Don't try to Second - Guess your Approvers

Part Two - It's you!

In my last post I talked about difficult people along the approval chain and why you should trust your own instincts and do your best work no matter what the circumstances.

Today I'm going to talk about the other side of the coin, and it's one that writers don't like to think about: The possibility that you might be part of the problem.

Sometimes when approvers re-write your material or refuse to sign off on a product even "with tracked changes," they do so because they've been burned in the past by communication specialists who don't know their subject or let their egos get in the way of accepting necessary changes.

The fact is, most of us have been that communication specialist at some time in our careers.

A couple of months into my first job in government communication, I was tasked with writing speaking notes for the Minister, who was scheduled to make an announcement concerning a major international trade initiative. Although I didn't receive enough direction on the front end, I still felt like I had done a pretty good job of it, until the director general's assistant called me up to his office. I was met at the elevator by a phalanx of international trade folks, one of whom seized my ID card and proclaimed, "It doesn't say 'poor bastard' here!"

That was my first inkling that I was going to have to do more than just a little tinkering to make the speech workable.

In the interests of brevity, I won't go into detail about what transpired over the next day and a half while I worked with the international trade folks to whip the speech into shape. But with their input and my writing skills, we arrived at something we all could be proud of.

That experience taught me two things: The first is that, as a communicator, you need to build relationships with your subject matter experts so you do receive timely guidance on products and messaging. The other is that something I might spend a few days on represents several weeks or even months of work to someone else, and I shouldn't be surprised if they have very strong feelings about it.

So the bottom line is, you should always assume that even the most difficult approvers really do have something of value to contribute. There's a good chance you're just not seeing it because all the jargon and complex language is getting in the way. Maybe you should re-examine your working relationship and see if there's a way you can demonstrate your value to the organization.

I'm not a fan of meetings just for the sake of meeting, but after this experience I started asking to attend early planning meetings to demonstrate my interest in and understanding of trade issues. Within a few months, when products bearing my name went through the international trade directorate, the director-general and the subject matter experts knew who I was, what I was capable of, and that I had treated their area with the attention and care that it deserved.

Sometimes there were still delays and changes that I thought were unnecessary, but the wholesale changes and demands for re-writes never happened again. And even though we got off on the wrong foot, our overall working relationship ended up being both positive and productive.

After all, doesn’t everybody just want to be respected for the knowledge and expertise that we bring to the table?