How PR Pros Can Stress Less and Find Work-Life Balance

Members of the Poston Communications team attended the Florida Public Relations Association Orlando Area Chapter’s monthly breakfast on July 11 for a discussion of tips to help PR pros stress less and maximize all areas of our lives. Dr. Eric Janowitz, founder of Synergy Chiropractic in Oviedo, Florida, explained how to balance work life with personal commitments and manage stress through the “Synergy Life” framework. This framework, designed by Janowitz, focuses on intentionally creating your best life.

Managing Stress to Balance Your Life

Public relations professionals continue to find their roles ranked among the most stressful careers in America. Any PR pro will tell you that has to do with the rapidly changing media landscape, juggling demanding needs, meeting deadlines, launching successful campaigns and keeping up with endless numbers of news outlets. All of this begs the question: How do we manage our stress level while working in this field?

Stress occurs when we’re depleted of energy and resources. As noted in Poston Communications’ mission statement, we pride ourselves on open lines of communication with our employees to help improve their lives both personally and professionally – effectively helping them to achieve their idea of work-life balance. Whether they are at the beginning of their careers or seasoned veterans, we help our employees to be authentic and aware in everything they do. It is important to put forth a conscious, purposeful and deliberate effort to build personal and professional relations.

The Synergy Success Cycle

• Understand your sense of personal power by establishing your self-identity and self-confidence.
  • To-do lists can be never-ending, which can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed or overloaded. Through Poston’s PRecision Curriculum, we teach our team members and interns how to properly prioritize and manage their workflow so that they can respond to clients’ needs appropriately.

• Know that if your self-identity is low, your quality of purpose will change.
  • During this stage, you must identify two main things: Why is something important to you, and what is the ideal vision for this area of your life?
  • Poston works with clients to establish “SMART” goals when designing PR campaigns: specific, measurable, attainable, reliable and timely ideas. Janowitz encouraged us to also think through “MAGIC” goals when it comes to our self-identity: measurable, attractive, giant, inspiring and creative.

• The people in your inner circle can impact you in a variety of meaningful ways.
  • Are you a key influencer in someone else’s life? Who are the key influencers in your life? At Poston, we encourage our team members to be active contributors to the industries we serve and to the communities in which we live. We are also advocates of leadership coaching and implement those concepts regularly into our leadership team meetings, biweekly office meetings and twice-yearly strategic planning sessions.

• The work you put in to be successful is your process.
  • You implement standards through the habits that you create in your life. At Poston Communications, our process orientation helps us counsel clients effectively while managing quality across our agency. For example, we recently gave away our Pitch Development Worksheet as an example of the many templates from which we work on a daily basis.

Working to create balance in your life to minimize your stress ultimately can help you become more productive and happier, both inside and outside of the office. Lean on your inner circle to keep you accountable and be your outlet to unload your frustrations. Working through the “Synergy Success Cycle” can help balance your life and lessen your stress.

Kali Hammond is an account supervisor at Poston Communications, based in Orlando.