By Gemma Smyth, Managing Director

Over the weekend I attended ConversationsFest, an event organised by Padraig McKeon and Andy Green, which challenged attendees to consider what it takes to be a more aware, informed, purposeful and effective communications practitioner.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent stimulus presentations delivered by Professor Paul Willis, Paul Conneally and Kim Blanchette, which were followed by lively breakout sessions involving group discussions and debate.  

For me however, the biggest benefit of the day was having the time and space to think outside of the day to day of running a busy communications agency. It allowed me to reflect on the lessons I have learned, and continue to learn with every year I am in business. 

A number of years ago I wrote this article ‘7 lessons from 7 years in business’ and I capture below five more insights to add to this list which I hope may be helpful to others in running an impactful business. 

1. Schedule time and space to think. All too often we get caught on the hamster wheel of life and business, constantly moving forward and never pausing for thought. Attending industry events can take us out of the day-to-day and provide space for new thoughts and ideas to ruminate, but we should also consider scheduling time in our calendars each month to consider the bigger picture, to seek advice through coaching and mentoring, or simply just to think.  

2. Own uncertainty.  A key theme of this weekend’s conference was the need for communications professionals to embrace complexity and uncertainty and realise that so much of the work we do is reliant on incomplete or changing information and circumstances. It struck me that this is the case for all of business, and indeed life. The key is acknowledging that we cannot control everything but what we must do is build adaptability, flexibility and agility into all of our communications strategies and be willing to move with the changing sands.  

3. Be ever-curious, and build a team who share this curiosity.  As our world continues to evolve in response to emerging technologies and socio-political changes which we need to be able to adapt to, we must remain curious in order to succeed. Curiosity is the engine which drives us to continually learn, gives us the ability to quickly change course and be able to bring new ideas to the table. In the world of communications it manifests as a hunger to consume news, always asking questions and exploring new trends, but at its heart curiosity is an interest in our world and a willingness to look at things from another point of view to yield better results.  

4. Be kind to ourselves and others. We cannot be the best communicators - or business people - if we are burning the candle at both ends or pushing ourselves too hard. We must take time to be kind to ourselves, to prioritise mental-health and work-life balance, and to offer the same kindness to our employees and colleagues. We also need to be able to demonstrate empathy both with colleagues in our organisation, and with clients, the media and stakeholders outside of our organisations. This involves having the emotional intelligence to ‘read the room’ and adapt our approach to meet individual needs. 

5. Giving back. In Paul Conneally’s presentation on Saturday he talked about work and self being inextricably linked, and that people needed to find purpose in their work. One of the ways we can find purpose is by giving back i.e. what Simon Sinek refers to as service to others. This can take many forms, and each business needs to question what giving back means to them. For us it is a combination of offering our time pro bono to organisations we really believe in such as The Shona Project, creating content such as our Climate Hub which shares tips and advice to help others in their communications efforts and always being authentic, open and generous with our time and advice when sought.