Public Information and Liaison in Crisis Management

Tom Mueller 0:07

Hi 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 , Marc Mullin , who's joining us again from Bellingham , Washington . Hey , Marc . Hi Tom , happy to be here . Today's episode is a continuation of our conversation with Adam Wine , a 30 year veteran of the US Coast Guard and a highly , highly experienced crisis responder . Let's pick up the conversation now . Alright Adam, l et's shift gears here for a second . Let me pull you back a little bit and let's just talk about the relationship between the public information officer and the liaison officer . Those need to be really tight-knit relationships when you're working a major incident . Have you seen an incident where you really didn't have that kind of cooperation between those two core external facing teams ? What was the result of that ?

Adam Wine 1:27

Everything that you need to do as a liaison officer the JIC staff produces and essentially you just have a different customer base that you provide that information to . That individual as a liaison needs to be very much a partner and that individual and the PIO or a team that functions together provide information to do different audiences . They have to be tweaked , especially for the liaison officer , a certain way so that the stakeholders are feeling that they're getting information specifically geared to them , not just what the general public is getting . That was also one of the things where we realized if you give information to any politician or group politician or staff , that information will be released to the media at the politicians and beneficial discretion , in other words , whenever it's going to do them good so that they can sound like they know something ahead of time . It was a little bit of a blurring lesson when you first gave them a briefing , thinking that they were going to hold this information until we released it . We literally asked them that the incident commander said listen , I'm giving you this information , it'll be going out to the media at my news conference at three o'clock and these politicians would inevitably upstage them and release it ahead of time .

Adam Wine 2:54

We eventually developed the possibility that anything that we went to the stakeholders with would be information that we'd already gotten approval to go out to the public with . Just to avoid that , I'd say now I actually have served now as a liaison officer and I work directly with the JIC . I would go directly to them as Liason officer and just say , okay , I need your news release , I need your , you know this , this and this , and I would put together my little VIP packages and so then when I would escort the various VIPs that were coming to visit around , I was handing and stuff and all of it was generated by the JIC staff . There is no way to separate those two groups . They are , like I said , two experts dealing with two separate offices .

Marc Mullin 3:39

That seems a good way to think about it is is same , much the same content , but just two different distribution channels . And then the answer about how does the timing fit together on that ? Because you don't want to give electors too much lead time , but you definitely don't want them asked by a media person for something they haven't heard yet either . So I think that's good , good advice to work as closely as you can with each other . Have you ever worked with somebody who was underperforming and that you had to actually move out of their position ?

Adam Wine 4:11

Yes , we get that . Sometimes the people who were underperforming were just they just didn't have the training and in other times you usually have people who medically were , or age wise or something along that line , or the stress had gotten too much to them . And the one that comes to mind right away is Hurricane Katrina . I had a staff of all volunteers working and they would come in and I would know I'd give , ask quick questions , find out what their skill set was and they would go into particular jobs . And since this was kind of a long , ongoing operation , it was very , very long hours and you could see the toll it was taking , because most of our volunteers are retirees , because they're the only people who have that time on their hand , and it was wearing them down and there were certain job performances and functions that were starting to really suffer . And I have to figure out how to tell this person who I've asked for volunteer they've come in on their own time to work , to take the day off . I just kind of bite the bullet to a certain extent and says , listen , you've been fantastic , but you're in an exhaustion level . And I would tell them these are the symptoms I've picked up . You need to take this many days down before you can come back to work . He said but I love being part of this . Yes , I understand , but everybody has to get rotated out eventually . I mean they stand pilots down . We're at an air station , probably get stood down after a flight . After so many nights you need to be stood down for this amount of time and that's one way of dealing with it .

Adam Wine 5:58

Th en I had another guy that went off his medication . He was working for us and started acting very odd and very disruptive to the operation . So I had to stand him down as well and I actually kind of had been counting on him . He had a lot of experience and I got a little . I was a little angry . When I talked to him I said you know , you are an experienced individual , you've got military background . What did you do ? And going off of your medication this way ? And I guess I did a little bit of shame and he felt a little ashamed of what he had done and I said I've got to stand you down for several days because of this and it comes from the incident commander . You put out some information that wasn't approved . The incident commander heard about it and I've got to stand you down for that . O ther times I've even had PIOs that I've had to recommend stand down because I was senior enlisted or a warrant officer .

Adam Wine 6:59

They wanted a officer from , you know , academy train type officer to be the actual PIO . Now this individual has no training , no qualifications and no experience , except for they're an officer and they feel that since it says public affairs officer , that's who should be leading it . So I would have these people who really didn't know their job couldn't really function , that I had to pretend like they were in charge and just run things , and most of the time they were intelligent . They just said you know , hey , sir , you know our brief , just go with it , you run it , you tell me what I need to do , and that's good . But the other people - I guess they were trying to do the job , but they wouldn't ask you how to do the job and so they would just cause trouble . They would , you know , release information that hadn't been approved . I would say, Sir you can't release that information , it hasn't been approved yet .

Tom Mueller 8:02

Or , you know , set up or do different things and yeah , that's a tough spot to be in , because hopefully you're getting somebody in there who's coachable , right , because the Coast Guard , moves people around quite frequently , and so you'll get people rotated in into an assignment like that . Don't have a lot of experience Usually there's somebody under them who does and helps coach through that , and I've seen that in some actual exercises where we had you know the senior Coast Guard person there , but was brand new , didn't really know what was going on , but they listened to the junior officer , and things worked out just fine . So that's a huge challenge , though , and that's where the training comes in . You know both f or any agency or company you're working for . It just highlights the need for training and people to understand these roles before they get in there .

Adam Wine 9:02

Yes , absolutely , we would get some of my challenges . Lots of times would be junior people who had gotten into the rate and they were . They liked writing and they would have , like a background in English , or even several cases actually most of the cases it was an English degree and they would try to write news releases and you could tell by the love of their writing . You know , first off , they're using a vocabulary that was , you know , exceptional , except for you're talking to the average public and if I have to look the word up , we're having a problem here you know , and I would have to rewrite their news releases .

Adam Wine 9:42

And I can remember at least one young lady breaking down in tears seeing how much I had to rewrite what she had and I said , no , it's like you know , brevity is beautiful . A true writer can write less and say more in the few words that they have . I think Samuel Clemens , the you know Mark Twain author , basically said that you know , if you can say something with less words in writing , then that's an actual sign of an actual person who can truly write . And that was a lot of training , a lot of the editing that we'd get , especially if a lawyer came in , and lots of times you would get that because of the responsible party wanted the lawyer involved and if they did , if they said that , I'd say , okay , that person has to be in the jic personally , not not , not wandering around or anything . They have to be sitting in there with us . And oh , you know , you sure you want ? Yes , I don't want to . And they go . You want it , no , I don't . Lawyers aren't really any useful to us .

Adam Wine 10:42

We were trying to put out information to educate the public . You write at a sixth grade level of education , lit in this test that I'd use for all the things that they wrote . I also used to make them read it out loud anything they wrote that was going to go public . And they , you know , you know why . Why do I got to do this , chief or , or you know , Mr . Wine , it's because if you read it out loud , it doesn't sound right while you're reading it . It needs to be rewritten . So that's got to be one of the basic tests you read it out loud and if it , if you stumble over the words or and it doesn't make sense why you're reading it , you need to rewrite it and write it so that you can do that .

Tom Mueller 11:21

So , Adam , if thinking about you know different PIOs and liaison officers that you worked with , you know we , we all work with young people who are training to take on these roles as PIO or deputy PIO or liaison officer , as you're , as you think about it . So what are the , the characteristics that make for a good PIO ? And and then you know , we got to work on how we train people in that . But , as you think about that , what do you ? What's your sort of criteria for picking a good PIO ? That's an interesting question Because I actually we had to do .

Adam Wine 12:00

We have to do that as senior enlisted and warrant officers on the Coast Guard , we people who are applying for an interview , because early on I would just read the rules . That says these people needed this scores from their ASVAB tests and they needed to be able to achieve the following things . And I followed the letter of the rule and some of the people that went to school based on that turned out to be well failures as PIPAs , and I learned that you went with the things that you look at , say do I want this person to be on my staff and so stuff I was looking for .

Effective Crisis Communication Skills

Adam Wine 12:43

Strangely , they do require a certain amount of arrogance . I know you can't have a humble person being your spokesperson or writing your information because they have to have a certain level of arrogance and confidence in their own skills and abilities . Otherwise can do the job . You can put , create the information that the news release , whatever , but if you don't have the personal drive to push that thing through for approval , you'll never get it back in a timely enough manner so that you can actually release it out to the media . You also have to have that certain level of personality where you can talk to the media and to the community and get the information across . So you're looking for certain verbal , at presentational skills . You're looking for a . You know , of course the basic journalistic skills should be present . You know , being able to write and stuff so with word processors and a lot of other things that are out there , I mean there's even what the , the AI now , that you can use , can . Can ? You know ?

Adam Wine 13:48

My son , the law , was trying to show to me and tell me how great it was and it turned out . I was , rather I was impressed , you know , you gave it some information in it . It turned out better than what my , a lot of my junior people can produce in a short amount of time . So you , but you're looking for that , the skill sets . I'm not , you know , you don't . They don't have to have them . They have the to have the ability to . I'm willing to learn them .

Adam Wine 14:16

So I would call one of the biggest things they need is the ability to adapt and overcome the situation . You're going to be hit with things that aren't covered in any kind of rules or job aid , that are going to require you to adapt to the situation and make it work , whatever it's going to be if you're out of , you're in a situation where you don't have electricity and power , how you getting your information ? Do you have a way of dropping back to writing the information and sending it to somebody who does have the information so that they can text it to another individual who can write the news release ways of getting around ? You know , like in hurricanes lots of times , so your use is very much restricted and not and the general public can't really make calls and communications because they're using the secure , the cell phone network for emergency uses only . So how do you get information out and back quickly and adapting around all those types of situations ?

Adam Wine 15:19

And I'm looking for a person who can do that . So right confidence , a little bit of arrogance . Your basic journalistic job skill sets and I would say a number one is the ability to adapt and overcome . And in situations you're dealing with , don't let small stuff hold things up .

Tom Mueller 15:38

The the adapt and overcome pieces . It's got to be critical when you're working in the crisis , managing the space right , because it's something a little different every day . And I I know that I've seen some folks that you know that we've had to demobilize because they were sort of good at their jobs , doing , you know , writing or public relations or whatever it was . But when you put them into that jik setting where everything was sort of chaos and you had to be able to adapt and move quickly and adjust your expectations of what you're doing and what you're delivering and they just couldn't quite mentally get there , and so you know we'd work for a couple of days and then just send them home because it was just taking too much of a stress load on them . So those are tough . But you do find there are certain people that you know they're just not quite cut out for that . Or you know they come to you and they bring you a problem .

Adam Wine 16:39

Yes , without solutions yeah .

Tom Mueller 16:43

That's , I'll get your take on that , Adam . But you know , I've had people come to me , you know , and after like the third time they're bringing me a problem . I'm thinking , you know , it's probably time for you to go home , because you're just not adapting here and you're not helping us find solutions and solve the problems , and that's what we need here . Yeah , what's your take on that ?

Adam Wine 17:06

A couple things . You are correct . That is definitely true . During that Katrina operation , because I had so many volunteers , I would literally bring one in and I would find this person had a strong skill set in particular area . I would go okay , you are now in charge of this section , right here , this is your . I'd hand them a job aid out of the JIC manual and I'd say this is your basic core guidance and you do everything you can with this , and if you can't solve what's there , then you can come ask me a question . And they start to ask things almost immediately Like no , no , go , do as much as you can and then come back and ask me a question if you really need to . But come to understand , because you'd always hear this well , how do you want it done ? No , no , don't ask me how I want it done . I just want the product . I don't need to know how you got there and I just need this product . And so you're going to let me do this .

Adam Wine 18:04

Yes , and I was surprised , delightfully surprised about a lot of people would love to working and be able to produce the final product , but they're so used to people telling them that they have to stay inside these particular lanes when they're doing it and they , you know you have to make this product but you have to take this highway or whatever . You've got to get from point A to point B but you've got to take this highway and that's the only way you can get there when they say , well , we could go around them , we've got alternate means . Can I use alternate means ? I was like that I always wanted to find if there was a better way to doing something and so I don't like when I did that in Katrina , I said I don't have time to tell you how to get there . You produce a product for me , you figure how to get there and you come back , and if you're running into a roadblock you can't get by . You come back and tell me and I'll see what we can do to get through it .

Adam Wine 19:04

Was it crudely rewarding that these , the young folks that I was working with , what often did that and were able to come back and hand me a product ? And then they would eventually want to , of course , show me how they did it when I had time , because they were so proud that they figured out how to get around all the roadblocks and over the all the burned out bridges and it was . It's amazing what they were able to achieve , especially when they didn't have somebody breathing over their shoulder who said , who was saying things like give me an update , give me a regular update . I wanted to know when you couldn't move forward any further and that's all I wanted . And so they were really , really happy and their level performance exceeded exceeded everything I was expecting , to the point where I was like , wow , I think I need to change my regular leadership style at working , which I would do .

Adam Wine 19:58

I said my guys would come in and ask me now stop telling people how to do stuff , and I'd say this is what I want , make it happen . And I think I helped some guys in their career as a Redder on that . They would come back and say to me Coast Guard guys , you know I really liked the fact that you let me just go do this , mr Wine , and we didn't breathe over my shoulder except occasionally wanting updates as to how soon it will be done . But you know , I figure that's a fair request from any boss to add what I'm going to get my product . So I would say that that was right there .

Adam Wine 20:31

That's really key is letting people have enough freedom to perform beyond minimal levels , and they will , I would say , most of the time , far exceeds your expectations when they've got that , because most PAs , like I said , have that certain level of arrogance and confidence built in them and and they're always they already have a little bit of adaptive overcome .

Adam Wine 20:58

They're just , they feel constantly restricted by well , basically , management . Management is probably the number one restrictive thing for people being improved to perform above and beyond , because they feel that some guys going to stop them in their tracks when they're moving forward you know , sometimes things don't work is and and you know that these guys are working on , they always doing this , or it just didn't work out and okay , we'll find another way , and they , they , they . I would get that . Look , you know . You know I'm not going to get yelled at . Well , I don't really have time to yell at you . So go figure out another way and make it happen . Oh , we can do it this way . All right , you know , you know , run back and you know , and step on it and make it happening and get it turned out and they did .

Tom Mueller 21:47

All right , adam . Hey , thanks for joining us today . I feel like we've just only scratched the surface of the stories that exist in your brain .

Adam Wine 21:57

Sorry about that .

Tom Mueller 21:59

But we've touched some really interesting stories . So we're going to draw to a close here for for this conversation anyway , but again thank you very much for for being with us .

Adam Wine 22:11

Oh , my pleasure . I hope that some of the information I've passed on , or some of the stories , will be useful to folks out there and maybe help guide them and be successful in what they're doing .

Tom Mueller 22:23

Thank you , Adam , thanks guys , thanks for joining us for this episode of the leading in a crisis podcast . If you'd like what you're hearing here , then 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 , and we'll see you again soon on another episode of the leading in a crisis podcast .