The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
What really happens when a crisis hits an organization—and how technology is influencing decisions and reputation impacts. Come hear what happened when experienced leaders were actually in the middle of a crisis—and capture the lessons before it happens to you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC.
Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization.
Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast.
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The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
EP 13 When leadership fails - the consequences and workarounds; community meeting formats and guidance; winning over the local community - with Adam Wine
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Today we share exploits from the front lines of crisis response with Adam Wine, a seasoned crisis professional with over three decades of experience in the US Coast Guard.
Adam has worked with many incident commanders and other leaders, and he shares some stories about leadership failure, the consequences of bad decisions during a response, and lessons we can learn from those situations.
We also discuss community meeting formats. You can do a town hall/open mic format or posterboard session. Which is most appropriate?
Adam also shares stories from a major oil spill response in Dutch Harbor, AK, and how the ability to adapt and adjust to changing conditions and public sentiment is pivotal to a successful response.
Adam currently serves as Emergency Management Coordinator for the Fairfield County Virginia Emergency Management Agency. He shares with us a riveting tale of a leadership failure in a crisis, underlining the importance of self awareness and knowing one's limitations.
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Leadership Challenges in Crisis Management
Tom MuellerHi everyone and welcome to the Leading in a Crisis podcast . On this podcast , we talk about all things crisis management , with a special focus on leadership . We deliver this through interviews , storytelling and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders . I'm Tom Mueller in Houston . I'd like to welcome my co-host , Mark Mullin , who's joining us again from Bellingham , Washington . Hey , mark .
Marc MullinHi , tom , happy to be here .
Tom MuellerHey , before we jump in and speak with our guest today , Mark , I just wanted to share with you that I had my first fan moment this week here in the Houston area . I was doing training with a client and I was talking to one of the participants in a break about the podcast because we had some episodes that are relevant to a project she's working on , and she just looks up at me and says, " you're that podcast , I love that podcast , I love you guys . She said I've given you guys five star ratings . I'm like woohoo , wow , that's great , our first fan moment . So that was a lot of fun . Would you go ahead and introduce our special guest today and let's get the conversation started ?
Marc MullinSure , Tom . And again , it's a distinct pleasure to be able to introduce Adam Mullin to the world . I guess , Adam , it's nice to have you with us . Adam is a 30-year veteran of the United States Coast Guard and he's responded to a massive number of actual events in crisis . The record is long and distinguished .
Marc MullinAdam . In addition to responding , though , he actually supervised the development of the policies and protocols to sustain joint information center training for the Coast Guard , and then he's also built out the public information officer liaison qualifications for NIMS . So , basically , if you pick up a FOG (field operations guide) or take a national incident management system training in the JIC or liaison , you're going to be working with Adam's handwork . So he's got a deep experience , and not just the theory but the practice of response communication , and in his spare time he's the emergency management coordinator for Fairfield County , Virginia emergency management agency . So , Adam , it's a real pleasure to have you here , and I'll stop talking about who you are and we'll let you take a few minutes to kind of give us an understanding about your background and your passions and so on .
Adam WineGood day and thanks for the introduction there . That was really fantastic . I appreciate that and the mention of the JIC manual . I was actually part of a team not necessarily the person heading up . I was really one of many people worked together to develop the National Response Team's joint information center model . I went into that as a reluctant member . I wasn't a fan of the concept at the time . I was a practitioner in the field and didn't really need that . That would prove to be untrue and I actually became , of course , later a big champion of it and continue to go on and help do all the revisions to the manual all the way up until I retired .
Adam WineAs far as my experience goes , you mentioned 30 years in the Coast Guard . I now retired somewhat but I've gotten back into the response field . I worked for Emergency Management Solutions as a senior consultant . Just recently I dealt with the standing up a hospital for COVID down in Houston , responding to the migrant children that had come across the border and needed to be taken care of . We set up several camps to help deal with that . With the Afghan debacle that went down , we helped with reuniting more than 13,000 pieces of luggage back to the owners that ended up here . That would include both American citizens as well as Afghans . There's a lot of new experience that I got out in the civilian world . It was very , very much different than the things I had done all the previous years in the Coast Guard .
Tom MuellerWell , adam , if I can , I'll jump right in here . I want to talk to you about dealing with large-scale emergency response and crisis management situations . When we get into those situations , it puts a lot of stress on the leaders of the organization the incident commander , the section chiefs , but even people who are just working in the JIC or a section . Sometimes you see a leader who doesn't perform well or doesn't quite meet expectations . I wonder if you could share an example of a situation where you saw a leader who didn't quite lead the team as well as they might have been done . What can we learn from that failure ?
Adam WineUnfortunately I probably have more examples than I would like to share , but there was one in particular we responding to a derailment in Paulsboro , New Jersey , and the incident commander he was a nice person and had an excellent staff for both the Joint Information Center as well as a liaison officer - and did not listen to anything that they provided as far as guidance . There was a hostile public that we were dealing with who had felt that they had not been given a lot of information that they needed . Of course , with the derailment there was a chemical spill and there was a shelter in place . That would be in place and then the wind would shift and they would drop certain areas and say it was safe to come out and then suddenly the wind would shift back and everybody would have to take shelter again .
Adam WineYou could imagine the amount of local community frustration that grew up from that . There was a town meeting- type setup and we had actually gotten the person to , instead of doing the New England style town meeting where they sit behind the table and they address questions , we set it up as an information fair where the bunch of booths where , if you came in you had a claim for this or a concern about that . You could go to the various tables and talk to the people you needed to speak with . That was a great way of or that's normally a great way of diffusing the anger that would build up when you come to a town meeting and you can't get your questions answered because so much is going on . Everything was working fine until the the incident commander decided that that individual wanted to step up and address the public and I said no , do not do that . You'll completely undermine all the things we've gotten into doing this fair and you're going to become the focus of all hostility .
Adam WineShe disregarded what we said , walked up onto the stage , began speaking . There were several people there who said you know , Mr Wine, you looked like you wanted to dive and tackle that individual off the stage . It did . The situation spun up to the point where the police had to come in because basically a minor level right began to break out there . So it's astounding . You can gather a group of highly trained individuals who know a lot about experience and it can all be undone by a senior staff member who just ignores that advice and goes ahead with what they think . I've got a gut feeling . I think this is what I should do . It was painful to watch that occur and to be there and actually be on the team . I think that would be considered a drastic failure moment right there .
Tom MuellerSo it's interesting , you know , when you think about town hall meetings and the formats , you know there's a couple ways you can go and you guys obviously decided the open mic thing wasn't going to be the best for this situation and oftentimes , when the public is very angry , we try to avoid that . I saw that in the derailment in East Palestine , Ohio , where they did a town hall meeting , same thing , just did it without the open mic and gosh , before the meeting started the mayor intervened and changed formats and brought it back to an open mic thing .
Adam WineRight , right , and that's all it takes . You know you had all the expertise and everything in place and it was ruined by one person deciding they step onto the mic , so that's definitely an indication where you have what I called a weak leadership . All the way through , there was a constant not listening to the subject matter experts that are there .
Tom MuellerJust how do you , how do you work through that then , Adam ? I mean , that's a very frustrating thing for a PIO , a situation for a PIO to be in .
Adam WineFortunately , I was actually the functioning liaison officer at that time , the person who was the PIO wanted to pull her hair out , that's the way to describe it . She was constantly being thwarted and everything she was doing and trying to get the information out and and dealing with stuff . So I know this doesn't sound quite right , but as far as liaison officer , I would actually just do things and then share the information with the incident commander that these things had occurred . You know you're supposed to say - h ey , this is what we plan to do . Do we have your permission ? I would just do them and ask for forgiveness later , because I did not want this individual, I didn't want the team to fail . And I saw I said you know , we're just going to do this for liaison and when it gets done we'll just go tell her that , hey , this worked out and and she seemed to be okay with , oh , that worked out well . But then she would say things you know , I'd like to kind of be in on that and I'm thinking , no , I do not want you to be part of this , because you're going to start talking and alienate all these people we have engaged - to the point where they're actually seeing us as the ally rather than a adversary in a in the response cleanup situation .
Adam WineSo , um , yeah , I guess that's kind of in the military . You can kind of get away with that . I don't think it works in the civilian world in any way . It's pretty much one way way to getting fired . But I had a certain level of protection , being so senior in the Coast Guard by then , that there really wasn't much that they could do for me . So I , you know I would do what was right to get done and and try to save as much as I can with the response . So how do you do it out there in the in the civilian role ? I I don't know . I mean there's just examples after example , most recently , of people just completely failing , despite the fact when you look behind them you see they've got experts helping them . But you know , I guess you know their , their error , yet in their ignorance and they insist on doing things their own way
Marc MullinLiaison officers tend to be pretty well trained , pretty good at their jobs , very capable of advising , fulfilling their role of advising incident command . Why does that not work ? What are we missing that makes an incident commander think that there are better communicators than the PIO would be ?
Challenges and Success in Public Affairs
Adam WineWe have this analogy that we used to pass around inside the public affairs realm in the Coast Guard was that public affairs is like golf . Everybody seems to play a little bit and they think they know what they're doing because they can go out on the local golf course and hit par or whatever under par and they're doing really well . But there's a vast difference between people who piddle around on the local golf courses and a professional and they don't understand that . And so that's what we get . We get these local people who think well , you know , I did some talking or I've written or did some journalist classes or I did speech class , I should be just fine . No , there's a vast difference between your little experience and what we're coming in with from the field . And they well , like I said again you know this line comes up a lot recently is they're ignorant and they're arrogant about the fact that they're ignorant . So they don't listen to the experts because they think they know better .
Tom MuellerAnd in corporations you see that oftentimes in the approval process , where there is a set approval process for documents and yet somehow a senior executive seems to exert their self into that process and then you start seeing complete rewrites of press releases and other information by somebody . And it happens with attorneys as well . Oh yeah , budding authors out there who who want to spend time , you know , editing this particular document , but it's a challenge . You know that private sector faces a lot too . I saw it just a couple weeks ago at a major drill .
Marc MullinWell , I like , when I think about responses and I hear about different responses , I like to cluster them into good , bad or ugly , because I've always liked the good , the bad and the ugly , and the one you just described sounds like an ugly response .
Adam WineOh yeah , that I would . That was close to one of the worst . It's right down there at the bottom .
Marc MullinYeah , just to me an ugly responses where things itself inflicted yes because of the people in the room . And what about a good response if ? What was the best response you were ever part of and what made it ?
Adam WineThere was a shipwreck and oil spill in Dutch Harbor , alaska , but it's on the Aleutian Islands out there and we were at the very early stages of development of the Joint Information Center and I had gone from being really against doing a joint information center to swinging 180 degrees as we were in the process of developing it and this incident literally went down . On Thanksgiving morning I got a call . I thought it was a joke . My boss called me up you know Chris Haley from Seattle , he was my boss at the time and he said hey , Adam , pack your bags , we're going to Alaska . I thought it was a joke because it was the only state in the union that I had not been to and I had mentioned that , like you know , one day I need like to go to Alaska and sort of . He calls him up Thanksgiving morning yeah , pack your bags , you're going to Alaska . I laugh . But he showed up , my house a few minutes later went to Alaska and I didn't get back until the day before Christmas .
Adam WineI was up there for a while and what was great was I was able to take all the stuff that we have been developing and and we were about to put together that would become the NRT-JIC model and field test it or run it through . We were taking all of some experiences and after active reports from previous cases and said these are the things we need to concentrate on . And , being on a small island , I was feeding information out to Chris , who was anchored in Anchorage , and he was feeding it to the national media there , because we had one media station in Dutch Harbor and they were the newspaper , television station and radio station all in one . I mean , you know it's a small place , yes , I would speed to them . Plus , I would put the information and video and all that kind of stuff and either faxing it to them you know , telling you how far back that was or I was putting a video on Coast Guard aircraft that would fly up to the mainland along with supplies and stuff that was going on , and it was really great because we got to do everything from the national level to the local level , media to .
Adam WineWe had never really done a lot of community relations . Being that we were the Coast Guard , we had a tendency to deal with the crisis and then the the , the latter part of it . You know , dealing with the local community was not something we normally had to deal with very often . But Dutch Harbor only had 6,000 people on it , so I had to set up an entire community relations process and it was really great because it would be things we would use to we actually go back and rewrite and say , oh yeah , this is , this is what you should do .
Adam WineBut I had gone out to the smoke jumpers course public affairs course out in Redmond , Oregon , just prior to this , and those are the guys that helped develop the whole ICS process and these public affairs specialists that were we're out there . We were trying to basically get information from them so that we could create the joint information center model , and , of course , they hadn't written anything down . They were just experts and they knew everything . So we had to take copious notes and steal all their train , all their presentation aids , and one of the things they talked about a lot was the community the communities you're working with , but but also the response community , which I've never thought about before , and how when you're out there working , you're working from , you know before the sun's up and and you know it's dark a lot that time of the year . So you're working a lot in the dark doing a lot of work and you don't know what everybody else is doing so .
Adam WineI would provide updates , all my news releases plus all the photographs , and I'd post them over top of the , the coffee mess where everybody kind of gathered in the morning to eat or to get , you know , get their coffee and their donuts or whatever before they went to the meetings . And I also posted them on the on the wall in the where the incident command post was , so that the people who were working could see what was going on outside of their little narrow area of their part of the operation . And it helped with morale because they go oh hey , you know , look , you're over there working and that's so , and so you know he's working on the other beach and I've never . I know we flew on the same airplane but they hadn't seen each other since they arrived . Because of the level of work , that worked really well . I was putting up information in the two local grocery stores , basically poster side stuff I'd print out . It would be my news release . I have a big map showing where the oil was at and we learned a lot from the public . I was holding town meetings , or scheduling town meetings , and we meet in the fire hall and the people come ask questions and that was going really well . Public was pretty happy Until about 10 days into the incident we started realizing that there was a little bit of hostility , because I would stand with the crowd and listen into what they would say or questions , or sometimes people kind of state questions , but not loud enough for anybody to hear .
Adam WineYou know , kind of a I don't know . A little bit of a kind of a mumble kind of thing . Yeah , what are they going to do about this kind of a statement ? But it didn't go anywhere . So I would try to write those down and get them to the incident commander so that we could come up with an answer and provide it .
Adam WineBut I noticed that getting kind of worse and so I pulled a couple of people to the side . I said why are you ? I had been there long enough now I could call him by first name . I said why are you angry ? We're doing all this . And he says to me I'll tell you why we're angry . This bill is right in our backyard and we can't go out there to see . It Says well , it provides you with the video of everything every day . He says , yes , but we can't go out there and see what's going on . I said so you want to go out onto the spill site ? And they said , yeah , we want to go out there and see what you're doing .
Adam WineAnd so I went and talked to the incident commander . I said listen , I think we should set up a van and I'll transport these people out there and they could look at the spill site . I'll keep control of them the whole time and I'll bring them back , and I think that'll help reduce the community hostility . Now he thought I was crazy . I said but , sir , give me three days . So I got the last rental vehicle on the island , a big 17 passenger van . I put this notice out that I would , if you want to go see the site , meet at the library that next morning .
Adam WineAnd so I drove around that morning to go to the library . There was 1500 people standing outside . I didn't know what to do , so I drove around trying to come up with something to do and I drove in and I parked behind me . I didn't realize , nobody knew what vehicle I was driving . And I parked behind the library and I saw the pastor that I had worked for . He was a pastor as well as a teacher at the school and I'd given a presentation at the school about oil spills , just to educate the kids . They I waved them over and I said listen , I need your help . He's what I said . I can't take 1500 people . It carries like 15 people or whatever 17 people on the van . Can you organize these people , cause they're not going to listen to me ? But they'll listen to you because you're a local figurehead and that was one of the things we talked about getting local figureheads on your sides .
Adam WineAnd so I said , yeah , that was a strategy I'd learned from attending the Redmond course . And so I went over and talked to him . He said , sure , I'll do that on one condition . I said what's that ? And he said I got to go in the first van . I said , oh , absolutely so I would drive this van out to the site and there's this big ship sitting there on the beach and all the cleanup going on . I remember coming around the bend and the curve and everybody yelling stop and I'm thinking the hills coming down the side , cause they all said it so loudly and instead they just wanted to stop . They all piled out of the van and they took their photographs standing so that you can see the ship in the background . It was just a like a porstee thing , and I got them up on site and they did that . So I would do this for the rest of the time I was there .
Adam WineRemember I said three days now the rest of the time I was there , every day people would come and want to go out to the site . All they wanted to do was see what was going on . And then there was a point when they didn't have enough people to do cleanup . So they were talking about flying people in from Seattle to do the cleanup , cause there was that spotted owl thing and all the lumberjacks were out of work at the time . Don't know if you remember that . Okay , so they were going to hire all those guys and bring them up . Well , the cannery there on the island , on the off-race certain times of the year , so it was shutting down right then . So they make this announcement and the community almost goes into a mutiny because they're not working right now and you're going to fly people in , give them a bunch of money to stay at the hotel and go out to work on their beach and it takes .
Adam WineI said , and they were doing this , and that's one of the times where I kind of spoke up in the command meeting and they were talking and the responsible party guy was going on about it and I said you know , sir , you've got to stop here for a minute . If you do this , you will . These people will just murder you . And he goes what are you talking about ?
Adam WineI says , why don't you just hire the local people ? I mean , why don't you just fly as an expert to train them ? It's got to be a lot cheaper . Plus , these people are going to be more willing to work . It's their own beach . So you know they're going to do a better job and you're going to make them very happy and you're going to go from being a villain who spoiled a bunch of oil to a hero that's providing them jobs . In the wintertime and Christmas approaching , I can't see this being anything but a win for you . And it's going to just fly the experts in . They did , they did do that . I don't know if they did it , because I said so , but they maybe the money thing flipped them over , but they did that . And the next thing , you know all the local people around there working on the site .
Tom MuellerA quick note for our listeners . As you can tell , adam has a lot of stories to share . On our next episode , Adam recounts a crisis incident when he says the government ordered him to lie about what was happening in the response . It's a fascinating and , frankly , disheartening story , but told with Adam's unique flair and honesty . Tune in to hear Adam recount that experience on our next episode . So thanks for joining us for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast . If you like what you're hearing here , please like and subscribe to the podcast and give us a five-star rating , and please tell your friends and colleagues about us as well . We'll see you again for another episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast .
Marc MullinThat's the end of this episode .
