Let’s face it. If an individual at a public relations agency wants to get ahead, being Mr. or Ms. Nice Person will keep you trying to convince journalists that a number 10 pencil is better than a number 9 for the relatively few years before you are fired as younger replacements willing to work for a lower salary are hired.
The above is only one of many truisms that I have witnessed during my lengthy career in the propaganda business.
Below are some others:
- Good work does not necessarily mean advancement.
- Being nice to colleagues often is a negative factor when promotions are handed out.
- What management looks for are people who are aggressive.
- Most managers I’ve come across think that threatening their underlings is the key to getting them to produce better results.
- If you expect loyalty at an agency, you have to bring your dog to work.
- Promises made by management to keep an employee from leaving are words not to be believed. (Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that making a promise is a necessity of the past, but breaking it becomes a necessity of the present. He wrote it in 1513, but it might have been written today.)
- In fact, regardless of the circumstances, no promise made by management should be believed.
- Friendships at agencies come with a caveat: Even your best pal will push you under the train if you’re up for the same promotion.
- The old “smoke filled rooms” of political days are not a thing of the past. They’ve just been transferred to PR agencies when promotions and salaries are discussed by management.
So what does PR management style have in common with Dolly Parton?
The commonality is that Dolly Parton and the highest levels at PR agencies that I am familiar with both want to appear that they are caring and empathetic people. And they both are experts at presenting that image—Ms. Parton to the general public, high-ranking PR executives to their staff.
But there is a big difference. For decades, Ms. Parton has proven that she cares about people by her generous donations to causes that help everyone. It’s obvious from their actions that the highest-ranking PR executives are playing a role and that their management philosophies from Ms. Parton’s are so far apart that it can’t be measured.
Examples:
Ms. Parton said, “I don’t boss anybody around… I just try to put people that are smarter than me in all the right places, and then I go on about my business.”
PR management at all levels think just because they have a title they are always the smartest people in the room.
Ms. Parton insists that when terminations are necessary it must be done by the unit’s leader and that it must be done empathetically and believes that a loss of empathy during a firing is a failure of leadership.
At PR agencies, high level management doesn’t “dirty their hands” when dismissing someone; they have other people delivering the termination notice.
Ms. Parton knew that the image she invented for herself would make her an object for jokes and accepted them with good humor.
PR agency executives take it as a personal insult if someone makes an unflattering remark about them. (One time, I was asked by the highest executive at Burson-Marsteller, when it was the leading international agency, to write a skit making fun at agency management for the annual meeting. I did so. But when I presented it I was told in a harsh voice, “No.”) I replied, “At what level did you want the laugh meter to read.” That ended the meeting and my being asked to write skits for annual meetings.
There are many lessons that PR people can learn from Ms. Parton’s style of management; none, in my opinion, that she could learn from PR managers.
