Internal Communication: The Key to the Future of Shared and Sustainable Leadership

As companies put effort into gaining competitive advantage in today’s ever-changing business landscape, leadership and internal communication have ended up at the forefront of how companies can best reach their set goals.

From having favoured a more vertical and strict hierarchical structure, leadership has become more collaborative, more focused on the “we” before the “me”. Shared and sustainable leadership has become a way for modern companies to step up and take their organization to the next level. These companies have acknowledged that internal communication is the tool to this leadership to be embraced and implemented. The study in the main author’s MBA thesis looks specifically at how internal communication within an organization can reveal how it influences the development and effectiveness of shared leadership and sustainable leadership within organizations (Storvist, 2025).

To put it short, shared leadership emphasizes the importance of lateral influence with a flattened leadership hierarchy, and a focus on teams and shared purpose where the process takes precedence over traits (eg. Zhu et al, 2018 and Northouse, 2022). However, sustainable leadership looks at the long-term impact of leadership, highlighting innovation, trust and adaptability through mentoring and collaboration in order to drive sustainable change within the organization (see McCann & Holt, 2010; Kumar, 2020).

Internal communication aims to ensure the flow of information and ideas within and organization, and can be both formal and informal. As a practice, internal communication is not simply an exchange of knowledge. Through it, the organization can foster commitment among its employees and connect with them. Internal communication can serve to motivate employees, for example through feedback. By extension, internal communication can improve the organizational performance, as well as strengthen the identity and culture within the organization. (Heide et al, 2012; Men, 2021; Björck & Guhl, 2023) Despite playing an important role, researchers acknowledge that internal communication has been overlooked within research and companies alike, despite the fact that managers bear the brunt of responsibility regarding how organizational communication is perceived (Dahlman & Heide, 2021).

Internal communication and leadership in a case company

To explore more how shared leadership is enacted through internal communications and how existing leadership and communication processes might pave the way for sustainable leadership, a case study was initiated. The literature review already revealed that while there were clear advantages to adopting shared leadership, it was not without its weaknesses. Shared leadership can sometimes lead to power struggles, increased stress and knowledge hiding among employees. Research also highlighted risks of decreased decision-making efficiency and a decline in creativity, with one source (Sweeney, 2022) even suggesting that shared leadership cannot entirely take the place of vertical leadership, instead proposing a spectrum where both shared and vertical leadership can co-exist. In the end, the strength of shared leadership comes down to how communication flows, something that can also be applied to sustainable leadership.

While conducting the research, the main author learned that the company had made the transition to shared leadership in 2019. This shift had resulted in a new employee and leadership policy in 2022, with a workshop to discuss the policy held in 2023. This workshop highlighted areas that the employees wished to work on more, such as feedback, communication, openness and sense of community to name a few.

This provided the initial blueprint, along with extant research (eg. Tkalac Verčič et al. 2021), to formulate a survey that focused specifically on different aspects of internal communication, shared leadership and employeeship. The survey also included questions relating to organizational identification, which worked as an indicator for the presence of attributes that could ease a shift to sustainable leadership.

The results of the survey revealed several key findings. First, there was a discrepancy within demographics. Respondents in both the Manager and Team Leader roles were less satisfied than the respondents in the Employees role, and respondents in the middle experience segments were less satisfied than both the newest and most experienced respondents. Also, the feedback aspect of internal communication remained an area that still needs to be addressed, as the questions concerning feedback scored the lowest in the survey.

Additionally, it became clear that while informal communication can serve to strengthen the bond between employees, the survey indicated that informal communication may be imbalanced. However, the survey did not reveal whether this imbalance is a result of too much perceived informal communication or too few decisions made as a result of informal communication.

At the time of the survey, June 2024, the case company had been working from a shared leadership approach for five years. Despite that, the survey results indicated a lack of communication related to information about the company’s leadership polices. For a significant number of respondents, the shared leadership initiative remains unclear or has not added any specific and/or noticeable value.

These key findings show how crucial internal communication is, and how internal communication can help address lingering issues. By supporting the demographic groups that either are in leadership positions, or are about to become the senior employees in terms of years of experience, the case company will set a solid foundation for long-term knowledge, skill and employee retention. A baseline structure for how feedback can be asked for and given would serve to strengthen internal communication and bolster organizational performance. Policing informal communication is risky, as it might negatively impact the sense of community among employees if the only encouraged form of internal communication is formal. That said, discussion about how to best make use of informal communication as an alternative communication and information channel could result in, for example, best practice guidelines.

Finally, clear and consistent communication about the direction towards shared and sustainable leadership, what it means and how it is practically put in use, would address the uncertainty and ensure that information about workflows and leadership structure is a tangible and vital part of the case company’s internal communication.

The results of the survey showed indications of processes and attributes for both leadership and communication that would aid the case company should it wish to transition to a more sustainable leadership approach, such as trust, mentoring and collaboration among employees.

Studying leadership construction through internal communication survey is not a new thing (eg. Men, 2014) but it remains a not so often used method in MBA theses. Internal communication satisfaction for example can reveal how well (or poorly) leadership ideologies are executed in an organisation. Thelen (2021) noticed there is a connection between servant leadership and communication satisfaction. In general, we could use more studies like this on Finnish organisations about their leadership studied through internal communication. The results could reveal how modern leadership developments are actually executed in organisations and how they could also improve the crucial communication.

Short biography of the authors:

Pia Storvist is the main writer. She has been working in sales and customer service since 2019, starting out in sales before landing in her current position which focuses on business support and billing. In her spare time, Pia enjoys knitting, creative writing and working out.

Outi Ihanainen-Rokio is a Senior Lecturer at Novia, in Degree Program in Digital Business and Management (MBA), representing Faculty of Business. She has a PhD in organizational communication. Along with a keen interest in internal communication and organisational development, Outi has passion towards gardening and mushroom picking.

References:

Björck, A. & Guhl, S. (2023), "Strategic Internal Communication and Generational Change: Opportunities and Challenges for Segmentation and Customization by Generation. A Study of Swiss Communication Managers", Rodríguez-Salcedo, N., Moreno, Á., Einwiller, S. and Recalde, M. (Ed.) (Re)discovering the Human Element in Public Relations and Communication Management in Unpredictable Times (Advances in Public Relations and Communication Management, Vol. 6), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 99-121.

Dahlman, S., & Heide, M. (2020). Strategic Internal Communication: A Practitioner’s Guide

to Implementing Cutting-Edge Methods for Improved Workplace Culture (1st ed.). London: Routledge.

Heide, M., Johansson, C., & Simonsson, C. (2012). Kommunikation i organisationer. Malmö: Liber.

Kumar, J. (2020). Sustainable Leadership: The New Challenge For Organizations. Modern  Management, Applied Science & Social Science (IJEMMASSS), 02(02), 95–100.

McCann, J. T., & Holt, R. A. (2010). Defining sustainable leadership. International Journal  of Sustainable Strategic Management, 2(2), 204.

Men, L. R. (2014). Why Leadership Matters to Internal Communication: Linking Transformational Leadership, Symmetrical Communication, and Employee Outcomes. Journal of Public Relations Research, 2(3), 256–279

Men, L. R. (2021). Evolving Research and Practices in Internal Communication. Current Trends and Issues in Internal Communication, 1–18.

Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th edition.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Storvist, P. (2025). Internal Communication as a Key to Shared and Sustainable Leadership. Master of Business Administration. Vaasa: Novia University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved from https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060520879 

Sweeney, A. (2022). Looking within: a longitudinal qualitative analysis of shared leadership behaviours in organisational teams. Team Performance Management, 28(7), 441- 460. https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-02-2022-0013 

Thelen, P. D. (2021). Leadership and Internal Communication: Linking Servant Leadership, Communication Satisfaction, and Employee Advocacy. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 15(5), 440–462.

Tkalac Verčič, A., Sinčić Ćorić, D., & Pološki Vokić, N. (2021). Measuring internal communication satisfaction: Validating the Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire. Corporate Communications, 26(3), 589–604

Zhu, J., Liao, Z., Yam, K. C., & Johnson, R. E. (2018). Shared leadership: A state‐of‐the‐art review and future research agenda. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(7), 834–852.

The blog post has been reviewed by Novia's editorial board and accepted for publication on 9.6.2025.