How to Communicate in a Crisis
It is the leaders job to define reality and communicate this to their team.
If you don’t define reality for your team someone else will. In the absence of clear communication from their leaders, people will define reality for themselves based on their fears and assumptions.
Communication during a crisis needs to be clear, consistent and concise.
Clear communication is communication that is both easy to understand and clearly - transparently - true. Don’t hide uncomfortable truths in the hope that the problems will go away.
Consistent communication is important as people need to hear the same message several times before it starts to sink in and affect their behaviour.
Concise communication honours peoples limited time and limited emotional reserves during a crisis by cutting to the chase and telling them what they need to know and then releasing them.
And in all this keep a sense of perspective - avoiding naive optimism but still speaking hope, avoiding despair but still speaking honestly.
The Puppy Perspective
The other morning, my world was a world of poo. That isn’t a metaphorical way to say anything had gone wrong – quite the opposite in fact. I simply mean that we had five new girl puppies in the house (they were 5 weeks old), and that night was my turn to be the puppy-sitter. It was all going rather well, with no cries for food until gone 06:30 am which is when I let the puppy-mummy Grace into the puppy-pen to feed them.
Great, thought I, the pups are being looked after by their mum so I can stumble into the kitchen and make myself a delicious Earl Grey tea to get my day off to a perfect start. By the time the tea was made I returned to the living room to find Grace had finished feeding the pups and wanted to get out of the puppy pen- those little pups are cute but they have got very tiny but very sharp teeth so the days of having a ‘comfort suckle’ on mum are over! I let Grace out of the pen and put some chew toys in for the pups to play with and decided to tackle the dishwasher back in the kitchen as the pups scampered about the pen and played – content and full of milk (the pups not me…).
That morning I learned something about synchronisation. Before the SAS or Navy Seals go into battle, they synchronise their watches. When lovers walk, they synchronise their steps. My little pups – they synchronise their poos!
I returned to the living room to a scene of carnage so stomach churning and disgusting that even HBO would not be brazen enough show it in Game of Thrones – it made the Red Wedding look like a family picnic. The pups were still scampering and rolling around the pen – but they had all been for a poo. And as any of my pups will tell you – there is no point in doing a poo unless you have a dance in it (which some did) – although some don’t dance, but they do paint – so they had painted little puppy paw prints on the wall, and made trails across the paper on the floor of the pen. And they are jolly and inquisitive little girls, these pups, so when I get over my shock and awe and get in the pen to try to start cleaning up- they scamper over to me to so they can see what I am doing, and try to help. One started to drag some ‘decorated’ paper over to show me what she had made for me – another stuck her face into the open packet of baby wipes I was using to clean another pup’s feet – one started to nibble my toes, another tried to climb up me and the fifth lay dozing with a smug grin on her face – I’m sure she was the one who painted the wall.
Having puppies is a lot of fun - but you also have to deal with a lot of mess.
There’s a metaphor for life right there - no matter how much you enjoy your job, it always comes with a certain amount of ‘poo’ that you have to clear up. Those tasks you really don’t enjoy - but they have to get done regardless.
You can’t have the puppies unless you are prepared to deal with the poo.
Everything worthwhile in life comes with a certain amount of poo that we have to deal with.
The question is - do we focus on the puppies or do we focus on the poo.
When someone asked me a few hours later how my day was going - I had to choose how I was going to answer. I could either say: I started my day playing with puppies, or I started my day covered in poo.
We choose what we focus on.
We live in the most challenging times - for people born after the Second World War probably the most challenging times we have ever experienced.
Yet, for all the poo - there is still puppies.
For all the reasons to cry, there are still reasons to smile.
When you communicate with your team, with your family and with your friends - have the courage to speak about both the poo and the puppies.