Postscript: PR advice for leaders

Deadly spin postscript:

PR advice for leaders from a PR pro.

#1: Show us your calendar

My current boss did this a couple years ago. I wish my other bosses had done the same thing earlier in my career. It would’ve saved them from some unnecessary and unrealistic requests from me.

Yes, communicating with employees is important. It’s a full-time job for some of us in PR. And it should be a priority for all leaders. It’s been a priority for pretty much every leader I’ve worked with. They’ve all known it’s tough to lead if no one’s willing to follow.

But leaders have dozens of other priorities. They’re all important and urgent and constantly competing for a leader’s time and attention. I’m not sure we fully appreciate how unrelenting those demands are day after day after day.

Hopefully, here’s what’ll happen when your PR team sees that every minute of your day (plus your nights and most weekends) is already blocked and accounted for in your calendar.

We’ll up our game.

Whatever we send your way for review and approval will be good to go. You won’t have to waste time don’t have on editing, rewriting and fact-checking our work. And we’ll give you as much turnaround time as possible. No more expectations that you’ll review and approve our drafts before the end of the day or within the next hour.

We’ll get ruthlessly efficient in helping you get the word out.

That’ll be good for you and good for employees on the receiving end of your communications. Sure, we could have you host a town hall, run a live chat online, take over our organization’s Instagram account, sit down for a coffee klatch or do a star turn in a video. But if an old-school email does the trick –an email that takes you less than 60 seconds to review and roughly the same amount of time for employees to read –that’s what we’re going with. An email won’t win us PR awards and accolades but it’ll get the job done. That’s all that matters.

And we’ll pick our spots.

When we ask for an hour of your time to connect you with employees in-person or online, you’ll know we’ve done our homework, we’re being strategic and we know this will be time well spent for both you and employees. We won’t be making this request on a hunch or because it’s a new and novel way to communicate as a leader.

#2 Help us keep our egos in check

Some PR pros can get confused about who’s in charge. It happens to the best of us and it’s easily done.

You look to us for strategic advice and counsel. You send us to meetings you can’t attend and deputize us to speak on your behalf.

We help draft your all-staff memos, town hall addresses, keynote speeches and opeds. The more we draft, the better we get at capturing your voice and the less you edit and change. We recommend projects for you to lead and causes for you to champion. We make introductions and connect you to the right people. And you confide in us. Sometimes, you admit that you’re making it up as you go. Or you’re tired, burned out, dreaming of calling it quits and thinking that folding towels poolside at an allinclusive resort sounds like a great career move.

A little recognition and appreciation can go a long way in keeping our egos in check. So too can a gentle yet firm reminder that you’re in charge and you’re the one calling the shots.

But sometimes we won’t get the hint and course correct. Resentment will be on a slow simmer and then boil over (curdle is another useful image). We’ll start letting anyone and everyone that we’re the one pulling the strings and telling you what to think, say and do. That we’re the one who wrote every word of your all-staff memo, town hall address, keynote speech and oped. That we dreamed up the project you’re leading and the cause you’re championing. That without us, you won’t have connected with the right people. We take credit when you hit a home run and blame you when you strike out because you didn’t heed our advice. Instead of going to meetings and sharing what you think, we say here’s what you’re thinking, here’s why it’s wrong and this is what you should be thinking instead. If it comes to this, you have to let us go. You and the organization can’t afford to have us around. It’s only going to get worse, more toxic and a distraction for everyone. If we genuinely believe we’re the brains of the operation and we have what it takes to lead an organization and get paid accordingly, then give us that opportunity to prove it somewhere else.

Your PR pro should always be an ally and never an adversary or saboteur. For whatever reason, it seems to be the initially sycophantic and fawning PR pros who are most susceptible to crossing over to the dark side and going down in flames.

#3 Defend our core values whatever the cost

I’ve worked with lots of leaders who were good people. They treated everyone with respect. They were kind and quietly generous. They were gracious and humble. They were proud of the organization and knew that leading us was a privilege. They followed the Boy Scout Rule of always leaving a campground cleaner than when you first found it.

Yet some leaders inexplicably tolerated peers and direct reports who were behaving badly. They ignored, excused, justified or downplayed raging egos, flaming tempers, bullying, harassment, selfishness or laziness. Everyone knew what was going on. And everyone was waiting for the leader to step up and do something about it, even if it cost them a star performer or a personal friendship.

Here’s the problem with condoning bad behavior and doing nothing about jerks in positions of power.

The worst and most egregious behaviors that you tolerate as the leader become the core values for everyone in our organization.

It doesn’t matter what values we dreamed up and agreed on during strategic planning and then posted online, framed and displayed on walls and printed off as laminated cards for everyone’s wallets.

No amount of PR will cancel out the disconnect between what we’re saying we stand for and what you’re allowing to happen on your watch.

It’s not enough for you to be a good person. You also need to hold everyone who works for you –including your PR pro –to the same high standard.

Regrets about my career? I have a few. Not giving this advice to a couple leaders makes the short list.