A public relations personnel has to be spot on in

a. Confronting

b. Organizing

c. Working.

In confronting, a shy or retiring PR is not about to handle suppressive persons or situations. A PR must be able to stand up to and handle the more wild situations easily and with composure. When he does not, his confront blows and any sense of presentation or organization would go up in smoke. A PTS (potential trouble source) person or one who roller-coasters casewise or one who tends to retreat has no business in PR. His connections that make him PTS and his case would have to be handled fully before he could make good on PR lines.

In organizing, a PR has to be able not only to organize something well but to organize it faultlessly in a flash.

Every action a PR takes concerns groups and therefore has to be organized down to the finest detail; otherwise it will just be a mob scene and a very bad presentation.

A PR who can confront, can “think on his feet” and grasp and handle situations rapidly and who can organize in a flash will succeed as a PR.

The last essential ingredient of a PR is the ability to WORK.

When appointing people to PR training, the person’s work record is very, very important.

The ability to address letters, push around files, haul furniture into place, handle towering stacks of admin in nothing flat are all PR requisites.

To be able to tear out to Poughkeepsie before lunch and set up the baby contest and build a scene for a press conference on catfish before two and get dressed, meet the governor by six is WORK. It takes sweat and push and energy.

A PR should be able to get out a trade paper in hours where an “editor” might take weeks.

The ability to work must be established in a potential PR before wasting any training time, as a PR who can’t work fails every time.

People think a PR must be charming, brilliant, able to inspire, etc., etc.

These are fine if they exist. But they are actually secondary qualities in a PR. Lack of the (a), (b), (c) qualities is why you see PRs begin to hit the bottle, get sick, fail.

If a PR is also charming, brilliant, able to inspire, he is a real winner. Possibly one is born with all these qualities every few generations.

Personnel in appointing and training PR must look for the wish to be a PR and (a), (b) and (c).

And anyone taking up PR who does so to escape hard work will fail as it IS hard work.

A real top PR wants to be one, has the abilities of (a), (b) and (c) and is trained hard and well on the subject. Then you have a real stat raiser, a real winner, a real empire builder.