Leadership and public relations

This book conflates ideas around public relations and leadership. Our aim is to bring together a range of insights from both areas to create a usable framework for public relations leaders. However, before we do this it is necessary to separate out these terms and discuss what we mean by public relations and leadership. In Chapter 2 we outline what a public relations view of the world looks like. Here, we set out to define what leadership is and to tease out its most important dimensions for public relations. This discussion serves a number of purposes. First, it highlights that leadership and public relations share many of the same preoccupations. Second, it follows that public relations practitioners should therefore play, and are well suited to, a leadership role in organisations. Finally, the nature of public relations leadership suggests the adoption of particular leadership styles and behaviour.