Nowadays, the term Crisis became many different connotations in the academic and business sphere. But the fact is that managers are facing hard times in real life business cases during still lasting global crisis. An important aspect of crisis-handling is the internal (employees) and external (media) crisis communication and presentation of managers in public. The above mentioned requires special communication strategies and skills which can be developed as a precaution for potential crisis situations.
In the Cotrugli Business School Alumni, MBA's of Slovenia, a focus-group discussed the burning issue at the Cotrugli Business BreakFast on Tuesday, March 16th 2010. The basis for the discussion was an interview-research carried out on 20 Slovenian middle- and top managers, carried out by Daniela Bervar, Country manager for Slovenia. The research focused on crisis communication and threats during a crisis situation a company can be facing. Although the research sample can not be representative to the whole management (N=20), it can provide interesting facts about the fears of management during crisis communication processes. The focus of the research was to determine what do managers fear more in the crisis communication – external negative media attack or internal revolt of the employees. The results showed, that the potential negative publicity attack of the media was less feared by the managers - in 19 out of 20 cases was stated, that the internal employee revolt and loss of internal trust would pose a much greater threat. The general idea was, that ˝the media can be handled the one way or another, but the hardest thing is if your own employees turn against you.˝
The Slovenian Cotrugli MBA and Executive MBA Focus group, together with the guest-media expert and CEO Leo Oblak (Infonet Media), discussed further on the reasons why and how managers deal with crisis communication, and here are some ˝golden rules˝ as findings of the discussion group:
1. PR department or professionals. When should CEO's in crisis situations use a PR manager and when should they speak in media themselves? The idea was that it depends on the situation. Placing a PR instead of speaking for himself/herself can attach a sense of guilt and media avoidance to a manager, but there are cases when it is better that managers leave the communication to a PR (in order not to make ˝overexposure˝ of a situation which is not so relevant).
2. Have a healthy balance between internal relations and external public presentations. Do not try to give different picture to the media about your company if the employees know that is not the reality going on.
3. Be yourself as a CEO. Internally and externally, with no different ˝face˝ when you speak to employees and to the media. Be genuine in your deeds as well in presentation of yourself.
4. ˝Devils' lawyer˝ concept – Have a professional engaged, who will critically judge your decisions and actions as well as your public presentation as a CEO. Let the Devils' lawyer put you in different situations as your opponents would do. Prepare accordingly.
5. Interact with employees as well as with the media. But for real. Close, but professional interaction with the employees and media can facilitate the communication in crisis. If you are known to be a good listener and a humane persona, you will be less judged in times of crisis. It is not so easy to blame someone you know, but if the people do not know you, they will also be less keen to trust you.
6. If you would like to be correctly understood by the media, form your statements in a short and effective way as slogans. Make your statements concise and clear – the message should be understandable to everybody. Metaphors are also very effective for illustrations of the problem.
Special thanx to the MBA / EMBA participants and Alumni from Slovenia for the interactive discussion and to Leo Oblak (Infonet Media) for the professional input and practical business cases.
