Leading Through a Crisis

Crises happen. And  they can happen to good people. If you are a leader when a crisis hits, even if the crisis is not your fault, it is your problem to address. The crisis itself won’t damage your personal reputation as much as the way you handle it.

A crisis is more than just a bad day at the office – it’s short or long term reputational damage that eventually affects the bottom line. Not all crises hit the media, but they do filter through to an important audience for you. It could be your stakeholders, board members, staff or clients.

We know how quickly a crisis can snowball and so as leaders, we need a plan. By the time the crisis hits most leaders are so busy dealing with the fallout, they know they should be considering strategic communication, but instead they tread water and ‘survive’.  Think of crisis training as the insurance policy you always keep up to date, you revise every year, but hope you never have to use.

As a journalist, the crisis story, is the one you want. It’s exciting, it’s fast paced, it’s unfolding, and it’s unpredictable. But what I’ve seen in years of being in a newsroom is that there is a big difference in the end result for leaders based on how they communicate publicly at crunch time.

The first rule of crisis communication is to speak early. The truth is the earlier you speak, the less you have to say. The longer the crisis has played out publicly, the more intense the scrutiny. While some leaders wait for the crisis to ‘blow over’, they’re missing an opportunity to become part of the solution.

Remember when we used to say today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper?

Now yesterday’s news is only a google search away from being back on my social media feed, and I’ll use it to decide who I work with, who I buy from, who I build with or who I’ll enter into business with.

If the advice you receive during a crisis is “don’t say anything”, chances are your well-meaning team are hoping to protect you from doing a Banducci (is it too early to use that as a verb)? When you don’t say anything, you allow other players to fill the gap and comment or speculate. It keeps the media, or your audience of stakeholders, clients and staff, hangry (typo intended) to hear from the boss. The ‘say nothing’ advice often has legal considerations and obviously I’m not suggesting ignoring legal advice. Your legal team are no doubt protecting your legal responsibilities, but who’s looking after your reputational damage. You’re not in court, but you’ve got no customers left…

If you find yourself in a crisis and the advice is ‘say nothing’ my response would be “but what can I say’? Experience tells me there is always something you can say. The inquiry, the investigation, the changes your organisation is making – you can always say something. Consider the fact that you can show remorse or respect without admitting fault.

One of the biggest traps for leaders in a crisis is to jump into defensive mode. We can all be guilty of it when we’re under pressure. There is nothing wrong with correcting false information or accusations, but your focus should clearly be on moving the conversation forward.

But there’s a catch. If you have been ‘media trained’ beyond recognition so that your remarks are disingenuous, your audience will see straight through it. Rather than starting with some prewritten garbage about your sympathy, try to find your real empathy. What can you say with your hand on your heart that is empathetic, honest and raw? That’s what your audience wants. A good media trainer who specialises in crisis training will never ask you to sound like a cardboard cutout version of yourself. You should never sound rehearsed (although the truth is there’s a lot of practice behind the scenes).

The crisis is over when people talking stop talking about it. A leader’s job is to say enough to get to that point.

For more crisis or communication training tips head to thinkboxmedia.com.au

or contact Sandra for a tailored session sandra@thinkboxmedia.com.au