You Vs. Communications Professionals, how are you different?
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From birth it is said that we begin learning. Adjusting to the environment is no easy task, and developing all our senses prove to be key, enabling one to actually begin this process. Learning… how to walk, talk, think, adjust, and see, could easily be related to the ways that we communicate. These are just a few of the baby steps taken in bridging the gap, becoming a blossoming intellectual. As we continue to grow we are shaping our character, building a base foundation of who we are, will we ever be able to say we are complete? I think not. As the world turns and we evaluate our experiences it seems we routinely play catch-up to our constant changing values, placing accountability upon what we expect from ourselves, these very complex expectations change depending on what is experienced or witnessed in our day to day lives. I would like to claim that these set of experiences is no different from communications professionals. The skill do not lye in the way that we handle situations, but in the way we choose to break down issues and problems to come up with a plan, alleviating the bothersome worries that plague a group of people. Yet the main question is what do mass communicators and public relations (PR) professionals do that is so different from what people do everyday.
When you look into your mirror in the morning getting ready to take on the world, you are not only looking at yourself. You are looking at a vision, you may not realize it at the time but you are looking at something bigger than yourself. You notice the blemishes, the zit that wont go away, how white the teeth are, or not, you determine if your hair is acceptable, (not even to your standards) you are looking at the image you portray, and there is something that we all try to say with this appearance. The answer, we hope to know before we leave is, were we successful.
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Image is key, the professional knows this, you know this, so the work is started before you even know what your doing. The difference between this first aspect and a normal individual is that while you are focusing on yourself, the professional is focused on the entities image, the relationships that it has with its publics and its employee’s. The professional takes everything that you did to correct your image and applies it to an organization. As we all know depending on what we are breaking into, this is not always an easy task and definitely not as easy as waking up in the morning and getting yourself ready. So one constantly asks themselves during the day, throughout the day, was this successful. This questions is asked so many times that at some point one will garner a play book of skills that can be toyed with in certain situations.
In order for all this to be possible an individual uses various forms of communication. When you go for that job interview you dress to impress for the job your applying for, this is a form of communication. When you think that special someone can be standing right next to you, you attempt to communicate and gage your way to see if theres interest, this is another form of communicating.
The professional much like yourself has to find a way to break into this communication. How you communicate reenforces your image. This can be very tricky at times. The image is not to get that special someone, or to even impress for that matter. Its to attract an individual or individuals to take an active part in receiving your message. You need a message that will deliver your viewpoint, and you have to deliver it in a way that people can understand and accept hopefully arriving to the same conclusion.
When you were just a little tyke you mocked a mirror image of your parents to learn how to speak, how to think, you understood what you didn’t like and vowed to be different and you made your own adaptations to what you thought was correct.
Managing yourself is no different from creating a brand, all one has to do is look in the mirror. Its no different from expressing who you are, or what you may think is a good thing to get into. Managing yourself is simply the way of the communications specialist doing their best to enforce the very same ideals of a company. While some may not all agree with the image taken forth by some of the companies, they make mistakes just like humans do. In this aspect I find that there is no difference between the way a communications professional works, much different from how we portray ourselves.
No matter what we get ourselves into when we arrive at that fork in the road we do our best to make sure that we stay in the game or get out when possible. And to be honest I don’t see any type of spin in that.