What To Do When They're Shouting At You

Most people don’t like confrontations, and it’s even worse when it’s a large crowd demanding answers and/or action.  So what do you do when you’re the one they’re shouting at?  This is Part 1 of a series of articles that will give you the basics of handling angry groups and the media, and how to prepare your company’s staff to handle crises and their aftermath.

Part 1:  Preparing a Good Crisis Plan:

Every business should develop a crisis plan before it’s needed.   Most major public relations firms have a crisis expert who can help you draw up a plan to train your staff to be prepared to handle media, clients and stock/stakeholders.  If you haven’t secured (or can’t afford) the services of a PR firm, here are some of the basics you should take care of today.

1. The Few, the Chosen, The Crisis Management Team.  Pull together your senior staff and select a few people who will serve as company spokespersons.  Tell your staff that any media inquiries, complaints or public comments should be directed to the spokespersons.  Have an emergency contact plan so that these people can be reached in the event in that your office becomes inaccessible (fires, floods, etc.)

2. The News Never Sleeps, especially in the Internet era.  Train your staff to alert the spokespersons as soon as a crisis rears its ugly head.  Don’t delegate the decision whether a crisis can “keep overnight.” Establish an emergency contact schedule and issue beepers or mobile phones to your spokespersons.  Fast response is critical.  Just as you train your customer service staff to handle dissatisfied clients on the phone, you must train all staff on what to do if they walk into an unexpected crisis.  Tell them exactly what you want them to do, what authority they have to correct situations, what they can promise to do.   For example, it’s not uncommon to have a loan officer arrive to give a public presentation on “buying your first home” only to be confronted with accusations of predatory lending.  How should the officer handle it? One good way is to say, “I’m sorry, I’m here to teach a class about Homebuying and there are a lot of people here who’d like to learn about that.  If you’ll give me your names and telephone numbers, I’ll have someone who can answer your questions call you before the close of business tomorrow.”  Keep repeating that training, you’ll have new people come in and others leave. Make it part of orientation.

3. Lights, Camera Action, a Rehearsal.  Take key staff out of the office for a day and role-play crisis responses.  Adapt the list below to likely scenarios in your line of business and divide into teams.  Envision the “worst case” scenario in each one and try to develop an effective response strategy and short worded response for each. Here’s a good example for a municipal housing authority to use:  A family your agency evicted during the day becomes homeless and their child is killed on the streets the same night. A realtor might try the exercise role-playing their response after partnering with a Builder/Developer who is revealed to engage in shoddy building practices.  Now, view your response from the perspective of affected parties, the media, and the general public.  Does your response sound genuine or uncaring? Does it offer answers and/or relief, or just empty words?  Or, worse yet, are you blaming the victims?  Remember, some of these may be more likely than others in your line of business, but all of them do happen. Try them all.

BestHousingPractices.com Top 10 Crisis List:

1. Acts of God (or other supreme being)-fires, floods, etc.
2. D’oh! Clear-cut organization negligence  (cut the power lines, released a toxic chemical)
3. Hello, My Name is Simon Legree-Executing an unpopular action (zoning disputes, clear cutting trees, evictions, etc.)
4. Guilt by Association-Failures or bad acts by business partners (e.g., Ford and Firestone.)
5. Employees do the darndest things  (Theft, fraud, discrimination, etc.)
6. Wild-card events (employee violence, product tampering, hackers)
7. Leaks and sneaks-employees feeding negative information to the press or proprietary information to competitors.
8. Dad-gum Gummint! (Regulatory investigations or sanctions)
9. Get me Legal:  (Lawsuits)
10. The Crisis that Ate New York, Tokyo and Sydney: Mutating Crisis- where one crisis sparks another, usually worse.

Who is Affected?

1.    Obvious victims: (directly affected)

2.    Other stakeholders (clients, business partners, employees and their families, investors, community members, political allies, victims’ families)

3.    Others in similar industries, (remember Tylenol? Now everyone has tamper proof packaging), economic or demographic areas. 

4. What Goes around Comes Around.  If your people are arrogant, smug, or cocky during good times, you will pay the price when they falter (and they will).  Make sure your employees, partners and associates are people you want to have representing your business. 

5. Head in the Sand is an Unflattering Position.  Evaluate your management group’s receptiveness to internal reports of problems.  Do they encourage and act on employee comments, or are they more likely to “kill the messenger?” If your management team’s theme song is “Don’t Bring Me No Bad News,” you could be headed for trouble. In many situations, it’s the maintenance crew or customer service reps that get the first clue when something has gone terribly wrong.  Remember, the Watergate was just an overpriced hotel in DC until a security guard noticed that some door locks had been taped over.

6. Sometimes your Best Friend or Worst Enemy Knows Before You Do.  What about external warnings? Are you and everyone on staff taking them seriously? If not, why not?  Are you so caught up in what you’re doing that you miss the clues?  Re-read  “The Emperors New Clothes” the next time you decide your internal team knows better.

7. I Hear you Knocking but you Can’t Come In.  Technology is a tool, not a substitute for personal attention.  Is everyone in your organization answering calls personally and/or returning them promptly, or do you use technology to duck and cover?  Real life example: a client once told a receptionist I supervised who had a bad habit of automatically putting callers on hold, “What if they were calling in a bomb threat?”  I wished I thought of that!  Also, for you folks who use technology to respond to complaints or to avoid uncomfortable situations, be aware that “But I responded with a (voicemail, e-mail, fax)” is the 21^st Century equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” Nothing will make a bad PR situation worse than an organization that can’t be reached, or won’t respond.

8. The Lone Ranger never Faced an Army or the Media.  Find professional assistance. You might not be able to afford a PR, media, or legal staff full time, but make sure you know who the best are, and how to find them when you need them. Ask for recommendations from companies similar to yours that have weathered a crisis well.  Assign this task to a member of your crisis team and follow through on it. 

Next time:  When the Media is involved, or what to do when Mike Wallace is at your door.