Making a human connection

Making a human connection

by Monique Clendinen Watson

When I was about 12 years old, I realized that I could write.  I could do more than just put words and sentences in paragraphs and essays to make good grades in English.  I could write words that made people laugh or cry or remember. I could make them choose me to represent my class at school events and applaud me for doin

g a good job. When you are 12 and your childlike relationship to the world is being altered by pressure to conform to what is expected of a young lady, anything that comes unedited from your own soul is magnified and becomes golden.

So of course, I continued to write. Not just for term papers and class assignments, but on my own, in my personal notebooks, for friends and family and for special occasions.  I would write down my feelings, and descriptions of what was going on with me and my friends, about things that surprised us, or frightened us or just made us smile. I tried my words in poem and drama and by the time I was a teenager trying to figure out what I would do with my life, it occurred to me that I wanted to be a writer.

My very practical parents did not discourage me, but they steered me towards ways to express myself that would result in a regular paycheck. Since it was the 1970s and journalism and broadcast communications were careers du jour, I became a mass communications major at the University of Detroit. It was a wide-ranging program and we learned to write for radio, television, newspapers and then there was this subject called public relations. I didn’t like it at first, it was not as exciting as covering a breaking news event or writing a script for a television show. It involved not expressing my hopes, dreams and beliefs, but helping others express theirs. It involved listening to a client and understanding what they wanted to express about themselves. It involved understanding who they wanted to express this message to and what kind of reasonable response they were trying to get from their expression. It involved not only expression through writing, but expression through appearance and action and organization. It involved brainstorming and planning and figuring out ways to execute a plan, step-by-step.

While my early jobs were in journalism, by far, most of the paid work in my more than 30-year professional career has come through public relations. My public relations skill set has taken me to jobs in education, politics, tourism, environmental advocacy, community development, art and culture. It has led me to becoming a small business owner and a teacher. With each job, project or opportunity came the chance to learn new subjects, meet new people, experience new things. At every level I was challenged to be creative, to grow, to imagine something new.

To say that there has been a huge evolution in communication technology over the past 30 years would be an understatement. I have tried in vain to explain to my millennial children that on my first post college job, we used manual typewriters and it was quite a few years later before our office had a fax machine. The immediacy of today’s communications which allow you to instantly share, to friends and strangers alike, the details of your opinions, adventures and experiences has changed the world forever. We all marvel at the inborn skill of the young to utilize this technology. Today, as soon as you are old enough to hold a phone or a tablet, you can write, take pictures, shoot video, record audio, insert graphics, create your own and share, share, share. We now can all shape the reality that we want people to believe about our lives on platforms that will last for as long as there is an internet.

I have found however, that even with all the creative potential at the fingertips of everyone, messaging that conveys authenticity and true meaning still involves skill.  Knowing how and when and how often to post, what to say or not say is still very important. Choosing the right platform, the right images, the right words should still be undertaken with great thought and deliberation.  Even with use of smart applications, algorithms, bots, and whatever else technology has in store for us, the human imagination, sensitivity, style, taste, vulnerability, and yes even mistakes are necessary for the creation of that which is new and authentic. The pressure is always to get it done yesterday, but the most successful, effective messages are those which reflect the time, energy and intent of the sender.

Public relations practitioners can be compared to mask makers of old, who could connect with and convey a spirit other than what is perceived. Our public profiles are today’s masks. A good mask disguises and projects at the same time. It distinguishes and amplifies life/death, goodness/evil, happiness/sadness. We use our masks today to amplify and project what is best about ourselves and disguise what makes us vulnerable.  In the clutter and crowd of technology, a good public relations strategy will help your audience understand the essence of who you are. People still gravitate towards messages that make them laugh, cry and remember. A strong public relations strategy can provide that kind of human connection to heart and soul and more.