For all the major highs that come with a job in public relations, there are lows, and that usually comes from the amount of rejection PRs face. Aside from sales, there are few other professions that face rejection, high stress levels or are ignored multiple times a day.

PRmoment recently asked professionals how they dealt with rejection in their day-to-day and it would seem many agencies have practices and policies, alongside learning resources, to ensure the entire team is able to build resilience to the word “no”.

But what is resilience, where does it come from and can it be built in a busy PR environment? 

Our brush with resilience

Hayley Knight, co-founder and communications director at PR firm Be Yellow, explains that as rejection is “part of the job” when it comes to PR, which can be “demotivating”, it can be reframed to rebuild resilience.

“Receiving feedback from a journalist, editor, or even potential client can be demoralising, but it’s also a good chance to build a relationship, as they’ve taken the time to respond, and it has the potential to open the door to give them something they’re looking for,” says Knight.

“But the worst kind of rejection is radio silence when it comes to pitching, and you don’t have any direction or feedback to understand where it went wrong. Radio silence is a good learning tool, and an opportunity to process and reflect, and create something better, and more relevant. When something doesn’t work, don’t rush to fix it.” 

Similarly, Leah Archibald, senior PR and content executive at PR agency Herd explains: “Boy, I've faced my share of rejections. There's nothing more frustrating than nailing a press release or campaign, carefully compiling a list of journalists, and crafting the perfect pitch, only to be met with a no or, worse, silence. But rejection is part of the game, and how you handle it will make all the difference.”

Understanding resilience

But, resilience in itself is a somewhat contentious concept in the employee wellbeing space, chiefly because some post-pandemic employers harnessed its power for evil by developing super resilient employees to handle impossible workloads.

Putting the onus on employees to be more resilient in the face of adversity created by the organisation is not the way to go, but being mindful of yours and your team's resilience could make or break a day.

The main issue with resilience is that it's not a linear journey, says Emma Ewing: “Resilience is not static and I think it's so important to have that self knowledge that it's ok. It's totally normal and human for resilience to be variable and to not expect ourselves to be superhuman and zen-like in the face of it.”

Alex Shore, resilience coach at Shore Coaching says the first step to understanding resilience is this simple fact: “Resilience isn’t something any of us naturally have or don’t have. It’s a daily practice rather than a personality trait, no one is born resilient. When you break resilience down, it’s the daily practice of flexible thinking, self-compassion, an optimistic mindset, emotional awareness, being your authentic self and working with your nervous system.”

Resilience is best built with techniques not too dissimilar to therapeutic exercises used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) that involve a person looking inwards and having a check-in with their feelings and/or resilience levels.