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Crisis Communication Priorities for a Sudden Crisis

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By Gerard Braud

Media_Relations_CamerasIf you experience a crisis that results in the mainstream media wanting to cover your story, your highest priority crisis communications outlet should be talking to the media. In the vast majority of cases, you should want to have a live human being talking before the media, and not relying on a simple printed statement, e-mail or even social media post.

It works like this: If your crisis is big enough to command media attention one of two things will happen; the media will spontaneously show up at your door or you need to call a news conference and address the media about your crisis.

In a sudden crisis, such as a fire and explosion, or a school shooting, panic and chaos are likely to follow. The fastest way to settle panic and chaos is to calm emotions with a spokesperson that has command of his or her emotions, command of his or her words, and can demonstrate some degree of competence and control.

Many organizations think a written statement is sufficient. It is better than nothing, but those are cold words. A spoken statement is better than a written statement of cold words is. Audio of the written words creates warm words. Audio allows you to convey emotion. Best of all is a person with warm words appearing in person or captured on tender video. The look on a person’s face conveys more emotions than his or her words alone.

In the case studies I have mentioned in previous articles, including at Virginia Tech, at the University of South Florida, at Dominos Pizza, a human being before the media or on video could have made a huge difference in the first hour of the crisis.

The size of your communications department comes into play, as you determine whether you have enough people to record a podcast or web video. If you select podcasting and web video, keep in mind that sites like YouTube limit the length of what you post.

Add to your to-do list time to reflect upon what your technical capabilities are for using social media in the form of podcasting and web video.

Next on my priority list after the spoken word, is posting your information to your website… the website that you control. Next, a series of mass e-mails must be sent to various groups of stakeholders. These stakeholders will include the media, employees, and then groups specific to your organization, such as customers, parents, students, patient families, government officials, etc. If e-mail is down, you will have to contact some of those people by phone as a Plan B. If phones are down, you will have to have a Plan C.

Add to your to-do list the need to make sure you have those lists made on a clear sunny day. Have the e-mail addresses in group folders for fast e-mail notifications. Also, have a full written, printed version in your plan.

It should be noted that I have a strong belief that all audiences are equal and that you need to reach all audiences simultaneously, or as close to simultaneously as possible. When I first started writing crisis communications plans in 1996, my top priority audience was the media because, at the time, the media were the messengers to the masses. Back then, if a company needed to talk with their employees, the easiest way to do so was to put them in front of a television. Technology has changed that drastically.

There are so many ways to talk directly to your employees and key stakeholders. This means that in many respects you can circumvent the media and how the media might interpret the information before sharing it with your audience. Technology at your disposal includes e-mail and websites, plus reverse 911 phone call capabilities, plus text messaging and more.

One problem that many organizations face is that their IT, or Information Technology departments, severely limit who has the ability to update the corporate website. This can be a fatal flaw if you do not have the ability to update your website.

I recently heard a speaker with a public relations firm present a case study lauding how she and her client so masterfully used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their community during a crisis. When I asked how they used their own website, their answer was, “well, we didn’t have the ability to use our website, so we had to use Facebook and Twitter.” Whoa?! Really? What that tells me is that both the PR person and the communicator at the company did not have a crisis communications plan in place. Instead, they selected to wing it. It says to me that these are people who failed to plan. When you fail to plan, plan to fail.

Add to your to-do list the need for a meeting with your IT department to make sure you have access to a portion of your website so that you can control the content of information regarding your crisis.

In a previous article I discussed how a WordPress blog template is your best tool for fast web updates.

Controlling the flow of information on your website and getting it posted quickly requires a number of things. Previously I mentioned that every one of my plans has dozens of pre-written crisis communications templates. Each one of those templates can be:

a) given to your spokesperson to read to media on site

b) given to a spokesperson from human resources to read to employees if an employee meeting is called

c) can be posted in its entirety to your website

d) can be e-mailed to your key audiences, while still including a link in the e-mail that brings everyone back to your website

To speed the process of posting to your website, you can create what is often called dark pages. These are web pages that are written and coded and sit unpublished. When you need them, you simply hit publish and the information is up for the world to see. This is also covered in more detail in my previous article about using WordPress.

AirplaneMany major organizations do a poor job of being ready to use their websites. I find airlines to be among the worst. On September 11, 2001, neither American nor United Airlines were ready to use their website for crisis communications. In January 2009, during the miracle on the Hudson landing by US Airways, the company was still more focused on selling tickets on their website than informing the world about their crisis. The US Airways website, to their credit, had a hyperlink on their home page, which I recommend. The link took you to a page in the corporate newsroom with more information, which I also recommend. However, on subsequent visits to the home page, the hyperlink would disappear. If you tried to navigate with the back button to the home page, the home page defaulted to a ticket reservations page. Overall, it was a frustrating experience trying to get first hand information about the unfolding event. If you frustrate your visitors, they will get their information from other sources, which may be less reliable, yet more accessible than your site.

Add to your to-do list the need to convert your pre-written templates into dark pages that are ready to be used quickly.

As mentioned in previous articles, a blog is easy to use and gets high rankings in search engines. It allows you to store many unpublished pages, which are just one click away from being published. Also, search engines place a high value on your blog because a blog is treated as though it is the most current news on the web. Furthermore, the title you place on your blog is quickly picked up by search engines. Hence, if my crisis is food tampering at Dominos, my blog headine would be Dominos Pizza – Food Tampering – Employee Hoax. Simply think of the words that your audience would put in a search engine and use those words in your headline. Don’t sanitize the words in the headlines because the search engines need to see the words that the web searching audience would use.

Additionally, a blog gives you the ability to open the conversation through the comment section of the blog, if you’d like. There are other benefits that you can achieve by using a blog on a regular basis. Industry bloggers and trade publications will follow your blog and use it daily, as well as on the day of the crisis. Add to your to-do list to have an official blog.  Many corporations still are of the opinion that a blog is a bad thing because they don’t want to hear the nasty things customers say about them.

 

Dark Day Crisis Planning Must Begin on a Sunny Day

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By Gerard Braud

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Few organizations in the world face the communications challenges of America’s Rural Electric Cooperatives.

On any given day customers could be protesting over electric rates. Workers could be under attack for disconnecting service. Board members could be scrutinized for per diems, travel or expenses. Add to that the growing influence of negative social media comments and big city media covering more co-op controversies, and you have a storm brewing. That storm demands effective communications from all executives, board members, and co-op public relations teams.

Here are three steps every cooperative should take:

Step 1: Annual Media Training with Good Key Message Writing

There is no excuse, in this modern age of media, for any executive, board member or public relations person to mess up when talking to the media. But it still happens.

Many rural people tend to be friendly, honest and sometimes too chatty. Unfortunately many executives, board members and public relations people mistake the gift of gab for the ability to be an effective communicator with the media. Many board members mistakenly believe the respect they get from their status in their communities will transfer to respect from the media. That isn’t true. The fact is many of the habits you have in everyday conversation have to be avoided when talking with a reporter.

Don’t worry, there is hope. The secret is to set aside one day every year to sit down in front of a television camera with a media training coach to practice realistic interview scenarios.

Since most reporters really do not fully understand the history and inner workings of cooperatives, your media training must adopt the newest innovations in training. Never settle for training that provides only bullet points as talking points. This outdated method leads to bad ad-libs and ugly quotes.

Modern training requires a library of pre-written quotes, learned and internalized by each executive, board member and spokesperson. When written properly, internalized, and practiced, these verbatim sentences provide context, information and strong quotes.  These are all elements reporters need in their story. Also, when written in a conversational sentence structure, these sentences are easy to work into everyday conversations by leaders and employees alike.

Consider that many executives who are interviewed complain that they are taken out of context and misquoted. A well-worded, pre-planned opening sentence delivered by the spokesperson can serve as a pre-amble statement that provides context to your cooperative’s goals and purpose. This forever eliminates the issue of being taken out of context.

With annual media training you will be a good spokesperson for good news, as well as when you have to speak to the media during a crisis.

Step 2: Write a Strong Crisis Communications Plan

The worst time to deal with a crisis is during the crisis. The best time is on a clear sunny day.

  • During good times, your cooperative must conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify all potential crises.
  • You must write a crisis communications plan that chronologically tells you every step you must take to effectively communicate during the crisis.
  • You must write a preliminary fill-in-the-blank statement to use in the first hour of your crisis when facts are still being determined.
  • You must create a more detailed news release style statement for each potential crisis that you identified in your vulnerability assessment.

If you identify 100 potential crises, then you need to write 100 potential news releases, using evergreen facts, fill in the blanks and multiple-choice options. This is best done through a facilitated writing retreat with your communications team.

A classic mistake cooperatives make is to prepare communications only for natural disasters, power outages and worker injuries. A modern crisis communications plan must also cover smoldering crises such as executive misbehavior, discrimination, financial mismanagement, per diems, and even crises involving social media.

When pre-written on a clear sunny day, these documents are ready for quick release to the media, employees, customers, the Internet and other key audiences. This process is not easy and is time consuming, but it pays huge dividends during your crisis. Many organizations experience a crisis, then in the midst of it, look at a blank word document and try to spontaneously draft a statement. The statement then goes through unprecedented scrutiny and rewrites, resulting in massive delays. In the modern age of fast communications, this is lunacy. You should never put off until tomorrow what you can write today.

Writing your Crisis Communications Plan is the perfect way to get all employees, executives, and board members on the same page. On a clear sunny day you can all agree on the policies and procedures that need to be followed for effective crisis communications. Make sure your plan goes beyond standard operating procedures.  Also, make sure it doesn’t rely on only the expertise of your public relations team. The plan must be so thorough that nothing in the process is forgotten, yet easy enough to understand and follow that it can be executed by anyone who can read.

Step 3: Hold an Annual Crisis Drill

Too many cooperatives make the mistake of thinking their executives can wing it in a crisis. They think a gift of gab equates to being a great spokesperson. They also think that knowledge of the business equips them to manage a crisis and the communications for that crisis.

The secret to getting it right on your darkest day is to set aside time on a clear sunny day to hold a crisis drill. During your drill your emergency managers can run a table-top exercise. Your communications team and executives act out a real-time exercise, complete with news conferences, using role players to portray the media.

When done correctly, a drill exposes bad decision-making, bad behavior and outright incompetence among responders, spokespeople and those in leadership roles. Conversely, annual drills teach your team members how to effectively work together during a crisis. Team members are taught to achieve effective communications while also working to end the crisis.

As your facilitator prepares your drill scenario, make sure you include realistic elements of social media, since social media can spread good and bad news faster and further than the reach of traditional media.

Conclusion

As more cities sprawl into rural areas, they bring more homes and electric customers into your cooperative territory. The sprawl also brings more media attention and more scrutiny of your operations.

The best way to prepare for the increased attention you will get, is to plan on a clear sunny day and never to wait for the dark clouds to roll in.

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About the author: Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC has helped organizations on 5 continents communicate more effectively with the media, employees and customers in good times and bad. He facilitates writing retreats and workshops to help cooperatives write and complete their crisis communications plans in just 2 days. He also trains cooperative board members and leaders on how to become effective spokespeople.

Be a Control Freak with Your Crisis Communication

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

Braud MDU3 copyBy Gerard Braud

Your first choice when “it” hits the fan should be to use the crisis communications channels that you have the greatest control over, that reach the broadest audiences, and that offer you the greatest stability.

Many people think you can’t control the media, but I have a long track record of controlling the media with spokespeople that I have put through a thorough media training class.

Good media training means going far beyond developing three key messages. I think the three key message system is bull. Simply giving an executive three bullet points and asking them to talk and ad lib about those issues as much as possible in an interview is often a recipe for disaster. Many are not naturally gifted at filtering their words on the fly. Many might hit the bullet points, but phrase their answers in a negative nature, rather than in a positive sentence structure.

Ask yourself, why would you ask a spokesperson to completely ad lib an interview with bullet points, when you could achieve better results by giving them time to internalize, carefully worded sentences with a positive sentence structure?

I believe that the key to successful media training is being able to tell a deep story. The story should be filled with quotes from the minute your spokesperson opens their mouth. The spokesperson should be trained to end each answer in a place that creates a cliffhanger, and generates a question that they want to be asked. To that extent, you control the message, you control the questions, and therefore you also control the media.

I’ll get to my priority list of tools later, but first let’s look at a case study that shows the dangers of depending upon social media and why it is a bad fit.

Twitter over capacityHave you ever gotten the smiley whale page on Twitter? It’s the page that says Twitter is over capacity. If you are depending upon Twitter to handle your crisis communications and Twitter is over capacity, you are screwed. In a crisis, chatter increases on both land based and cell phone networks, as well as on social media sites. Making social media a high priority is a bad idea because the probability exists for those tools to fail you when you anticipated that you would need them the most.

The next reason I think social media is a bad fit is because the sites and profiles are so very easy to hack. This happened to Burger King recently. Gerard braud burger king hackTheir entire account was hacked. Read more about it in one of my previous articles.

Beyond the straight Twitter hack, in seconds someone can create a profile with a name that is similar to your profile, causing confusion for the social media audience. Additionally, security is low on social media sites. Virtually everyone I know who uses Facebook has received a direct message from a friend who is allegedly in London, has been allegedly mugged, and who is allegedly asking you to wire money to them because their credit cards and cash have been stolen. This is a hack. The hacker uses deductive reasoning to determine a password.

How many of us have received a Tweet from a friend tells us they made an extra $500 last week and that I can too if I link a website? Or a friend sends a link that says someone has posted a compromising picture of you online. Those messages all came from Twitter accounts that had been hacked. My point is some social media is a bad fit because it is vulnerable to failure and the fix is beyond your control.

Take out your to-do list and schedule time to evaluate which forms of communications are a bad fit and which forms of communications are the right fit.

 

Prescriptions for Great Media Interviews: Secrets You Need to Know Before Talking to Reporters

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By Gerard Braud

Braud MDU3 copyThe doctor’s resume was impressive. It demonstrated a successful practice, plus a history of research and teaching. The ABC News program 20/20 wanted to do a story about the doctor’s research. The teaching hospital selected me to be the media trainer.

After the best research possible, to prepare, I called the public relations department at the doctor’s hospital.

“What exactly does this person do?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” said the public relations director. “That’s why we hired you.”

“Hum? This is going to be a challenge,” I thought.

The media training class began as normal, with the doctor being recorded on camera for a baseline interview, to evaluate the spokesperson’s natural strengths and weaknesses. The baseline interview is usually followed by a critique and suggestions for good key messages that will help guide the interview.

There was just one problem. After the baseline interview, I still had no idea what the doctor was saying. No matter how I tried to get the doctor to simplify the information, we were getting nowhere, until the fourth hour.

Yes, it was four hours into the day when I sketched out a simple diagram with a cause and effect explanation. I presented it to the doctor and asked,  “Is this what you do?”

“That’s perfect,” The doctor responded.

“Then why didn’t you say that four hours ago?” I asked.

“Well what would my peers think?” the doctor replied. “I don’t want to dumb it down.”

“The goal of this interview is to put butts in your waiting room and money in your pocket,” I replied. “We’re not here to impress your peers. We’re here to talk to potential patients.”

Many medical professionals fall into this same trap. They are afraid to “dumb it down.” The truth is, you don’t need to dumb it down, but you need to simplify it.

With that said, let us examine three great rules for more effective media interviews.

Gerard-Braud-Author-BookRule #1: Don’t talk to the media, but rather talk to the media’s audience.

Spokespeople mistakenly put reporters on a pedestal. The reality is, most reporters are generalists who know a little about a lot and can make an audience think they are smarter than they really are. Don’t try to talk at a high level. Besides, the reporter isn’t your audience.

Your audience is made up of the people at home. Research tells us the average person watching television has a 6th grade education and the average person reading a newspaper or other written source has an 8th grade reading level.

This means that anything you say must be said at a 6th grade level if you want to be a great communicator. You don’t win prizes for using big words. Additionally, never give too many details.

Many spokespeople shun this advice, saying they don’t want to “dumb down” their information. The best mindset you can adopt is the same one learned through diversity training, which is to respect all people and to be inclusive of all audiences.

Also remember, when you use big words and technical terms, often the reporter has no idea what you are saying. Which leads us to the second rule, based on how little most interviewers know about your topic.

Rule #2: You should always know the first words that will come out of your mouth.

The goal is for you to know two great sentences that instantly adds context to your interview and simultaneously states a great quote.

The two most often heard complaints by spokespeople after interviews is that they were taken out of context and their best stuff was left on the cutting room floor. That will never be the case when you follow this rule. These first two sentences become a verbal headline.

Many spokespeople reject this rule. First, they don’t believe you can know what to say without knowing the question they will be asked. Secondly, they don’t want to sound scripted or rehearsed.

Here is a confession from my 15 years as a journalist, combined with a revelation from 20 years as a coach to spokespeople. Think AED Hears sign_633back to your last media interview. While you were talking, were you partially wondering what the next question would be? Confession: when I was a reporter and my guest was blabbing, I was wondering what my next question would be, because their answer was rambling, full of jargon, too detailed, or lacking quotes.

The revelation is that both the reporter and guest are wondering what their next question is and no one is concentrating on the current answer. This creates an amazing opportunity. Your pre-planned answer will provide context to all you believe about your subject, it will be quotable, it alleviates the jitters about not knowing what to say, and it becomes a preamble to eventually answering the question you were specifically asked.

Furthermore, when written for the mouth and ear, and used in daily conversation following your media training, your pre-planned sentences become internalized and never sounds rehearsed. In fact, you will sound spontaneous and natural.

Rule #3: Talk about the benefit you bring to your patients and not the scientific details. Focus on what’s in it for them and work to manage their expectations.

If you think details are important, do a quick self-examination. When you read the newspaper, do you read every story? No. Of the stories you read, how often do your read until the end? Often you don’t. Chances are you read the headline and the first few paragraphs.

So, if you are not interested in everyone else’s details, what makes you think people want to know your details?

Finally, remember that media training is designed to let you mess up in private so you’ll be great when the real interview happens. In a career where perfection is expected, it takes humility to subject yourself to training. But the most effective communicators train at least once a year and before every interview.

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About the author: Gerard Braud is the author of Don’t Talk to the Media Until… 29 Secrets You Need to Know Before You Open Your Mouth to a Reporter. He is a media training expert who helps spokespeople communicate more effectively. Braud has appeared on TV more than 5,000 times and been quoted in more than 500 publications around the world.

The Media Are Listening in a Crisis

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

By Gerard Braud

Among those listening IMG_0470* copyand fostering social media are the mainstream media. CNN’s i-
Report format is perhaps the most dominant among mainstream media, but other media outlets have their own channels for sharing photos and videos. The same is true for local media.

Because I am a regular contributor to i-Reports during weather events and natural disasters, CNN has turned to me on numerous occasions to provide live, on the air interviews. This is something each of you should be prepared to do should you experience a crisis where you work.

I first discovered the power of i-Report during an unusual snowstorm in New Orleans in December 2008. I posted a 15 second i-Report, which CNN pulled off of the web and aired going into their weather reports. It was shot with a point and shoot digital camera, then uploaded via my laptop. I was able to be on location in the snow where no reporters were and I was able to shoot and upload the video faster than any news crew could. Before any assignments editor could think about sending out a news crew, I had already done the job of the assignments editor, the reporter, the producer, the photographer and the editor. Furthermore, it cost the network nothing to have a timely news report.

CNN liked my video so much that they asked me to do a live report via my laptop web camera. Unfortunately, the live report was cancelled at the last minute because a bigger story broke on the national scene. Minutes before airtime, the body of Caylee Anthony was discovered in Florida, after months of speculation that the child had been killed by her mother, Casey Anthony. But just the same, technology placed me where they had no news crews.  The media’s own social network allowed me to speak and the media listened.

Since then, my i-Reports to CNN in Tropical Storm Lee in August 2011 and Hurricane Isaac in August 2012, resulted in the networkCNN iReport Lee Web asking me to be their correspondent, providing live reports for several days. I’ll explain the technical side of how you can do this in a future article.

In the case of the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the Japanese tsunami in 2011, CNN i-Reports allowed CNN have to have reports in the early hours of these crises. However, as the infrastructure of electricity and communications weakened and collapsed, social media tools became less effective for CNN.

There are two events that I consider as game changers in the world of social media, and especially how it brought out of reach crises to the mainstream media.

One is the January 15, 2009 miracle on the Hudson, in which US Airlines flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. What makes this a game changer is that New York is the undisputed media capitol of the world. No single city in the world has a larger collection of global media correspondents. Yet the first official picture used by the media was a Twitter picture taken with an i-Phone by a man who was on a ferry. He tweeted that the ferry was going to rescue survivors and he included a photo. He was there, where no other reporter could be. Additionally, he knew more about the crash than anyone at US Airways corporate headquarters. So, in this case, the company could use Twitter as a way to listen and get updates. It required the airline to proceed with caution as it attempted to verify facts. We must all be careful not to fall victim to a possible hoax or a Photoshopped image.

To verify what the airline saw on Twitter, should the airline start tweeting back? As we’ll discuss a little later, that depends on many other variables.

The second game changer was on April 16, 2007, when a gunman went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech. That day is filled with more crisis communications lessons than we have time to cover in this series of articles. These are lessons I am happy to discuss with you in depth in another forum.  On the day of the shooting, a student with a cell phone innocently stepped outside of a building and came upon police trying to storm a building where the gunman was killing 30 people. The student was so close that you could hear 26 gunshots in his video, which he immediately uploaded as an i-Report to CNN. The student took the global media and their global audiences into a place where no media should have been and where no media could go.

I think we can use these game changers as a launching point to emphasize the need for speed in crisis communications. Among the lessons that we should touch on here is that, had the university had a properly written crisis communications plan, it would have dictated communications within the first hour of the crisis. All of this was covered in a previous article. Add to your to-do list that in your crisis communications plan, it clearly needs to state that your organization will begin communicating with the outside world within one hour or less of any crisis going public.

Most crisis communications plans have no mandates at all. Most crisis communications plans, like the Virginia Tech plan on that day, are fatally flawed because they state standard operating procedures, but contain no mandates or timelines for implementing those standard operating procedures.

In this case, the first shooting happened at 7:15 a.m. and the first communications should have begun no later than 8:15 a.m. Proper communications would have likely cancelled classes and locked down the campus, in which case, the student with the cell phone would never have had the opportunity to stumble across this news event and become an i-reporter. More importantly, communications within one hour would have kept most, if not all, students from entering the campus, which would have prevented the deaths of 30 people.

For the record, the first communications from Virginia Tech came out at 9:25 a.m., which was 10 minutes after the second shooting began. Here you clearly see several compelling reasons why there is a need for speed and why you must always begin communicating within the first hour of the onset of the crisis.

This Virginia Tech cell phone video is further a game changer because the university was so oblivious as to what was happening. They waited a full five hours after the crisis began before sending forth a human to make a public statement. A human should have been making a statement within the first hour. Instead, the world was clamoring about the shooting and the story was being told from everyone’s perspective except the university’s.

For timeline purposes, let us note that Facebook was functioning at that time as primarily a tool exclusive to college students, so the outside world was limited on how much they could look in. Also at this time, Twitter was about to be launched and didn’t play a role in this crisis.

Without getting side tracked on the sins of Virginia Tech, the bottom line is the media monitor social media for breaking news, and in the case of CNN, they have a team of people who are constantly reviewing and vetting i-Reports. If you are not ready to use these tools to control the flow of information about your crisis, expect that eyewitnesses with smart phones will control more of the story than you will.

Tomorrow, I’ll teach you about the tools I use to file my live reports, even when I have no electricity in a hurricane.

 

Lone Star College Shooting – Crisis Communication Case Study

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I’m frustrated by the continued failure by schools and colleges to communicate well during a crisis.

Rather than adding thoughts here, please visit http://blog.schoolcrisisplan.com/?p=95

What Leaders & PR People Can Learn from Lance Armstrong: Denial & Crisis Communication

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By Gerard Braud

Lance Armstrong’s denial of doping over the years provides a valuable crisis communications and public relations case study for analyzing denial by powerful people and how they communicate in a crisis.

This is important for two reasons:

1) Public relations people may give excellent advice and professional council, but be rebuffed by their corporate leaders.

2) Corporate leaders may be blinded by the view from their high perch and ignore the wise council of their public relations professionals.

Lance Armstrong appears to have shifted from a position of denial to a position of doing his duty and coming clean.

Denial is also a critical marker in crisis communications, especially in a smoldering crisis. Penn State is a perfect example of an entire institution where the leaders were in denial.

As a rule, the longer you remain in denial, the more you cause monetary and reputational harm to the institutions with which you are associated.

Lance Armstrong has harmed his Livestrong Charity, his sponsors and his businesses. (PR Daily, CNN)

This is true for denial at Penn State and many other organizations with allegations of child sexual abuse being swept under the rug.

PR people – When you see denial, urge the leader to come clean. If they don’t come clean and follow your advice, then it is time for you to polish your resume and find a job where you are respected for your advice and where the leaders have higher ethics

Leaders – When your public relations team tells you that the best thing to do is to come clean, please humble yourself to take their advice.

Here are a few important leadership lessons.

In every crisis I have witnessed and in every case study I have analyzed, individuals in leadership positions follow distinctive, easy to identify patterns that foreshadow their future success or failure.

• Some leaders do their duty, while others are in denial.

• Some take action, while others are arrogant.

If a leader does their duty and takes action, then their constituents (employees, stakeholders, etc.) will be responsible and remain loyal. However, when the person in the leadership position is in denial and is arrogant, their constituents blame everyone for the failings that occur, and the individual in denial and showing arrogance also blames everyone for his or her failings. (In the case of Lance Armstrong, he has spent years blaming his accusers.)

Remember this:

Duty vs. Denial

Action vs. Arrogance

Being Responsible vs. Blame

 

The best way to exhibit leadership in a crisis is to plan ahead on a clear sunny day, starting with a three-plan approach including a crisis communications plan, an incident command plan and business continuity plan.  Armstrong makes a perfect example for this three-plan approach because he is a leader and CEO who is continuously in the media, he is a brand, and he runs a business.  Most organizations and leaders are up to date on their incident command and business continuity plans, but most fail to plan for speaking to the media, employees, and other key audiences.

My crisis communications plans usually have 100 or more pre-written and pre-approved templates, each containing the words a leader would

use to communicate when “it” hits the fan, especially during the early hours of a crisis when emotions and anxiety are high.

As new issues arise, a document must be created for these new issues. This is especially true of smoldering issues, such as allegations harmful to the brand. Having the proper statement depends upon the leader telling the truth and not being in denial.

The best time to write such templates is on a clear sunny day and the worst time to write and formulate your words is in the throes of a crisis.

Managing a business and making money are too often the characteristics executives consider the mark of a good leader.

In my world, a leader is someone who uses effective communications in critical times to get their audience and themselves through what may be our darkest hours, so we can emerge into a bright new day.

Feel free to download this PDF and share it with your fellow leaders and PR teams.

One Month After Sandy Hook: Effective Crisis Communications In Critical Times

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One Month After Sandy Hook Elementary: Effective Crisis Communications In Critical Times

(Free conference call – Listen on Demand REGISTRATION IS FREE TO ALL)

[Editor’s Note: I recall the morning I received a frantic call from my daughter when there was a shooting on her campus. The school failed on a grand scale to achieve effective communications and failed at crisis communication. I hope this article and telecast will provide food for thought that leads to real change at schools and businesses.]

The tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut will raise many questions about school safety and gun control. What will it not do? The Sandy Hook shooting will likely not raise any discussions about effective crisis communications, although it should.

As television viewers, we see the coverage, but most people don’t realize that such a crisis immediately brings 500 media outlets and approximately 2,500 people to your town and to your front door, all with questions they want you to answer now.

Why no attention to communications? Schools will review emergency procedures. School safety consultants will call for more security measures. Companies that sell school text messaging systems will be in full sales mode. But few if any schools or school systems will do anything to prepare for the day when they might have to communicate with parents and the media about a tragedy at their own school.

The sad reality is that school shootings and workplace violence happens all too often. If you are the leader of a school or company, or the designated spokesperson, examine whether you are prepared to flawlessly and effectively communicate amid chaos, trauma and grief. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if you had a personal relationship with any of these victims. Now imagine trying to talk with parents or loved ones to break the bad news, then respond to hundreds of media calls, while dealing with your own personal grief.

The worst time to deal with crisis communications is during the crisis. The best time to address all of these issues is on a clear sunny day.

As it relates to tragic shootings in schools, be aware of these realities:

• A text messaging system is not the same as a Crisis Communications Plan. A text messaging system is only a notification system. Your text messaging system may save lives on a college campus when you can warn students to take cover from an active shooter. But when those texts are going to parents, a text sent too soon will lead to panic with potentially thousands of parents attempting to reach the school. This traffic jam then keeps emergency responders from reaching the scene. A text messaging system is notification; it is not communications.

• If you are unfortunate enough to experience a shooting at your school or workplace, you can be assured the media will be on the scene in greater numbers and nearly as quickly as emergency responders. You have an obligation to speak to them within one hour of the onset of the crisis, regardless of how tragic and personal the event is. For that reason, on a clear sunny day you should write the statements you will say to the media, parents, employees or any other stakeholders. You must successfully use three types of sentences in such a pre-written statement, which would include 1) fill in the blank statements, 2) multiple choice statements, and 3) declarative statements that are true today and will still be true on the day of the crisis.  I’ve successfully used this system in every Crisis Communications Plan I’ve ever written. On the day of your crisis, your template can be customized for release within 10 minutes. This message should then be shared simultaneously with all audiences, including communications to the media, e-mail, the web, social media, employee meetings and with all stakeholders. No audience should be told anything that is not told to all audiences.

• Denial and ignorance are the greatest evils that keep organizations from writing an effective Crisis Communications Plans. Denial means many will never take this step because they don’t believe they will fall victim to such a tragedy, although they may spend money for all sorts of security measures and text messaging systems. Ignorance means they simply think that having a text messaging system, a public address system and a plan for a fire drill are enough. You will forever be judged by your ability to communicate effectively.

• Do not summarily dismiss your responsibility to communicate and defer all communications to law enforcement.  Some law enforcement officials are effective communicators and some are shamefully bad. Furthermore, their comments should only be about the crime, crime scene and the investigation. Your job is to communicate on behalf of your institution. Your job is to be the face and voice of comfort to those you know so well and with whom you share a bond and grief.

• Leaders will quickly second guess every decision and every word during a crisis. That is why all communications decisions and all words that will be spoken should be determined on a clear sunny day. Most Crisis Communications Plans state only vague policy and procedures without definitive timetables or job assignments. Most Crisis Communications Plans fail to have a bountiful addendum of pre-written statements and news releases. By my standards, if I can identify 100 potential crisis scenarios, then on a clear sunny day, I can and will write 100 pre-written and pre-approved news release templates.

• Stay in close touch with members of your Crisis Management Team. Each team member is running their own team, be it emergency response and incident command or communications. Meeting in person is best, but you should never delay meeting because you are not all physically present. Opt to use conference call technology to hold virtual meetings when necessary.

• The perfect Crisis Communications Plan should outline in great detail every decision that must be made in order to effectively communicate. The plan must be written in chronological order so that in one hour or less you can successfully gather all of the facts known at that time, confer with fellow decision makers, then issue your first statement to the media and all other stakeholders. Your plan must be so perfect and thorough that no steps are left out, yet easy enough to execute that in the worse case scenario, it can be effectively executed even by an untrained communicator.

• Many leaders fail to communicate in a timely manner because they are waiting for all of the facts to be known before they say anything. This is a bad strategy. Speaking early helps eliminate rumors and helps to gain the public’s trust. It is better to communicate a little than to say nothing. You need two types of pre-written statements. The first statement gives only the most basic information and is void of many of the hard facts, which are usually not yet known in the first hour of a crisis. In my plans, this is known as the First Critical Statement. Some organizations call these holding statements.

Such a fill-in-the-blank statement should acknowledge to the world and the media that the event has happened and that you are gathering more information which you will share within the second hour of your crisis.

The second hour statement is a more detailed statement that fills in the blanks to many of the facts that were not given in your First Critical Statement. This statement should be written on a clear sunny day, when you are not under emotional distress. This is the type of statement I referenced above. To achieve this you must successfully use three types of sentences in such a pre-written statement, which would include 1) fill in the blank statements, 2) multiple choice statements, and 3) declarative statements that are true today and will still be true on the day of the crisis.

• Communicate quickly, especially in a college or high school situation where an active shooter is present. During the Virginia Tech shooting, the university had a woefully inadequate Crisis Communications Plan, which is sadly still used by an enormous number of universities. Furthermore, when the first two students were killed, school officials were slow to communicate. Two hours after the initial shooting, the gunman shot 30 more people. The university, meanwhile, had still not communicated the events and dangers from the initial event. In addition to the sad deaths of 32 people, extensive fines and court damages have been levied against Virginia Tech for their failure to adequately issue communications that could have saved lives.

• Never get frustrated because you think reporters are asking stupid questions during a news conference. The questions get dumber when you fail to communicate quickly. On a clear sunny day you can actually make a list of all of the questions you think you might get asked by reporters in any given crisis event. Once you have written all of these potential questions, you can effectively write news release templates that will sequentially answer each anticipated question, beginning with who, what, when, where, why and how. You can also successfully write answers that deflect speculative questions, which are the specific questions that so many spokespeople and law enforcement officers consider to be stupid. I can promise you are going to be asked, “why do you think this happened.” You also know that in the early stages of the crisis you will not know the answer. But don’t get frustrated and angry.  On a clear sunny day write a benign answer and have it ready in your news release templates. All of my pre-written statements contain this phrase: “One cannot speculate on why a violent individual would commit such an act. We will have to wait for our investigation to tell us that.”

• When you have your emergency drills, enhance those drills by including mock media and mock news conferences, complete with video cameras. Never use real media for these drills. During your drill you can test your skills, your Crisis Communications Plan and your pre-written statements all on the same day.

• Social media in such a crisis may do more harm than good. As a communications vehicle, social media is a tool and it should never be substituted for talking to the media, talking to employees, posting to the web and communicating to stakeholders via e-mail. All of these tried and true techniques should be used before Facebook and Twitter. YouTube should be your first social media option, followed by links on Facebook and Twitter to your primary website and your YouTube videos. My experience and research shows that Twitter is especially problematic, because well meaning, yet ill informed people, will re-tweet old tweets as though the shooting is still under way, causing undue panic. Once a shooting is over you must tweet an all clear message repeatedly for several hours, complete with links to your primary website where you must post the latest information.

• Do not delay in writing your Crisis Communications Plan. Twice this year I was contacted by organizations that wanted to write their Crisis Communications Plan “within the next 6 months.” Both had shooting fatalities in the workplace before they “ever got around” to writing their plan. One experienced a triple shooting with a double murder and suicide within 12 hours of calling me.

Please realize that the question should not be if you should have a Crisis Communications Plan, but how soon can you have one. Every organization must be prepared to effectively communicate in critical times.

About the author: Gerard Braud is known as the guy to call “When ‘It’ Hits the Fan.” He is an expert in writing Crisis Communications Plan and Media Training, and has practiced his craft on five continents. He has developed a unique workshop that allows multiple organizations to write and complete an entire Crisis Communications Plan in just 2 days, using his proprietary message writing system. You can reach him at gerard@braudcommunications.com  www.braudcommunications.com  www.crisiscommunicationsplans.com
Amid the heartbreak of every tragic shooting we always hear, “No one every thought it would happen here.” The “never happen here” attitude creates huge problems, leaving schools, businesses and communities unprepared – whether it is a tragic shooting at a school, a theater, a mall or your workplace.

It is heart breaking to have to address these concerns during this holiday season, but such is the reality of our world today.

CommPro.Biz has asked global crisis communication expert Gerard Braud to offer a free conference call and conversation to guide us through the steps every school, community and business should be prepared to take when the unthinkable happens.

REGISTRATION IS FREE TO ALL

http://www.commpro.biz/green-room/the-sandy-hook-tragedy-effective-communications-in-critical-times/

Please share via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail with your child’s school leadership, with community leaders and with leaders in your organization.


In this conversation we will discuss:

• Why this tragedy will lead so many institutions to do absolutely nothing

• Tragic flaws in the conventional wisdom about crisis communications

• Social Media’s upside and downside in a crisis

• Tried and true techniques that everyone must be prepared to undertake

• How leaders fail to lead while throwing up roadblocks


 

3 Dead in Murder-Suicide: The Time is Never Right to a Write a Crisis Communications Plan

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Friday 2 people were murdered, then the killer killed himself. One of the murders, as well as the suicide, was done “in the workplace.” I won’t say where, out of respect for the privacy of the person who called me the day before. All of this happened where he works.

Just 24-hours before, on Thursday, he called asking me to help his organization write a Crisis Communications Plan. He said he’s had my card on his desk for the past 6 years. We met at a Crisis Communications Workshop I had taught in his town.

He had high hopes of scheduling me to fly out to help him this summer. He said conditions were not right to do it before then.

This tragic event is one more reminder that we, in the corporate world, try to plan out everything. We move this because of a certain project and we postpone that because of another deadline.

Have you ever notices that violent people don’t care about your deadlines or projects? Have you noticed that explosions still happen even when you are not ready for them?

The best thing you can do is to set priorities, with clarity as to what is “urgent” and “important” for the long-term health of you, your people and your institution. There are many urgent and important little things that are on our short to-do list that can but put off.

There is no perfect time in your schedule to stop to write a Crisis Communications Plan. The time to commit to it is today. The time to place it on the urgent and important list is today. The worst time to prepare for a crisis and to deal with a crisis is on the day of the crisis. The best time is on a clear sunny day long before the crisis rears its ugly head.

I’ve successfully helped organizations on 5 continents write and complete a full crisis communications plan in as few as 2-days. I have a much longer list of companies who have called, but who could not find 2 days on the schedule to get this done.

We extend our sympathies and prayers to those who are affected.

National Speakers Association (NSA) New Orleans: Home of New Orleans Keynote Speakers

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The National Speakers Associations of New Orleans (NSA New Orleans) has been the foundation of my professional speaking career, positioning me as a keynote speaker in New Orleans, as well as a conference presenter and keynote speaker on 5 continents. NSA New Orleans has allowed me to focus on being an expert in media training and crisis communications.

This Saturday, March 3, 2012, I will have the opportunity to give back to my NSA chapter, with a special program that focuses on writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The amazing thing about writing for SEO is how much I’ve learned by accident. This blog post will serve as one of the examples.