You’re leading a team of PR professionals. What’s the best way to overcome common teamwork challenges?

Create distinct lanes for everyone and make sure everyone understands not only what their role is but what the big picture is and how their effort ladders up to that overarching goal.

Before you put together a team, it's important to define your goals. Once you have a clear idea of your goals, you can build a team to help you achieve them. You can also develop strategies and plans that can support your goals.

To overcome common teamwork challenges when leading a team of PR professionals, prioritize effective communication, clear roles, and collaboration. Encourage open dialogue and feedback. Define roles and goals clearly. Foster a collaborative environment where expertise is shared. Address conflicts promptly and transparently. Celebrate achievements to boost morale. By focusing on these steps, you can create a cohesive and productive PR team.

Since inception in the early 1990s, we work in a collaborative and "hierarchy-lite" manner, where all of us contribute to actual client output and work, where each of us take a client relationship from beginning of consults to campaign completion and reporting. Some of us are specialist roles, e.g. AI and technology research, while also working on client projects, so that our expertise can help clients in their business and digital transformation as well. We don't keep "account handlers", and the paradigm is akin to "Star Trek Enterprise" where each of us is a specialist role serving a collective purpose. In this manner, there is little conflict, since each of us brings something to the table for the team, the clients, and the media.

1. Define clear goals & roles: Ensure everyone understands campaign objectives and individual responsibilities for clarity and direction. 2. Foster open communication: Encourage regular check-ins, active listening, and open discussions to avoid misunderstandings. 3. Embrace diverse perspectives: Value different voices and ideas to create well-rounded communication strategies. 4. Resolve conflicts constructively: Create a safe space for respectful exchange and problem-solving to maintain team harmony. 5. Recognize and reward achievements: Celebrate successes individually and as a team to boost morale and motivation. By fostering a culture of collaboration and open communication, you can empower your team to overcome challenges.

Imagine Role Reversal Days, where team members swap roles, fostering empathy and understanding. Storytelling Sessions share experiences, fostering connection and insights. Gamified problem-solving adds excitement and encourages inventive solutions. Virtual retreats and hackathons engage teams, promoting innovative campaigns. Peer coaching circles and a PR Buddy System enrich collaboration, fostering learning and camaraderie. Walking meetings or virtual strolls foster creativity and well-being. We craft a culture that thrives on challenges, ensuring success in PR's dynamic world.

It's crucial to establish clear channels where team members can share ideas, express concerns, and provide updates. This open dialogue fosters a culture of transparency and trust, ensuring that everyone feels heard and valued. I make it a priority to schedule regular check-ins and encourage an environment where feedback is not just welcomed but sought after. This approach helps identify potential issues early and allows the team to collaboratively find solutions, preventing misunderstandings and conflicts from escalating. By maintaining regular and open communication, we strengthen our team dynamics, ensuring that we can navigate any obstacles together with unity and mutual respect.

As you're growing your team, it's important to keep everyone informed. Communicate your growth plans and strategies to your team so that everyone agrees. This can help ensure a smooth transition as you're scaling your team, and it also shows your team that you're committed to their development.

In my previous PR teams, a solid editorial structure has always been beneficial. This includes having a comprehensive distribution list for all press releases, organized by short- and long-lead outreach, clear allocation of thematic responsibilities among team members, and a structured and standardized weekly meeting. During these meetings, focused dialogue within the team unleashes power and helps avoid potential risks. Ultimately, clarity and transparency within the team always prove helpful, even in very small teams ??

Having regular stand-ups can help to remove roadblocks faster than letting colleagues struggle with a task. We all have different sets of skills and sometimes a quick sync-up can go a long way.

If each team member has distinct skill sets, they can bring diversity and creativity to your PR efforts. When choosing team members, look for people with different backgrounds and experiences. This can help you create a well-rounded team that can offer different perspectives on PR campaigns and strategies. Using diverse skill sets can also help you achieve your goals more effectively.

While it continues to be challenging to attract applicants with diverse backgrounds, building a team with diverse individuals, each providing their unique experiences, expertise, and perspectives, is invaluable and ultimately a key differentiator between the ability to deliver "good enough" and "amazingly effective" public relations on behalf of clients.

Expanding our horizons and being open to different perspectives, ideas, and approaches. By valuing and celebrating our differences, we can leverage the unique strengths and talents of each team member to achieve our collective goals. Tolerating differences fosters a more inclusive and innovative environment, where everyone feels empowered to contribute their best work.

Everyone has their own set of skills, and as a leader it is our job to nurture it. Allowing your team to take responsibility of things they feel confident about, giving them the space to make mistakes and guiding them to try again is crucial. It is important to not put anyone down, but leverage their skillset to our advantage. Afterall, we cannot judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree

A leader is an enabler, one who creates the perfect setting and platform for others to manifest their creativity and contribute. As the PR Leader, you know the desires of the stakeholders and the project itself in more depths than your team members. Therefore, you should try to design the playground for your team members in a way that could allow them to invest their creativity and efforts in a meaningful way for the project and fulfilment of the end goal.

Be sure you address conflicts quickly rather than letting things simmer. Also, deal with each side of a conflict fairly by remembering the old adage about there being three sides to every story: Person One's side, Person Two's side, and the truth. In addition. keep emotions out of your analysis of the conflict. You may not be able to please one or both sides, but what matters is the project rather than an individual's feelings. That may sound harsh, but without a successful project, jobs maybe on the line and that's the bottom line that matters.

I don't always live this by example, but the "assumption of positive intent" goes a tremendous way toward conflict resolution. Start with being curious about why something happened or why someone did something rather than forming a judgment about it or them. This applies to clients as it does to team members and also to working with journalists. We're all human, we all are doing the best we can, and we all have bad days, and grace goes a long way to diffusing conflict.

We host a monthly team-nominated "Team Member of the Month" where we not only celebrate the one team member that won but also the runners-up, including letting them know why other team members nominated and voted for them.

When we show appreciation and acknowledge the efforts of team members, we create a positive and motivating environment where individuals feel valued and empowered. This not only boosts morale but also encourages continued success and collaboration among team members. By reinforcing positive behaviors and contributions, we strengthen the team’s cohesion and drive towards shared goals, ultimately leading to greater overall success.

Once you have your team in place, it's important to delegate tasks. Ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities and what you expect of them. This can help you ensure that each team member contributes to the PR efforts and that they complete efficiently. As a business grows, you may scale your team. This can mean adding more team members or changing the structure of your team. For example, you can create sub-teams to focus on specific goals or areas of PR. As the business changes, reassess your PR goals and team structure to help ensure that you're still meeting your needs.

Celebrating individual and team achievements can boost morale and motivation. Avoid overlapping duties and ensure accountability towards every team member by defining clear roles and responsibilities.

Something that is often overlooked is defining and agreeing what success looks like for the team and for the project. Particularly important when you have a cross-functional team. Without this clarity, it's hard to know if you're executing well against plan and progressing towards key milestones.