Category Archives: Communicating in a crisis

Keep it real: authenticity makes for great communication

Communicating in a crisis, Content marketing, Talking to your employees

What characterises someone as a good communicator? Being ‘authentic’ is usually hailed as a key attribute; someone who says it how it is, who doesn’t hide behind pre-scripted sound bites, who answers the question (and without jargon) but, most importantly, is clearly themselves. People respond well to an authentic leader, whether it’s a politician or a business leader, and feel they can have a genuine connection with that individual.

But for some reason, being the authentic version of ourselves is quite hard. Watching a debate for the UK general election last week involving six leaders and deputy leaders of the UK’s political parties, each politician had 30 seconds at the end to give their pitch to the electorate. For some inexplicable reason, most chose to read from an autocue. The result? Stilted, monotoned, expressionless statements that had me thinking more about their presentation style than the content of what they had to say.

Why would a skilled politician and speaker need an autocue to give the type of speech that they have probably already given hundreds of times? All it served to do was to strip them of their authenticity; that very thing makes them the person they are and why people like – or dislike – them.

Strip away the stuff that hides the real you
It had me thinking that the best example of an authentic communicator is probably your five-year-old self. You weren’t afraid to say what you thought of something; weren’t afraid to admit you didn’t know; and weren’t shy of saying what it is you liked and didn’t like. Of course, your five-year-old self had no filter, so I am not suggesting reverting to toddler tantrums, but I am saying that leaders whether they are politicians, CEOs, or anyone with a message to give, should strip away the communications tools that cloak and stifle authenticity.

Bin the autocue
That means binning the autocue; the over-scripted corporate videos; the company intranet piece written and polished by someone else; and the impenetrable corporate jargon that you’d never use outside the office. And maybe doing more of the things that are authentic to you. It’ll make your communications better, and your message will be more likely to land.

How great leaders communicate

Communicating in a crisis, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

There’s nothing like an ambitious title for a blog and this one feels right up there along with 300 odd words on ‘How to do nuclear fusion’. But, here goes.

When you think about great historical figures who communicate well people like Churchill come to mind. A nice turn of phrase, consistent messaging, positive reinforcement, presence, and no little preparation resulted in a reputation as a great orator – though, interestingly, no one remembers his alleged struggles to overcome a speech impediment. Historians are divided as to whether he had a lisp, stuttered or simply liked a ‘loaded pause’.

Today’s leaders have it harder than he did in many ways given the number of communications channels they can use there and the expectation of delivering more. Some leaders, for good or ill, thrive on the immediacy of Twitter for example – dear departed Trump – while others are probably blissfully unaware as to what goes out under their name.

once upon a time

I want to communicate
What never changes though are the leaders – and I’m moving on to include business leaders and managers here – who are really good at communicating do it naturally. They have a distinctive voice; take every opportunity to communicate; are authentic (you can believe that what they’re saying is from them and represents their values); use wit and humour when appropriate; and take advice and feedback from those around them to improve. Probably most important though is their desire to communicate; they genuinely want to do it. Try media training someone who has no desire to talk to the media. It can be very painful.

For those who aren’t natural communicators, communication is a tougher job but no one says they need to be great orators. If they follow the same rules that come more naturally to the good communicator then why shouldn’t a bad communicator become a good communicator? And surely it’s worth the effort. For CEOs or senior managers, I would have said it’s probably the most important part of their job.

Easy enough? Now about fusing together those pesky light nuclei…

A train crash of a radio interview

Communicating in a crisis, Working with the media

A nice interview yesterday saw the Managing Director of Customer Experience at the Rail Delivery Group – Jacqueline Starr – face-up to John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Well, nice for the beleaguered rail passenger but I suspect that Jacqueline Starr won’t be buying her media relations team their morning coffees and croissants any time soon.

Hauled on to the show to discuss a Times story that found out of 50 rail journeys it was possible to get a cheaper fare on 33 of them than that advertised (and if you haven’t investigated split ticketing before, I’d strongly recommend you take a look), Starr rather walked into Humphrys’ gleeful clutches with a performance big on media messaging but rather lacking in substance.

image for screen-400The alarm bells rang when Starr’s first response was to laud how the “rail industry is very successful in meeting customer demands”.  Things got worse when she then fed Humphrys that awful line about how “customers are at the heart of everything we do”. I can almost see that A4 of key messages given to Starr beforehand.

All well and good to prepare some messaging but you cannot simply hope to paper over a genuine issue with some  platitudes that no one, least of all someone as tuned into PR hogwash as Humphrys, is going to roll over and accept.

Towards the end of the interview, Starr finally admitted to the issue and agreed it wasn’t acceptable. Why not do that from the outset? The rail travelling public is a cynical bunch and is never going to buy some stale soundbites about customer service.

Fair play to Starr for fronting up in the first place but a bit of empathy and, when you’ve been caught out, a good dollop of contrition and a commitment to put things right might have kept things on the rails and are what the travelling public (and John Humphrys and his ilk) want to hear.

Where’s your ‘green lawn’? Some reputational disasters can be hiding in plain sight.

Communicating in a crisis

There’s a new pastime that’s all the rage in drought stricken California. Outing celebrity green lawns. In terms of environmental activism, it’s not up there with strapping yourself to a decommissioned oil rig in the middle of the North Sea or risking life and limb to disrupt a Japanese whaling ship, but nonetheless, it’s doing a great job of heaping shame on those celebrities who seem to rate their green lawn as a higher priority than irrigation for crops, or even drinking water.

For those tasked with safeguarding a company’s reputation, we get used to rooting out those potential crisis situations buried somewhere deep within an organisation. But how often are those reputation manglers hiding in plain sight? For many a celeb in California, they appear unaware that their conspicuously green and verdant lawns are a reputational car crash in the waiting. For many companies the same principle applies, except of course it’s usually not a green lawn at issue.

What was once acceptable…
Perhaps it’s a tax arrangement that may be perfectly legal but under today’s intense public scrutiny has become questionable at best; or employment practices (zero hours any one?); or the sponsorship of a particular event or organisation that once made sense and now seems clichéd or unacceptable; or even the hobby your chief exec pursues.

You can get too close sometimes to a situation to realise a potential PR crisis in the making. Perhaps it’s worth stepping back for a moment and asking yourself, where’s your ‘green lawn’?

When to speak up in a crisis

Communicating in a crisis

A head of communications I once knew found himself caught up in a major industry scandal with his firm at the eye of a media storm. His working day stretched out. He’d arrive late at home and be off early the next day, working weekends and, even when at home, he’d be fielding calls and emails.

According to him, his wife had identified a curious imbalance between his time at work and his visibility in the press: “The thing I find odd,” his wife told him, “is that you’re spending all the hours dealing with this crisis and yet all I ever see in the press is you saying ‘no comment’. What exactly are you doing at work?”

That’s the curious thing about a crisis. It can suck up the hours but quite often, in media relations anyway, it involves saying very little. Increasingly though, that approach has changed. The growth of social media and the way in which news – particularly bad news – freely surfs the waves, means control by way of a ‘no comment’ is virtually (and literally) impossible.

Speak up …and quickly
People nowadays not only prefer transparency and full disclosure – they demand it. If you’ve nothing to hide, why not take every opportunity to say exactly that. And if you have something to hide, you’d better come out and give your side of events pretty quickly because it will be out sooner or later.

And wouldn’t you prefer to be the one who manages that story?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be spending any less hours in the office managing a crisis, but at least your wife/husband/partner will be able to see and read a bit more from the fruits of your labour.