International experiences, global accreditation with IABC
It isn’t often that you are awarded a scholarship to attend a leadership conference in the USA! However, this is where I found myself a few short weeks ago at the IABC’s annual Leadership Institute in Long Beach, California.
The experience proved to be a career highlight, among many since joining the board of IABC NSW in 2017. Special thanks to IABC Asia-Pacific for making it happen.
Leadership Institute is a gathering of around 200 IABC leaders globally to come together to exchange ideas and best practice on creating exceptional experiences for our members. It provides talks and seminars from world-leading experts on building our skills as communications leaders to advance our growing profession. There were 10 representatives from Asia-Pacific (pictured right).
Among the many highlights of Leadership Institute was exposure to the limitless opportunities for our members to build your career on a global scale. This is one of the genuine points of difference for IABC. No other communications member-based industry association has the depth and reach of our network. There are opportunities to join global committees to create thought leadership and best practice benchmarks; become a Gold Quill Awards assessor; access world-leading resources; assess and select presenters at the IABC World Conference, among so many others.
Leadership Institute is time for the global IABC Chapter Management Awards. It was a privilege to collect an award on behalf of my IABC NSW board colleagues for our work with strategic partners at the University of Technology, Sydney and sponsors Salt & Shein. A board colleague once said to me, “IABC will give back what you put into it.” Never have truer words been spoken. If you have the time, use your membership to explore what’s out there for you across the globe. It will infinitely broaden your professional horizons.
Global communications accreditation
Which brings me to the other successful aspect to the trip; being awarded Strategic Communications Professional Management Professional (SCMP) accreditation.
Achieving SCMP accreditation is both an honour and a thrill. Being accredited means you have achieved the global standard in our profession at the stage you are at in your career, whether that be the Communications Management Professional (CMP) or Strategic Communications Professional Management Professional (SCMP). It gives you confidence and validation of your many years of experience, hard work and commitment to advancing our profession.
The 100 question CMP and SCMP exams are held over three hours and cover six guiding principles:
Ethics
Strategy
Analysis
Context
Engagement
Consistency
Picking up the IABC NSW Chapter Management Award (CMA) on behalf of the team.
It took some time, effort and forward planning to achieve the accreditation but the reward was worth it. You will need references, proof of pro bono work and/or professional development in the past 2 years, as well as information on your career background. Professional development can include courses, conferences and other learning & development opportunities within your organisation. You can find out all you need to know about achieving accreditation on the IABC website.
It’s important to know that the exams are held in certain locations globally throughout the year, so you will need to be able to travel to sit the tests. This needs to happen within 2 years of being accepted to sit the exam. Take a look at the current schedule.
If you’re thinking about going to World Conference in Vancouver in June (and you should if you can, having experienced Montreal last year!), this is your perfect opportunity. Start your application now.
For advice on achieving accreditation, please feel free to reach out to me at patrick_armstrong@bigpond.com.