I think it’s all about confidence. Confidence comes with experience. Whether it be experience with programs and software or experience with clients.

I think everyone has to take their own path and have their own experiences until they become completely confident in themselves as a professional. Hopefully it will happen for me sooner rather than later.

We did things (I still *do* things) haphazardly, awkwardly and politically incorrectly. But no one will ever shoot you for having a fact-based opinion. They may not *like* you (and that’s life, whether at work, at play or at college) but they will *respect* you for having done your homework. Keep showing seniors that you continually do your homework and the future will be so bright you gotta wear shades!

[hey, that sounds like a good idea for a song… nah, it’ll never take off]

One great thing about this forum is that you can put your wrong foot forward, so to speak, and not have it chewed off.

I know all of the contributors here by reputation, most of them through email and Skype, and a couple or three personally. You couldn’t meet a nicer group of people. And every one of us has been where you are today.

So put the wrong foot, right foot… all the feet.. forward here.

Allan

However, as time passes and we continue blogging each week, we are learning to research our ideas and express them clearly and confidently.

Your criticisms and suggestions are welcomed. Now that we are aware of common mistakes we as young PR practitioners make, we can catch ourselves before we do it. Thanks again!

I’ll throw out a few notes.

1) “on the one hand, and on the other hand” is usually born of trying to understand both sides (or the many sides) of an issue. High school and college English professors want to see that you can do this (and rightly so!), which is why you all have written countless “Explain the issues of the Civil War” or “Compare and contrast X & Y” essays.

But while knowing and understanding the arguments of both sides (or all the sides) is important, decision making is about picking one. In working life, two or three fairly good solutions usually exist for any one problem — the bad solutions sift out early. Most people can tell you the merits of each. Good. But leadership is about picking one and being able to say why.

“On the one hand, and on the other hand” is often used in business settings to avoid making a choice (read: investment). But at what price? In financial theory, you find the concept of the “price of perfect knowledge.” The price of perfect knowledge is the price you would pay to know, without a doubt, which of your two or three solutions is best.

Here’s an example: I once asked an intern to arrange a new coffee machine, since the old one couldn’t keep up with demand. Nothing happened, which I vaguely wondered about. About a week later, he suprised me not with a solution but with a very detailed array of choices: we could have a coffee service, two or three small machines, one big one…

I smiled, shoved the brochures and papers back at him and said “No one will kill you for the choice you — not I — are going to make in the next five minutes. But, if the art department doesn’t have caffeine this afternoon, make sure to let us know your next of kin.”

What I saw, and what he knew deep down, was that any of these choices were pretty good, and none were “wrong.” But by working the problem for a week, and presenting me with solutions without choosing one, he far exceeded the “price of perfect knowledge” I was willing to pay.

2) One of you uses the phrase “unbiased opinion.” No opinion is unbiased; by definition, any opinion is biased. Bias is perfectly fine in a business setting; bias without being able to crisply explain the facts behind your bias is not.

No one is going to ask you to make a call in your first week or month or even six months, maybe. But, at some point, you will have worked a client’s case long enough, and have enough facts at hand, that someone senior will say “What do you think?” That’s when bias — backed by explanation — is fine and, if you were working for me, desirable. He or she may disagree — and if she’s a good mentor, she’ll explain why. It’s learning for you, not the end of the world.

And what is important here is the setting. “Being a know-it-all” is blasting off, as a junior, when your opinion wasn’t asked. That can be fatal in business, a frat or sorority, or at the family reunion. My point is, when you ARE asked… have an opinion based on facts.

3) Don’t fear speaking your mind on blogs or MySpace or whereever. No one asks you to bare your soul on your blog — write what you are comfortable revealing. I’m probably far too outspoken for my own good, but you may notice I rarely touch politics — even though I have passions there — and reveal little about my children or partner. I’ve been told by many friends and family that my music knowledge approaches that of a 10-year old, so I don’t go there either.

I’d urge you to be more outspoken than not, if you must err on one side or the other. The employer that won’t hire you because you had a reasonable opinion on a blog is not someone you want to work for anyway (I realize that doesn’t pay the rent).

With regards to your blog, many of us fall victim to using the “on one hand…one the other hand” crutch because often times in school we are thought show both sides of the argument. Unless we are doing a straight-forward persuasive speech or paper, I have encountered a few professors who have taught to show the reader both sides of the argument, so the reader can form his/her own opinion. I am in complete agreement with you, in that it is not the best or most productive way of presenting an opinion, and yes, it does make the presenter seem that he/she is unsure of him/herself. Personally, I know that I fall victim to presenting two sides or options to an opinion, simply out of habit. I appreciate you bringing this flaw to our attention.

On the subject of us falling victim to using “I think” or “I believe,” I often times have to stop myself of saying this statement. One thing middle/high school teachers and college professors could do more of, is teach students how to have an opinion and to stand strong behind it. We are taught early on, that it is ok to use these phrases at the beginning of a thought, and then we get to college and are all the sudden confronted by the fact that if we use these phrases we loose half our credibility. But half the problem is that we never learned how to form our own opinion and stand confidently behind it. It is a learning process, and the more I continue to write, the more confident I get with my opinions.

Students don’t want to jump into a situation sounding like know-it-alls who have been working in the field for years and have firsthand experience to back up their opinions. And I agree that we need to get over this and have confidence in our own abilities as well as knowing how to constructively state the “and this is why” part you spoke about.

However, I think there could be a second reason for this “on the one hand, on the other hand” issue: we’re still in a student frame of mind. We have had the theories of rhetoric pounded into our heads over and over during the past four years in just about every communication class. The key way to establish credibility in any paper or speech is to address both sides of an issue and then prove why your way is the best. I guess this is just another way that the classroom differs from reality.

“Going with the flow� is good with all of your friends when deciding to go to dinner or something, but in a professional environment, you’ve suddenly lost your backbone. When you give that up, you’ve also lost your status as an opinion leader. There is a fine line between compromising and sacrificing your stance on a situation. This can sometimes be an issue in ethically questionable situations.

People want to have strong personalities on their workforce. If you can’t give something to a company or even worse, if you can, but you are afraid to, that’s a bad sign.

To our benefit, many of you all hold us at a higher standard than some of our professors. “Tough words” typically means that they are true. We don’t get those too often. Without a doubt, there will be plenty of them to go around once we enter the work force. It’s much more helpful to hear them now, from ya’ll.

When you know your facts, it shouldn’t be difficult to take a stand on an issue. Whether it is knowing what is best for your client or knowing what is unethical in the PR industry, facts give a position credibility and legs on which to stand.

What good is an opinion if you don’t share it?