The 3 Rs of Crisis Communications

I have a dirty little secret.

I have an addiction to crises.

Blame it on my training as a reporter when I had more fun breaking news on deadline than penning ?feature stories.

While that sense of urgency was not always directed at documenting a crisis, it did instill in me a desire to run toward a fire and not away to safety.

Shifting to a corporate communications role allowed me to finetune my approach. A crisis in the corporate world can involve everything from workplace violence and supply chain shortages to strikes and pandemics.

Rather than furiously gathering details for a story I hoped would scoop the competition, I needed to shift my energy to quickly gathering information and counseling leaders on how to engage employees, the media and the public.

There are countless books and lectures about crisis communications. I offer a simple approach to get people started on their path to a more holistic approach. I call it the 3 Rs of Crisis Communications: React, Reflect and Resolve.

React

The call came in the middle of the night. A colleague calmly explained there had been a fight at the plant and one person was seriously injured.

I was less than an hour away and knew the clock was ticking on our crisis response. My first call was to my communication leaders so they could activate their part of the crisis plan, which included media monitoring. I then hit the road and drove to the plant.

There is a temptation in a crisis to throw caution to the wind and rationalize that speeding will get you there faster. In fact, staying composed is the first step in ensuring your crisis plan is being executed as planned.

Effective crisis plans are not built solely on communications. Organizations like my employer have robust, easily executable plans. There are key people and backups for our emergency response teams, with each person responsible for handling specific tasks (security, logistics, labor/HR, communications) during and after a crisis.

In this case, I was one of the first to arrive at the plant and checked in with our head of security. As other members of the team arrived, we gathered to review the facts, which sadly included the news the injured person had died.

The profound sadness of the news did not affect our ability to coordinate both internal and external communications for employees and the media. We knew our roles and adhered to the plan but not in the robotic manner one might expect.

There was deep grief and emotion in the room as we went through each step of the process. People took time to listen to and console colleagues affected by the incident. By the end of the day, I was physically and emotionally drained, but confident we had done our best to manage the crisis.

How are you and your organization set up to react to a crisis? Do you have a plan? Do you have an emergency response team with clearly defined roles?

Your ability to react is more than having security secure the site and your communications person drafting a media statement. Your crisis response plan should ensure there is a business continuity portion, just as there is a plan to ensure employees receive support and counseling.

Reflect

Having a crisis plan is only good if the people responsible for executing it are willing to reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

Reflection is a perfect opportunity to find weaknesses and shortcomings in the plan. This includes feedback from people outside your emergency response team.

While positive feedback is great and reassuring that you did the right thing, I prefer to focus on the negative feedback to strengthen the plan.

Years ago, a member of my team called to say there was an accident at her facility. She was fairly new in the role but someone who was very adept at dealing with difficult situations. I was working at another location and decided it was best to stay where I was to monitor the situation remotely instead of driving an hour to the plant.

My team member did a great job working with the plant emergency response team to address the incident, but one of my leaders was not pleased I chose to stay put. Rather than argue my point, I reflected on the feedback and realized that while I trusted my team member to do her job, I had a responsibility as a leader to be there to support her.

That’s why reflection is so critical. In the heat of the moment, we make decisions that make sense and probably achieve the desired results. Reflection allows us to determine if there are even better ways to react.

Resolve

Don’t confuse resolve with the annual flurry of unattainable resolutions people like to make this time of year.

By resolve, I am referencing your intent to make your crisis plan more effective. When the period of reflection is over, your team should have clear recommendations to improve the crisis plan.? Set deadlines and schedule a tabletop exercise to pressure test your plan.

Don’t shrug off changes with an attitude that you cannot plan for every conceivable crisis. Indeed, no plan is perfectly set up to deal with an earthquake in Japan that shuts down a critical semiconductor plant or address a massive power outage on the hottest day of the year.

Instead, your team’s willingness to adapt the plan based on previous crises will put you in a better position to handle even the most unexpected events.

This point hit home a few years ago when we were conducting an active shooter exercise with the local sheriff’s department. As we walked through the crisis plan, the deputies suddenly jumped up and ran out of the plant.

We were momentarily stunned until a colleague who had been sitting closest to the deputies said there was a school shooting.

Instead of brushing off the incident because it was several miles away, our team adapted our plan to focus on helping employees who were frantic to find out if their children were safe. It turned out a large number of our employees not only had children in that district but also knew the victims.

It was yet another emotionally draining day, but one I will never forget because it demonstrated that having sound and adaptable crisis plans leaves you room to be caring and compassionate.

Conclusion

The 3 Rs are intended to get you thinking about how you handle a crisis. They work in concert to make your plan more than a series of defined steps or tasks. They make the plan a tool that can be wielded in any situation.