by Caroline Leach | Apr 28, 2015 | Learning, Work/Life
New Year’s Day always seems so full of promise. Remember that feeling of being on the brink of something great?
That’s the day I launched this blog. My goal was to go on a learning journey to explore the future of corporate communications. I’d post every Tuesday and Friday. Life would be perfect.
This isn’t my first blog. Three years ago I launched a blog on our company’s social collaboration platform. My goal was to drive adoption and role model what colleagues could do with social business.
What have I learned so far from blogging?
Pursue excellence, not perfection. It’s important to write great posts, but it’s also important to publish with some level of frequency. Find the right balance, whether it’s a blog post, a work project or an exercise program. Know when to take the leap. And make the “thumb slam” I wrote about in my first post.
Do your most important work in the morning. That’s the only time you can truly control. Texts aren’t stacking up; people aren’t asking for a minute of your time. This is the best time to do what’s most important to you. For me it might be a blog post or a big work project. Getting something important done first thing makes me happier and more productive for the rest of the day.
Don’t be afraid to look silly. In launching social collaboration at work a few years ago, I felt out of my element. But I realized I could learn what I needed to know. I started an internal blog to share my learning journey and ask for help from others. Earlier this year I debated whether to post “What’s Your Theme for 2015?” It seemed too soft and self-revealing. But I gave it a thumb slam. And 2,154 views and 61 comments later, I’m glad I did. Colleagues inspired others by sharing their themes for the year – from brave to intentional and from growth to transformation and more.
No one knows all the answers. Doesn’t it always seem like everyone else but you has it all figured out? Except they don’t. And the way to figure it out is by doing it. One step at a time. Have a plan, sure, but take in feedback along the way and make adjustments as you go. Pamela Druckerman summed it up well as, “everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.”
Work and life are one in the same. No more searching for an elusive work/life “balance.” They are one in the same, and it makes life easier to approach it as one big mashup. What am I learning in one area of my life that I can apply in another? And as my HR colleague Linda Simon wisely says, “enjoy every day.”
On New Year’s Day as I was fine tuning my first post and figuring out how to point the servers with my domain name to WordPress, my husband, Kevin, made me a cake. The one that opened this post. Sweet.
And although my posts aren’t perfect and neither is my life, there’s joy in losing myself in the thinking, the writing and the learning. Sweet.
by Caroline Leach | Mar 15, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
What are the questions – asked and unasked – you’ll encounter in an interview for a corporate communications job? Here are mine.
Can you write? This really means, “can you think?” As acclaimed historian David McCullough said, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That is why it’s so hard.”
Good writing is the price of admission to corporate comms. That’s why I’m often surprised by the number of people in the field who aren’t strong writers.
How do you become a good writer? Read voraciously. Write frequently. Edit liberally.
Are you smart? While you don’t have to be Mensa material, you need to have common sense. You need to possess a pragmatic, practical intelligence to navigate our VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – world.
How do you solve problems? This is where I ask people to tell me about a train wreck. A project gone wrong. A major mess-up.
I want to see what early-warning indicators they observe. How they take accountability. How they turn things around. And how they analyze and fix the root cause so it won’t happen again.
Essentially, can they figure it out?
Do you have grit? Psychologist Angela Duckworth says grit is the key to success.
What is grit? It’s “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals . . . having stamina . . . and living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
It’s never giving up. And according to Duckworth, it’s more important than talent or IQ.
This is why I’m looking for candidates with passion and dedication. People with a relentless commitment to making something happen, whatever it takes.
Will you thrive in this culture? Every company has a distinct culture, or the way work gets done. Is it formal or informal? More structured or less structured? Conservative or innovative?
I ask candidates to tell me about the environment they most enjoy working in. Then I’ll ask why and for a few examples. As they speak, I picture how they might interact at a meeting or with various leaders at the company.
Are you savvy? This isn’t a question I’ll ask directly, but I’ll listen for signs that someone knows how to navigate an organization. That they know how to articulate their point of view appropriately, at the same time that they’ll listen to and consider their colleagues’ points of view. That they know how to resolve conflicts with professionalism and poise.
Will you add a diverse perspective and skill set to our team? The more diverse the team, the more effective it will be. Research bears this out.
I’m looking for people with a different take, a fresh perspective or a novel twist on doing things. This is part of always striving to improve and get better.
How flexible and agile are you? Can you quickly see when change is needed? And if so, can you pivot? Do you remain calm and unruffled when the best-laid plans need to be scrapped or redirected?
Are you social? A communicator has to be active in at least a few social media platforms. This is no longer optional. It’s a requirement.
When I’m preparing to interview a candidate, I start with a Google search and the person’s LinkedIn profile. Then I see what they’re tweeting. And how they’re communicating visually with pictures, videos, infographics and more.
Great story: A candidate flying in for an interview with my team tweeted about the great DIRECTV service on his flight, complete with a screenshot. We hired him.
Bad story: A candidate who tweeted “nailed it” after an interview. A fellow USC Annenberg alum shared this on a career panel we were on last year. That tweet ended the person’s candidacy.
What kind of a leader are you? In one word, how would your team describe your leadership style?
Here I’m inspired by my DIRECTV colleague Jen Jaffe who leads talent development. We were recently on a leadership panel at our company’s Young Professionals Network. She asked her team for input on her leadership style, so I did the same.
It’s an instant 360 feedback activity. Try it with your colleagues sometime.
How much upside career potential do you have? As candidates tell me about themselves, I’m listening through the filter of our leadership competencies.
Are they a strategic thinker? Someone who can innovate? Lead change? Deliver results? Build talent and teamwork? Establish productive relationships? Act with integrity? And build a deep understanding of corporate communications, our business and our industry?
What are you looking for in your next career gig? Life is too short to work in a job where you aren’t learning, contributing and making progress toward your most important goals.
That’s why I’m eager to learn what the candidate wants to get out of the job. It has to be a great fit for the company and the candidate as we work together to transform TV and entertain the future.
And lastly, one of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, offers a great course on reaching your goals by blogging. She advises people in each post to “write and write until something surprises you.”
My aha moment was seeing the relationship between heading off a train wreck and acting with grit. The Little Engine That Could did exactly that.
And it’s what each of us needs to do every day. Because we’re all capable of far more than we think we are.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 19, 2015 | Leadership, Learning
Is it a good idea to earn a bunch of letters after your name? ABC, APR and CPRC, to name a few.
As with many decisions, it depends.
First, what are these letters?
They’re the accreditation programs offered by various professional associations for corporate communications and public relations.
IABC offered the Accredited Business Communicator designation through 2013 and is moving to ISO certification.
The Universal Accreditation Board, of which PRSA is a participating member, offers the Accreditation in Public Relations designation.
The Florida Public Relations Association offers the Certified Public Relations Counselor designation for senior-level professionals.
Second, should you want them?
Earlier in my career, I pursued accreditations to help establish credibility and confidence in my capabilities as a communicator. They were part of the evolution in my journey of demonstrating my professional knowledge. A logical next step after my PR certificate and my M.A.
Right after I hit the required five years of work experience, I earned an ABC. Shortly after than came an APR.
As my work expanded into Human Resources, I added an SPHR, or Senior Professional in Human Resources.
But here’s the thing. I was motivated to prove something to myself, not to others. I wanted to show myself that I had mastered a body of knowledge. That I had reached a certain level of expertise. And that I had what it took to contribute at the next level.
It was intrinsic motivation. I was internally motivated to add to my knowledge bank – for the sheer joy of learning something new and applying my new-found knowledge to my work.
And to continue learning through the recertification process every few years. Lifelong learning is what enables you to thrive in a rapidly changing world. It gives you more confidence in your abilities to handle whatever comes your way.
Leonard A. Schlesinger and others make a compelling case for this in a Harvard Business Review piece about the information explosion and continually retraining and relearning for the future.
When I hear people talk about accreditation, the underlying rationale is often extrinsic motivation. There’s an expectation of an external reward. Could be getting hired, getting a raise or getting promoted.
From my perspective, there are more effective ways to make the case for those external rewards. Things like sharing your best work, showing the results you achieved for your organization and giving insight into how you think and solve problems.
This may be why accreditation seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years. Fewer people are pursuing accreditation, perhaps because they don’t see the rewards or a return on their investments. Associations are stepping up their marketing efforts in response. And so the cycle goes.
Like with most things in life, you’ll go further with intrinsic motivation. Do things because they’re important to you personally and you derive satisfaction from them.
This has implications for leadership as well. Creating the conditions for people to be internally motivated will lead to greater performance, after the extrinsic needs such as salary have been met.
Someone will go the greater distance because of a burning motivation within. Our job as leaders is to provide a sense of meaning and purpose that speaks to our team members and fuels an inner passion to excel.
This means investing time in getting to know each person as an individual. What are their passions? What are their aspirations? What’s most important to them?
Once you know this, you can structure your team for maximum impact and tailor your leadership approach for each person.
Third, what do you do with them?
Do I list my accreditations in my LinkedIn profile? Of course. Why wouldn’t I showcase my dedication to lifelong learning?
Do I include them in my email signature or on my business card? Absolutely not. I want the focus to be on my name. On my personal brand.
Should you get accredited? Probably not. Unless you love learning and want to prove something to yourself.
Work on your social media presence, your speaking ability and your strategic agility. Bring new ideas and fresh thinking to your job every day – all topics of upcoming posts.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 8, 2015 | Careers, Learning
When the universe gives you signs about what you’re good at, pay attention.
I learned this the hard way. Or the long way. Save yourself some time and follow the mantra to do what you’re good at. What you love.
When I was five, my uncle gave me a used typewriter. It was a cherished childhood gift. I’d happily type stories, letters, calendars. Anything, really.
The same year, I started kindergarten at Crow Island School. My family had just moved from the San Francisco Bay Area, where my sister and I were born, to Winnetka, Illinois.
As my mom tells the story, I was ready to drop out of school after day one. Apparently I was disappointed we wouldn’t learn to read until first grade. (Yes, this was a dramatically different era in public education, especially given what came next.)
So my mom went to talk to my teacher, a 23-year-old named Miss Rabeiga. She hadn’t taught anyone to read before, but she said she’d give it a try.
She asked her 19 students who wanted to learn to read. Six of us raised our hands. She invited us into her office during lunchtimes to teach us. I still remember the thrill of sounding out the hardest two-syllable word in our book, “some-thing.”
In high school my mom signed me up for a career counseling course, full of aptitude and interest tests.
With my abilities in school and interest in business and the arts, the report recommended several entry-level positions, many of which did not require a college degree. I wonder if the recommendations would have been different if my name was Carl instead of Caroline.
To be fair, though, I didn’t explore the ideas that better combined business and the arts – advertising specialist, marketing analyst and employee development trainer.
Following in my parents’ footsteps (they met at Berkeley in the 60s), I went to the University of California, albeit a different campus. I was there about six weeks when I realized I’d made a mistake. The school was not for me.
So I transferred to UCLA. And I fell in love with it. There was something for every interest – academics, athletics, activities.
The lesson? Don’t be afraid to make a change if something isn’t working for you.
It was hard to pick a major. My dad suggested English. “You love to read and write,” he reasoned.
“But Dad,” I countered, “what kind of career could I have? How will I become financially independent?”
So I chose economics, the closest thing UCLA had to an undergraduate business major. It seemed practical.
And I kept missing signs along the way. My professor for the economics of entrepreneurialism said I got the highest grade in the class because I was the best writer. Same thing with a business writing course, which I loved.
After four fun years at UCLA, all I knew was I wanted to work in the business world. So I signed up with a temp agency. On my third assignment, with a real-estate development firm, I was offered a job in their accounting department.
After less than a year, I moved on to aerospace procurement. I bought hardware for satellites and worked with suppliers in exciting places like Paris, Heidelberg, Gainesville and Joplin.
When aerospace crashed in the 90s, it wasn’t like my parents hadn’t warned me not to go into it. Layoffs were announced for 25% of the workforce. Every day I wondered if I was going to be let go. If only I’d realized I was a bargain as an entry-level person.
There was a silver lining, though. I finally focused on what I wanted to do with the rest of the my life. (This phenomenon now has a name – a quarterlife crisis.)
I dusted off my copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles, which my parents had given me several years earlier.
And I actually did the exercises. Seven stories about solving problems. Then underlining the verbs. And plotting them by skills with people, info/data or things. Mine were all with people and data. Not very good with things (maybe that’s why I don’t like cooking).
This turned into a flower exercise of my favorite fields, people, skills, working conditions, salary and places to live, capped with my purpose in life.
From there I matched my flower petals with potential careers. And that was the first time corporate communications came across my radar.
Finally, a field that combined business and the arts, just like my career counselor suggested.
People would pay me to write all day? Nirvana.
But how to make a change? That’s the subject of my next post.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 5, 2015 | Learning
What’s a great way to learn something new every day?
That’s the question I’m pursuing through this blog.
More specifically: through the practice of corporate communications, what are the best ways to delight customers, engage employees, wow shareholders and contribute to communities? And how will those approaches change and evolve over time?
One thing I’ve learned about learning is that it requires a good degree of humility. When you’ve reached a certain point in your career and your life, the expectation is that you know everything. Or that you should know everything. And be able to figure it out if you don’t.
After unsuccessfully giving something your best attempt, it takes courage and confidence to ask someone else for information, ideas or inspiration.
As advertising exec Court Crandall said in his TEDx Manhattan Beach talk in November, “as a creative person, your expertise is tied to your self concept.”
He talked about the growing gap between the world changing at an exponential rate and the human brain’s unchanging capacity (Stanford’s Carol Dweck might beg to differ with her concept of a growth mindset, but that’s the subject of a different post).
Court’s solution? Focus on learning, and turn each day into a paid internship. Hey, it worked for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in The Internship, right?
But Court is on to something. In today’s world, no one has all the answers. Everyone comes to the table with different information, different ideas and different perspectives. It’s in the melding and shaping of those ideas that diamonds are formed from the crushing pressure of the business world.
Drawing on Socrates, Court advocates being a great facilitator – asking good questions, listening to ideas and embarking on a collective quest for knowledge.
John D. Wagner described this in a humorous piece for The New York Times, Learning a Foreign Language Called Public Relations.
A writer with an M.F.A. in poetry, he was surprised to land a senior role in corporate communications at a startup. “I spent each workday in full wing-it mode,” he began.
Yet he mastered the art of corporate improv – taking what was thrown at him and pivoting toward a brilliant yet simple solution, time after time. He asked great questions and acted with common sense. And when the startup crashed, he realized he’d learned to tell meaningful stories that motivated people.
And that master storytelling is one of the important things that corporate communications is all about.
It reminded me of a recent conversation with Smooch Reynolds, a luminary I met early in my career as a communicator. She was describing the importance of being able to navigate an FIO environment.
Because that’s what we’re all doing every day – figuring it out.
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