People Power in PR – advocacy, talent and harnessing passion

Speaker Post: Emma Leech

Over the coming weeks leading to #PRFest, the speakers will blog about their session, giving you a flavour of what to expect on the day. 

Emma joins #PRFest for the first time, and after winning so many awards with her team at Loughborough University, we’re sure to learn some great things about people power in PR.

In a world where AI, automation and the “robots are coming” message is worryingly clear to us all, I’ve often wondered why organisations still only pay lip service to the idea that people are our biggest asset.

People are our biggest asset

I’ve always been phenomenally interested in people and I’ve been extremely lucky over the course of my career to develop a specialism around team transformation – turning around teams, culture, skills, confidence, and delivery.  Building an award-winning, high performing communications team is both a science and an art, and with interactive elements, take away resources and useful data, the idea behind my session is to get to grips with what works, what doesn’t, and how to meet the business challenges we are all facing head on (and with a smile).

People power in PR

People are innately individual, but they can also fall in to types and patterns of behaviour that you can recognise and work with to build the strongest and most impactful teams around. Diversity, openness, an ability to understand motivations and fears, and a business focused view on the skills, competencies, attitudes and culture you need in your organisation are essential elements.

Once you understand the hurdles, it’s so much easier to see the opportunities.

The ability to harness passion is also crucial to advocacy and engagement work. Whether your agency or organisation is focused on internal communications, membership, B2B or B2C, public affairs, generating coverage or delivering reputation strategy, people have a central role to play. The session will look at how you can think about and plan for emotional triggers, identify influences, and harness advocacy and talent in its broadest sense.

Come and hear Emma speak at #PRFest and hear about harnessing the most important asset you can have.

You can buy your tickets here.