Crisis Communicaitons... The Lasso Way - S3E30 - Benjamin Morgan

[Music] All right welcome back to LASO and Leadership. This is the third season of our hit podcast. We're looking at Beards Book Club. But we're taking a slight diversion today from Beards Book Club. Because we've got a really special guest which I can't wait to get to. But before I get too far ahead of myself, I'm Jason Rogers. I'm one of the hosts of the show and I'm here with my incredible co-host, Garth Nichols. Garth, it's good to see you buddy. Yeah, good to see you too Jason. We're excited about this little digression we're taking from Beards Book Club. Speak with Benjamin Morgan. And Benjamin, welcome to the podcast. You know the pod well enough and so we're really excited that you're here because you know as the days get shorter Jason, right, as the less sunlight, there's some things that come up that we need help with. And so today we're going to be talking about communications but a particular type of communications and I'm excited about it. So Benjamin, why don't you take some time to introduce yourself? Well first of all I'm so pleased to be a digression tool for your podcast from Thunderhead Club. So we've built it up. We've built it up. If you go add that to my credentials, a digression tool. So yeah, thanks very much guys. What a treat to be a part of your podcast and certainly talking leadership. So my name's Ben Morgan based in Calgary, Alberta. And I am a senior fellow with an organization called the Center for Risk Communications. That's based out of New York. It's under the leadership of world leading one of the world leading authorities in crisis and risk communications. Dr Vincent Covello. I am a senior fellow in his New York office and I also champion Canadian support in organizations and essentially we help support organizations prepare for conversations or communications when they are communicating to an audience who is feeling high stress high concerns. We use that language a lot and we go there because it's not just applicable that the theories and tools that we engage in aren't just applicable when you're having a crisis but they're equally applicable when the audience you're speaking to is feeling that stress and concern. So in the academic world you've heard that the province is cutting funding. So your students are feeling stressed to concern what's going to happen to tuition. Your faculty is feeling stressed and concerned. Are we going to lose positions? And so perhaps as the leadership of the university, you're needing to address faculty and students. And so you would want to take a different approach to have your communication as effective as possible because the audience is you're speaking to our high stress high concern. So that's kind of the wheelhouse I'm in. Crisis and risk communications. I found myself randomly into that space all starting with the Calgary southern Alberta floods in 2013 where I was with the city of Calgary and was ultimately accountable for the communications from the municipality during Canada's costless natural disaster that was followed by the 2014 Snowtenber event the 2015 Underground Bump fire and then was flown up to Fort McMurray in 2016 to help support communications during the Fort McMurray fires in 2016. And it's just kind of gone from there. So it's a place I'm passionate about and I love having conversations and looking forward to today's conversation. Hey, Garth, before you get to your first question, buddy, hear me on this in 2014 in Snowtenber has been says that was my first week as I head of school here at Rundle. And I know you've dealt with a little bit of snow days out there in Ontario, but here at Rundle, in 40 years, we'd never called a snow day before. And Snowtenber was the one day we'd ever called a snow day at Rundle period full stop. It was that bad. So I was, you know, in the fire trying to communicate my way out of Snowtenber, I wish it had been or his wisdom at that point because I'm sure I made a mistake or two along the way. But, uh, anyways, let's get over to you, Garth, what let's take on your mind. Well, thanks. And, you know, snow like a snow day isn't a crisis, right? But some people will have high stress and high concern. So when you talk about risk communications, crisis communications, Benjamin, give us a sense of constitutes and you're my, what constitutes a crisis? Well, that is that is the question. And if you dig into the academics around definition of crisis, you'll find all sorts of definitions. And, uh, you know, primarily if an organization is experiencing a crisis, it's Tony Jax that says this really, really well. Uh, Tony Jax, uh, author, um, researcher, he would say a crisis is an event occurring that has the potential to sink the ship, to bring your organizations to its knees. You're experiencing something that if you do not ask for help, you don't, you don't have the resources or the capabilities to deal with this yourself. You're in crisis. Certainly with the advent and, and with, with social media and now we're in the AI space, crisis can take on a lot of different, um, uh, have a lot of different perspectives, financial crisis, mental health crisis, uh, brand and reputation crisis. We, we're seeing right now, uh, uh, too much political crisis. And, and, and I kind of tend to drift away from, you know, it doesn't really matter how you define it as a, as a crisis communication practitioner. I'm not going to come into your organization, say this isn't a crisis. It's not how you define it. It's what you do with it. It's how you respond to it. Whatever it is. And so, um, I liken this example, you can have a, uh, so I'm in Calgary, Alberta, the, the main highway here is called the deer foot trail highway, too. And if you can imagine a, a big motor vehicle collision, uh, snow day, right, uh, semi truck is spun out and landed on top of a car and traffic is backing all the way up. Take one event as an example. And, and I would argue that to the person in the car that just had a semi truck fall onto it and maybe they're critically injured and pinned, they're probably experiencing a crisis. They, they are in trouble. They need help. At the same time, all the emergency responders who are now out on the highway working in the elements, they're at risk. Uh, they are experiencing that event, not as a crisis. They're experiencing it as risk. And then you have that backlog of traffic. And now maybe I'm sitting in that traffic line. And I'm late to join this podcast. I'm now experiencing an issue. So, you know, you can take one event as an example and it depends on your experience, your individual experience and how you are engaging or connected to that event. Uh, to everybody else coming the opposite way in traffic, it's just noise. It's something for us to look at. We're going to rubber neck. Um, so yeah, you can take an event. You know, I'll throw this one at you while we're, while we're there. Was COVID a crisis? Was COVID-19 a crisis? I think depends who you ask, right? Isn't that, isn't that the point of this Ben? Like, I loved the way you've dissected that, like, it reminds me a lot of circles of impact when we look at something that happens in a school and who do we need to take care of first and who do we need to take care of second who you take there and who are the caregivers and then how do we take care of the caregivers? And I think that that's how we frame some crisis. And I'm not sure if it's right or wrong in our schools, but that you've dissected that crisis on the highway in a similar way. And I, it just brings comfort. I think I'm part of bringing comfort to leaders is, I think we have to have guiding principles because in the moment, obviously, we want to pick up the phone. We want to call somebody to help us out. But sometimes we don't have that first moment. We've got to do something in the in the early stages. So if you're to strip communications from a leadership standpoint down to like two or three core principles that every leader should know, wow, what would you do with that Ben? How would you dissect that? Yeah, that's a great question because I love core principles because that's what I try to live by, try to. We don't always get it right. You know, when we do work with organizations and we talk about this is how you can communicate when your audience is feeling stressed or concerned. But we also have to recognize that in many cases, the leadership team is feeling stressed and concerned. And so if you're if you yourself are feeling that stress and concern, it can be a lot harder to connect with the core principles to think, how am I going to connect with my audience? Because I'm, you know, we say check your gas tank, right? So I think three principles perhaps for leaders to consider. If we if we strip it down, right? To the foundation, if you will. First one I might throw out at you is people first message second. Theodore Roosevelt said this many, many years ago, people want to know that you care. before they care what you know. This holds, I don't know if you saw the communication coming out of the 2013 floods, the first press conference in the morning, we put the mayor up. And the mayor wasn't there to talk about how much of the energy grid had been reenergized, you know, what bridges were open. The mayor was there to say I was in the community last night. I see you're hurting. I want you to know that we're working as hard as we can. Ray, he's the one that connects to, and this is a very important word, empathy. Empathy before information, especially when people are under stress. So that would be the first, the first principle. People first message second. I think also there's an opportunity to think about the notion of clarity is kindness. Whether you're in a school, a hospital or a Fortune 500 company, your message has to be clear, concise and repeated. Confusion, confusion can breed fear, clarity can help build trust. Trust and empathy are incredibly important in communications to an audience that's feeling that stress and concern. And then building on number two, repetition builds clarity. I shared, oh, I didn't share, but before this communications, phase of my life, I was a paramedic at Advanced Life Support Paramedic. And I did a lot of time in the Dispatch Center. So I used to answer the 911 calls. If we picked up the phone and somebody was screaming at the other end, my baby, my job was to repeat three times. I need you to calm down so I can help you. I need you to take a breath so I can understand what's happening so I can help you. That repetition helps to build credibility. Dr. Kovalla will talk about the stickiness. They talk about stickiness in marketing. So during uncertainty, people may need to hear something three to seven times before it sticks or before they believe it. And let's call that not nagging, but let's call it leadership is thinking about your people first, your message comes second, clarity being kind and building that repetition. So what never changes? Empathy, clarity and repetition no matter the platform. So even when we say you need to hear it three to seven times, that can be in different places. Think about marketing. Yeah. You're gonna hear it on the radio on your drive home. You're gonna pass that road sign, bold sign, sitting at the side of the road. And then you're gonna get home and you're gonna see it on your socials. And then there's a postcard arriving in the mail. Same message on repeating it multiple times through multiple platforms, but it's that repetition and clarity. So Benjamin, you mentioned three to seven times before the message lands. I've heard different numbers as well, but I love that it's this repetition. And you're talking about, you know, be concise and repeat and repeat repeatable. And then empathy comes first. I want your feedback on this. If I am in a crisis and I don't know, there's a lot of like ambiguity and complexity and I don't know all of the facts. Two questions. How long do I have before I lose control of the narrative? And what's the first thing I should do, I assume the first thing I should do is empathy, but you know, is it okay to say we don't have all the facts, but we know you're hurting. We don't have all the facts. We know you're concerned as are we. Like give us a, give us a run out of that. Yeah, so I love that. And I'm going to challenge you a little bit because you're very, very close. Okay. Okay, so number one, how long do you have? Do you have any idea when the first public conversation about the Boston marathon bombing started? When did the public discourse around the Boston marathon bombing start? I have no idea. I'm going to hazard the guests and say it was like almost immediate. Yeah, the first publicly available tweet was a picture of smoke rising from a backpack. It took authorities somewhere between three and five hours to be a part of that conversation because in that, at that time, we were still hung up on this notion that as the authority, we can't say anything until we know. We can't say anything until it's verified. We flipped that on its head a little bit during the Calgary floods and we found a difference between, there's difference between information and communication. Right? The bridge is gone, the bridge is gone. That's information. Communication has got all these little pieces and subtleties to it. So you're absolutely right. You want to be a part of that conversation as soon as you can. Even if that's saying, hey, we know something is happening. We don't have all the details yet, but we're committed to keeping you informed. Right? Something is simple, that could be a social post or a all-hale bulletin rule. Yeah. In your example, though, and this is, I'm a little bit of an outlier in this world a little bit. You said we know you're scared, we know you're-- Right? You don't know. And I see so many leaders come to the podium and they'll say, this has been a very difficult time for everybody in our community. Well, no. Right? Maybe we started at the top talking about how people will experience and event in different ways. So if you're a leader and you're telling me that this is a difficult day, maybe I wasn't having a difficult day until you told me that I was supposed to be having a difficult day. Yeah. So as a leader, don't make assumptions on what people-- and you can fix that by saying, we think that many of you may be struggling with this. Or we know that many people in our community have had a hard time with the feelings that they have about this. But we can't make assumptions in blanket statements. And I'll go back to my paramedic days when I would have a paramedic student and they would go to start an intravenous, a little needle in the hand. More often than not, they would say, this is just going to hurt for a minute. And I would say afterwards, why did you tell them it was going to hurt? Well, because I need to talk to them. I need to make sure they know what's happening. I said, yeah. So tell them you need to start an intravenous because you're going to get them medicine. If it hurts, it hurts. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But you use the professional standing over somebody who's vulnerable and you're telling them, this is going to hurt. What is their experience? Well, more likely, it's going to hurt. So I would avoid making assumptions, avoid making blanket statements. When I do my presentations, I use a lot of language, like likely. I try to avoid using statements that are absolute in nature, guarantee, ensure-- we will do this to ensure this never happens again. You're just setting yourself up for failure, right? So-- Yeah. Yes, you want to be a part of the conversation quickly. You can do that by simply saying, we are aware of an event occurring in the wing of-- y-wing of the university. We don't have all the answers yet. We're committed to-- we understand or appreciate that some of our community or many in our community are scared of what they're hearing about. We want you to know, right? I'll use often-- I call it the four-box method, where I'll just take information and drop it into four different boxes. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here's what we're doing. And then maybe another one box for rumor, rumor, mis-rumor-busting, or sometimes I'll put in there what we need people to do. So here's what we're doing. Here's what we know. We don't know. Here's what we need you to do. Is a great way of organizing the different pieces of information you might have coming up from an event. Now, Ben, in leadership, I think you've hit on some really interesting topics there. I think we went from, like, principles to mistakes. And I-- mistakes are made. Sometimes in leadership, I think leaders are paralyzed because they don't want to make a mistake. They don't want to make a criticular. So they do nothing. And I think part of that bringing that fear down is bringing awareness. And so I'm asking Ben, what are three or two or one common mistakes that leaders make in a moment of communication crisis or otherwise? What pitfall should we be watching for that are avoidable? Is the question. So I'm going to pick up on where you just were. You can't clam up. It's the classic media, no comment. We had a client-- very, very important organization. They do incredible social service programings for people in need. They were in the middle of their annual fundraising campaign, and they got held by-- held hostage by cyber pirates. So they had lost their website, their internet. They lost their voice phones. They lost their emails. They didn't have anything. And postcards in the mail donate now $2.5 million. They were trying to rise, right? So I might have received that postcard. I would have gone to scan the QR code, and I would have got a 404 error. So I roll in four days in and I'm like, okay, leader, what have you said and to who helped me understand? And the reply was we haven't said a thing to anybody except the people that are in this room. And it struck me as odd, but they were paralyzed by fear because their fear was if people knew that they were being held ransom that nobody would, why would I donate to that organization if you're just using that money to pay cyber pirates? That's not what I'm donating money to. So they paralyzed in fear, right? There's a, in the Chinese language, when they spell crisis, they use two characters. It happens to be here. They use two characters. One character represents threat and the other character represents opportunity. And so the leader needs to recognize that there's opportunity to rise and demonstrate their potential or their commitment as a leader. One of the biggest traps can be leading with logic instead of empathy, which is quite opposite to the first principle we talked about. Those smart leaders, and I'm air quoting smart, the smart leaders will jump straight to the why or the data, assuming that everybody is on the same page. And this, you know, when you've got a PhD, you know, you've got engineers, scientists, and they come out, they have all the facts. And so, hey, this is what people need to know. When in reality, their audience is still reacting emotionally. And when you're having an emotional reaction, there's no way logic is going to help them through that emotion. Right back to COVID, when we all had that toilet paper hoarding scenario going on, there was no need, no need for people to hoard toilet paper. That was a visceral emotional response. And when you look at that, this is why stores started to put ration toilet papers, ration toilet paper, you can only buy, because if you go back to Aristotle, he's like, you have three ways to address a problem, right? The pathoetho, pathoetho, logo. And then that's logic emotion, logic emotion and authority. And so the toilet paper hoarding, it was such an emotional response that no logic was going to help people understand that they don't need to be doing this. That's why they went to authority. And they said, you can only buy one package of toilet paper. So when you're that routely, emotionally responding, don't come out with the facts or the wire, the data, you need to meet your audience where they're at, which is starting to lead with empathy. And I'll caveat that by saying it needs to be genuine empathy, not scripted. And so you really need to ask yourself, depending on what you're experiencing, who is the right leader to show up on behalf of the organization? Is it always the president and CEO? Maybe not. I've seen a few. Let's talk BP horizon, the leader of BP should never have shown up. The CEO of the, forget the railway name, but the lack of a gantyck, that CEO never should have shown up. A, not the right person, B, they weren't prepared. And it tells a little bit more like as leaders, this is a really interesting point for us. What are the, like, what's the matrix? Who, like, how do we decide whether it's the head of school that shows up, the CEO that shows up or someone who's closer to the actual issues? Or is it someone who has stronger relationships with the people who are impacted? I'd love to hear more about that. And I just before I jump on the second part to a growth question is, when do you decide? Like, right? Do you, in crisis do you decide pre-crisis or is it in situ? Like, is it? So that's, that's what I'm wondering. Yeah, so the answer to the Garth question is depends. The answer to Jason's question is ideally before. And we've built, we've built matrixes. And I'll give you an example. I, I won't name the municipality, but there was a municipality that was really having a power struggle between the mayor and the city manager. And, and that was the struggle, the power struggle between the public communication. So mayor thought the mayor should have more air time. The city manager thought the city manager should be having more air time. The city manager also thought that the general managers should be taking more of a proactive role in being effective communicators to the community. So we built a matrix. And we had that we had them all sign it, right? Right down to guy or gal on the floor, the subject matter expert. This is when you would have a subject matter expert speak to. If it's, if it's a program, right? Like, if so, if you're speaking to a program within the city, that would be the subject matter expert. If that is now talking about maybe it's more connected to that department overall, it's the director. If it's more high level policy, then maybe it's a general manager. You know, if, and then when does it get to the mayor? Well, when it's about the people or it's about the why and, you know, not the how, but the why. So we've built that matrix. And we've done that for organizations as well. When does it go to this president and the CEO? Justin Trudeau may be missed an opportunity on COVID. He was doing his daily Justin was doing or Justin. I don't know if I can call him Justin. Ormor Primus. Yes. Or last week's totally fine. It's clear. You know, the former prime minister was doing daily briefings. Remember him coming out in front of the house under the tent. And okay, okay, tell me something we haven't heard. You know, and you could just see him. I'm taking the role on this. Well, we still, you know, I started to tune him out. Maybe shouldn't have been him. Maybe when the prime minister of Canada says I'm holding a briefing, there's something more important now that we should be paying attention to, right? Maybe it should have been the minister of health or the, you know, whoever was ultimately accountable, right? So think about that escalation point. So from an organization perspective, you know, hey, we built this product and a bolt has come loose and fallen off. Does the CEO need to come out and say we're very sorry about that bolt that's fallen off? Probably not. But if 100 bolts have fallen off and those hundred bolts have caused, you know, car crashes and fatalities and the reputation is tanking. Yeah, maybe we need to see the president of CEO, the person that's ultimately accountable. So you, yeah, you can build that matrix in. And then I also think about, you know, you got to consider personality. Really, you know, you're your higher leadership team, your C suite leadership team. Maybe the smartest people in the room, but are they the people when your audience is feeling that stress and concern to be able to demonstrate authentic empathy and care. Maybe, maybe not. Ben, this has been pure gold before we got on the air. We said, we usually do 20, you know, at the most 25 minutes, we're well past that at this point. I can go on for like the next hour or hour and a half or two hours. I've just been filled with this wisdom. And I know that our leaders are and we hope that we're compelling them to seek you and your work out. We'll get to where they can reach you in a second. But before we do, I've got a question I have to ask because I'm dying of curiosity. You know, Ted Lasso, we watch him. We've been dissecting his leadership for about two and a half years now. From a communication lens, is he a good leader? Ben, what do you think? Well, I think he's probably a great leader and a good communicator. And he's probably a better communicator than he gets credit for. So I think, I think if you looked at Ted Lasso, maybe here's some things that leaders could copy or emulate. And what stands out for me most about Ted Lasso when he gets into those difficult conversations. To me, he hits that empathy without the ego. I don't see the ego when he's expressing when he's expressing the empathy, which to me resonates a little bit more empathy without ego. And if you watch the show, there appears to me to be a consistency of values. I don't think you would ever second guess what Ted Lasso values because he's consistent with it. You basically know what you're going to get. And the third that maybe leaders could avoid is investing in people, not just the outcomes. Right, you want to win the game. You want to have the best team out on the pitch. And to do that, right, I think there was a there was a new owner or something and they just really wanted, I'm trying to remember the episode. I think it was season one, the new owner, the lady and rate her whole drive. The whole drive was to win the final right. They were the underdog team, all that kind of stuff. In order to reach the out. you got to invest in the players of the team. Because if you're not investing in the players, the team, you're gonna have a hell of a time reaching the outcome. So you got to invest in the people. - And it's interesting because we talk a little bit about the audience, like who you are speaking to. And Ted actually, and I think it supplies to school leaders in particular, because we have such opportunities to build relationships. He builds relationships with reporters. He has inside jokes, he's got nicknames, like the whole bit, not just suggesting we have nicknames for parents and families here, but he does lean into that relationship. So his message lands better. And I think that speaks to, when you're talking about empathy, it's gotta be authentic. And if you are unknown, your authenticity might not come off. You talk about who the personality is that you wanna get out there. But it's an interesting thing to invest, constantly invest in your audience so that when you are speaking in time of crisis, like they're ready to hear it. Like they Ted did a good job of that. - It's interesting, then, sure. - Yeah, there's a, Dr. Kavello has one of his formulas, and it's called 1n equals 3p. And that stands for every one piece of negative information. I need to balance it out with three positives. Maybe throw an extra one in there to get ahead of the curve, right? And that ties into this theory called negative dominance theory that we intuitively assign more weight or value to messages and information that's negative. The trick there is you don't need to wait for a time to deliver negative information to start with the positives and balancing. - Yes. - Before the acquisition of on through Onyx, WestJet used to do a great job at positive, you remember the elfs popping out of the Coke machines and delivering presents to everybody. There was no, there was never a meeting with the executive leadership board of WestJet saying, "Hey, we have an extra $500,000. What should we do?" I don't know, let's give presents to people. Oh, that sounds great. They were, the assumption would be, they were intuitively and strategically continuing to make positive deposits in what I call the sentiment bank with their audience, with their customers, so that when they did have something negative happen, they had that positive currency to withdraw from. So don't wait as a leader to start making positive deposits onto the sentiment bank with your staff, your customers, your teams start doing it now. And it can be very, very simple messages that will maybe grow interest in your, in your sentiment bank account. - Yeah, Benjamin, you've given us tons of things here. You've talked a little bit about who your mentors are. You've also talked about theater, Rosadale, Aristotle, and Tony Jax too. So these are great names we're dropping. But Benjamin, where can we, where can elisters find you and your work? - Love having these types of conversations. So obviously I'm on LinkedIn, Benjamin Morgan. And you can find us at the center for risk. Communication.ca. - Nice. - Okay, and Benjamin, I've succeeded in all expectations. You have a communication expert and you hope it's gonna be great. And this was beyond. I hope this is just the start of the conversation for leaders across Canada and North America who are listening to this podcast. And they know they can reach out to you in your organization. I think sometimes as leaders, we don't reach out soon enough. And I really encourage people to reach out. If you think you need to reach out and get support, you should already be reaching out and getting support. And I can attest the fact that Ben and all his work is one of the places you can reach out to. So that's a wrap on today's episode. We look forward hearing your feedback. Please let us know what you thought, Garth, I can't wait to read your notes on this topic. And if you could do us the honor and take us home, we'd appreciate that. - You know, thanks very much for having me and for a great conversation. And with that said, until next time, keep on leading the last way. - Oh, got a bad-- - Nice one, Benjamin. All right, thanks everybody. Good to see you, Jason. Thanks, Benjamin. Take care, everyone. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC - "Leader Ship Lessons"] [MUSIC - "Leader Ship Lessons"] [BLANK_AUDIO]