Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• 8 Steps to Building an Effective Internal Communication Strategy
  By Peter Banerjea via Smarp (@BeSmarp)
  
  A carefully planned strategy is necessary for your internal communications function to succeed. Get started with this helpful guide.
  
  “Even though internal communication has a direct impact on employee experience and employee engagement, most businesses don’t have a long-term IC strategy. We share in this blog post a step-by-step guide to help you craft a great internal communication strategy...”
  Read more >>

• 3 Tips for More Effective Email
  By Skip Prichard (@SkipPrichard)
  
  Get some interesting email statistics and 3 effective techniques to make the essential use of email even more effective.
  
  “Email has become the essential communication tool that many professionals love to hate. Even the most important customer transactions, internal operations, and supplier partnerships transpire through email. Emails can build or destroy credibility, clarify or confuse situations for coworkers, and save or sap an enormous amount of time each day...”
  Read more >> 

• Google's Best Leaders Use This Simple Tool to Show Care and Concern for Their Employees
  By Scott Mautz (@scott_mautz via @Inc), Inc.
  
  Google found a way for leaders to easily invest in employees as a whole.
  
  “Google is known for studying, measuring, and systematizing just about every facet of leadership--what makes the best leaders, the best teams, and even the best email productivity. You can add to all of this a simple, popular tool that the most emotionally intelligent Googlers (and outsiders who have discovered it) use...”
  Read more >>

• 4 Storytelling Lessons from 100 Years of ‘The Hilton Effect’
  By Beki Winchel (@bekiweki via @RaganComms), Ragan Communications
  
  The hotel chain focused on these 4 things in crafting their content over the years.
  
  “This year, Hilton turned 100. Considering it’s grown from one hotel to more than 5,700 hotels and 17 brands in 113 countries and territories, the chain has a lot to commemorate—but it didn’t want to mark the occasion with only statistics and accomplishments…”
  Read more >>

• Leaders Don’t Have to Choose Between Being Liked or Being Effective
  By Elizabeth Shassere (@startupliz via @Medium), Medium
  
  Here's how to get the balance right to get the best our of new teams.
  
  “I recently mentored a startup founder whose company was suddenly growing fast. She went from having a one-day-a-week helper to three full timers and a boatload of work for them all in a few short months. I have no doubt her team will soon double in size again...”
  Read more >> 

What were some of the top leadership and communication articles you read this week?

—David Grossman

Click below to download this eBook—Use the Right Channels to Communicate with Impact—and see how being more purposeful when choosing communication channels leads to less clutter and more effective communications with employees.