Leadership and Management
The Leadership and Management domain tests your ability to lead teams, manage the PR function, develop talent, and exercise ethical judgment as a manager. Items cover delegation, performance, budgeting, agency relationships, and change leadership.
Core rules
- Situational leadership: diagnose follower readiness in skill and will, then adapt direction and support.
- Delegation transfers authority with clear outcomes, resources, and checkpoints, not just tasks.
- Performance management: set expectations, give timely feedback, document, and address underperformance before it escalates.
- Budget and vendor management: define scope, deliverables, KPIs, and change control; avoid scope creep.
- Ethical leadership: model the Code, protect dissenting voices, and manage conflicts of interest transparently.
- Change management: explain the why, engage stakeholders, provide support, and measure adoption.
Worked example
A strong media-relations specialist is promoted to manage a team. Within three months, deadlines slip and two staff members complain about micromanagement. The manager is competent at media work but has not been trained to lead. The fix: clarify role expectations, provide management coaching, delegate a defined project with checkpoints, and use weekly one-to-ones for coaching rather than task review. Reasoning: the problem is a skill-will and role-transition issue, not a motivation problem; situational leadership and deliberate delegation address both.
Traps
- Promoting the best practitioner without management development.
- Avoiding difficult performance conversations until review time.
- Micromanaging as a substitute for clear expectations.
- Treating budget or vendor problems as purely administrative rather than strategic.