Lesson 4:

What are Public Relations?

Public relations (PR) refers to the methods and techniques used to control the distribution of information about a person or organization to the public and media. Its main objectives are to circulate significant company news or events, preserve a brand image, and present negative events in a positive light to minimize their impact. PR can take various forms, such as issuing company press releases, holding news conferences, conducting interviews with journalists, posting on social media, and other communication channels.

When an individual or an organization is operating in the public domain, there is always a risk of information about them, or their actions being made public. Although PR is a specific industry, any effort to portray oneself in a certain way to others can be considered a form of public relations. That being said, public relations affect public works and housing managers, too.

Levels of Communication

Communication with the public is different from communication with oneself, an individual, a small group, or even the masses. In fact, there are 5 defined kinds of communication ([Author removed at request of original publisher], 2016) which are:

1. Intrapersonal communication is a form of communication that takes place only within an individual’s mind or with oneself.
2. Interpersonal communication is a type of communication that takes place between two people who have a mutual influence on each other’s lives, typically in pairs.
3. Group communication takes place when a group of three or more individuals communicate with each other to achieve a common goal.
4. Public communication is centered around the sender, and typically happens when one person delivers information to an audience.
5. Mass communication is a form of communication that involves transmitting messages to large audiences through various forms of print or electronic media.

As a manager, you may encounter various kinds of communication, and sometimes they may cross over. You may have a small group of people meeting but also share the result of it with the community. This is why it is important to know the many different levels of communication and how they differ and/or share similarities.

Executing a Community Meeting

A community meeting is a forum where community members can come together to share their perspectives, discuss ideas, and provide feedback on issues that impact them. By bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, community meetings provide a unique opportunity to exchange information, build relationships, and work collaboratively towards common goals. Here are some best practices to ensure an effective community meeting:

1. Planning
   To ensure that community meetings are productive and meaningful, it is important to plan ahead and involve community leaders and members in the process. This can include forming a planning committee, developing a clear agenda and goals, and inviting a diverse group of participants that reflect the community’s various constituencies and marginalized groups.
2. Land Acknowledgements
   At the beginning of a meeting, it is important to make land acknowledgments. To respectfully communicate with the community on whose land you are on, you can call the band office after hours and use *67 to hide your number. By listening to the recorded message, you can learn what terminology to use and how to pronounce words phonetically. You can write down the phonetic pronunciation as you listen and then practice saying it out loud until you can say it correctly.
3. Facilitation
   During the meeting, it is important to facilitate open and respectful communication. This can involve using open-ended questions to encourage participants to share their views and experiences, and actively listening to their perspectives without bias or judgment. It is also important to acknowledge and address any unresolved anger or frustration from past experiences, and to maintain a positive and constructive tone throughout the discussion.
4. Participants
   When organizing the meeting, try to find an open space that respects the values and traditions of the indigenous community, and avoid any distractions or interference. The groups of participants should reflect the diversity of the community, including elders, youth, artists, healers, and other members who represent the community. It’s also important to prioritize the inclusion of those who have been historically marginalized or underrepresented, such as women, and to respect protocols of the community’s governance and decision-making processes.
5. Feedback and Follow-Up Actions
   After the meeting, it is essential to use the feedback and information gathered to inform program planning and resource allocation. This can involve sharing the meeting summary with local leaders, community organizations, and healthcare workers, as well as provincial health departments and policymakers. Additionally, it is important to communicate any follow-up actions or decisions made as a result of the meeting back to the community or affected individuals.

Overall, community meetings can be a powerful tool for building relationships, fostering collaboration, and empowering communities to take an active role in shaping their futures. This model for hosting, facilitating and gathering feedback for a community meeting also works for crisis or disaster response. By following these tips and best practices, community meetings can be successful, productive, and meaningful for everyone involved.

Note: (ICRC, 2023)

Creating a Meeting Agenda

Writing a meeting agenda may appear simple, but it’s not always straightforward. If an agenda is hastily put together and too vague or unstructured, it will be of little value. Here are some tips for planning an effective agenda for your next team meeting:

1. Make Meeting Objectives Clear
   Provide a brief overview of what the meeting will cover without going into specific agenda items. Ensure that you are clear on what you want to achieve during the meeting. Do you need input, feedback or want to make a decision together? The more clarity you can offer on the goals of the meeting, the more likely you are to achieve them faster.
2. List Agenda Topics as Questions or Tasks
   Avoid vague agenda items – make the purpose of the discussion clear immediately. Adding supporting questions or tasks is a great way to do it. For example, if you want to share with your team a proposal for the next quarter’s sales goals, specify what you want to find out.
3. Clarify Expectations and Responsibilities
   Determine if meeting participants need to prepare anything in advance. Be clear on who is responsible for each topic. If someone on your team needs to provide context or explain data, let them know in advance and allow them time to prepare, rather than putting them on the spot during the meeting.
4. Estimate a Realistic Amount of Time for Each Topic
   Avoid packing your meeting agenda with too many items and underestimating the time it would take to go through them all. Try to be realistic if you want the discussions to be meaningful and not overly rushed. Consider how much time it would take to introduce the topic, answer questions, evaluate potential solutions, and agree on the follow-up actions.
5. Get Feedback
   Seek feedback from your team to ensure the selected topics are relevant to all participants. Are you missing any important matters that need to be discussed? Consider including topic suggestions from your team members in your meeting agenda. Many document collaboration tools allow you to easily exchange feedback with your colleagues.

Note: (Nuclino, 2023)

Role of the Media

The media (any kind) serves as a crucial communication channel and a significant participant in any changes happening. Communication with any kind of media is an important tool for the sovereign government of indigenous land and all public sector managers, including the public works and housing managers to understand and utilize.

Managers must know how to effectively communicate its message to the media, which holds significant influence in any democracy. To promote effective communication, the communities’ officials should appreciate and tolerate the independent media’s role in providing feedback and serving as a communication channel. The effectiveness of the media in its communication role depends on its actual and perceived independence, which can impact its ability to operate effectively.

There are various types of media, and some of them can overlap, meaning they can fall under more than one category. It is crucial for managers to comprehend that there are media forms that can be employed to communicate with their community effectively. Here are some media types that managers should be aware of:

Note: (University of South Florida – UCM), (Social Media vs. mainstream media – point and stare 2017), (Lutkevich & Wigmore, 2021), (What is Community Media 2022)

Media Relations

For effective governance and democracy to function within the public works and housing management department of sovereign indigenous communities, it is essential for the government to maintain communication with its community members. The community has the right to be informed about the activities of the government ministries, public sector bodies, and the reasons behind administrative decisions. The information provided by the government should be timely and reliable. To spread information to a larger audience, the government can use the media to filter and analyze information for public consumption.

Leaders of public administration must communicate with the public, informing them of the changing roles between members of the community and administration and what they should expect from these changes. It is essential for every level of society to understand the specific roles of public administration bodies, the limits of those roles, and the penalties available to the public in case of non-performance by those in public sector responsibilities (including public works and housing management departments).

This process of understanding the roles and responsibilities should begin with leaders and public sector employees. At the same time, the difference in roles between the elected leaders (i.e., chief and council) and any appointed political representatives (members/managers who are representing the community or department on a political/government level) should be defined. It is crucial to build trust and confidence between the public administration, citizens, and the media. Individual citizens should have an understanding of the services provided by the administration, and the new training and accountability standards applied to civil servants. This will help make it clear what the public sector does and build external respect and support for the ongoing economic and political transformation.

Note: (OECD, 1996)

Media Narrative Management Plan

Creating a narrative management plan is essential to making sure that as a public works and housing manager, you control what information is being shared (or not being shared) with the community and public. This falls into a multi-disciplinary field within marketing called “narrative marketing”. It is like storytelling, as it emphasizes how information is told, not just what the information is.

Furthermore, in today’s connected world, it’s not just about what you say and how you say it. What’s important is what the audience is hearing and saying. With the wide accessibility of information, anyone can create content about a brand, company, department etc. on social media. Organizations can no longer control what is said about them. They can only manage their narrative – or the story being shared about them.

As a manager, it’s important to have a narrative management plan that applies to all types of communication, including traditional interviews, community meetings, and various streams of media such as social platforms, news, radio, and television. Treating all communication with the community and the public like an interview is essential, and being prepared is key to success. To create an effective narrative management plan, here are some key aspects to consider:

1. Identify the key messages
   Before the interview, the public works and housing managers should identify the key messages they want to communicate to the media. These messages should be clear, concise, and relevant to the topic being discussed. For example, if the topic is about the challenges of maintaining public works and housing facilities in rural areas, the key messages could be about the unique challenges faced by rural communities and the steps being taken to address them.
2. Prepare for potential questions
   Public works and housing managers should anticipate the questions that the media might ask and prepare appropriate responses in advance. This will help them to stay on message and avoid getting caught off guard by unexpected questions. Managers should also be prepared to provide data and facts to support their responses.
3. Practice delivery
   Public works and housing managers should practice delivering their key messages and responses to potential questions. They can practice with colleagues or friends and family to get feedback and improve their delivery. This will help them to feel more confident during the actual interview.
4. Use visuals
   Public works and housing managers can use visuals such as maps, charts, and photos to help illustrate their points during the interview. Visuals can help to make complex information more accessible and engaging for the audience.
5. Stay on message
   During the interview, public works and housing managers should stay on message and focus on the key messages they identified in step one. They should also avoid getting drawn into debates or discussions that are not relevant to the topic being discussed.
6. Be respectful and professional
   Public works and housing managers should be respectful and professional during the interview, even if they are asked difficult questions. They should avoid getting defensive or confrontational and should instead focus on providing clear, concise, and accurate information.
7. Follow up
   After the interview, public works and housing managers should follow up with the reporter or media outlet to provide any additional information or clarify any points that were discussed during the interview. This will help to ensure that the information presented is accurate and complete.

Dragonfly Effect Media Model

The Dragonfly Effect marketing model emphasizes the importance of leveraging social media to create a powerful, emotional connection with the target audience and inspire them to take action. By focusing on these four key elements, marketers can create social media campaigns that have a lasting impact and achieve their goals.

Note: (The dragonfly effect: Driving social change through social media 2018)

Watch this video from the creators of the Dragonfly Effect to learn more about why they designed the model based on a dragonfly: What Is The Dragonfly Effect? – YouTube

Emergency Communication Plan

In the event of a disaster or emergency, it’s crucial to have a communication plan that provides quick and accurate information to everyone involved. This plan outlines how to share information during a crisis to ensure that everyone is informed and working together. This is an essential part of disaster management and managers should know how to create and implement effective communication plans.

Managers can be better equipped to handle emergencies and provide timely and accurate information to the public by creating and implementing a comprehensive disaster communication system ahead of time. This communication plan should specify objectives, procedures, and approaches for communicating information during a crisis, and should cover both proactive and reactive communication. The goal is to ensure that critical information is disseminated quickly and accurately, which can help build trust, prevent the spread of harmful misinformation, and provide the public with the necessary facts during a crisis.

As a public works and housing manager, it’s important to have an effective emergency communications plan in place. Your plan should be able to accomplish the following 10 things:

1. Launch quickly.
2. Inform senior management about the situation.
3. Identify and brief the designated spokesperson on the situation.
4. Prepare and issue statements through various channels including traditional media, social media, and other relevant entities.
5. Organize and facilitate media coverage.
6. Prepare technologies such as email, wireless phones, smartphones, social media platforms, and satellite phones for message distribution.
7. Communicate situation information and procedural instructions to employees and other stakeholders through various channels.
8. Communicate with employees’ families and the local community through various channels.
9. Continually adapt technologies, message content, and timeframes for message delivery in response to changing events associated with the emergency.
10. Prepare social media messages in advance to ensure they are appropriate for the situation and only authorized employees can issue messages via social media.

By having a solid emergency communications plan in place, you can better prepare for and manage emergency situations that may arise within the public works and housing sector.

How to create an emergency communication plan:

As a public works and housing manager, you can follow these steps to create an effective crisis communication plan for your organization:

1. Define the purpose of the plan
   Establish what you want to achieve with the communication plan, whether it’s to keep your employees informed or to communicate with the media.
2. Identify key stakeholders
   Outline the individuals or groups that need to be kept informed throughout the crisis.
3. Develop a communication plan
   Create a hierarchy of communication so that everyone can stay informed, no matter where the crisis comes from or which team deals with it first.
4. Assign tasks
   Determine who is responsible for what and assign jobs that team members should complete when the situation escalates.
5. Assess potential crisis situations
   Identify all potential situations that could impact your business, such as natural disasters, pandemics, national threats, or otherwise.
6. Anticipate common questions
   Identify all potential questions that might arise during a crisis and develop thoughtful answers.
7. Identify associated risks
   Be prepared for potential risks that could affect your community even if your plan is well-thought-out.
8. Create social media guidelines
   Communicate proactively with the public through social media and monitor all platforms for negative feedback, responding immediately to any comments.

Note: (https://www.smartsheet.com/content/crisis-communication-templates)