After being lambasted by more desultory head-spinning news of-the-day I wonder how things will be (in general and Marcom in particular), when they finally become “never the same again.”
The economy, legal Ponzi schemes (Wall Street Derivatives), illegal Ponzi schemes (Madoff), careers and nest eggs vanishing faster than rolls on the Biggest Loser, and all we can say is no more. Suddenly our senses are overwhelmed by the volume, complexity and potential consequences of digesting the sine qua non of our professional practice, authentic stories with context.
But being authentic and telling like stories is what we do at WordWrite. So how is this done when most else occupying the brain’s bandwidth is an economic or social train wreck–or worse–just plain hard-wired fear about what tomorrow brings?
Well, glibness aside, you tell it the same way you would during good times! You use facts to build an empirical base of reality and then breathe a reliable story into them that presents you (or your client) in ways to which audiences attend.
But tough times also call for the heightened practice of some specialized skills and client service practices. These include:
Acknowledge the complexity of it all. Resist the temptation to present sound-bite sized ideas and solutions to either your organization, or worse, yourself. Contemporary problems in PR and marcom are everywhere, and just like the problems of the larger economy or social system, few easy, quick and silver-bullet solutions exist. This is especially true about social media–who application is intriguing but hardly a magic elixir.
Learn from mistakes. Guess what? Easy, quick and silver bullet solutions in communication have seldom existed though they have been widely used as the iambic pentameter of professional advice. You, me and the pro in the next shop don’t have all the right answers and we have all advanced at least some of the wrong ones. Learn from what you did wrong and proceed accordingly.
Embrace Humility. To be humble (as a communication pro or business leader) is not professional suicide or dangerous. Just like you, your leadership and colleagues are scratching their heads about turns in their commercial and career fortunes. Self-concepts of infallibility and center of the universe wisdom are dying (thankfully) and many will be knocked down a peg or two or three. And that’s ok — and it’s natural — and should be ignored at your own peril.
Listen. Those are around you are suffering your brand of pain — but many of them also look upon you as a trusted advisor if you are a communication pro or a business leader. Use active listening as a substitute for solution-oriented discussion. You are not your colleague’s therapist, clergy, banker or (usually)
vocational guidance counselor. But you do have a reasoned perspective that is valued and it is hard to imagine active listening was not a part in becoming valuable. Now’s the time to expand that skill.
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John Durante is senior marketing associate for WordWrite Communications.
