrive as headlines, stripped of the thinking that sits behind them. I often use the analogy of a maths exam: even if you get the answer wrong, you still get marks for showing your workings. It is the same in organisations. People do not expect to be involved in every decision, and they understand that some information is confidential. But on the big things that affect their work and their tenants, they want to see some of the thought process.

When we remove the “workings out”, we remove people’s ability to make sense of change. That’s when rumours, fear and resistance step in.

3. Who actually gets communicated with Another pattern is that frontline colleagues often feel “the last to hear” important news, they hear about changes from colleagues in the form of gossip. Meanwhile, when we sit with senior leaders, they will often say, quite genuinely, “We communicate all the time.”

Both experiences are true. Leaders are in constant meetings, drafting messages, and producing content. They are on what might be termed as “send mode”. But communication is not just about how much you send; it’s about who receives it, when, and in what form. If the people closest to tenants feel left out of the loop, then something is breaking down, no matter how many messages have been sent.

Perception: same message, different meaning

There is another, deeper layer to this. Five people can read the same email, sit in the same briefing or attend the same town‑hall and walk away with five different stories in their heads. One might feel reassured; another might feel anxious or angry. The words are the same; the experience is not.

That’s because communication lives in the space between what is said and what is received. People don’t just take in the words; they filter them through their own history, their trust in leadership, their workload, their relationship with tenants and their current stress levels.

Communication is always both thinking and feeling. Someone who already feels valued and listened to will hear a difficult message very differently from someone who feels ignored or unsafe. If we treat communication as purely rational, we miss the emotional reality that actually drives behaviour. People act from the sense they make of things and that sense‑making is always shaped by feeling.

This is why communication has to be two‑way. You cannot know how something has landed unless you ask.

Alignment: the hidden lens on communication breakdown

In our CultureScan we look at several attributes; one that is particularly helpful when it comes to communication is alignment. Alignment is essentially about how similarly different parts of the organisation see things. We analysis the data in many ways of which one is level of seniority from the board, executive team, heads of service, middle managers and frontline colleagues.

In one organisation, we saw a clear pattern: the board and executive were highly aligned with each other, but then there was a steep drop in scores below the executive. The story this tells is not that “communication is bad everywhere”. It suggests that the breakdown is between what is agreed in the executive meeting and what is then taken out from there into the directorates and teams.

In another organisation, we saw strong alignment from the board right down to middle managers. The scores only dropped when we looked at frontline colleagues. This points to a different problem: the messages and priorities are clear in senior and middle leadership, but something is going wrong in how those are translated and shared with people on the ground.

This is where alignment becomes powerful. Rather than treating “we need better communication” as a vague complaint, it becomes a diagnostic. It shows you where the signal is getting lost. Is it between board and executive? Executive and directors? Middle managers and frontline? Without this, you end up throwing generic “internal comms” solutions at a very specific problem.

One‑to‑ones: where communication is tested

Communication doesn’t just happen in town‑hall meetings, emails or intranet posts. It happens in the everyday conversations between managers and their teams. If the bigger organisational messages are the broadcast, one‑to‑ones are where the translation happens.

In a healthy system, one‑to‑ones are not just task updates. They are spaces where people can check their understanding and their feelings about what’s happening. Managers can move beyond “Did I tell you?” to questions like:

• “This is what you heard from the recent briefing, how does it sit with you?”
• “What sense are you making of this change for our team?”
• “What are you hearing from tenants or colleagues that I might be missing?”

Good communicators don’t only check what people understood; they’re also curious about what people are feeling. They know that someone may nod along in agreement and still walk away worried or disengaged.

When those sense‑making conversations don’t happen, misunderstandings harden. People fill in the gaps with assumptions or gossip because there is nowhere safe to check their thinking and feeling.

The very practical recommendation I gave in response to the question on the day was to pay much more attention to the quality and frequency of one‑to‑ones. If you want to improve communication, invest in line managers as communicators and sense‑makers, not just as deliverers of tasks.

Boards, tenants and colleagues: closing the governance gap

In housing, there is often a noticeable distance between the board and frontline operations. That distance is appropriate in some ways; you do not want the board involved in day‑to‑day decisions. But when colleagues don’t understand what the board does, or why “the board have decided X”, it creates a vacuum.

I regularly hear comments like, “The board made this decision, but no one can explain why,” or even, “What does the board actually do?” If people don’t understand the role of the board, it becomes a faceless entity that decisions are attributed to, rather than a part of the governance system they can relate to.

There are some simple practices that help:

• Board briefings for colleagues that explain, in plain language, what the board is responsible for and how decisions are made.
• Opportunities for colleagues to ask questions of the board at set times, whether through Q&A sessions, visits or short video updates.
• A deliberate focus on both tenant voice and colleague voice. These are completely interlinked. The board needs to hear directly and regularly from tenants, and it also needs to hear from the people who are closest to tenants every day.

Visibility matters. Colleagues don’t need directors and board members to be everywhere, but they do need to see that the people making the big decisions are in touch with the realities they live and work in and are prepared to listen as well as talk.

Communication or messaging?

Finally, I think it’s helpful to distinguish between communication and messaging. Many organisations have become very good at messaging. They have multiple channels, polished slide decks and well‑branded campaigns. Those things have their place.

But messaging without dialogue is not communication; it is broadcasting. Communication is a two‑way, thinking‑and‑feeling process. It involves saying, listening, checking understanding, and being willing to adjust in response to what you hear.

When people tell you “Communication needs to improve”, they are often living in a world of intense messaging and thin communication. The answer isn’t necessarily more channels or more content. It is more spaces for real conversation, where people can bring both their thoughts and their feelings into the room.

So, what do I recommend?

• First, use data to locate where the breakdown is. Look at alignment between board, executive, middle managers and frontline colleagues, rather than assuming the issue is everywhere.
• Second, invest in line managers. Support them to run regular, high‑quality one‑to‑ones that include sense‑checking and upward feedback, not just task lists.
• Third, make governance visible. Help colleagues understand the role of the board, how decisions are made, and where responsibilities sit. Create ways for tenant and colleague voices to be heard at that level.
• Fourth, when you communicate decisions, show as much of your workings as you appropriately can. Explain the “why”, the trade‑offs and what was considered, not just the outcome.
• Finally, treat communication as a thinking‑and‑feeling practice. Don’t just check whether people received the message; ask what sense they are making of it and how it feels from where they sit.

In housing, our work rests on trust, with tenants, communities and with each other. Trust doesn’t just depend on what we say; it depends on whether people feel seen, heard and included in the conversation. When we treat “communication” as a rich, relational, perceptual practice we can continue to build that trust and ultimately this will improve resilience across the organisation at all levels.

To discuss any of the issues raised above, contact: tracey.mceachran@campbelltickell.com.