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Successful Leadership: How to Motivate People to Drive Your Business Forward—Even In Challenging Times

2009-06-02T20:45:33-04:00

After a weekend of brainstorming with some of the brightest and the best, the Counselors Academy members had the opportunity to hear the advice of President and CEO of Bates Communications, Suzanne Bates. The best-selling author addressed the attendees in her speech “Successful Leadership: How to Motivate People to Drive Your Business Forward—Even In Challenging Times.” Bates offered solutions to working past the struggles of a recession, saying that through times such as these a leader’s “only choice is to motivate and inspire.”

Bates spoke about the importance of passion, a sentiment that echoed in the many breakout sessions. She reminded the attendees that “it’s important not only to understand our own passions but what excites our teams as well.”

Purpose and passion are necessary qualities in leaders. Without the ability to effectively communicate visions with employees, inspiration and motivation will be hard to find. Bates explains that leaders need to design their message with their employees in mind, which leads employees to share the same passion that drives the CEO.

“People remember stories, not business plans” says Bates. She explains that public relations professionals often have a hard time telling their own stories, but by refining the “big idea” into powerful stories teams learn to understand how to execute the strategies necessary to succeed. “Leadership is all about teaching through storytelling” says Bates.

Bates also emphasizes the importance of keeping in touch with your employees’ thoughts and feelings, monitoring your own feelings and constantly seeking out fresh ideas to avoid the slump in morale that so easily occurs after the initial excitement of new campaign plans.

“Position yourself for success by understanding what motivates you and your team” Bates emphasizes. “Motivating like a CEO begins with your own inspiration and passion.”

By Emily Randisi and Melissa Kavanagh

Geeks Unite: How Geek Squad Used Reputation to Build a Strong Brand

2009-06-02T12:03:23-04:00

For a geek, Robert Stephens is surprisingly personable. As founder and “chief inspector,” as he likes to refer to himself, Stephens is responsible for positioning The Geek Squad as the nation’s largest technology support company.

Stephens’ lecture, Geeks Unite: How Geek Squad Used Reputation to Build a Strong Brand, was insightful, relevant and unexpectedly humorous. While delving into his past he shared some of his most significant public relations and business management tactics. His most noteworthy points included creating an interesting brand, the importance of practicing transparency and authenticity, tips for managing new businesses and the value of visualizing your competition.

“Above all else, a company must have a great logo.” Stephens emphasized iconic corporate brands, such as Apple, with timeless graphic designs inspired by simplicity. He advised attendees to envision a company’s brand as a movie title; he believes a brand should project heart, soul and social relevance.
Authenticity and transparency start with employees. It is important to inspire and influence from the top so employees understand and project the story behind the brand. “Authenticity can’t be faked. PR has to be earned,” says Stephens.
Three techniques that facilitated Stephens’ success as an entrepreneur: take care of your employees, don’t take yourself too seriously and make decisions that are true to your brand.
Envision and attempt to create your business’s arch enemy to proactively address your shortcomings and promote innovation. You will always benefit from knowing your competition.

Reminiscing of childhood memories, like watching “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Stephens emphasized the importance of having a fun and interesting corporate culture just as Wonka did. “Don’t be afraid to be different and remember it’s all about living.”

-Emily Randisi, Gillian Love

Steve McKee: When Growth Stalls

2009-05-31T19:38:02-04:00

McKee Wallwork Cleveland hit their peak in 2002 when it was named the fastest growing private company at the Inc 500, one of the most prestigious advertising awards. On the exterior, the company seemed to be at the top of their industry however, there was trouble in paradise when the company’s growth hit a screeching halt. “During the weeks leading up to the conference, I started to feel like a fraud,” said Steve McKee president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland of Albuquerque, NM. “We were in the death spiral and didn’t know it.”

After months of intense research, McKee’s company discovered that they were in the middle of a death spiral, characterized by four main issues. In McKee’s recently released book “When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You’re Stuck & What to Do About It,” he describes these key issues as:

Lack of Consensus: McKee found that without addressing internal issues and inconsistencies within a company’s staff, there was no way to move away from stalled growth. “You will loose people if you have a lack of consensus on what the company must look like in the future,” said McKee. “Growth will stall and you will never move forward.”
Loss of Focus: McKee found that the old saying “Jack of all trades, master of none,” caused many problems within the company. He realized that if they re-focused their business’s specialties they would be more successful.
Loss of Nerve: As seen with Starbuck’s reaction to McDonalds $100 million dollar café campaign, it is never a good idea to steer away from what you stand for as a company. “If you decide to not react to issues at hand, whether it be competition or loss of a hold on your industry, your business will stop. Don’t become numb to your problems,” said McKee.
Lack of Consistency: Public relations, advertising, Web site; it all must be consistent. McKee saw that the company had inconsistent ideas of who they were. “Today we have an amazing public relations team that keeps our messages consistent. Without consistency people will never know who you are or what you stand for,” said McKee.

McKee found that the first way to solve a problem is to discover what it is. By assessing the company issues based on these four topics, McKee and his partners were able to address their lack of consensus, loss of focus, loss of nerve, and inconsistencies. McKee advises that a company must focus on internal problems before it blames its issues on the external. “It is so easy to blame our companies problems on the economy when we don’t realize these things are going on,” said McKee. “Addressing and recognizing the problem is where the recovery starts.”

-Emily Coleman, Skylar Stetten

Aggregated Posts from CA Blogs from Around the Net

2008-08-27T16:15:06-04:00

Some of you have asked for us to aggregate the various blogs some of our Counselors Academy members write. We're experimenting with that concept now and will see how it goes over the next week or so.

If you'd like your blog's feed or another feed considered for inclusion, use the comment button below and let us know.

Thanks in advance while we work the kinks out!

All millennials aren't created equal

2008-06-03T10:29:25-04:00

There's an interesting debate raging in the current issue of The Strategist (far and away, the best PR trade publication in this blogger's opinion). The subject is millennials and the debate is whether they are slackers or simply an updated version of the average, hard-working American of the past.

Ed Cafasso, a Manning, Selvage & Lee executive, posited the former view, describing them with such well-worn criticisms as 'self-centered,' 'possessing poor writing skills' and 'having a definite sense of entitlement.' He tarnished millennials as doing little more then holding out their hands in expectation of immediate gratification.

Bob Kornecki, who teaches PR at Loyola University Chicago and Northern Illinois, disagreed, blaming indulgent, Baby Boomer parents for any millennial self indulgence, espousing millenials' work-life balance demands as being smart and healthy, and proclaiming them to be more techy-savvy, informed and realistic than their predecessors.

Stop. You're both right. I've met all types of millennials, both in the workplace and on the college lecture circuit. Some can't write. Others do expect the world handed to them on a silver platter (one job seeker, for example, asked me to research which public relations firms she should contact for employment). And, there are more than a few millennials who have no idea of any world history prior to 1990.

On the other hand, there are millennials like Sarah Gatling and Alexa Richards. Both are College of Charleston students. Both volunteered to staff the recent PRSA Counselors Academy Conference. And, both took the time to 'report' on the proceedings on the Counselors' blog.

These two millennials also mailed handwritten notes to me, thanking me for the opportunity to experience the Academy conference and sharing some of their learnings from the event.

Alexa and Sarah are the types of millennials who dispel the conventional wisdom about their generation. They're also the types of millennials who will one day be leading PR firms and departments.

Bottom line: like every generation that preceded them, all millennials are not created equal.

Book Club Recommended Reading

2008-05-22T17:05:25-04:00

One of the sessions at this year's Spring Conference was a new one, Book Club. The concept was a simple one: four presenters were to choose a business book and discuss it for the participants. Then the whole group would discuss recent reads and share some of the ideas learned through the process.

The session was spearheaded by Elise Mitchell of Mitchell Communications Group, with the panel comprised of Lisa Simon of Simon Public Relations Group, Monty Hagler of RLF, Roy Reid of Consensus Communications and myself of The Cohesion Group.

The books reviewed by the panel included these four titles:

Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by Mark Perry
Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? by Seth Godin
Full Frontal PR: Building Buzz About Your Business, Your Product or You by Richard Laermer, and
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni

Partners in Command focused on the relationship between and the leadership qualities of George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II, outlining how they made an extraordinarily effective team during the war and in their efforts to bring peace and stability to the world.

Meatball Sundae defines 14 trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It addresses what to do about the increasing power of stories, not just facts; discusses shorter attention spans and how to work within that new framework; and explains the new math that says that five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don't.

Full Frontal PR is a practical primer (and a refresher) on media relations. It's a tactical "how to" on placing stories in traditional print and broadcast outlets with some surface treatment of new media.

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive provides a model for effective team leadership though a fictitious account of how the process works. The opening line, "if everything is important then nothing is," captures the foundation of the author's premise that leaders must have a system to help their teams effectively deal with the most important issues, including defining them.

Participants also discussed the following books and recommended them as good reads:

Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone
What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
The Customer Comes Second by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane Mcferrin Peters, and
How Not to Come (in) Second by David Kean

All of these titles are available at your favorite bookstore or online book retailer.

If you have a recommendation for a book, article, publication or blog you think other Counselors Academy members would find interesting, please add a comment to this post.

No one mentioned whether or not you'd receive a gold star for choosing a selection from this list this summer. Surely it was an oversight.

Future Counselors Inspired

2008-05-20T19:53:00-04:00

by Sarah Gatling, College of Charleston

Six students. Three days. One unbelievable opportunity.

In late February 2008, the College of Charleston Department of Communication Advisory Board, of which Steve Cody is a member, offered students the chance to be the first student volunteers to participate in the Counselors Academy Spring Conference. After the application and interview process, myself and five other students were chosen to be the representatives. On May 17, we piled into a van destined for Naples, excited to meet people who we thought embodied the essence of PR.

On first arrival, after our technical briefing with Jason Anthoine and Abbie Fink, we walked into Sunday night's reception not knowing what to expect. We were grateful for the welcome we received, and left knowing we would work as hard as we could to make our school and the members of the Counselors Academy proud.

Throughout the conference, along with reporting on the various sessions and keynote speakers, we gained invaluable insight into the profession. Tom Amberg opened our millennial eyes to the reverse mentoring relationships we will encounter in our careers. In honor of Lynn Casey, we all plan to carry on the spirit of continuous learning so that the world and profession we work in continues to grow.

Our hard work and learning matched the fun we had. Darryl Salerno's breakout session, English as a First Language, will always cause us to question our spelling and pronunciation. After a great learning experience interviewing our respective SAGE member at lunch, we will continue to debate whether we had key lime pie or cheesecake for dessert.

And to Steve Knipstein: the challenge to the best waterslide ride still stands.

The Fashionable Counselor

2008-05-20T19:50:00-04:00

by Neal Osti, College of Charleston

Jason Anthoine, head honcho of The Cohesion Group, has left his mark on the PR industry, and apparently the fashion industry as well. On Sunday night, Anthoine, shown here with Deb Radman, immediately attracted the attention of his esteemed, and well-dressed, fellow Counselors as he proudly paraded into the Starlight Reception, clad in green pants covered in a martini glass and shaker design. Heads turned in awe, and then turned back with looks of sympathy as his brave wife, Jana, followed a few generous steps behind. While the food and conversation was great, nothing quite compared to the striking outfit worn by the confident Georgia communicator. The bar has now been set high, as Counselors will look to dress in a way that merits the worthiness to share a room, and perhaps a drink, with the fashionable Jason Anthoine in conferences to come.

In all seriousness, Jason served as one of the student’s greatest allies and friends throughout the Counselors Academy experience. I believe I speak for everyone from the College of Charleston team when I say, “We couldn’t have done it without you.” So, thank you, Mr. Anthoine.

View from the Top: Making Brands Stand Out

2008-05-20T18:27:24-04:00

by Ashley Stokes, Lexi Richards, Genevieve di Leonardo, and Neal Osti, College of Charleston

When putting three of the top minds in marketing together, even the most seasoned of audience members are in for a valuable learning experience.

Nancy Weber, Chief Marketing Officer, Meredith Corporation, discussed the power shift to consumers who are now acting as co-producers of the media as part of the realities of Web 2.0. One third of all Americans go to the web for news, which is changing the consumer-brand relationship. Meredith Corporation has made $600 million in investments in publishing groups alone. It has a reach of 75 million women and reaches nearly one third of all Hispanic women. Weber entailed five core strengths that guide communication messages. With Meredith having its best year ever in 2007, “meeting the consumer on her terms seems to be working.”

Bruce Himelstein, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, provided insight into the necessity to integrate marketing and PR. Underscoring that “every step we make has to be done in sync,” Himelstein feels that PR has become more important than advertising for his company.

Mark McCleary, Vice President of Marketing, Life Fitness, discussed making his brand stand out in a global market. Speaking from success, McCleary gave advice on how to strengthen a brand’s image. His presentation emphasized global agency coordination as vital, an outsiders point of view as invaluable and research as a necessity. McCleary summed up his speech by asserting that value comes from constantly offering new ideas in the marketplace.

In today’s evolving and highly competitive market, these speakers suggested that the seamless integration of marketing and public relations will be imperative to success, meaning that PR no longer has to look up to its brothers and sisters in marketing, but instead has a seat at the table.

There's a First Time for Everything

2008-05-20T17:23:17-04:00

by Neal Osti and Katie Varn, College of Charleston

As Counselors arrived in Naples, they were greeted by smiling friends they’ve met at conferences past. However, amidst the sea of familiar faces drifted a number of new members to the Counselors Academy. These members joined a group of the most elite and thought members of the PR industry to experience a sharing of knowledge and opportunity unlike any other.

Matt Tumminello, Target 10, New York, felt the most valuable thing he has taken from the Counselors Academy Spring Conference was the networking opportunity. “The ability to talk to people who do the exact same thing you do is fantastic… rarely are we talking to our peers on this kind of level.”

For Ryan Rex, Rex PR, Tulsa, OK, he learned the most at Counselors Academy from the experience itself and the relationships he developed with the people he met. “I have already established some relationships, I have one business lead, and just from a people perspective, to have a resource in somebody that you can tap into and have a free and open discussion about best practices with is invaluable.”

In speaking with new comers to the conference, one recurring theme was the appreciation for the new relationships that were built. Chuck Norman, S&A Cherokee, Raleigh-Durham, NC, agrees with this sentiment .

Dana Hughens, Fleishman-Hillard, Raleigh, NC, gained great insight from the New Media Communications Boot Camp seminar on how to implement her basic knowledge of technology into media relations effectively. “I can help my younger employees to use their expertise of digital knowledge strategically.”

For these new members, the experience has been priceless, and they now look forward to flying out to Palm Springs next year.