The Dilemma For PR Professionals -- Facilitating The Conversation Without Dictating The Words

The conference speaker had finished his presentation and was handling questions from the audience.

As he deftly manuevered through any possible problem areas, a colleague whispered to me, "You can tell he's been media trained."

Then, as the messages got more obvious, she added, "Maybe too media-trained."

Later in the day, as another speaker struggled through a 50-slide PowerPoint, painfully reading the tiny text, a different colleague said to me: "You can sure tell the people who don't have a PR staff to help them with these presentations."

And there -- so beautifully illustrated in real life -- was the dilemma facing public relations and corporate communications professionals today.


Finding the middle ground

How do we find the middle ground between overly messaged corporatespeak and impossible-to-comprehend, do-it-yourself communications?

Or, said in a different way, how can we help facilitate the conversation without dictating the actual words that are used?

Some people claim that in a world of always-on communications, PR people are no longer needed.

But I would argue we are needed more than ever. Not to dictate messaging, but to help clients -- whether internal or external -- communicate more effectively, in their own unique ways.


Learning new roles

PR people need to learn new roles -- facilitator, coach, tutor, mentor -- to go along with strategic counselor.

We need to think less about controlling messages and more about whether our company's messages are being understood and believed.

We need to be asking these questions: Are we credible? Are we real? Or are our perfectly crafted missives simply being dismissed by a skeptical audience?

We need to be listening more than we talk, to understand what is being said by others -- as they are the ones who control the messages.

It's a new role, to be sure, and if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I don't know how we make it happen.

But I can see the writing on the wall. And it's not written in corporatespeak.

Quick hit: What are your thoughts? Join the conversation by adding a comment.

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