Great comms teams don’t happen by chance—they’re shaped by leaders who know how to bring out the best in their people.
Kelly King, Global Director of Public Relations and Partnerships at BON CHARGE, takes a thoughtful and strategic approach to team building, blending structure with empathy.
Her focus? Creating space for collaboration, growth and honest communication—all while delivering real value across the business.
What frameworks can comms leaders use to match individual strengths with the specific demands of roles like media relations, internal comms, or content strategy?
I’m of the belief that you can’t be an effective leader without knowing your team inside and out. Ensure you are capturing not just what you see as your team’s strengths – but also how they see themselves, what they want to be working on, and what they need from you to contribute their best work.
Once you have this inherent knowledge, that’s the bones of your framework! It will form a starting point from which you can map KPIs and planning activities in a way that each person feels heard, valued – and importantly – fulfilled in their role.
Of course not every job is sunshine and rainbows all day, but by flipping the focus on leveraging strengths in the first instance to achieve the desired results – rather than the old school way of identifying the task and then allocating resources to execute – results in a greater sense of ownership and pride in the work done.
And when the time comes where we (inevitably) need to ask someone to do something more menial, if they’re otherwise feeling highly engaged and motivated with their work, they will likely have more bandwidth and be happier to pitch in and do what needs to be done.
How does misalignment between a team member’s capabilities and their assigned tasks quietly impact team confidence and output?
Not understanding what matters to people is a fundamental failing of so many professional relationships.
Firstly, if someone is far more capable than the level of work they are tasked with, they are unlikely to be around for long. Being listless due to feeling undervalued and disempowered is extremely common – and the risk is far greater when managing an ambitious, high-performing team.
Know how people want to develop and ensure a plan of action to improve talent retention (and the subsequent IP drain of turnover), which will reduce time and resource costs, improve morale, and otherwise provide for a more productive and positive team culture.
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The other way misalignment could occur here is if you are expecting or tasking someone to do something beyond their capabilities. Equally in this scenario, it’s a leader’s role to provide the right environment for people to feel safe in speaking up about these kinds of issues.
However the onus shouldn’t only be on the staff member: as a manager, if you’re in tune with your people, you should be in a position to also identify where this might be an issue, and provide the requisite support to either upskill and reassure, or otherwise reallocate the work.
What are the risks of relying on availability or seniority—rather than fit—when assigning high-impact comms tasks?
High-impact, high-risk and high-visibility comms tasks should never just be the remit of one person – no matter how senior you are. Even as a Director, I test my thinking with my staff members for their input, consideration and ideas. When someone develops a press release, a crisis plan, or anything else externally visible that requires broad messaging alignment, at least one other communications or content team member should subedit their work.
This is not just a sense-checking exercise; it means that more people are across the issue and know of the detail, so that should things escalate, I then don’t need to brief in additional resources, as we have support ready to hit the ground running to help.
In what ways can communications leaders identify untapped potential within their teams—particularly among technically skilled or overlooked staff?
Talk to your people! Set up structured 1-on-1s, and dive into how you as a manager can support their professional hopes and aspirations.
When it comes time for formal review, I’m a firm believer in 360‑degree feedback structures, which can be great to uncover informal leadership and other overlooked traits.
The other thing that helps with potential and confidence to speak up is public acknowledgement of non-obvious wins in comms metrics – like clever internal campaigns, automation, or analytics contributions.
In this way, you can weave together cultural openness, structured visibility, and provide real opportunities to those who deserve the chance to shine.
How can clear role boundaries improve speed, collaboration, and confidence across a comms team?
There is undeniably improved speed, collaboration and confidence that comes from knowing exactly who to go to as the subject matter expert within a team setting, and so setting these clear roles and responsibilities are important – but within reason.
While area ownership is critical, by putting too much emphasis on structural separation of duties, it minimises collaboration and the ability to ebb and flow with business area demands. So the ideal – like so much in life! – is balance.
Identifying owners for projects, campaigns, brands, areas of expertise, regions – or however it makes sense to cut it for your organisation – should always be tempered with impeccable communication, alignment, and cross-functional understanding to have agility, flexibility, and support. It is a team, after all!
What strategies help leaders avoid over-specialisation, ensuring comms teams stay adaptable and future-ready without sacrificing depth?
The trap of overspecialisation is real! It’s a challenge to maintain technical excellence while keeping teams adaptable, collaborative, and resilient.
Agile workflows assist with both visibility and balance for this – I like to have a workable structure and apply agile methodologies such as kanban, scrum, and design thinking to my team workflows.
Additionally – and probably predictably – always foster a learning culture to ensure ongoing skill expansion within the team.
Without development, we hobble our potential – and providing that support for your team has cross-functional and cultural benefits, as well as performance ones in line with implementing current best practice.
Kelly King’s insights offer a compelling reminder: the strongest communications teams are built on trust, clarity and continuous learning. Success doesn’t come from rigid systems or top-down orders—it comes from knowing your people, challenging assumptions, and sharing ownership.
Whether guiding a team through crisis comms or planning long-term strategy, Kelly’s approach proves that leadership in communications is just as much about listening as it is about leading. For those looking to future-proof their teams, her advice is both timely and practical.
Adrianne Saplagio is a Content Producer at Comms Room, where she combines her passion for storytelling with her expertise in multimedia content creation. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for engaging audiences, Adrianne has been instrumental in crafting compelling narratives that resonate across various digital platforms.
