Hiring a PR Firm? How Your Leadership Style Can Make or Break the Relationship

by Frank Williams

Over the course of my public relations career, I’ve worked with a wide range of clients. Some of the engagements were positive, productive, and long-lasting. Others, not so much.

It took me a number of years to fully understand the degree to which a client’s leadership style affects my team’s ability to effectively serve them.

We’ve worked with a few micromanagers. Rather than giving my team of professionals room to work and be creative, they analyze every detail of every task. In these situations, the work can fall victim to analysis paralysis.

We’ve also worked with clients who were on the other end of the spectrum: they were completely disengaged from the process and the work we were doing. In some cases, they would assign (notice I didn’t say “delegate”) the work to a subordinate without giving them the resources or authority to get things done. In some cases, the person who was our point of contact felt obligated to get every single decision approved by their supervisor, but the supervisor was too busy to offer those approvals.

Sometimes the disengaged client suddenly morphed into a micromanager late in the game. After being invisible throughout the process, they suddenly request massive changes that send us back to the drawing board and prevent us from getting work done on time. While our client agreements now address such scope changes, it is frustrating because we want to help our clients get the results they desire.

In another instance, a client said they would be engaged throughout the process, including developing a meeting schedule. Then, they suddenly became too busy and completely disengaged, assigning the work to a subordinate and tuning completely out, making it difficult to get the information we need to do get things done.

Effective public relations is strategic. This means it is a management function, not an afterthought that organizational leaders can ignore. At Pioneer Strategies, our entire approach is rooted in the idea that every communication activity should be designed to achieve clearly defined communication goals, which in turn should help advance overall business goals.

An effective public relations program requires buy-in and engagement from organizational leaders. This does not mean that they need to allocate massive amounts of time to the process – but it does mean that they need to be informed, engaged, aligned and willing to invest the required resources in their public relations effort.

Don’t get me wrong; we know our clients are busy. If they weren’t, we’d be a bit worried. We aim to take work off of our clients’ shoulders and make their lives easier – but we cannot do our job if a client is completely disengaged.

Experience has shown me that the clients we are most effectively able to help are engaged delegators. They understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. They view us as a partner, not just a vendor. If they delegate work to members of their team, they also delegate authority and responsibility. We agree on communication protocols, parameters, and boundaries, and they allow us to work within those boundaries while also upholding their end of the deal. They also give our team the space to be creative and do our jobs.

If you are working with a PR firm or are thinking about engaging one, take a step back and examine your leadership style and how it could make or break the relationship. If you’re an engaged delegator and are ready to take your communication program to a higher level, drop us a line!