Counseling

Counseling, the crème de la crème function of the public relations profession, occurs when senior practitioners give advice to the senior members of an organization. This is often not an easy or enviable position. Advice can help define and redirect the future of an organization as well as refine its communication programs, functions, strategies, and tactics.

In essence, this kind of advice is intended to build, maintain, or repair a favorable relationship between the organization and one or more markets or publics—its stakeholders. If proper, the advice addresses problems that might strain the relationship and increase the quality of strategic relations; but it is important to note that this advice may lead to dramatic or subtle changes on the part of the organization to make it more capable of meeting stakeholder expectations. This public relations counsel can focus on increased standards of corporate responsibility or better ways to achieve those standards. It addresses standards of ethics and helps the management of the organization recognize what it needs to produce a good organization so that it can act with character, legitimacy, and authority

The advice may focus on what the organization needs to do as well as how to perform that objective. The persons receiving the counsel seek to better understand and respond to some challenge. Counseling by its nature requires experience and tends to be dysfunctional if it only confirms management's preferences. It is best when it brings to bear sound judgment that draws on best practices as well as sage ethical advice. Through years of experience, counselors acquire insights needed to offer such advice. Advice is often based on astute insights into case studies—both successful and unsuccessful. Insights grow because of constant attention to best practices and scrupulous reading of essays and books reporting on relevant public relations research.

Counseling can occur reactively and proactively. In the first case, a management team may call on the advice of a senior practitioner after some problem has reached the boiling point. Slowly, the relationship between an organization and one or more publics has deteriorated. Other counseling expertise was used to solve the problem, but the advice failed to solve the problem. Perhaps, someone thinks, the problem may be a “PR problem”— whatever that means; he or she may unfortunately think that one or two well-crafted messages and perhaps a slick slogan, clever pamphlet, or expeditious Web/social media posting can set the matter right. Often these “Band-Aid” strategies fail because the problem is due to something other than ineffective communication. Counseling is least useful when it focuses only on communication solutions.

Proactive counseling is employed to head off a problem before it starts or before it reaches the boiling point. For instance, a substantial amount of discussion occurred in the 1970s regarding the ability of public relations practitioners to use issue monitoring and other issue management techniques to spot and respond to an array of emerging issues. Experts often thought that if an emerging issue was addressed early enough, the messages the organization disseminated could allay the strain. In some cases, studies eventually found that the strain was not due to an emerging issue that can be “communicated away.” However, thinking about, planning for, and responding in an open and constructive way may lead to a proactive, collaborative decision before combatants become recalcitrant and the problem and solution become ego driven. In this sense, public relations counsel can be conceptualized as a key component of change management.

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