Being the superwoman that she is, account manager Megan Boyd works by day as a PR pro here at our agency, and at night she takes online classes toward her master’s degree. Thinking ahead on an class assignment recently, she decided her topic would be the evolution of public relations knowing it could possibly double as an agency blog post. Her professor scored it a 100. And although she’s off a few years and facts (denoted by *), we also give her an A++.
Ch. 2 Original Post Within Chapter 2, there is a discussion about how managerial roles and activities are affected by aspects of the situation. In your experience, how have situational circumstances and pressure lead managers/supervisors to act outside of their “comfort zone” and how this may have influenced their leadership performance in either a beneficial or detrimental way? If you do not feel adequate workplace experience to witness this phenomena, you may use an external example. Regardless, be sure to clarify the workplace setting and type of industry that you are referring to. Hopefully, we will have enough of a variety in responses such that you will all realize how situational circumstances may influence leadership and how that phenomena varies across industry settings. My current superior found herself at a junction due to evolution in the industry of public relations. After she and her husband were laid off from an *advertising agency in the early 2000’s due to the “dot-com bubble burst,” they decided to found a new public relations company. For the first **eight to 10 years, a model of service including media relations, press release crafting and distribution offered enough demand to sustain their agency. However, in 2004, with the emersion of Facebook, the needs of her clients began to change. By ***2012, companies required more than just a newspaper, print, television and even stagnant website presence to remain relevant. They now needed social media management, something that, up to that point, had been widely seen as an individual activity of online pastime. As Yukl (2013, pg. 30) says of a manager’s entrepreneur role, “Planned change takes place in the form of improvement projects such as development of a new product…” To overcome what Yukl (2013, page 38) calls the “crisis phase, the primary responsibility of management is to determine how to adapt and survive.” The company’s owner ****had to step outside her “comfort zone” to educate herself to then in turn train her direct reports on how to turn social media into business messaging platform, a client leads outlet, but above all, a money-making endeavor. Over the years, that service grew from solely Facebook, (what I deem the “Godfather of social media”) to much more. When I joined the company in August 2013, my team was managing more than four dozen client social media accounts spread across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, Vimeo and others. It now makes up a considerable portion of our revenue, and continues to grow each quarter. * a PR agency and an internet radio giant ** six *** 2008 **** had an opportunity to