New Year's Resolution

With 2008 now only a few days away from becoming history, I have been looking back at my life these past 12 months. Were the days that filled them good or bad? Was this is a good year for me? If my life in 2008 was a movie would it get a thumbs up or thumbs down? From a communication aspect, I give my life in 2008 a good review. Why? Did I write the definitive communication text or paper on this significant topic? No. Did I win any major award in the field? No. But I, like many others, did seek to advance the field and act of communication in an honest way.

Communication, like eating okra, is not for the faint of heart. It is messy, frustrating, and time consuming. Success is never guaranteed. Sometimes even the best intended communication efforts can make situations worse. Yet, at the same time, it is necessary for our personal growth and for the survival of our society. As a result, it needs to be promoted, practiced, and protected. The fact more people than ever are working as professional communicators is a good thing. This reality signifies an ever-growing awareness and recognition of the necessity of viable and effective communication. If any one thinks communication does not matter, then they should try getting through one day without it, even if it is a day they spend alone.

This brings me to my resolution for 2009. I will continue striving to be the best advocate for communication that I can. This blog is a piece of that. I will seek to make it more relevant and timely than it has been up till now. (I will also seek to generate a readership, which up till now I suspect consists of me.) But that aside, with over 35 professional years in the communication field and a growing realization that our world is more vulnerable and complex than ever, the bar of awareness and advocacy for communication must be raised. My resolution for 2009 is to help with that heavy lifting.

Dealing With Complexity

The world is growing in complexity. More people. More agendas. More perspectives. More ideas. More problems. More needs to be heard and understood. Collectively, this makes for an imposing reality. Given this: what is a person to do? How can a business cope? How can a nation succeed in achieving peaceful co-existence? How can a planet sustain itself? The answers to these questions are as complex as the world that drives them. At the same time, responses and possible solutions do share one particular common element. For those of you guessed "communication," then go to the head of the class.

If there is going to be any chance at all at addressing the world's dilemmas, then people are going to have to talk with each other. Further, they are going to need to do so in ways that help them feel connected, listened to, validated, and even appreciated. All of this is one tall order that takes solid thinking, planning, collaborating, and test runs. These are exactly the kind of tasks that persons with good communication skills identify and undertake. The trick for those communicators and all who work with them is to devise a way or ways that help ensure the strategies are successful. This, of course, is where good communication on everyone's part comes into play. Also, it does not hurt if participants possess patience, a sense of humor, and an ability to think in the long term.

Communication is not easy, nor is it always successful. Looking ahead to 2009, the world faces an array of complex issues that range from food and water shortages and weak economies to global warming and AIDS prevention. What's a people to do? For starters, seeking ways to communicate makes for a great first step.

Naughty and Nice 2

2008 was nothing if not a political year. As it is with every presidential election year, most everything that happens by our leading political figures dominates the news and is viewed through the prism of election day. (That, by the way, is not necessarily a good thing, but it is a reality of our media and the mindset it helps set within our nation.) All this is to say that my list of naughty and nice communicators in 2008 is very short and very political. It also, I freely concede, reflects my own political bias, certainly in this particular year that is rapidly drawing to a close.

But before I name names, let me define what criteria I am using to determine who or what is placed on which list. Honesty. Plain and simple. Rarely are efforts to communicate letter-perfect. Things can almost always be done more effectively. However, if an effort is honest without a goal to mislead and/or deceive, then that in itself is a good or nice communication effort. While being good or nice may not result in success, it does contribute to the kind of bridge building that remains a fundamental purpose of communication. Having said that, the naughty list is dominated by President Bush and his administration. Any individual and group that makes deception a main part of their outreach deserves nothing less. We may have had worse presidents in our nation's history, but it is difficult to identify one that has been more fundamentally dishonest. The most recent example of this is Bush's current round of farewell interviews with the major media outlets. In each one he talks of his regret that intelligence had been better regarding the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The well-documented fact is the intelligence was just fine. Bush, Cheney and others simply manipulated the intelligence to fit their desire to go to war. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of their ongoing lies makes their behavior immoral as well as criminal.

In terms of nice, I must go with President-election Obama. In less than a month, he will become our new communicator-in-chief. As a student and teacher of communication, I feel at this moment that our nation is in good hands. Obama is a solid communicator because his words come from his ability and willingness to listen. As a result, he is able to speak to the needs, concerns, etc. of people in a manner in which they can relate and feel heard. The success of his historic campaign is the result, in large measure, of his ability to communicate with consistent honestly and compassion. May he continue to exhibit this talent.

Happy holidays everyone!

Naughty and Nice

Christmas is now one week away. Among other things, that means the end of another year is almost upon us. Not surprisingly, much looking back over the past 12 months is underway as people review the highs and lows of their personal lives as well as those of the country and world. From a communication standpoint, there are primarily two lists: naughty and nice. Who or what were examples of poor communication and who or what were examples of good communication? I will share my list of each in my next entry, but first I think it is important to define what I mean by poor and good communication.

I do not necessarily define poor or good by success. The act of communicating is tricky and tough. Well-thought-out, straight-forward plans do not always succeed, but nevertheless the people behind them deserve credit just the same. Similarly, poor plans, such as ones based on lies, deception and purposeful manipulation can generate success but that does not make them any less poor. Ideally, communication is an honest act but that is not to say there are those who not abuse that truism. Unfortunately, there are those who justify their shady behavior by pointing to the fact people attended their event, voted for their candidate, or bought their product as a result of misleading information. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's just say the end does not justify the means when it comes to communication. Also, there are so-called communication experts who actually give the profession a bad name just as there are politicians who give politics a bad name.

Good and effective communication is often time unseen or even unappreciated at the time it happens. Good communicators should never over shadow the message or the client they are attempting to represent. This seemed to be an unfortunate trend in 2008. But the flip side of that trend in 2008 is that communication, as a tool and profession, continued to be recognized as being vital to any effort to bring people together. There will be more to come on communication in 2008.

Musicality of Communications

Have you ever watched an orchestra or any kind of musical group play? It can really be a fun and enjoyable experience, especially when they are playing music you like. The sounds they produce are in sync and harmony and can make a true connection to any or all who are listening. What is particularly interesting is the individual musician in a group and the challenges he or she has to meet in order for the entire group to produce a pleasant sound. One such challenge for this person, irregardless of the instrument they are playing, is to focus on making sure they are playing their own notes correctly in a time when they are supposed to. Another challenge is that they have to pay attention - listen - to what the musicians next to them and those around them are doing so they can make any necessary adjustments in their playing should unexpected occurrences arise. These individual musicians, then, have to both focus on themselves and others: communicate at and communicate with.

The dual challenges of the musician are very similar of those of a communicator. Yes, the communicator needs to devise effective and even creative strategies with which to connect with others. But these strategies must be derived from information they have collected by learning more about the people with whom they are attempting to blend. It is all part of establishing and maintaining an ongoing dialog with others. No one communicates in a vacuum just as no musician in a group plays within a vacuum. Communication, ideally, is a circular exchange and interaction between information collected and information shared. The two build on each other much like Ravel's "Bolero" continues to expand.

This gives us one more reason to admire musicians. Not only do they deserve applause for the skills they exhibit at playing an instrument, but they should also be recognized for demonstrating just how enjoyable and meaningful effective communication can be when all the right notes are hit.

Long Term Thinking

One of the first things I will be doing after the upcoming holidays is talk to a group of public relations officers about communicating with young people who either have or who are about to graduate from high school. As someone who has worked in public relations in a higher education setting for nearly 35 years, they want me to talk about how we go about communicating with that particular audience. It is an interesting question, particularly for those of us in higher education who face that challenge each semester. Students, after all, are what keep us afloat. But the question itself speaks to a more encompassing topic: strategic communication.

Connecting with any specific audience or public begins, for me, with a reaffirmation of the fundamental essence of what public relations is. Public relations professionals are relationship managers. It is these men and women who work to bring publics together and then keep them together over a sustained period of time. Consequently, any strategies devised to connect with high schoolers must be long-range in nature, not short-term. Remember: public relations is a long distance run, not a sprint. Yes, we want the prospective strudents to enroll at our institution but we also want them to stay with us, and then remain in our corner when they graduate.

Any plans for recruiting high schoolers to enroll are incomplete if they focus only on short-term strategies, such as sending representatives to high school fairs, doing on-line advertising, and/or sending out press releases. While these steps are valid, they do not or should not represent the entire package. This is an easy trap to fall into and often times many public relations professionals do just that. Communicating matters the most when it articulates a long-term commitment.

Teaching Communication

One of the things I enjoy doing the most is teach. Whether I am at any good at that I will leave to others to address. But I find the act of preparing lesson plans, figuring out ways to be informative and motivational, and interacting with a range of students to be fun, challenging and stimulating. I have been doing it now for over twenty years. Specifically, I teach a public relations class part-time and have been doing so at different colleges, the one most recent for the past five years. I view what I do in this regard as important because successful communication is vital to the success of our society and our world. Any thing that any one can do to help drive that fundamental truism home to students of communication should be supported.

In my teaching experiences, one lesson above all others that I strive to impart on students is that becoming an effective communicator requires constant and ongoing practice. It is very much like becoming a high caliber artist. Yo-Yo Ma is a great and acclaimed musician, but you can bet he continues to practice as often as he can. Why? Because he wants to retain his level of performance and, if possible, improve upon it. Yo-Yo Ma, of course, is one of countless examples of this.

Many students, at least initially, view communication as being easy because, let's face it, everybody does it and everybody does it all the time. One joke is we can even communicate without even thinking because it is so fundamental to our being. Sadly, far too many people do attempt to communicate without much planning or thought. Consequently, it is not surprising to know that most attempts by so-called professionals fail or are not as effective as they could be simply because not nearly as much planning has been done before hand.

Whether you are in public relations or another profession; whether you are simply trying to make social arrangements with friends; or whether you are trying to share your own views about something, the fundamentals of communication remain: be a good listener, know your audience, and know what it is you are trying to communicate and what you trying to achieve. They are worth learning and remembering. I will continue highlighting these essentials to future students and, of course, keep practicing them myself.

Reality Check

Isn't if fun how television and motion pictures can make some things seem more glamorous or exciting than they really are? For instance, take any of the multitude of cop shows that have been on television over the years. Is there a more exciting profession than being a detective who goes from one bad-guy-fighting/crimes solving adventure to another? These men and women seem to have little, if any, time for doing such mundane things as changing clothes, going to the grocery store, mowing the lawn, or paying bills. They just bounce from one shoot-out after another, yelling matches with their bosses, and close encounters of the best kind with their lovers and/or spouses.

Of course, as many television shows of this kind that have been produced over the years, there have been almost as many articles and accounts by real police officers that discuss how unreal and misleading those fun and entertaining productions actually are. In the real world, being a cop involves tons of paper work, research, talking with people, and routinely staying in touch with key sources. Many officers, in the real world, can go an entire career without firing their pistol once other than in target practice.

This vast difference also applies to people in the public relations profession. While there have not been nearly as many entertainment depictions of PR types as there have been of cops, there have been enough to report that the real day-to-day world of those in the communication industry is as unglamorous as is the real world of those in law enforcement. Being an effective and respectable public relations officer involves research, planning, collaboration, and paper work. Let's face it, how action packed can preparing the text for a three-fold brochure really be? Public relations professionals are relationship builders and managers. They are not news makers or party animals. Establishing connections with others requires solid research and planning. People who are looking into entering this profession should do so because they recognize the importance to our society of meaningful bridge building.

Knowing Your Audience

Have you ever been around two people who seem to be very much in sync? For instance, they seem to finish each other's sentences or, at times, read each other's mind. Assuming neither one possesses any kind of psychic powers, the obvious conclusion at this particular dynamic is that these individuals really do seem to know each other very well. They talk with each other and not at. Their dialog is circular and not one-sided. From a communication standpoint, this circumstance is ideal. Each individual knows his or her audience or public. As a result, meaningful communication occurs.

The scenario I painted usually involves a couple or two close friends. Obviously, it is not always realistic to expect a professional communicator to develop this kind of closeness with a public. For instance, a high ranking professional at a high ranking public relations firm is not expected to be as tight with a public, such as potential investors, as he or she is with their spouse. Nevertheless, it is a goal worth striving to achieve if one wishes to be an effective communicator. Make no mistake: the more one can learn about another, the better they will be able to connect with another person. This is the "bottom line" challenge of any communicator. Know your audience.

In real estate, the mantra is "location, location, location." In communication, the mantra is "relationship, relationship, relationship." If one does not make the effort to educate themselves about an audience or public - no matter how big or small it might be - then their communication efforts will be made of straw, not brick. And if you are wondering how that plays out, then just read "The Three Little Pigs." Here's a hint: the house of straw collapsed at the first strong wind.