I'm nearly 1 year into my first role as a comms employee. I was given feedback today that made my heart sink: they feel I am not confident enough with understanding the org's audiences, which is both blue collar frontline workers and white collar office workers.

According to them, I'm too prim and proper and not relatable enough to either sides of the coin (which is odd being called prim and proper and not relating to... even anyone? but sure, maybe I'm just wired this way. I digress).

I didn't pushback on this feedback. I actually DO understand our audiences, even if they're perceiving I don't. Blue collar needs more down to earth language. White collar needs a bit more polished and professional presentation. And when communicating to both simultaneously, it yields basic, neutral language.

MY issue is the office politics coming from the top. Everything needs to be reviewed before going out (of course, I don't have the authority yet), but in doing so they always make their own edits, usually multiple times for one just communication, nitpicking certain words relentlessly as if it's a hill to die on, and then they have the audacity to tell me it's too many back and forth emails and micromanaging my work.

I'd like to know I'm not being unreasonable or incompetent. Even if it seems I am in the wrong, please be kind!

I've noticed that people respond very differently depending on whether they feel you're trying to convince them or understand them.

For example, instead of immediately saying:

"Here's why you're wrong."

try asking:

"What makes you see it that way?"

It sounds like a small difference, but it changes the entire direction of the conversation.

The second version gives the other person room to explain themselves instead of immediately putting them in a defensive position.

And sometimes, once people feel they've actually been heard, they're much more open to hearing your perspective too.

I'm curious — what communication habit have you found makes people noticeably more receptive to what you're saying?

Hey everyone,

I'm planning to apply for an MA in Visual Communication in Europe for the 2027 intake, and I'm trying to figure out which universities are genuinely worth it.

I'm looking for a program that's strong in:

Branding & Visual Identity

Editorial Design

Motion Graphics

Creative Direction

Portfolio development

Good industry connections and job opportunities after graduation

I'm currently considering ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts), Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London, Politecnico di Milano, and UdK Berlin, but I'd love to hear real experiences from students or graduates. Which university would you choose and why?

I have just started a new job at a local liberal arts school as a Communications Specialist and wanted to hear others’ experiences working in Communications in Student Affairs. What worked well for you? How did you find success in connecting with students and engaging with them in a successful way? Places to reach students besides another email in their flooded inbox? Literally anything else you wanna share?

Hi everyone! I’m Amrit, and I am a communications professional currently exploring my next opportunity across Communications, Content, Employer Branding, Internal Communications, Brand Marketing, and Customer Success. My experience spans PR, content, customer experience, community engagement, digital marketing, and AI-enabled workflows, which has helped me build a fairly broad skill set across storytelling, stakeholder management, campaign execution, audience engagement, and process improvement.

A few highlights from my work:

• Led customer experience initiatives for 500+ customers and partnered with Product, Sales and Operations to resolve 1,000+ customer queries.

• Identified 25+ at-risk accounts and developed remediation plans to support retention.

• Secured 20+ media mentions for five architecture firms through targeted PR storytelling.

• Authored 150+ long-form articles, contributing to a 20% increase in organic traffic.

• Created social and video content that contributed to a 15% increase in digital engagement.

• Led 20 community outreach programmes and six large-scale training events.

• Grew digital audience engagement by 65% through a campaign for Pancreatic Cancer Canada.

• Currently developing AI-enabled editorial workflows to improve communication and content processes.

I’m particularly interested in opportunities where I can combine communication, strategy, audience understanding, and execution rather than being limited to just one part of the function.

I’m currently exploring opportunities in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, or remote roles, and would really appreciate any leads, introductions, or conversations with teams that may be looking for someone with this mix of experience.

Here is my LinkedIn profile: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amritshanmugasundararaja/\](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amritshanmugasundararaja/)

Okay, so my boss didn't say those exact words, but that's the general vibe of the feedback.

This is the second time I've been given feedback that my email to colleagues is too long. I have a tendency to ideate in written words, and bring others into my thought process via written communication. It's embarrassing, to be given feedback that my communication is poor, when I am a comms professional. Granted, my mass communication deliverables are getting great feedback. This is purely my interpersonal, colleague communication that is being critiqued.

I am wondering if anyone else has received feedback like this. I am of course going to take it and try to adjust my style moving forward, per VPs request, but I can't help but feel a little miffed. For context, I am the only comms person in the company, so my boss isn't a comms professional, and that itself is a little challenging. I'm a specialist, but I often feel like I do the work of a manager because I'm doing both strategy and execution, at 100%, all the time.

Secondly, my boss let me know once prior an email was too long, and this is her second warning to me, but when she sent me the email as an example of another too long one, she said that it wasn't just her preference but another colleague had spoke up that she can't reply to my emails because there's too much content in them and she doesn't know what to reply to first, and has a hard time with it.

I guess I'm just confused if 3-4 paragraphs, including bullet points inside some of them with direct CTAs, is too much? Long story short for this specific example, the colleague reached out to me with a story they wanted covered, and I said sure let's set up time to meet, they said they would put time on my calendar but didn't. I had some time today to think about the story, so I sent them the angle I think we should go for, and some data I'd be looking to gather from their department to tell the story. At the end of the email I put some times down I'm available to meet to talk further if needed. But in my experience, not just in this company but in general, if I don't get the ball rolling, stories don't take off.

My boss basically said I should've had a meeting instead, so that colleague could react to my ideas in real time, and that my communication style is underselling my skills and ideas. It seems to me like my boss has a preference for meetings over emails, but I have always felt emails were more efficient when you just want to get a project rolling. I was also thinking about, the fact that if I took some of the content in the email, and put it into an attached "planning doc" that the feedback might have been different. But why do people even need that extra step to differentiate? is ideating inside an email so horrible? Can people truly not take 3-5 minutes for an email in 2026?

Am I way off base here?

Another interesting note, I recently had a exec reach out to me via email with a complaint, and I wrote them back quickly with a solution, to which they wrote back that my solution didn't work for them. I asked my boss what to do, because their email was confusing. My boss said to ping them and ask to hop on a call. She always wants me to get on a call instead of email back and forth.

I said okay, so I pinged them on teams and said I'm happy to hop on a call that night (after 4pm) or the next day) then I added a few sentences after clarifying some things from the original email, because my boss had mentioned the person might've been confused in a couple areas, so I brought those specific areas up. They told me they were all set without a call. My boss gave me feedback there saying I shouldn't have said anything besides hop on a call, because my added context might've "shut down the conversation" and there might be stuff we might not be seeing. Am I off base for thinking that, in adult conversations with professionals, especially a chief, if there is an issue I'm not seeing and I didn't represent correctly in the context I gave, they'd flag that and tell me? I asked my boss, do you want me to still schedule a call with them? and she said no, this is my feedback going forward.

I'm feeling frustrated, not sure how reasonable my frustration is. Looking for advice/perspective/insights I may be missing.

Hi!

So. Some context. I just got hired at a startup for as a creative lead however my role has somehow also blended into a content lead. I have an agency background.

Now the owner also has a corporate company and the resources are shared. Which means I work with the pr team of that corporate company for the same startup.

Because my role has also blended into content and since I just started I don’t want to be sticking out - I’ve been asked to create a communications strategy for the brand against some profiles that were benchmarked.

Can someone (kindly) explain what this means exactly? I’m also confused because when I confirmed that I would be handling the comms strategy (as advised) the PR guy said he got confused as usually the comms strategy comes under PR

I’m guessing in corporate, brand comms strategy gets clubbed into PR? I replied that I would be confirming the content buckets pillars and messaging for the overall brand + handling social media but would not be handling PR.

Yes, I know it sounds insane that I’ll be handling content + design + social media management but I need to get through 4 months to settle down and establish.

Now for the brand communications strategy, is it basically seeing what the benchmarked data says and saying “ok, to fill in the gap or to match the standard, this is the content pillar (education, tech) and the style of writing that will go out on digital and social”?