An interview with the first lecturer in our new CIPR Diploma course
Richard teaching Diploma
Richard, after the first lecturing session you spent at Apeiron Academy teaching CIPR’s Diploma in PR, what are your initial impressions of the Bulgarian PR students?
I met some very sophisticated practitioners working in international organisations in a multilingual environment. It’s additionally impressive that they’re willing to study for a professional qualification in English (not necessarily one of their languages in the workplace).
Students were introduced to a large amount of theory in their first module. What is most important in the absorption of such large amount of PR knowledge? How would it be easier to learn and understand all this theory?
Rather than teaching lots of theory, my intention was to put it all in context, and so make their future study easier. All educators say this: we don’t try to teach – we encourage people to learn.
How CIPR Diploma in PR helps the development of PR specialists? Which are the strengths of this qualification?
I’ve noticed a connection between the Diploma qualification and success in public relations careers, but there are several possible explanations for this. It could be that the qualification spurs people to success. But it could be that the qualification is attempted by the more ambitious and thoughtful practitioners. Either way, the high level content of the course should help with arguments that need to be made with senior colleagues over the role and significance of public relations and communication management. We are helping to develop a new generation of reflective practitioners.
You are committed to teaching at the expense of practice. Isn’t the teaching task sometimes more difficult than being a practitioner? What is it to be a PR tutor?
Teachers, like PR practitioners, are communicators; and both can usually only achieve results indirectly. I do sometimes feel that teaching is the biggest challenge of my PR career.
What are the things that PR professionals forget most often at the expense of achieving communication goals? What would be the values of your own PR company, if you had one?
I have run my own PR business and managed PR teams. And I’ve always tried to tell the truth – even when it’s at the expense of picking up business in the short-term. (It’s a trait, though, that’s more comfortable for a lecturer than for a practitioner.) One thing I was always willing to do was to put important external relationships ahead of relationships with employers and clients. Clients come and go, but in PR you are only as good as your relationships with key opinion formers.
Do you believe in excellence? Do you think PR professionals should embrace some kind of personal working standards before starting every new PR project?
Again, I do feel we should tell the truth. One truth we should tell is over the limitations of PR. We should promise less and deliver more.
What are you expectations for the development of the PR profession in 2011? Do you think that PR specialists will have to add some to typical HR skills and responsibilities to their expertise?
I looked out at my class of postgraduate students in Leeds today and told them I envied them. There is so much change in the internal and external environments that this is a great time to be a young communicator. I predict that the PR departments of the future will be larger than they are now, and will embrace many more disciplines than currently come under the umbrella of public relations. (There will be much more data gathering and analysis, for example.) Yet those larger departments will probably be given a different name than public relations.
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* Richard Bailey is a public relations educator with experience of teaching at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional levels. He is CIPR-approved professional trainer and course leader on the CIPR Advanced Certificate and Diploma qualifications. He was Apeiron Academy’s first lecturer in on CIPR’s Diploma in PR course started 2011.
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