Common sense and communication: Paul Kelly looks back on a 41-year career in PR

After 41 years working in corporate and public affairs consultancy, I will finally be hanging up my boots at the end of December.

Try as I might, I have never really been able to explain what I do for a living to my family and especially not to my 94-year-old mother.

‘Well, that sounds nice dear,’ she will normally say, damning me with faint praise, before adding ‘but wasn’t there anything useful you could have been like a carpenter or an electrician?’

I have to say it is just as well that I never attempted either of the two career suggestions she obviously thought were superior to my own choice. Unlike my father, my practical skills are not Grade A, and I suspect there would have been some unhappy customers to contend with and probably some time in jail as a result.

But I flatter myself that I was quite good at what I did elect to do because at the root of it is common sense and that is something I was born with. However, the strange thing about common sense is that apparently it is not at all common. In fact, if my experience is anything to go by it is very rare!

Thanks to common sense I made a good living as professional communicator, but it became clear to me that the key skill involved with this is really listening. Nowhere, is that more the case than when you are standing in a village hall, being told that you were obviously born out of wedlock, because you have had the temerity to propose a development in the local area. In that situation an ability to listen and, just as importantly, to be seen to be doing so is critical and on occasion quite disarming.

These days we are all supposed to be on transmit the whole time, which is why social media is as all consuming as it is. I am not sure this is a good thing for society and it certainly has not improved standards of public debate on the vital issues that we face collectively.

Thankfully, this is not something I will have to concern myself with moving forward. In fact, I am half tempted to go and attend a whole range of public exhibitions, just to have a good rant and get my own back. After all I will now have plenty of time.

Or perhaps that is not the common-sense thing to do in the circumstances? 

I shall ask my mother what she thinks.