How Managers Hit PR Paydirt

As a business, non-profit or association manager, you’ll know it’s PR paydirt when you’re able to persuade your key external stakeholders to your way of thinking, then move them to take actions that lead to your department, division or subsidiary’s success.

Proof of pudding will be outside stakeholder behaviors like increasing repeat purchases, more inquiries about strategic alliances, new specifiers of your components, more membership inquiries, or a jump in capital contributions.

But to realize such results, you’ll have to get personally involved with public relations people assigned to your unit. Then shift their emphasis from communications tactics to a workable and comprehensive blueprint that will lead to your success as a unit manager.

A blueprint, for example, like this: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

What such a public relations blueprint will require of you, is a sharper focus on those outside groups of people who play a role in just how successful a manager you will be. In other words, blueprint targets your most important external audiences.

Get your PR people on board early on. This should be an easy task as some of them, no doubt, are wondering if there may be more to public relations than press releases, special events and brochures.

One of responsibilities of a human resources professional is to let employees know that their job has been eliminated. It is seldom easy to do and often painful for person who is hearing news.

Just recently, I was involved in communicating a large layoff to employees at a Fortune 500 company. I sat with one woman after she had heard news to tell her about career transition services she could take advantage of. The woman was in shock and not ready to hear about transition services for her self. She said out loud several times, “How am I going to tell my kids this?”

When I asked her why she would not want to tell her kids, she said that her teenage son had been having a hard year in school and she did not want to upset him. She asked my advice. Recently, my mother-in-law died. Losing a loved one and losing a job have similarities. Both involve losing something you love. Both involve change. I thought back to how my husband and I told our children that their grandmother had died. I remembered that we told them truth, answered their questions and assured them that we would stay a strong family.

If you lose your job, here are some pointers for how to tell your children.

1.First, take care of you. Take stock of talents you have to offer another employer. Take stock of good things you have in your life.

2.If you have a “significant other” in your life, tell your partner before you tell your children.