New Brown, old Blair.

Blair faced his last Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon and apart from a few predictable jokes he didn't get off too easily, in fact he looked like he aged a little more during the event.

Will Brown do a better job as PM? Only time will tell but with Cameron snapping at his heels he needs to work hard to win over the voters, whether with his actions or more likely (sadly) with some cunning media handling (a former journalist I spoke to a few days ago had some less than positive things to say about Gordon!).

Blair rewrote the book of PR and spin in politics - somehow I don't expect any such innovations from Brown but perhaps that's a good thing.

Managers - Want to keep your staff happy? Just talk to them.

As part of a team that trains people to be the best communicators they can be (we really do) I would say that communication is something I a) think about rather a lot and b) consider to be highly important. This week, however, my attention has been drawn to the importance of good internal comms - namely in the workplace.

The strength of communication between employers and employees could, I believe, well be the make or break of any organisation. Talking to your staff, and allowing them the freedom to respond openly and confidently has got to be the most basic yet most powerful way to a happy workplace. And, in stark contrast, an environment in which staff are not properly addressed has to be a sure-fire way to lose their trust, their loyalty and confidence.

Learning to be better communicators, and better still, learning to manage staff through the aid of good communication will produce something priceless for any employee at any level; a feeling of respect and of integrity.

We offer various courses that help turn people into better communicators, and one in particular that addresses communication as an imperative feature of good management. However one tip that I would offer to all managers for immediate affect is this; make sure you talk and really listen to your staff; after all, they are what makes your organisation.

Does communication matter to you as an employee? As an employer? Have you had any particularly good/bad experiences of communication in the workplace? Feel free to discuss without fear of retribution..!

Falconer, Jail Bird.

The Government seems to have performed a U-turn over the release of prisoners this week. A ‘Whitehall source’ has stated that the Government has run out of options (having only 481 prison spaces left) and so up to 2,000 prisoners could face early release.

Now the point here is not the fact the Government can’t keep criminals locked up. Instead it's the fact (that Sky News are particularly keen on today) that on May 6th, Lord Falconer, in a Sky News interview said "I am not going to announce early releases because of prison overcrowding. It's simply wrong". So, firstly did Falconer lie to the media to keep them off his back? If so, he won’t be trusted again and his reputation and the reputation of the Government will be damaged. Secondly, if he wasn’t lying and the events that have happened were unexpected, what should he do to rectify this blunder?

If it's the first; the fact is that you shouldn’t lie to the media EVER, it is done fairly often and those that get away with it, don’t for long – sooner or later they get found out and whether they are in PR or are a spokesperson they find it very difficult to rebuild the trust of journalists. If it's the second; what we'd recommend is some quick thinking and crisis handling (if it’s not a crisis yet it could be soon). By explaining the situation to the media and outlining why the position has changed, or the fact that new information has arisen you will at least go some way to justifying what happened. The last thing you should do in this situation is ignore it and pretend nothing happened.

We await a response from Lord Falconer and it may turn out that the ‘Whitehall source’ was incorrect but either way this situation has all the ingredients to make a very sticky mess for those involved.

See the Sky story here:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1271123,00.html

A drop of French courage?

One of the dos and don'ts we never thought to include in our media training courses seemed to be rather obvious: 'Don't speak at a press conference when under the influence'.

Now you may wonder what I am getting at but a video of Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 Summit has been posted on You Tube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1uxb0JHqzlA and the French President seems to be quite drunk. The matter has been explained away by the French as the effects of a sleeping pill but is it a coincidence that Sarkozy had just had a 'long meeting' with Putin?

So needless to say we wouldn't recommend a bit of Dutch courage (or anything else that makes you stagger and mumble) before you go on stage; your journalist audience are unlikely to see the funny side!

Not so Cold War.

The war of words between Putin and well, everybody else, has continued this week after Vlad threatened that the world is likely to return to the ‘Cold War’ days. Blair is due to meet with him at the G8 summit and promises a “frank discussion” with the Russian leader. In the BBC interview Blair went on to say that many people were “concerned about the direction Russia is heading.

But what is more interesting is why Putin is causing this confrontation and media frenzy; is it to cause a distraction from the Polonium poisoning which he or some of his ‘mob’ have been blamed for (no doubt Blair will raise this one with Putin) or is he just using the media to make his voice heard and build global-support?

The media are no fools and they know when Putin speaks it will get an audience (and rightly so, as he is the leader of one of the planet’s largest nations), so who is using who?
Used correctly, the media can help you build support although threatening the world with weapons may not be the way to go about this. So this brings us back to the above question – what is Putin up to? I don’t pretend to be an expert on Russian politics but I think we can expect some more PR activity from Moscow over the coming weeks. Watch this space…