TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

So you're caught in a scandal. How do you keep from it destroying your political career?

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

Okay, folks, I'm going to be bipartisan here today. I'm going to talk about two Democrats and two Republicans who've essentially had their careers destroyed by scandal.

Crisis communications.

When scandal hits a politician, it is time to communicate, to try to dig yourself out, try to protect yourself, try to rehabilitate your reputation. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. The most recent high profile example of a situation where I believe the politician was never able to recover a scandal was Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. At the time of recording this, he just recently exited the presidential campaign for the 2016 GOP nomination. Now you might be saying, well, I don't remember seeing anything about him in a scandal in the last year. What are you talking about? T.J. here's the problem. A few years ago, Chris Christie was caught in a so called bridge Gate scandal. Some of his top political aides were punishing the mayor of a small town and part of the punishment was shutting down the George Washington Bridge that connects northern New Jersey with Manhattan, New York City. And because of that, there were massive traffic snarls, people were stuck in ambulances, couldn't get places. It was a massive, massive, massive headache. A colossal abuse of public trust, of public facilities for naked political reasons. Now here's why I believe this scandal cut so deeply into Chris Christie and prevented his presidential campaign from ever gaining traction from a purely communication standpoint. I believe all candidates have to have some kind of internal story, internal logic to who they are to really make sense, to propel them through a presidential campaign. You look at the people who actually become president, there's some kind of consistency with their career, what they're about and their message. Chris Christie's career message was always he's the no nonsense tough guy who tells it like it is and doesn't play the normal political games. That was his whole positioning through his rise to politics, in politics throughout New Jersey, as a local official, as a U.S. attorney and as governor. So here's the problem with the bridge thing. It is true he was never directly implicated, but when you're chief of staff, your press secretary and everyone is caught red handed doing something that helps you politically or it was perceived or designed to help you politically, and they're talking about, you know, laughing at constituents, laughing at children caught in school buses, telling them their parents should vote Republican, otherwise it comes across as extraordinarily crass. Here's the problem for Christie. There's only one of two ways you can go on this scandal. Number one, you believe that Chris Christie absolutely knew he ordered this, directed this, and he is the most craven political hack, or as bad as any other political hack out there who is used, who is willing to use government authority, government funds, government people to really destroy and disrupt lies for his own purpose. I mean, it couldn't get worse than that. You either believe that or you can take the stance that, okay, he's completely innocent, he was not implicated. But what that does mean is here's a guy who's so clueless that he surrounds himself with political hacks, doesn't know what they're doing, is such a poor manager, he doesn't hire the right people and he doesn't manage people effectively. So either way you go in that scenario, it completely destroys the fundamental positive brand of what Chris Christie was supposed to be about. He was supposed to be the competent manager who gets things done, doesn't care about politics, and just wants the best people to do the right thing. So that's why I believe he never recovered. When you look at the polling data in his own state and around the country, he basically lost 20 points because of that scandal. He never recovered. And in his presidential campaign, things really never took off. So when the polls came in and he didn't come in first or second or third or even fourth, there simply was no more rationale for him. And that scandal, I believe, destroyed him. It would be totally different. People forget four years earlier, people were begging him. Absolutely. Polls showed he could have beaten Mitt Romney. That was pre scandal. Now, some of you may be saying, well, T.J. you're being partisan, you're being unfair. Let's switch to the other side. Let's look at the Democratic side. Someone like Gary hart. Back in 1984, he ran close second, did very well against Walter Mondale. The former Democratic vice president came close to winning that nomination. He was the frontrunner in 1987, and then he got caught on the boat called the Monkey Business with Donna Rice, young, attractive woman, not his wife. It was a scandal, and he became perceived as the ultimate in phonies. Hypocrites. He famously said, follow me around and you'll be bored with what you see. Now, interesting side note. That challenge he made to follow him around didn't get in print until two days after the Miami Harold followed him around. No one remembers or cares about that. But he never could recover from that scandal. He dropped out of the race, then dropped in. But at that point he was a joke. He ran again in other presidential campaigns, never could be considered serious again because his whole brand was not of the serious policy wonk trying to make government more efficient, but kind of the trivial playboy who likes to hang out on yachts with young attractive models. Let's go back to the other side again. On the Republican side, Rick Perry, longest serving governor in the country. By all accounts pretty successful governor of Texas, able to win re election and hold power longer than any politician in Texas, Democrat or Republican. Tremendous fundraising prowess. Good looking guy. He had everything in place for his presidential campaign when he started back in 2011, number one in the polls before he even entered the race. He got in, things were going well. But then he had a debate where he was asked a question. He answered it, listed the first government agency he was going to cut. The second government agency he was going to cut had promised three, and then, oops. It was considered by all accounts the worst moment in presidential debate history ever. And it just instantly solidified this image of him of being a male bimbo, himbo, mimbo. It just solidified people's preconceived notion that maybe this guy isn't bright enough, maybe he's not smart enough. Now, I'm no Rick Perry fan, but I have seen him give speeches and conduct himself in media interviews where he was highly articulate. He has since talked about how he had just gone through back surgery, wasn't able to exercise anymore, that prevented him from sleeping, and at the time of the debate he hadn't had but a few hours sleep in the last week. Well, I wouldn't be able to remember my own name after a few hours sleep. But you know what? You're not running for president, so the standards are different. So the problem was it just magnified everyone's worst preconceived notion about this guy being a bit of a dim bulb. And he never recovered. He never recovered from that one moment. He had all the money in the world, didn't help him. Lost primaries, had to get out of the race. He then decided to rehabilitate himself. He got new glasses that were supposed to make him look smart. He started giving more speeches on foreign policy, decided not to run for reelection as governor of Texas, really boned up on public policy and decided to make a serious bid for the 2016 nomination. And it went nowhere. He was one of the first, if not the first major candidate to drop out before the year 2016 even arrived. The problem was the only thing anybody ever saw when they saw Rick Perry's name was oops. There are certain negatives you simply cannot get over. There are some things a good crisis communication expert is not going to help you spin your way out of. Now, again, I'm being fair. I mentioned two Republicans. I'll mention two Democrats. Ted Kennedy, very famously in the late 60s, had his Chappaquiddick incident where he was with a young attractive woman, not his wife, a night of carousing, drove off a bridge, she died. He did not. He waited 24 hours before reporting it. So to many people, this was simply unacceptable behavior. A scandal, a sign of moral recklessness that could never be forgiven. And despite the fact that many, many people were hoping he would run in 72 and there were draft movements, the negatives were so high, he didn't 76 the same thing. 1980 rolls around a lot of people thinking, Ah, the 60s. That's a long time ago. People will forgive and forget. He's seasoned now, he's more mature. People will forget. Well, they didn't. His negatives were still sky high. He was never able to overcome that one crisis, that one blight on his reputation and one record. So what's the moral here? It's not that, boy, you make one mistake, your life is over. I don't mean to sound that negative or pessimistic, but there are limits to spin. There are limits to how much you can rehabilitate yourself if you've had something happen that just so destroys your brand and puts a negative stamp on it. There are, of course, and this is much less memorable, politicians who have been successful at overcoming crisis, as you've heard me mention in recent episodes. John McCain did an excellent job on this. He got ensnared in the Keating 5 scandal back in the 80s, the allegations that Charles Keating unfairly influenced the political process through his campaign contributions and received leniency with regard to the regulation of his SNL. John McCain was one of those politicians caught in the scandal. Horrible, horrible publicity did not help the careers of those five. But John McCain was able to weather the storm because he was up front. He apologized, he said he was wrong. He tried to make things better. He answered every question. He didn't hide, he didn't dodge. He didn't attack reporters for asking him questions. He didn't blame the media for making a big deal out of it. He took it seriously. He answered the questions. And in fact, he talked about it so much, he wore reporters down. He got them tired of talking about it. The old joke was that John McCain would follow. If you're a reporter, he'd follow you out of the press conference and into the, into the parking lot to continue talking about the Keating Five scandal. And eventually reporters simply got tired of listening to him, they got tired of talking about it, they got tired of writing about it, and they moved on to other issues. So there are cases of politicians, significant public people being able to overcome a crisis. But beware, the best way of handling a crisis is not to have the crisis, especially a self inflicted crisis in the first place. Folks, as always, we take your questions here. Get your questions ready. Let me let you know how to do that. You do it by sending it to jwalker on Twitter infoediatrainingworldwide.com or post your questions wherever you see or hear this program, whether it's on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or my blog. Let's go to one of the questions and this is coming in from Julie says. Hello tj do you have any suggestions suggestion to what would be the appropriate video platform to use for presentations? Most of the presentations I'll be doing are demos when recruiting prospects for my medical billing company. Well, Julie, I'll answer this at a couple different levels. If you're talking about a demonstration speech or presentation where you're physically the room, and let's say you're using a PowerPoint and you want to use a video clip of a testimonial from a customer or a client, then it almost doesn't matter what video clip you do, you would put it into your PowerPoint software, have it installed so that when you hit click, it automatically plays. I would caution you, I have seen in the last really 10 years a rise in the use of video in standard presentations at conventions, conferences, and most of the time it doesn't really add anything. It adds a level of technical complexity because you don't have the speakers set up the right way or the computer you're using doesn't have the right software, you're left sort of turning around and staring at a big black box on the screen and apologizing to the audience. So I'm a big fan of the video. But if you're giving a speech or a presentation, I would recommend only using a video in small snippets where it absolutely adds to the whole message and emotional experience of what you're doing. If it's just video for video sake, who needs it? People are there to hear you speak. They want to go to a movie, they'll go to a movie. They want to watch tv, they'll watch tv. So don't try to mix the media. People are used to seeing all sorts of fancy special effects on video screens. It's highly unlikely you're going to dazzle people with your special effects. So don't use video just to show people your latest commercial reel. Only use video if it absolutely makes sense. Now, for years I used a lot of video clips in my speeches about presentation skills because I, I'm talking about presentation skills and I needed to actually show short video clips of world famous people doing things the right way and the wrong way. So it was essential to what I was doing. But for so many businesses it's not really essential to what you're doing. I would focus first and foremost on speaking in a way where you've got interesting ideas, where you're explaining them clearly in a memorable way. Focus on that. Don't even worry about the video unless it's absolutely essential. Now interpreting your question another way. If you are communicating with people by sending them video and it's an online type of thing, there are a number of platforms if you want a completely controlled situation. Vimeo and Vimeo Pro allows you to control the look and feel of the video and it will play right away. And unlike YouTube, it doesn't instantly send people to another video. If you're a small business and you don't have a lot of extra money, I would recommend the simplest thing for most people is still to use YouTube because it easily plays on any platform. If someone is getting your email and they're on their cell phone, it's really easy to play a YouTube video. If they're on a tablet, an iPad, Almost any computer, YouTube is really good at making their videos playable. It costs you nothing. The problem with it of course is it can then send your prospect or your customer to a video of one of your competitors. So that is less than ideal. Now the other option you have would be what I do. Quite often if I'm sending a video to a prospect, I just send it to them through Gmail, it uploads it into Google Drive. When the person says it, they hit one click, it downloads to their computer and it plays it. Now some people don't like downloading videos, but if you are going after prospects and they're serious about, I don't know if it's a prospect customer or a prospect to work for you, but if they're serious about your company, it's not that much of an inconvenience to send it to them that way. The other reason I like sending the raw video file through Google Drive is that this way I can personalize it. When someone, a prospect, contacts me, I typically create a personalized video for them. So I'll say so Chris, thanks for writing. I understand you're looking for media training. I'll personalize it to them and this way by sending it as a private video, they know I'm not talking about them to the whole world on YouTube or Vimeo or any other place. I applaud you for trying to use video in all of your marketing efforts. I do believe that people are making a huge mistake by not doing it. It's one reason why I'm doing this show not just in audio for itunes, but on video for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, video, Vimeo and other platforms. So Chris, thanks so much for writing. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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