As much as leaders often invest their blood, sweat, and tears in running efficient organizations, they are not immune to negative outcomes. From strategic risks to operational, financial, compliance, and reputational risks, a lot can go wrong. A simple IT outage is enough to cause a delay in product deliveries and set off a chain of negative reactions from customers, some of whom can be quick to share their discontent online, thus creating a scandal in a matter of minutes. While these worst-case scenarios are few and far between, the way that you handle them determines whether your organization recovers and how fast it does so. We look into the best ways to communicate in these times of high pressure:
The Best Leadership Communication Strategies for Volatile Times
Mergers gone wrong, supply chain disruptions, audits, and customer backlash are just some of the risks that leaders encounter now and then. In Strategic Leadership, communication style often determines who comes out on top from those who go viral for the wrong reasons is their communication styles. Here is how the top leaders maintain calm even when things seem to be falling apart at the seams:
⏱️ Timing
Suppose a popular e-commerce website were to go offline for more than two hours without prior notice from the business. What do you think would happen? People would start speculating, and stories would be rife about bugs, sabotage, cyberattacks, and more. That is exactly what happens in a time of crisis when a leader does not step up to the plate to explain what is happening.
With this possibility in mind, here is what you need to do:
Act First
In this digital age, people do not have hours to wait for confirmation from the affected organization. In fact, within a few minutes of becoming aware of a situation, people start checking the official organization’s website for an answer. And if none is available, they start speculating, and this can go viral quite fast.
As a leader, it is up to you to act quickly to prevent this escalation. Luckily, you do not need to have all the answers, or any for that matter. You just need to establish that you are working on the problem, so that you become the anchor at a time when people are looking for one.
Keep the Updates Coming
People always want to be in the know, as this keeps them grounded. So, if you say that you will have updates every two hours and then go silent, they assume that the situation is now worse or that you no longer have control. No matter how busy things get, ensure that you carve out time to communicate with everyone affected by the situation, even as it evolves.
🎙️ Tone
As humans, we tend to rely on our basic responses when things get tough. And it is not uncommon for leaders to resort to shouting, crying, or engaging in other behaviors that are tied to their high limbic systems. Unfortunately, while communicating on time is a good thing, people do not just care about how often you are updating them. They also pay attention to how you are doing it, and when your tone is wrong, then your message is not received well.
Here is how you take the emotions out of it and present your information in a way that people can appreciate:
Be Objective
Have you ever received a report from a surgeon or engineer? They tend to be so data-oriented that it can sometimes feel like they are removed from a situation. But that is exactly why they are so effective in their communication. Use the same approach by stating the facts and avoiding defensive language or posturing.
So, instead of saying something like ‘we are so devastated by this horrible attack and it is not our fault,’ you can say that ‘our IT team identified an anomaly at 9:00 am and we have since deployed several measures to resolve the issue.’ In this way, you share the facts of the incident without delving into your emotions.
Stay Calm
People tend to have section reactions in terms of crises, be it fear or anger. As a leader, you have to model the behavior that you want to see from the public and your team as a whole. That means that even if people are coming at you angry or afraid, you have to find ways to stay calm. If you do not, then you will feed into their fear or anger and create a feedback loop that worsens the news cycle.
🔍 Transparency
Organizations struggle with transparency in times of crises. After all, if you share too much, then you can overload people with information, invite misinterpretation from the public, lose control over the narrative, or even reveal sensitive details about your organization. And if you share too little, you pave the way for more rumors, lose trust from the public, and amplify feelings of anxiety and fear from the public.
The good news is that you can be transparent without telling everyone everything immediately. How?
Explain What Happened
For the most part, people are not always after the solution. Instead, they like knowing how the organization got into the crisis in the first place. Take the example of incorrect invoices. People affected would want to know why the figures were wrong. By explaining the systemic or technical reasons behind such issues, you are able to move the conversation into how the systems work rather than who made a mess.
Share the Process
As you work to resolve the issue that is causing the crisis, you will not have the results. However, you will be well aware of what you are doing to get things back on track, and you can share this with your stakeholders. For example, if your accounting system has caused a delay in salary processing, you can tell your employees something like, ‘We have engaged an IT expert to fix the issue.’ By communicating the process without sharing facts that you have not verified, you prove that you are taking action.
Don’t Hide the Bad News
In some cases, crises are compounded by more bad news. And while organizations are often able to keep such news under wraps, leaks can happen, both internally and externally. If you become aware that a third party has access to information that you were not ready to reveal, be the first to share it with the public. Otherwise, if the third party gets to the public first, then it starts looking like you are hiding things, and people stop trusting you.
🛡️ Responsibility
If we are being honest, many leaders dig themselves into a PR nightmare when they issue a non-apology apology. But what does this mean? Well, they come up with statements that simply read as ‘we are sorry if anyone was offended.’ And as you can imagine, these statements only anger people more, which, again, lengthens the period that these organizations take to recover from crises.
A good responsibility statement can help you avoid this. Better yet, if done right, an effective statement can help you win more stakeholders over, thus helping your organization grow even in times when the odds are not in your favor. How?
Admission
If your organization failed to meet its own standards or the expectations of its stakeholders, it is okay to admit that there is a gap. For example, you can say, ‘We commit to same-day deliveries but yesterday, only 70% of our customers received their orders. That gap is not consistent with our values and it is unacceptable.’
Note that using the word ‘but’ cancels out the admission that you have made. So, when crafting your message, ensure that you do not try to explain away your faults as an organization.
Commitment
Admission of responsibility is one part of the picture. People also want to know what they can expect in the future, and this is where you can commit to doing better. For example, in the case of the missed deliveries, you can say, ‘Because we are responsible for this failure, we are partnering with one new distributor to restore reliability in our supply chain.’
🗺️ Stakeholder Mapping
Organizations have a diverse range of audiences. And while you might think it might be easier to share the same message with all of them at a time of high pressure, this is ineffective, as these audiences all have different needs and goals. Therefore, you need to decide who needs to hear what and when so as to respect the nuances that apply to each category. Here is how:
The Employees
Your employees are critical in two aspects. First, they are the people you will rely on to resolve the crisis, and they thus need to be aware of what is happening so as to be of help. Secondly, they are the most likely to be the sources of leaks or misinformation to the public. And you thus need to not only tell them what’s true but also restrict what they can share with others.
The Affected People
Crises often affect customers, but their effects can also spill over to other people as well, including your suppliers and distributors. No matter who they affect, you need to communicate with these people through empathy and utility. Let them know that you understand their concerns while also providing them with the way forward.
The Investors and Authorities
When things get bad, regulators and investors often turn to the data as it informs their next steps. Regulators often focus on matters such as compliance and legality, while investors look at things such as losses, burn rates, and more. Prepare this data so that you can address these concerns effectively.
The Public and Media
Even though the public and the media may not be directly affected, they are likely to want to hear the story. And in most cases, they are so invested in a headline that if you do not give them one, they can come up with one that is sensational and paints your organization in a bad light. As such, you need to come up with a summarized narrative that explains what has happened and how you are dealing with it.
⚓ Narrative Stabilization
Stories about organizational crises tend to mutate over time. Something that was as simple as a CEO resigning voluntarily turns into a story about how an organization was flagged for fraud and fired its CEO as a cover-up. And since people tend to click more on scandalous tales, you can guess which story gets the most traction.
But while it may seem like the scandals always win, you, as the leader, have the opportunity to stabilize your narrative to prevent such a mutation in the following ways:
Centralize Your Information
One way in which information gets distorted is when people from the same organization seem to have a different take on what happened. The easiest way to prevent this is to inform everyone in the organization of what has happened while also keeping them updated on the progress through internal memos or portals. For the public-facing side, ensure that all your social media posts, media interviews, and all other platforms point back to the same message.
Visualize the Data
Timelines are highly effective in explaining crises because people tend to trust charts and graphs more than text statements. As such, come up with a captivating visual that people can refer to when discussing or researching the crisis. Interestingly, the use of such timelines has been shown to keep people from claiming that you hid the truth from them, as they can see exactly how the process unfolded.
Anchor the Future
Immediately you start resolving the crisis, start using post-pressure language as if you have rectified the solution. By doing this, you signal that the crisis is a thing of the past. Not only does this alleviate feelings of fear and anxiety in your stakeholders, but it also changes the public narrative such that people turn their attention to newer crises.
Address Misinformation
When false narratives start creeping up, use data to redirect the conversations instead of simply saying that they are not true. You can simply share the logs or other figures available, as these will serve as proof that your organization is not hiding information from the public.