Relationship building can be difficult, though not impossible. Because of this perception, some business leaders and marketing executives pigeonhole as a “nice to have” but not a “must have”. This I feel is wrong perception. It puts more pressure on us – the Public Relations professionals. The truth is the advice that is given by good Public Relations counselors often involves a lot of hard work. A good Public Relations counselor will look at a problem and, if necessary, say to a company leader that they need to change their organizational behaviour, corporate policies, decision making, even the culture of the company, if that is what it will take to have a positive relationship with the company’s stakeholders.
For too long, PR has been associated with spin, a term that is derisive because Public Relations PR is not employed to make a negative sound like a positive. If a negative is really a negative, then the best Public Relations advice is to face it, own it with care and respect, learn from it, address it, and then put it behind you and move on. With good planning and some luck, a Public Relations professional may succeed in turning a negative into a positive in time. To summarise:
- A Public Relations person should be a good listener as listening is one sure way of learning and gathering feedback for making the necessary changes, prepare a strategy and create a good copy that could be accepted by all. Listening is an art which calls for keeping one’s own ego and emotions under control. Humility is very important in this profession.
- A Public Relations person should have radar like sense of anticipation about the shape of things to come.
- A Public Relations person should thoroughly understand the functioning of the management and understand the Management Process.
- A Public Relations person should have an excellent communication skill because their major job responsibility in an organization is to solve the communication problems of the company.
- A Public Relations person should have good knowledge of media. It is but natural that they should have a thorough knowledge of the working of media-print, electronic, or internet. Their ability to get along well with those media professionals can be an asset to the organization.
- A Public Relations person should have the necessary business sense, business acumen and actively contribute to the bottom line.
- A Public Relations person should not be a cosmetic attachment to the organization, but an active, rather pro-active, player in the process of its progress.
- A Public Relations person should be highly creative, competent and courageous enough to have out of the box thinking to inspire the organization and its members to adopt new and unusual ideas essential for its growth and prosperity. And at the same time, be able to devise strategies to prepare the organization and management team face any crisis like situation, should it arise any time.
- A Public Relations person should have a flair for writing, act a resource person for media. After all, one of their major obligations is to feed the media with news, stories and articles.
- Lastly, a Public Relations person should be a great motivator and get along with the most difficult people. The ever-changing world is a difficult place and people’s behaviour is difficult to predict. It has become gradually a challenge of getting along with people, particularly difficult people. It requires a cool mind and pleasant peaceful disposition which the professionals must master. If a Public Relations person doesn’t possess drive and enthusiasm, he will be frustrated easily.
My personal experience is – there may be ample times and ample reasons to go mad at things of not your liking, and still loaded with a responsibility to ascertain their execution. There may be frustrations, personal or professional, but a Public Relations person should never let them out.
So a good Public Relations professional must have empathy. Awareness about the sensibilities, the opinions and the perspective of others is the underpinning of successful Public Relations. In its purest form, empathy puts you in touch with your target audience in a way that is almost intimate. It’s an extremely useful power to have in any form of communication. A Public Relations person’s duties and responsibilities include media relations, publicity, internal and external communications, employee communications, holding events and public relations support to marketing, manufacturing, personnel and finance divisions and community relations, etc. Lastly, not to forget the PR agency coordination, and the following general rules.
(To Be Continued)
