Category Archives: Communicating in a crisis

Great messaging needs great consistency

Communicating in a crisis, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

One thing about effective messaging that is key for any business is consistency. Together with ‘clear’ and ‘concise’, it’s part of the three Cs of great communication (I’d be tempted to add a fourth C – creative – to that list).

Your mission…should you choose to repeat it
I thought about this while absorbing the latest UK local government election results and it made me think that a big problem for the Labour government is the lack of consistency when it comes to their messaging.

When coming to power in July 2024, they made a great noise about their “mission-driven” government. But when was the last time you heard any of the government’s front bench politicians talk about those five missions so carefully laid out?

*Clumsy metaphor alert* A chef needs consistency, so why not a communicator?

Of course, you might argue that the original mission-driven messaging here was too vague or disparate, but that’s not really the point I want to make: if the spokespeople don’t keep their discipline and the communication advisers allow the focus on their original messaging to be lost, no one – least of all the intended audience – really knows what the key messages are.

Forget me not
I think it’s a major problem for any organisation or business that builds a message platform which quickly gets forgotten, or subsumed by some other idea that similarly falls by the wayside.

I see it with the development of company values: often there are too many and they change too frequently. Try asking people in the business if they can tell you what the company values are and their inability to repeat them might surprise you – that’s a failure right there of the four Cs of great communication.

What do you stand for?
This is not a post about the political rights or wrongs of the current government, but it is a post about the need to be ruthlessly consistent about what it is that as a person, a business, or an organisation you stand for.

Top tips for a career in communications (and one thing to never get wrong)

Communicating in a crisis, Content marketing, Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Working with the media, Writing

Somebody asked me for the best bit of career advice I could give after years of working in the communications business. I thought long and hard about it and came up with a few thoughts.…

Be curious; listen more than you speak; know your audience; tailor your messaging; keep it simple; less is more; be nice (or at least not objectionable); proof read and proof read again; don’t misspell a spokesperson’s name; be clear and concise; don’t be afraid to introduce a bit of humour; don’t be afraid to challenge those around you (and particularly those above you); the legal team might know the law but that doesn’t mean they write better than you; trust your instincts (they’re almost always right); don’t use jargon/corporate speak; if you don’t understand what’s being said, chances are most others don’t know either; and don’t let ‘busyness’ steal time needed for thinking creatively…

And then I realised, all these things are great and ‘must haves’ but ultimately it comes down to one thing:

Never – and that means absolutely never – send an email with an attachment without first opening the attachment and checking it is actually the attachment you want to send.

Have that as your bedrock and you’ll go far.

Keep it real: authenticity makes for great communication

Communicating in a crisis, Content marketing, Talking to your employees

What characterises someone as a good communicator? Being ‘authentic’ is usually hailed as a key attribute; someone who says it how it is, who doesn’t hide behind pre-scripted sound bites, who answers the question (and without jargon) but, most importantly, is clearly themselves. People respond well to an authentic leader, whether it’s a politician or a business leader, and feel they can have a genuine connection with that individual.

But for some reason, being the authentic version of ourselves is quite hard. Watching a debate for the UK general election last week involving six leaders and deputy leaders of the UK’s political parties, each politician had 30 seconds at the end to give their pitch to the electorate. For some inexplicable reason, most chose to read from an autocue. The result? Stilted, monotoned, expressionless statements that had me thinking more about their presentation style than the content of what they had to say.

Why would a skilled politician and speaker need an autocue to give the type of speech that they have probably already given hundreds of times? All it served to do was to strip them of their authenticity; that very thing makes them the person they are and why people like – or dislike – them.

Strip away the stuff that hides the real you
It had me thinking that the best example of an authentic communicator is probably your five-year-old self. You weren’t afraid to say what you thought of something; weren’t afraid to admit you didn’t know; and weren’t shy of saying what it is you liked and didn’t like. Of course, your five-year-old self had no filter, so I am not suggesting reverting to toddler tantrums, but I am saying that leaders whether they are politicians, CEOs, or anyone with a message to give, should strip away the communications tools that cloak and stifle authenticity.

Bin the autocue
That means binning the autocue; the over-scripted corporate videos; the company intranet piece written and polished by someone else; and the impenetrable corporate jargon that you’d never use outside the office. And maybe doing more of the things that are authentic to you. It’ll make your communications better, and your message will be more likely to land.

How great leaders communicate

Communicating in a crisis, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

There’s nothing like an ambitious title for a blog and this one feels right up there along with 300 odd words on ‘How to do nuclear fusion’. But, here goes.

When you think about great historical figures who communicate well people like Churchill come to mind. A nice turn of phrase, consistent messaging, positive reinforcement, presence, and no little preparation resulted in a reputation as a great orator – though, interestingly, no one remembers his alleged struggles to overcome a speech impediment. Historians are divided as to whether he had a lisp, stuttered or simply liked a ‘loaded pause’.

Today’s leaders have it harder than he did in many ways given the number of communications channels they can use there and the expectation of delivering more. Some leaders, for good or ill, thrive on the immediacy of Twitter for example – dear departed Trump – while others are probably blissfully unaware as to what goes out under their name.

once upon a time

I want to communicate
What never changes though are the leaders – and I’m moving on to include business leaders and managers here – who are really good at communicating do it naturally. They have a distinctive voice; take every opportunity to communicate; are authentic (you can believe that what they’re saying is from them and represents their values); use wit and humour when appropriate; and take advice and feedback from those around them to improve. Probably most important though is their desire to communicate; they genuinely want to do it. Try media training someone who has no desire to talk to the media. It can be very painful.

For those who aren’t natural communicators, communication is a tougher job but no one says they need to be great orators. If they follow the same rules that come more naturally to the good communicator then why shouldn’t a bad communicator become a good communicator? And surely it’s worth the effort. For CEOs or senior managers, I would have said it’s probably the most important part of their job.

Easy enough? Now about fusing together those pesky light nuclei…

A train crash of a radio interview

Communicating in a crisis, Working with the media

A nice interview yesterday saw the Managing Director of Customer Experience at the Rail Delivery Group – Jacqueline Starr – face-up to John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Well, nice for the beleaguered rail passenger but I suspect that Jacqueline Starr won’t be buying her media relations team their morning coffees and croissants any time soon.

Hauled on to the show to discuss a Times story that found out of 50 rail journeys it was possible to get a cheaper fare on 33 of them than that advertised (and if you haven’t investigated split ticketing before, I’d strongly recommend you take a look), Starr rather walked into Humphrys’ gleeful clutches with a performance big on media messaging but rather lacking in substance.

image for screen-400The alarm bells rang when Starr’s first response was to laud how the “rail industry is very successful in meeting customer demands”.  Things got worse when she then fed Humphrys that awful line about how “customers are at the heart of everything we do”. I can almost see that A4 of key messages given to Starr beforehand.

All well and good to prepare some messaging but you cannot simply hope to paper over a genuine issue with some  platitudes that no one, least of all someone as tuned into PR hogwash as Humphrys, is going to roll over and accept.

Towards the end of the interview, Starr finally admitted to the issue and agreed it wasn’t acceptable. Why not do that from the outset? The rail travelling public is a cynical bunch and is never going to buy some stale soundbites about customer service.

Fair play to Starr for fronting up in the first place but a bit of empathy and, when you’ve been caught out, a good dollop of contrition and a commitment to put things right might have kept things on the rails and are what the travelling public (and John Humphrys and his ilk) want to hear.