In a Crisis, Communicating Well is Key
When a crisis arises, people look to their leaders, and it’s incumbent upon those leaders to understand that their normal communications plan may not be sufficient for the situation. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t wait until his next scheduled “Fireside Chat” to tell the American people. Likewise, he didn’t try to go along as if nothing had happened.
Three things people will want to know from a leader in a crisis are (1) facts necessary to protect themselves and their families from the emergent danger, (2) that leaders are making well-informed decisions, actively gathering and disseminating information as it becomes available, and (3) that leaders are actively engaged in managing the resources available to meet the crisis and, in so doing, setting the stage for a return to “normal,” whether that takes hours, days, weeks, months or, as we’ve seen with the coronavirus pandemic, years.
Mixed messaging may be the worst thing that can occur. During the current pandemic, a variety of messages came pouring out from different sources, some reputable, some not. Some messages were misinformation from otherwise reputable sources that still taint announcements from those sources years later.
Remember how early announcements said that masks didn’t prevent COVID-19, ostensibly to allow hospitals and medical professionals to get a jump on acquiring protective gear? When the message changed to say masks did help, many people refused to believe it—citing the early announcements, often by the very people who changed their guidance, and were now trying to encourage mask adoption. Today, a significant part of the population looks at mask orders as a violation of freedoms, and not public health guidance, because of that early communications misdirection.
When the first cases of the omicron variant were identified on our shores, and cases started appearing despite mask use, that empowered those arguments, despite the official guidance adapting to the more easily transmitted variant, and saying that surgical masks less effective, and recommending upgrading to masks meeting N95 and KN95 standards.
Even though “the Science” predicted that regular masks would be less effective, and omicron caseloads reflected those predictions, many people saw it as reinforcing their anti-mask position, even when things played out as expected.
If they distrust a source, they may never go back to it. Worse yet, in the age of social media, there are plenty of sources vying to fill the void. What this means for leaders is that you need to share accurate information as quickly as possible—but never dispense false information. If you lie, you may be written off forever.