Ep 104 Does the CEO Need to be the Spokesperson Each Time in a Crisis Braudcommunications.com April 13, 16

Does the CEO always need to be the Chief spokesperson during a time of crisis?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Today's question comes from Jared Breaux, his well known brocast and I have a link for you in the top of the show and in the notes, so you should check him out. A lot of good content he puts out. But the question is, does the CEO need to be the spokesperson each time in a crisis.

Crisis communications?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is it depends. And fortunately we have time here. We have a lot of time. Unlike Twitter where you're limited to 140 characters and in a sound bite culture, if I were on CNN News I can actually go deeper. And that's the beauty of this podcast. We can look at all the n a question like this. Let's define our terms. First, a crisis isn't just a bad story or an unflattering story. I define a crisis, as do most PR and crisis communication counselors, as the something has happened and the news of this event, this situation could severely harm the reputation of your organization, perhaps even in a permanent way. So if it's just your stock price is down 1% or your sales are off 2%, that's not a crisis. Might not be a flattering story, but it's certainly not by any definition a crisis. If you have a thousand five hundred franchises and one of them doesn't pay its rent on time and they go out of business, that's not a crisis to your brand. It may be a bad story that day in that local town that your franchise went out of business, but it's not truly a crisis if it actually meets the threshold of a crisis. Meaning the average person you care about, your customer, your investor, your prospects, other stakeholders, regulators, elected officials would see the story, hear about it, and it profoundly affect their view of you. Well, then it is a crisis. And that is the worst possible time to have the CEO go in hiding and just put out a relatively low level head of public relations spokesperson. Now, disclosure. I am occasionally hired as a spokesperson for corporations, though typically not during the time of crisis. And as much as I love my fellow spokespersons and PR persons, during a time of crisis, people want to know who is accountable. They want to hear it from the top. So that's why, for example, during the Gulf spill you actually had of BP a number of years back, you did have to see the CEO of the whole worldwide organization speak out. Now he did a poor job and it ended up costing his job. But the decision to have the CEO of the whole company speak out, I think that was a wise one. I don't think they prepped him or rehearsed properly. That's a separate issue. The problem with having a spokesperson or a vice president or someone lower level is those people cannot truly speak on behalf of the entire corporation to all shareholders, all regulators, all investors, all clients, all customers. That is something uniquely that the CEO can do. The CEO is really the only person authorized to speak on behalf. And if it is a crisis that involves loss of life, harm to the environment, damage to a town, a city, a lake, a river, an ocean, people want to know that the person who has their levers on the power, who's most influential in getting things done, cleaning things up, stopping it, preventing it from happening in the future, they want to see that person accountable. They want to hear from that person on what exactly is being done. They want to hear that person answer questions, the basic questions and the tough questions. And when the CEO is not made available, it generally looks awful. It looks like the company is trying to hide. Looks like the company is trying to sweep the whole issue under the carpet, under the rug. Looks like the company really has not come to grips with the gravity of the situation, that they're trying to keep it low key and small. And that just doesn't work. There are exceptions to the rule. I'll go into those in just a moment.

To hire TJ Walker as a keynote speaker or workshop leader for your next conference, call 212-764. 4,955.

There are crises from time to time that are big news in one market, one city, and if it's a multinational company and the CEO is in charge of thousands and thousands of businesses in every state in the United states and in 50 other countries, well, most of the time that person, the CEO, doesn't need to be the spokesperson. If it's an isolated incident, and I'm assuming, of course, there's not massive destruction or death or massive explosions that are dominating all national news. But if it's truly a local news story and the national and international media are not hopping onto it, then you don't need your international CEO. These things need to be looked at in a proportional sense. If only local media are interested in the story, then you may want the highest ranking official within your organization. And I'm using the example of corporations, but it could be a government agency as well. You want the highest ranking official in the that local market. That's Going to satisfy the reporters. Reporters and the public. Reporters want to hear it from the old cliche of the horse's mouth. They want to know what the most accountable person has to say about how they are going to account for this problem, this disaster, this explosion, this fire, this accident. They want accountability. So in that case, it's not important that it be the CEO necessarily. It does need to be the highest ranking person. Now once CNN is calling the BBC, Al Jazeera and Fox News Channel and Skynet, once they're calling, this has become an international issue. At that point I think it is a grave mistake not to put your CEO on. There's this sense in some corporate circles and in corporate communication circles that well, we want to keep our CEO away. We don't want him to be muddied up. We want to keep him above the fray. We don't want to escalate the issue. Well, with all due respect, if all of those major international TV networks are calling you, the issue has already been escalated. So you're not going to de escalate anything by not having your CEO on. Now sometimes the decision to not put a CEO in front of the camera is based on the fact that people think, maybe even the CEO thinks that that person is not very good as a spokesperson. Well, I don't have a lot of sympathy for that line of reasoning because number one, someone isn't good. Train them. I could train a SEAL to be a good corporate spokesperson in a time of a crisis and so could any other good media trainer. That's number one. Number two, if the person isn't good at speaking on behalf of the entire organization and explaining things, why in the world is he given the position, the high ranking position and the high salary of a CEO? And I am saying he because there are actually more CEOs named John in the world of large publicly traded companies than all the women CEOs combined. So I think any board of directors is not doing its basic job. They are negligent if they do actually hire a CEO who isn't a good competent spokesperson. They don't have to be beautiful or be a great orator to but they do have to communicate a message with confidence and clarity and deliver sound bites on message during a time of crisis. If they can't do that, they're in way over their heads. They never should have been hired in the first place. To be a spokesperson, it really is as simple as that. Or to be a CEO, it is as simple as that.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author, TJ Walker. For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker.

Here's the checklist I believe you should go through. If you are involved in a crisis with your corporation, government agency or organization, you're trying to figure out, should we go to the CEO and have that person be the spokesperson or should we keep it lower? The question is, if you're a reporter, who would you really want to talk to? Who's most relevant? If you are the general manager in a particular town, running a factory for a huge conglomerate and you know everyone, you know everything about it. You've been there for 20 years, you already know the media. It would be sort of odd to bring in through a Skype webcast a CEO a thousand miles away who doesn't know anything about your community or the particular situation. In that case, go with the general manager. So ask yourself, who would reporters want to talk to? Number one? Number two, who would the people in the audience of these media outlets want to hear from? And if it is the CEO, you need to make that person the CEO. If it's just they've had basic questions, okay, there was a fire. No one was hurt. It was a crisis short term because people were scared. It was on local news, but now it's out. No one was hurt. It was a simple error. You figured it out. Well then maybe a spokesperson, a PR representative may be fine, but those are the questions to ask. What would a fair minded person, who would a fair minded person really want to talk to? Whether it's the audience, stakeholders, investors, clients, customers, citizens in the community, who would the reporters want to talk to? Also ask yourself who truly knows the most about this situation? Also ask yourself the timeline. If a fire happened an hour ago, the manager of the plant may be your best spokesperson to explain. Here's what we know happened, here's what we're doing to put out the fire. If it's three days later and the factory is burned to the ground and there are two deaths and the whole world is talking about it, and now there's a press conference at 11. Your CEO needs to be the spokesperson for that press conference. Thanks for joining me today. As always, we take all of your questions. If you have any questions about media training, crisis communications presentations, please just send them to me. You can post them right here. Wherever you're listening to or watching this program, you can post them right on our website@mediatrainingworldwide.com the news section. Or you can post them on Twitter jwalker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

Speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please subscribe to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments and share it with your friends and colleagues. To help today.