By Rebecca Canan
If you’ve been in Communications for 5-10 years, you likely realize that the things that made you successful back then are no longer as relevant today. For example:
Relationships with heavy-hitter journalists who cover your industry?
Back then = Critical.
Today = Arguably still handy, but more important to understand how influence works in a highly networked, messy media world.
Ensuring your CEO delivers smooth and effective speeches?
Back then = A big value-add (especially according to your boss)
Today = Your CEO probably still likes this; however, to add value to your organization at-large, your ability to enable employees and other stakeholders to be communicative, active supporters of your company is more important.
Writing comprehensive and punchy press releases?
Back then = Well, writing was the bread-and-butter of your role.
Today = Writing is still important; that said, the writing style has changed — the emphasis is now on creating content that gets shared; content that isn’t necessarily perfect and complete, but that is highly relevant and timely.
In other words, you’ve got skiiiillls…they’re multiplyin (to the tune of Grease’s “You’re the One that I Want“). Below are some early ideas we have on how communicators’ skill sets should evolve and take on new variations. What are we missing? How have you changed your competency frameworks?
Over the coming months, we’ll be rolling out support tools and resources for members on corporate communication skills. If you’d like to get involved, feel free to email me the competency model that you’re using — I’d be happy to review it, give you feedback, and keep you informed on our progress.
Related CEC Content:
on February 21, 2011
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This is a good step towards breaking down communication skill requirements. I’d like to see them on both an individual and organizational / aggregated level.
The bottom line is that the move is from message sending to dialogue. Now, couple that with what we know about people’s listening skills and the normal distribution of dialogue proficiency, and therein lies our next challenge.
What’s not new is that this has always been a need, regardless of the views of organization / stakeholder / environment relationships. In the past, however, more organizations that were seeking a larger market footprint could get away with message sending in the shadow of limited competition and / or limited information flow.
What’s new is that information flow is no longer limited. What’s scary is that unlimited information flow contains much that isn’t relevant, or worse, isn’t true.
Today’s communicators need to not only manage their conversations, but actively listen (monitoring) at a pace that has hitherto been unknown.
on February 21, 2011
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Hi Peter – Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree that listening was always an important part of communicating, but it’s grown both more important (due to the vast number of conversations occurring in – and documented in – social media) and more complex (due to the same reason – much more to sift through and analyze).
As I’m developing and vetting a new competency framework for corporate communicators, under the “core comms skills,” I’ve put an emphasis on both active listening and on data analysis. I think the trick will be in figuring out how to develop and hire for these skills in today’s teams.
For past CEC Insider posts on a similar topic, check these out: http://www.executiveboard.com/communications-blog/tag/monitoring/
on March 3, 2011
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[...] This Post Tweet Skills are top of mind right now as we’re doing a lot of work around defining the competencies of the communicator of the future – one that is a true consultative partner to the [...]
on March 28, 2011
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[...] a previous blog post, I talked about how these value props are reflected in the individual skill sets of a modern communicator. Now, let’s take a look at hiring – how do we screen for these capabilities? And…(a scary [...]
on May 11, 2011
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[...] I’ve referenced in past blog posts, I have spent LOTS of time on these questions so that you don’t have to. I’ve [...]