Professional Development

I love learning new things, which is why I appreciate any opportunity for professional development. Even though I've been working as a strategic communicator in some capacity for years, and I’ve taken courses on internal communications, change communications, and even interpersonal communications, I’ve never had the chance to study how to be a better strategic thinker and communicator.

Fortunately, I’ve always had good instincts, but I have been looking for an opportunity to work on my analytical side for quite some time. Last week I finally got my chance when I attended the Strategic Communications Planning workshop at the Centre for Excellence in Communications, led by David Kardish, a highly respected communicator with extensive government, NGO and corporate experience.

During the two-day course we studied the various elements that go into the development of a strategic communications plan, from issue-identification to determining desired outcomes to position statements. We used a combination of lecture, give-and-take and group work on scenarios to learn the various elements of a good communications strategy.

At the start of the first morning, the 10 participants were asked to introduce themselves and tell the class what they hoped to get out of the course. I was surprised that there were at least two people besides me who basically said they know they can trust their instincts but sometimes have a harder time getting buy-in for their ideas. We were all looking for a logical progression to follow that would help us to justify our proposals. I was pleased, but not surprised (I’ve taken two courses with the Centre for Excellence in Communications already), to walk out after Day Two with tools that I can use right away to help me in my day-to-day and longer-term communications planning. In particular, I began to see how I can build a speech outline in similar fashion to the way one might create a communications strategy and create a much better speech.

Any time you put 10 strangers, especially communications people, in a room together for two days, there is great potential for conflict, chaos and confusion. To everyone’s credit, all of the students were highly focused and together we created some really good ideas in the scenarios.

The most important thing now is to find a way to use what I’ve learned as soon as possible so it stays fresh for me and moves beyond the theoretical to the real world. About a year and a half ago I attended the Internal Communications Master Class with Jim Ylisela and I came home feeling energized and motivated to put all my new ideas into practice. Then, when I started proposing these bold new ideas, I kept getting shot down (no budget, no bandwidth, we’ve never done it that way before, etc.).

This course is something I can use right away with the tools that are already at my disposal. I can’t wait to get going.