How can you show your organisation that you're worth your weight in gold?

Sometimes, as communications and media professionals, it can be hard to show your value unless a crisis is happening. 

If your organisation has little experience being in the media spotlight, they don't necessarily understand the value you can bring. 

Unfortunately, this also usually means they won't bring you in until an issue progresses.

What can you do to show your value and get the opportunity to deliver some really awesome advice?

Become their best mate.

If you're a stranger to people outside your team, they're not likely to come to you to discuss ideas to test if something might be a problem.

Think about how you can build rapport with people who deliver your organisation's core work and show them that you're interested in their work. 

A good question to get them thinking about how your skills could add value to their work is, 'Is there anyone you would like to know more about your work?'

You can then flex your skills by suggesting opportunities to reach their target. You might not be jumping into their team meetings immediately, but it will get them thinking and prompt them to talk to you more about what they want to achieve. 

They don't know what they don't know.

Communications professionals add value in so many ways.

Next time you're meeting with someone that you want to impress, think of something small you could offer that might make their job easier. 

Would it help your manager if you put together speaking points for their next key meeting rather than just sending them the stats they asked for? Would your CEO like you to do a media issues scan for your industry each week in addition to the daily media monitoring you send them? Could you create some infographics for the staff newsletter to make it more engaging?

These might seem small, but they show people you're a strategic thinker that will help them communicate better (your core skill!!). 

Take the time to reflect.

When you're brought into a project late and need to paddle extremely fast to manage things, it's not the time to suggest a different approach for next time. 

Instead, use the calm at the end of a project or media issue to reflect and get people thinking about how you can add more value next time. 

If getting media responses approved quickly was challenging, perhaps you could suggest developing a more agile approval process. If you know you could help prevent a media issue from getting into the media if only you'd known about it sooner, invite people to come to you with things that they feel might become contentious.

Unfortunately, it's unrealistic to expect people to jump into line straight away, but taking the time to reflect on the work that was done and constructively offer some suggestions for improvement next time will certainly get them thinking.