Tom Mueller: 0:09

All right, all set. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis podcast. On this podcast, we talk all things crisis management and we do that through storytelling and lessons learned to share from experienced crisis leaders. Thanks for joining us. Again today I'm tom mueller, writing shotgun with me again today my co-host, mark mullen.

Marc Mullen: 0:34

Hello Tom, looking forward to today's session awesome.

Tom Mueller: 0:39

We've got a very interesting guest with us today. He is jeff hahn, and Jeff has a new book coming out called Breaking Bad News and it is focused on crisis communications, and Jeff has some kind of unique offerings in this book we thought would be interesting to bring up to our listeners. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Hahn: 1:01

Tom Mark, great to be with you, really pleased that you're focused in studying this part of communications. It's a craft that mixes some art and science together and it certainly deserves the attention you're giving it. So thank you.

Tom Mueller: 1:16

Yes, thank you for that. We're having a lot of fun with it and you know the pool is deep of interesting people to talk to and, you know, bring out in this forum and our objective here really is just sharing experiences from people who are sort of long in tooth and have been through a lot to help the younger generation that's coming up, you know, to tap into that expertise, share some lessons learned and and maybe benefit their own careers as they go forward. Jeff, if you don't mind, could you take just a minute and introduce yourself to our audience?

Jeff Hahn: 1:54

Oh for sure, Just a little bit about my background to help set the stage. I grew up in Motorola. From a career standpoint, I spent 15 years in the semiconductor business and for all of those 15 years I was actually a member of the crisis management situation assessment team. At least to everything from hazardous material spills to workplace violence and fatalities, to outbreaks, contagion outbreaks, and even spend an entire 48 hours in a bunker over Y2K, If you remember that that was actually the thing.

Jeff Hahn: 2:47

worried about it because Motorola chips, the semiconductors with those tiny little clocks in them, were in billions of different applications. So it was really enriching for a young communications PR person to be exposed to all of those different situations and I came to fall in love with this part of the whole craft of PR.

Tom Mueller: 3:14

It is fascinating and we learn something new every day as we go through this. Each one of us, in our careers, have dealt with different types of crises and different crises require different skill sets, but there are some common themes that go across crisis situations and I know you tackle some of those in your book. One of the things I like about this is that you focus a lot on case studies and looking at a bunch of different incidents that have happened in recent years. So that's kind of a unique thing for me. But as you think about your book and the sweat effort you've put into that, what's unique about the offering that you're bringing forward here?

Jeff Hahn: 4:03

Well, in Breaking Bad News, I sought to really try to understand and unpack the patterns behind the crisis response. And now, as owner of my own agency for the last 18 years, trying to put all of those side by side and asking myself what's the same about each of these? And if I were trying to teach a new person to the craft, how would I begin to break down and help them understand? Here are the patterns and the things that you look for in every crisis event, and so that journey led me to the creation of the book, which took seven years to write.

Tom Mueller: 4:44

Wow, that's a labor of love.

Marc Mullen: 4:47

A lot of data crunching.

Tom Mueller: 4:50

Or torture.

Jeff Hahn: 5:00

Yeah, in fact I used my graduate program at Texas State University. I wrote a capstone paper there about the structure of a media interview and just to give you some sense of the depth I went into on this, I recorded 505 radio interviews, all business topics on NPR, stripped out all of transcribed and then stripped out all of the answers. I didn't care what people said, I was looking for the questions and through a statistical analysis found that reporters ask six kinds of questions and they ask them in a predictable order. Well, that's the kind of pattern, especially in a high stakes engagement like a media interview, you want to be able to assure a client, hey, there's a method to what you're about to go through. Let's train you and get you prepared for that. I love that we can find these archetypes and templates and patterns. It really builds a lot of confidence in my own consulting that hey, there is a known method to assess and then address all kinds of crises.

Tom Mueller: 6:09

Yeah, I love the fact that you're data-driven on what you've done there and are there. Well, I guess, as a former journalist, I'm sitting here thinking well, the top five questions have to be who, what, when, where, why and how. I can go to six, I guess. Does that line up with what your data shows?

Jeff Hahn: 6:31

It's close, you know all of those things come out. But when we looked at the model that formed up out of that data analysis, we found that an interview typically goes like this there's an opener question Tell us what's happening. There's a probe that gets a little bit more difficult to respond to. Then there's a clarifying type question. From there the questions really kind of veer into different directions. But you can almost always expect a reporter to use a phrase like many people are saying that this is true or that's not true. What do you say? That's a proxy question. Then you're going to get a hypothetical and then a wrap up and almost always you're going to get is there anything else you would like to add? And that question, by the way, is the one where I've had to coach a lot of my clients over the years through. I said please do not miss the chance to nail the end. Stick that landing, because if you just say nope, that's got it, you'll miss the opportunity to give them your best quote.

Tom Mueller: 7:40

I think I have the most fun with that question in training sessions because it surprises most executives who I'm working with. But you're spot on, this is it's the softball question, so just use it as an opportunity to reiterate that key message. Exactly Right, and a lot of good reasons for that Great.

Jeff Hahn: 8:02

So that pattern of a media interview goes all the way back through the book as I think about. Well, what's the pattern behind the creation of a rapid response team? What are the roles that ought to be repeated? What's the pattern behind messaging? What about, then, messengers? Is there a pattern or a method? Then, of course, what about the outreach itself? I complete it by calling that the method. So the model really shapes up as a 3M message, messenger and method. Kind of easy to learn and it takes some of the mystery out of this craft called crises.

Marc Mullen: 8:41

So what you're talking about explains why it always seems like the same things break in a response. So what you're saying is that's because the same things are done, the same assumptions are made, the same actions are planned and so on. So to really streamline our response capability, we probably need to take a hard look at that, take a hard look at what's always happening. That's not working. But it seems like so many times, particularly in incident response, what everybody wants more than anything else is to go home. They just want to be done with it. So it's hard to get that sort of review afterwards. And I look at your list of your examples and I know a couple of these examples you give in your book. That organization has dealt with this before.

Jeff Hahn: 9:29

Oh, absolutely.

Marc Mullen: 9:30

They made the same mistake.

Jeff Hahn: 9:32

Mark, you just hit a great one on the head. Everybody wants to go home, they want to get back to normal. That's the driving motive that we have to recognize as the background pattern that's happening, and the famous quote you guys will remember it, Tony Hayward from British Petroleum I'd like my life back. Oh no, it's fantastic for us as students of the craft. But, my goodness, it speaks directly to your point, Mark, that people want desperately to get back to normal, to get rid of this dissonance.

Tom Mueller: 10:09

Yeah, and there's a whole backstory to that quote of why he said that in the context that he was in, and it comes back to the fact that the CEO was out there on the beach talking to a group of fishermen and he was tired and he shouldn't have been there in the first place and he was. You know, he was out there unescorted by a company media person, and so you know, there's just so many little things lined up for him to fail in that, and so it's yeah, absolutely, it's a. It's a quote that just lives in infamy now for me now, but the stronger message behind that that I always pull out is what's the proper role for your CEO in a crisis situation? And, jeff, I want to hit you with that Mark, do you have something else you want to throw in?

Marc Mullen: 11:06

I was just saying. It's not good to justify the statement by saying you wanted to be at a yacht race.

Tom Mueller: 11:14

Never a good look.

Jeff Hahn: 11:16

Not a good look, not a good look.

Marc Mullen: 11:17

Great subheading.

Jeff Hahn: 11:22

But, tom, your question is a really good one because there is a role. But what I talk about in the pattern of messenger in the book is the best possible role for a CEO. It may not be to be the first one on the scene. Although there are certain industries I'll take airlines there is an expectation that the CEO is quick to communicate. But you have other options and what I found in exploring each of the three M's message messenger method of delivery is there's options in every one of these cases and I think that, depending on the type of crisis that you're faced with, you can choose a communications person, a subject matter expert. You can even choose outside third party expertise that allows you to shape a narrative. Ceos certainly can play a good role, but I suggest, at the right time in the right way, not as the first knee-jerk response, let's get the CEO in a press conference and say you're sorry, it's just the worst advice ever because it's not thoughtful.

Tom Mueller: 12:41

Well, and one of the risks you run there is if your CEO is leading and out front and makes a mistake, as Tony Hayward did, where do you go from there, Right? So much better to have you know your CEO. You know, step up and make the commitment on behalf of the company that all the resources we need to address this situation will be applied, and I'm going to be watching this closely. Let me introduce you to the team who's going to be running this response day to day right.

Tom Mueller: 13:16

Step back, get out of the way.

Jeff Hahn: 13:19

Yeah, and be a CEO to operate that. Let your experts take the stage.

Tom Mueller: 13:29

I'm curious, jeff, when you're you know, when you're coaching with the 3M model there is, you know what's how does that play into an actual sort of coaching session with an executive? Are they sort of open, you know, to that, or how do you roll that in sort of easily?

Jeff Hahn: 13:57

roll that in sort of easily. Well, back to the pattern idea. What I talk about in Show Em is that messages can take on unique shapes depending on the circumstances, and what I found in my research work is that there really are 16 message types that you can choose from, those 16 roughly split in half, and it depends. The choice that you make depends on a single question Are you going to accept blame? If you're going to accept blame of some degree, then you have eight message types or eight message options to choose from. If you're not, you have another eight options, and so it's in that pattern and we find those options that you can apply then. Now let's take a unique situation. Where does your intuition, where does your instinct take you? You're going to reject blame. You're going to accept it. Okay, now let's work down through the flow chart of options. That's how I do that coaching.

Tom Mueller: 15:01

Yeah, do you, mark? I'm just jumping back to kind of your area here on. You know crisis plan development and you know, jeff, you've got some interesting options laid out here. How does that translate? If you know, if a team is preparing a crisis management plan, is this a way to develop some, you know, template key messages to include in your plan, or how would you recommend it fit with that?

Jeff Hahn: 15:29

Yeah, typically there's a known universe of situations. I characterize those really into three categories. There are reputation incidents Maybe there's a dozen of those that I've categorized. There are safety situations, emergency situations, explosions, plane crashes, and so when you start to map all of those possible incidents, you can develop a fairly good inventory of options based on the message choice. So for this incident, option one is x, option two is y, and that gives you the opportunity not to try to overload it. I think all of us here have been involved in exercises where we've developed a 73-page three-ring binder that will never be visited or looked at again All things that are worthless over time. So when I teach a crisis planning class or seminar, my promise to those who attend is that you're going to get a complete crisis plan on an 11 by 17 piece of paper.

Tom Mueller: 16:48

Wow, okay that's impressive.

Marc Mullen: 16:52

It's interesting what you said about being prepared with this messaging about it was your fault or you're accepting blame. I think you better have that sheet ready. You better have those statements ready, because if you want to see a corporate attorney turn white, just give him eight options on how to say it was all your fault. Yeah, so it's a challenge, but again, some of that is there's a reality where you look at a specific scenario and say it's very obviously something that we did or didn't do, but even at that, so much of the time you don't know that until a year later you just don't know what's coming. So that's an interesting challenge as to how do you actually address the fact that you're responding aggressively to an incident that may not even be yours or your fault, and how do you say you're sorry without accepting blame, when everybody thinks that if you say we apologize for this event to recur, the populace says oh see, you are admitting it's your fault, but I'm sorry is way different from it's my fault.

Jeff Hahn: 18:05

Completely right, mark, and I go into a little bit of that. I found that there are eight components to a complete apology. It's an academic exercise in some respects, but it's an interesting enough device, this thing called the apology, that it's worthy of some examination. I think that you can use strategic ambiguity as your friend and circumstance typically as your scapegoat, to keep you just close enough and empathetic enough to a situation without pulling yourself into liability, and being in good proximity and understanding how people are feeling and talking about. I understand how people feel that's not an admission of guilt. Feel that's not an admission of guilt, that's not an admission of blame, but it is a human and empathetic response that creates credibility and that's the way that you can attach yourself as a spokesperson or a brand to an event without getting pulled into the deep dark trolling that would happen to you on social media.

Marc Mullen: 19:19

Right as you're reciting those words and picturing saying that to my wife when I come home late from a meeting. See how those elements of an apology would work on a domestic front.

Jeff Hahn: 19:31

Yeah, I'm anxious to hear how it works for you, yeah.

Marc Mullen: 19:34

I'm going to have to replay it back from the video. When we're done with this, I'll let you know.

Tom Mueller: 19:39

Right, yeah, you might think about some bridging techniques in there too, mark, you know.

Marc Mullen: 19:45

There may be time to send in a subordinate. True enough.

Jeff Hahn: 19:48

You could use another spokesperson.

Marc Mullen: 19:50

A subject matter expert.

Tom Mueller: 19:53

Well, Jeff, I know you jump into some sort of tactical level discussions in the book. I'm curious about kind of two areas that you talk about. One is the makeup of a rapid response team and then the other is who belongs in a war room and who doesn't. So walk us through your take on the rapid response team and how you see that being set up.

Jeff Hahn: 20:19

Mark mentioned earlier your corporate lawyers or general counsel. They certainly have a role on the team, but I don't think that lawyers can lead a rapid response team very effectively, can lead a rapid response team very effectively. They're trained in argumentation and they're also trained in creating as little liability as possible. So their default is to no comment oftentimes, or we'll have something to say once we get to court. Well geez, the court of a public opinion has already rendered judgment when that happens. So I think when we look at rapid response teams, we want to configure it around a table with these characters. Certainly legal counsel's there, but on the side of the table, at the end of the table, is what I refer to as the chief decision maker, kind of recalling what we just talked about. Oftentimes people assume that's the CEO. Maybe not. Maybe there's a better executive who works better in this situation, and you know it's gonna be a situation at any given time where Murphy's Law takes over. Of course it should be this person, but they're hiking in the Himalayas. So on the other end of the table you need a deputy chief decision maker, someone who can approve communications, can muster additional subject matter experts around the table as needed. So those are the anchors of the team Chief decision maker, deputy chief decision maker. Around the other parts of the table you have rapid response team coordinator, someone who can really keep track. This is a person who is fantastic at project managing and sorting and prioritizing. You need that person to help you keep track of all the different ideas and situations flying around.

Jeff Hahn: 22:21

Then, of course, your communications manager, and I think there's two roles to play when it comes to comms. The senior communications manager really has to take the viewpoint, has to put her or his eyes in the minds of the audience. What are stakeholders thinking? How are they feeling? That's a different kind of exercise than the other communications person who's okay. I got to go set up a corral for the press and manage that situation, so I like those kinds of roles for communications. Then, of course, you've got your subject matter experts as needed. That might be HR, it, if it's a cyber attack facilities. I did a lot of consulting for a university for several years and transportation was always at the table, and so you'll find those subject matter experts as the situation warrants. But that's generally the makeup. I count that as eight people maximum to really facilitate rapid decision making and with that, Waram you're describing is specifically for communications.

Marc Mullen: 23:33

That's not the physical response. So how do you integrate with the physical response and the decisions they're making in that other room?

Jeff Hahn: 23:44

Yeah, good distinction, mark, because there's incident management or crisis management, and there's crisis communication. So what I just described was the comms part of it. What I just described was the comms part of it. Deputy decision maker is often the person who's integrated and connected to incident response and bringing new information in. Of course, when crises get rolling and really start to bloom your communications, people are going to be tracking social media and the narratives that are being set into place through those channels, so everybody's going to probably have some inputs around the table and, of course, everyone has a phone, so they're going to be getting lots of texts too. Managing that that's a discipline. It takes some practice that is.

Tom Mueller: 24:40

That's a discipline. It takes some practice. Yeah, jeff. The other follow-up there was about the war room. So similar concept here with the rapid response team and the war room. Again, we're talking about a war room for the communication side of the response.

Jeff Hahn: 24:52

Yeah, what's your recommendations there be careful of is not to overload it. You can overload a war room with lawyers and I have seen that have a really deleterious effect on decision making because they are voicing all the things that could go wrong rather than leaders. I had one experience where it was a gas company. They had a leak occur in one of their lines. That leak developed into a gas bubble underneath the home. It blew the home up when a light switch came on. There were two fatalities and, of course, damage to other structures around that little neighborhood.

Jeff Hahn: 25:58

And in the war room were five attorneys. But it was the senior communications leader who finally said how much more of a check will we write if we actually act like we're human? And in that moment those lawyers stepped back away from the table and said it won't be any difference or it'll be very little difference. So okay, let's be human. And that created the opportunity then to say how are we, as high integrity individuals, expected to react here? High integrity individuals expected to react here? It's one of those really interesting times when there was an overload and a very smart comment helped bring balance to it. So I think as you load your war rooms up, there are those who are experienced enough to know their roles when to contribute and when to listen also takes practice, because you're going to have people with strong opinions who all of a sudden want to say, well, we should do this. That's not a good deliberation. You have got to really think about it from all of the experts around the table it from all of the experts around the table.

Marc Mullen: 27:20

It seems like a lot of times, when we walk into a response which, by definition, is unexpected, you need to address the core reason why you're there, and a lot of times we forget that our core reason is not to get back to normal, because if we try to get back to normal, everything you say would be sufficient if everything was normal.

Marc Mullen: 27:39

But things aren't normal, so you just have to begin to understand. It Sounds like what happened there is somebody had to toss cold water in the attorney's faces and say you're going to pay. So now how do we protect the reputation of the organization while you do your lawyer stuff and just step back and let the communicators handle it? But I've seen that a lot to me a lot of times when the initial statements if you form unified command, all the initial statements sound so good and so noble, but what they should be saying is this is bad and we're doing the best we can to stop it and there's nobody else that can be in this room that can do better than the people we have here, or something like that.

Jeff Hahn: 28:19

I love what you said, mark, and I think it's exactly right. This people are so, so desperate to get back to normal. They'll even say things in a warm room like how do we make this go away? Which that is an expression of a dream. It's not real. We have to walk through these one step at a time and not get too far ahead of ourselves. Staying in the present is a really that's a hard to develop skill.

Marc Mullen: 28:46

Yeah, well, if you want to get now, I have a hurricane. You have to go through the hurricane.

Jeff Hahn: 28:50

Absolutely right yeah.

Tom Mueller: 28:52

Well, jeff, I just have one more question for you. Can you guess, what that question might be?

Jeff Hahn: 29:00

Nope, I'm ready to go.

Tom Mueller: 29:03

Anything else you'd like to add?

Marc Mullen: 29:06

I just want to get out of here.

Jeff Hahn: 29:10

I appreciate it very much and it's fun to spend time with you all to think through these hidden patterns. I always believe that when it comes to crises, good judgment and high integrity are really the hidden variables that we depend on so much. What we should appreciate more often, and what I coach my clients on, is that options are better than answers. We don't have all the information to get everything exactly right. Let's use our message options, our messenger options and our method of delivery options in a smart combination to move through one step at a time.

Tom Mueller: 29:52

All right, Jeff. Thanks so much for taking a little bit of time to chat with us about this very interesting conversation, and we very much appreciate your time today.

Jeff Hahn: 30:02

It's been my pleasure, guys, great to talk to you.

Tom Mueller: 30:06

And that's going to do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Thanks again for joining us. If you'd like to reach out to the show, then drop me an email at tom, at leadinginacrisiscom, and we will see you again soon on another episode. Take care.