How should you manage your speechwriter? Liberally!

I had chance to advise 20,000+ members of the Public Relations Society of America on how to manage their speechwriters. In my article, “Your Speechwriter: An Operator’s Manual,” in the current issue of PRSA’s The Strategist, I tell PR people to cut speechwriters some slack.

“Speechwriters are also more likely than their well-coiffed PR colleagues to be unkempt, unruly, unconventional—or all of the above,” I wrote, with the authority vested in me as executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. “But do not punish them for this. Every organization should have one person who is deeply — and perhaps even a little single-mindedly — devoted to helping the leader articulate the organization’s point of view as compellingly as possible.”

Not, of course, that all or even most speechwriters are corporate rebels; but I was hoping to give those who would like to push the boundaries, a little room to do so.

Did I do the right thing? Read the whole piece and weigh in here. —DM