Resilience in motion: How constant change shaped my approach to PR

UP NEXT spotlights the perspectives of IPR NEXT members as they drive the future of communications with purpose and impact. Learn more about IPR NEXT, the Institute for Public Relations’ membership community for emerging leaders.

Anneke Taylor Lehmann is a public relations and social media specialist at SpartanNash.

I’ve never had a five-year plan that lasted five years. I’ve lived in over 30 places, attended more schools than I can count and held roles ranging from military trainee to bartender to communications professional.

Through it all, I learned to find stability not in my environment but in my mindset, habits and relationships.

Recently, I was activated with the National Guard following a natural disaster — at a peak moment of personal and professional stress — and I had to drop everything and respond. That moment didn’t teach me resilience — it revealed it. Because resilience isn’t built in a single crisis; it’s forged in the repetition of change.

I used to believe resilience came from dramatic turning points. I was wrong. Sometimes the quiet, repeated disruptions teach the most enduring lessons.

Years of transitions taught me how to adapt without losing myself. Moving taught me how to build trust quickly. Bartending taught me how to read a room and stay calm under pressure. The military instilled the value of consistency and camaraderie. And PR taught me that influence often outweighs authority.

These experiences shaped my ability to find stability within myself when everything feels out of control. And that’s the essence of resilience: internal clarity, not external consistency.

What resilience means for PR

Not every communicator will experience an immediate military activation. But PR professionals know what it means to operate in ambiguity. We pivot constantly, manage competing priorities and navigate rapid news cycles. Resilience shows up when you keep calm during a crisis call, balance shifting expectations across stakeholders and adapt to organizational change without losing momentum.

It’s also what helps you handle the realities of PR: responding to breaking news that changes your messaging strategy in minutes, managing client expectations when priorities shift mid-campaign or staying composed when facing an overnight content overhaul. Resilience is what allows you to maintain clarity during a high-pressure media interview or to calmly lead a team through a crisis.

Resilience isn’t just about surviving transitions — and change isn’t just a challenge. It’s a training ground for steadiness that teaches you to command calm within, and that ability becomes the anchor for others. When everything else is shifting — when a headline calls for an immediate statement or when a campaign needs to pivot overnight — that anchor provides consistency, empathy and clarity that keeps teams and clients grounded.

Three ways emerging PR professionals can practice resilience every day:

1. Practice adaptability in small ways: Volunteer for new projects, embrace unfamiliar tools and learn from feedback. Resilience isn’t built in a single moment. It’s forged in the repetition of change.
2. Build habits that ground you: Set clear priorities, practice proactive communication and allow time for reflection. Stability starts within, not in external circumstances.
3. Recognize pivots as opportunities: Every pivot is a chance to strengthen your ability to lead calmly and confidently under pressure. Change isn’t just a challenge, it’s a training ground.

Resilience isn’t flashy. It’s quiet, steady and often invisible until it’s tested. So, I will continue building five-year plans that won’t last five years because in PR, where change is constant, resilience isn’t optional, it’s essential.