Delaney Confidence Series – Spotlight on Communications for Engagement
by Jessica Delaney, Principal, Engagement + Strategic Communications
In much of our training, we focus on differentiating clearly between communications and engagement. The difference is that communications builds shared understanding of a problem, opportunity, or project, while engagement is sharing influence in decision making. For many of our participants, there are some aha moments when we share this. Here’s some of what we’ve heard:
“That’s why the engagement didn’t feel right, we were just informing them of the decision we had made.”
“So, an open house is really about sharing information …. we do a lot of open houses.”
As a communications professional, I have always advocated for having your communications colleagues or consultants at the engagement planning table early. A great engagement plan on paper doesn’t count for much; you actually need people to know about the engagement and care enough to participate. In our engagement courses, I often say we aren’t providing “McCommunications”. By this I mean: engagement planners sometimes take a drive-thru approach with communications that is purely tactical and not strategic. “Hi – Can I get a survey, with a side of Twitter, and we need to use our online engagement portal, and it should have a video!” The idea of McCommunications resonates with every communications participant, and so we decided that now is the time to launch Communicating for Engagement.
This course is about how to develop a communications plan to support an engagement plan. From promotion and recruitment, to building common understanding and reporting out, these three sessions (nine hours in total) delivered virtually, will support both the communications and the engagement professional by exploring how to build communications strategy into engagement planning. To learn more about the course, you can view our course flyer here https://www.rmdelaney.com/wp-content/uploads/Brochure_Communicating-for-Engagement.pdf
For the November course, we are offering 25% off with code COMMS25. Can’t wait to see you there.
