You're in a crisis communications situation. What are the most important skills you need to succeed?

Empathy is the most important! Understand the emotional impact of the crisis on individuals and show compassion. Active Listening is the key. Listen attentively to what people are saying. Understand their concerns, fears, and needs. Show that you genuinely care by maintaining eye contact, nodding, and asking follow-up questions. Acknowledge people’s feelings without judgment. Validating emotions helps build trust. For example, saying, “I understand this situation is incredibly stressful” shows empathy.

Lot of companies and brands tend to react to the situation instead of analysing it and having a well thought through communications strategy. Get just your key stakeholders / leadership team together and assess and monitor the situation and develop a response strategy with timelines. We as communication experts, need to stay calm and not panic in these crisis situations.

Have a cool head. The minute leaders see the communicators stressed, it infects the whole process. Demeanour and management of emotions is key when reputation is under fire. Stay calm, exude confidence, and reassure leadership through both verbal and non-verbal communication that you are focused.

Preparedness is key. Device effective plans, maintain communication and transparency and train your internal stakeholders for every possible scenario. Skills like adaptability, empathy, coordination, collaboration, and ethical leadership will play a crucial role in the effective management of any messy situation. Most importantly, only strong, established media relations will aid in controlling the narrative which is pivotal to mitigating risks.

After several years of doing this, in many different situations, my No. 1 piece of advice is the following: Ask Legal what they’ll let you say. ??

Tell the truth and tell it “first!” Get ahead of the media cycles. Be as transparent as possible. Ask for grace and people will respond. Don’t embellish. Have clear message points developed by a PR PRO. My experience includes: Pentagon 9-11 family crisis response. American Red Cross rapid response team for public affairs. Crisis communicators learn their craft in the crucible so find one who has been in this arena! Mike

In the midst of a crisis, unforeseen challenges will arise. Your established strategies may or may not prove feasible. Nevertheless, action is imperative. To navigate such turbulent times, realign the organization with its core values. By doing so, you gain the clarity needed to effectively prioritize your course of action.

Important to consider that everyone perceives communication differently. Therefore, all aspects of human understanding/ psychology must be considered. Crisis comms is a lot about assessing possible audience reactions and not only firefighting.

It's important to let the public know that you are working on a solution. Even if you don't have the right answer or plan yet, a simple note of external acknowledgment keeps the lines of communication open until next steps.

Know your audiences - and know where they are going to get their information. That is where you need to have a presence. Run analytics and understand what tools in your toolbox are the most effective.

Crisis communications often involve multiple stakeholders, such as executives, legal teams, external agencies & authorities. Collaborating effectively with these parties is essential to ensure a unified response & coherent messaging.By leveraging the expertise & perspectives of each team member, we can develop a comprehensive strategy that addresses the crisis from all angles. Timing is critical. Without proper coordination, there's a risk of mixed messages, delays, or even contradictory actions that can exacerbate the situation. By prioritizing these two elements, you can enhance your team's ability to respond swiftly, effectively, & with a unified voice, mitigating the impact of the crisis on your organization's reputation and operations.

No matter what the crisis, you are not alone in the process. The ability to collaborate and follow established processes with individual stakeholders and external audiences is critical. Any crisis is typically all consuming, in terms of time and intensity. The ability to understand your role on the team and how best to work with others is critical.

En un equipo siempre can a existir posiciones encontradas, los conflictos si se manejan con empatía y respeto son positivos para el crecimiento de los equipos, yo he acu?ado la teoría de conflictos constructivos para el buen manejo de estos escenarios.

Teamwork is essential in any major crisis response. Hopefully, an organization's crisis team has undergone practice sessions implementing elements in the crisis plan. If not, the crisis communications leader needs to emphasize teamwork and coordination to everyone who is responding – at the site of the crisis and online.

Coordination is the key. Every update is important for the teams, in particular for customer-facing teams such as operational, social media, and community. Make sure all of the updates are comply with regulation and policy by working together with board of management, legal, and technical teams before updating customer-facing teams. To avoid confusion, prepare list of FAQ to help the teams to answer customer questions. This will help customer-facing team to sort issues that need to be escalated.

In my experience, being proactive is extremely important. During a crisis, giving frequent updates assures those affected, as well as other interested parties, you are not trying to hide something. Transparency is seen as honesty. If you say you will provide an update at a certain time, provide the update, even if you only state you have no new information at this time. However, there is always something to say. Share what your organization is doing. Provide details on your plans. Give timelines on your actions. If other organizations or agencies are involved, give details on their roles. Lastly, address those affected directly. What is your organization doing to support them? Remember, impacted parties come first.

The best way to prepare yourself for the need to adapt and improvise in the moment is to outline as many possible scenarios that may come up as you publicly deal with your crises and do it in advance of any public response. This exercise will help make you more comfortable when/if you have to pivot your messaging on the fly, but it will also help add perspective from other points of view as you tailor your messaging in response. That’s not to say that you need to prepare a defense for every negative issue, but being prepared to respond to as many potential reactions as possible can help establish a baseline of credibility with your intended audience that you’re considering all sides of the issue.

No two crises are alike, so adaptation and improvisation are important tools to meet the challenge of the moment. However, to the greatest extent possible, the crisis response should stay consistent and messaging repetitive. A reputation is at stake so the operating principle should be to act consistently with an organization's values under stress. As the gold-standard example of Johnson & Johnson's response to tainted Tylenol showed, principle matters. Putting the patient first in all decisions not only saved the brand, it burnished it.

S’adapter : oui ?? Improviser : non ?? ?? lmproviser signifie faire quelque chose sans préparation, sans anticipation. Or, la communication de crise - pour être réussie - doit avoir été pensée, préparée. Chaque scenario, chaque situation doit être préparée en amont sans quoi on se laisse embarquer. Le premier point de la préparation est de se fixer un ??objectif clair qui orientera ensuite les actions.

Traquejo é uma palavra de ordem nos dias atuais. Rigidez fica bom para pedras, pessoas precisam de flexibilidade, muita flexibilidade. Respire, n?o aja simplesmente por impulso, mas pense estrategicamente.

You need a response team that is flexible and can match up with the characteristics of the specific crisis situation. Who decides and who formulates a plan of action should vary with the given crisis. Rehearsals are ideal. Spring a prototype crisis and act like it's the real thing. Evaluate, consider alternatives, plan for next time.

Escute. Escute. Escute. Uma boa experiência é a avalia??o 360 graus em que você é avaliado por quem está acima de você, por subordinados e pares.

Listen to feedback and adjust accordingly. Frequency, content, voicing, adapting to new information about a situation... all of this is critically important as a crisis unfolds and you work through it.

Que debes cambiar dentro de tu organización para que no vuelva a repetirse, o al menos para estar preparados en caso contrario? Una crisis es una oportunidad de evaluar procesos e introducir mejoras que nos fortalezcan.

Documentation of performance and outcomes is key to ensure continuous improvement. Crisis communication is fact driven and there should be no gaps or second guessing

In my experience, regardless of the complexities or the topic of the crisis, there are three musts: 1. Tell the truth plainly and with compassion; 2. Admit what you know yet know and commit to getting the answers; 3. Commit to coming back with more information as it is available. This is how we build trust and credibility in a tough situation.

The ability to listen and fully understand the situation before you open your mouth. You have to know what you're dealing with before you can anticipate what you might be dealing with as a result of the situation. Only then, do you get together with your team and plan and know that you will likely need to improvise as facts and information evolve.

Be prepared, remain calm, gather information, act decisively, be truthful, speak plainly and never overlook the power of common sense.

Someone once described it to me as ‘the ability to see round corners’. What I took from that is that rapid assimilation is crucial. Really consider the impact of the crisis on any significant stakeholder groups and ensure their needs for information and support are addressed. Often, the crisis can be handled but it’s the backlash from those overlooked which gives the story legs. Try to assess any wider impact at the earliest possible opportunity and put a strategy in place which takes people with you.

The most important aspect of dealing with a crisis is being prepared for one. Anticipating that a crisis is a question of 'when' rather than 'if' you need to have everything on auto should the circumstances demand it. The team that needs to get into huddle, the training to prepare, the location, communication channels etc. should all be pre-thought, planned and rehearsed. The most dangerous reaction to a crisis is confusion often stemming from a lack of preparedness. Once you have that in place you are best placed to evaluate, prepare, and disseminate information corresponding to the nature and extent of the crisis.