Asked and Answered: Questions Leaders Ought to Have About Exec Comms

Several years ago, it occurred to leaders of the Professional Speechwriters Association that speechwriters’ clients didn’t necessarily understand what a successful collaboration looks like between speaker and speechwriter.

So we issued A Speaker’s Guide to Collaborating with a Speechwriter, a brief document that speechwriters can use to borrow the PSA’s credibility to help their principals become better partners. We’ve heard from many speechwriters who’ve told us the document sparked just the sort of productive conversation they were looking for.

Recent conversations with members of the PSA’s sister organization, the Executive Communication Council, revealed a similar problem: Executives—especially new ones, or those who haven’t had exec comms support in previous jobs—who don’t intrinsically know what their exec comms professionals can do, and who thus fail to imagine what they and an effective exec comms pro can achieve together.

So this week we released A Leader’s Guide to Successful Collaboration with an Executive Communication Professional. Designed to be easily scanned by busy leaders, the document asks and answers, “What should you expect from your executive communication professional? What should your communication professional expect from you? What should you both expect to achieve together?”

If you find this document useful and actually use it to directly or indirectly improve the quality of your work with your leader, we want to know about it: In what context did you present it? How did the leader respond? How has the leader’s new understanding about exec comms affected the nature of your relationship? Write to me at david dot murray at prorhetoric dot com.

Your story may help us make this document work better for your colleagues.