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| Issue No. 200504
| April 2005
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The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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The Facts Are Necessary, But Not Always Sufficient
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
Like many before me and since, I entered the public relations field with journalism training and experience. I have a bias toward the rational, persuasive case. Marshall the facts and let them carry the argument.
Anyone who watches television, however, understands that the facts, while necessary, sometimes are not sufficient.
Recently I attended a presentation underscoring that truth, by Martin A. Kramer, vice president, Dezenhall Resources. That's the same company whose chief, Eric Dezenhall, wrote the book Jackie Disaster, reviewed here last month by Brian Eckert.
Dezenhall represents firms in crisis communications situations. Speaking to the College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania, Kramer asserted that fully half of the battle in an adversarial television story is for the representative of the institution under attack to come across as caring and empathetic. And viewers form their verdict on that in the first 30 seconds of an interview.
A former CNN White House producer, Kramer painted a grim picture of television journalism today, offering the following media beliefs:
- There are no acts of God.
- First beats better.
- Emotion trumps facts.
- Grievance equals expertise.
- Allegation equals truth.
In such situations, he said, it's important to negotiate ground rules for interviews, and he offered useful tips for doing that.
The larger truth, however, and one with which I'm not fully comfortable, is that many of us in media relations should learn more about perception management. People make decisions based on intuition. And intuition is the hot new field in psychology.
"What we're interested in is presumptions and perceptions and beliefs that are more or less instantaneous, rather than derived and reasoned," says David Myers, professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, in the March 2005 issue of Monitor on Psychology.
Myers, author of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (Yale University Press, 2002), calls this decision-making by "offstage thought." Yale University psychology professor John Bargh calls it "automatic processing."
Monitor on Psychology points out that Princeton's Daniel Kahneman earned the Nobel Prize in economics for research into rational versus intuitive thought and how both affect economic decision-making. And the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell has written Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Little, Brown, 2005).
Many decisions are being made, attitudes formed, and reputations defined outside the realm of rational fact analysis. I've always felt that working in higher education public relations is like taking a continuing education course for which we get paid. So I guess it's time to crack those psychology textbooks.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Listen!
by Zoltan Bedy
State University of New York at Oswego
Whenever people talk about good, effective communication skills, they usually refer to writing and speaking. There is little mention of listening as a communication skill. Yet, listening has been recognized for the last 20 years as a critical skill among managers and leaders, and in work teams. It is, arguably, at least as important as any other communication skill.
The results of a pilot study by Iris Johnson and C. Glenn Pearce in 2001 found that listeners became aware of their communication behaviors by voluntarily engaging in periods of self-imposed silence. In 2003, Johnson and Pearce, along with Tracy Tuten and Lucinda Sinclair, conducted a follow-up study, "Self-Imposed Silence and Perceived Listening Effectiveness" (Business Communication Quarterly, June 2003, v.66, i.2, p.23), to test the effects of listening and listening-training on listening awareness.
The study, which had both quantitative and qualitative components, used an experimental design (pretest -- treatment -- post-test) to test the effects of exposure to a lecture on listening, experiencing a period of silence (nonspeaking), or a combination of both lecture and silence on perceived listening effectiveness.
The Silence Assignment was a 12-hour period during which participants were to go about their normal daily business, but were not allowed to speak. If they broke their silence during that period, they were to begin again. Communication during this period could be done in any number of ways, none of which could include speaking or making sounds. At the end of the silence period, participants filled out questionnaires that included demographic information and open-ended questions "about the silence period and what participants learned about themselves, others, and listening."
The listening lecture was about two hours long and included such common topics on listening as "types of listening behaviors, barriers to listening, emotional and mental filters that affect listening, and effective listening techniques."
While there was no statistical significance between the group exposed to the lecture and the group experiencing the period of silence, the thoughts and feelings recorded by participants in both groups were both revealing and quite interesting.
Before getting to the comments, however, let me quickly review the rest of the methodology. All of the 167 study participants took the pretest of perceived listening effectiveness before treatment. After taking the pretest:
- Group 1 attended a lecture on listening and then completed the post-test. Following the post-test, the group also completed the Silence Assignment.
- Group 2 completed the Silence Assignment, followed by the post-test. Following the post-test, the group attended a lecture on listening.
- Group 3 completed the Silence Assignment, attended a lecture on listening, and then completed the post-test.
The study thus tested the effects of a lecture on listening versus silence versus a combination of lecture and silence on measures of perceived listening effectiveness. The post-silence questionnaire included sections on Self-Knowledge, Understanding Others, and Learning about Listening.
Johnson et al. found that three themes emerged from participants' comments in the Self-Knowledge section of the questionnaire. First, participants noted how difficult it was not to speak. Second, they recognized that while listening is difficult, it is necessary and critical. Third, they noticed the benefits of speaking less and listening more. Some of the comments from this section included:
- I hated being quiet, but I paid more attention.
- I rarely listen as well as I speak.
- I picked up on underlying messages I missed before.
- I interrupt a lot when I am able to talk.
The comments in the Understanding Others section of the questionnaire highlight many of the same ideas participants discovered in the Self-Knowledge section. Respondents seemed to have a "stronger realization of how they use speaking to Ôdrown out the silence,'" recognized "the inherent give-and-take between listener and speaker in the communication process," and found that many people preferred to have a speaking role. Some comments from this section included:
- People don't know how important listening is.
- People do not really listen to what you say.
- The quieter I am, the more people open up to me.
In the Learning about Listening section of the questionnaire, the comments reflected the themes of the other two sections. They highlighted that "listening is not an easy task, and certainly not as easy as the counter-role of speaking." This section, however, also indicated that respondents "appeared to recognize a heightened awareness of the process of listening" and of "their own skill level in listening" following the Silence Assignment. Some of the most telling comments from this portion of the questionnaire included:
- Listening is a great tool to use to learn more about the world around you.
- Silence helps you hear things you wouldn't normally hear.
- I can better comprehend what others say when I don't talk and just listen.
- I can listen with more precision when I'm not talking.
- Listening is more important than talking.
- Listening requires more effort than speaking.
- Listening requires patience.
- People tell you more and give more information when they know you are really listening and won't be cutting in.
The study participants' comments make some very interesting points for those of us in the "communication business." Our communication does not always have to be directed outward, by speaking. While I realize it is extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- for any of us to find a 12-hour waking period during which we can remain silent, in order to help ourselves be better communicators, we might try to conduct some experiments on ourselves. Perhaps beginning with a brief period of silence -- maybe 10 to 15 minutes per day, at first -- can help us realize some of the same things (and the same benefits) the participants in this experiment did.
Listening is one tool to help us be better communicators. The more tools we are able to employ, the better we will be at our craft. Your comments, as always, are welcome and appreciated.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Book Review: Strategic Communications Planning: For Effective Public Relations and Marketing
by Ed Tate
Tate Public Relations
You probably know someone on your campus who uses the term "strategic" more often than a two-year-old kid uses the word "want." Then there's "marketing" and "integrated." Combine all three -- without understanding the news business -- and you have the magic formula for alienating professionals in media relations, especially those of us with backgrounds in journalism.
The overuse and misuse of such jargon by a few doesn't obviate the need for PIOs (Public Information Officers) to heed the growing demand by university administrators that their communicators think strategically, particularly with the increasing influence of marketers on most campuses. The good news is that experts agree that successful marketing always depends on effective media relations, or more broadly on public relations (PR).
Public relations is the "secret weapon" of marketing, writes Thomas L. Harris in his excellent book Value-Added Public Relations: The Secret Weapon of Integrated Marketing. Co-founder of Golin Harris, a top PR agency, Harris says that "public relations is uniquely able to close the marketing credibility gap."
But, even if your colleagues in marketing accept that reality, you need to speak their language to have maximum influence. Practitioners of media relations and public relations need to both talk like and think like the marketers who love the word "strategic." Thanks to a very practical, relevant book by Laurie Wilson, Ph.D., and Joseph Odgen -- Strategic Communications Planning: For Effective Public Relations and Marketing -- it's now significantly easier.
Strategic Communications Planning lays out an impressively logical but sophisticated strategic-planning process for communications. The foundation is a matrix that the book translates nicely into graphics to clarify each step of the process. Developed over more than two decades by faculty members at Brigham Young University, where Wilson is a professor of communications, the matrix provides a model that most readers of this book will certainly want to use as a basic outline for communications campaigns and programs for years to come.
The matrix, which at first blush appears similar to other communication-planning methods, comprises ten steps that fit within the familiar (old) RACE model:
Research
1. Background research
2. Situation analysis
3. Core problem/opportunity
Action Planning
4. Goals and objectives
5. Key public and messages
6. Strategies and tactics
7. Calendar
8. Budget
Communication
9. Communication confirmation
Evaluation
10. Evaluation criteria and tools
Compelling tables and graphics abound, such as a diagram that illustrates the complexity of interrelationships among different objectives, key public, and strategies. The authors' techniques for development of key messages that link directly to objectives are right on the mark. Sure, much of it is stuff that veteran communicators understand intuitively, but the book serves to remind us how these concepts fit into the planning process. Moreover, it provides a framework and language that should be persuasive and effective with colleagues who want reassurance that your approach is inherently strategic and well planned. And their complex planning matrix can easily be adapted and condensed by users into a format, perhaps simplified, that's appropriate for their specific projects and programs.
The authors devote many pages to a hypothetical crisis-communications case study (pesticide contamination in a residential area), developing it through each of the ten steps as they unveil the process. At the book's end, they bring together the crisis communications efforts in a fascinating and highly readable manner. And, to my surprise, the authors provide some new, useful approaches to communicating during, and after, a public crisis.
First published ten years ago, Strategic Communications Planning has been updated with a new glossary and appendices that include copy outlines for everything from brochures to websites. Other useful features are sample timelines and budgets that reinforce the need to ensure that timing and cost are built into every plan.
My single caveat relates to the book's purpose. Because it's a textbook, a primer in strategic communications, it's a bit simplistic at times, and the writing is a bit pedestrian (e.g., a weird, frequent use of "poignant"). And like most textbooks, the paperback is a bit pricey ($49.95, Kendall Hunt Publishing), but there's always Half.com and other sources for used books.
Wilson and Ogden have produced an outstanding handbook for public relations professionals.
This one gets two thumbs up!
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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