When it comes to diminished professional confidence, The Curse of Cassandra is potentially more damaging than Imposter Syndrome. It is very easy to be ignored or overlooked in PR and internal communication, and have your ideas and views obscured by louder, more popular or branded voices, however valid your point of view or prophecy.
What should the priorities for internal communicators really be in 2022? They should not be the point issues which routinely appear in the annual predictions for the profession. It’s time for us to take a step back and get back to basics, or to discover the basics if we don’t know what they are.
The job titles for internal communication roles are inconsistent and meaningless when it comes to seniority. This confusion puts candidates for IC job roles at a disadvantage during recruitment, creates frustration and increases the risk of mismatches between successful applicants and roles.
Internal communication recruitment sometimes feels like the lawless ‘Wild West’ with no agreed or universal standards for what an internal communicator is, or does, what we should know and if we should be even qualified or accredited. No wonder some recruiters don’t know what ‘good’ looks like.
ggelf IC has had a reinvention and is now The IC Citizen. What The IC Citizen stands for isn’t a 'stupid idea'. It’s important for all of us that work in internal communication and who are serious about doing a good job and becoming better at what we do. A compass guides the way.
When did you last inspire someone? Can’t remember, or are you just too modest to admit it? To inspire is to create the hope of a better future for internal communication, for the talent we spot and the profession as a whole. With that in mind we should all set our modesty aside and become active players in the inspiration game.
We need to develop a better internal communications ecosystem to support our profession. An ecosystem where there is a symbiosis, co-existence and more co-operation between all the actors in it, and a little less commercial competition, so we can properly harness the power of our collective.
The explosion of philanthropy in knowledge sharing and support which many internal communicators experienced in the early days of the pandemic is over, and paid for online events are now making a comeback. Knowledge has a price tag, but it should be one that everyone working in internal communication is able to pay.
There are lots of gaps that are barriers to ‘getting on’ in internal communication. The practice vs. theory gap, the career expectations and reality gap, the geographical opportunity gap, and perhaps the biggest, the gap between professional frameworks and recruitment. Mind the gap.
The world is in a mess and it seems that a complete absence of leadership, decent ethics and strategy is driving poor decision making at every level in our society and the consequences of this are immeasurable human suffering and torment. Having a few more chartered public relations practitioners might just tip the balance towards some more considered decision making by leaders which would benefit everyone and possibly save the world. However small our numbers and influence might currently be, small positive actions can collectively drive big change.
The IC Citizen 