What you can learn from governors' crisis communications

Leaders emerge in a crisis, and during the coronavirus pandemic, the leaders emerging are governors.  Governors are getting high marks from the public for their handling of this crisis, seizing moments to provide leadership and calm, a comforting voice of compassion amid the worst circumstances, all while exemplifying problem-solving action.

At Bighorn Communications, we have been impressed by many governors since the onset of the pandemic and wanted to help all communicators learn from these key moments of executive leadership. Separate from actual policy directives – well tracked by the National Governors Association – we focused on how those policies were presented, analyzing governor’s major announcements (as seen before March 27, 2020). 

In our report released today “Crisis Communications and Covid-19: Lessons Learned from America’s Governors,” we offer clear guidance to help other executives, in the public or private sector, to improve their own crisis communications, including how they present major policies, and what media or software platforms they use to communicate the same.

Read the full report here on LinkedIn or here on Issuu. Below are some key points.

Standing is the standard for a reason

Standing conveys action, energy and control, and married with a state seal podium is often the standard staging one may expect from their state leaders during a crisis. While generally seating is not our first choice for crisis communications, seated speakers do also project calm, resolve and stability.

Printed posters. Professional or problematic? 

Several governors, like Colorado’s Jared Polis (above) effectively kept their printed poster to a simple hashtag. In other cases, the posters distracted viewers with smaller print, too much information, or in the case of Nevada, design that was simply illegible. 

Too many mics

Nothing takes away from your brand more than having someone else’s brand literally on top of yours. That’s what you allow to happen when you have every local station’s mic flag clamped on to your podium. 

Lastly, there’s a right way and a wrong way to include interpreters: 

For more lessons from recent gubernatorial crisis communications, check out the full report. 

Look for: 

• How governors best leveraged their public broadcast systems,
• Which videoconference platforms earn the highest satisfaction ratings, and
• Which governors kept hand sanitizer in reach.

If you have something to share about how your organization is navigating this or another crisis, we would love to hear from you. If you need help building up your own crisis response plans, contact me at neil(at)bighorncommunicatins.com.