The real challenge for council PR heads is retaining the hearts and minds of staff and local stakeholders rather than just winning coverage on page three of the local newspaper, says Mark Fletcher

As local authorities approach the budget cuts, attention will inevitably turn, at some point, to their reputation and specifically, how the story will play in the local press.

Of course, this will be important. Many people rely on local news coverage for information about their council and changes to their service.

But the real communication challenge is not about what’s on page one or page three.

It’s about how to retain the hearts and minds of staff and stakeholders. And that’s not a one-to-many problem. It’s very often one-to-one communication.

Forget the front pages. You could write them today. They are the diet of the dailies and the weeklies. But service resilience will not depend on pleasing the local editor.

The real challenge is having highly-skilled people who maintain goodwill, whatever happens.

Even with training, delivering difficult news is not a pleasant experience. It’s hell to have to hear it. It can cause extreme anxiety at the time, and the aftershocks can be lived with for many years. And the experience can be as bad for the person delivering the missive.

So what we all tend to do is avoid the discomfort in a number of ways.

Some use the news sandwich – good news, bad news, good news. Others lay off the blame: ‘I’ve been told to tell you.’

But, whatever means you take, it’s not easy. The problem is that we rarely, properly, review the way we deliver the message – and, as a result, we find it harder to improve our technique.

Social conventions prevent us from asking someone who has just been told they are to leave at the end of the month, ‘Do you think I was fair, even-handed and friendly?’

Rightly.

Even having someone there to observe will not tell you how the recipient actually feels. But the lack of an honest appraisal means you’ll never learn or improve.

In training sessions, I’ve worked with senior leaders to help them examine the emotional impact of their delivery on others. An exercise will start with a simple scenario – you’ve given someone a piece of work to do and the result is very poor. You then ask the trainee to write what they would say to that individual, in order to elicit three different emotional responses – the person is motivated, feels guilty and feels anxious.

This is not about teaching people how to put the fear of God into others. Rather, it’s about helping them understand the emotional impact they have on others.

The results are stark and perhaps not surprising. Few manage to achieve the motivation response. Their interlocutor often wonders what the catch is. After all, the work was poor.

What can start as guilt – ‘I want you to know that you’ve not only let me down, you’ve let the whole team down’ – often turns to resentment, and even anger. And as for anxiety, that appears before the speaker even opens his or her mouth. So, broadly, over hundreds of sessions, I’ve found that people struggle. Not a surprise. Often, it’s the first time that anyone has ever given them feedback on the impact of what they’ve actually said.

But there’s another factor. The impact of the speaker. Our presence, our history, our rank, our job and our reputation all stand alongside each of us as we address another.

Senior leaders often forget how powerful they are. Merely saying, ‘Can I have a word?’ can send more junior staff running for cover. The irony is that we’re actively taking away opportunities for this kind of communication. Increasingly, missives go out by e-mail. Newsletters and poster campaigns replace corridor talks.

At times of change, leaders can hunker down and bunker themselves away from daily life. They become less accessible. Economic exigencies can justify a new brusqueness.

There’s no time to engage, we’ve got to get on with this.

But there’s never been a more important time for one-to-one exchanges – and not just when there’s bad news to deliver. An investment in leaders who, in turn, invest time in powerful one-to-ones will help maintain commitment, energy and goodwill when things are going to get very difficult indeed.

Mark Fletcher is a communications consultant working in the public sector, e-mail: reputation@mac.com