Internal PR: Communicating Within Your Own Team

By: Madeline Wines, Account Supervisor

As strategic communicators, we know the importance of press releases, media pitching, and crafting thoughtful messages for external audiences. We know how to earn media attention and communicate compelling stories. Yet, despite these transferable skills, we often struggle the most with communicating within our own teams. 

Public relations is a team-driven effort, and strong internal communications are essential. Here are my top four tips for improving internal communication:

1. Use the Sandwich Method

The sandwich method is a tried-and-true method when it comes to giving and receiving feedback, and it works for good reason. While criticism is great for helping teams grow, it can be hard to receive criticism if you're not also being recognized for what you are doing well. Criticism can sting more and feel unbalanced when not paired with a positive piece of praise.

Using the sandwich method (sandwiching negative feedback between two pieces of positive feedback) always helps to soften the blow. This can be especially helpful in a setting like PRLab, where peer-to-peer feedback is constant. It helps maintain kindness in team dynamics while still encouraging everyone to improve their individual skills.

2. Build Rapport

Strong internal dynamics are necessary even before issues arise. That way, when or if they do arise, you can combat them easily. The best teams I've worked on or led have always been the ones where the members were close with one another. 

However, it is often hard to build natural-feeling relationships in a classroom or agency setting. A quick way to try to start building rapport is to begin each meeting with light team bonding. Before diving into the meeting agenda, I recommend asking team members how their weeks have been, what they've been up to, and any fun facts they want to share. These small icebreakers help team members find commonalities among each other, and they strike a nice balance between productivity and bonding.

To take this tip a step further, you can even try to elevate team bonding by doing an activity outside of working hours. A highlight for me this semester was the PRLab EBoard bonding brunch at Shy Bird. Feel free to invite your team to get coffee or lunch and dedicate the time to relationship building so that people can learn more about each other outside of the office or classroom.

3. Talk With Your Team, Not at Them

This tip is applicable whether you are in a leadership position or not. The important part of feedback is that it's a part of a bigger conversation — one in which two people participate — rather than a one-way critique. 

There is nothing worse than receiving a critique and feeling like you can’t say anything back to further explain, problem-solve, or identify issues. I encourage any team member to make feedback a conversation where both parties can express what is and isn't working for them. This tip is twofold because it not only helps identify problems in the feedback stage, but it also helps build mutual understanding and respect among peers. Plus, if you are the feedback conversation starter, it gives you the opportunity to receive feedback too.

4. Overcommunicate

Overcommunicating is key when working within a team. As a team, you must present a unified front to the client, and to do this, everyone must be aligned. Internal communication relies heavily on making sure everyone is on the same page regarding deliverables, goals, expectations, and long-term planning. 

Whether you are assigning tasks or working on a social post, overcommunication helps prevent confusion and frustration among all parties involved. Some quick ways to over-communicate that I love to implement are:

1. Taking clear meeting notes

2. Sending internal recap texts to the group

3. Being reachable via text/phone call

4. Flagging all changes/edits made

5. Opening the floor for questions at multiple points during the meeting

While working in a team, you can’t assume that silence from the team is the same as understanding, so when in doubt, always communicate more than you think you need to.

Ultimately, internal PR helps ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, you are combating problems as they arise, and the team actually enjoys working together. When the internal communication works well, the client results, collaboration, and creativity are all strengthened. So, take these tips to your next internal team meeting and leave a comment below telling us how they worked.

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About the Author:

Madeline Wines is a sophomore at Boston University studying public relations in the College of Communication, with a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship from the Questrom School of Business. Currently, Wines serves as co-agency director of Unleashed PR, a PRSSA-affiliated, student-run firm, where she oversees all agency operations for 50+ members and manages both client-facing and internal teams. She is also an account supervisor at PRLab, the nation’s oldest student-run PR firm, where she leads a team of executives and drives strategy for nonprofit client REBELS. 

Wines has gained experience across corporate and nonprofit sectors in her home state of Connecticut, including a marketing internship at Defibtech, where she executed a national-level campaign and a communications internship at Shoreline Arts Alliance. Wines has maintained a spot on the dean’s list each semester and is passionate about using strategic communications to drive impact for mission-driven and innovative organizations.