The Communicative Leader
On The Communicative Leader, we're making your work life what you want it to be. Do you need years of training or special equipment? Not at all my friends. Simple, yet thoughtful changes in your communication can make great strides in displaying your leadership ability. And why the heck should you care about leadership communication? Well, communication is the yardstick others use to determine whether or not they see you as a leader. Ahhh don't be scared, I got you. We will walk through common organizational obstacles and chat about small, but meaningful communication-rooted changes you can integrate immediately. No more waiting for the workplace to become what you hope it will. Nope. You, my friends, will be empowered and equipped to make those changes. Let's have some fun! Can't get enough?
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The Communicative Leader
Navigating Chaos: Leadership in the Eye of the Storm with Stephanie Craig
When chaos erupts, the difference between catastrophe and manageable challenge often comes down to preparation. Crisis management expert Stephanie Craig brings a lifetime of experience navigating high-pressure situations to this illuminating conversation about organizational resilience.
Growing up as the daughter of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police hostage negotiator, Stephanie developed an unusual comfort with chaos from an early age. This natural affinity, combined with formative experiences in politics and business, positioned her perfectly to guide organizations through their darkest moments. Now, as president of Kith Consulting, she shares the formula that drives her approach: "clarity plus trust equals strategic speed."
This episode delivers actionable wisdom for leaders at all levels. Stephanie reveals the critical distinction between brand and reputation—"Brand is what you own. Your reputation is what people say about you"—and explains why reputation accounts for approximately 35% of organizational value. She dismantles the dangerous "it won't happen to me" mentality that leaves many organizations vulnerable and provides a blueprint for building a core crisis team that can respond effectively when disaster strikes.
Perhaps most valuable is Stephanie's insight into how values serve as an essential touchstone during crises. Whether responding to data breaches, navigating political tensions, or engaging with social movements, organizations with clear, consistently applied values make better decisions faster. Through compelling examples from Silicon Valley's COVID response to high-profile corporate missteps, she illustrates how preparation transforms potential disasters into manageable challenges.
Don't wait until crisis hits to develop your response strategy. Listen now to build the communication infrastructure, team dynamics, and leadership mindset that will protect your organization when—not if—challenges arise.
Hey leader! Thanks for listening. For more leadership communication tips, check out https://www.thecommunicativeleader.com/
Welcome to another insightful episode of the Communicative Leader. I'm your host, dr Leah oh, and today we're thrilled to introduce you to Stephanie Craig, a renowned crisis expert who has guided world leaders and top organizations through their most challenging moments. As the president of Kith Consulting, stephanie brings a wealth of experience from the realms of politics, media and business to the art of crisis management and organizational resilience. Stephanie's unique blend of strategic communication and reputation management has helped her build a stellar reputation as she mitigates crises, repairs reputations and fortifies organizations against future challenges. Her impressive career includes working with distinguished figures like former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and influential Fortune 500 companies, offering her unparalleled insights into the dynamics of very high-stakes situations. In today's episode, we're going to delve into crucial topics such as the core principles of crisis management, the role of communication during turbulent times and how leaders can build resilient crisis-ready teams. Stephanie shares her strategies for safeguarding your organization's reputation and overcoming vulnerabilities that a lot of times we tend to overlook, vulnerabilities that a lot of times we tend to overlook. So, if you are eager to learn how to steer your organization through these stormy seas and emerge even stronger, this episode is packed with expert advice and practical strategies to enhance your crisis readiness and solidify your leadership effectiveness. Let's have some fun.
Dr. Leah OH:Hello and welcome to the Communicative Leader hosted by me, dr Leah Omilion- Hodges. My friends call me Dr O. I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert. On the Communicative Leader, we're working to make your work life what you want it to be. Welcome, stephanie. I'm so excited to have you on the Communicative Leader and before we begin our conversation, I was hoping you could share a little bit about your journey. So you've been in politics, media and business. You're a crisis expert and president of Kith Consulting, so just give us a little bit of that pathway.
Stephanie Craig:Well, leah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here. I think the whole story of how I got here starts a long time ago, and I can literally say a land far away. I was born in the Canadian Arctic. My father was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer you know those guys with the hats and the red jackets, and so you know I, my mom, used to say that I've been through every natural disaster except a tsunami, and I definitely choose not to cross that one off the list.
Stephanie Craig:Yeah, don't want that one, but also it's. I come from a line of of people that find common chaos. Um, my grandfather was in world war II at Normandy. My dad, as I mentioned, was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who specialized in um hostage negotiation. Lovely thing to emulate. Really not appreciating as a teenager. Um, lovely thing to emulate really not appreciating as a teenager, but really.
Stephanie Craig:I always, even as a kid, found a calming sense of being in the middle of chaos Excuse me, leah and I graduated from college in the middle of a 500-year flood. Oh, it was literally the largest up until Hurricane Katrina. It was the largest evacuation in the US since the Civil War, and so, you know, just really found myself in a calm spot, being able to just help folks and do what we needed to do, and that just led me into a career in politics, which helped me refine this, this real, um desire to, to take control, and I I freely admit that I am a control freak and that it has served me well. Um, and so, being in in in politics it's. It really helped me learn from people that knew how to adapt and in in crisis.
Stephanie Craig:That is something that we try to impart upon our clients is, when they're in a crisis, teach them how to adapt. Our preferred way of working with people honestly is to teach them how to mitigate a crisis, how to spot a crisis and how to recover from one faster. So being able to teach folks how to adapt and how to structure themselves in a way that makes all of those things easier something I learned through politics a real hard work ethic that I have loved and have taken with me everywhere and have through. First my first part of my life, I got to see almost all of Canada, and then my political life has taken me across the United States to so many neat and wonderful places, and each time I've learned a little bit more about a region. I've learned a little bit more about industry, which crisis management itself is agnostic, but it's really helpful to be that old adage an inch deep and a mile wide. Mm, hmm.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah. That is a fascinating story, stephanie, and it makes sense and, I'm sure, positions you perfectly to be a guide during crisis and before, and the coaching and afterwards.
Stephanie Craig:Absolutely. I think that's something that folks expect you not to be able to. Well, I'm special. We might have a data breach. Well, unless you're a data breach expert and you have one, no one's going to be an expert in data breach. Well, unless you're a data breach expert and you have one, no one's going to be an expert in data breach. So part of the nice thing about the way I've built my career and my life, I love people.
Stephanie Craig:I find people fascinating and I like to collect them, and so in my world I have a few people that are data breach experts. So I don't have to be a data breach expert, I just have to know one Exactly.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, exactly, that's a. It reminds me my spouse is like I don't need to know what our calendar is, you know what it is right. Like when you have those connections, it really can make you really yeah. So let's think about some high stakes leadership and I know, stephanie, you have guided many prominent figures and organizations through really challenging situations and I was hoping you could share one of these high stakes situations that really impacted or otherwise shaped your personal approach to crisis management.
Stephanie Craig:It's actually it's not been one particular issue. As I mentioned, there was the flood, and then there's been some other very high stakes issues that we've encountered, and some that stick more with me are the ones that impact people, and it's something that is not very I guess the word I'm looking for is folks don't think that these people exist anymore, but I've made it a big, big priority to work for people in politics that I believed in, and one instance in particular and it was a long, long crisis situation was I was an advisor to the mayor of San Jose, california, during COVID and we were charged with you know how are we going to take? Because San Jose is considered basically the capital of Silicon Valley and it was so high homelessness population. You know housing is expensive and you know we really knew two things we had to serve people. We really knew two things we had to serve people and we had the talent in our own backyard to be innovative and so that kind of those kinds of crisis situations, while long-term and that's something people don't really grasp Leah is that crisis.
Stephanie Craig:There are some crises that are contained and you can be like done, I'm moving on, and others are a very long tail and that's why I choose this one to talk about. There are some there are some very sexy ones where you know we were on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Uh, and that's honestly when somebody called us too late. If you call us beforehand, we can do everything we can to keep you off the campaign. Exactly that's that's when it's too late. You know you call us, you know we can help, but we prefer to help earlier.
Stephanie Craig:But the reason I talk about that one is there were the the. The kind of adage in in Silicon Valley is they kind of got the idea that COVID was coming a little bit earlier than other folks, okay, and so they started really planning and figuring out. It ended up with something very revolutionary. It was called the Silicon Valley recovery council and it had some of the most prominent names in tech gathering to create a plan to support the community, and that, to me, is a really good example of you know what you need to do, you figure out what resources you need to make an impact and then you go to work and then you go to work.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and I mean and think about all of the leadership at every level there in planning ahead of time and making sure the right people are at the table. And I love, too, that you started that by talking about how do we serve those around us. What a profound example, what an incredible thing to be a part of.
Stephanie Craig:I mean, no one was excited about COVID, especially when there were so many unknowns, but to be able to be in a position to help lessen it and make it better for your community really really powerful thing about that that was interesting is that the right communicating to so many different groups of people business leaders, community leaders, average citizens, business, you know, business folks that were worrying about the survivability of their own business it required a lot of nuanced communicating and understanding what not changing what we said, but changing how the message was delivered.
Stephanie Craig:So very specific groups would hear what we had to say, and Sam does. The mayor who's now in Congress and one of my favorite people, um, he was. He's a very plain spoken person and getting those nuances is important and he was very good at it and it made our job a lot easier because he understood frequency, he understood tone, he understood audience and when you are trying to make people understand that you know what we're doing everything we can and we have hope that this is going to work. I think it's communication is just critical.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah. And, like you said too, I think so many people think well, I've posted it or I hit send, so they're done.
Stephanie Craig:Communication has occurred, but if people, if the message isn't framed in a way where people are going to listen to it, doesn't, doesn't matter well, and that's something that we talk about in client preparation is, we have a formula and it's called clarity plus trust equals speed, and we actually say strategic speed, uh, because speed for speed's sake ends up in the ditch. And so, um, it's, it's clarity of what matters, who matters to you, what matters to them and how they communicate. So understanding who your greatest stakeholders are, and like deeply understanding not understanding, not saying our customers, but what are your customers value? Who do they trust to get information? Where do they get information from? You know, if you're not 40 some years old, you're likely not on Facebook.
Stephanie Craig:So if you have a really young audience that's not how to be communicating young audience, that's not how to be communicating. And so understanding who they are, clarity in who, what, where, all of that and then building the trust with them, communicating in the places where they need you to communicate in a way that they need you to communicate so they'll hear you. That's the insulation for crisis, because when something happens, if you've taken that time to build the trust, get to know them, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, so clarity on that trust in the people, the procedures and the policies. Everybody knows what they're doing, they know what the the chain of command is and they know what our policy is on. Back to data breach. They know what our policy is on data breach. And so clarity plus trust equals strategic speed, and strategic speed comes from having all of those things answered and ability to go forward fast.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, exactly when you're not in a state of crisis, when you are thinking clearly and have time to workshop, that Absolutely.
Stephanie Craig:And make decisions that can be made ahead of time. There's no need. Let's just be honest. There are very few people in this world that like to have their hair on fire.
Dr. Leah OH:I am one of them but I don't recommend it yeah, yep, so make those decisions.
Dr. Leah OH:Yep. So, stephanie, you just kind of shared some core principles with us, as clarity and trust equals strategic speed, and I love that. And I'm wondering, with that, are there other core principles that you believe are essential to maintaining organizational stability and resilience, especially during crisis? And I'm wondering too, if these principles do they hold true if you have a really high profile individual and an organization, or do they change a little bit if it's, you know, if you're talking about, um, a political figure or a large organization, um, it depends.
Stephanie Craig:I think I would go back to those, those two things. The clarity and the trust equals speed, all right, and the reason that I say that that they're not any grand principles is because you should be, as an organization and an individual, driven by your values, and it's not up to us to tell you what your values are. It's up to us to lead you through an exercise that makes sure you know what your values are and then have those values weave their way through everything that people do. And from an organization standpoint, that means does your if you have a value of, of honesty and transparency, okay? Are? Is your pay honest and transparent? Is your board honest and transparent? Are the is the language of honesty and transparency in your evaluations, in your job postings, in your internal newsletters, in your board report? So it's more an idea of helping people figure out what the principles are for them than us imparting them, and that actually for an entire organization that serves as a touchstone both in a crisis and also in trying to spot and mitigate a crisis, because if you see someone acting in a way or a policy that's contravening to those values that you know to be true that you all have adopted, that friction inevitably is going to lead to smoke and likely to fire. And so when people, when we talk about resilience and principles around resiliency, the idea of preparation is critically important there, because it gives people the confidence that they know where they stand, they know what values they're standing on, they know what to do, and so it's that confidence that we try to impart by the preparation.
Stephanie Craig:And I think the other one I would probably add is mindset. There needs. There are two ways you can look at this. You can be a okay, I want to plan for this, I want to invest in planning for this. I want to walk through my really bad days so they aren't really bad when I get here, or I don't think anything bad is ever going to happen to me and I'm going to stick my head in the sand. Those people usually are the ones that end up on the front page of every newspaper in the world Mm-hmm. And so to me that that actually the, actually the this, the way we employ this with leaders is I was a competitive figure skater as a kid. I think every kid in Canada is either a hockey player or a figure skater.
Stephanie Craig:Yeah, and soccer is becoming a very, very close like third, I think. Um, but one thing that my coach used to oh from. I was a very young competitive. I turned competitive at like 10. Um and so they figured out really fast though that if I mentally walked through my routine, I would be able to understand. I had to understand what the whole thing would look like, and then I would. I would be able to understand. I had to understand what the whole thing would look like.
Stephanie Craig:And then I would? I would mentally keep walking through it, keep practicing it in my mind and then practicing it in, and I have honestly used that throughout my entire life.
Stephanie Craig:Both of my parents have passed away, and in almost very close succession to one another, and but, oh, thank you, but it's very interesting in everyone's like, okay, you're, you're, you're not as upset as I would have, because it was very close to them, as I would have expected you to be, and it's because I wasn't surprised by anything. I mentally walked through and I and I started to deal with those emotions prior to having experienced them. I don't recommend having to do that. Everybody at some point in their life will have to do that, but for me, it it it very much helped me get through some emotions that I knew I would have to deal with in the time, knew I would have to deal with in the time, and that's some.
Stephanie Craig:For some folks, these reputational organizational crises are their worst professional days and I guarantee you you will not go through your career without having one. Yeah, so walking through those, those bad days, and that's what we do in asking you to prepare. Okay, what does that bad day look like? Where are you going to stumble? How are you going to work through that? That stumble and that mindset is critically important to, to wanting to be aware, and I think that leads that desire to build a, a resilient organization by looking at the problem, inspires confidence, because you have to invest in in preparation, you have to invest in the infrastructure.
Stephanie Craig:You know one of the things that we constantly talk about, and I think I told you earlier you know we're management consultants that speak communicator, yes, and we inevitably the organizations that have the most challenges, ones that don't have communicators at their leadership table. Yep, and because it's a great thing, naturally what we do. It is our. We are the people that look around corners, we are the people that say this is what could happen. It's our natural inclination to work through those bad days. So for most leaders, I say take a page out of your communicator's book.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, yes, I love that and there's so much. So when I did my master's, my PhD, I worked in public relations and I was in crisis communication for a little bit in a healthcare setting in our first big crisis. So I kind of I did a lot of the work because I was an academic studying with a PhD and had communication background. But so much you don't plan for. And even like I realized I had to learn how to control my voice because I was nervous and I was recording these messages I'm like don't record again. I could not provoke more fear through my shaky voice. You're right.
Dr. Leah OH:And for me, I did not like looking around the corner. I'm like I can do this, but it is, you know, the mantra of plan for the worst, expect the best, and that is really challenging and that's why I really want to raise up what you and your colleagues do, because that is not easy work. It is not an easy way to go about life when you're always essentially looking for the exit, like what's going to happen? What is this plan, what is next? So thank you for doing that and for doing it so well.
Stephanie Craig:Well, you know we are. We are the least fun at parties. We're usually standing in a corner, but it is. I think it's. It's interesting to me.
Stephanie Craig:When I was much younger in my career, I couldn't understand why people didn't love this and why it was really why I was attracted to campaigns, because it was fast and it was energizing and you worked 60 days straight, maybe longer. And now I look back and it's it's not an average skillset and it's not an average personality. To I shouldn't say average, it's not a common yes, yeah and um, and so I have great respect for other people that have. Um, I'm a, I'm a judge. Uh, I think this is the third time I've been a judge for the PR week, um, uh, gosh, what are they called?
Stephanie Craig:The do good awards? What do we call those anyways? Um, and to look through those entries and see how creative people are, we are not creative. That's not our job. Um, it's our job to make sure that the things calm down and things can get back to business. But there's a there there's a deep appreciation for communicators who don't do what we do, who do the good stories, who do the good storytelling, and these are important mixes and I think they're nuances that aren't really truly understood by the C-suite.
Dr. Leah OH:Oh, completely agree, Completely agree. It's like, oh, you're all just communication All the same. Completely agree, completely agree. It's like, oh, you're all just communication All the same. So let's think a little bit more about the role of communication in crisis, and I'm wondering, in your experience, if you could walk us through. What does effective communication look like in managing a crisis? Well, and then the second part. What are some of the strategies, your go-to tactics for ensuring your messages are clear and calmly delivered under pressure?
Stephanie Craig:Well, these are all things that can be decided ahead of time and good communication. Leaders have an entire file folder that is made of holding statements and message sets and draft internal emails and all of these. So, yeah, communication needs to be clear, needs to be concise, needs to be accurate and truthful, and then it absolutely you need to be able to understand what you can talk about and what you can't, and that's, that's an understanding that you know. Everybody has a number of potential crises that they can think of. Every industry has very specific industry crises. So, if you understand your business and that's something that I'd say to a lot of communicators make sure you understand the business of the company and you can put together so many potential scenarios that you can get approved and you can get ready to go that only need a couple different details put in there.
Stephanie Craig:Also, make friends with the lawyers, because in a crisis, lawyers and communicators always have to work together and make sure that they understand what you do and you're you know if, if the decision is, or if the best interest is not to communicate, you're not going to communicate. It's not. You're not like compelled to completely give away the whole store of information just because you have the opportunity and I think that there's a lot of miscommunication between silos and organizations. Yes, Yep, so build those relationships. Build your holding statements, figure out who your spokesperson. Yes, Yep, so build those relationships. Build your holding statements, figure out who your spokesperson is.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, I really love that. Figure out ahead of time what you can communicate like what. What can we share and what do we? What is proprietary? What needs to stay just in house?
Stephanie Craig:Well, and a good example of that is ransomware. So most companies have ransomware insurance. Yeah, does everybody know what that ransomware insurance says? Yeah, does the ransomware insurance prevent you from talking? Does it? Do you have to talk? Like, what are the parameters around that? Those are things you can find out beforehand. So, and you should, right, right, and you should be prepared and, like any of your big divisions within your organization, figure out what you need to know about them and what they need to know about you, what you need to know about them and what they need to know about you. So, building those internal relationships, yeah, it's. I think the part that is so interesting to me about communications in crisis is, once you get to the point of communicating, it's not particularly you know unique.
Stephanie Craig:Yeah, you, you, you figured out who your stakeholders are, you figured out the best way to communicate with them, you know that the information you have is right, cause you've built the internal relationships and then you're just ready to communicate, and I think something that's that's really important for folks is that, and I think it's both for us, as communicators, to understand, as well as our internal partners is that the news media isn't always our number one constituency, and so if you need to make sure that the people that matter most to you are getting the information from you, and figure out how that's supposed to and don't get me wrong, I have a deep love of reporters and what they do is, um, it's very important and um, they're doing it with fewer and fewer resources, and then I think that's something to understand is that you need to.
Stephanie Craig:If you are going to speak to the media, you need to figure out who you're dealing with and what they're dealing with, and it's not. I think so many folks are conditioned to the. I'm going to hold a press conference and I'm going to do this. That very well may not be your best strategy. Figure out what the and also you have to figure out the strength of your spokesperson. A lot of times in a crisis, it should be your CEO. Leadership matters, but if that CEO is terrible and gruff and you better get a media training, him or her media training terrible and gruff and you better get a media training him or her media training, yeah, and you better understand the right format for them, yes.
Stephanie Craig:And so I think there's, as communicators, there's the things that we are very good at. Then there are the things that we need to work on building relationships, making the plans, executing the plans. Those are things that make for good communications.
Dr. Leah OH:Exactly, I always think, especially when a term comes to crisis, I like to think of the work. It should be like dominoes, like everything is already lined up and hopefully we can just stare at them and they look beautiful. But the day the crisis happens, we hit the one and it's, it's already set, we're ready.
Stephanie Craig:Well, this is what I mean by when we talk about trust. You trust that all those dominoes are in line and that when, when you flick the first one, you know what's going to happen. There's no, there's no mystery. What's going to happen, and that makes for a really bad day, to be less bad.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, exactly yes, and not worse. Right, absolutely, that is certainly happening. And shorter and not longer? Yeah, exactly. So let's think about all of your political experience. So you know that you have experience in both American and your political experience. So you know that you've had experience in both American and Canadian political landscapes and I'm wondering if you can share with us some of these lessons you learned, probably about resiliency and adaptability, that you use or that maybe you coach other leaders to use and apply in their own organizations.
Stephanie Craig:Well, for me, it's always been understanding what you stand for when you are a political leader, because there are going to be lots of people wanting things from you and you're going to be wanting to serve a lot of different constituencies, and I think political leaders owe it to themselves, as well as to the people that support them, to be honest and transparent on who they are and then letting people make a decision for who they are. Um, I'm just, I'm trying to think through. Um, there's a. I keep thinking back to this. I was very, very young I don't even I hadn't even officially graduated from college yet when I was on a federal election campaign in Canada.
Stephanie Craig:And there's this woman and I admit I've lost track of her. Her name is Leslie Thompson and she was the head of communications for the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Canada Very prominent fella. But unlike the United States, they have to run for election, so first and foremost, they are members of parliament and then they are certain members of parliament are elevated to cabinet, so, just like everybody else, mr Axworthy had to run for reelection, and him being so prominent that our campaign got a lot of attention, a lot of media, and we were supposed to have a town hall at a senior center and we got word before any, about 20 minutes before anybody got there, that seven seniors were showing up, a room set for 200. And I don't know what I guess it was ringing or something like that and I remember and I was like just a deer in the lights and Leslie looked at me and she goes what are we doing today?
Stephanie Craig:And I thought, lady, like in my mind, I thought, lady, are you on like drugs? Like what do you mean? She goes I don lady, are you on like drugs? Like what do you mean? She goes I don't make. Well, we're having a town hall. She's like no, we're not, we're having a round table. And she just, she's like listen, she's like there's a table in the back of the room that we were going to use for sign in, bring that up here, put 10, 12 chairs around the table. Yeah, we're having a round table, love it. And it was that, that moment of of yeah.
Stephanie Craig:Just leadership, that she had to save this, and I've never, obviously, all these years later, I've never forgotten it, never forgotten her name, and it just it was a moment for me of okay, there's, there's no defeat in this. You have to figure out how to make it work. And I think that campaign was just so absolutely impactful for me, because I remember so many other issues as um, I'd gotten to do, uh, prime minister's advance, so an advanced team for the leader.
Stephanie Craig:And it was my first, my first event yeah and I got to staff, um, the first lady and her daughter and I was 21 years old and super green and the her, their daughter grabbed me by the arm.
Stephanie Craig:She said you want to be a journalist, let's get out there. And so we went out, went out and I I was watching the scrum with the prime minister as prime minister, and I can't I cannot remember this man's name, but they didn't have kind of like a little podium for him to stand up, like not much, I think it was. He would have needed like a foot or two, but the media were just pressing, pressing, pressing in, and so it would have looked very, you know, kind of almost like interrogatory, right yeah, and his head of advance pushed his way to the front and about three feet back from the prime minister, he sat down on the floor. This man in this like $500 suit just sat down cross-legged in front of the prime minister and they and it pushed the media back. And these like these lessons from these just pros, and that's the adaptability that I think folks need. You need to be able to understand the situation and what you need out of it and figure out what to do to make it happen.
Stephanie Craig:I've never forgotten those lessons. Uh, I one of the things that I love to do is I love to be a mentor and um and a support for folks coming up in the industry, and those are the things that I tell people you've got to go do volunteer. You've got to go do things that scare you, that are that are frenetic, that go figure out how to adapt to all these things and it's it's a lot of fun and so many good skills.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, that is so incredible and I think that shows you the power of communications. I think a lot of people think it's just my verbals. You're like, nope, that was a very clear nonverbal when that gentleman sat down, literally took up that space to be like, yeah, we're stopping here and I love to in that story, of being like we're having a round table, even the sass to like people say, what are we doing today, like to play a little bit with it, and you recognize that when you are leaning into these adaptability muscles and these resilience muscles, a lot of confidence I think stems from that competence. Yes, and that is really really incredible.
Stephanie Craig:Well, it gives you experience, and that's if anyone has any political inkling. Even if you don't make a career out of it, I highly recommend working on a campaign. The people are deeply entertaining. You also really learn how to make do with very little, and to be able to be exposed to that when you're young is important. And given that communication is so dramatically important to politics, you really don't find a lot of better communicators than those that come out of politics, and so go figure out how they do what they do. And I think another interesting angle for communicators in politics is communicators are so well respected. It's such an important function in a political office. Go figure out what that feels like. Go learn from people that know what that feels like.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, I love that. So really closely related to your work in politics, but beyond that as well, let's think about reputation. So you know that reputation is often at stake, especially during a crisis, and I'm wondering what are some kind of proactive steps that leaders can can take ahead of time to safeguard their reputation or their organization's reputation? So when a crisis hits, you know maybe that that hit isn't quite so so deep.
Stephanie Craig:Do all the things that I've already talked about. There is there are no crises in an organization that don't have a reputational impact, and something that a lot of business leaders don't understand is that brand is what you own. Your reputation is what people say about you. It's what your stakeholders own. I like that, and so, as you think about how you safeguard your reputation which, let's just be honest, leah is now about 35% of your organizational value, wow, like, think about that, yeah.
Stephanie Craig:Something intangible and delicate, is 35% of your organization's value. Some people it's even higher, someone's probably a little lower, but it's valuable. And so, as people think about what they need to do for a reputation, it's understanding those stakeholders, it's building that trust with your stakeholders. So, when the time comes, because they're the people that hold your reputation yeah, one of the most interesting recent examples of that do you remember maybe, like six months ago, there was a little kerfuffle about a five guys receipts going around social media. Oh, mm-hmm.
Stephanie Craig:Because like a hamburger and it was like $23. Yes, five guys said nothing. Do you remember this? They said absolutely nothing. It's because they knew their customers. They know how much they're paying. It wasn't a surprise to them, but they still keep coming back. Yeah, and so that understanding of your reputation is really important and there's a there's a lot of recent examples of not understanding who your audience is, and I think there's some very complicated ones. Folks talk a lot about the Bud Light issue. I think that's some very complicated ones. Folks talk a lot about the Bud Light issue. I think that one's very complicated because you do have a lot of different constituencies and in a lot of cases, those constituencies are very counter to each other. So that one's very, very, very complicated. And do I think they handled it right? Not really, but that's because they didn't put the effort in to understand what was going on. But it's a complicated one. But you know there's some other really good ones Costco. There was recently a big food recall.
Dr. Leah OH:Okay.
Stephanie Craig:And Costco knew everyone that bought it and they called them.
Dr. Leah OH:Oh, that's incredible, Right, yeah, that's values Yep, that's constituency.
Stephanie Craig:And then those people talk to other people and so, and then they give them the benefit of the doubt. They knew that Costco would probably do something important like that, yes, yeah, would probably do something important like that, yes. And so all of these things that we talk about building this infrastructure to is reputation, resiliency. Yeah. And your reputation, and I think that if folks take anything away from what I said today is reputation is not owned by you. It is owned by your stakeholders.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that. I've never thought about it that way and you said that like a light bulb moment, total sense. But yeah, I think you're right, until someone kind of points that out. It's like ah, yes.
Stephanie Craig:Absolutely.
Dr. Leah OH:So let's continue this idea of kind of getting ready and crisis proofing as much as we can and thinking about this at the team level in organizations. So I'm wondering if you could share some insights on how leaders can cultivate this culture within their teams, where they are inherently resilient and prepared to face, you know, any unexpected challenge.
Stephanie Craig:The two big things would be that has to come from the top down, they have to fund it, they have to prioritize it, and I would. The actionable item is create a core crisis team. A core crisis team and everybody on that team has to have one of two skills the best team members have two, that they have to have a subject matter knowledge and they have to ability to make decisions.
Stephanie Craig:I've I've never put together a crisis, a core crisis team, that didn't have a communicator, the head communicator, the lawyer, and probably HR, I would say, or it, depending on what kind of company it is. So, but definitely the communicator and the lawyer, and it shouldn't be more than eight to 10 people. Yeah.
Stephanie Craig:And your company culture dictates. If the CEO or leaders in the team because sometimes we worked with a college that had their president was an 800 pound gorilla, yeah, and if she were in the room, the, the, the team would, their goal was to please her, not good, the team would. Their goal was to please her, not good. And so we worked out a way where the team came up with two recommendations and then there were two people designated to go present them to her and she could decide what they were. But they got to deliberate, they got to have their best expert recommendation, that, that thumb on the scale, Um, and the leadership is also critically important. We did a uh uh simulation with a, a global company, and the CEO of the company. They were, they're like in 17 countries. Okay.
Stephanie Craig:Was the first person there every day. Hmm, and then?
Stephanie Craig:you kind of figure. I think he really knew his team because oh wait, he would get there a little bit earlier and everyone would try to beat him and what he needed to do, but that was because he prioritized it. He really understood what needed to happen. And that sort of leadership is invaluable and it also people on it gives people the confidence that you take the resiliency of your company, the resiliency of your reputation, seriously when you invest in protecting it, and that's a vote of confidence for the company. You invest in protecting it and that's a vote of confidence for the company. And people like comfort. Oh yeah, they like to know that somebody is caring what's happening, that they're investing in helping people figure out what they need to do to row the boat with them. Those kind of investments are really important for a multitude of reasons.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and I think too, I love that you bring so much of leader values and organizational values and help people identify those if they haven't quite spelled them out, because with time, when you're living those values, then you have better retention, right? Because you have the folks who self-identify and then the people are like this doesn't quite align with mine, that's fine. Have the folks who self-identify and then the people are like, eh, this doesn't quite align with mine, that's fine, then they can self-select out. But we're seeing too and you're talking about building these teams that are inherently resilient, and the modeling, how it shows up that way as well. I really love that.
Dr. Leah OH:All right. Let's talk about blind spots like these vulnerabilities. So, in your experience, what are some common vulnerabilities that are often overlooked Either leaders overlook these or organizations and what are some of your tips for kind of maybe spotting these before it's too late?
Stephanie Craig:it's too late. Well, the biggest one we see is is absolutely, is the head in the sand. It never going to happen to me. Um, we have a couple of different tools that you're that we have that give folks, um, empirical information to take leaders to try and shake them out. Um, that is, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, that's really the biggest blind spot that we see. Uh, and then it's other leaders that are are. Well, you know, this doesn't affect me, and those they they tend to require very, uh, analytical approaches to be able to to deal with them.
Stephanie Craig:So, for instance, I spoke at a conference this past fall and we talked about the ramifications on your financial infrastructure of a reputational crisis. If your reputation is damaged, your customers go away. Your supply chain may not want to do business with you. So those are both economic shortfalls. If it's something that requires insurance, do you have enough reserves to be able to cover what in between when the incident happens and when the insurance pays out, Do you have enough reserves?
Stephanie Craig:And when you start talking to people about it that way, they light bulbs really start to go off of. Oh wait, this isn't just to. I'm going to show my age here and quote bridget jones um, this isn't just somebody fanning around with a press release. Yeah, they're real business ramifications. Yeah, and when people understand that that, I think one of the reasons that, um, I don't do a lot of speaking to communicators is because, by and large, communicators get it, Are my. You know, evangelism comes into the other parts of the business. The CEO, the CFO, the chief legal counsel those are the folks that I want to talk to to make sure that that they talk to their communicator, at the very least go and, you know, meet them and figure out what they're, what's keeping them up at night.
Stephanie Craig:Um yeah, and respect the function. I think is another another thing I'd love to yell about yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right thing.
Dr. Leah OH:I'd love to yell about yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right in helping people to recognize that, even if you think this isn't going to impact you, this is interdependent. Absolutely this organization is not thriving, you personally and your team will not be thriving.
Stephanie Craig:Yes, well, a good example of that I actually wrote about this was the Silicon Valley Bank. Okay, I I did not talk about the, you know, financial side of it. I am not a CFO, I'm not, don't work for the SEC. But one thing that was critically missing in that whole situation is they didn't have a senior communications person in the bank. Hands down period didn't, and a large part of what drove their problem was the way the CEO was communicating. And if there had been a communications person sitting in that room saying you can't say everything's going to be OK because people automatically assume that it's not right now, yeah, and those kinds of blind spots on on who can contribute and who can help you mitigate and spot, I think are are fatal sometimes.
Dr. Leah OH:Mm. Hmm, yeah, yeah, I agree, I think are are fatal sometimes. Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. And great example to bring up watching that one play out was was pretty painful, absolutely yeah. So let's shift gears a little bit and think about advocacy and social movements and I know you've been involved in a lot of efforts this way, like I am, als and the force to end harassment and advocacy, and Stephanie is hoping you could share kind of how social movements influence your approach to crisis management and reputation repair.
Stephanie Craig:Well, it's. This all comes back to values and living your values, and there are all sorts of values across the spectrum in organizations. You know, if you are an advocacy organization, you wear your values in your name. If you were a business, you either don't have a perspective or you do have a perspective. So you know Hobby Lobby, everybody knows kind of what Hobby Lobby stands for, and so they understand also how they are going to react to social movements.
Stephanie Craig:And this again is comes back to knowing who your constituents are. Ben and Jerry's before they were sold same kind of thing understood who their constituents were and so they lived their values in their company. So they, you know, they understood kind of the landscape for companies that don't they have to go back to those. They have to do the values exercise, they have to do the stakeholder exercise, because that gives you clarity in if, how and when you will engage in a social movement. And another thing that I would highly recommend if you are a, an organization that does business in the United States, can you be part of a trade association? Do you need government relations? Because, given the highly interconnected communications in this world, if somebody takes issue with what you're doing and you don't have an understanding of the landscape and you don't understand what you stand for. You are going to be a floating in the middle of an ocean. Yeah.
Stephanie Craig:You need that touchstone for when an issue comes knocking. One of the you know guidances we sent out to CEOs after a year, after January 6th, was you know, did you make promises last year? Where are they? Yeah, and we are. We are very um.
Stephanie Craig:We make it a habit to not work on day-to-day politics in our firm. All of us come out of politics but we don't work in politics. Um, because we understand that there are different approaches and um. It makes us better to work with people. We don't always agree with Um, and so it becomes a really good exercise for us to help Pete, for us to help people work through, but we want people to work through them, because if you do not have again, if you do not have that touchstone when somebody comes knocking, you're not going to know what to do. And the other part of it is to make sure it's congruent throughout your organization. Yeah, if you say you believe X, it better be throughout the entire organization. Leave X, it better be throughout the entire organization. Yeah, and a lot of folks have um, a lot of people that do political giving, a lot of the bigger companies that do giving. They're very much um, they're done for strategic reasons. But understanding how those strategic reasons tie into your reputation and to the people that you value yeah is important because nothing lives in an on an island anymore yeah
Stephanie Craig:yeah, and for me personally, getting involved in helping start imals, als and, uh, ending advocacy, ending harassment and advocacy were two very personal issues for me, um, and so I think that, um, I, as an example, um, very tragically, uh, the actor Eric Dane was diagnosed with ALS the other week. The actor Eric Dane was diagnosed with ALS the other week and, despite the fact that People Magazine has had the founders of I Am ALS on the cover, the reporter went to the Muscular Dystrophy Association to quote about ALS and they got a whole bunch of things wrong and that is a perfect example. I deeply care about this.
Stephanie Craig:And now my impression of People Magazine is completely off base, yeah, and so I think that that's to me, understanding those values is very, very important yeah.
Dr. Leah OH:Exactly and understanding those values is very, very important. Yeah, exactly, and I like to, because I think so many organizations and I do think this is shifting now with the political landscape but so many are like it was just this little bit of a homework assignment. Here's our mission statement, here's our vision statement, Done and they leave it.
Stephanie Craig:But I love that idea of actually living it and being able to speak to it because you're embodying it Well, and something that you said just really struck me, which is if people don't buy into it, they can just move on.
Dr. Leah OH:Exactly yeah.
Stephanie Craig:If they don't like what you're selling.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yep, just move on. It's not good for them and it's not good for you, and we know what to do then, right, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So, stephanie, last two questions for you, and they're intertwined, and this is the way that we end all episodes of the communicative leader is, you know, advice or a challenge or a tip for our titled leaders out there? And then the second part is again what is the pragmatic leadership or communication tip, advice or challenge for employees of all ranks and across all industries?
Stephanie Craig:Well for those in the role. Don't forget that you are vitally important to business. Mm-hmm. Don't forget that you are vitally important to business. There is nobody moves along, no one can sell anything if they have communications and the the the end to that is communications and marketing are not the same thing and if, if I had my way, marketing would always report to communications. Yeah, I love it and I'm sorry, leah, I was thinking about that. What was the second?
Dr. Leah OH:question. Well, and the second one is just for all employees. So we have some folks. I think, especially after COVID, a lot of folks are like I don't want the stress with the titled position, but self-leadership and growing as people. So those folks who are not in a title leadership position, but self-leadership and you know, growing as people. So those folks who are not in a title leadership position, you know any different rank. What advice, challenge or tip do you want to leave them with?
Stephanie Craig:It never hurts to make friends outside your circle, and that helps you as a professional, that helps you as a person and it helps your organization, Because learning about what other people do and creating those relationships like I said, I'm a collector of people- yes. Because I love people, I find them fascinating, I find them interesting, and just go meet other people in your organizations because it will make your experience better and it will make your industry better.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, yes, I love that and it's something. You're right that for many of us, it's not the natural inclination but it's a game changer, and a really important one, absolutely. Stephanie. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us, your time. I've learned so much in this interview. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I learned so much in this interview. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I know our listeners will as well.
Stephanie Craig:Leah, it's been my absolute pleasure, and anytime you want to chat again, I would love to do it.
Dr. Leah OH:All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.
