Change has become a constant for today’s communication and PR professionals. Reorganizations, mergers, workforce reductions, shifting business models, shrinking resources, and the rapid adoption of AI are reshaping not only how organizations operate, but also what is being asked of communicators and leaders.
As AI becomes increasingly capable of generating, analyzing, and distributing communication, our greatest value shifts toward what technology cannot replicate: our ability to read the human system, build trust, create meaning, surface what is unspoken, and help people move through change together.
That is the Relational Advantage—the human capacity to create the conditions in which people can navigate uncertainty, make meaning, build trust, and move forward together.
Because communication is what we send; relationship is what people experience.
In this session, we’ll explore how communication and PR professionals can use their Relational Advantage to better understand what is happening beneath the surface of change, help leaders anticipate how decisions will be experienced, and become more influential strategic advisors. We’ll also consider how AI can create greater capacity and efficiency while making distinctly human capabilities—judgment, critical thinking, discernment, trust, and relational intelligence—even more valuable.
Participants will leave with:
- A new lens for seeing change: Recognize the human and relational dynamics beneath the communication and better understand what resistance, trust, and unspoken concerns may be telling you.
- Practical ways to lead and influence: Strengthen your ability to advise executives, manage up, support teams, and help leaders anticipate how change will actually be experienced.
- A clearer perspective on AI and your evolving value: Use AI to create capacity while protecting and strengthening the judgment, critical thinking, discernment, and relational intelligence that make communicators uniquely valuable.
Participants will also receive practical handouts and tools to help apply the Relational Advantage in their own organizations.
About the Panelists
Tracey Lukes is a professionally trained and certified executive leadership coach with advanced training in relationship systems coaching. As a facilitator and consultant, she helps leaders and teams navigate complexity and change by strengthening the human and relational dynamics that shape how people communicate, collaborate, make decisions, and move forward together.
Michele Roden has spent more than two decades helping leaders and teams become the best, most honest versions of themselves — together. As a Master Certified Coach (MCC), the International Coaching Federation’s highest credential, she brings the field’s highest standard of practice to every engagement, paired with a warmth and directness that makes hard conversations feel possible and productive. Michele co-founded BluOpal Consulting in 2003 and has since coached several hundred C-suite and senior executives across finance, technology, healthcare, and other complex, high- accountability institutions.