Category News

By Kerry Burke

It’s hard to believe that we are over a month into this new world of social distancing and remote working. For many of us, this is a strange and challenging new reality where we are learning to juggle multiple things at home while continuing to produce our best work – and all while emotionally processing everything that is going on in the world.

One of the most important things we can do to help us get through this time is to practice self-care. You may have heard the phrase “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” and that is important to remember as we navigate this new way of living and working.

There are many helpful resources online that share best practices for working remotely, and hundreds of articles on self-care during the time of COVID-19. Everyone is different, and it’s important that we all find an approach to self-care that works for us. A good place to start your self-care journey is by asking yourself: What can I do to take care of my well-being so I can continue to be the best communications professional for my company?

I’ve participated in numerous Zoom meetings, phone calls, and text conversations with friends and colleagues from across the country where we have discussed this same question. What I’ve learned is this: there is no right or wrong way to take care of oneself during stressful and uncertain times. As I mentioned, we are all different and you have to do what is best for you. Taking that into account, I started keeping a list of things that help me feel energized and motivated, and a list of things I did that would make me feel lethargic or stressed. Journaling these activities throughout the day helped me notice trends in my work performance and mood, and I have been able to adjust accordingly.

Important disclaimer: By nomeans am I a psychologist, nutritionist, or life coach. But as a professional communicator, I have a love for writing and connecting with others and I hope these insights in my journey towards self-care will help motivate you in being the best person and professional you can be in this “new normal” we are navigating together. 

Energizing habits:

• Maintain structure: I try to maintain my morning routine as much as possible to set myself up for success. If you aren’t doing this already, try getting ready each morning as you would for a normal workday – shower, get dressed (leggings are totally OK!), make your bed, exercise, etc.

• Eat well: I always feel my best when I’m eating healthier. I was eating a lot of processed foods when this all started, and once I got back to incorporating more fruits and vegetables into my diet, I felt 100 times better. The Harvard Health Blog published a blog about eating during COVID-19 that offers some great tips on how you can eat healthy to improve your mood and lower stress. If you have a tough time meal prepping or aren’t a fan of cooking, there are places that will do the meal prep for you, and some will even bring it to your door with contactless delivery. Some of my favorites in Nashville are Eat Well Nashville and Clean Eatz.

• Get some fresh air: During my lunch break, after logging off from work, and on the weekends, I find going outside for walks and runs with my dog Brady keeps my spirits up and re-energizes me (and Brady loves it, too!). Some of my favorite spots include the nearby 12^th South neighborhood, the Richland Creek Greenway, and the streets in my own neighborhood. I encourage you to find some areas near where you live where it’s safe to walk (sidewalk is preferable!) and not overcrowded or visit a local greenway.

• Breathe: At least once a day, I try to do a quick guided meditation or a yoga video. It helps calm my thoughts and be more present and mindful. Take a few moments each day to focus on your breathing, or try meditation and/or yoga. You can find many free guided meditations and yoga classes on YouTube, and many apps and gyms are now offering free videos as well.

• Stay connected: I’m so thankful for the technology that keeps us connected when we can’t be together in person – whether it’s Zoom, Skype, FaceTime or Google Hangouts. Zoom is my personal favorite, and I have weekly Zoom dates with friends and family to help me stay connected to them.

• Write it down: As I mentioned earlier, journaling and creating lists have been very helpful in my quest for quarantine happiness. You can purchase some fun physical journals – either blank or with daily journal prompts, and/or you can do what I do and capture lists and thoughts in a note app like Evernote.

Not-so-energizing habits / Habits to avoid:

• Watching too much news: After the first two weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was on media overload and had to take a break. It’s important to stay informed, but that does not mean we need to watch every press briefing and read every article. I now set aside specific times each day (usually once in the morning, and once in the evening) when I allow myself to check the news. I am careful to only read and watch reputable, unbiased news sources, and keep up with the most recent CDC guidelines.

• Social media overload: While social media helps us feel connected to one another during social distancing, it can also breed negativity and anxiety. Like I’ve done with my news intake, I have set aside certain times during the day where I check social media. Additionally, I try not to get sucked into reading negative posts or comments. The goal of designating times to check news and social media isn’t to be 100% successful (and I certainly have my moments of weakness!), but to help us be mindful and try to limit screen and scroll time so we can focus on other things.

• Indulging stress vices: Everyone handles stress differently. If you are a person who finds yourself indulging in “stress vices” like too much food or alcohol (I, personally, have been known to over-snack!), try to be mindful and limit those activities during times of stress. If you need additional support, check with your Human Resources department to see if your company has an employee assistance program or can connect you with helpful resources, or contact a local helpline.

• Isolating yourself from others: Loneliness has major impacts on health and well-being, and many are at risk for loneliness while social distancing. Make sure you are staying connected with others. Try to reach out to one person a day by phone or video. As a person who lives alone, having regular communication with friends and family has helped me immensely.

• Being hard on yourself: When this all started, I felt a little down on myself for not accomplishing all the impressive things I was seeing others do on social media: working out three times a day, reorganizing the entire house, cooking gourmet meals, taking on a new hobby, the list goes on. But then I remembered that we are all in different situations and we all operate differently. And that’s OK. Give yourself some grace right now, and take comfort in the fact that we are all doing our best – even if that looks a little different for each of us.

For more ideas on ways you can invest in self-care, I recommend checking out these articles on Forbes, Healthline, and Lavendaire. They provide great tips and tricks on how to keep you focused and motivated. Stay safe, be healthy, and know that you will get through this! 

Kerry Burke is a Business Communications Lead for Cigna and serves on the IABC Nashville board of directors as president-elect and Vice President of Social Media. 

By Michael Deas (Courtesy of Ragan Communications)

“Love in the Time of COVID.” If that title reminds you of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” the novel by Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (or perhaps more familiar, the movie starring Javier Bardem), the similarity is as intentional as it is striking. As unthinkable as this sounds in the second decade of the 21^st century, our society is being overtaken by a disease. Not since the Greatest Generation has a single conflict so consumed the entire globe.

What a very different year 2020 turned out to be. It’s hard to believe now that at the beginning of March, when the warnings were just starting to sound in our ears, my company held its annual officers and managers meeting, which is an internal communication tour de force. How quickly, over the next few weeks, did our communication work turn from strategic planning to pandemic management. We ended the month of March with a “work at home” order for all office-bound employees.

Since we are an “essential business” involved in infrastructure engineering and construction, the coronavirus outbreak presented us with a dichotomy: field employees (inspectors, construction managers, surveyors, etc.) involved in ongoing road and right-of-way projects needed to stay on the job; office employees needed a new kind of internal infrastructure to stay working while isolated and distributed. We learned some things along the way:

1. Everyone needs to be reachable. For us, that means urging every employee with a mobile device to download an app that connects to our cloud-based intranet. What may have been considered convenient before has become indispensable now.

2. Working at home means leveling the tech playing field. We cannot assume everyone has a workspace, desk, docking station, large monitor and other peripherals, wide-band Wi-Fi, and all the other things we take for granted in an institutional office environment. Our company provided a fund and a charge code so that employees, with supervisor approval, can upgrade and purchase equipment needed to create a remote office and can connect securely to our servers.

3. We need to stay focused. In addition to providing COVID-19 news, we found it necessary to give employees a steady stream of normal work news, along with encouraging messages from the CEO about the need to remain committed to our work and the company mission. While it is a “new normal,” it is still normal. We are striving to maintain business services as seamlessly as possible.

4. We must keep in touch. The Wall Street Journal recently noted the dramatic uptick in cell phone usage—for talking, not texting, entertainment, or social media. As an antidote to the constraints of social distancing and isolation, employees are voluntarily calling one another more frequently than ever. For us, this means sharing cell phone numbers, as well as posting instructions on how to forward desk phones to other numbers.

In four more weeks, our efforts may take a completely different turn. The effect of our shelter-in-place measures is hard to predict, both for good and for bad. But for now, there is plenty of love—aka communication—to give and to receive, even in the time of COVID. Maybe, especially in the time of COVID.

Michael Deas, ABC, SCMP, is director of marketing at Volkert, Inc. Deas also serves on the 2020 IABC Nashville Board of Directors and is the chapter’s accreditation coach.

As many of you are aware, President Trump declared a national state of emergency over the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak last week, and the CDC issued guidance on in-person gatherings, including a recommendation of social distancing of groups of 10 or more. The number of people affected is rising fast and has begun to impact those in our region. The IABC Nashville Board of Directors is actively monitoring the situation with the health and safety of our communications tribe as our top priority. As a result, the following actions are being taken:

• Effective immediately, all in-person IABC Nashville networking events, professional development luncheons, and the 2020 Music City Gold Pen Awards will be postponed until further notice. The threat of COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving situation and one that we must take seriously. Our Board of Directors will continue to monitor the situation and will rely on guidance from federal, state, local governments, and the CDC.
• We live in a digital age and now is the time to embrace the technology that we utilize in our day-to-day lives. Our Board of Directors will be strategizing on ways we can potentially offer professional development opportunities to our members digitally. For the latest updates on these developments, be sure to check our website and social media channels, including Facebook and LinkedIn. In the meantime, we recommend visiting the IABC Academy website offering excellent online training programs and courses on various topics.
• Several of you have already registered for events in March and April. As previously stated, all proceeds from our networking mixer that was to be held on March 12 will be donated to the Community Foundation of Middle TN to help with Nashville tornado relief efforts. IABC Nashville will provide a full refund or a credit toward any other IABC Nashville event that you may have already registered for. We understand the importance of in-person meetings, but we must be vigilant in doing everything we can to mitigate the risk associated with COVID-19 – and that means keeping our community safe.

This is a challenging time for our city, our nation, and our world but we are #NashvilleStrong and will get through this together. Please continue to take care of yourselves and take care of each other. We look forward to networking with you in person soon. If you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out via email. 

Warmest Regards,

Mollye Dietrich
2020 IABC Nashville President

By Kellie Davie, APR
Vice President of Awards, IABC Nashville

Business communicators are often tasked to plan and execute the “tactic of all tactics,” a special event. It could be organizing a conference, hosting and running an awards reception, or an event that draws in hundreds of people. Whatever the subject, special events are an effective way to reach audiences in-person and in real-time.

They also can be a bear to run.

Throughout my eleven-plus years in communications, I have helped or took the lead to plan and implement dozens of special events: hotel and restaurant grand openings, trade shows, a week-long fashion show, professional development luncheons, and most recently the Music City Yoga Festival – an annual fundraiser benefiting local wellness nonprofit Small World Yoga attended by several hundred yoga enthusiasts and affiliated exhibitors. Each event has varied in budget size and audience demographics, but the formula for executing them remains the same: it’s all in the details.

Above: Music City Yoga Festival

Being a detail-oriented individual is vital in becoming a successful and respected professional in any field, but it is critical in that of business communications. The ultimate test of this skill comes when implementing a special event for your organization. Here are my five tips in planning and executing a successful event:

Develop a Structured Plan

Like any marketing communications campaign, events need to be structured with intent and purpose, not created on a whim. When developing an event for your organization, consider the following outline:

Goals: Does this event help to advance the mission of your organization, and will it bring back a strong return on investment from execution?
Objectives: Develop SMART objectives: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time specific. Are your objectives designed to change audience behaviors and perceptions of your organization, or are you trying to raise general awareness or a product, service, or client? Strategies: How will you go about reaching these SMART objectives and accomplishing the event you are planning?
Tactics and Tools: What are the communication channels and tools you will need to not only get the message out about your event but to execute it with quality, on-brand and on message?

Above: Ribbon-cutting for the Omni Nashville Hotel

Create Detailed Timetables

A successful event is 1,000 things happening on time and in order. A timetable makes that happen. Use every tool available to develop timetables to collaborate with your event team. Google Sheets, Trello, and Basecamp are three tech tool that help keep everyone on the same page. While every organization varies when it comes to its planning processes, there are some standard documents you should make when planning any event:

Timetable: A detailed timetable of what is happening and when is critical in the event planning process to ensure details are not missed. I like creating these in a Gantt chart format that illustrates a project timetable to make it reader-friendly for various teams.
Task List and Affiliated Task Ownership: Task lists can help everyone understand their responsibilities. They also facilitate clear and consistent internal communications to remain clear and consistent.
Run of Show (ROS): Put simply, this is a document that shows what happens when. A Run of Show is essential for speakers/presenters, production teams, and all internal stakeholders involved to know how the event program will run and the specific times each transition occurs. And they cannot be too detailed. David Green, host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” has a ROS that even includes scripted lines such as “Good morning, I’m David Green.” A good ROS leaves nothing to chance.

*    BONUS: It is also helpful to become familiar with other event planning documents including Banquet Event Orders (BEOs) for catering setup, stage plots for audio/visual teams, and detailed scripts for speakers.

Above: Nashville Fashion Week

Know Thy Budget

This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how often I have seen budgets thrown into disarray when someone gets a little too excited about décor, entertainment, or gourmet food and beverages. Good communication is the key to successful budgeting. Consider the following to help you plan a budget savvy event:

Everyone Must Understand the Budget Limitations: Work closely with your organization’s accounting department to understand how much money is allocated for the event and keep track of all revenues and expenses by creating and updating an event income statement. Trust me; your accounting manager will love and thank you for doing this.
Consider Sponsorships: Are you planning an event on a shoestring budget? Consider reaching out to like-minded brands on sponsorship opportunities. Not only will sponsorships help offset additional costs, but sponsors can help spread the word about your event by sharing it across their communication channels. A “win, win” if you ask me!

Communication is Key

This goes without saying in our profession, but healthy communication practices are critical when planning any event. Everyone involved with your event, whether its attendees, production teams, or sponsors, should be kept informed with the latest updates on what is happening and when. Make sure you are keeping the following in mind to streamline communications with your event planning:

Accuracy: Are all your promotional materials and communication channels (i.e., websites, social media handles, news releases, and e-newsletters) for the event accurate with dates/times, location, presenters, and registration details?
Clarity: Are your event materials easy to read and understand for both internal and external audiences? Does your event messaging and programming reflect the objectives you are trying to achieve?
Team Meetings and Updates: Be sure that all who are involved with implementing the event are continuously updated throughout the planning process leading up to the big day. Schedule regular meetings to review timetables, get status updates on tasks and troubleshoot any possible concerns. Meeting in-person or over the phone goes a long way, plus it ensures communication details don’t get lost in email chains.

Above: Good planning leads to things like IABC Awards

 Be Kind

Deadlines, ticket sales, catering and managing a timetable and a budget is stressful and can represent high-stakes tactics for an organization. It’s stressful and can bring out the worst in people, so it is essential to maintain professionalism and show gratitude to those who are involved. As the saying goes, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” so remember to be kind and respectful to others throughout the planning process.

Keep Your Cool: Murphy’s Law is real; anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Be prepared to go straight into problem-solving mode if a speaker fails to show or a delivery isn’t made and find solutions to work around any event issues. You are in control of your work and emotions, so do not let a setback cause damage to your reputation post-event.
Maintain Professionalism: You may be the only one keeping your cool when a problem occurs. That’s where your problem-solving mode can be beneficial. Astronauts and scientists at NASA always expected someone to go wrong during a space flight (and something almost always did). The key is to work the problem and you do that by remaining professional. Expect to isolate that lone wolf who does lose their cool; they aren’t solving the problem(s).
Show Gratitude: Everyone involved with planning the event is putting in extra time to make it a success. Be sure to keep your teams motivated by continuing to thank them and give praise on excellent accomplishments. A genuine “thank you” or “great job” goes a long way with team members and volunteers.

At the end of the day, producing a successful event is all about creating a memorable experience and helping your organization reach its goals. By keeping these tips in mind the next time you plan an event will help you to strengthen your professional development and bring even more value to those you serve.

While we are on the subject of events

 Are you interested in sharpening your event management skills? We are looking for volunteers to serve on our IABC Nashville Music City Gold Pen Awards Committee. The Music City Gold Pen Awards is an annual celebration taking place in late August/early September that recognizes Middle Tennessee professionals who exemplify excellence in strategic business communications, management skills, thought leadership, and creativity. Opportunities to get involved with the committee include judging, marketing communications, event logistics, and sponsorship outreach. Please email kdavie@keycompr.com by Friday, March 20, if interested and available.

Meet our new and returning members of the IABC Nashville Board of Directors.