A recorded live-stream by TJ Walker (May 31, 2016) that analyzes a crisis-communications case: the early-2016 resignation of Jed Bernstein as Lincoln Center president after an internal complaint revealed a consensual relationship with a subordinate whom he promoted. Walker outlines how Lincoln Center mishandled media relations (slow response, spin through a crisis firm) and explains why personal relationships with direct reports create reputational and organizational risk. He gives prescriptive advice (disclose relationships to boards, recuse from supervision, respond promptly to reporters) and contrasts the situation with public figures like Donald Trump whose independent power bases make different responses possible.
In an age when leading presidential candidates can brag about their adultery, is it okay to date people in your office.
Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.
So here's the crisis communications issue, folks, and why I'm bringing this up. It was announced in early 2016 that Lincoln center, the premier cultural institution in the United States, or at least New York, announced that its president was stepping down. Jed Bernstein. This was after only 27 months in the top job, which is a pretty short tenure for a position like this when the search committee goes on for years looking for someone. And it was just announced that he was simply moving on to return to his roots as a Broadway producer. It was all his idea. He had resigned. Well, turns out that that's not exactly what happened. The New York Times did some digging. Other people were fishing around. And it turns out none of that was really true. What really happened was that Mr. Bernstein was having a dating relationship with one of his employees. He'd given her two promotions, and he was her manager. And that just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Now, here's the confusing part. If you're Jed Bernstein, you're probably thinking, wow, I'm not married, she's not married. What's the big deal? Donald Trump has publicly bragged about dating lots of women while he was married to his first two wives. I'm not. I'm a boy scout compared to Donald Trump, and he just won the New York primary. I'm imagining Jed Bernstein had some thought process like that going on. Well, folks, as you've heard me say before, and I'll say it again, things that work for Donald Trump simply do not work for most people most of the time. So beware, be very, very cautious about learning any media lessons from Donald Trump and applying them to yourself. Now, let's dissect this in a little more detail. This. According to the New York Times, the Center, the world's leading performance arts complex, had presented the resignation as a sudden but understandable decision by a cultural leader who wanted to return to producing shows for the stage where he had spent much of his career. In reality, Mr. Bernstein, age 61, was forced from the top post after an anonymous complaint revealed that he had been involved in a consensual relationship with a woman in her 30s who worked for him and whom he had twice promoted. According to two people briefed on his resignation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations over his departure were confidential. After repeated requests during the past several weeks. To elaborate on Mr. Bernstein's departure, Lincoln center on Tuesday provided a statement to the New York Times through the crisis management firm Rubinstein, which, by the way, they have an excellent reputation. Full disclosure, Rubenstein has hired me before to do media training for the clients, but I was not involved in this case. The statement said that in response to the complaint received in March, Lincoln center, quote, immediately retained independent outside counsel to conduct an investigation, end quote, determined that Mr. Bernstein had violated Lincoln center human resource policy by not disclosing personal relationship with an employee. So here's the problem. If you're Lincoln center, your reputation is critical because you are depending on the generosity of a lot of rich billionaires and centimillionaires to give you millions of dollars every year to keep your doors open. So you have to constantly be concerned with your reputation because people can stop giving like that. Sources can dry up. You're not able to simply run a printing press if you're Lincoln Center. Now, to their credit, they were described in the New York Times as the world's leading performance arts complex. But you can tell from the tone of this story the reporter is annoyed and is, in fact angry at the Lincoln center by putting in. After repeated requests for several weeks, they finally got back to me. Well, when a reporter writes that they are obviously unhappy and they want to make you look bad in this case, deservedly so. My standard operating procedure, my advice to all clients is you call back reporters same day, same hour. You might not have a comment right away, but you're going to get a comment to them that day. The idea that they would take a couple of weeks is bizarre. Next, the little dig about they responded through a statement from their crisis management firm. Rubenstein is sort of telling the readers of the New York Times, hey, folks, this is a big scandal I've uncovered. Look, they've handled a. They've hired an organization that specializes in handling scandals. So it's kind of a way of pouring more gasoline on the situation. Let's step back and look at what is really happening. If you're Jed Bernstein, you're thinking, well, I'm not committing adultery. I'm not married. I'm not like Donald Trump. I'll be okay. That's the wrong way of looking at it. Donald Trump is an exception in many, many ways. But the biggest way he's an exception is he has an independent power base. He has his own company, his own wealth inherited from Daddy. But be that as it may, he has his own wealth, his own campaign organization. He can in fact, hire and fire anyone he wants. He really isn't accountable to anyone. And in the political process, it's a very diffuse situation. You can appeal to a plurality of voters in any one state, and that can insulate you from the fact that all your party leaders, even in your own party, might hate your guts. That is Mitt Romney, the Bushes, and others who have said highly disparaging remarks about Donald Trump and his personal morality. So what works for Donald Trump is simply not transferable to most people in most situations. Jed Bernstein, while the successful producer is not the sole funder of Lincoln center, he was not able to stack the board with all of his friends and cronies. He's not the one writing checks for everything. So his power base is tied in with many, many other people. They simply do not have the luxury of laughing it off or ignoring it the way Donald Trump can anytime someone questions him. So here's the real problem. Most organizations in the country, whether it's big companies, governments, nonprofits like Lincoln center, have taken an increasingly liberal attitude as far as the private lives of their citizens. You can be gay. You can be transgender in a way that 30 years ago, even 15 years ago, that might keep you from getting certain positions in an organization or certain jobs offered to you. You can live with someone who's not your spouse. That used to be a big no, no. In many corporations, there's basically only one thing you can't do, and that is you can't have a dating relationship, a sexual relationship with someone who works for you, and you're in a position to fire them or give them promotions. And unfortunately, that's the one thing Jed Bernstein did here. He gave this woman a couple of promotions, and she may be eminently qualified. I don't know her. I don't know anything about her skills. The problem is it kind of sours the work environment if someone keeps getting promotions, and it's well known that that person is sleeping with the boss. A lot of people who don't get the promotions are thinking, hmm, I didn't get that job because I'm not sleeping with a boss. That's not a very attractive work atmosphere. So it's completely rational for organizations to want to have this policy of not having employers and bosses date their employees who report directly to them. So the problem that Lincoln center has and that Jed Bernstein has is they put out a lie, number one. Number two, they dodge the media. For a long time, they tried to spin this, and now they're very reluctantly being brought to the table. To be held accountable. So they just look bad at every single level. Now, Jed Bernstein is apparently a successful producer. He'll be able to go on and do that because that as long as you have rich people willing to give you money, you can be a producer, folks. Not saying it's that easy, but that's the biggest stumbling block. So he'll be able to do that. Lincoln Center, I don't think has ruined its reputation at the point where no one will ever give it money. But this is a black mark because here's the thing about wealthy donors. The last thing they want to do is to see their money spent on a crisis communications firm that's charging a lot of money to defend unethical activity of top highly paid executives. Now, they don't mind paying PR to generate more attention for the shows to sell more tickets. That's fine. And folks, I certainly don't mean to disparage Bernstein. As I mentioned, full disclosure, they've hired me before. But for a nonprofit to get itself ensnared in something like this is embarrassing and it's totally avoidable. Now, one central tenet of crisis communications is we can't control crises. You can't control a tornado, a hurricane, and I'll even be generous to Jed Bernstein and say you can't control who you fall in love with, but you can control how you react. You can't control what you say. You can control your next steps going back in time. In order to contain this, what he should have done is formally notify his board of directors that he has started dating this individual and that he is requesting another manager, have independent oversight of her. If he had done that, I dare say he would not have been fired and the board would have been fully informed. It just would have made everyone feel better. There probably wouldn't be anonymous complaints. There wouldn't be people anonymously calling the New York Times trying to get stories like this. And everyone could have been much better off. But now it's the worst of all possible situations where denied, deny, fake story denial, hiding from the media for weeks and now a whole bunch of expensive PR firms involved. It's not a good situation, as in most cases, not most, but an awful lot of crisis communication issues, all of it could have been contained and in fact, it never would have escalated to a crisis if people had just been willing to take a little short term pain and discomfort. That doesn't solve every crisis. It doesn't solve natural disaster crises or explosion or fire crises. But in a situation like this, involving humans, and emotion, it would have solved the problem. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.
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