Why public relations professionals feel powerlessness, and what to do about it
Communications and marketing place unique pressures on its professionals. The most creative and kick-ass ideas, the most detailed plans, the best content, the perfect pitch, the great story - all these things we control could be rendered useless at a moment's notice because of factors we do not control.
The demotivating feeling from this lack of control resembles a starship trying to escape a black hole. It feels like the gravity of the universe reached out from an indiscernible void, and grabbed you by the center of your chest, tethering you, your hard work, your wishes, and your aspirations to an unseeable oblivion.
As if we had wishes and aspirations anyway, you say under your breath. (or, maybe very loudly.) PR people just execute the will of the client / the marketing team / the product team / the CEO. Our will is not our own. Mired in such thoughts, how could anyone find motivation, purpose, meaning, or hope for the future?
Apply that reflection to your own industry conversations, and I'll bet you a drink you resonate, or know someone who resonates, with one of the following:
Aspires to get out of PR one day
Routinely asks whether PR is what they should be doing
Wishes for more hobbies outside of your work
Possesses a creative or strategic ability, but the ability isn’t fully accessible
Feels saddled with weight that transcends the to-do list; all actions feel "heavy"
Can't see a "light at the end of the tunnel”
I’ve heard statements like this from friends and colleagues throughout my career. Situations vary by person and context, but these statements all emanate aspects of the public relations industry that create feelings of powerlessness, especially among mid-level and entry level employees. We could spend an entire post identifying the ways in which this is true; however, I'd find it way more valuable to help you identify whether you feel this way, why it's important to identify it, and what to do about it.
How Powerlessness Impacts You - In and Out of Work
Powerlessness impacts your thinking abilities, more specifically, your executive function, the part of your brain responsible for planning, self-monitoring, self-control, working memory, time management, and organization, among other things. Despite all motivation and good intention, prolonged feelings of powerlessness hinder your memory, your thinking, attention, focus, self-control, and more. You may have a hard time completing tasks; you may forget normal things; you may make weird, odd choices that make no sense; you're unexplainably on auto-pilot in certain situations; your reactions to some situations may not be congruent to the situation, to name a few cues.
It also leads people to dehumanize their own vision of themselves, and be more apt to feel dehumanization from those that they perceive to be in power. Dehumanization prompts feelings of unworthiness, excessive shame, guilt, self-pity and self-loathing. (ways this manifests: feeling unworthy of praise or pride, help from others, or that you deserve "good things" like vacations, non-essential purchases, etc.)
Power also facilitates goal pursuit. "Feelings of power" and "setting and pursuing big goals" have a direct correlation. Those with low feelings of power set and pursue goals less frequently than those who feel power. This isn't simply lack of motivation to pursue a goal; it can also manifest as a lack of clarity and interest in goals at all.
Here's something bonkers: the more time one spends feeling powerless, the more likely they are to justify their situation and those in power. Studies have shown that, given enough time feeling powerless, people lend enhanced credibility to ones supervisor, the organization, and even become less willing to stand up to unjust acts. It’s hopelessness permeating your reasoning process.
Why is it important to recognize these cues? Powerlessness is a global feeling. Meaning, if you feel powerlessness at your job, allllllllllll the above results seep into work, and non-work areas of your life. The shame, guilt, dehumanization, fogginess, etc., that powerlessness creates in your mind, does not care whether you're answering work emails at this moment or not. Have you forgotten where you placed important, non-work objects? Have you reacted to a non-work situation (perhaps a lover, a friend, a family member) with a severity, casualness, or aggression that was incongruous with the situation? Do you have trouble identifying hobbies that bring you joy, happiness, delight, etc.? This could be job powerlessness seeping into non-job areas of your life.
The powerlessness - and the feelings that come with it - cause you to sleepwalk into a life where you aim to survive, or endure, rather than purposefully create a vibrant, rich life of happiness and fulfillment.
How To Reclaim Personal and Professional Power
Prolonged feelings of powerlessness can cause even the smartest, bravest people to get stuck in stories that drain joy, ambition and vision from their lives, convincing you that you have no power, no options and no community.
The link between personal power and professional power contributes to making powerlessness a global feeling, spreading these negative stories into work and non-work life.
Therefore, reclaiming power includes exercises that also apply globally, helping build both personal and professional power. After all, many of the best leaders draw upon immense personal power to build and cultivate trust. (and, two of French and Raven’s Five Types of Organizational Power are popularly categorized as “personal power” types.)
Here are a few exercises that have helped me, and others in my life, tell themselves better stories, about their ability to affect change and reclaim power.
Daily reaffirmations. The stories that shame, guilt and unworthiness create in your mind can feel all-consuming. I've done a lot of work around these three feelings in my own life.
For me, one of the hardest associations to break around unworthiness, shame and guilt was the meeting place of I feel and I am. The two can overlap so much that, without reflection and work, they may feel like the same.
But while you may feel powerless, and unworthy, and be carrying shame and guilt, you yourself are not unworthy of help and care and support. You yourself are not a shameful person. You yourself are not unskilled because of a few mistakes you made in a foggy state. And ideally, you yourself are not powerless. (if you're not sure, don't fret, but don't do this alone, either; see my sections below about community support, and coaching.)
To help me better define who I am and what I feel, I developed a practice of daily affirmations. It can be incredibly powerful to find statements that counteract the feelings of powerlessness, shame, guilt and unworthiness, and to feel their effects. It can be invigorating; it could bring you to tears; it could focus you.
What worked for me was a dedicated 10-15 minutes each morning, where I "sat with" a few reaffirming statements that helped remind myself I'm a good person, with some faults, and that's okay. Ideally, by sitting with these reaffirmations, you can figure out the feeling that's draining your energy.
Here's a simple guide:
Before you begin, jot down your affirmations. There is no wrong answer. Over time, as you better understand your emotions and your needs, your affirmations may evolve; that's great. Just don't go into the exercise blind.
Find a place where you can sit comfortably on the floor for at least 10 minutes. Leave your phone, digital watch, etc., in another room. If anything, bring a journal, especially if you need help remembering your affirmations.
Take a seat. Bring calmness and stillness to your mind and body with deep breathing that stays comfortable/natural. I like to begin with my eyes closed; many excellent meditation practices recommend keeping your eyes open. Starting with your eyes closed may be easier at first.
Before you read any affirmations, picture them in your mind and be aware of the feelings they create, the images / people / locations / activities your mind feeds you. (If none appear at first, that's also okay.) Try to imagine these images around you, as if a scene from a movie in which you're appearing. Stay with it for a minute. We're energizing your space and your mind with these reaffirming feelings. This on its own can be incredibly powerful; it occasionally makes my eyes well up before I even progress any further. Keep breathing.
With your space and mind energized, begin to read your affirmations. If you need to open your eyes to read your affirmations, that's okay. Return to the energized space as soon as you can, eyes open or closed. I recommend saying the affirmations aloud in a comfortable, natural, but audible voice; if that's not possible or you're not there yet, that's okay. Keep breathing.
Focus on the feelings that the statements create in you. Be warned, they may be powerful! Try to locate the feelings in your body, if you can. For example, my anxieties and fight-or-flight responses have a permanent residence in my shoulders; they live in little strings that pull my shoulders into my ears when I am anxious. My affirmations have a habit of loosening the strings. Keep breathing.
Your mind will try to pull you out of the moment, with to-do's, reminders, things to get to, and all that. Keep your mind and your body present in this moment; these 10-15 minutes are soul food. Your to-do list will be waiting for you on the other side. Keep breathing.
When your 10-15 minutes are up, write down what you experienced. No editorializing and there are no wrong answers. Some days you will have pages of notes, about sources of feelings, new wants and needs, realizations of past events, breakage of emotional blocks… and some days, you won't. That’s okay. There's no agenda, nothing here to be "successful" at, and no way to "win". Just by energizing your mind with affirming thoughts, you've already done a great job.
I've spent a good chunk of time diving into my emotions, to understand how I feel, why, what bad habits I need to break, and what good habits I need to create. My affirmations fit me and my bag of worries. Here are a few of them :
Whatever happens, I can handle it.
I am worthy of love, care, help and appreciation.
I am a good person who treats others well.
I am believable and trustworthy.
My wants matter. But they are also my responsibility. Nobody was put on this earth to meet my needs but me.
I am imperfect and I don't always know what I'm doing. That's okay.
My imperfections do not define me.
My humility, humanity, and compassion are nothing to be ashamed of; it's always in play.
Every action I take is a vote for the person I want to become.
There’s no rush. Take your time.
I can vividly see the energization of my space as I type these out. I'm surrounded by friends, my Grandmother, and Captain America.
Huh? Captain America for, most of my life, has represented a version of me I strive to be: loved, appreciated, respected, trustworthy, always knows what he's doing, seemingly perfect. My "Captain America half" would be the part that the world saw. It needed to seem perfect, always in control, and infallible. Any risk of those not being the case would be met with feelings of anxiety and unworthiness.
But I discovered that this desire to be Captain America made me bury parts of my personality and image that I did not deem "Cap worthy". In a sense, I was living bifurcated, unwhole, and hiding parts of me that I didn't want the world…or Cap…to see. I lived in shame, guilt and fear of disappointing the part of me that strives to be like Cap.
The idea of not living up to this image created shame and unworthiness. My hobbies, imperfections and eccentricities that didn't align with this image created more shame, a fear of "discovery" and, broadly, a sense of self that hadn't been developed.
It took a lot of work to convince Captain America that he's exhausting me, and actually, holding me back from a much richer and enjoyable life. But the ideal I strived for had nothing to do originally with trying to be perfect. My anxieties twisted my vision. The ideal of Cap, in my mind, originally stood for my values, my compassion, and my humanity.
Now, he has a seat at the table, along with other personifications of my affirmations, along with my friends and grandmother who remind me of my worthiness, my intrinsic goodness, and my vulnerabilities.
Personifications and images are personal to you. It may seem weird, but so many core emotions are impacted by, or outright stem from, experiences / images from our youth. You may be surprised by what you find.
Through daily affirmations, you can unwind harmful stories born from powerlessness about who you are. Who you are and how you feel are not one and the same. Reclaim who you are.
Activity-emotional association exercise. The feel wheel has been a source of much deeper understanding about myself than I ever could have asked for.
Print out a feel wheel. Next to each feeling, write an activity or situation that makes you feel that feeling. This will take a few sessions. Don't feel bad about looking up the exact definition of each feeling.
During my feel wheel exercise, I discovered that I had a lot of examples in a few core emotions and very few in others. I also remembered things that I love, things that bring me joy, things that surprise me…and I realized how little I engage in some of these things. I re-remembered hobbies and activities that brought me good feelings that, for days, I could not articulate what feeling it created in me. I had to go do the activity and sit with the feelings to know for sure.
(literally; I made a homemade Egg McMuffin one night and yelled out, "delight!!!" like an android experiencing emotions for the first time.)
There are a few goals of this exercise.
Become more specific about how activities and situations make you feel, including job activities that result in positive and/or negative emotions.
Reveal emotional gaps in your experience and help you seek out opportunities to enrich your emotional palette.
Once you identify activities and hobbies that make you feel love, joy and positive surprise, create a roadmap for purposefully integrating more of these activities in your life. Some will be harder to program back into your life. That’s okay. Start small if you need to.
Get very clear about what your job is making you feel. Naming the feeling, and the actions that lead to the feeling, gives you control. Just like you roadmapped how to integrate positive activities in the bullet above, you can also roadmap how to get out of situations that cause negative feelings.
Roadmapping your way out of negative actions can take many forms. If you learn that a weekly meeting or a specific deliverable causes you fear or anxiety, why? Where does that feeling of fear come from? Perhaps it forces you to practice a certain skill where you feel exposed and you fear looking like you don’t know what you’re doing. A roadmap could include practice or coaching for that skill, or flagging to a superior that you want more practice with that skill before the meeting.
It could be something deeper, like a boss that causes you frustration, a leader that makes you feel disillusioned, a new assignment where you feel skeptical, or a new role where you feel excluded. It could also be several of these factors. Identifying specific emotions and causes will help you devise a specific roadmap, which provides you a plan; plans give you control.
Revisit or recreate community. The number of negative feelings / negative actions found in the above exercise have no correlation to how “easy” this should be. A single challenge can be very difficult for even the most seasoned professional to roadmap their way out from, to say nothing of professionals early in their careers or those with multiple barriers.
Don't do this alone. Your struggles are no reason for shame, guilt or unworthiness. Leverage community to help you better understand the path ahead. Or, if you are in need of community support, join one.
There are both social and logical reasons for joining a community. Socially, community reminds us that we aren’t alone, others understand and have been there before, and that we are worthy of help. For those of us who have belonged to a community of friends or trusted coworkers for a while, talking through things with someone who knows you deeply provides confidence, reassurance and a nourishing deeper level of perspective.
Logically, talking things out - even if your thoughts aren’t fully formed at first - helps your subconscious mind process big problems. Having more conversations will give your subconscious more potential answers to chew on, increasing the chances that your mind will devise answers to challenging problems. (to learn more about why the subconscious mind works this way, check out my post on creativity and scroll down to the part about the subconscious.)
If you don’t have a community readily available, see my post about purposeful community development. There are many resources available to help you think through these challenges, share their perspective, develop roadmaps, and more.
Re-examine your definition of power. Power, powerlessness, and empowerment can be defined a lot of ways. For many Americans and many of my public relations brethren, we tie an incredible amount of self-worth to professional power: work successes, relationships and progression.
Because of that, many people tie ideas of power, powerlessness and empowerment to hierarchy: am I in charge? Do I command others? If so, then my opinion matters. This creates a dynamic where junior people believe they can only exert “power” once they reach senior positions. They spend years of their career holding their opinion and not seeking ways to exercise their strengths.
I encourage a broader view of these terms, one that allows room for all parts of yourself to have weight. Try these:
Empowerment: clearly identifying strengths I possess that have value to me. Through these strengths, I pursue my wants.
Power: opportunity to exercise these strengths and to pursue my wants.
Powerless: lack of opportunity to exercise my strengths and pursue my wants.
Powerlessness: the absolute most amount of the "powerless" feeling I can endure before change is needed.
Consider your strengths and where/when you get to exercise these strengths. And consider the limit of the amount of "powerless" you can endure before the shame, guilt and unworthiness creep in. Have you already crossed that threshold?
Work with a coach to revisit or rekindle your career aspirations, and/or talk to a mental health professional. Who among you takes a workout class, or has taken a fitness coach, or played on a team? You want to make your body better, but you wisely realized that you would do that much better and much more quickly by hiring someone who can teach you the right techniques, notice ways to improve, provide you resources, etc.
The same thing happens when you start a job (usually, ideally): you're provided some combination of onboarding materials, mentorship, coaching, equipment, etc. The company believes these resources will help speed up your learning.
In that context, it's counterintuitive to not pursue resources who can help us tackle thorny career questions, get to the bottom of feelings and emotions, and work through topics that hinder our work and life progress.
Never before have mental health and coaching resources been more approachable. If you don't know where to start, ask a community. Google for resources near you - or, professionals with a point of view you like who are open to remote. Or, talk to me!
Moreover, if you find yourself digging up serious stressors, traumas, or issues, it can be difficult, or even damaging to tackle that without skills and techniques and support from a trained professional. Invest in yourself. You are worthy of support, help, care, resources and advice.
Now What?
These exercises are meant to help PR professionals build a stronger support system, make them more resilient, and collect the necessary resources to overcome barriers to a rich, fulfilling life.
What that life looks like will vary by person and by situation. Through these exercises, one should better learn what brings them joy, inspiration, wonder, sadness, anger, anxiety and many others. By knowing this, it's possible to create a roadmap toward more of the good things and, ideally, fewer of the bad ones.
Building such a roadmap - and executing it - can take time, and change. When ongoing patience and resilience are required, especially in the face of existing struggle, community can continue to provide important nourishment and support.
Stick with it. What seems far away and impossible today can only be done with many steps. Even a series of small, positive changes over days, weeks and months can eventually snowball into something big and meaningful. You can do it, and it's worth it!
To summarize:
Conduct these exercises; learn what matters to you, and how certain life situations impact your emotions.
Build a roadmap toward bringing more of that meaning into your life (and a roadmap out of what saps that meaning).
Execute that roadmap, stick with it, and continue to engage with/rely upon your community as you go.