Amid the hype about social media, there’s one thing social media has changed, and that’s the tone and temperature of the entire process of building and maintaining community relationships. For many business, commercial, or other interests working to influence community attitudes and decision making, robust engagement by individuals from inside and outside communities should be forcing the rethinking of many old-fashioned techniques so many have taken for granted for so many years.

Where political connections were thought to matter significantly in the past, now they are only valuable to the politician if you can prove you can control the temperature of the opposition and the bullying, bloviating and bellyaching of an ever-growing number of virtual participants through social media.

Another artifact of the old days is having frequent private contacts with political and elected officials, and other decision makers, on pending and current matters with significant public impact. Increasingly, all encounters are watched, counted and reported by someone, forcing an ever more intense transparency; in fact, the transparency has all but stopped these meetings.

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[Part II of II]

Click here to read Part I

Self-Coaching

For the really resistant, brittle individual who is impervious to almost any suggestion that he or she could use some coaching, I’ve developed a brief self-coaching list. These 12 items often lead to good conversations, but this is something you send to the executive, ask for 10 minutes to review it, be turned down, but wait for the phone to ring.

Lukaszewski’s Twelve Quick Performance Tips for Spokespersons:

1. Use positive declarative language. Avoid using negative words and phrases. They cause confusion, generate negative follow-up questions and make you feel defensive.
2. Talk about the future rather than the past. Everyone remembers the past differently. Going there often causes confusion and disagreements.
3. If you must talk about the past, speak only about the lessons you learned there that will help you build a better tomorrow. Generally, the past holds very few, if any, useful lessons for tomorrow.
4. Be constructive. Make suggestions or give helpful advice rather than criticize. Criticism creates critics and victims and is remembered forever.
   

Continue reading " No Time for Coaching — How Can I Still Help My Busy Boss Get Ready for the Media? (Part II) "

[Part I of II]

As individuals move higher in an organization, two phenomena occur. The first is the belief that they are pretty good communicators. The top person in an organization usually assumes that he or she is the best communicator of all (that’s why he or she is at the top). The second is that their skin gets thinner; meaning, of course, that fools are less readily suffered the more senior an individual tends to get. Avoid using the word training with senior people. They don’t believe they need any. Always use the word coaching. Senior people know they can always use some coaching.This advice also goes for senior staff people.

There are two techniques I use to get to the busy boss:

Catch Him or Her Doing Something Right or Wrong

Routinely begin videotaping and audio taping presentations by very senior people. It doesn’t matter what the presentation is about; you need the videotape. Analyze the presentations for things the executive or manager did that you like and things that he or she could improve on. Then assemble clips of video or audio with examples of something he or she did that you really like and something that you can make one or two constructive suggestions about to improve.

Continue reading " No Time for Coaching — How Can I Still Help My Busy Boss Get Ready for the Media? (Part I) "

Whenever bad times occur, more people have more advice for the leader. Competition for leadership attention and interaction is fierce. Communicators have an added disadvantage in this struggle because virtually everyone, especially managers, feel that they are good communicators anyway and can provide this advice as well as other suggestions and ideas.

The reality is that there’s going to be enormous change in the C-suite during the next couple of years. Much of this change will be due to the previously undiagnosed incompetence of those in charge, actual malfeasance, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time with wrong competencies or inadequate ideas. This list of leadership change causes alone is something of extraordinary value to the communicator to think about and anticipate, or counteract, if possible.

In bad times it’s more essential than ever for communicators to understand the core concept at the heart of managing anything. That concept is that every problem a manager or leader faces is a management problem before it’s any other kind of problem. Yes, communication may be at the heart of the problem, but management issues and questions come first. If all you have to offer when you walk in that room is a communication-related solution or concept, the odds of being heard are relatively low. If you wish to be heard, you need to come at all problems from a management direction before a communications direction.

It’s helpful to also understand just how vulnerable the boss is in these times. The place to begin is with the five major reasons CEOs and managers lose their jobs, in good times and bad. This knowledge fortifies the communicator with important management information that precedes advice-giving before offering communication-related solutions.

Job Loss Trigger #1: Failure to complete the job or to accomplish what was promised. This seems very obvious, but often isn’t realized until it’s too late to do anything significant to counteract it. Virtually every leader is hired, appointed, or even elected in anticipation of what will be accomplished; expectations are set, anticipation is initiated and hope begins.

Can you notice when failure is beginning to occur? Do you have the fortitude to raise the issue and suggest some remedial options?

Continue reading " In Bad Times the Table Is More Crowded. Is There a Place for You? "

One of the reasons public relations communicators and other staff functions are left out of strategic meetings, especially when the most important decisions are made, is because we have great difficulty being strategic. The strategic mindset requires a different approach and a different kind of thinking.  To me, strategy is a unique mixture of mental energy verbally injected into an organization through communication, which results in behavior that achieves organizational objectives. All strategists have specific behaviors and attitudes that attract management attention. When it comes to achieving a strategic mindset, we are responding to those behaviors management finds extremely useful and that build on our intuition, creativeness and ability to deal with highly emotional situations. In this program, I identify and share the seven attributes of trusted strategic advisors using dramatic examples, dilemmas and corporate problems as vehicles for discussion, interactive learning and instruction.The Seven Disciplines are trustworthiness, verbal vision, management perspective, strategic thinking, pattern recognition, constructive advice, and teaching the boss to take your advice. A discipline is a highly focused behavior centered on an important concept, principle or intent.Other topics I cover in my session include:  what strategy is, why strategies fail, what management wants and expects from us, providing constructive feedback, making recommendations, overcoming resistance to your advice, getting the boss’ attention, and understanding the management perspective.Learn what management wants and how to provide options for resolving management trouble. Learn how to help the boss take next steps by providing information they don’t already have.
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Why should your boss listen to you? This talk will help you affirmatively answer this question because you can be heard much earlier, more often, and at higher levels. Learn the disciplines to get there. You’ll come away with the know-how to provide a well-timed, truly significant insight every time.

Continue reading " How to Develop the Mind of a Strategist: Getting Invited to the Table Earlier "