The art of smart thinking in public relations

Posted on Author Heather 8
This PR Conversations post looks at the challenges in attracting smart people to build sustainable careers in public relations, by sharing a conversation that I’ve had with Ann Pilkington, founder of PR Academy, the largest provider of professional PR qualifications in the UK.
 

It seems to me that there’s a perennial debate in public relations about the merits of experience versus qualifications. Indeed, research I’ve undertaken looking at the evolution of professional PR qualifications in the UK, found an historical emphasis on evaluating a candidate’s personality and other personal qualities, something I found also when studying careers in public relations for my PhD. We could sum this up as a battle between being street smart rather than book smart. 
 
Then we have the art versus science argument that pits emotional intelligence in public relations against intellect and evidence-based practice. This is often gendered with claims that women innately have superior communications skills and so are best suited to a career in public relations. 

Likewise, professional bodies contend that public relations is a strategic management function, where planning and persuasive models are required to guide campaigns. Yet this perspective is anathema to the “seat-of-the-pants” person who relies on “natural talent” combined with abilities gained in the school of life.

This difference of opinion is often confusing to those starting out in a career in PR. Graduates feel their knowledge is undervalued – their employers think they are overqualified. Lists of required knowledge, skills and competencies to work in PR get longer and longer, yet anyone can make a career shift into PR – even to head up a department in a major firm or government body. 
 
What I think is missing is a focus on the art of smart thinking in public relations to ensure we see creativity and intelligence as equally important. Would you agree – and what do you think the main challenges we face in attracting the brightest people to work in PR?
 
Ann Pilkington, Co-founder, PR Academy:
There is a perception, I think, that PR and communication roles are all about being able to communicate with this being understood as interpersonal communication, i.e. chat, be socialable. Trouble is that everyone can communicate can’t they, so why on earth would you need a qualification and membership of a professional body? This undervalues the role.
 
How often do we hear communication referred to as a “soft skill”. I have done a lot of change communication work in IT project environments and while designing an IT system is seen as hard, comms is seen as soft. We should call this out whenever we hear it.  Sure, designing IT is tricky but is it so much more tricky than designing communication strategies that actually change behaviour? I don’t believe so. I would argue there is more smart thinking needed in the latter than the former.

Yet, I reckon those who love data and theory would be more drawn to the world of IT than the world of PR.

Perhaps we have ourselves to blame. There needs to be much more value put on qualifications and ongoing professional development. Having done something for a long time in no way means that it has been done well. You and I have talked about the risk of group-think whereby those within a team think they know how to do things and don’t need any outside input. 
 
We also need to prove that value of what we do and that means getting comfortable with data. It’s not good enough to say “I don’t do numbers” like it’s a badge of honour. When I ask my CIPR internal comms certificate groups who has a comms strategy or who has SMART objectives – why do so few hands go up? (To their credit, they are usually on the course because they want to learn this stuff.)
 
I believe measurement and evaluation is improving. We have the AMEC evaluation framework and the new UK Government Communication Service Evaluation 2.0.  I was at the AMEC summit in Barcelona recently* and there were some good examples of evaluation. But there is still bad practice and use of….. yes, you guessed it…… AVEs in countries where the large agencies think nobody will notice. Well done to Francis Ingham of the PRCA/ICCO for calling it out. 
 
You mention gender and we know this is an issue for UK Plc. Recently the Hampton Alexander Review reported that the UK is falling far short of its target for gender equality on boards.  A debate on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour discussed how there is an issue with the pipeline of women who can step into senior roles because women tend to end up in HR or PR where they get no P&L experience.

Should we do more to show the impact of PR and communication on the P&L? Do we talk the language of business enough?

 

Dr. Heather Yaxley:
It is interesting to see some momentum around measurement and evaluation triggered in large part by publication of the Barcelona Principles in 2010. These didn’t contain anything radical or new – indeed there had been many initiatives over the years to encourage a focus on effective PR. I have a copy of a research and evaluation toolkit produced by PRCA, IPR (as was) and PR Week from 1999 (and updated versions from 2001 and 2003). Yet, many people think this is all new and mysterious rather than simply management by objectives. 
 
Another piece of research that I’m working on currently is to evaluate the study of a professional qualification as a career development strategy. Specifically I am gaining input from those who studied the CIPR Diploma between 1998 and 2017. Initial findings (presented at the International History of Public Relations conference) are inspiring regarding the lasting personal and professional benefits attributed to the qualification. Again, it is about gaining evidence in order to demonstrate the value of qualifications and professional development. 
 
I really love how the new CIPR Professional PR Diploma** is equipping experienced PR practitioners to evaluate practice and think about how it can be improved. This is another side of considering impact as it makes you question effectiveness in different ways. For example, to focus on the detailed process of management, methods of measurement and evaluation, and examining ethical dimensions robustly and in depth. 
 

This approach enables recommendations to be made to address specific performance indicators with reference to an evidence base from academic work, research studies and practitioners’ own critical thinking and reflective insight.

It has been really exciting and rewarding to help experienced practitioners to not only talk the language of business, but to transform the strategic contribution that public relations is making to their clients and employers.
 
My passion is for lifelong learning to ensure sustainable career development. This is a gender neutral perspective and advocates approaches that can be adopted at any point in a career. Indeed, I have an issue with discussion of gender equality focusing primarily on hierarchical career progression. Yes it is important to ensure equality of opportunity in boardrooms – but that isn’t the career pathway for the majority of people, particularly in public relations. 
 
To attract smart people to choose public relations as a career option I believe that we need to show how the work can be intellectually challenging and immensely rewarding.
This is not simply about claiming the status of a profession or promoting representation in the C-Suite – although those are both possible. Rather, I’d like to reinforce how public relations offers opportunities to craft out careers to fit with individual ambitions and capabilities, as well as meeting the complex – and changing – needs of employers. 
 
The question though is how to encourage more people to realise that there is more to public relations than a fun experience at the start of a career. Can we do that?
We welcome your comments below and through social media. Connect with:
** See PR Academy website for details of the CIPR suite of professional qualifications – including online, face-to-face and blended learning options.
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8 Replies to “The art of smart thinking in public relations”

  1. Really interesting debate.

    I contend that the two skills that everyone in the knowledge economy needs today are:

    (i) the ability to look at, interrogate, and extract genuine insights from the data that surrounds every kind of business, and

    (ii) the ability to use these data-driven insights as the foundation stones of their storytelling – whether they’re looking to convince peers, bosses, investors, journalists, bloggers, cynics, consumers, regulators. This is massively relevant for PR and comms, and also more broadly.

    The new equation of success for the knowledge economy is “Analytics + Storytelling = Influence”. Trouble is, education (specialisation) and misunderstandings of psychology (left vs right brain) have kept these skills apart for too long.

    You’re quite right that it’s not acceptable to say “I’m no good at maths”, and we don’t require every knowledge economy worker to have PhD level stats.

    I outline my thesis in a lot more detail in my 2018 book from Routledge, “Narrative by Numbers: How to Tell Powerful & Purposeful Stories with Data”. More at http://www.narrartivebynumbers.com.

    Would love the chance to engage with you both in public dialogue on this – and particularly my prescription for the 4Rs necessary in the workplace today.

    1. Sam – thanks for your comment. I think we would certainly agree that the two skills you identify are important and ought to be connected for effective communications. I’ve watched your interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vod1kJ7xpQg). An integrative approach rather than traditional cognitive dual processing models is something that I support. Please explain more your prescription for the 4Rs, so we can discuss a bit more here. P.S. I’ve emailed you regarding other opportunities to connect on this topic. – Heather

      1. Reading. Writing. Arithmetic. And R.

        I don’t think everyone needs to become a statistical superhero or a coding deity overnight, but the problems with both education and psychology have created a tension that we need to address and resolve urgently.

        My new curriculum would also include courses in empathy and curiosity.

        1. Great idea – shame that we can’t teach common sense and a sense of humour or can we? I heard a really interesting BBC Radio 4 programme yesterday talking about lack of general knowledge of economics. After graduation (psychology degree) in order to find work* I studied the RSA Diploma for Personal Assistants. This included law and economics – along with shorthand and touch typing. The latter was the most sustainably useful thing I think I’ve ever learned.

          * I’d wanted to teach maths to middle school aged children but teacher training funding that year was only available if you had the right degree subject. My local council would fund the Diploma course however.

  2. Many thanks for another thoughtful and informative piece. In the art vs science debate, the answer is both, and more. At Bledcom a few weeks ago, Craig Fleisher made some pertinent points about the “science, art and craft” of communication. A healthy balance of all three makes for effective communication (and never forgetting that public relations and strategic/public communication are about humans, not just software, hardware and algorithms). It’s a very exciting and stimulating time to ponder the future of the field, and what to do to shape it.

    1. Thomas – you’ve reminded me of Mintzberg’s triangle of management practice – where he says that management applies science (using knowledge), depends on art (to produce insights/vision based on intuition) and “is especially rooted in craft”. A great quote is: “Art brings in the ideas and the integration; craft makes the connections, building on tangible experiences; and science provides the order, through systematic analysis of knowledge”.

      Interestingly, for those who advocate for PR as a strategic management function – or a profession – we can turn to Mintzberg to support my assertion that it should be undertaken as a reflective practice. He highlights: “Put together a good deal of craft with the right touch of art alongside some use of science, and you end up with a job that is above all a practice, learned through experience and rooted in context”.

      Indeed, reflective practice (underpinned by critical thinking) enables productive life long learning. Hence we are able to take account of complexity of context – and the complications of humans – in crafting communications. Further, being reflective in our practice encompasses listening (often missed in the urge to “do” communications) and ethics. Both of these underline the human aspect that you rightly note.

      1. Thanks Heather, love the concept of reflective practice and it’s refreshing and encouraging that you focus on that, rather than the (in my view) misdirected urge to define the field as a profession alongside the likes of law, medicine or accounting. Yes we need standards and principles, but in our fast-moving knowledge / attention / surveillance economy, public communication (to borrow Jim Macnamara’s umbrella phrase), rigid standards are much less crucial, than reflective practice guided by critical thinking. Active, engaged and curious listening, paired with a common sense application of what’s right and good. Here’s a classic challenge for formal education and training…

        1. Thomas – thanks for your support for public relations as reflective practice. Guiding principles are important in reflective practice – most importantly in relation to how we review the ethics of our own behaviour and the practices we enact. This applies across personal, occupational and organisational decision making. I think this presents a new opportunity rather than a “classic challenge” for formal education, training and practice. Traditionally, ethical practice is defined by codes produced by professional bodies for their members (where membership is mostly voluntary), along with presentation and/or discussion of illustrative case study scenarios (real or fictional). This results in emphasis of rules-based ethics plus stories of heroes/villains in the classroom and often reliance on “a common sense application of what’s right and good” in the workplace. The classic challenge seems to be the mismatch between what is taught in the classroom as ethical practice, what is expected by professional bodies in respect of codes and what is enacted in the workplace, in pragmatic (or otherwise) response to everyday situations. Reflective practice could enable these different perspectives to be brought together through use of ethical decision-making models and habits. That is something we’ve been working on with the new CIPR Professional Certificate and Diploma qualifications – which has been very interesting and promising as a way of using reflectivity as an active, engaged, curious, listening approach in practice.

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