As communicators, we instinctively know that we provide consultative support to our business partners. However, as much as we bring to bear critical thinking, outcomes focus,  and business acumen capabilities to our conversations with partners, there continues to be a disconnect with how our partners value this consultative approach.

The Council ran a workshop for our European membership last month in Zurich, as part of our effort to help Communications teams move up the value chain.

In the workshop we asked all of the 43 participants out loud if they think they add value to the business. All responded ‘Yes’! Then we asked them to write down what they think their business partners think of them, and we got a very different story. Communicators are the people who ‘write press releases’, who are ‘the right-brained, creative ‘types’’, who ‘help you put pretty colours on the website’.

But, is consultative skills just a ‘buzz word’ or do they really matter for communicators? And if they really do matter, then how and why do they matter? Here are 5 reasons why we want to help you develop consultative skills through attending one of our training sessions:

• Anyone can be a consultative business partner:

As a communicator, you already possess the skills needed to be a consultative business partner.  However, in order to be effective, you need to engage your business partners by asking ask them about what they think they already know.

• Anyone who was not part of the original process can catch up with what you already decided, in a matter of minutes: 

If you take the initiative to record this process, then this allows for any member of your team to quickly get up to speed by reading your notes – which is part of the benefit of making it a process.

• If you don’t get the results you were hoping for, it is easier to make mid-course corrections: 

Since you’re now creating a process and recording the sessions with your business partners, you now have the ability to go back and conduct a step-by-step analysis to uncover the weak or missing link. 

• The process lets your business partners see a direct link between what Communications does, and a metric-orientated outcome that allows them to be more successful:

Remember that you ultimately want to work with your business partners to determine what your target audience should be doing differently.  Your success then will be determined on your ability to help drive the behavioral change that will lead to the desired outcomes. Your business partner is an intrinsic part of the discussion where you set the metric; ipso facto they will appreciate the discussion.

• Over time, partners begin to see the real consultative value of the Communications function and come to you with increasingly more strategic & higher value requests: 

Once you begin to embed this process, you’ll be on your way to creating successful products for your business partners. It now only makes sense that by consistently providing your business partners with quality work that they’ll continue to seek your advice in the future!

We’d love to join you on-site to train you and your team on consultative partnership with the business. Learn more about this skill development offering.

CEC Related Resources:

• Consultative Partnership with the Business
• Critical Thinking
• Outcomes Focus
• Business Acumen
• Supporting Business Partners
• How to Seek Existing Business Insight
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan

The media are always after a good story. That is of course unless they already have one that is too big for them to handle.  And sometimes, you may think that an unfortunate piece of bad press can do great damage to your company’s reputation only to have it never gain traction in the press.

Certainly when I worked for a major TV news broadcast organization, the aim was never to damage a company’s reputation, but if that happened as the story unfolded, that in itself could make the story more compelling.  So if you think you need to get the media involved, consider the following:

1. Context is everything: If the media is already covering something big, chances are that it may actually pay no attention at all to the event that involves your firm.

2. The media’s attention is relatively short: Just as your company’s unfortunate piece of bad press pushed something off the headlines, in most cases the next big thing will push the event affecting your firm down the pecking order. Read More »

Does the mass media really know how to communicate the stuff that people care about? Or does it always prefer to get stuck into a good old scandal? Scandals don’t come much bigger than the one that just engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Starting in the UK, the wave has now hit stateside – and still dominates Europe’s headlines and op-eds.

French newspaper Le Monde quips, “James Murdoch, the son-and-heir, placed on the ejector seat.”  Spain’s El Pais comments, “Murdoch the emperor defrocked” (by the House of Commons’ culture committee).

Why the snowball effect and why the relative blind-siding of other stories? Can these guys just not resist the temptation to report scandals?  It is not that the audience never cared about the Murdoch scandal. Doubtless, many people were fascinated. But it does not affect their livelihoods – unless, perhaps, they work in the media. Other big issues have been relatively sidelined as a result – the Greek debt crisis, and the drought and emerging famine in the horn of Africa  are two relatively neglected issues which really do touch ordinary lives. Maybe the media is giving people what they want, but too much of it for too long. In the midst of a scandal, when does the media pause for a second and determine when it’s over and time to move on to other topics of audience interest?

Read More »