Be heard, be exceptional

CHICAGO, — Communicate, communicate, and communicate strategically. This is the prevailing theme of the 2012 International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) World Conference, which was held from June 24 to 27 at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. With 20/15 as its vision, communication professionals from 40 countries gathered to soak up the latest thinking, hear about new trends, learn innovative techniques, develop skills, enhance career opportunities and network with old and new colleagues. Coming out of the session-packed conference, the attendees from the Philippines — Rosan Cruz and Carla Paras-Sison of Lopez Holdings, Owen Cammayo of IBM, Ritzi Ronquillo, IABC Phil., Roni Tapia, Leah Caringal and Donald Lim (a conference speaker who talked about digital brand health), MRM Worldwide president, and this writer — surely took away new information, new tools and new approaches that will be useful during the next three years and beyond. Surely, the conference gave them a boost to do extraordinary work in the world of communications.

Chicago, of course, is a huge, razzle-dazzle conference host! No doubt a world-class city of unsurpassed beauty, it truly made itself beloved by first and old-time visitors — Chi-town, the blues, famed shopping along Michigan Avenue, topnotch museums, celebrated architecture, winning sports teams, an internationally renowned symphony orchestra, spectacular live theater, and thousands of unique restaurants, among so many other attractions. Chicago! Chicago! As a communications colleague muses, “How many poems, songs have been written for you — your musical bands on Michigan Avenue, your Lake Michigan, your sporting icons of journalism and the academe! A great city, immortalized by Carl Sandburg in a poem, and by Frank Sinatra in a song.

As always, the annual IABC global meet is replete with helpful themes and lessons that will help shape the future as the world emerges from financial crises and deals with historic events. Here are some nuggets picked up from the various breakout and plenary sessions. They are basic principles that continue to resonate in people’s personal and professional lives.

• Communications is about choices and decisions. You make your choices and your choices make you. Creativity, for example, is a catalytic choice that brings creative chemistry. If it is done right, everything else follows and you become triumphant. And if you don’t, nothing follows and you feel down and out. So choose, look outside, be persistent, change rules, find support, drop excuses and be the best you.

• Changes, changes, and more changes are all around. Technology has changed, your workplace has changed, your office attire has changed. Only one thing hasn’t changed — the basic purpose of communication, which is to increase the effectiveness of an organization.

• Great communications has 10 tenets: Share your vision, walk the talk, listen then achieve constancy, understand your audience, know your story, tell it like it is, be simple, practice for perfection, communicate substantially, never stop the learning.

• Great communications is about great presentations. It is a pitch, a sell. It is an opportunity, albeit limited in time and space, which can create a helpful disturbance in our current state of affairs. In today’s business, a pitch is its unqualified spirit, where ideas captured, embraced and nurtured by human skills are the most valuable commodity. In presentations, both rational and emotional intelligences are necessary, but the latter, more often than not, dominates.

• You pitch every day of your life. Great communications is a vital cog in every significant part of life.  It’s non-stop. It happens in your workplace, in your home or in places you go to as you commute from your office to your residence and back. You present to prospective clients, to targeted audiences, to identified buyers and to marked investors. You may not consciously realize it, but you are pitching something every day — the eyeball that leads to a passionate affair, the job interview that starts a successful career, the time you ask for a raise or request a reassignment. Every new meeting, every new opportunity, involves strategic communications. You’re at it all the time.

• Be as simple as you can be. It’s a basic, universal concept that you have to be reminded about. The more complicated, convoluted and elaborate your communication is, the lower the chances you will get into a meaningful conversation with your targets. It’s always prudent to be on the “keep it short and simple” track.

• Content is still king. No amount of polished delivery will save bad content, like no amount of good advertising can save a bad product; you have to “think playwright, not actor.” Think how well you can write your pitch, not how well you can deliver it.

• If you listen well, you communicate well. And a good listener is a good presenter. If you are an intent listener in social meetings, you can turn out to be the best conversationalist.  You should be a receptive listener, make time to interact with prospects, open your mind to suggestions and, more importantly, encourage input from all areas. All these will bolster your confidence with a positive “can do” attitude, and efficiently pitch your conviction that what you say is achievable and that we are capable of extraordinary feats.

• Reputation is more precarious than ever. True and false information spreads like wildfire in a vast and interconnected social media landscape and even the most venerable brand or company can be leveled in a flash. Today, communications has as much to do with safeguarding reputation as it does with building it. Reputation saboteurs are lurking around every corner, and organizations need to manage risk, anticipate attacks and bounce back faster after a hit.

• Charisma is not inborn, it can be developed. It is something you can acquire by having the courage to be different and rise above the clutter. Try behaving as you wish — writing, mentally dictating and owning what you want and not what the norms or other people dictate. Follow your own road and discover your own form of charisma. Pretty soon, you will be a magnet for people who are interested in who you are and what you do.

• Emotion rules over reason. It is another universal principle that continues to resonate. Great passion in most, if not all your involvements, will augur well in your connections. As has been proven in many instances, magic overpowers logic, and engaging people’s feelings vigorously with your words and actions will work in your favor.

 • Your own uniqueness brings better results. Mimicking is bad pitching. Turning into the person that you are not or simply aping somebody else’s persona or style can do you more harm than good. It is more advisable to project your own “you.” When you communicate, bring to others your authentic self. It will have a better impact.

Communicate, communicate and communicate. You do that all your waking life. And as you do it, be sure to be heard, be sure to be exceptional.

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Email bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.