Category: public relations

Does PRSA Leadership Consider Gaslighting Ethical?

~ penningink ~ Leave a comment

For years, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has designated September as ethics month. The organization also has its annual convention and leadership assembly, with delegates from every regional chapter, in October. So the last day of September is a good time on the cusp of the two to consider ethics and leadership in PRSA.

The key question as noted in the headline is whether the leadership of PRSA who promote ethics in the profession consider gaslighting to be an ethical action. That question comes up because that has been strongly alleged by one member, Mary Beth West, APR, Fellow PRSA.

West, a veteran PR professional and long-time PRSA member, has been in a long-term battle with PRSA leadership after she asked leadership questions about financial discrepancies, even to the point of non-compliance with New York State Law. She also requested information about finances and other leadership issues, such as the insider approach of the current board appointing their friends as new board members. She has continued complaining about a lack of disclosure and transparency.

“Disclosure of Information” is a provision of the PRSA Code of Ethics. However, after asking the PRSA leadership to basically adhere to its own code of ethics, West was met at first with stonewalling, and then with gaslighting, and even punitive retribution. PRSA leaders responded tersely, then harshly, and then threatened to take away her APR (Accreditation in Public Relations) and membership in the College of Fellows.  All this for being persistent in asking honest questions.

(Self-disclosure: I am also APR and a member of the PRSA College of Fellows).

Apart from her displeasure in PRSA leadership failure to follow its own ethics code, West is most concerned that members of PRSA are not aware of how the organization is being led and what is happening with their dues. This includes those members who will represent their chapter in a few weeks at the National Assembly. She has worked to bring these issues to light with her Facebook page called A Better PRSA and a series of YouTube videos documenting her interactions with the PRSA board called #prsagaslighting .

It is not clear if this issue will be resolved or sputter. But, it is not just something between West and the PRSA board; it is really between the board and all members. I know of more than a few long-time PRSA members who have let their memberships lapse or are considering doing so because of their own disappointment with leadership. 

The question is if those members who remain will take the time to review West’s documented evidence of questionable board behavior and then ask leadership some questions of their own. If more people do so, there may be a more honest and civil response. Or to use terminology from crisis theory, perhaps the board will be moved to more ethical response that eschews denial and attack the accuser strategies and moves to apology and corrective action. 

The Peripheral Presidential Campaign

~ penningink ~ Leave a comment

As an academic, I tend to look at events and news with a mind on theory. Reading news about the current presidential campaign, it occurred to me that I am witnessing an example of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) in the campaign of Kamala Harris.

It could be called the peripheral presidential campaign because of how it is executed and how people are responding to it.

Simply, ELM says that people process information through two cognitive routes. The central route is used when people are paying close attention or are highly “involved”. In this state they are seeking information and they want it in quantity and detailed specificity.

It is similar to peripheral vision, in which one sees things off to the side and not by looking directly at it. 

The other route is used when people have low involvement, meaning they don’t see the topic at hand as personally relevant or they are otherwise not motivated to do the focused thinking and information processing. This is called the peripheral route. 

When some describe the Harris campaign as appealing to “low-information voters,” meaning voters who do not seek detailed information, I think of low involvement voters and those who are considering the campaign via a peripheral route. 

While all presidential campaigns to a degree appeal to voters with platitudes and general themes for peripheral consideration, the Harris campaign is unique in this regard for several reasons:

  • She replaced her party’s candidate late in the campaign and did not receive an y primary votes;
  • Since being named the candidate more than two months ago she has not held a press conference;
  • She has done only three interviews, all of them brief and with reporters clearly partial to her and yet she offered little substance.
  • Her campaign website for a long time had only donation appeals and little on policy. The recently added “issues” tab discusses policies but in ways that stress contrast (see below) over substance and details. As many point out, she does not answer why her future goals if elected have not been addressed currently while vice president.

Even CNN—not a conservative network—has reported that many undecided voters actually want more details about policies and positions from a campaign promoting “vibes.” Others have criticized the media at large of journalistic malpractice for enabling this peripheral campaign and not insisting on more and detailed responses. Even more troubling than allowing vagueness is not fact-checking and correcting untruths. But to peripheral voters, even truth may not matter. Oxford dictionaries made the adjective “post-truth” the word of the year in 2016. It defines it as “related to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief.” That describes peripheral processing perfectly. 

While many would say that Harris outperformed Trump in their single debate, the reality is that her debate points were also largely peripheral. Partisans cheered both debaters but the undecided voters who tuned in wanted more.

Vibes could also be called what scholars label peripheral cues, which are what people consider when they are not thinking critically or processing information in the central route. There are seven identified peripheral cues that can be persuasive to people short of detailed information and substantive argument:

  • authority—people are persuaded because of someone’s position or title;
  • commitment—people are persuaded by their perception of a communicator’s commitment to a cause;
  • contrast—people are persuaded when someone sets up uneven points of comparison, i.,e. It’s either this or that or at least it’s not that;
  • liking—people are persuaded by a stressed affinity of a person toward them;
  • reciprocity—people are persuaded by a quid pro quo promise, i.e. if you do this I’ll do that
  • scarcity—people are persuaded by a fear of missing out, a false sense of urgency;
  • social proof—people are persuaded by the perception that others like themselves think or do something.

Again, any politician uses some or all of these peripheral cues when seeking votes. But those messages are usually part of broader appeals that do included specifics. For example, Trump has done more than 50 interviews since Harris became his opponent, and in these and other campaign events he talks about specific policies and results of his past term and details of his plan for another. Harris, meanwhile, as the CNN article and others attest, has offered only messaging that has peripheral impact.

As examples, she refers to her commitment to causes without policy specifics, and when questioned about how her commitment has changed (ion things from fracking to the border), she insists in vague terms that her values are the same. She certainly contrasts herself to her opponent, Donald Trump, albeit not always truthfully, in the hopes of earning votes not on who she is but who she is not. And she strongly stresses liking, with words such as “joy” being an emotive theme devoid of rational clarity.

One thing the theory does say about the peripheral route—it can persuade but only in the short-term. Less than two months from election day, that may be enough and actually the plan of the Harris campaign. After that, anything from rising fuel prices to an unanticipated policy to the breakout of war could make things relevant enough for peripheral voters to start processing things centrally. But at that point no amount of specific information can lead to them adapting their behavior—election day will be over.

The business of journalism and the future of PR

~ penningink ~ Leave a comment

An annual report from a news outlet says a lot about the business of journalism. For one thing, journalism is a business.

It may also be a nonprofit mission. 

One thing journalism is not is an institution with a unique claim to the first amendment and role in democracy. Oh it certainly has “a” role, but it is not unique to journalism. When “freedom of the press” was inscribed into our First Amendment it was a reference not to an institution or an as-yet unformed profession. It was about people who owned and operated a printing press. 

In other words, business men.

These people were printers, and they printed leaflets, advertisements and many things, including newspapers. All of the above had been restricted under the British Stamp Act, requiring a literal stamp of approval by the government before anything could be published. This was one of many grievances our founders had against King George. 

In our modern era, the “press” includes all forms of means to produce and distribute information. So-called “mainstream” media are part of that. But so are an increasing number of other voices contributing information and perspective to the public sphere.

So, our democracy has become also a cacophony. It is the beautiful mess of freedom. But in this mess traditional journalism has had to adapt, to pivot, just like any other businesses adjusting to technology, market demand and other changes.

My thinking on this was prompted by two publications recently. One was an article in Crain’s Grand Rapids Business about the creative ways journalism is handling it’s current business crisis. Incidentally,  Crains just recently added a paywall, so subscription is required to read this article. Crain’s also has gone from free publication of those personnel and brief company updates to a paid model. Both are signs of the business reality of needing revenue from multiple sources now that the old model of subscriptions and large advertising income alone is not sustainable.

Another item that caught my eye was the Bridge Michigan and Bridge Detroit annual report. It is an interesting read, showcasing their values, coverage areas, awards won, and the annual report requisite numbers about readership and revenue. I found it interesting and well done, as a subscriber and a PR professional. It meets the goal of annual reports of transparency, loyalty building, brand promotion and solicitation. 

Both the article and annual report from media outlets I subscribe to are a reminder to me not to take good reporting for granted. They also are evident that journalism is not taking readers for granted. Nor should they. The competitive landscape has changed:

  • So much of the media marketplace is online, where news is shared not in a branded publication or outlet but a single story at a time, aggregated by third parties like Apple News, Flipboard and others or users’ own forms of curation;
  • News links have been banned in some countries on social media because publishers need to make the profit, not the social platforms. But this also limits distribution;
  • Many other businesses are doing brand journalism that extends beyond their product or service lines and simple brings more content into the overall media mix. Examples include Coke‘s studio and UPS stories. 
  • Traditional media organizations are increasingly seeing competition from independent journalists who start their solo brand on platforms like Substack. Examples include Christopher Rufo, Matt Taibi, and Bari Weiss, all of whom left jobs at prominent media to be journalism entrepreneurs.
  • Then there is the host of alternative media platforms ranging from the Daily Wire and Blaze Media on the Right to Slate and Huffington Post on the left. 
  • To round out the landscape there is a growing number of think-tanks and other similar institutions that put out daily articles. These include the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, the Cato Institute, and the Brookings Institute.

All of this relates to public relations in several ways. Obviously, the media relations aspect of public relations is affected—if people don’t read or believe the media en masse, it has less credibility and reach and is therefore less useful as a public relations channel. Secondly, public relations professionals have increasing outlets to reach, and can also be very successful representing organizations with branded journalism and other channels they can control as part of a growing mix of tactical options.

One of the key questions going forward has to be if journalism in competition will see objectivity as a unique selling proposition or a competitive liability. Will news outlets brand themselves by ideology or neutrality. This will also affect the decisions of which media PR professionals pitch and where media planners buy advertising. 

There are examples of both with new online outlets in Michigan. Bridge, which I mentioned earlier, promotes objectivity and bi-partisan reporting in its annual report. Meanwhile, the Michigan Advance sells its “top notch progressive commentary”.

While each journalism outlet will make its own editorial policy and market-driven decisions, there is also an issue of journalism damaging its “institutional brand.’ For example, public relations professionals hate the expression “just PR” which takes a single episode of bad practice and smears the whole profession. I wrote about the notion of “just journalism” previously due to the growing lack of objectivity in reporting, with even some editors speaking of it with disdain as something old-fashioned. 

Since writing that I have seen more examples of waning objectivity not just at the national level but in local media. My local paper refused to cover a story about a teacher quitting over mandated critical race theory lessons because the editor’s wife was a teacher and became the managing editor is “against book banning,’ even though that was not the issue in this case. It was news, regardless of editors’ personal opinions. A local TV station refused to cover people who were concerned about the appropriateness of public drag queen performances because they “did not want to give platform to hate.” Again, that is a pre-judgment and subjective value decision, not one of objective journalism to tell the story and represent all views.

I don’t know if the market—i.e. readers, listeners, viewers and in turn advertisers—will restore journalism to a sustainable business with a unique identity as professional purveyors of objective truth. It could be we have enjoyed a period of time in which news media was central to communication and a revered societal institution that will one day be seen as quaint, as different groups settle into their partisan echo chambers to be fed red herrings and propaganda. But, change happened before in the media.

A little less than 80 years ago, in 1947, prominent media formed the Hutchins Commission, chaired by Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, in an impressive act of professional self regulation. They asserted a need for freedom of the press but also a need for journalists to resist sensationalism and give society what it needs.

And so, once again perhaps journalism may need a business retreat. As a profession, it needs to consider what it offers of unique value to society. It is not enough to assert its “importance to democracy” when readers are tired of its flaws and many others as I mentioned above are doing their own reporting, ranging from objective to perspective. 

The need to balance corporate and personal values

~ penningink ~ Leave a comment

Last semester in a  discussion about employee relations a student asked me about the situation in which an employee’s values don’t match the company values.

It’s a good question. I think about it personally. I myself have had to say publicly that I get my values from God and not my employer. 

Nevertheless companies talk a lot about their “values.”

The Institute for Public Relations Study recently addressed this question and shared a study on the subject. Of interest is that a third to almost a half of employees, by different age groups, said their company’s values aligned with their own “somewhat” or “not at all.”

My question is “should they?” And if so, what specific types of values?

I would say values should be categorized as collective vs. individual, or organizational vs personal.

Collective or corporate (i.e. any organization, not just a corporation) are universal, related to an organizations mission, and not likely to violate a personal value. Examples of these would be that the customer comes first, quality is job one, we try harder. Values related to how a job is done, operational goals, and organizational culture. 

Personal or individual values are based on more deeply held beliefs associated with an individual’s own identity. These are associated with an individual’s family, ethnic or national culture, faith, and other things that precede and supersede the workplace. Often these values are related to the hot topics debated in society that are not directly related to one’s job. 

So when a company “takes a stand on social issues,” which stand do they take? Are they conscious of the unintended consequence that stand serving as a proclamation to some employees—and other stakeholders—that their personal values-based position on said issue is not valued, welcomed, accepted? Such employees will go from ambassador to stranger, they will go from being proud of their job to seeing it as just a paycheck, and maybe a temporary relationship on the path to something where they don’t feel insulted.

Getting employees to identify with employer is great to some extent. We spend significant amount of time at work, one of the first things people ask you is what do you do or where do you work? I have read academic research about going beyond employee engagement to employee-organization identity fusion. That sounds a little extreme to me, as if a person gives up their individual identity in order to blend into a workplace. That is more akin to an authoritarian regime than the “value” of individual autonomy and diversity. 

Indeed, it is useful to foster a positive culture, one in which employees are engaged, productive, happy and serve as brand ambassadors even beyond the work setting. They can be proud of where they work, and even should be. But a profession and particular job is but one aspect of identity. I would even say it is secondary, marginal, and circumstantial.

Personal identity is deeper, more permanent. You can change jobs, it is harder to change your ethnicity, faith, and other aspects of personal identity. If implied one must do the latter they are increasingly likely to do the former.

The noble thing for companies to do, therefore, is work toward values that are appropriate for the mission of the organization as an aspect of organizational culture. But they should maintain and even be upfront about having institutional neutrality on the topics of our day that reflect a personal value. They should seek with intention a balance of being both non-discriminatory AND non-celebratory of any personal values.

This may be different in the case of small or privately owned enterprises, in which an owner will publicly proclaim their personal values or even make them part of the organizational values. This could be a follower of Jesus Christ or an avowed secular humanist. I’ve seen both. That is up to them. But in either case they will both attract and repel employees on the bases of personal value, as opposed to business metrics such as product or service quality, customer service and others. 

Of course, many non-profits were founded and exist  entirely around a cause that is intimately related to a value that is deeply personal. These could be as disparate as advancing the Christian Gospel or advocating for abortion. Here it would be ethical to be clear about a non-profit organization’s purpose, and it will affect who applies for jobs, volunteers and donates to the organization.

But behind alignment with core mission, neutrality on unrelated personal matters should be an organizational value with which most individuals can agree. I have written about the virtue of neutrality before.  

A term related to values that is expressed often in recent years by corporations and CCOs is “purpose.” Purpose generally defined is beyond mission and considers the positive role an organization plays in society. In discussing this concept at length, Ranjay Gulati in his book “Deep Purpose”  offers a cautionary note that echoes what I have been saying: “Culture should not coerce conformity. It should seek to find an overlap between personal passion and company goals. The best cultures facilitate individuality.”

Gulati also offers prudent advice about articulating values generally and enabling individuals to enact them. This is more like guidelines than rules and can help avoid a corporate value trampling on individual values. Among the many examples in the book he mentions Apple under Steve Jobs: “As we’ve seen, Steve Jobs helped create Apple University with the goal of training people not to think exactly as he did, but rather to understand his guiding principles and mindset and apply them using their own judgment in the leader’s absence.”

My answer to the student in class was brief and basically asked students to consider that there are differences between corporate and personal values. I did acknowledge that it was a good question and I have more to say on the subject. I’ve done that here, and I hope PR and other management professionals will give consideration to the difference.

Gen Z and other new employees need to position between Imposter Syndrome and Dunning-Kruger Effect

~ penningink ~ Leave a comment

I have been a professor at my university for more than 20 years. My career is older than the very life of my current students. 

In that time I have seen a lot of changes in everything from student attitudes to terminology. While I always favor looking at individuals verses a group identity, there are some common threads in the Gen Z student and young professional. Among them are two ways of thinking: “Imposter Syndrome” and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They are the extremes on a scale of one’s self-perception of ability in the workplace. 

I would advise Gen Z to adopt Aristotle’s ‘Golden Mean’ and position themselves between these two extremes. 

Imposter Syndrome is the phenomenon where one feels like a phony, that they are in a workplace but really don’t deserve to be there, that they lack skills and knowledge of those around them. 

To this I say to students they need to bolster their own sense of self-efficacy. Also, it is important to remind them that college does not teach them everything. A bachelor’s degree gives students a lot, but it is a baseline. College teaches students how to learn. They must continue this in the specific workplace and industry where they land. I speak regularly to chief communication officers (CCOs) who are describing the next thing they need to learn even after decades of experience. On certain topics I continue to read and listen and learn. So no recent graduate of young professional should feel like an imposter. College graduation is called a “commencement” because it is a beginning, not a final conclusion.

Last semester a good student finished presenting a project to a client and left the room and shouted in the hallway “I’m done with college!” It was a joyous and funny moment. No doubt the excitement and jubilation were well worth it after all the work done. But I said to her, congratulations. Now the learning begins. 

The other extreme is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in which someone without a lot of knowledge or ability overestimates their competence and proficiency. This is the person who thinks they are too cool for school. It’s the person who thinks a three-month internship grants more knowledge and experience than a 30-year career. It’s the recent graduate who assumes a bachelor’s degree imparts more wisdom and understanding than a PhD. It’s the young person who listens to a seasoned veteran explaining past experience and says derisively “OK, Boomer.” 

As a former colleague of mine used to say about some—not all—students, “they don’t know what they don’t know.”

As I get older, it has been humorous to hear from millennials who used to walk around like they rent the place complain about their new Gen Z employees who seem resistant to feedback, instruction and mentorship. They are getting as little of their own attitude. In one case a mid-career professional told me about a new hire explaining with passion a concept they had just heard about but which was fundamental and already second nature to others in the room.

Perhaps they should have said “OK, Genzie.”

But I also note that the phenomena of Imposter Syndrome or the Dunning-Kruger Effect are not about age, they are simply about change. Individuals at any career stage can change jobs, industries or move to a new city or state. This was expressed in a recent AdAge article about entry level professionals finding a tough job market and seeing their mentors laid off. 

No matter the age or experience, the job market and change makes one “new” in the new context and can generate feelings and manifest behaviors ranging from self-doubt to overconfidence.

In either case, time can “heal” these maladies at either extreme end of a self-perception scale. The one with Imposter Syndrome will soon gain confidence if given good instruction, feedback and support from an employer. Success defeats perception. The individual with the Dunning-Kruger Effect may soon find out they are “not all that” in a performance review, a creative team meeting that doesn’t not rubber stamp an idea, or from some negative client feedback. 

The best attitude for a recent grad and young professional is one of humble confidence, between the extremes. Absolutely they should be willing to speak up and contribute what they know and offer the skills they have. But they also should be open-minded to continual learning and feedback, be respectful of the people who went before them, take advantage of opportunity to try and fail, and expect to be corrected.