You’re a new emergency management professional. What communication skills do you need to succeed?

Being new in any field means that you listen first. You listen to all the people around with more experience. However, let Mee further detail that having experience does not equate to competency levels. There will be plenty of people who bloviate over their professional exploits. Listen to them. Listen to them all so that you can get a full understanding of what to do...and what not to do.

Learn to write specific agendas before meetings and assign reporting tasks, and then learn to issue meeting minutes promptly and thoroughly with all the follow ups and due dates indicated. Additional as another post pointed out, practice hostile interviews on camera.

After the application and phone interview in October of 2005, the first in person phase was a mock press conference with actual members of the local media present. That told me that this was a tough media market and they expected their Emergency Management Chief to be able to think on their feet and have some credibility on camera. This is very important if you are going to be the one representing your agency before, during or after a major disaster or incident. When you are answering questions on live TV it is very important to stick to what you know and tell the truth. Falsehoods can come back to bite you and destroy any credibility you had. There is nothing wrong with offering to get back to them with an answer later and do so.

The ability to speak effectively, and with tact can go along way in Emergency Management. This is because a lot of practitioners are teaching, giving presentations, or running meetings at some capacity in their day-to-day duties. So understanding the art of speaking, rather be formal, educational, or even informal capacity can go along way for practitioners.one thing I’d like to leave you with is that understanding when not to speak it’s just as important knowing when to speak.

I would argue that interpersonal skills are the most critical communication skills that emergency manager, or work in emergency management could have. The reason for this is because a large portion of job duties, surround the ideas of collaboration, coordination, and communication. Understanding, governance, and learning how to translate Issues across departments and across disciplines. This profession is very relationship based and understanding the social networks, and it’s influence between people, organizations, and stakeholders can be a game changer.

It’s a cultural skills or an area that needs to be expanded upon. The conversation of equity within Emergency Management at all phases is a conversation that both researchers and practitioners are having. Initially having stakeholders, affiliates, mercy managers, that are from the cultural context and question would be ideal, when this is not possible in grain within the communities, cultural context that you’ll be serving to go along way from building trust between the community and a government organization, as well as understanding the needs of community and its limitations.

Credited to - Sergeant, Bomb Disposal Expert, and Commander of the NCPD K9 unit, John Hill: LESSON 1: Your value is based on the tools you learn and keep in your belt. You may never use them. BUT you better have them there if you do. AND you better know how to use these skills. A hammer in the belt of a skilled carpenter can build a house. That same hammer can cause more destruction if you don't know how to use it! SO gather as many tools as you can, learn how to use them expertly, and be grateful if you never do! Now get to work!!! *I loved that guy*