Wanted: Professional Communicator To Start in 2021 — Must be resilient and flexible, and patient with others who are less so. Must be facile with finance and a superstar with a spreadsheet. Background in political strategy, teaching, financial advising, business planning, and data analysis required. Must have at least five years’ experience on social media. Psychics, empaths, and good listeners preferred.
For years, many, if not the majority, of professional communicators (including yours truly) started out in life as journalists. As those jobs became scarcer, the wanna-be journalists turned from tossing press releases in the trash to writing them.
Speaking from experience, I would argue that journalism is the worst possible background for the re-imagined communications professional of 2021. Journalists generally go into the field because either (a) they like writing, or (b) they are cynical about business or government and want to expose its flaws. As a result, ex-journalists know how to write words, produce copy, and gather facts.
For the most part, however, they are not skilled in math, data analysis, or planning. And those are the skills the post-Covid professional communicator will need if they expect to survive in whatever the next normal brings. Let’s look at seven vital communications skills one-by-one. Ask yourself if you have the know-how to do your job properly going forward…
1. Business savvy
If I were a CEO hiring a CCO or anyone in communications today, the first skill I would look for would be a solid grounding in business and finance. Someone who understands how my organization makes or retains money and how it builds value in its community. That is as true for nonprofits and government agencies as it is for any for-profit. It is essential to understand — and be able to, at some point, calculate — how the communications function contributes to the health and sustainability of the company and society. You must be able to determine and demonstrate how you can most efficiently get your messages out there.
2. Data dexterity
Another implication of this new data-driven world is that it requires some level of proficiency with data and data analysis. Data tells you what works and what doesn’t work. It’s what you base decisions on.
Most of what we thought we knew and have become accustomed to has been uprooted or disproven in the past year or two. The hunches and gut feelings based on our prior history have little relevance now. Unless you survived the Spanish flu a hundred years ago, you probably have no experience with which to inform your decisions in our current pandemic. So you will need data. Ideally, you’d be able to analyze and interpret that data yourself. If you’re lucky enough to have the ability to hire someone, then hunt up a data analyst to help you out.
3. Coaching capabilities
I’d also look for someone with experience teaching and educating others. First, it will have taught them patience. Secondly, a lot of new things will be thrown at us. So someone who can explain things to others — put new concepts in context and teach others how to cope — will be critical.
4. Change curiosity
Change. You don’t have to love it, but you do at least have to be willing to sidle up to it and embrace it when it comes into your life. In essence, the most important personal characteristic necessary for survival these days is resilience. Anyone who clings to doing anything “the old way” won’t make it to through the interview process. A psychic, might, however.
The ability to read tea leaves will definitely be a plus. Specifically, someone who understand the workings of politics. Never has government played such a huge role in our personal lives — whether by providing relief or withholding it. Navigating the whims of our political leaders — be they local, national or internal — will be critical.
6. Empathic insight
The successful professional communicator of the future will also need empathy, because chances are very good that they will be dealing with a wounded staff. Someone, perhaps, who has lost loved ones to COVID-19. Or has been traumatized by racism or discrimination. Or just is exhausted from juggling the travails of work, child care, and isolation. A background in psychotherapy might also be useful.
7. Social media chops
It is also a time for all those who don’t “get” Twitter and social media to retire. The world has spent most of the last year on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch. If you can’t navigate in that world, then you won’t be able to communicate effectively. The time is long past when our stakeholders only got their news from traditional media outlets. Most news today arrives in a text or a Tweet. So if you want to reach journalists, that’s where you’ll find them.
8. Big ears, and the skill to use them
Whenever I’ve interviewed potential new hires, I’ve always preferred those who asked more questions than I did. Asking others for their thoughts implies you are listening. If nothing else, we all need to be listening more, and shouting less. ∞
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash.
