I was watching Jerry Maguire the other day and this quote came up about the Sports Management business: "The key to this Business is Personal Relationships." It got me thinking about the communication business and how vital, the very life of PR, is Personal Relationships.
Why would Facebook have more than 950 million users, if not for the relationships?
In any given day at the Office, we interact with dozens of people on the phone, by mail or face-to-face. At the start of the internship, i was dreading every phone call: i had to keep a calm demeanour on the outside but i was terrified of slipping up. Personal relationships is as much a science as it is an art.
Sometimes by establishing a personal relationship, in times of conflict, people and clients usually try harder in understanding the problem is mutual and only solved through cooperation even if both parties have diverging interests and unmet needs.
There is always a client who has a clear idea of what he/she envision their website [for example] to be and is extremely stubborn in accepting your concepts: patience, empathy and a little grovelling helps in getting to a compromise.
We learn in class ethics, Grunig's two-way communication, so on and so forth and it is amazing to be able to absorb and apply those principles in the professional world.
What are your views on the Personal Relationships in PR?
Regards,
Kevin
