7 ways a PR spin doctor can worsen a crisis
By Craig on May 13, 2010 in Issues & crisis management, Media relations, Public relations, Strategic communication | View Comments
This is a guest post from Paul Ritchie*, an experienced public relations practitioner who has just published Stay On Message^, a book which explains the principles of professional communication and how they interact with context, narrative, framing and the media cycle.
The most common thought that is contained within crisis management literature is that somehow a crisis is just an external event that can be managed with the right level of resources and preparation. My view is that this is incomplete and it misses the most dangerous variable in any crisis and that is the way a spin doctor actually responds to the issue.
Stay On Message by Paul Ritchie
Time and time again, we see crises spin out of control because of the miscalculations of the spin doctor or the organisation he or she represents.
A crisis first and foremost is a time for good judgment, yet often under the pressure of the moment we retreat to the default mechanisms that define our own behaviour. It’s hard to believe but most of us under pressure move to a way of operating that, more often than not, is our general default. For some it is to shout, for others it’s to lock the door and search for data, for others it is to blame someone and, for others still, they downplay the crisis or even deny it is happening.
I suggest that spin doctors, more often than not, make seven common mistakes in a crisis. These mistakes are the result of our own default mechanisms. The challenge for the spin doctor is to understand their own defaults, so that when a crisis hits, they can actually be aware of their weaknesses and work around them.
These are the seven most common mistakes of a spin doctor in a crisis that I identify in my new book, Stay on Message.
1. Not asking for help
The speed and overwhelming intensity of a crisis demands the willingness and capability of a spin doctor to say, “I can’t do this alone”, and to call in help from other business units, or from an external public affairs firm.
2. Underestimating the danger
No one likes bad news and no one likes to be the person who brings bad news. In some organisations, to give bad news is akin to isolating yourself from the mainstream of an organisation. Think of Enron, Wall Street financiers who believed a market could never fall, NASA’s space shuttles, or the Catholic Church dealing with child abuse, or the Greek Government wildly spending money. It takes courage to confront prevailing worldviews or cultures that are crumbling internally.
As the interface between an organisation and the public, the spin doctor has a responsibility to his or her organisation to provide fearless, frank and honest advice about how to best manage the organisation’s reputation, and they also have a responsibility to the public and the media to ensure that the information provided is trustworthy and reliable.
Paul Ritchie
3. Throwing out your quality control
A crisis, by its nature, brings uncertainty and confusion and a testing of character that is remembered long after the intricacies of the events themselves are forgotten.
There is a tendency in a crisis for spin doctors to cut corners and throw away the normal quality control processes that typically guide the production of materials and the preparation for media conferences and interviews. To cut corners and throw away the processes that make your materials and responses accurate and robust is a false choice. Quality control is the key to producing reliable work, and these processes should not be junked in a crisis.
4. Using weasel words
Spin doctors have forgotten that part of their work involves saying uncomfortable things. Somewhere along the way, many spin doctors have come to believe that weasel words are the best way to pacify anger.
Weasel words allow a spin doctor to slice and dice a response, while thinking that by not providing real answers and not acknowledging the premise of an issue or accepting responsibility, then somehow the issue will go away. Instead of pacifying anger, however, weasel words galvanise anger, with the audience muttering to themselves, “they don’t get it”.
5. Providing false assurance
There is something deep within most people that says that, even in the darkest of circumstances, everything is going to be okay. This human yearning for reassurance has an important place in life, particularly in providing encouragement to loved ones at difficult times. However, there is a world of difference between holding the hand of a sick loved one and saying, “You’re going to be okay” and lying to them by saying, “The doctor says you will be home in 24 hours.”
The difference between false assurance and reassurance is a narrow one. Reassurance seeks to create strength out of pre-existing trust, whereas false assurance seeks to create that same confidence out of false premises.
For spin doctors who are managing the media response to a crisis, misplaced or false assurance can actually exacerbate a situation. False information in a crisis breaks trust with those seeking reliable information, harms the longer-term credibility of the spokesperson and, in a worst-case scenario, can actually cost lives.
6. Not accepting responsibility
Every crisis has a cause, or a series of causes. The powerful pressure of the principles of narrative means that in many crises, the quest to blame and punish someone commences almost immediately. That deep intrinsic yearning to make sense of things leads us all to instantaneously ask the question, “Whose fault is this?” When this question is asked, it sparks in others another basic human instinct, which is to avoid, hide from, or deny responsibility for their own mistakes and errors.
It is in assessing the issue of responsibility that the spin doctor has to move away from the traditional role of defending at all costs.
Traditionally, the work of spin doctors is to protect reputations, and because of this, most spin doctors instinctively gravitate towards providing a defence of any action. It is at this point in a crisis when many spin doctors make the terrible mistake of trying to explain and defend the organisation rather than seeking to answer the unfolding narrative. One of the worst mistakes a spin doctor can make in a crisis is to move immediately to a defensive position and not realise that he or she is defending the indefensible.
7. Getting caught flat-footed
Crises, by their nature are not planned. They can and do strike with little or no warning. They happen on weekends, at night or in the hours before you plan to head off on annual holidays – it is the spin doctors’ version of Murphy’s Law.
The need to communicate reliable and factual information quickly means that you have to be on top of your game and ready to go at a moment’s notice. The spin doctor’s email, fax and phone lists need to be up to date and backed up in multiple locations. Media monitoring must already in place and you have to be prepared for a failure in your organisation’s IT infrastructure. Its hard to get on the front foot if you are flat footed.
These are my seven most common mistakes in a crisis. If I have missed any let me know.
What do you think of Paul’s list of mistakes? Can you add others that should be high up on the list? Do you have personal experiences of your own that amplify what Paul has said? And on a lateral front, what do you think of him using the term ‘spin doctor’ for PR people!?
*Paul Ritchie has advised Australia’s largest institutions and political leaders on how to communicate their message for over 20 years. His work has provided him with unique insights into how organisations and political leaders position themselves in the media, how they develop narratives about what they do and how they behave when faced with a crisis. Paul has completed postgraduate study at Harvard University and the Australian Graduate School of Management. At Harvard, Paul studied the role of personal narrative, the rise of social media and the principles of adaptive organisational leadership.
^‘Stay on Message reveals the simple yet powerful tools that will allow you to communicate effectively and authentically in a world with unlimited media possibilities. It authentically explains the principles of communication and how they interact with context, narrative, framing and the media cycle. Stay on Message identifies the trends in new media and explains how to navigate this new media world. It is available from Vivid Publishing.
