This week in PR (26 April newsletter - the leadership issue)

There are 28 content links in this week’s roundup. From these, leadership emerges as a strong theme.

At first glance, you might think I’m repeating myself from last week’s discussion of thought leadership, but there’s a distinction to be made between the two. It’s the difference between persuasion and influence.

Leadership was the theme of the PRmoment podcast in which Ben Smith’s guest Will Hart said:

‘Great leadership in an agency involves creating a team environment. The best leaders know how to empower their team. They need to be looking down and in while the leader needs to be looking up and out.’

So great leaders enable others to perform; it’s all about the team, not the self. And that’s the point: thought leadership can easily be seen as too blatantly promotional, too attention seeking, too self-satisfied.

Sometimes the leader may seek a lower profile and refuse to play the media game. This was the main thrust of the conversation on the When It Hits The Fan podcast this week. Co-presenter David Yelland introduced their guest thus: ‘like Jay Gatsby he dominates his age.’

The guest was Matthew Freud and the pretext for this rare interview was 40 years of his eponymous consultancy. And it occurred to me that while I feel I know much about Matthew Freud (we should all know that his great grandfather was Sigmund Freud; and may know his great uncle was Edward Bernays, his one time father-in-law Rupert Murdoch; and that his brother-in-law is Richard Curtis). He’s well known and exceptionally well connected but I can’t recall ever seeing an interview with him or even hearing his voice. Nor could I be sure to recognise him across a room.

This low profile has been a conscious decision. And his advice to politicians - not heeded by Tony Blair and probably not by Keir Starmer either - would be to ignore rather than court the tabloid press.

He discussed the difference between hard power and soft influence and explained why he took the decision never to promote Freud Communications. It turns out this most famous PR man is something of an anti-PR man.

I can hear the soundtrack to the Richard Curtis film Notting Hill as I write this: ‘You say it best, when you say nothing at all.’

Public relations is more than publicity; it’s also more than reputation. In Matthew Freud’s words:

‘‘The vast amount of the work that we do is encouraging clients and companies to be better. Very often they come to us and say ‘we want a better reputation’ and we say, ‘great, be better’.’

Amanda Coleman was thinking along similar lines this week. She’d been reading the Peter Apps book on the Grenfell Tower fire (after the negative comments on the tabloid media from the Matthew Freud interview, it’s good to acknowledge the public service value of this well-informed trade journalist from Inside Housing). Moved by his book and reflecting on the negative role public relations can play in aggressive reputation management, she wrote:

‘‘Show me the bodies’ rightly won an award and should be mandatory reading for anyone working in public bodies and their suppliers. It has made me more determined to try and encourage a change where crisis communication is about people and not reputation.’

Back to the theme of power and influence. Public relations and corporate communication leaders have little power but do wield considerable influence. That gives us some say over when to remain silent and when to speak up - and with which words and in which channel and with what timing.

We’re often advisers - courtiers if you like - to powerful people. Farzana Baduel used a different word in introducing her podcast guest, reputation lawyer Emma Woolcott. She described public relations and legal advice both operating on a spectrum of advocacy.

Yet much of our advocacy work takes place internally and behind closed doors (which is why we’ve so rarely heard from Matthew Freud in public).

If the leader is an enabler of their team’s performance, then the public relations adviser often plays the role of coach and mentor (even shoulder to cry on). So it was useful to hear an expert attempt to distinguish these two roles. In Jo Twiselton’s explanation:

‘Mentoring is offering advice, helping to guide people around a problem; coaching on the other hand is about getting the solution from the individual. You’re helping people see where they can help themselves. It’s not directive in the same way that mentoring is.’

Jo Twistleton is an acknowledged expert so I should defer to her knowledge. But having attended a session this week led by Dr Julie Gannon, co-author of a report into formal mentoring schemes, my understanding is that coaching is the more short-term and directed approach whereas mentoring is a more long-term and conversational approach to personal and professional development.

I’m happy to open this up rather than close down this topic because like the difference between persuasion and influence it’s subtle and open to interpretation. Just like public relations really.

That’s why professionals can never stop learning. So if you or any members of your teams or networks want to consider options for professional development, please alert them to PR Academy’s open online event on Wednesday 15 May from 1-2pm. You can register for free using this Eventbrite link.