Why Most Public Relations Training Is Complete Rubbish (And What Actually Works)

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You know what really grinds my gears? Sitting through another corporate PR training session where some consultant from Sydney charges $3,000 to tell you to "be authentic" while reading from PowerPoint slides that haven't been updated since 2018.

After 17 years running communications for everything from mining companies in Perth to tech startups in Melbourne, I've seen more PR disasters caused by following "best practice" training than by complete amateurs winging it. The problem isn't that people don't know how to communicate. It's that most PR training teaches you to sound like a corporate robot instead of a human being.

The Cookie-Cutter Crisis

Here's what every PR course will tell you: craft key messages, stay on brand, control the narrative. Bollocks. The most successful PR campaigns I've witnessed came from companies that threw the playbook out the window and actually responded to what was happening in real time.

Take Bunnings during the early COVID panic buying. Did they follow some crisis communications framework? No. They just put up signs saying "Snags still available" with a smiley face. That's not in any textbook, but it worked because it was genuinely them.

Most training programs are obsessed with preventing mistakes instead of creating connections. They'll spend three hours teaching you how to write a media statement that says nothing, but won't spend five minutes on how to have an actual conversation with a journalist who's probably worked a 12-hour day and just wants straight answers.

The real kicker? About 78% of communications professionals report feeling less confident after formal PR training than before it. That's not a typo. We're literally training the humanity out of people.

What Actually Works (But Nobody Teaches)

Stop trying to control everything. The best PR professionals I know are basically professional listeners who happen to be good with words. They don't start with key messages. They start with understanding what's actually happening.

Learn to fail better. I once worked with a CEO who accidentally sent a brutally honest email about company layoffs to the entire customer database instead of the board. Instead of panic mode, we turned it into a story about transparency and honesty. Sometimes your biggest mistakes become your best content.

Master the art of strategic silence. This one drives me mental because no course teaches it. Sometimes the best PR move is to say absolutely nothing. Twitter outrage has a half-life of about 18 hours if you don't feed it.

The most valuable skill you can develop is recognising when something is actually important versus when it just feels important because everyone's talking about it. News flash: just because something's trending doesn't mean it matters to your business.

The Real Training You Need

Forget media training. Get coffee with actual journalists. Not in some formal setting where you're "building relationships." Just genuinely get to know them as people. Find out what stories they're excited about, what frustrates them about their job, what makes their day easier.

I learned more about effective PR from having beers with a Herald Sun journalist than from any workshop I've attended. Turns out, they hate press releases as much as we hate writing them.

Practice explaining complex things simply. Not in business jargon, but like you're talking to your neighbour over the fence. If you can't explain your company's latest initiative without using the words "synergy," "leverage," or "ecosystem," you're not ready for public relations.

Study how small businesses handle PR. They can't afford agencies, so they get creative. They use humour. They admit when they stuff up. They treat customers like actual humans instead of target demographics.

The Authenticity Trap

Here's where I'm going to contradict myself slightly. Everyone bangs on about authenticity, but authenticity without strategy is just expensive therapy. Being genuine doesn't mean sharing every thought that pops into your head. It means being honest about what matters.

I've seen "authentic" companies tank their reputation by oversharing about internal dramas that customers didn't need to know about. Authenticity isn't transparency. It's being true to your values when it matters.

The trick is learning when to be the quirky local business and when to be the serious professional service. Reading the room isn't a skill they teach in PR school, but it's probably the most important one.

Where Most Training Goes Wrong

Traditional PR education treats communication like it's still 1995. They're teaching broadcast strategies in a conversation economy. Press releases, media kits, editorial calendars. All useful tools, but they're teaching them as solutions instead of starting points.

Real PR happens in the comments section. It happens when someone complains on Google Reviews and you respond like a human being instead of a customer service script. It happens when you notice what people are actually talking about and join the conversation instead of trying to redirect it to your key messages.

What I'd Teach Instead

If I ran a PR course (and thank Christ I don't have the patience for that), here's what we'd cover:

Week One: How to have actual conversations with strangers. No talking points allowed.

Week Two: Crisis management by studying small business social media responses. They're often brilliant because they can't afford to be boring.

Week Three: Understanding your audience by hanging out where they hang out. Not demographic research. Actual hanging out.

Week Four: Writing like you talk, not like you think you should sound.

The reality is, most people already know how to communicate. They just think they need to sound more "professional" when they represent their company. Usually, that's exactly wrong.

The Bottom Line

Good PR isn't about perfect messaging. It's about consistent, honest communication that treats people like people instead of markets to be captured. You can learn that from watching how your favourite local cafe handles a busy Saturday morning better than from any $5,000 communications masterclass.

Stop trying to sound like everyone else. Start trying to sound like yourself, but with a plan.

Most PR training fails because it teaches you to hide behind your brand instead of using your brand to connect with people. The best communicators I know learned by doing, stuffed up regularly, and kept getting better at being genuinely helpful instead of perfectly polished.

And if you're looking for dealing with difficult behaviours or improving your workplace communication skills, you'll probably learn more from paying attention to how your team actually talks to each other than from any formal training program.

The companies that get PR right aren't the ones with the most sophisticated strategies. They're the ones that remember communication is fundamentally about humans talking to other humans, not brands broadcasting to target markets.