I think that a communication background will become more vital as time progresses. With just about every organization engaging on social media, trying to find ways to create messages that break through the clutter, staying engaged with audiences online and offline, a communication professional is needed more than ever. For the simple fact that an organization needs a person on staff that can serve as counsel to the C-Suite regarding initiatives that involve the company communicating with an audience.
More than ever, marketing and communication have become more integrated. In my experience, organizations are seeking employees who are willing to work cross-functionally to achieve common goals. This mean as more professionals will be expected to work with the marketing team, work with IT to collect and measure campaign effectiveness, and coordinate with sales to synchronize company wide messaging. Within my current employer, we are doing some of these very items in an effort to get out of the silo mentality and more of a holistic approach.
In the past nine weeks I examined what it takes to be a leader within the field of communication. Through it all, the underlying theme is a leader must have a vision. Rebecca Wriggle (2006) wrote “The most critical competency of every strategic leader is the ability to see the future. Leaders at the strategic level cannot move an organization to a future they cannot envision.”
Whether it’s an organization branding message, deciding how a brand is represented on social media to planning worst case crisis communication scenarios, the communication leader must aim for a goal and work backwards into that goal. The two areas of leadership communication that peeked my interest included crisis communication and internal communication. Crisis communication from a leadership perspective included not missing out on an opportunity for change. For example, change is one of the hardest tasks to accomplish, especially when things are going well and is difficult to justify a change. When an organization is in crisis mode due to an unforeseen situation, management is more receptive to change and being a leader that has vision to see past the immediate crisis and think about the future is extremely valuable. “Only during emergency events does organizational leadership discover what does not work. Capturing stakeholder insights during an emergency enables the strategic leader to drive longterm direction and evaluate programs for their inherent risks and benefits,” (Tim Tinker, 2012).
Internal communication intrigued me because I feel it is one area at every organization that I’ve worked at that could use the most improvement. Understanding how important it is to involve internal audiences within broader communication efforts has affected me to improve me own efforts to communicate more effectively within the walls of our own organization’s building.
I’ve enjoyed this term and will implement what I’ve learned to become a better professional strategic communicator. Thanks for reading and hope you’ll check in, from time to time.
