A Certificate Course, in Executive Communication? I Almost Can’t Believe It Myself

I’ve long been skeptical of professional accreditation.

Always thought the now-moribund “ABC” designation from the International Association of Business Communicators stood for, Average Business Communicator.

Always thought a truly talented pro wouldn’t waste minutes, let alone years, mastering a “body of knowledge” that everyone else in the business already agreed on. Sounded like groupthink, glorified.

So when I founded the Professional Speechwriters Association, I reacted almost violently to an early suggestion that we create an accreditation program for speechwriters. I remember struggling to control my emotions and order my argument against such an idea. I still do!

The ideal speechwriter would be a Greek scholar, an MBA, an ex-diplomat, an ex-spy, an ex-fighter pilot, an accredited psychiatrist, a sociologist, a linguist, a onetime cab-driver and a professional comic. Among other things that it would be absurd to try to test for. I’ve seen great writers with any number of those skills fail at speechwriting, and I’ve seen writers with only one or two of them succeed.

No, I insisted, we would certainly not be offering a “PSA” designation for professional speechwriting prowess!

I said it strongly enough that no one ever asked about it again.

So you can imagine how I felt, a decade on, as the legendary CEO communication counselor Helio Fred Garcia walked me through a course he teaches teaching top corporate executives, when it began to wash over me: This is a course every single executive communication professional should take. This is a basic philosophy and approach that every single executive communication professional should share in common. If every executive communicator could count on every other executive communicator at every level to understand these concepts, every exec comms team and the entire exec comms discipline would be immeasurably more powerful for it.

I asked Fred if he could convert this course, which he has been teaching for 40 years, into something not for C-suite execs themselves, but for the executive communication pros who support them. He said he was sure he could.

I asked him to give a short version of this course last spring, to members of the Executive Communication Council, at the ECC’s Annual Gathering. I figured if these elite exec comms leaders could be compelled by these teachings, then every last practitioner in the business could benefit.

To a one, they agreed with my gasping idea that this was the “it” that every exec comms pro had to “get” before presuming to help senior leaders communicate. And to a one, they agreed that if they had two potential exec comms candidates in front of them, one who had completed this course would have a significant leg up on another who hadn’t.

“I don’t love this so much because it is new,” a member of the ECC said about the deeply grounded, culturally rich, ethically sound and intellectually rigorous course. “I love it because it is old.”

I still accept and celebrate the notion that a great thinker and practitioner could parachute in from any communication-adjacent discipline and become one of the great executive communication pros of our time. But I believe that even the greatest genius of exec comms could benefit from taking this course—and would be proud to affix its completion logo onto their email signature or LinkedIn page.

And for every working exec comms pro, this course will provide a foundation for the rest of your career—and I believe it will eventually provide a foundation for the whole executive communication profession.

The only catch: Because of the intensive nature of this course, we can offer it to only 20 participants at a time, per Fred Garcia, who built this philosophy after sitting at the feet and clambering onto the shoulders of some of the great public relations gurus of all time (and his co-teacher Katie Garcia, who built her philosophy the same way). They know what it takes to absorb these ideas. And they’re determined to help us help every serious exec comms pro do it.

I hope you’ll join us to be among the very first. Several of these seats have already been claimed. Register now to secure one for yourself.