The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
Interviews, stories and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Being an effective leader in a corporate or public crisis situation requires knowledge, tenacity, and influencing skills. Unfortunately, most of us don't get much training or real experience dealing with crisis situations. On this podcast, we will talk with people who have lived through major crisis events and we will tap their experience and stories from the front lines of crisis management.
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.
Your co-host, Marc Mullen, has over 20 years of experience as a communication strategist. He provides subject matter expertise in a number of communication specializations, including crisis communication plan development, response and recovery communications, emergency notifications and communications, organizational reviews, and after-action reports. He blogs at Blog | Marc Mullen
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.
The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
EP 28 Risk Communication vs. crisis communication - say what? With Ann Hayward Walker
Join us for an engaging conversation around risk communication - not the same as crisis communication - with Ann Hayward Walker, a seasoned scientific advisor who has worked major incidents including Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez. Ann has spent many years exploring how people process perceived risk and how an incident management team can effectively communicate around risk issues. How does she recommend managing the difficult issue of risk communication? Hint: It isn't through the PIO or Liaison teams. Emotion plays a part in connecting with a community that has suffered a major incident, yet it can get in the way of information flow. Ann also tells us why she prefers information to facts in an emergency response context. There's a lot to unpack here. Please join us!
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Hi everyone and welcome to the Leading in a Crisis podcast. On this podcast, we talk about all things crisis management with a focus on leadership. We deliver this through interviews, storytelling and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. My co-host, Mark Mullen, is away this week, so I'll be flying solo here today with our special guest, who is Anne Hayward Walker, and our topic today is going to be around risk communications. Anne, welcome to the podcast.
Ann Hayward Walker:Thank you so much, Tom.
Tom Mueller:So, Anne, before we kick off, give us 30 seconds on your background and work history.
Ann Hayward Walker:Well, I guess I would say the short answer is that I started working with a variety of scientists to help people make decisions about uses of the marine environment in the coastal zone. That really led to working with a variety of scientists and also looking at things that were of concern like hazardous materials and oil spills, and over the years working with decision makers, whether it be preparedness or planning for coastal uses or emergency response. They needed to have the scientific information kind of consolidated and boiled down and so, if you look at every person as a lay person, they needed to know things that were not really scientific and in turn that sort of translated to communities down the road about how they as lay people see emergency response and pollution in the marine environment. So that kind of led me in. I started with working with academia, so that led me into risk communications and looking at research and trying to apply it real world.
Tom Mueller:Well, I know you and I have bumped into each other at major crisis response situations, including Deepwater Horizon and others, and I understand you also worked Exxon Valdez, but you're working it from the scientific perspective. So in our normal incident command system structure, where would your role fit among the management team?
Ann Hayward Walker:It's kind of evolved. ICS didn't exist at the time of Exxon Valdez and the scientific support coordinator was looped in directly to the Coast Guard or federal official in charge of the response. After Exxon Valdez, ICS evolved and the national contingency plan was modified and at first the scientific support coordinator was in the environmental unit in the planning but later it was revised so that they could advise Unified Command directly, which was really the intention of scientific support. How do they help Unified Command harness scientific information to make real-time, timely and credible decisions?
Tom Mueller:As said, you've worked a lot of large response situations, so what has your years of experience taught you about risk communications and crisis communications in general?
Ann Hayward Walker:That's a complicated question and not that easy to boil down to sound bites. So if we look at risk communication, you know really what is risk communication and it's about informing people who are affected by an incident to form beliefs, judgments and their decisions about the potential risks and a lot of their view of potential risk. Their understanding could be based on risk perceptions, which could include their background and education and what they know from experience. So I guess I would say that risk perceptions are really the key to addressing risk communications and that all of that has to be done on an incident-specific basis, because every incident is different, and so the people who you can sort of get groups of people by their stakeholder role, but basically you have to understand what their risk perceptions are for that particular incident in order to be able to share information about what's going on in a way that makes sense to them and then their opinions and judgments and decisions are more fully and completely informed.
Tom Mueller:You know that's it sounds simple enough but in fact when most crisis situations occur, you know, we may not know the risk perceptions of people in that particular community. You know. One example that jumps to mind here is the train derailment up in East Palestine, ohio, where you had, you know, pollution issues around vinyl chloride, and local residents there had significant concerns around air pollution, water contamination and they didn't really seem at all receptive to messages from the company, from regulators, even local elected officials and first responders. So how do you break through the lack of trust there and help people understand the risk that they're facing?
Ann Hayward Walker:So I think when an incident occurs, something has happened in the system which is broken, industry failed in some way and created a problem.
Ann Hayward Walker:It could be government authorities, the federal government, others are not trusted. So we're starting from a negative. I think the only thing that we can do. We have plans about processes to put in place and the normal way of managing an incident is using the incident command system, which came from the military and very vertically oriented.
Ann Hayward Walker:And what we found for risk communications, both from researchers and others, is that in order to arrest, really do a good job with risk communications, addressing risk perceptions, you have to do horizontal collaboration inside the command post, which means getting out of your ICS box, your function, and stretching outside and collaborating with members of the community to learn more about their risk perception. So it really requires first an objective to establish risk communications and stakeholder engagement at the outset, like in the ICS 201 form, the very beginning, because that will enable resources to be applied to it, and then to have within the command post what I would call a function, that is, technical assessment for risk communications, and the function of that ICS box, if you will, would be to collaborate, to facilitate collaboration inside the command post and from the environmental unit and sampling and everything else. Provide information to the liaison officers, public affairs officers, to help address risk perceptions and concerns real time.
Tom Mueller:Well, it's interesting now. So you're talking about potentially a new position within the ICS structure to help manage that risk perception issue. Typically those communications issues are going to live with the public information officer, maybe with liaison officer, and I think you might get some pushback around that from those sections. Have you had any experience with that?
Ann Hayward Walker:I had experience with it. I experienced pushback and what I found is that Unified Command, the incident commanders from the state, the federal government and industry sort of understood that this goes beyond specific training for an ICS function. Now, ICS is supposed to be infinitely flexible and adaptable, but in practice what happens is people are trained according to traditional functions. What happens is people are trained according to traditional functions and so those adaptations are not built into the training process. So on Deepwater Horizon, we actually well, we created a new section called Oil Risk Communications and Assessment within the planning section, and that function was to connect with the people within environmental unit, to connect with operations because those are the guys who are actually seeing what's happening out on the field to share information, to have new again horizontal collaboration across functions in the incident command post and then to package that information to share.
Ann Hayward Walker:At that time. This is now what 14 years ago there were, really just at the emergence of social media. So the understanding of how fast things have to happen and sharing outside the command post really wasn't a given at the time. But I think that the challenge now is for ICS to adapt very, very quickly and for some of this risk communication practice to be included in an ICS training which we have actually implemented where I live, which is a small rural area, not unlike southeast Louisiana or Prince William Sound.
Tom Mueller:And so can you talk to us a little bit about that in your community there Does that mean you already have materials prepared to communicate with the community? What does that look like?
Ann Hayward Walker:So what we've done is where I live, which is on the Chesapeake Bay, the eastern shore of Virginia, the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula we've developed a standard ICS 201 that has we have two different counties here and we've actually got like staging areas we know where staging areas might be, for example, and other things that would be included on an ICS 201. But we've also got objectives, initial response objectives, incident objectives, planned actions included and one of them is established communication channels with stakeholders, local governments, communities, stakeholder. We have critical information requirements, stakeholder interest and concerns, including public or political, which gets to the risk perception, and you'd use a stakeholder outreach process and risk communication process to specifically address limitations and constraints of response operations, which is another thing people really don't understand at the beginning. But in this way we put into a default ICS 201 so that these objectives are right there at the very beginning and you kind of make sure that that's included along with operations, otherwise it gets lost in the urgency of it.
Tom Mueller:Right, and it's such a nebulous type of function. You know risk communications Right. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm fascinated by the fact that you've sort of worked through interdisciplinary ways within a command post to try and highlight these issues. You know, as an example, you know going into an exercise or even a major response. One of the things we coach teams to do is have your dispersant materials ready to go. Talking about fact sheets and you know whatever tools and graphics that can help people understand how this tool is used and how it's. You know a part of the US EPA toolkit for dealing with oil spill responses, but it seems no matter how well prepared someone is, the use of dispersants becomes very controversial. Is there a way around that?
Ann Hayward Walker:I don't think so, because anything which is unfamiliar and not used very much is always going to be strange and in terms of communities that might be located near an oil spill which would use dispersants, they're going to be unfamiliar, they're going to be untrusting. If they go on social media to look, they'll find nothing but controversy. So there is a way, I think, that we can help to dispel that. We did a dispersant training class, but we made it very interactive. So I use a thing called Mentimeter which allows for a combination of presentation material and then audience questions can ask them like at the beginning, what are your concerns about dispersants? And then you sort of have an idea that toxicity, for example, would be a big one. Well, that one we can address in the class. And then we ask them at the end of a particular section you know, does toxicity mean a small amount of you know how it's expressed and evaluated? So there are steps that can be taken.
Ann Hayward Walker:But some things will always be controversial, especially when an incident happens and there's no trust. So they won't understand what vinyl chloride means right out of the gate. People won't understand about liquefied natural gas. It's just too unfamiliar and they'll be worried and fearful.
Ann Hayward Walker:So I think really the thing we have to do real time if there's not much preparation ahead of time is to be a guide. The command post can be a guide to where they can find information online and also from the actual incident, and we can help share information which is current, because the best available information is from the command post and we can support those things. But I think we have to get out of our ICS boxes and address people's fears and concerns. We really need to know what they are and they're ongoing and they're detailed. There's a lot of research in social media from academic researchers that has shown that they can get very detailed with their questions and if we just put out a seven-word message, which is great for people to remember, it's not gonna address the questions that they have. So if we're going to do risk communications real time, it requires a real focus and resources within the command post and being able to collaborate outside with people who are trusted in the communities.
Tom Mueller:You know we're living in a very polarized society now at this time in our lives, Anne, and you know I'm just struck by how untrustful people are generally today. And then, thinking about, you know, trying to go into a community and communicate about an incident that has occurred, trying to establish credibility there, it would be quite challenging. Any thoughts on that?
Ann Hayward Walker:Tom, you know me, I'm never in charge of anything. I'm an advisor. I'm a technical advisor to an incident commander, or a unified command. So I don't have experience saying exactly what I would do, but I do know that unified command has, in Deepwater Horizon BP incident commanders, and the federal on-scene coordinators have sort of gone with my, some of them have gone with my recommendation.
Ann Hayward Walker:So what I guess I would say is we have to give our best shot, to be honest, in reaching out to people in the community that are trusted by them.
Ann Hayward Walker:We ask them, you know, I mean for health things. We sort of know who those are, we know that they're general physicians, we know that there's poison control centers, we know that, and those people have the technical background to sort of make sense and then talk about it back to their own community. So if I were in charge, I would immediately set up within the incident command post a function for gathering technical assessment for the purpose of risk communications that links to both logistics, the medical team, environmental unit that's doing sampling operations, because they are the guys in the field that see everything and also then packaging that information and sharing it with those who are more directly connected in function with communications, like the public information officer or the JIC and liaison officers. But I think that's a new way of collaborating. Again it's horizontal, it's not vertical like a traditional military organization. That's where ICS came from was really a military organization which has huge strengths for operations because it's very efficient. But we're not talking operations, we're talking risk communications.
Tom Mueller:Yeah, and we're talking emotions here, because when you get to risk communications, you're dealing with emotional issues now rather than factual issues, or at least the perception from you know. You're dealing with fear in a community, right, and dealing with fear by laying facts on people isn't always the most effective way to do that. You've got to kind of reach them on an emotional level as well, and that, to me, is the huge challenge. You know every company that's dealing with a major incident in a community you know faces that challenge and of course, the best way around it is to have ties with that community, to be a trusted person in that community and to bring the credibility with you. Then people are very likely to listen. Hey, I want to take you back, Ann, just a second. You mentioned working in Deepwater Horizon and that you had some space there to operate and work some of these risk communication issues. Can you take just a moment and tell us a little bit about that communication?
Ann Hayward Walker:issues. Can you take just a moment and tell us a little bit about that? Well, thanks, tom. Well, my assignments changed. I was assigned immediately to aerial dispersants because of my experience and having to deal with that in the 80s and 90s, and then I was assigned actually by the Coast Guard incident commander Well, he wasn't the Coast Guard incident commander, he was the federal on-scene coordinator to go to parish meetings and talk about dispersants at sort of these open house educational stations where you could go around and ask questions about safety or dispersants or logistics or where do I get hired, things like that.
Ann Hayward Walker:And then, as we learn more about the questions people had from these open houses, I would go back and say, okay, I've got to get information packaged to answer that question for the next meeting. And that really led to the development of a function within the environmental unit where we looked at I was working with another specialist who was really a chemist and a very analytical master, you know, really masterful in sampling, and we worked on this oil risk communication assessment. So part of what people want to know, need to learn about is how the incident is unfolding. Part of what people want to know need to learn about is how the incident is unfolding and for oil and some other pollutants they spread right so and it can change the way things look. So part of what's what is important for people to know and we say facts, I guess after Deepwater Horizon.
Ann Hayward Walker:I'm not a big believer in facts, because facts change. We think at the at the beginning, somebody says this is how much was released. Well, now we learn more. No, it's not how much was released. So I'm not a big believer in the use of the word facts. I'm not a big believer in the use of the word, the term fact sheets. I like information sheets. I like we're going to share information. This is what we know as of today.
Ann Hayward Walker:It may change as we learn more tomorrow because, that, to me, is the most honest way to tell people what's going on, and so that's what we did is people asked questions.
Ann Hayward Walker:We went back and we talked with people in the command post and again, I think the best available information about what's going on is from the boots on the ground people. We found that there were people working on a dispersant fact sheet at CDC in Atlanta. There was an error and a lot of the people in the command post had had to work with dispersants over the years. So we kind of and working again collaboratively if you get outside your box we worked with some toxicologists and with working with them, we found that there was an error in the way something was communicated. So I think that collaboration is really it's not important, it's critical, it's just critical. And if the organization is not set up to have that kind of collaboration across functions, I think it's hard with social media to ever get ahead of anything now. But we can't just say we're not going to try the best we can.
Tom Mueller:So and one of the favorite videos that I used to use in doing liaison officer training sessions. It was actual video of you at a town hall meeting in southern Louisiana during Deepwater Horizon and you're standing there next to Dave Fritch and you were talking about dispersions and there was an activist on the other side of the table from you asking pointed questions and just over the shoulder of that activist was a television camera filming your interactions. So potentially a lot of pressure on you.
Ann Hayward Walker:e probably looked really stressed.
Tom Mueller:Everybody was just holding tight. What struck me about that was how calm and cool you guys were being in the face of very aggressive questions and an obvious television exposure there, but maintaining your cool and providing information in direct response to the questions. But that can't be an easy thing to do, is it?
Ann Hayward Walker:No, it's not easy to do and it's not easy to do at all, and I think it just is stressful. There was one meeting in Louisiana where I was on the receiving end of about 30 F-bombs and it was shocking, primarily because I believe the fear was so genuine. And if we in the command post some things we are fearful about and some things we don't know enough to be fearful about, and some things we learn to be fearful about and some things we do know enough that you don't have to be fearful about, and some things we learn to be fearful about and some things we do know enough that you don't have to be fearful about, and so I guess I feel like, again, the best we can do is share information about the situation and try and allay people's fears the best we can. And if we don't know, we can say we'll try and find out more for you, we'll try and connect you with someone that can answer more questions for you in detail. We don't have all this information right here with us today, something like that.
Ann Hayward Walker:I try to put myself in their place. If I was trying to explain to my mother, who was terrified about something and she could be very intense sometimes. How would I go about it and how would I want to be spoken to myself? I do try very hard to speak to people the way I'd want to be spoken to myself and just not lose that.
Tom Mueller:Right Good sage advice, though, ann, to share with our listeners, and we thank you so much for taking time to prepare and to come on the podcast today. You have such a rich history of experiences, you know, dealing with major incidents and even face-to-face communications, so we're very happy that you were able to take time and be with us today we're very happy that you were able to take time and be with us today.
Ann Hayward Walker:Well, I appreciate it so much, Tom. We go back almost 20, well, 20 years now, and this is another example of how much relationships matter. You know you have a relationship with somebody years ago and how important it is to have good terms, so thank you for thanking me all these years later.
Tom Mueller:My pleasure and we look forward to talking to you again soon.
Ann Hayward Walker:Good luck with your podcast. I think it's wonderful. They're great.
Tom Mueller:Thank you, and that's going to do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. If you like what you're hearing, then please like and subscribe to the podcast 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. Thank you.
