Mastering Strategic Communications To Navigate High-Stakes Environments With Chris King

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everyone, I'm Adam Markel, and welcome back to another episode of Welcome back to the Change Proof Podcast. I have an amazing guest in store for you today, a very senior leader at an organization that we don't get to hear from that frequently. So I'm gonna go ahead, read his bio, and then just jump right in. His name is Chris King, and Chris is the director of corporate services at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, INPO as it is called, and communications program director for the World Association of Nuclear Operators in their Atlanta center. With over 29 years of experience in the commercial nuclear industry, Chris is truly an expert that we will learn a lot from. So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Chris King. All right, Chris, so it is fun for me, and I mean this, it's fun to read someone else's bio and share their, their accomplishments in the world. And yours is, you know, most people haven't, haven't traversed the same ground. That's obvious. But a lot of people haven't been to the places that you've been and dealt with the kind of things, serious, serious things that you, that you deal with daily. So outside of the bio, my question to you is what's one thing that's not baked into your CV? One thing that you would love for people to know about you that's not, not what people customarily or typically learn about you.

You know, I don't know that you would get it out of my bio. Perhaps if you dug deep enough, you might be able to. But, you know, one of the things, you know, I started in this industry in 1996. So I've been here a minute, but thinking back then to where we are now, when it comes to our organizations understanding and appreciating the way to use strategic communications to help their business run better, help improve morale, and help align our workforce to all be rowing in the same direction. You know, back in the day when I was, I was part of the communications team here, we were order takers. It was like, hey, I need a thing. Here's the thing I need. We would take that order. We would do very good things and the ka-chunk machine, we'd push it back out the other end, and we gave them exactly what they asked for. We were proud of it. Now we've conditioned the leaders in our industry to understand that while they're very effective, very successful at operating nuclear power stations, they may not be as good in helping to engage the workforce. And so instead of them coming to us as professionals and say, Here's what I need. They, they come and say, here's my problem. How can I, how can you help me solve that problem based on what you know around engaging a workforce through strategic communications? And that's been done through a, with a peer group in my industry that are second to none. I'm, there's a group of professionals out there that I'm proud to call friends and just comrades in the industry right now. So that's one. Area that you probably wouldn't get out of my, my bio.

Yeah. I, you know, I think it's a great, it's a perfect lead-in. It usually is. This question leads right into the, the next, the next thing in the sequence. And that is how important in, in your industry is the engagement of the workforce? Because so many things that we're hearing today are, are really driven by, focused on technology, especially artificial intelligence. And, and that is on some level, I think people are, are afraid of it because it is, it feels like it's, it's, it's a, it's like human minus, right? I think it augments it. It, it's an augmentation to how humans can show up. At least that's how I'm framing it in my world. But we might dive down that AI, down that, that rabbit hole, or maybe it's not a rabbit hole either, but I, I'm curious how important the communication piece is to the workforce in your industry.

So highly technical. Yeah. So it, it always comes down to relationships and knowing, knowing people, right? So what we have found, and it was, it was an aspect of helping us achieve what I just described, which was When we got involved with leadership teams that may be in a performance challenge space, when we could come and sit down with them, we being, it wasn't just me. So the way it would work is we would go, I would bring two of my peers with me to a station that may be challenged, and we would sit down with their professional communications team, but also their station leadership team and talk to them about, find out what they're doing. We'd interview them, but we would, what we've been able to do is help them see how just employing some things around being seen out amongst your workforce, just, you know, the whole manage by walking around, while is somewhat of a cliché, it works. If you think about this giant industrial setting that is a nuclear power plant and having your senior-most leaders walking through this, this place and engaging with their employees, it breaks down some of that, that siloing or that uncertainty that you may have, especially as a new leader, that may be created just because those people don't know you. And if you're trying to drive for a vision or you're trying to drive for to accomplish a thing and you don't have buy-in by those folks who are walking the floors, you're doomed. And so, what we've been able to do over a number of years is help prove the reality that being a strong leader, you have to be able to connect with your employees. You can't manage from your ivory tower, but you have to be around walking and meeting and understanding what your employees are doing. And what they're going through every day.

And before we even turned, you know, hit the record button and started this thing, we were talking about change. And I think that again, this is a perfect lead into the conversation around change, which is not just in the, in the nuclear space, obviously it's in, in every industry, it's in every business, it's in every aspect of human, of human existence. This, this sort of, this ever-present change. But I would say even today, what feels like a, a profound uptick in the velocity, the pace of change. So like you said, when it comes to getting people to buy into change or to doing things differently, do you have a personal philosophy that you share in those settings that you're describing where, where you're trying to help that leader that either kind of seasoned leader or that that newly kind of newly minted green kind of leader get other people engaged around change?

Yeah. So if, if you think about someone who's trying to kind of change the way that we do business and, and, and so being able to help those leaders understand that it can't always be directive, even as a new leader, but if, if you bring people along with you, and you get some early adopters who can be your deputized advocates back out in the field when you're not around. But if you get a group of individuals who feel like they are a contributor to the success or a contributor to the direction that your organization is taking, again, you get those advocates that are built into the workforce that you don't have to be there to sell the idea, you've, you've now deputized some folks to be out there on your behalf and, and, and speak the truth that you want them to speak, to begin to convince others who may not be early adopters to begin to bring them along to buy into the change as well.

What would you say is the greatest headwind to that? Because in the, in the, in the ideal situation, the leader is, is out there visible, connecting, modeling, even perhaps whatever the change might be being an advocate and then enrolling other advocates, just the contagion, right? It becomes contagious.

Yeah.

Your, your positivity around something, other people pick it up and then they pass it on. And that, that's a good scenario. That's, that, you know, that becomes a great flywheel.

Sure.

And yet we know, you know, and I know in our work too, that when you, when, when those leaders come to you and they tell you what the challenges they're facing are, at least what I hear and what our team hears. More often than not today is that people are not only exhausted from all the change, but they're just, it's like they're white knuckling the whole, like they're holding your breath is my favorite. It's the, the, the most telling thing I've heard somebody say. It was a leader, a senior leader saying, my team is just holding their breath. They've been holding their breath since they can't remember when, like post-pandemic. But I mean, it's like, you know, they just keep holding their breath thinking that some, at some point they're gonna get to exhale. Mm-hmm. And that's how they're experiencing this perpetual change. So what are you hearing? And, and since it's not that best case scenario more typically than what would be the greatest headwinds that you've, you, that you're sort of experiencing in there?

You know, I, I don't know if this is directly answering your question, but you know, as think about those leaders who have been exceptionally effective at changing a culture or shifting an organization, not only are they present, but they're genuine and transparent. So, even when things don't follow the plan, and inevitably something's not gonna go as planned, right? You can be genuine and upfront with your organization and, and own it, right? That didn't go as planned. I'm your leader. I missed a step somewhere or I misguided someone, but But where, where I've seen that be most effective when they do reach those tripwires or they do meet that kind of headwind is they're genuine, they're fallible, they're human beings that we all make mistakes or we all misjudge or we all misplan, but to face it and own it and just say, we're going to move past it, I believe is an attribute that I've seen. Those most effective leaders do very effectively. And again, it, it's another step in creating that relationship, being genuine with your organization, like I said, but also getting, you know, demonstrating that, you know, you're gonna make a mistake, I'm gonna make a mistake, let's learn from it, let's move on, and I need your help in moving on. Yeah.

I, I'm gonna answer the question too that I posed to you. In thinking about what, you know, how I, I, you know, what, what my answer would be. The first thing that came to mind was this sort of the idea that there's not a lot of safety. So as a headwind, I find in organizations there's a lack of safety for mistake making. I mean, in your industry, there's probably almost no margin on some level at, at the macro level, like the worst case scenario being some sort of a, a, a catastrophe, an accident, et cetera, that that impacts people's health and safety. So there's little or no room there. And yet in every industry, yours included, but I want to get your, your thoughts on this. Mistakes have to be made. You have to continually learn and you can't learn except through mistake making. So, right. I'm a fan of, you know, mistakes being the result of, of something that doesn't go according to plan, but, but everybody was fully committed. And fully present in the process. So then mistakes happen. Where I have a lack of tolerance and, and I'm tested in my own patient level of patience for, for myself and for other people is in these unforced errors. When I see unforced errors that are the result of just, you know, not being present. Yeah. Being multitasking, thinking about too many things at the same time and, and, and being also just depleted mentally, emotionally, physically depleted. So does that resonate with you? Any, anything you wanna add to that?

Well, there's another component of that is being overconfident, right? So I've done this task 30 times in the past 2 years. I don't need the procedure. I just know I gotta go do this, this, this, and this. Inevitably, that's the time where a mistake is made when you become overconfident. You don't follow the written rules, you don't follow the written procedure. And so we, you know, that's a message that we regularly try to impart on our workforces is there's always— humility. Have humility. And also don't think you got it. Just because you got it once doesn't mean you're gonna get it again. Right? And so being overconfident, but also Stop when you're unsure. And so it's okay if you're in the middle of doing critical work, but you're uncertain if that procedure is accurate and it's gonna get you to the endpoint. It is okay, and it's expected as an individual to stop if you're unsure, put the component in, in a safe place, and then go ask somebody if you're right or wrong.

Yeah. The words, the three I think on, on the scale of the, of the words or, or phrases that, that, that create the most fear in, in a professional of a, you know, in business, but in so many areas of life. But just let's stick in this, this arena. The words, I don't know, are terrifying to people. Like, what does that mean? What was, what does it, what will it mean to my boss or to other people or, you know, to my, to the respect that I, I think I've earned or deserve, right? It's like, I don't know, is, is just like dangerous. Those are dangerous words, right? That what you can't, when you can't say them, they're dangerous, right?

Okay. When you can't say them, absolutely. But it's expected culturally in my business to be able to say, and you're encouraged to say, I don't know, help me understand. I need guidance. Because we are in such a critically low margin industry, we have to encourage our employees to be comfortable in stopping when they're unsure. And even if they shouldn't have stopped because they were monitoring or running the right path, it's okay to stop. It's okay to shut things down just in the spirit of being a conservative decision. Yeah.

And that, and that might be in hindsight technically called a mistake, like as we were saying earlier, right? To shut something down and then you come back and go, oh, in hindsight it didn't need to, and maybe it cost us something to do that, right? But that, that humility that, that leads to this, you know, in the book Change Proof, which, which when I spoke for your organization and, and to, which was great by the way. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. We were talking about these principles in Change Proof, like the, the, the PAC, the pause, ask, choose, this idea that you pause, and I'll add your language to it, to have humility, to be able to ask, and those 3 questions you just gave us, I, people, people listening to this gotta write these down if you haven't already done it, which I know people have already, but it's like, I don't know, help me understand. I need guidance. Were those the three? Did I capture those?

I believe so. Yeah.

Right. Because those are questions that, of a person that has humility to start with. So there's no overconfidence when you ask that. And what flows out of that from the standpoint of the collaboration with others, the trust that you have in other people, and at the times when they need your advice, your guidance, then they're trusting in you. Like that's what we refer to as having a, it's a sort of a got your back culture, got your back environment, right?

Yeah.

As opposed to, no, I, I'll be, somebody will think I, I should know that, you know, the judgment associated with the, all that whole thing. It's just ego, right?

That it is.

And that gets more mistakes have been made. More unforced errors have been made in the, in the name of ego probably than anything else.

I agree. And, you know, even holistically within the industry, we have a phrase that's, we're only as strong as our weakest link from an industry perspective. So what happens at one station or in one country affects us all, right? Because then it raises the question about whatever happened there, could it happen here? And so we have this community that feels strongly about, that you're not gonna see in any other industry. We have a community that feels strongly about our best interest is served in your success. And so we want you to be successful because that makes our industry successful.

Yes. And, and PR, I hate to use that term, but the world's confidence and, and, and comfort level around what you all do is vitally important. So it is, it is sort of like the weakest link can destroy the whole thing because an accident that happens in Japan impacts the confidence and the, and the public relations and, you know, the, the world's confidence in the industry as a whole. Not, not just related to what might might happen in one country or one location, right?

Correct.

That's rare. There aren't that many industries where, you know, if you screw up the shoes, you know, that were manufactured in Bangladesh and, you know, Nike has to, you know, take them back or whatever, like, it doesn't mean that people stop buying shoes, right?

Does not. It does not.

Thin margin, as you said.

Very thin margin.

I don't know that I brought this up at, at, during our talk. If I did, then, then, well, please let me know, but I also wanna bring it up with you now, which is when it comes to margin, I think what we love to do is we play with words. I mean, we play with concepts as a part of the, the fun of the work that we actually get to do because people need to think not just outside the box. I mean, the, the instructions somebody once said is on the, are on the outside of the box. It's not like, right. You know, like that, that's the paradox of it or whatever. But so margin, when you think about margin, I know you are thinking about margin for error. A lot of people, when they think about margin, they're thinking about profit margin in, in a business context. When we think about margin, we're thinking about the space between our load and our limits. Mm-hmm. And I'm not sure I had that conversation or had the time to do that with your folks, but, but this idea of the space between our load and our limits, I think is really meaningful because I think a lot of people don't have, to your point, they're playing with a, with no margin or very little. And when you don't have any space between your load and your limits, the chances of making mistakes that are, again, those ones that don't have to happen.

Right.

Um, the chances that, that you don't show up the way that you're able to show up to perform like the best you can, whether it's on the, on the field of play, the literal field of play in sports, or it's in the field of play in your job and in your role as a, as a parent or as a leader of a, of some team in an organization, you don't have a lot of margin, man. There's not, there's not, you're, you're just on a razor's edge all the time, you know?

Yeah.

But stressful.

100, 100% agree. But in my mind, and we talk about it within these walls, is a good leader is gonna understand when their team members are reaching their capacity and they partner with them to help them overcome it. And they'll help them shed things and we'll, you know, we work with them to bring it, give them a little bit more margin, right? And so we always talk about a good leader knows their people and can read the individual. They know them individually, not as a group, and can relate to them in a way to help them find a way to create more bandwidth in their work so that they do have a little bit of breathing time. So they do have a little bit of downtime in their brain to hopefully eliminate some of those error-likely situations so that they aren't bouncing from task to task to task and rushing through things and creating the potential for an error to be made.

Yeah. It may well be that your folks, because there is this more sensitivity around it, are probably better at it than I experience elsewhere. Because it may be— do you have an opinion as to how good managers are at what you're describing? Because what you just said, if that was the standard, you know, that was the gold standard across industry, you know, in organizations, then people would be doing so much better than they're actually doing.

Well, I mean, if we were knocking it out of the park, we wouldn't have to talk about it anymore, right? So, I mean, I think generally speaking, we do a pretty good job of that here. But, you know, it takes great senior leadership to be able to make it so it's an expectation of managers lower in the organization. I would like to think that we do a pretty good job of it here, but again, you know, We ebb and flow. We get, we get those margins that are tight too, and we have to manage those as well.

Is there a sort of a genetic marker, if you will, in, in a leader when you're looking at a leader and, and wondering, you know, is this person able to discern what we just talked about and even diagnose or evaluate when, when somebody's got such thin margin? That it's only a matter of time before they either screw up their health or they screw up their most important relationships, or they screw up at work, right?

Yeah.

Whatever that might be. And you get ahead of that because you are that leader that can get, can evaluate that early enough on that, that you can intervene or, or be helpful. What are some of the genetic markers of someone who has that capacity? Because people are gonna wanna know that right this second, Chris.

Well, that's a big question. You know, I know, I know that when I meet one-on-one with my managers, being able to ask direct and specific questions about individuals within their teams and them bringing back a full, thoughtful, kind of meaningful response that illustrates that they know what their individuals are going through. I mean, I don't know if that's a genetic marker, but it's a, it's a tactic for me to be able to understand that they're exercising that responsibility, at least. Gosh, man, I think you could write a book on that if you knew the answer to that one.

Well, it's funny. This is a terrible plug for the new book Reculture that's coming out. So forgive me. I swear to God, I didn't plan that.

No. All right.

I'm going to skip past that now.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny as, as you were answering that and I knew you were up for this, the, for the question, I think, yeah, maybe it's something that is quote in the, you know, in the person already, whether it's sort of an empathy or a compassion for other people. Maybe there's that, but I think it's also something that's fodder. And this is why I'm glad we're talking about it for what the work you do and the work we do is that is fodder for training. You know, maybe we're, you know, like this is something you can train. So that other pe— and you can, and you can be, be checking in and, and, and having sort of advocate advocacy structure around it.

Yeah.

I sometimes use that term like you just did a minute ago instead of accountability, but, but just the idea that we can check in on this so that we're making sure that we're, we don't leave people behind.

Yeah.

Like in a military context, right? We don't leave any, any person in the field. You don't leave a person in the field. And I think in the business world, it's been acceptable for too long that we leave people behind.

Yeah.

That's, that's a personal statement. I get it.

So I'm not, yeah. And I've been parts of other organizations where, you know, you know, it's my way or the highway and they, you know, they leave, they leave bodies behind them as they plow through getting something done and nobody's gonna stay there long, you know, you know, you're not gonna create a strong engaged organization if that's how you operate. So yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a tough place to be. And, and sounds like you've been there. I know I have.

Yeah.

And, and, uh, personally, and I, and I, and I witnessed it. I see I have kids that are in the workforce now and, and I could see just even in the organization, some big ones, which I won't, I won't name, of course. But the, the way that the organizations burn through their, their talent.

Yeah.

You know, and thinking it's so funny, it's always feast or famine. I don't know what it is about it, about us as a, as a species perhaps. Because of course there was the time not so long ago, the great resignation, right? There was that trend.

Yeah. Right.

You know, and now it's the opposite.

They're calling it like job hugging because, you know, people, I've not heard that term.

They're making different terms all the time.

Right.

Job bugging.

So that's good.

You know, the cycle just keeps going back and forth between these two extremes, a pendulum, you know, it's just a back and forth.

Yeah. And, and I'll be having conversations with friends of mine on the golf course or something, and they'll tell me stories about things that occur in their organizations. And I will be shocked and say, you'll get escorted off the property if you were found doing that at my company. It's just, that's a deal breaker. You would just be gone. So it's shocking what. What occurs in some organizations now.

Indeed.

Yeah.

I wanna ask you one final question, then we'll wrap things up. I, I know I, we, we talked about resilience quite a bit the day that we were together and how that contributes to a culture. You guys have got a culture that is so committed to continuous learning and the continuous improvement. Could you speak a little bit more about, about why that has become part of the DNA? At ImPo and, and what it is that, that continue, like, that's fine to be on a, on a, you know, mission, vision, value statements on plaques. People have these things. There's nothing profound in that, but again, spending time with organizations as I do, so few of them actually live out that. And I got the distinct sense that this is so important to you guys. So, oh, how is that? Why is that?

It's in our DNA and And A, it's a core value of our organization, is a value of continuous learning. But organizationally, it's that way. And even our industry, it's that way. And that's, that's one of the pillars of what IMPO is about, is around you never, you're never done. And we're always about pursuing excellence. And if you're ever in the IMPO building, we have a big, I'll call it a carving, if you will. It's a big marble table with the word excellence chiseled into it. But the last E in the word is unfinished because you're never, you never achieve excellence. And so you're always pursuing the next thing. And so that's a mantra that we talk about with our employees, but we also pursue it within our industry. So in our industry engagements, We're always talking about, so what's the next step? Where are we gonna go to next? How do we achieve the next level of performance? And it's just been, it's a cornerstone of what we do, again, for our organization and for our industry. It's, it's just a constant pursuit of excellence.

Yeah. That was part of what I observed. In fact, I'd said this to you in a prior meeting we had, just that I felt like the environment that I was a part of, I got to be invited to be a part of, was impec— there was an impeccability to it. Yes. That felt like that to me. Like every detail was being looked after. You know, everybody's very much on point, not on edge, just on point.

And it's a proud, it's a proud organization with deep commitment by its workforce.

Yeah. Credit to you all. And, and Chris, thank you so much for making the time to, have a conversation today. And yeah, thank you for the opportunity.

Well, thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I've, I've really enjoyed meeting you over the last couple of months and hopefully our paths will cross again soon.

I'm looking forward to that as well.

Cheers, my friend.

Ciao for now.

Bye-bye.

Oh my goodness. I just love that conversation. You know, Chris, Chris has got a big, big time job in a, in the nuclear industry is, uh, again, low thin margin, no margin for error and stuff, and keeping people, focusing on people and human, human plus, not human minus. How do we, how do we plus people? And I think everything that Chris just shared with us was about plussing people, including this, the idea that we, we have to have that humility sort of again in our, in our model, the Change Proof model of pause, ask, choose the, the pauses that that moment for humility, that you, you're questioning whether or not you should go forward with something or do something, react to something even. And then you ask, ask those questions. Any questions are powerful in that moment, but, but that, you know, what don't I know? What don't I see? Where do I need guidance? Who can guide me? Um, how do I understand?

Better?

Those, those questions are, are powerful tools in creating greater performance, but also creating greater collaboration, greater connection to other people because we don't have to, we don't have to find those answers by ourselves. They sometimes come to us. I know when, and when I'm sitting in stillness, I'm sitting in prayer, I get lots of downloads and, and answers, so to speak., or not, you know, like I get, get genuine answers. Um, but we cannot operate the way we do as, as a human, as a human being, as a species, not as an algorithm, not as, as something artificial, but something totally natural. We need to connect with other people. We can't operate in a vacuum. We can't operate in, in isolation, in an isolation tank. Or as we like to say in the business world, in a silo. Too many people do. Too many of us try to win in that way, and that is not a recipe for success. So I loved everything that Chris was sharing with us. And I know if this was meaningful to you as well, please share this episode with some friend, family member, colleague. Sharing it is, you know, sharing is caring, as the old saying goes, but it it really is helpful to us too, because it helps the algorithm to put this content in front of more people that would benefit from, from interacting with it. So, uh, any comments you have, you can leave them at adammarkel.com/podcast. If you'd like to also engage with us further, you can go to workwelllabs.com. That's another resource to find out more about the work that WorkWell does in the world within organizations dealing with tremendous change and sometimes resistance to that change and sometimes other things that are, that are not so helpful to the business succeeding. All those things are fodder for conversation and for solution making and blameless problem solving. That's what we love to focus on. So love to hear from you and engage further. We thank you for being a part of the community. Thank you so much for tuning in and for sharing your time and your energy with us as well. Ciao for now.

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