I must heap praise on my colleagues at Ketchum’s Global Corporate Practice for their insights made available through the 2013 Ketchum Leadership Communication Monitor. Apparently, there are nearly 70,000 books available on leadership. Yet, their work supplies much-needed data on the role of communications in leadership.
The Monitor covers much ground, but here I will stick to my knitting and probe its crisis management implications.
KLCM: Leaders are continuing to underperform on the very behaviors viewed as the most important to effective leadership – open, transparent communication, leading by example, admitting mistakes and handling controversial issues calmly.
J.D.: In other words – spin doesn’t work. As the findings suggest, good crisis PR usually applies a healthy dose of openness, leadership, humility and confidence.
I hope this is an obvious point — reputation management is just one facet of broader strategic crisis management.
There is a lot involved in the decision-making process to determine how to manage a social media threat. But for all of the required complexity, there’s typically only six solutions to choose from: delete it, ignore it, monitor it, redirect it, respond to it or engage deeply on it. 