[Bonus] How CEOs Can Lead the Way Through a Crisis with Julia Angelen Joy

Hey there. I'm Molly McPherson and you are listening to a special bonus edition of the podcast. These are the interviews that I'm including in my special COVID 19 communication response kit. You can find the kit online on my website mollymcpherson.com ResponseKit in this interview I am speaking with Julia Joy. She wrote an article How CEOs Can Lead the way through Coronavirus concerns at work. Her co author was Jocelyn Brandeis and they wanted to focus on how all companies, large and small need to be prepared at any given time should a crisis happen. But their article goes in depth for how leaders can respond to the COVID 19 coronavirus crisis. So Julia shared ways with how CEOs can lead the way. Take a listen.

Julia Joy, welcome to this video, our second in the series for this communication resource kit, everything COVID 19 and I'm so appreciative that you could join me to speak about leadership in the time.

Of COVID Yes, thank you, Molly. I'm so happy to be here and I always love our conversations. Super excited to talk about this important topic with you.

Yeah. And I guess we'll start off by saying, well one, you are Julia Joy, but from here on out I will referring to as Jules, your nickname because I feel I know you so well and really our relationship was born and nurtured in social media land on Twitter.

It was, it was. And people. I still hear it after all these years. People say that social media is fake. It's not real life. I have relationships with professionals and peers that I cherish. They are as close to me remotely as my real life relationships. And I just, you know, there's no substitute for in real life. But it's false to say that something really real can't develop via social media.

And.

And so we're great examples because we're great friends now.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And why I like engaging with you on Twitter is I feel you have the same communication PR value system that I do, which is rooted in traditional public relations. You and I, pretty much the same age, come from the same experience, but also have embraced this idea of using digital technology, social media for branding, PR marketing and reputation management. So that's where I think we align.

Yes, I think I have this balance and I tell people I learned PR old school and I am forever grateful for that traditional background and experience. But I've been an early adopter of every tool and technology. Even if I don't love it and don't use it, I certainly understand it and understand what it means for my Clients. And I again am surprised with some of the conversations I have with people who still, still aren't totally up to speed. And it is that I don't believe in an all digital communications experience. I pull in traditional tactics all the time. And so I kind of feel like I live in the best of both worlds.

Yeah, you certainly do. And here I should make a point of saying that you are in. You are one of the resources in this COVID 19 communication kit. You're one of the charter members that came into Slack and, and you're very, very good at Slack. And I know a lot of the people coming in. We're building this community. It's a free resource. We encourage people in that Slack community. You are certainly in there. But I'll admit I've been on. I've had Slack for a number of years but never used it. This is the first time I'm even jumping in. I can admit that I'm learning my way around. But you're pretty seasoned on it. You're pretty savvy.

Yeah, I like it. How are you finding it?

I tell you, like when it came down to how to create a community.

Right.

I don't know. For your clients, this comes up a lot. In mine, you have to look at what is the product, who's the company, what's the organization and what are you trying to achieve and most important, who are you trying to reach? A lot of people default to Facebook groups, but I think nowadays when you're trying to hit a segment of just opinion makers, thinkers, people that love and breed collaboration. I thought Slack was perfect because it's just about the conversation. It's not about the personal as much though. It can bleed in, but it's the rat, a tat tat of the conversation. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah. I think that it's a reasonable comparison. If you were going to use Facebook, I would say it's like Facebook group light.

Yes.

So it takes away some of what I consider noise, the things that I don't love about Facebook. Some people love it. So it really drills down. So it's kind of somebody who's a little bit more looking for a little bit more efficiency and to the point. And also that back and forth daily minute by minute communication which I feel like is still awkward in groups. I think that groups work really well for an external community, but not for. We have a meeting in five minutes. Did we talk about X? So I really see it as really beneficial to producing work product and engaging work teams. And so maybe more Internal focus. And even though we don't all work for the same company, it's still very work focused. Yes, I love it and I think it's easy to use and very streamlined, which I like.

Yeah, I could not agree with you more. And the reason why I wanted to speak with you today right now about what is happening with COVID 19 is you were ahead of the curve when it came to getting out of blog posts right away. I mean as I was, as I was creating this kit, this link came across Twitter of an article that you co authored with Jocelyn Brandeis, who's also in the group as well is in our Slack Channel How CEOs can lead the way through coronavirus concerns at work. An area of focus in my work is I tend to bridge communicators with leaders. I like to tell leaders and show them the strength in their comms team, why they need a strong comms team and why the comms team needs resources, whether it's budget, whether it's things, whether it's equipment, why that needs to be a connection there. And I love this article about how you kind of called what COVID 19 was going to be. So if you had to summarize this article, what would you say? How would you summarize?

I would say the article does represent my general philosophy that you have to create a culture of communications from the top. It starts with the CEO. I personally won't engage with clients if I'm not working with and reporting directly to the CEO. It's been a very long time since I've had a job where I didn't report to a CEO. I feel so strongly that that's a key ingredient to communication success, that if an organization is trying to silo communications it is not going to be as successful. And I really want to be part of successful teams, forward looking teams. And so these conversations are happening all the time on the sidelines via message. Jocelyn is another Twitter friend. So we're super close friends now because of this great social media technology. And she and I very early on we're saying, you know, we're hearing some rumblings. So what is this? This is like mid February. We're hearing the rumblings and we're saying two things. One, this is going to drastically affect brands, this is going to drastically affect how companies communicate with their customers. And two, it's going to be a double whammy because at the same time you're going to have internal communications focus on employees. And most organizations can barely handle one or the other and can barely handle one or the other during a crisis. Now, under duress, you're going to have to pivot your marketing and hold up your entire staff and employee communications. This is not gonna go well. And so we were looking at examples, organizations that were leading. And it seemed like every positive tweet or LinkedIn article or news story about an organization successfully coming to terms with this at the beginning of the crisis, those were all about CEOs who were getting ahead of it, and they were winning in both of those categories. And so the organizations that weren't winning were either dropping the ball on the employee engagement or dropping the ball on the brand and the external engagement. So we saw that there was a sweet spot and who was going to do it. Government can't step in and manage your employees. The government can't step in and manage your brand. So it's going to be CEOs who are going to lead us, the masses, through this crisis. And we started to see it and started to happen, and we were getting positive confirmation that our theory was turning out to be true.

Now, you mentioned the sweet spot for CEOs that can do both at once, communicate to both channels or appreciate both channels. Jules, do you have any example right now of anyone out in a brand, a well known brand, or that you've seen in the past week of some CEO that's nailed it in the last week?

Yeah, I'm going to. We're on a Zoom call right now. And the CEO of Zoom very immediately managed his brand, understood where his product fits in this crisis, started talking about his team, and he came out and said, under no circumstances will my sales team use this crisis to boost sales. So he immediately said, I acknowledge we are in a crisis. This is about Community started offering Zoom for free. Individuals can use it for free, but at the enterprise level or the academic level, you would pay for a package and upgrades. So he immediately put people before profits. He did it externally and then of course, internally by supporting his sales team and a sales team that likely works on commissions and bonuses. That's where their money is. Before they ever had questions or concerns about what does this mean for our paycheck, he said, oh no, we're going to handle this. And then I follow him on social media, and he has since made many contributions to the community and has been very active in communicating what his company is doing and how he's doing it. So that was an early, excellent example.

Oh, that's a great example. And I like how you pointed out people before profit. That's Probably a good mantra for any organization and leader.

I've tweeted it like a thousand times. It's people before profits. And if you're doing a decision making matrix and you get stuck, it's either A or B. Is it people or profits? Are you putting people before profits? That helps with the decision making. And it is very clear organizations that are not doing that and that is not working out well for them.

Yeah, I agree with you. Now, speaking of certain types of people, let's talk about a category, communicators. Sometimes they're highly valued. Many times they're not. They're just, they're expected to do the job. Yet in times of crisis and even not in times of crisis, especially now with, with so many, with so many mediums out there that they're juggling at once, I always place it as a highly valued category in any business. Yet sometimes you might find them under HR or under categories. They're deeply embedded in the system and in the hierarchy. I don't feel like they're as high as they should be. What do you think about the relationship between leadership and communications? How should they view that group?

Well, I've always, for many, many years have said PR needs a seat at the table. And so I went back to school and got an MBA so people would be more open to the idea of me having a seat at the table. And it has served me well. I'm an executive for an organization because I believe so strongly that to really thrive and there are lots of businesses that are going to survive, but to really thrive, you have to have communications as part of your leadership team. I already believed that. I knew that. I have worked for public agencies, so I've done federal, we reported up to the epa, so federal level disaster crisis communications. I've had that training, those environments get it. And you know a comms person at a public agency. Oh yeah, they're in every meeting on every list for the go to person in the public sector. We don't see that it's still marketing and events and social media. And this is going to be an ongoing battle for our industry. And I have all kinds of thoughts on that. So two things are going to happen. We're going to see organizations that have communications and a leadership role pulling ahead. If we were to. If you just gave me a list of 100 companies and said, Jules, decide which ones are going to survive this crisis and which ones are going to survive the likely coming recession and economic negative impacts basically, and all I knew about them was whether or not they had a senior communicator at a top level in the organization. I could divide it into two categories and I bet I would be super close as to who pulled ahead and thrived and who did not.

Oh, I could not agree with you more. And you noted an important distinction that I noted as well. Just from working in the federal government, working for fema, we were valued. I mean, we were front lines. I mean, especially after Hurricane Katrina and the trailer incident. I mean, people valued our work. But you're right, whenever I hop into another category, it's not valued. And I'm always surprised by that. And they're the ones that struggle. You're absolutely right.

Yeah, I guess someday I'll stop being surprised. I don't know why it still surprises me. Yes. So seeing organizations, if they don't have that process, that what I call culture of communication, communication as a leadership role, already happening, if that's not second nature, if that's not part of who they are, it's not in their DNA. This is a very difficult time for them right now because either going to do the right thing and pivot and rely on communications, but if that trust hasn't been built, if that leadership category has not been part of the internal operations of the organization, that's going to be a challenge for the organization or then they're not going to do it, which is going to bring its own set of challenges.

Okay, so you segued very nicely into some of the internal challenges as it relates to operations. So now referring back to your article, you give questions for people to ask on their team, you know, for leaders. I love this, this list of seven questions of the questions your team needs to consider now as we prepare for an increase in coronavirus cases and one right at the top. Can your organization deliver at current levels if a percentage of your staff gets ill? How do you think a leader right now, if I had to tap into your mba, how should they be? How should they be juggling external and internal communications, but while also being concerned about trying to have predictive behavior on what will happen if a staff member or their family gets sick?

Yeah. Yeah. So I wrote this article. I think the dateline for the article, when it was shared nationally was early March. We had not, I feel like there was this A and then B in the crisis where we really shifted as a nation to oh my gosh, this is serious, this is happening, mass outbreaks and you know, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, et cetera. So I was predicting, based on some information we didn't Quite know what the percentages or the numbers are. I was a little bit more of a polar panic, so I was going to worst case scenario, 2% of your staff, 10% of your staff, depending where you live, 50% of your staff. Can you legitimately continue business as usual? And if you look at a corporation versus a retail outlet, a luxury brand versus a manufacturing brand. And so some practical things, because the CEO does have to be practical. So in an ideal situation, internally, they have strategy, finance, sales, they're relying on a team that is still really focused on those key areas. So somebody's running in running those reports. Hr, where are we with staffing levels and communications? So I'm not in any way suggesting that CEOs stop thinking about sales or stop thinking about revenues. What I'm saying is you've got to do both. And if you haven't been used to doing both, the thing that's going to get pushed off is the communications because you're going to focus on the sales and I get it, and the operations and the revenues and your quarterly reports, etc. But that's not where the trouble is going to hit.

Right, Right. And, and you also ask in your, your questions, what if your business is named in the news? Are you prepared to address concerns? Do you have a trained spokesperson? What is the chain of command for addressing concerns? I think a lot of these businesses get in trouble with the chain of command that their true skilled communicator is too far down that hierarchy, that chain. And as you're advocating, bring these communicators, they need a seat at the table. So let's touch on crisis comms for a moment. We have COVID 19. Everyone is in a crisis right now. Yes. But even today, here we are on a Friday when the news was announced that four senators had sold their stocks, knowing what was coming. And I put that on Twitter and people were tweeting back like, imagine being that communicator. You're now with two crises. If your business does get dinged from a Covid related response or just something in the environment that we're in, what. What would you say to a leader then?

Yeah, we have a couple of examples. Very early in the crisis was the Corona beer.

Yes. Seems so long ago.

Yeah, it's been, yeah. Somebody said we're living in dog years. And yeah, it seems like, yeah, the beginning of March seems like forever ago. And so that one is, there's a backstory there and that's its own PRK study and how that all developed. And there was some questionable research on that. So I'm not sure resources were accurate. But in the news media, in social media, what consumers were confronted with was this idea that Corona beer was somehow associated with the coronavirus. And some people thought it was funny. Some people said, I'll never drink it again. Some people said I never drank it anyway. So who cares? Who would have thought in a million years in a planning meeting with the CEO of the holding company that owns that beverage that they would have to strategically plan a crisis around a virus or a pandemic that had the same name as their midline beer brand? I mean, it just, you know, you would never, when I say plan for a crisis, you would never in a million years now you will, but million years have guessed that. But what they did. So this tells me they have a strong communications team. Their CEO came out and he did a lot of speaking. First he refuted and pulled up the real stats and addressed the concerns about the ambiguity of the research that was telling consumers that. And then he came out and did follow on stories about their advertising and marketing. So no, that company probably did not have virus related crisis as one of their scenario plans, but they clearly understood the need to get in front of that story. I think it had about a three day news cycle before it drifted away. One, there are more important things we had to talk about. And two, people very quickly got over it. Another big brand, their tagline, KFC finger looking good.

Yes.

Now the entire world has pivoted to be germ phobes. We've pivoted to sanitation, hand wipes, washing your hands. And that's just not an attract. Whether you thought it was proper to lick your fingers or not before this. Now you can't even be associated with something like that. They very quickly jumped on that and you know, pulled some of the marketing, pulled some of the visuals that show that. And so they were aware that even without a coronavirus case, a health issue or a death or an employee in one of their restaurants being diagnosed with it, that there was just a general idea that this was inappropriate at this time. And so those to me were CEOs that very quickly understood what could happen in the news by association. And companies are being called out. A lot of restaurants unfortunately for maybe practices that aren't meeting our high sanitation and safety standards. And this is always the case. This did not start with coronavirus. This started when we got cell phones and social media. Any day 24 7, one customer can totally blow up your brand with one tweet. And that is what communications teams need to be prepared for, right?

Oh absolutely. And you just put the finger on my business. That's exactly what I do that reputation management and understanding and educating the leaders who are older Gen Xers, baby boomers who don't still understand the true power of viral media, how it does only take one person and they have that mindset that oh well, the people who complain are anonymous online and we don't know who they are not. So they are more than happy to put themselves the their names and their thoughts and opinions to bring you down. That is the cancel culture summed up. So you mentioned like two very savvy companies that understand the power of modern day communications and KFC certainly had their, you know, got their viral chops I think two years ago when they ran out of chicken and I don't know if you remember the ads we effed up. So it's very similar. They knew how to respond immediately.

They've been very years, they've been very ahead on their marketing, fast food in general in crisis. Then by having it be part of their culture, by creating a culture of communication, they were much better prepared than for example Whole Foods. Slightly different category. But the CEO of Whole Foods has been naturally negatively portrayed in the media, a lot of it starting with social media. Seems like to me an organization that wasn't leading previously with communications does not have a culture of communication because they stumbled so much when they were thrust into the spotlight.

Right. I agree with you now in your article as well, you touch on media relations which is a school probably that you and I maybe you know, 20 years ago was at our peak. If you had to say, I bet like you if you had to do a percentage of your job, Media relations was such a big part of my job. Do you find nowadays that leaders aren't necessarily thinking about the media anymore because people are so focused on viral and reputation spinning out of control. How can media relations be used in a time like this? Like really tap traditional media.

Yeah, yeah, well and that's really interesting to hear about your work because I do have a slightly different experience. I work with a lot of tech companies and a lot of startups.

Sure. Categories.

Sure, yeah, yeah. A heavy focus on media relations. So what is different than my work in the early days is now I say no a lot more and I'm guiding media relations. I'm guiding them through this noisy, ever changing media landscape. It was more cut and dry in the old days. There was one journalist who covered one beat paper and they worked there their Entire career, that was your guy, that was your gal. And we are just in such a different world. Not everybody understands that. And unfortunately, one of the things that I don't love about social media is that there's so much access to the media, everybody thinks that their story. You see me complain about this on social media all the time. Everything is a media pitch, everything is a press release. And so now I spend most of my time saying, no, that's not a story. No, that's not a press release. No, we're not email blasting this to 2,500 journalists.

Right.

And so that is my experience and that's what's different. And I've seen that both in my consulting clients and with the agencies that I've worked for. So to your question, what can they do? You kind of have two categories of focus right now. One, staying out of the media. Don't do anything that's going to cause negative attention. So, you know, don't have people in your restaurants or stores licking their fingers or whatever. Adhere to all the safety regulations that are being placed on your industry or your geographical location. So avoid negative media. What everybody wants is positive media. But really having a conversation about what's appropriate right now. And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where the CEO mind has to pivot internally. Is it more important to try to place your brand in a loosely connected media story right now, or do you really need to be taking care of your employees? How much momentum are you going to get by trying to hijack the news by something that's three steps removed versus the long term loyalty and engagement that you're going to get if you protect your employees. So what I'm experiencing with clients is, and we're not going dark, nobody's shutting down their comms departments. But it's like, you know that press release about our three new partners, not really relevant right now. Nobody cares. And then the thing that I'm a little bit snarky about is the companies that are coming out and saying, oh, what? You know, press release, we're cleaning our stores. Press release, we're taking care of our employees. And it's like a media story isn't really about what you should be doing every day.

So now we're not going.

I don't have clients to do that because they're all very sophisticated and smart. But I'm seeing other organizations trying to push or I have PR peers who are sharing stories with me that their organizations or their agencies aren't getting it and they're trying to hijack the news in a way that's just really inappropriate right now.

Yeah. And you touched on the difference too in terms of the time span that back maybe 20 years ago, organizations I think could rely on that beat reporter. They could rely on that magazine, that brand that would always run the story and whether it was a New York Times, Washington Post, you always had that beat reporter. Nowadays I work with organizations, they, if I ask where's the media list, you know, who do you have? They don't know any of the reporters. They don't. So that's the change that I've noticed. So if you could give one tip right now it to a desperate leader, a CEO, someone that, you know, mid size small business, not a huge brand, someone that wants to do good, wants to look for the employees, look out for their internal stakeholders and the external ones. What's the one leadership tip that you would give them?

I would say start today to embrace what I call a culture of communication where you're going to put. And by a culture of communication I mean using your emotional intelligence, using your putting people over profits, pivoting away from the sales and the numbers and the data. I know we all love data. Pivoting away from that and becoming the caregiver of your organization. They're all adults. But during this time, how are you caring for your organization? And so I think putting more time and energy into those internal stakeholder conversations is where they should be putting their energy. So yes, you maintain sales. So your key clients, your key accounts, your key customers need that love and care, but they might need it in smaller doses over a longer period of time. And sending an email is not showing care. So that's, that's just, that's a cya, you know, that's not showing care. So if you have, you know, a mid sized sales team, they're calling, calling their customers just to check on them, they're sending them food, they're delivering things at home. You are participating in the care of your customers, constituents, shareholders, whatever, employees especially. And then also now is the time to listen. And that is really difficult for leadership. But the culture of communication is a 360 process. It's a circle. It's like any relationship communication. I say something, you listen to me, I hear what you say and it's a back and forth conversation starting to have those conversations. And some organizations are great at it. Some organizations force it once a year at their annual meeting or their, you know, retreat or whatever. You need to take those principles not at that high level, but dial it down a notch. But spread it out a little bit each day over time.

Oh, well said, Jules. If you and I ever partnered together on a project, we would have no problem combining our value system. When it comes to relations and communications, I feel the same way as you do. It's a culture of communication, honoring and appreciating your communicators, but also your speaking to your internal audiences, your employees, and showing people that you care can really go a long way in even branding your company as a good company.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like anything else. The health and wellness of an individual is largely determined by what's happening on the inside. You know, if we're taking care of ourselves. The health and wellness of an organization is largely based on what's happening internally. Now, external markets are very scary right now and revenue loss is a real concern for a lot of CEOs. Some of that staving off the most drastic scenarios will come from the care and feeding of the internal team and taking care, bolstering that up at this time.

Yeah, well, well said, Jules. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and also this article. So anyone watching the link to how CEOs can lead the way through coronavirus concerns at work, even though you were pressing it, you and Jocelyn knew this was coming. This article still very much applies heading into week two of the threat response. Definitely. And you're with ZGroup PR. I'll have a link to your company, your blog and your Twitter handle as well. But thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing your advice.

Thank you Molly. I love talking with you. Thank you.

You as well.

Thank you.

I want to thank Julia for joining me on that special interview of the podcast. You can find the video interview of this podcast on my website and the special COVID 19 communication response kit. Just head on over to mollymcpherson.com ResponseKit you will see all the information you need as a communicator, business owner, head of an organization or an agency who needs to communicate with your key stakeholders during the time of the coronavirus crisis. So head on over to the website right now and check out videos and interviews just like this.

Thanks for listening.