IABC Wellington September newsletter

Upcoming news and events from IABC Wellington

In this issue:

• September event - The art of strategy
• Thinking about joining IABC? Discounts coming up with our double-whammy membership month
• IABC Wellington continues to grow despite recession
• Leadership good for business

September event - The art of strategy

When just ‘doing communications’ isn’t enough, our employers or clients expect us to think strategically. IABC Wellington has brought together three of Wellington’s most respected public relations advisors to discuss the art of strategy.

Being a strategic thinker is a core skill in any leader, and communications is no different.

However, at a recent Be Heard, Powerhouse People told us that while employers ask for people with strategic abilities, many candidates lack these skills, despite the claims on their CVs.

For this month’s networking event, IABC Wellington has brought together three respected public relations advisors ― Tracey Bridges, Michael Dunlop and Chris Wikaira ― to discuss what should go into a strategy, and how to develop yourself as a strategist.

The topics they will discuss include:

• What is a strategy?
• What should strategy do for an organisation?
• Can you have a communication strategy in an organisation that doesn’t have an organisational strategy?
• The difference between an organisational strategy and a campaign strategy.
• If we put “strategic thinker” on our CV, what will our employer expect us to do?

Here’s your opportunity to hear from three influential advisors, and discuss their views, as well as network with your peers.

Presenters

Tracey Bridges a partner at Senate, is well known to Wellington communication audiences as a specialist in issues management and social marketing, but she also regularly facilitates strategy sessions for organisations.

Michal Dunlop, Managing Director of Acumen Republic, brings a strong commercial focus to strategy development and planning.

Chris Wikaira brings his unique perspective to his strategic development work at Busby Ramshaw Grice.

Date: Tuesday 28 September, 2010
Time: 5:15 pm
Location: Turnbull House, Bowen Street
Cost: $20 for IABC members. $40 for non-members, who should pay at the door.

Drinks and nibbles will be served before and after the panel discussion, with time for networking after the discussion.

Register for this exclusive event on the IABC website.

Registrations close at 5pm, Monday 27 September 2010.

Thinking about joining IABC? Discounts coming up with our double-whammy membership month

If you’re thinking about joining IABC, or you’re a lapsed member, then September and November are the months to do so to get a great discount, saving $US40 (or about $74).

September is international new membership month, and that’s followed closely by our own local membership month in November. For these two months, we waive the US$40 membership application fee for new and lapsed members. Note that to take advantage of this, payment must be received within the month.

Want to know more? Please contact our membership chair, Amanda Woodbridge at Amanda@ideasshop.co.nz.

IABC membership offers you access to great Wellington events, as well as forums, podcasts, live-streamed events with international gurus, plus a range of resources and case studies.

IABC Wellington continues to grow despite recession

IABC Wellington has continued to grow despite the recession, recording a 4% increase in membership in the past 12 months. We continue to receive great feedback from you, our members, about our events. Highlights for this year include Telecom’s internal communications manager Megan Wiltshire who shared how Telecom managed the XT crisis internally, and hearing from this year’s Gold Quill winners, Amanda Woodbridge and Emma McCleary (Ideas Shop) and William Malpass (Bayer Australia NZ) about their winning formulas for communications success.

We welcome your ideas for events – please contact our professional development chairs Christine Langdon and Iain MacLean on christine@senatecommunications.co.nz or iain@macleanpr.co.nz.

Leadership good for business

Amanda Woodbridge

Leadership was the resounding theme at this year’s IABC Conference in Toronto, which I had the privilege of attending in June.

As communications professionals, we all know that organisations with great leaders are more profitable and successful – staggeringly so – than organisations with poor leaders.

What I learnt from the conference was that it matters now more than ever.

Late last year global professional services firm Towers Watson conducted a global engagement survey of 20,000 employees, and found that only 26% were fully ‘engaged’ – and a staggering 32% were disenchanted or disengaged.

In addition, only 50% said they had confidence in their senior leader, 47% trusted them, and 38% that they didn’t think senior leaders cared about their people. As you would expect, line managers fared slightly better with 64% of staff saying they had confidence in them.

Where senior leaders did rate well was around empowerment (62% said they felt empowered by their senior leader to take responsibility).

As we all know, good engagement is a significant benefit to a business: shareholder returns are significantly higher (as much as 57%) and staff turnover is much lower.

At the conference, Towers Watson rejected the idea that the recession (or the ‘great recession’ as the North Americans referred to it!) had contributed to the perception of poor leadership.

They claimed instead that confidence in leadership had been tracking downwards for some time, and that the recession simply exacerbated the results.

On arriving home I stumbled across NZ research reinforcing the need for great leadership here, released recently by the Ministry of Economic Development. It shows that shifting up just one point on the Management Capability Index, which indexes a company’s leadership performance, translates to an estimated $46,000 increase in profit per employee, 17% increase in sales and staff retention lifting by 30%.

What’s great about this research is that it shows the benefits of good leadership for us Kiwis, and provides a benchmark to measure ourselves against.

Developing great leaders requires a big investment - by businesses investing money in their leaders and leaders investing time in themselves. It’s not easy; it’s a journey requiring time and investment - particularly from the aspiring leader.

As communications professionals, we play a small but vital role in that. After all, open, honest and frequent communication is an important element in leadership.

Through advising the Chief Executive and senior leadership team, we can ensure their messages resonate in a way that supports their leadership style, and builds trust with staff. Our internal communications channels also help to create transparency and trust, if used well.

We can also work with Organisational Development to develop training programmes for all line managers to help them communicate with staff.

What we can offer most of all is a sense check for authentic, values-based leadership; is what our leaders and Chief Executives saying and the way they are behaving going to build a strong, effective, engaged workforce in the longer term?

The agenda for the next IABC international conference, to be held in San Diego next June, will be released shortly. Watch out for information via the IABC newsletters or www.iabc.com.