Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Last month I received a beautiful flower bouquet and note from Communiqué PR celebrating my first year at the company. It’s been an amazing journey this past year, jam-packed with different experiences and projects that have helped shape me into the public relations professional I am today.
In college, I had taken one public relations class before I joined the company, giving me a general sense of the industry but not nearly enough hands-on experience to know what I was getting myself into. To my great surprise and comfort, my boss, Christie, welcomed me in and showed me the depths of public relations. She taught me foundational skills as I started my career and continues to be my role model at work. Fast forward to a year later – I’ve learned a lot in my career and want to share with you some of the most important takeaways.
Be an enthusiastic team player
Public relations is not a solo game and working closely with colleagues is vital to successfully deliver quality work to clients. I’ve learned that it’s beneficial to always offer help on projects and be proactive with how you can contribute. Showing enthusiasm and positivity toward my team has helped me take on some challenging yet rewarding work that would not have landed in my lap unless I asked. It’s also given me the confidence to know that when I get overwhelmed with work, my coworkers will have my back like I have theirs.
Invest in time management skills
While time management isn’t offered as a course at university, I believe it’s a must for every public relations professional to learn and effectively apply daily. Having the ability to prepare, plan and execute day-to-day activities is essential to ensuring we are maximizing our time and offering clients superior service and work. To-do lists have been my saving grace and helped me keep track of assignments. Not only are to-do lists beneficial for keeping track of tasks, but it also helps understand the big picture, which has allowed me to begin to predict and address client or media inquiries before they arise.
No two days will be alike
Public relations is a fast-paced industry and we wear a lot of hats for clients. Because of this, work often takes on many different shapes – and I love it! Whether it’s writing, event planning, media relations or social media, there are many moving parts that keep our daily work interesting and exciting. While no two days will be alike, I’ve discovered there is a commonality among us as professionals, always looking for new and innovative ideas to uniquely tell our clients’ stories.
These are just some of the many lessons I’ve learned in my first year at Communiqué PR, and of course I still have a lot to discover. I truly believe that the key to my success is being part of a team that is strong, supportive and celebrates the many wins achieved over the past year. I can’t wait to learn more from my team as I continue to eagerly grow as a public relations professional.
The words we speak and how we deliver them can greatly influence how others perceive our message. It’s important to carefully consider our words to ensure that the messages we want to convey come across as clearly as possible. In life, both professional and personal, we communicate with a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds, with different views and communication styles. We also communicate in a variety of settings – including ones that are stressful or tense. Navigating challenging conversations becomes much easier when we learn basic tenants of diplomatic communication.
What is Diplomatic Communication?
A diplomatic communicator is someone who can get their message across and convince people to change without damaging the relationship. Diplomatic communicators use reason, kindness and compassion, and they show respect for other people.
Diplomatic communication (or tact) is about being honest, but not brutally honest. Tact and diplomacy are skills centered around an understanding of other people and being sensitive to their opinions, beliefs, ideas and feelings. Tactful communicators can sense what another person is feeling or thinking and respond in such a way as to avoid bad feelings or awkwardness, while at the same time asserting or reflecting their own ideas and feelings back in a delicate and well-meaning fashion.
All people and all communication situations are unique. Developing effective tact and diplomacy skills requires practice and good judgment. Outlined below are a few basic tenants of diplomatic communication to help you develop or strengthen your skills.
Learn to Modify Your Communication Style
Different people communicate differently. I’ve found that many people make the mistake of thinking that their own behavioral communication style is the best (or only) way to communicate effectively. To communicate with tact, we must ditch that belief.
Rather than making value statements about someone else’s communication style, we should learn how to accommodate it. For example, if you are providing information to a “dominant” or “aggressive” communicator, it’s important to get right down to business and stay on topic. Likewise, if you’re providing information to a “conscientious” or “passive” communicator, you might approach them more casually and give them time to think through the information before requesting a response.
Paying attention to the communication styles of those around us and modifying our behavior accordingly will ultimately help us achieve better results.
Choose Your Words Carefully
Like I mentioned previously, our choice of words can influence how others perceive our message.
Avoid starting sentences with the word “you,” because it inherently sounds like an accusation and puts people on the defensive. Rather than saying, “You need to use more research in your presentation,” consider saying, “Next time, I think your presentation would be stronger if you included more research.” Indirect communication might feel counterintuitive and like we’re skirting around an issue, but it helps protect the other person from feeling like they’re being criticized or demeaned.
Another good way to avoid the other person feeling defensive is by using “I” statements. “I” statements demonstrate ownership of our feelings instead of placing blame. In practice, this might sound like, “I see what you mean, but I had trouble understanding your message when I read it the first time.”
Diplomatic communicators think, re-think and then think some more about the words they choose to communicate their ideas.
Slow Down & Speak Concisely
One of my favorite character tropes in movies and TV is the person that keeps rambling when they’re nervous or under pressure (perhaps it’s because I relate to the tendency). It’s tempting to keep talking when we feel uncomfortable or when we feel passionate about the topic. However, this increases the chance that we’ll say too much or say something we’ll regret.
A best practice is to take a deep breath. With a clear head, it’s easier to be honest and assertive and only say what we need to.
Listen to Understand
Too often when we communicate, we are thinking of our response or our agenda. However, this rarely contributes to a fruitful discussion. A tactful and diplomatic communicator is one who exhibits all the traits of an active listener. An active listener uses verbal and nonverbal cues to signal to the speaker that they are paying attention.
For example, an active listener will make eye contact, sit up straight or lean toward the speaker, mirror the speaker’s facial expressions and avoid distractions. An active listener will also ask clarifying questions, summarize what the speaker said and/or pepper in interjects like “mhm.” Each of these practices shows the person you’re talking with that your only agenda is understanding what they’re trying to say, rather than trying to push your own views. Listening shows the other person that they can trust you.
Diplomatic communicators also fight the urge to interrupt and they consciously choose if, when and how to disagree.
Consider Nonverbals
What we actually say when we communicate begins long before we open our mouths and continues after we’ve finished speaking. Our faces are extremely expressive, and we can communicate countless emotions without saying a word. Our faces – both voluntarily and involuntarily – convey emotion and some of it is hard to hide.
Involuntary messaging often becomes an obstacle to our intended message and can even at times be in conflict with our spoken word. Relaxing our faces can make a big difference in our conversations. We might think we’re conveying an open mind, when really our eyebrows are furrowed, or our lips are pursed. We might even have our arms crossed!
Being a diplomatic communicator means you can appear relaxed even when you may not be. For those of us that have expressive faces, we’ll need to practice maintaining eye contact with a neutral but pleasant facial expression (i.e., eyebrows slightly raised, and lips parted). Remember to relax any parts of the body that can become tense during difficult discussions.
Becoming a diplomatic communicator will not happen overnight but consistent practice will pay off in the long run. I recommend choosing one of these basic tenants and mastering it before moving on to the next. And remember, one non-tactful conversation will not ruin the progress you’ve made.
After each conversation, ask yourself:
- How could I have modified my communication style to better meet the needs of the other person?
- What word choices might have conveyed my message more clearly?
- Did I take my time to respond or was I rushed and talking too much?
- Did I show the other person that I was listening to understand them?
- What did my face say?
To operate successfully most businesses depend on people working together in a collaborative manner to achieve key goals. Often this means leaders want their teams to deliver high-quality products or services in the most effective and efficient manner possible, with the proper use of resources. And, of course, they want them to deliver work on time.
So in a world in which many of us are still working from remote locations, how can we virtually collaborate more effectively?
Fortunately, this is still possible and there are some easy ways to make it more effective for you and your team. Here are a few of my tips:
Consider a regular touch-base virtual meeting
Schedule a short 15-minute or 30-minute reoccurring meeting at the beginning or end of each day. Use this time as an opportunity for people to share brief updates on the projects they’re managing. This can also be a time for colleagues to ask for help if they’re stuck.
Since the pandemic, our team has gathered virtually each business day from 9:30 to 10 a.m. Those who can make it, join. They, of course, can skip it if they have a conflict or other deadlines. But having the time to catch up has been beneficial and helpful in place of the informal chats that we used to have when we were in the office. These meetings also provide us with an opportunity to review our progress to our overarching goals, providing everyone with a line of sight into how we’re doing.
Work Together Alone
With Microsoft Teams, I recently was able to successfully work side-by-side virtually with one of my colleagues to provide her with copy edits and collaborate in real-time on the associated graphics. Working virtually together was not only fun, but it allowed us to discuss the changes, share feedback and generate new ideas much more efficiently than if we’d been working in isolation and emailing changes back and forth. If you haven’t tried it, I encourage you to give it a go. With screen sharing features widely available in many software solutions, it can be a powerful way to boost productivity.
Leverage Video for Asynchronous Communication
Video can be a fast and efficient way to communicate with team members. With solutions such as Panopto Express, all you have to do is open a browser and you can easily record a presentation – no plug-ins or installs required. Sharing your video is easy, too. Recordings can be published to YouTube, Google Classroom or Panopto itself. This is a wonderful way to share information or provide trainings in an asynchronous manner. We record nearly every meeting we have. This way if a colleague can’t attend and we need their help, we can forward them the video and they can watch it at their convenience, enhancing our collaboration.
During these challenging times, it’s more important than ever to leverage team members’ strengths. Business leaders should continue to look for ways to encourage and establish virtual collaboration habits within the workplace. I hope these tips will help get you started.
Admittedly, when determining the topic I wanted to write about for this blog post, I really struggled to identify one that inspired me and sparked my interest. After reading a variety of publications, searching recent news, and reflecting on recent experiences and campaigns across multiple days, I was still drawing a blank. Given that I’d spent what felt like ages trying to come up with a blog topic, I was being critical of my time spent and starting to get frustrated.
Then I came across this article in the New York Times: The Power of Low-Stakes Productivity. The article shares how most individuals have warped senses of productivity and how our perceptions of productivity and the amount we are expected to accomplish has been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We see our friends and families mastering the art of sourdough, reading stacks of books, completing home projects or learning a new skill, and may begin to wonder why we haven’t accomplished more with our abundance of free time. Instead of criticizing our lack of productivity or implementing self-care rituals to cope (though, I’m certainly not against those), shift your focus to small wins. Believe it or not, it will encourage productivity.
This advice reminded me of something my friend often reminds me of, originally said by Desmond Tutu, “There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”
This isn’t novel advice, but it is impactful. With any large project or lofty goal, it’s important to break it down into actionable and achievable steps. But what we’re often missing is the celebration of the completion of these steps.
Teresa Amabile, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, recommends celebrating small wins daily. Professor Amabile noted the research she and her co-author, Steven Kramer, conducted inside companies revealed “that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress — even small wins.”
Celebrating small wins creates forward momentum. When you take the time to celebrate an accomplishment, even a small one, it encourages you to complete another, and another, ultimately leading you to accomplish a much larger goal.
Another reason to honor small victories, according to Professor Amabile, is that “it helps us to work through difficulties and find weak areas that we need to work on.” Acknowledging small wins, such as addressing a handful of emails or making progress on a blog post, can help you maintain positivity even on days you’re ready to criticize how little you got done.
As you prepare to celebrate your own small wins consider the following:
- Keep a “done list” to track how much you’ve completed.
- Don’t look too hard for accomplishments; it can be as simple as reading a few pages of a book you’ve been meaning to read, but remember, if you can’t find any wins in a day, you’re probably not going small enough.
- Apply this approach beyond your professional life.
As we all work through these uncertain times and look for ways to adjust to the new normal, it’s important to test out new methods to encourage productivity, not only for ourselves, but across our teams. In our very deadline-driven and fast-paced industry, we often look right past our daily accomplishments. Stop and appreciate the small wins for more positivity and productivity.
Heading into the final quarter of 2020, many of us continue navigating the familiar challenges of this trying year. Many businesses are relying on remote workforces for the foreseeable future. Teachers and students are pivoting to online learning and virtual engagement. Collectively, we are still acclimating to our new normal.
Like many others in neighboring industries, PR professionals find themselves operating in a landscape that continues to transform before our eyes. We’re learning that what traditionally has worked may no longer apply. Agility, persistence, poise and creative thinking are traits that many of us rely on now more than ever before.
As PR pros work toward driving brand awareness for clients and securing editorial placements, we sadly do so amid shrinking newsrooms. There have been countless impacts to the community of journalists that we’ve built relationships with and critically rely on for news coverage. Getting information out and reaching readers has become more difficult, leaving those of us in PR to rethink our approach.
Recently, this article from PR Daily explored three common challenges PR pros face and offered tips for how to address these challenges. Here are a few helpful takeaways from that article.
Scrutinize news pitches appropriately
As PR pros, our job is to help clients identify what topics will draw the most interest from journalists and news media. Not everything that we wish to promote may come across as newsworthy. Sometimes, PR pros have to work with clients on refining a pitch angle so that it is juicy and meaningful to our target audience.
To do so, the article lists a few important questions to ask that can help refine a story angle. These include:
- How is your news relevant to the community?
- What is the human element?
- Is there data to support this news?
- Do you have an expert that can speak to the situation?
If you’re unable to find a news hook after asking these questions, more digging is needed, or this news will need to be tabled for the time being. After all, you may not want to invest too much time into an idea that isn’t likely to succeed.
Define and manage expectations
With so much change occurring across the media landscape, managing and aligning on expectations with your client is critically important. Carefully considering pitches is a must because news outlets are approaching their coverage with a higher degree of scrutiny.
Additionally, the news cycle operates rapidly, with some stories getting bumped and pitches being placed on the backburner. Make sure clients are aware of this, as well as any changes that are happening with media outlets with whom you regularly work. Remember, your PR role is to serve as a trusted adviser to your client when working with media and driving brand awareness.
Reach out to the right contacts
Journalists are bombarded with news right now, especially those working in shorthanded newsrooms. Make sure that you’re pitching to the right journalists whose coverage beats align with your news story. It might help to have a developed article ready to go to save the journalist time from having to write it up themselves. Many outlets welcome contributed content, and this may help secure coverage.
Consider sponsored opportunities
Everyone wants to see their story published in top-tier news outlets, but these days, nothing is a given. If a client wants to ensure coverage, it might make the most sense to publish it on their own social channels or pursue sponsored content opportunities.
By leveraging owned channels, you’ll be able to sidestep the process of selling media on your news story and see the article publish sooner. This content can be re-marketed later as you see fit. Or, if reaching the audience of a top-tier publication is your objective, sponsored content programs are available. Native advertising tools – such as Outbrain and Taboola – can help your content reach these outlets.
PR pros – like many other folks – have certainly learned new ways to demonstrate agility and problem-solving skills this year. Necessity truly is the mother of invention. Hopefully, with these helpful tips, we’ll not only learn new ways of solving problems, but also learn how to achieve new goals as we close out the year.
It has been nearly eight months since employees began working remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many companies have announced they will continue to support remote work until the summer or fall of 2021. While others are considering integrating remote work into their long-term business model. This means many employees are stuck in their homes with the task of transforming a temporary workspace into a permanent solution. For those of us who feel stagnant in our home offices, below are steps we can take to improve our environment for a long-term remote work plan.
Think about ergonomics
It is necessary that your chair, desk and computer are set up in a manner that is most comfortable for you. Websites like Inc. have posted articles detailing the best ways to improve your desk to be more ergonomically correct. This means sitting in a chair that allows your feet to rest on the ground and which supports your spine. It also means adjusting your desk height so your elbows can gently rest at a 90-degree angle. Your computer monitor should be positioned at eye level and adjusted to a screen brightness and text size which is most comfortable for you.
Declutter
Take a few minutes each day to clean your office of old papers, coffee mugs, and lunch plates. It is easy for us to collect souvenirs of previous workdays, especially without the physical presence of others pressuring us to keep our space tidy. Spending a few minutes each day to clean up our office and put stationary away may also clear up space in our heads.
Make your office comfortable for YOU
Home offices provide a unique opportunity for you to customize your workspace without needing to negotiate with coworkers nearby. Position your desk near a window and open the blinds to access the natural light. Additionally, try out an essential oils mister or scented candle to help aid in your focus and relaxation during the workday.
Get closer to nature
Reconnecting with nature, whether indoors or outdoors, has positive impacts on our work performance. According to a 10-year research project conducted by psychologists at Exeter University, looking at an indoor plant or greenery around your office can give you up to a 15 percent boost in productivity. Similarly, a 2015 study found that active interaction with indoor plants can reduce physiological and psychological stress. Buying and nurturing houseplants is not only a fun quarantine activity but may provide benefits to your job performance too.
Focus on color
Color has an incredible impact on our feelings and emotions. Reconsider the colors of the stationery on your desk or the color of paint on your walls to positively impact your work performance. For example, incorporating green into your office could boost productivity and creative thinking. Additionally, painting office walls blue may help you focus better, as discovered in a 2018 study of university study rooms and residence halls.
These are small changes that can make a lasting improvement in your performance. For those of us unsure of how much longer this will last, or who are preparing for remote work for the long haul; taking the time to customize your home office will bring lasting benefits. Implementing any of these changes will inspire and energize you during this unique time. If anything, the pandemic has emphasized the importance of taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and also at work.