Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
In the wake of the recent hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires devastating communities worldwide, many businesses, government agencies and nonprofits are reflecting on their crises plans. Any business, at some point, will face some sort of public relations crisis and the response can either benefit or significantly damage the brand.
Aside from natural disasters, there is a wide variety of different types of crisis situations that a business can face such as technological failures, workplace violence, confrontation (boycotts, lawsuits), malevolence and organizational misdeeds, among others. Regardless of the situation, it’s a good practice to have a plan in place in the event of an emergency. Consider the following components when developing a crisis plan:
- Anticipate crises
Work to identify potential scenarios that could occur at your organization. In some cases, you will know a crisis will occur because you’re planning to create disruption, such as a major acquisition or employee layoffs. Consider outlining scenario action plans for anticipated crises, recognizing that the plans will serve as a framework because
specific circumstances of a given event will always drive the actions taken by the company.
- Communicate
In the event of an emergency, swift, accurate and controlled communication – delivered with transparency and sensitivity during the initial hours and days following the incident – is crucial. The tone for coverage around any issue is usually set by the first few stories that break within 24 hours following an incident. Responding quickly with accurate, factual information can help manage a story in a favorable direction.
- Establish roles and responsibilities
While each situation will involve unique facts and circumstances, it is important to have a general protocol in place before such an event occurs to ensure a swift and well-managed response. Components to consider when developing a protocol include:
o Identifying the appropriate crisis response team and establish a chain of command
o Assigning a lead spokesperson/spokespeople
o Communicating clear direction for employees, who may be contacted by media, about who is authorized to comment on the situation
o Disseminating approved messages and materials to key stakeholders
o Following up with key stakeholders, including the media, as more details are confirmed
- Managing media relations
Depending on the circumstance, issuing a statement to the press may apply. This statement could take shape as a media statement for newswire distribution, a press conference, or digital publication such as website and social media channels. Regardless of the delivery mechanism, developing template talking points and media responses will ensure effective information communication.
- Establish notification and monitoring systems
It is absolutely essential, pre-crisis, to establish notification systems that will allow you to rapidly reach your stakeholders using multiple modalities. If you use more than one modality to reach your stakeholders, the chances are much greater that the message will go through.
Intelligence gathering is an essential component of both crisis prevention and crisis response.
Knowing what’s being said about you on social media, in traditional media, by your employees, customers, and other stakeholders often allows you to catch a negative “trend” that, if unchecked, turns into a crisis. Likewise, monitoring feedback from all stakeholders during a crisis situation allows you to accurately adapt your strategy and tactics.
- Aftermath and analysis
In the week(s) following the incident, the crisis planning team should reconvene to review any new details that have surfaced about the incident and determine if additional outreach may be needed. Conducting an analysis of the particular scenario, process and execution will also identify adjustments that can be made to inform future crisis response efforts.
Effective and accurate communication with the media and external audiences following a serious incident or emergency can help build media and general public confidence that the company has responded in an appropriate manner. It is imperative that organizations be prepared to respond to an emergency or other serious incident with a communications plan that can be implemented quickly to minimize potential adverse effects.
We recently had a brainstorming session here at CPR and, not only was it really fun, we generated some good ideas. Despite its popularity, however, when I started researching this blog I found that many people find brainstorming to be a frustrating and fruitless process that fails to get the team’s creative juices flowing. The more I researched, the more I realized that the reason some people find brainstorming unproductive isn’t because brainstorming itself is ineffective, it’s because the method being used is.
Scientists have been studying idea generation for decades and have found that, in terms of generating original ideas, individuals perform better. Where the group really comes into play is evaluating and building on those initial thoughts. This deviates from the traditional brainstorming layout where you get a group of people together, present a problem, generate as many ideas and solutions as possible, don’t criticize initially, and build on the ideas that others throw out.
But traditional brainstorming can lead to a bigger problem – an idea called groupthink. Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that happens when a large group of people decide to follow an idea, not because it is the best idea, but because it’s the most popular and they want to fit in. This goes hand-in-hand with another phenomenon that can happen during a brainstorm – idea convergence. This is when someone shares their idea and it affects the memory of the entire group to make them look at the problem through that same lens, cutting down on outside-the-box thinking that is the fuel for a good brainstorm. These phenomena combined generally mean that the more extroverted participants in the brainstorm will shout out an idea early on that the group can’t shake, even if it isn’t the optimal solution.
Luckily, these are easy to combat by simply having each one of the participants spend time generating ideas alone before going into the brainstorm. If everyone comes to the meeting with a list of as many ideas as possible, no matter how crazy, and presents them during the brainstorm, it will allow for more ideas to be shared and avoid early idea convergence. Then the team can work to build off each original idea until they find the best option. It might seem counter-intuitive, but the best way to work together is to work alone (at least at the beginning).
There are a lot of different ways you can implement this idea of combined individual and group work. One example is the stepladder technique. The topic or problem is presented to the entire group, then everyone leaves the room except for two people. They discuss the problem and attempt to arrive at a solution. After an allotted amount of time, a third person enters the room, and shares his or her ideas on the topic before the original pair shares their ideas. This continues until each member has rejoined the discussion and presented their individual thoughts.
Another popular method is the 6-3-5 method. This has six individuals sit in a room and write down three ideas around the topic and then they pass their ideas to the right and build off the ideas passed to them. After five rounds, everyone in the group has had a chance to see each original idea and add their input, and the group then gets together to evaluate each idea.
Both of these methods will lead to better brainstorming, but there are tons of other ways to do it. It is all about finding the right method for you and your team.
Once the pesky issue of stifled creativity is out of the way, brainstorming sessions can have a lot of benefits. It allows you to collect different viewpoints, encourages critical thinking, build up your team, and it can be a lot of fun! It is a great way to break up hours of individual labor and work together in a creative environment. Combining individual and group work is the best way to ensure that your brainstorming session is both successful and effective.
If you’d like to check out some additional articles on brainstorming, here are some great options:
• Five Tips for Effective Brainstorming
• 10 Longtime Brainstorming Techniques that Still Work
• Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong
My colleague Beth Mayer recently wrote about our experience at “Managing Yourself & Leading Others,” a professional development workshop we took through the Harvard Division of Continuing Development. Her post focused on the importance of flexing one’s leadership style and it was a part of the session that I found to be most helpful. However, another valuable part of the course was learning more about organizational culture and the importance of working effectively within the context and norms of the company.
Oftentimes when people think about corporate culture, they want to know what an environment is like. For Instance, sometimes people will ask what kind of culture does your organization have? Is it heads down all the time? How frequently do you meet as a team or have team lunches? These are valid questions, but culture is bigger than just the fun stuff.
Ed Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, defines culture as “a pattern of basic assumptions, invented, discovered or developed by a given group, as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore is to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”
So let’s break this down and look at this definition using an example with our team.
For instance, at Communiqué PR, we have certain processes that we routinely follow when we receive a phone call or an email from a potential new client. This includes learning about the company’s business and communication objectives, and asking a host of other questions before moving to the next phase of developing a proposal. We consider this methodology to be valid because we have an excellent track record of winning new business. Therefore, when new members join the company or team, they are taught our process of approaching business development.
According to organizational development experts, the more thoroughly a person understands an organization’s culture, the more effective he or she can be. Research has also found that there are some common characteristics where groups form cultural norms. These include the following:
- Innovation and Risk Taking: Does the group have a high or low tolerance for innovation and risk?
- Attention to Detail: How much attention to detail is expected? Is this of high or low importance to the group?
- Outcome Versus Process Orientation: Does the group care more about steps to take or the outcome?
- People Orientation: Does the group care about people’s individual preferences?
- Team Orientation: Does work get done in teams or by individual contributors?
- Aggressiveness or Competitiveness: Does the group value competitiveness or is this frowned upon?
- Stability: Does the group have a preference for maintaining the status quo over growth?
When you’re leading a group or team — or interviewing to join a new company — you might want to think about your own biases in relation to the cultural norms. For instance, do you have a propensity to innovate and take risks? Do you have high or low attention to detail? Do you prefer more outcome-oriented work or process-oriented work?
One good way to getter a better understanding of your personality and preferences is to take the Myers-Briggs personality test. This will help you better understand your personal preferences and style so that you have a better understanding of how you get energized, how you take in information, how you come to conclusions and how you approach the outside world — including your coworkers. Different personality types have very different preferences.
Finally, in our class we discussed how leaders create strong cultures. Researchers have found they are often a function of the stability of the group, the length of time they’ve existed, the intensity of their learning experiences, how they learn and are rewarded for learning, and how the strength and clarity of assumptions by founders or leaders of the group help. Rewards for learning might include positive reinforcement or avoidance conditioning.
In what kind of culture do you thrive?
September typically marks the return to school for children all over the country, but earlier this summer I had the opportunity to pack up my notebooks and pencils and head off to Harvard for a leadership workshop with Communiqué PR’s management team.
The session, “Managing Yourself and Leading Others” was packed into a solid two days of case studies, live group discussions, role playing and, of course, marshmallows (but more on that later).
I’ve managed people for almost 10 years now and, like a lot of people, didn’t go through much formal training to do so. I’ve tried to base my management style on those managers who have really affected my professional and personal development – those I loved and learned from, and others who I learned from in far less positive ways.
Understanding Motivations: Good Days and Bad
Some of the most compelling and interesting exercises for me during the workshop involved taking the time to reflect on both my personal and professional motivations as a manager, and those of my team and organization.
To start things off, the instructor asked us to think back to a day when we came home from work feeling truly excited and fulfilled about our job. Similarly, we thought about days when we came home feeling a little beaten down and discouraged about work.
Some of us are motivated by money, titles or promotions, meaningful work, or a public acknowledgement of a job well done. When you think back on an awesome, inspiring day at work, what about it made it great? Do you know what motivates your team and employees?
Going through this exercise helped us to not only identify our own motivations but to consider those of the people we manage – understanding that can help us to adapt the way we manage and mentor them.
Which leads us to our next point…
Flex Your Leadership Style
Every manager is unique and will bring their own leadership style to an organization, but staying in your management “comfort zone” too frequently can be a drawback for you and those you manage. Managers need to use a variety of leadership styles depending on the business situation and the people or teams they are managing.
Some leadership styles are more authoritative and coercive, others more democratic or mentoring/coaching-focused. Part of our leadership styles comes from our personalities, our backgrounds, or the way we were managed previously. The reality is that none of these styles on their own are wrong, but focusing on one style too heavily can create challenges.
What works for a self-motivated, highly competent employee may not work with another that needs more development and coaching. In an emergency situation, a coercive style (“Do what I say!”) can be very effective, but it can also impact motivation long-term. An affiliative style, focused on team building, can increase morale, but has the potential to allow poor performance to go uncorrected. Daniel Goleman has identified six main leadership styles in this article from Harvard Business Review (registration required).
Goleman’s article underscores the importance of thinking outside our comfort zones as managers and adapting our preferred style based on the person and the situation. Being flexible to switching between styles, as the circumstances require, is an indication of both emotional intelligence and strong, adaptive leadership.
Don’t Eat the Marshmallow!
Then, as with all executive leadership seminars, we also discussed the power of marshmallows.
This stemmed from Walter Mischel’s work on impulse control and delayed gratification in the 1960s where he gave preschoolers a choice: You can have one marshmallow now, or wait a few minutes and then have two marshmallows. The results showed that those children able to wait for the second marshmallow (i.e., focused on long-term goals) were more successful later in life than those who immediately ate the first marshmallow (i.e., focused on short-term satisfaction).
As a manager – and a longtime PR agency employee – I found this analogy fascinating. Too often we focus on quick wins and short-term success that don’t connect to the bigger picture or objective. For our clients, we want to show value and results, especially early on in the engagement, but if those results don’t drive their businesses forward in a meaningful way, are they really worth it?
Perceived Versus Actual Rules
In another marshmallow-centric exercise, teams competed to build the tallest structure out of dry spaghetti sticks, masking tape and string that would support a single marshmallow (Spoiler alert: Marshmallows are surprisingly heavy!).
While this task seems ridiculous at first, it actually allowed our teams to put the workshop’s lessons into action. It presented an opportunity to collaborate quickly, understand each team member’s strengths and roles, test and re-test prototypes, and learn from those results.
For my group specifically, we learned the drawbacks of following perceived rules versus actual rules. Long story short, we assumed we couldn’t build the structure’s foundation in a certain way, and no one thought to ask the instructor or conduct competitive research to see what other groups were doing. We just kept plodding along assuming we were right. We lost the competition as a result.
The dangers of following perceived rules have huge repercussions when it comes to managing others and your own professional development. If you keep your head down, assuming you’re following the right path, you’re not guaranteed to succeed. There might be new and different paths to take, or even an escape ladder hiding in the corner that will take you to another destination entirely!
I realize it’s not always feasible to cross the country and head to Harvard for a two-day workshop, but I would highly recommend the power of external training for anyone who manages people, in any capacity. Getting outside of your day-to-day business routine and interacting with new people from vastly different backgrounds and professions was almost as helpful as the workshop’s lessons themselves.
What type of leadership or management training has been useful to you as a PR professional? Has any of it involved marshmallows? Tell us here, in the comments!
Would you believe it if you heard that nearly 11 percent of most marketing budgets are dedicated to social media? How about if you heard that among Fortune 500 companies, nearly 98 percent rely on social media for a combination of public relations, marketing, and customer service and industry insights?
While these statistics alone are not surprising, it is curious that despite the deep integration and heavy investment in social media activities, marketers are still facing challenges to deliver a strong ROI.
The 2017 biannual CMO survey, sponsored by American Marketing Association, Deloitte, and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, shines a light on the challenge businesses have converting social media investments into effective marketing. In fact, the survey found that 44 percent of CMOs said that social media’s impact was nonexistent or minimal.
With the impact of social media at an all-time low, and the investment of social media increasing (spending is expected to grow 19 percent over the next five years), how can companies better align strategies to create a social media plan that is both impactful and successful?
Cision recently published a white paper that taps into this challenge, providing six best practices for companies to consider when creating an enterprise-level social media plan. Checking the box on all six of these strategies will help maximize social media spending.
- Include all company departments. Taking a company-inclusive approach to social media will help create a plan that is authentic and maps back to the company’s overall business and communication objectives. A marketing department may not have insight into every subdivision, so getting feedback and including insight from different branches will help better define messages, accurately establish targets, select platforms and track results.
- Establish relevant, specific and measurable goals. Setting objectives you hope to secure from your social media efforts will lay the groundwork for future social activity. Without establishing an end goal, social media efforts can result in being too general and run up budget spending instead of delivering meaningful messages to your target audiences and creating impact for your company.
- Create target audience personas. A great way to establish and deliver meaningful content to your target audiences is by creating a customer “persona.” This can be done by identifying the character traits and spending habits of your company’s average and/or target customer. Combining characteristics such as age, gender, profession and income to create an “ideal” customer will help you understand the messages they want to hear, ultimately creating a more strategic social media plan.
- Identify the right platforms. Once you have firmly defined your target audience and established your persona, consider what social media platforms they would visit. What social media apps do they have installed on their smart phones? What platforms do they check at lunch? Depending on your industry and your persona’s demographic and profession, the answer to those questions and therefore the social platforms of interest will likely vary. Consider holding focus groups and issuing surveys to confidently detect your persona’s preferred platforms.
- Invest in the right technology. Investing in integrated social tools can help marketers monitor analytics around engagement levels and message distribution. A disconnect between social media spending and ROI can often occur when companies have not established an efficient and effective way to track their metrics. Marketing departments should vet multiple tools before making a purchase decision.
- Get internal feedback. Opening up the communication lines and welcoming feedback from the inner team will help in the brainstorming process and introduce ideas and strategies that the C-Suite may not have considered. Not only will this create opportunity for fresh insight, it may also filter and eliminate suggestions that are not ultimately structured for success and that will not resonate with your persona.
Cision’s full white paper can be found here: A Hub, Spokes & Technology: Social Media Strategy for Enterprise Businesses.
For many young adults entering the professional workforce, the ability to successfully manage email can be daunting. If not correctly managed, important emails can wind up at the bottom of one’s inbox, which may lead to a late reply or missed opportunity.
Managers, business partners, and customers also expect people to master email because so much business is conducted over the platform. According to Reuters, Adobe Systems, Inc. conducted a poll of 400 white-collar professionals and found that, on average, they spent 6.2 hours per day checking and sending emails, 3.2 of which were dedicated to work emails alone. Assuming that folks work 40 hours per week, this means they are spending an average of 16 hours weekly managing email. Because so much time is spent each week on email, developing good habits is exceedingly beneficial.
Given this, I decided to ask my colleagues at Communiqué PR for their tips on managing email. Here are their suggestions
Create and Use Folders
Folders are a great way to be organized in email. Some people prefer to create folders organized by subject, client or required action. For example, Zach Hanlon, a marketing and sales expert, was experiencing email overload. After speaking with his best friend (who works at a major consulting firm), he adopted a simple, yet effective strategy and set up just five folders: Inbox, Today, This Week, This Month/Quarter, and FYI. Then, he filed his emails into the various folders based on when he needed to act on them. (He details his approach in Fast Company.)
Personally, I’ve chosen to organize my folders by inbox and our list of clients. The bottom line is you need to come up with a system that best fits your needs and helps you to stay organized.
Respond in a Timely Fashion
Timing and organization are everything, and being responsive to email demonstrates you are punctual and that you view the sender’s email as a priority. Most clients and colleagues expect a response to their email within 24 hours, at the latest. Even if you can’t immediately start or respond to a request, it is a good practice to reply and let the sender know that you have received the message to avoid leaving people in the dark. By practicing good email etiquette, you are more likely to establish effective working relationships that are conducive to your overall success.
A popular tool to help you manage email when you’re out of the office is an automated response. An automated response may be used for certain occasions such as vacation days, sick days, or other blocks of time when you anticipate being unavailable. Communication is an important aspect of business, and by setting up an automated response you are still actively in contact with clients and colleagues even when not available. However, you’ll want to restrict its use because the recipient may perceive that his or her email is a lower priority or that communication with you may be difficult.
Another interesting idea is to put your out-of-office details, such as vacation days or meetings, in your signature so it is clear when you may be unavailable. This enables you to remind people in advance of your absence, which most people appreciate because it allows them to plan.
Be Concise
In the business world, time is of the essence, and maximizing your time and work output is paramount for success. When composing emails, communicating clearly while keeping the email brief is important, which is why the “One Thing” rule by David Masters, a professional blogger and writer, is so useful.
According to Masters, when composing emails it is best to limit yourself to writing about one subject at a time. When trying to discuss multiple subjects, the email may become too long and confusing. By sticking to one subject, you can begin to take a step in the right direction toward brevity and clarity.
Another great tip is to follow the idea of five sentences or less in an email. Usually, anything under the five-sentence mark comes off as abrupt, while more than five sentences is deemed too long. In email, you should be able to achieve your overall goal within the five sentence limit. Within these five sentences, the main questions that should be answered, according to Guy Kawasaki, a chief evangelist for Canva and brand ambassador for Mercedes Benz, are: Who are you? What do you want? Why are you asking me? Why should I do what you’re asking? And, lastly, what is the next step? By sticking to these five questions, you will be able to write clear and concise emails, which is a valuable skill to have in the business world.
For more on how to craft a perfect email, check out this article: “The Experts’ Guide to the Ever-Elusive Perfect Email”.
Concluding Thoughts
There are many ways to handle a high volume of emails, and some methods may work better than others. For those who have not tried these tips, I recommend incorporating them into your daily email routine.