This past week in our class at Fordham we looked at the crisis issues in our business today, and how people extract, shorten the news cycle, and figure out how to best address and deal with the challenges we face. I’ve dealt with everything from two suicides, to athletes endangering their wives, wives endangering their husbands, 9/11, lawsuits, hirings and firings. It goes on and on.
There are a couple of things that are really important: Listening and over-communicating. Listening to what is going on around you and being able to have the trust of the people who are dealing with their hair on fire, while also being able to differentiate whether the whole forest is on fire or just one of the trees.
Everybody has their own crisis going on every single day. (You have to) be able to be a bit of a calming voice and have a decent rolodex in your head to be able to talk to people outside to quickly understand how big or small it is. Every situation is totally different. You have to put empathy and humanity into everything you do. You can’t just go to a playbook — even if you have one — and say, “This is the way we have to do it all the time.”
Over-communicating is really important, especially in the world of social media. Whether it’s the janitor or the president of an organization, you want to make them feel like they at least know what’s going on and that there’s a plan. Establishing who the one voice is who’s speaking for you alleviates a lot of problems.
Coaches are probably the only people who actually like to talk about the value of losing, and that too can help get through a crisis. Acknowledging the loss and what we learned. The only place that I think successfully talks about learning from losing is sports because it’s a zero-sum game. You either win or you lose every time you’re out there.
I was lucky enough in the last three years of his life to spend a lot of time with (Former NBA Commissioner) David Stern. David would always go around and talk about two things. If you want to be successful, you have to be able to sell. That means selling an idea, selling yourself, selling a product, an organization. And you have to be able to concisely tell your own story.
Without being able to do that and communicate to the people around you, unless you’re the head of a sovereign nation, it doesn’t work. Communication and storytelling are probably way overused today, but are still essential.
You look at the best coaches, CEOs, the best clergy members, the best in anything. What they do is have an understanding of whom they’re talking to while being able to concisely communicate a core message that’s inspirational to everybody listening, especially during challenging times.
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