We’re not all the same
Loud, extroverted and (sometimes) party-loving. These are just some of the stereotypes people associate with PR professionals.
Unsurprisingly, these are terms uttered only by those outside of the industry, and, generally speaking, these are far from the truth.
There’s no doubt that in a client-facing and media-facing role, those core inter-personal skills are vital. But when you dive a little deeper, you find that typical PR characteristics vary hugely.
According to PR week, high-performance PR professional are “articulate, creative, proactive and flexible”. It’s qualities like these that can lie in a wide range of personalities, so it’s something certainly worth investigating.
Only when you first start working in PR do you realise that it’s not a certain ‘type’ that end up in this particular job. I became acutely aware of this when joining Little Red Rooster, when understanding how the company assesses personality types of everyone at the agency to determine how best to work with each other. This is done through answering a series of quick-fire questions about yourself and how you interact with others, with the results displayed on a colour wheel.
What I learned about personality at Little Red Rooster
At LRR, we look at personality types across the agency to understand how we can work most effectively together.
The process involves answering a series of quick-fire questions about yourself and how you interact with other people. The results then appear on a colour wheel, showing where different personality types sit.
The LRR wheel looks like this:
Interestingly, most of the LRR team sits in the bottom half of the wheel, with the majority towards the left.
The left side represents the more introverted end of the scale. The green section includes people who tend to be quieter, diplomatic, and thoughtful speakers. The blue section represents people who are detail-focused, pragmatic and critical.
On the more extroverted right-hand side, yellow represents people who are positive, expressive and people-focused. Red represents those who are more direct, spontaneous and competitive.
Only around 40% of the LRR team sit in these areas.
So much for the idea that everyone in PR is an extroverted party animal.
Why different personalities matter in PR
Understanding these differences is useful for more than simply satisfying our curiosity about where everyone sits on a colour wheel.
It helps us understand how people prefer to communicate, make decisions and approach their work.
That matters when you’re working as part of a team.
For example, one person might want to talk through an idea immediately, while another might need time to process it before responding. One person might naturally take the lead in a meeting, while another might contribute their best thinking afterwards.
Neither approach is inherently better.
They’re simply different.
And when you work in an industry that relies so heavily on ideas, relationships and collaboration, having different ways of thinking around the table can only be a good thing.
This graph is freely available for anyone at LRR if they need reminding of where people sit. Personally, this is something that has stuck in my head ever since it was produced.
Bringing your own personality to PR
This is particularly important for anyone considering working in PR, whether that’s an internship, graduate role or first agency job.
You don’t need to arrive as a finished product.
You’ll develop new skills, learn how to work with different personalities and become more confident as you gain experience.
What you do need is curiosity, resilience and a willingness to learn.
And, perhaps most importantly, you need to be yourself.
At LRR, understanding the different personalities across the agency has helped me appreciate just how many different ways there are to approach a career in PR.
If you’re considering a career in PR, do get in touch at everyone@littleredpr.co.uk as we always have roles available at internship and graduate level.
