Executive Coaching Meets Crisis Comms

Tom Mueller 0:06

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. We're so happy to have you with us again. On this podcast, we share stories from the front lines of crisis management and crisis communications through interviews, storytelling, and lessons learned as shared by experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. Thank you again for being with us today. As a quick aside here, I'd just like to share some basic demographic information with you about the podcast because I've been very surprised at the geographic reach that we've established here. Right now we have listeners across 36 countries in this great big world. About 40% of our listeners are here in America, 45% in Europe, and then the balance are spread out across Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand. And some of the places that surprised me where we have listeners Ukraine, Sarajevo, Lithuania, Prague, and of course major cities and across America, Europe, and Australia, New Zealand. So thank you to all of our listeners, and a special shout out to our international listeners there. Thanks for being part of the podcast. Hey, on our show today, uh, we're going to talk executive coaching, executive communications with a very well-known leadership coach who's based here in Texas, and that is Susan D. Nelson. Hey, Susan, welcome to the podcast.

Susan D. Nelson 1:40

Thanks, Tom, and congratulations for the outreach and how far your podcast is actually reaching across the world. That's really exciting. And hello to everyone that's there.

Tom Mueller 1:50

Thank you so much for that, Susan. It's good to see you again as always. Hey, a quick thumbnail on Susan's background. As I mentioned, she's a well-known executive and leadership coach. Um, she is a guest lecturer at Rice University's MBA program. Um, she works frequently with executives uh at the Texas Medical Center here in the Houston area. And she is also certified in leadership and management from Harvard Business School. So, Susan, those are some pretty uh gleaming credentials you got there. We're very honored to have you with us.

Susan D. Nelson 2:28

Thank you so much. And just as a little caveat, with the Texas Medical Center, I'm working with their innovation factory. So they've got this concept of how to get from idea to patient the quickest. And so it's incubators and support systems throughout that space. So that's it's just a really fun place to engage.

Tom Mueller 2:47

Very cool. Neat, neat opportunity to coach there. But now I know, Susan, you spend a lot of time with CEOs and senior executives. And I'm I'm wondering if you see sort of common themes among the trainings that you do with those senior leaders. And where do you see opportunities for improvement or development as, you know, kind of across your client base?

Susan D. Nelson 3:14

So I think that's interesting. Um, as we know, when you get into crisis communications, there's a lot of blocking and tackling that has to be done. And for I don't know about you and some of the other professionals out there, but it always seemed like I was that connective tissue, right? That that connective tissue because you're trying to get the stories and know what's going on between all the different places. And so one of the biggest opportunities is just being able to connect and engage and make sure that they are staying on top of things in that space. Generally speaking, when I'm I'm talking to these executives, one of the biggest challenges, actually, from a coaching perspective, the biggest challenges of leaders and executives is time. Whether you're in a crisis and you're in just in your day-to-day operations, it's always about time. And it is a commodity that is non-renewable, and it's one of those that they chase constantly. So if we think about crisis comms, the biggest challenge to that is preparedness. You can't always be fully prepared for something because you don't know exactly what's going to happen, but we've got to be prepared on the front end of it. And so that's the biggest challenge I see from a coaching perspective, communications training perspective, is executives and leaders actually carving out the time to be prepared for what could be coming forward.

Tom Mueller 4:31

I know you have worked many crisis situations with clients over the years. I wonder if you've got any particular stories you can share of successful crisis communications and executive leadership, or maybe one that didn't go so well and left room for improvement and personal growth, as I like to say.

Susan D. Nelson 4:55

Absolutely. It's always about learning and development, right? So I work with um several leaders from a training perspective and a coaching perspective inside of Stryker organization, which is a medical device company. Um, and if you follow the news, they actually unfortunately are dealing with a cyber attack that happened early yesterday morning. Um I was supposed to be talking to one of my leaders out of India really early yesterday morning who was absolutely ghosted me. Unusual, not part of their part of the interactions I've ever had with them. So obviously I stepped into a place of grace and something's happened, right? Several hours later I found out that there had been a wiper attack within the organization. Um, there's a lot of speculation, there's a lot of information out there, they're still working through all the pieces. What really worked was that the organization decided to not stay silent and they went out and used what sources they had. They couldn't they couldn't communicate internally because employees were waking up and their computers were completely wiped, or their cell phones were completely wiped. So they went to social media and first knowledge I had of it was a post on LinkedIn, which was just what we teach, Tom, just what we teach. You tell them what you know, and you tell them what you don't know, and you tell them when you're gonna follow up. And that's what they've done. Follow up, there's been some evolution as to what some of what they believe is going on and that sort of thing. I've been in touch with a lot of my leaders. The biggest challenge is a lack of information because they just don't have it and they can't, they don't have channels to get it there. So really being creative in some of the ways that they're they're doing that.

Tom Mueller 6:47

Well, and this is very common with cyber attacks. Um, you know, historically, you know, the the criminal elements have been involved, so it's been more ransomware. Uh lock up everything, you know, take over your computers, everything, and pay us a ransom, and we'll give you a key that may or may not unlock your devices. But yeah, the challenge then is if you lose access to your hardware, then it comes back to, well, what's our plan in place for dealing with that eventuality? And I think in my experience, I find, you know, most companies really struggle to plan ahead for that type of a black swan event that could hit the company, right? How do we, if we lose everything, what's our plan B or plan C for maintaining communications with our employees, with updating our social media channels, all of that. It takes a huge effort and a lot of energy. And to your point earlier about executives, it takes time to do all of that. So that's something that I've seen, you know, in different clients that I've worked with over time. So glad to hear there's a sort of a successful workaround that's in place now.

Susan D. Nelson 8:07

How are you still dealing with it, I'm sure.

Tom Mueller 8:10

How are you assessing the communications coming out of that so far? You mentioned the LinkedIn post.

Susan D. Nelson 8:16

So internally, the communications that's going on with some of the leaders that I've worked with, they're they're getting some communications. It's still sporadic. Um, but what Striker's done a really good job of is they've they've they really teach their leaders to support their people, support the business. Um, one of the things that I've worked with them is they push decision making down in the organization. So I would assume that there's a lot of that going on right now. Uh the challenge is is when you can't communicate, when you don't have the channels, when I don't know what's going on. I've got a team of 50 people, or there's 250 people in the organization underneath me. What do you do as a leader when there's that lack of communication? And it goes back to what we just said. Treat them as they're human and tell them what you can tell them and tell them what you can't tell them. And so that's what I've been coaching with my leaders around is what can you do right now? We're still waiting on what's coming in, there's limited information, and so first thing they're doing is they're checking in with themselves. This is a time of extreme emotional intelligence, right? We've got to really check in with ourselves and figure out how we're gonna do this and then start to plan because they've got a little a little bit of blackout time to think through how do they want to communicate with their employees, how do they want to communicate with the vendors that they're working with. They're gonna get that messaging from the corporate environment, like like the work that you and I have done historically. You know, we we've done that messaging down. What gets really impactful is how do you take that messaging and make it impactful for your people, your your stakeholders, whether it's your employees, your vendors, your customers. So that's some of the things that they're thinking through right now.

Tom Mueller 9:57

So there's a lot of creative energy being expended here now, re-establishing those communications channels and then working on messaging. You know, cyber attacks are always challenging because you know, it's not like you can see the fire over there. You can put fire trucks on it, you know it's going to be out soon. Uh, with these cyber things, it takes a while for the forensic work to get done to really understand, you know, what's happening here. And then to make the big decisions, you know, about are we buying all new hardware across the company or are we bringing in lots of people to redo and rework all of these laptops across the organization? So there's a huge operational component here that the company has to deal with. And then, as you mentioned, just talking to employees, talking to vendors. Vendors have got to be wondering are we vulnerable because we connect to the company, right, through their portals, the vendor portals or whatever it might be. So always a huge need and demand for communications in those in those incidents.

Susan D. Nelson 11:10

I'm talking about the partnerships and who you're working with and who's supporting you, and like they like one of the communications that they put out is that they are working diligently with Microsoft, because that's this, you know, their systems are in there. And so they're they're not just doing it in a black hole. I'd also go back to where we started with you have to prepare for this stuff even though you don't know what's coming. We've got to spend the time on the front end and front load that work at least from a skeleton perspective, so that when we have to dip in and deal with some of these issues, we know at least some of our foundational work is there.

Tom Mueller 11:50

Yeah, excellent points there. Uh, a quick example from my work history, a client I worked with, I spent a lot of time working on that cyber crisis prep and putting together kind of the plan B of if we get hit with a major ransomware and we lose access to our computers, you know, our network systems, our internal communications channels. Now what? Putting in place some backup channels, you know, sort of dark channels. Many companies have dark websites out there for communicating in a crisis. Well, we actually built a dark website for internal communications, right? So that uh employees who had the log on credentials could log into this offline site and pick up information that was being posted by company heads and company department heads and whatnot, uh, and then take that information and then go back out, communicate it in your business unit or in your business. And then another aspect was creating backup emails for people. Uh, you know, those good old Gmail accounts that never ever get used until you really need them. So there are, and as we've talked about, most companies, you know, just don't have energy and time for that kind of preparation.

Susan D. Nelson 13:18

But it's all about risk management, right? Where where are we comfortable with the risk? And and what did we learn and what are we doing different? So yeah, I did a we're down in South Texas, so hurricane preparedness and that sort of thing. And I remember back in the day when we realized we couldn't reach our employees in the Gulf because they've been hit by a hurricane. What we did discover is email didn't work, phone calls didn't work, text messaging worked. So we leveraged text messaging, and then the next thing we did is we leveled up and made sure that each of the sites had sat phones. Sometimes you just have to go through the fire and learn it, and then what are we going to do with it?

Tom Mueller 13:55

Yeah, that's right. Experience is the great teacher here.

Susan D. Nelson 13:58

Absolutely. And I'd offer up that as we get older and wiser, sometimes we take the experience that somebody else had to go through to apply towards our work. So that's staying on top of what's going on with others in your industry or in organizations similarly sized to you is important as well.

Tom Mueller 14:18

I'm curious how many of the people you work with are natural communicators versus uh people who have to really work at being good at this. What's your experience?

Susan D. Nelson 14:31

So, you know what? I it really depends. It depends on the level and where you are. And I would actually offer up that um even at the top of the house, sometimes those people communicate really well in certain situations. We all have our own comfort levels, and so we have to have really great self-awareness as to where I'm super comfortable. I can sit and talk on. I worked with an executive who was great on investor relations calls, working with his executive team, the board of directors was fine, but you wanted to stand him up in front of a group of 500 employees, and he just would get literally nauseous and not be able to handle it well. It just was not a comfort zone for him. So whether they're naturally comfortable communicating or it's a s or a challenge, I'd still say we still need to take the time, take the energy, do the self-reflection, self-awareness, work with our comms teams, our other professionals, our legal team, everywhere, every because it's a big collaborative effort to really understand what I need to do to be prepared to provide the best leadership guidance decisions necessary, and to be able to support the organization and the rest of the org.

Tom Mueller 15:46

Well, what's your coaching for that leader who's successful, you know, in operations and management, but is terrified of getting on the stage because it's part of the job, right? You can't really delegate that to you know a vice president or somebody else. So how do you how do you coach them through stage fright like that?

Susan D. Nelson 16:08

So, you know, obviously they do want to hand it off to somebody else every time, right? I want to outsource that. Let's take that off, let's take that off my plate right now. Speaking of, I don't have time for that. That's where that some of this work comes into play. It's not just about the operations part of the business, it's about who we are as human beings and leaders and what's underneath that. So if you're gonna work with an executive from a coaching perspective, or you're the comms person and you've got somebody who's really resistant, instead of saying it's not that big a deal, it's easy to stand up on stage. All you gotta do is stand in the middle of the stage, everything's done. We've done all the messaging for you. You do this all the time with everyone else. It's really important to stop and pause and realize that our executives and our leaders are human beings. They have their own belief systems, their own value sets, their own fears, their own insecurities. And that's where communications professionals, we can support them in a different way is to say, you know what, I don't know what's going on here. Can you tell me what's the real struggle with this? What's the problem with this? With the leader that I'm talking about right now, we had that conversation. What we come to we came to find out was I had a leader who was afraid of heights. Something that simple. It wasn't about that there were 500 people in the room, it wasn't about that we were doing a really uncomfortable message. It was around the fact that personally, as a human being, there was this own challenge. And so being on a stage and being able to see the edge and where you would fall off, that's what the challenge was. So then we came up with a creative solution together. And that solution actually, interestingly enough, was to put six-foot tables across the front edge of the stage and have them fully um skirted so we couldn't see all the way over the edge. And so we just put a big, branded, lovely logoed, you know, those tablecloths that cover, made for great optics, and it created a sense of comfort for him, and he would knock it out of the park every time.

Tom Mueller 18:17

You know, what strikes me is the humanity of that, because when people are in senior positions, we have very high expectations of them. And I'm sure they do of themselves as well. And so if you're if you're not meeting those self-expectations, it brings even more pressure on you.

Imposter Syndrome As A Growth Signal

Susan D. Nelson 18:38

When we're working with these folks or, you know, working one-on-one with those folks so much of the time, you're right. They even see that that's the need from themselves. And so there's an opportunity to really stop, reflect, and create a high level of self-awareness as to where do I really shine? Where do I struggle? What needs to be done differently? In fact, you mentioned the MBA and the EMBA and hybrid MBA groups that I work with at Rice. Um, I just got through doing a program there just a month ago. And interestingly enough, the number one topic that came up from all of these professionals that are up and movers, shakers in their organizations. The question I got the most was Susan, can you talk about imposter syndrome?

Tom Mueller 19:21

Wow, really?

Susan D. Nelson 19:23

Absolutely. And I was curious, I'm like, I was because I had one person ask that question. I thought, sure, we can talk about that, thinking in my head, yeah, I'm gonna set that aside, we'll talk about that offline. Let's let's come back to where we were where we were focused. And somebody else in the room seconded it, somebody, and I just stopped and said, okay, how many of the people in this room of about 50 have an imposter syndrome when you're working within your organization? Almost every single person in the room raised their hand.

Tom Mueller 19:55

Wow.

Susan D. Nelson 19:56

Because they were in a safe space, right? They were with their they were with their peer group, their colleagues. This was a safe place. This wasn't the people that report to them or that they report to, that they see on an everyday basis, that that are gonna sit in judgment of them. What I've discovered is this imposter syndrome, and it's there's lots of literature and information around it, all that sort of thing. One of the most interesting nuggets I've taken away from doing this work for more than 15 years in this coaching space is that imposter syndrome only shows up with people who are in stretch goals are or are learning. If I'm comfortable with where I am and I'm not doing anything new or not changing what I'm doing, or trying to to be better, do better, try something new, innovate, they don't experience imposter syndrome ever. It is truly an indicator that you are stretching and growing and be in being even more than you have been and going beyond. So oftentimes when I work with folks on imposter syndrome, I'm like, congratulations, you're making a difference in the world.

Tom Mueller 21:01

I love the way you frame that up, though. It's you're stretching yourself, whether it's personally, professionally in this situation, you're stretching the boundaries, and that's why you feel that insecurity. I was coaching a group um last week of fairly senior executives, and uh same thing. I we were, you know, kind of one-on-one with some. And the the confidence level just wasn't quite there, you know, even in the senior position. But I'm like, hey, fake it till you make it. You know, you've got the skill sets to do this, you're in the position, you've just got to stretch yourself and deliver it. It's fascinating though. Imposter syndrome is uh I'm just amazed it's as widespread as it is. But that's a testament to the culture of overachievement, perhaps.

Susan D. Nelson 21:50

Perhaps, which is where we have leaders and executives in organizations are often those high achievers, go getters. Those people who want to make a difference. Yeah. And I love that you brought up the comment around discomfort, because that is that's one of the places that I think all of us as human beings, that's where we can evolve, is when we get comfortable in the discomfort. Talking about I Brene Brown talks about it as vulnerability, which is a form of that discomfort. When we actually get to the point where we can sit with our own discomfort, is where we can grow both for ourselves, but when we can sit with discomfort with an organization, that's when the organization can grow, develop, innovate, strive for more. And what is more uncomfortable and a place of discomfort than when you're having to deal with a crisis situation?

How To Coach Resistance And Build Trust

Tom Mueller 22:48

Coach the coach a little bit here for us, Susan. So for that young communications leader, you know, who's sitting with a vice president and uh or a division head and they're not particularly comfortable, what would you where would you take them?

Susan D. Nelson 23:05

So it's interesting, because like uh you storytellings, which you mentioned earlier. So I actually had a very specific event happen in my head of when this happened to me, not as a young communicator, but just a few years ago. But I think the advice to the those communicators is first of all, be highly aware of who's in the room with you. Meaning if there's if you've got 14 other people in the room and there's discomfort, it could just be somebody that's in the room. I don't know. Sometimes legal will do that for us, sometimes the safety group, sometimes it's the finance folks that are in there. But who's in the room? So oftentimes, if this is really the case, I try to get the executive one-on-one. You know, can we just take a break right now? Just everybody take a break and come back in about oh, 20 minutes. Yeah, okay. And you start to watch the room clear, and then you look at the executive and say, You and I, just a minute. So you let the room clear. And then I work from a feedback loop of, you know, I'd just like to share with you that I'm observing significant discomfort. I and and validate what you've known with them. I've worked with you for several years now. You usually have a real confidence and and things are you cut your presence is really big. And what I'm sensing right now is some reticence, some discomfort. Just don't feel it just doesn't quite feel like who you are. What's going on with that? And just open a big, huge, open-ended question. Challenge you. Don't ask, are you okay? Uh-uh. Don't do that. Because that's a yes or no question. Ask a big, juicy, open-ended coaching question. You know, what's going on with you today? What's the biggest thing getting in your way? What challenge do we need to tackle around this? Like I said, I did this with an executive that we were doing a training, very high-level executive at a very, very prestigious organization. And we were doing media training, believe it or not, which is a big part of crisis, but we were doing some media training. And just, oh my gosh, all I could think of was looking at my kids when they were three years old, when they'd cross their arms and stomp their feet and say, I'm not gonna. I called for a break. Let everybody lead the room. And I sat down with this executive and I said, I sense a lot of tension, a lot of frustration in the room as well, but I'm curious, what's going on with you? And he was like, I've had this career for more than 25 years, and my claim to fame is within this organization I've never had a media interview, which was just stunning to me, especially inside this organization. I was like, I didn't go to, well, why not? I went to, and what makes you so proud about that? And he was like, they didn't get me. If I don't put myself in the situation, they can't get me. So when when you're doing this kind of coaching, you have to listen, not to what's being said, but what's underneath what's being said, actively listening. And I was like, Well, that makes me curious. Was there a time when somebody in the media actually got you? And he went on to share that as a teenager in a very small town, he had done something and the media showed up and it was one of those things that was supported, and he was supposed to do all this wonderful stuff, and he was super excited about what happened. But it got chopped up into little bitty pieces, and they actually presented it from a perspective 100%, 180% from when he put it out. And so it came off as he was not connected to the community, he was not connected to the organization that he was engaged with. So this 13, 14-year-old kid, as they say in Louisiana, got bit in the butt. So he had spent his entire career avoiding it. That was the point where we could start the work. It had nothing to do with his communication skills, had nothing to do with his confidence, had nothing to do with his abilities or his knowledge set. It had to do with who he was and what had happened to him in his past.

Tom Mueller 27:26

Right. Well, so many of us get burned. You know, though who deal with media regularly, you do get burned, and it gets harder and harder to trust these days. And, you know, look at our society today, you see a real lack of trust in media. So that's a natural instinct to have. It's almost a self-preservation instinct today. Well, this almost sounds like a psychotherapy session, Susan, trying to get him past this moment of PTSD, essentially, and back to the position, the executive leadership role he's in now. And how do you do that? Did were you successful?

Susan D. Nelson 28:05

I was very successful, and I'm gonna tell you, you nailed it. We leaned into trust. This executive happened to be working with an organization that had lots of support systems in place. And I said, you've got to put your trust in the people that are there. You've got to be honest with them and say, hey, listen, I've been burned. This is a sensitivity for me. How are we gonna manage that? And they came up with strategies on how to make sure that that was managed in a really great perspective. In fact, one of their communications professionals agreed to sit in on the interview at any given time with full accountability as well as permission to call it at any point in time. Sometimes if I just know somebody's got my back, I'm good. As executives and leaders, sometimes we feel like we are the front face of things and that we are there alone on an island with no protection. So you're talking about that that safety perspective and that trust perspective, that's when it's taught that's when we lean into our teams. And that's when we have to lean into our teams from a level of trust. So our our communications professionals, you gotta build trust. And leaders, you gotta build trust. And the only way to build trust is to be vulnerable, is to be honest. And the only way you can get honest with somebody else is if we take the time and work on ourselves as leaders. That's why working with coaches is so important, is we work on ourselves, and oftentimes it can be like we were talking about imposter syndrome, but it also can be that inner critic, which is that little bitty voice in our head that just starts napping, it's like a chihuahua nipping at your ankles. It's like you're not good enough, you're too lazy, all of those things. Well, if I do the work as a leader and understand that when that happens, I've got strategies in place, I know how to manage that. I have sources that are trusted that I can go to to support me in this. Then when somebody comes in and says, Hey, Susan, I want you to do this interview, and you go, I'm not good enough. I don't have enough credentials, I don't have enough experience. That's when we lean into those trusted sources and we stay vulnerable. I've been asked to do such and such, and all I want to do is throw up. Then we can have those support systems lift us back up.

Startup Leaders Wearing Too Many Hats

Tom Mueller 30:29

Okay. That that's a very new perspective on this for a lot of our listeners, I think, Susan. Again, back to the expectations that we have of those senior leaders. You know, that they're super people, super human. And, you know, frankly, in my career, I've worked with a lot of executives who were just so good. And um, so it was, you know, when you run into somebody who's dealing with those kinds of issues, it's to me, it's a little unusual in my life experience. But obviously, from your perspective, it's out there and it happens. I had one question for you around the MBAs that you work with. Um, now you hear we're talking about incubator companies and up-and-coming executives who are building companies from the ground up. Uh, you're working with them as part of you know, MBA programs. What's uh the key coaching that you find works well for younger executives in those situations?

Susan D. Nelson 31:33

So the incubator programs is with that Texas Medical Center group, and I'm doing a lot of work with them, and there is a lot of incubator work, a lot of startup work that's going on there. I actually want to throw out that we believe that they're on the young end, but some of these folks are they're in their second, third, fourth rotation of this because they are serial entrepreneurs, so to speak. Um, one of the biggest challenges for that group is having to wear multiple hats. So startup companies, people who are in incubators, those lean and mean organizations, is they tend to have to wear multiple hats as they're building the plane as they're flying it, so to speak. And so what happens is is being aware of what those tipping points are and where can we actually pull the lever that says, okay, we are now to the point where we need to hire in a CMO. We need a chief marketing officer versus the five of us or the this group is doing it or we're outsourcing it. So really that's that's one of the biggest challenges is them wearing all the hats, and then how do they scale and evolve the company? A lot of entrepreneurs like wearing the multiple hats, and so that becomes a tension point for them as to okay, I'm now going to be the CFO or I'm now gonna be leading operations. Oh, but I was doing marketing and I was working on this and I'm doing some finance stuff. So those serial entrepreneurs oftentimes like to have that broader responsibility. And at that point in time, they just need to understand when is good enough for them to go look for their next adventure, or when do we shift our skills and our focus and our intention to being uh more on the rails for what's needed as you scale an organization.

Tom Mueller 33:23

Okay. Well, Susan, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. It's really been a wide-ranging conversation. We've covered a lot, um, but as always, it's fascinating and fun catching up with you. So thank you.

Susan D. Nelson 33:36

Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It has been a lot of fun. And I just leave you with one thought, which is leaders and executives are human first. And as we deal with them as communicators, coaches, spouses, neighbors, we have to remember that who we are is not always what we do.

Tom Mueller 33:56

All right, Susan D. Nelson, thank you so much. And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks again for being with us. We truly appreciate you giving us your ears for these sessions. Again, if you'd like to email the show, drop me a line at Tom at Leadinginacrisis.com. And we'll see you again soon for another episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Take care.