CGM blog: Have you met my media consultant?

28 Oct CGM blog: Have you met my media consultant?

Do you have confidence in your business confidants?

The reason I’m asking is because how much do your trusted advisers really know about the given subjects you choose to share with them and how capable are they to offer sanguine advice?

We’re doing a lot more one-to-one coaching with business leaders at CGM these days. We work on strategy and plan valuable skills sessions including routes to raising their professional and company profile – but also chew over business tactics, specifically anything related to media, marketing and communications.

It is valuable work (like it or not we all need to communicate in multi-faceted ways these days) and our clients appreciate that close connection with a trusted adviser.

Our coaching clients also like to introduce me by saying ‘have you met my media consultant?’.

Fair enough – having a specialist adviser gives them status and stature and we enjoy imparting considered advice based on our media experience and expertise.

But we’re more than a good sounding board. Reflecting on how we took hold of the wheel when a media crisis brewed some time ago, one of our clients recently confided that they would have taken an opposing course of action which could have been extremely damaging.

Ours was poacher-turned-gamekeeper advice. We knew how it looked to others (mainly the press in this instance) and suggested an appropriate remedy. It worked.

However, we know our limits. There are some specialist areas of business I won’t touch with a barge pole.

So you can imagine what it is like to hear unhelpful ideas casually lobbed in by some business coaches to their clients which reveal little discernible knowledge of the specific subject in hand.

Fine if they say they’ll check it out in their own time, but they often waste their clients’ time and money on madcap ideas that are unlikely to succeed. They are usually well meaning but are guessing. They lack specific knowledge and skill. They’re generalists, not specialists.

There’s no guesswork at CGM. I spent more than 20 years doing the hard yards in media work, often pushing myself through the same communications pain barriers and facing the similar doubts and dilemmas (albeit as a journalist). I’ve had to make some big decisions, sometimes had to act in seconds on vital issues and have a proven track record of success. I’ve earned the right to advise. So have many of our team.

And that’s what you need to ponder when hiring a specific business coach.

So when anyone asks: ‘have you met my media consultant?’ you can have confidence in us.

Chris Green is CGM’s managing director and an award-winning author and journalist. CGM is an all round communications business proving media relations, media training, consultancy and coaching,   creative and publishing services to companies, business leaders and organisations.