I’ve provided media training to hundreds of companies, non-profit organizations and associations. At least half of those trainings were to help executives prepare for a crisis before it happened. Sometimes, I’ve had to step in while a crisis was at-hand.
The four most important things to know, in preparing for, or dealing with a crisis, are:
(1) Admit mistakes
(2) Express and exhibit compassion for victims
(3) Put the problem into perspective
(4) Create effective positioning
ADMIT MISTAKES:
Unless your organization is constrained by legal counsel from admitting a true mistake, you’ll find that most people are very forgiving of the admission of an error, if the admission is quickly forthcoming.
It’s important to tell the truth. Deception, in the long run, ruins
reputation and standing in the community - and ultimately your bottom line.
EXPRESS AND EXHIBIT COMPASSION FOR VICTIMS:
We’re all in the people business. You count on your various publics - all composed of people - to support you, to buy your products and services, to embrace your stance on issues. If you’ve made a faulty product or rendered a service that hurt people (or worse) - express compassion for those victims. Do everything you can to back up your expression of compassion with tangible acts of compensation, if at all possible. Make sure you rectify the problem so that it will never happen again, and let your publics know it’s been rectified.
PUT THE PROBLEM INTO PERSPECTIVE:
It often occurs that an organization has to deal with a crisis that somehow has the potential of tarnishing its reputation to the extent that the public perceives this is not a one-time occurrence, but a pattern of negligence. Usually, this is not the case.
Put the problem into perspective. Explain your long history of good citizenship, of trustworthiness and ethical behavior. Put this particular problem into the “untypical category” - of an incident that doesn’t typify your actions. When contextualized within the larger picture of upstanding behavior over a long period of time, the problem diminishes in scope in people’s minds.
The use of “perspective” will help you get through a crisis.
CREATE EFFECTIVE POSITIONING:
Remember or hear about the Tylenol crisis of years ago? A case of product tampering, where some Tylenol capsules were laced with poison. People died.
The eventual solution was the creation of tamper-proof product sealants.
What did Tylenol’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, do to cope with this situation? A simple positioning statement helped neutralize opposition to the company: “We are victims too.”
In one fell swoop, this statement helped put the company on the side of the victims. It worked and ultimately was part of a campaign that brought the product back into mainstream acceptance.
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