If you’ve ever read any of my stuff, attended my webinars, speeches, or public presentations, you know of my strong belief in the power of positive language and the destructive nature of “no,” negative language, and negative thinking.
This is a story about one of the most remarkable salespeople I ever worked with and learned from in my life, Andy Johnson.
Andy’s story is quite remarkable. He never finished high school. His first job was moving boxes in the shipping department of the Music Den in downtown Philadelphia in mid-20th century.
One summer there was a brutal flu outbreak that affected thousands of people. In fact, so the story goes, at the height of the epidemic, just a handful of employees showed up to run the five-story Music Den’s downtown headquarters store. Andy was assigned to the first floor – where both sheet music and small electronics, such as radios, were sold.
Andy was instructed by Mr. Schmitt, the founder, to only sell boxed radios and not the display units that belonged to the vendor company. When Mr. Schmitt checked in a couple of hours later, he was stunned to see that all of the radios in the display cases were gone. Before talking with Andy, he took a slight detour and checked the storage rooms where new merchandise was waiting to be sold. Turns out that those rooms were empty, too. Mr. Schmitt then went looking for Andy, who was on the sales floor talking to customers.
Instead of chewing Andy out, Mr. Schmitt asked a question that changed Andy’s life, “What are you doing in the loading dock hauling boxes when you can sell so well?” Andy answered simply, “Nobody asked me.” Andy’s career was a bit meteoric after that.
When I met Andy in 1966, he was selling stereo components and breaking all previous sales records in the department. After reading his personnel file and reviewing his sales records, I was very curious about his award-winning sales methods and being the busy father of seven children.
Andy’s approach was quite simple. At the beginning of each year, he sat down with his wife and figured out how much income they would need. Andy would write that number at the top of a sheet of paper, and using a formula the company gave him, he converted the commission rate into a gross sales number for the year. Seven and a half percent commission from every sale – from a $25 headset to a $3,000 stereo system – was subtracted from the big sales number he had to reach. When I saw this, I made the remark that it was a pretty negative way to motivate himself to make his sales goals. I was 24-year-old learning how to be a department manager. I will remember his response for the rest of my life.
Andy said that every single year, he made his sales quota and his commission quota by the end of August. That left September, October, November, and December, the heaviest selling months for musical instruments and musical anything. His way over-the-top sales in the last four months of every year made him the super salesman that he was.
Despite his truly amazing and systematic approach, and great memory of his customers, his batting average at the point of sale was average for retail sales, about 10% to 15%. I asked Andy how he handled all the “no” responses he got as a salesperson. His answer was quick. With a laugh he said, “I believe that a no is simply a short stop on the way to yes.”
Andy had learned that he could have a longer-term relationship with many customers. Even those who said “no” were likely to buy from him eventually. He stayed in touch with everyone he talked to periodically. Andy Johnson showed me that even “no” can become a powerfully positive and constructive “Yes!” “No is just a short stop on the way to yes,” has been a major driver of my career, my attitude about life, and my optimism about most everything that happens to me and those I care about. Who knows, it could probably work for you.
Now is the time of year when senior public relations practitioners are beginning work on applications for selection to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) College of Fellows. As I begin my 32nd year as a PRSA Fellow (I’m also an International Association of Business Communicators [IABC] Fellow), it’s interesting to reflect on the experiences of all those I have coached and mentored over the years, on my way to becoming a Fellow in both organizations. Just about everyone comes to the Fellow’s process with few clues about what being a Fellow is.
It’s About Your Footprint.
Becoming a Fellow is really all about the footprint applicants leave and have left on our profession, the community, and perhaps in even larger communities. There are Fellows who worked their entire careers in a single market and left a powerful footprint. There are Fellows who worked in a single state and left a significant footprint. There are Fellows who worked regionally and nationally and, in the process, left meaningful footprints everywhere they practiced.
What Are You Leaving Behind for Those Who Follow?
Gone are the grades, points, likes, ratings, gold stars, and constant competition and competitiveness of the applicant’s former daily practice. Your life becomes about what you leave behind through your time, talent, energy, and choices invested in, but often not acknowledged, the success of others… and the success they invest in the achievements of yet others. Now your best of show is about the best of show others achieve with your guidance, interest, energy, and coaching.
Step Out of the Limelight to Make Room for Others.
Your career’s focus shifts to taking a step out of the limelight so others can take or own their share of success, just as you did yours, and likely better because of you.
Find the Most Important Things You May Ever Do.
You’ll routinely be doing some of the most important, interesting, and personally rewarding career work known only to those you help and those they help.
A “footprint” is about the quality of practice and the level of influence rather than how many projects are done, for whom, or for what organizations they are completed. This is the hardest part of understanding what becoming a Fellow really means. It is such a mindset shift from counting projects and activities and raising your hand for recognition to really understanding personal impact, ideas, behaviors, and ethics that help others become better practitioners, citizens, public officials, leaders, more honorable advisors, and people of professional and personal substance.
Understand Your Personal Impact and Influence.
The footprint goes beyond activities within the public relations profession. It is about the impact and influence of the applicant in their vicinity, marketplace, industry, and profession. It’s about how applicants use their influence, experience, insights, and presence to make change happen – bringing reality and/or sensibility as well as reducing contention and bringing peace to contentious parties. It’s about helping start things that matter and often about stopping those things that don’t. It could be the preservation or introduction of core community values and interests. Or it could be finding and applying ideal behavior through the guidance of the PRSA or another organization’s Code of Ethics.
The Shift Is from Proficiency and Skill to Leadership and Impact.
I think sometimes it’s easy to mistake proficiency or expertise for leadership or impact on others. Those who wish to analyze their careers, to assess and develop their footprint, ultimately go through an interesting and introspective analysis of their lives and work. These are the steps I recommend:
Examine one’s life for the lessons that were shared with others. What did others learn from the applicant?
Reach back and contact those whose lives the applicant has affected. What value came from knowing the applicant?
Ask those who have known, worked, and benefited from the applicant’s efforts, presence, and insights to answer five basic questions:
What is/are/were the most important things, ideas, or concepts that these individuals learned from the applicant?
What is/are/were the most interesting things, ideas, or concepts learned or remembered?
What is/are/were those things these individuals feel they might never have learned had the applicant been absent from their lives? What do they know now that mattered that they didn’t know before because they met the applicant, whatever the circumstance?
What meaningful questions did the applicant help others to confront, consider, or explore that might not have happened had the applicant not been present?
How has knowing the applicant changed people’s lives?
How has the applicant’s life sought, found, and applied Ideal (ethical) Behavior? *
Your Impact and Impressions on Others Will Grow.
These questions matter because once a practitioner becomes a Fellow, all of these impacts and significant impressions on others continue and intensify. It is more than an honor to be selected as a Fellow. This selection is a personal and public recommitment to helping our profession and our professionals find ways to improve their skills. Yes, but also to begin to look at their practices and their practice circumstances from larger and broader social and cultural perspectives.
You Will Reinterpret Your Achievement Metrics from a Deeper Perspective.
Becoming a Fellow is about reinterpreting your professional metrics from entirely different and deeper perspectives. It’s about understanding what matters, what is helpful, what is sensible, and often, what is powerfully simple and true. Helping others do the same. It is about intentional professional integrity, honesty, and having a truly meaningful personal and professional life.
It’s your advocacy and modeling of ideal behavior that earns the distinction of being a Fellow.
You know who you are. Reach out to those who really know you and a Goodfellow to help.
(And You’re Missing an Enormous Credibility, Trust, and Integrity Building Opportunity)
Asking people to ask questions often is irritating and disappointing to clients and audiences. No matter how sincere you are, this question implies laziness or feels like you don’t care. Worse, to some you appear to be holding back information you know that they probably should have. To be a better leader or a truly successful and important Trusted Strategic Advisor, take control of all question opportunities. Rather than asking people to ask questions, suggest questions people should be asking and, if you can, answer them. Clients and audiences will be totally surprised, pleased, and grateful. They will remember you.
Asking people to ask questions shuts off the conversation, and a powerful opportunity to communicate, educate, and energize the people you’re helping is lost. As a leader or Trusted Strategic Advisor, you want to do more in every aspect of your work for the people you’re advising. This is a powerful moment for recipients.
Ending a conversation with, “Let me know if you have questions,” happens so frequently to just about everyone that we are only slightly angry or irritated when it happens. We shrug our shoulders and make our way through our lives without the information we were hoping to obtain.
My wife of 56 years, Barbara, had cancer toward the end of her life. She had two really wonderful oncologists – one was medicine-related and the other was a surgeon. Barbara really loved these two people as she worked through the terrifying cancer experience.
It is hard to believe how accidentally callous smart people can be. “If you have any questions, just call me, I’m available 24/7.” Shame on you.
In my case, it was very stressful. We were new to the cancer trail. We were always left sucking wind, not knowing the questions we’re supposed to ask. Out of frustration, I called our helpful general practitioner. These doctors leave the scene when the experts show up. I complained that we just don’t know what questions to ask. His response was, “Do you have a pencil?” He gave me 54 questions, none of which we would ever have thought of. The way he structured the questions, we could see how helpful it would have been had we known and expected these questions and answers earlier in the process.
At our next oncologist appointment, I mentioned our concern about not knowing what questions to ask, and that, perhaps, our experts could think about what we should be asking. They instantly responded and were quite generous in helping us know more sooner. They were constantly suggesting things we should think about.
I tell this story because it gets the point across clearly. Barbara survived her cancer.
I’ve used this technique in all the consulting that I’ve done. I anticipate the fact that potential questions may be building up in the minds of the people I’m helping, but that they are reluctant to voluntarily interrupt what we’re doing to get the questions answered. Or worse, they can’t listen because they’re preoccupied trying to figure out what they should be asking.
I want to replace that frustration with the surprise that someone could actually be so thoughtful.
Here are some of the personal interrupters I use as a speaker or presenter to help the audience with questions:
“At this point in the conversation, I almost always get these three questions. You might want to consider them as well.” Then I provide the questions. And since I know what the questions are going to be, I already know what the answers are. You can actually pull a double surprise – you help them resolve their stress about having questions and answer the questions, or tell them how you plan to get those questions answered.
Another technique I use is to say, “If you have a question, please interrupt me so we can respond, answer, or work on them right away. I love being interrupted.” The most important reason I use this technique is because it almost always triggers additional questions, which I might never have heard and they might never have asked. People almost always comment on how unexpectedly helpful what we’re talking about became when I interrupt myself with my little Q&A gambit.
At some point, I do ask if there are any more questions. If no hands go up, I say, “Well, I can think of a few more.” Then I ask and answer them.
Another way I interrupt myself is to do just that, pausing and saying, “Let me share how I think about this or how I came to these ideas to help you better remember why they might be valuable for you in your situation.”
Take control of the questions. Use them to build confidence in you.
What you’ll find if you behave this way is more access, more impact, more cooperation, and more trust. It’s a simple way to wear your empathy, integrity, and trustability on your sleeve.
“How do I get these good people I have been so loyal to over the years to hear me again and do what I tell them?”
The most frequent question I’m asked by senior practitioners is: “Jim, how did you get executives and bosses to change their minds and their ways? I have been with my leader for many years, I trust her, I like her, we work well together, but it’s impossible to change her mind on so many things. I think she knows what’s right but persists in doing something else. She’s consulting me less and less, and there are more surprises. How would you, America’s Crisis Guru®, convince her to change?”
At this point, I usually ask how long these individuals have been seeking changes. Many say, “From the day they arrived.” “How long ago was that?” “Eons,” is the response they say with a sigh.
This quote from a frustrated boss says it all: “I have enjoyed working with this person for a long time, but they insist on new ways to do things. It’s frustrating. The reason I’m here until nine at night is because I haven’t gotten today’s and yesterday’s work done. A new idea has to be somewhat sensational to get my attention.” Do you get it?
I have a 10-day rule on proposing or persisting in proposing new ideas:
If they don’t jump on the proposal immediately, I wait 10 days. Then I provide a not-so-subtle reminder. If there is no response or acknowledgment, I forget that idea and move on to another. One thing about creative people is that we waste ideas, actually throw ideas out in the trash every day. Grab one out of the trash and give it a fresh start. Way too many senior people have a collection of persistently ignored suggestions in the hopes of having some kind of breakthrough… which almost never happens.
Senior leaders make decisions on suggestions and ideas almost immediately. These are adults making adult decisions. They are paid to quickly decide everything. And they do. When they see you coming down the hall, they duck into the first doorway to avoid talking to you, take the hint. Their decision not to talk with you is immediate, intentional, and generally permanent. Too many senior people have stuck around in the belief that, over time, change will occur. This is simply a false assumption. It’s based on the equally false assumption that if we are good, smart, loyal, and pleasantly persistent, at some point they will again start listening to us. That’s one of the times it’s important to consider moving on. Once they turn you off, they will rarely turn you on again.
There are countless, disappointed, truly good senior people who believe, sadly and falsely, that they will be listened to at some point in the future. Some crises will befall their leader and the leader will be forced to turn to the trusted helper for assistance. What really happens is the leader ends up hiring outsiders, fresh faces, a new team is formed, and you’re not invited. Some loyal subordinates have spent years waiting.
Loyalty has limits always controlled by somebody else. Time to set your own.
There is one situation that demands your immediate and decisive action. If the behaviors to be changed are outrageous, unconscionable, questionable, borderline illegal, actually illegal, clearly stupid, hurtful, or abusive, you have only one choice: get out of there as fast as possible. Leaders who behave this way will never change and will always try to co-opt you into doing something you can never tell your mother, wife, or daughter about. If you stay, despite your good intentions, you become an enabler, a co-conspirator, and a collaborator. When behaviors get corrected, which usually involves the departure of bad actors, you will get the boot too, and you should.
Loyalty is a two-way street. The moment it becomes obvious you are on a one-way path out, as hard as it is, it’s time to move on. Too many good people have stayed on for what seemed to be good reasons, but wound up disaffected, disappointed, dissatisfied, trapped by false, unreturned loyalty. Once this happens, your heart, your gut, and your friends may tell you, “Staying will be worth it in the end.” It never is. In fact, the end happened some time ago. But the feelings of sadness, betrayal, and failure remain forever.
When there is avoidance, excuses, doubt, and exclusion, leave. You’ll immediately be happier, sleep a lot better, and you will suddenly become a happier, better parent, partner, friend, and neighbor. Life is about happiness, which only you can create for yourself…Some place else.
Senior executive staff ranks are full of strong-willed people who choose or learn how to be loyal to a CEO. That loyalty may be situational (by choice or pathological-sucking up).
In the case of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, the relationship with a senior leader is less about blind loyalty and more about a higher level of objectivity and perspective. By keeping perspective, I mean always remaining at some altitude, some constructive distance to ensure that the advice given or taken is truly the most valuable, objective, helpful, and ethical.
The key question for you as the Trusted Strategic Advisor is, what are the indicators that should cause you to question your loyalty, or at a minimum, raise serious questions of those to whom you have provided advice? There are patterns of suspect organizational leadership behavior to look for that, ironically, generally begin inside the top executive ranks.
The presence of even one or two of these indicators in your working environment is a very serious matter. The Federal Sentencing guidelines of 1991 list fifty of what are called Predicate Behaviors, inappropriate activities to look for that signal serious potential trouble. Here’s a sample:
Lack of tough, appropriate, centralized compliance within areas of the company.
Leadership that allows supervisors to overlook bad behavior.
Structuring incentives in such a way that they can compromise the ethical behavior toward the quality of products and services.
Permitting shortcuts.
Doing “whatever it takes” to achieve inappropriate business and financial goals.
Demeaning and disparaging compliance efforts and those doing compliance work.
Establish a Personal Integrity Barrier, Your Own Loyalty Limits
Write them down and be prepared on a moment’s notice to explain those limits. This exercise alone will prepare you to provide a service of extraordinary value to those you advise. Especially if it prevents, helps detect, or deters activities or plans that will be regretted later… or that would cause harm to others.
Eight Steps to Rebuilding and Rehabilitating Trust
Seeking Forgiveness is society’s requirement for relationship, trust, and credibility restoration. Adverse situations using this template remediate faster, cost a lot less, are controversial for much shorter periods of time, suffer less litigation, and help the victims come to closure more quickly. Obtaining forgiveness involves completing the nine steps below. To achieve success in the shortest possible time, these steps should be initiated and completed as quickly as possible: like, start them all today. Skip a step or be insincere and the process will be incomplete and fundamentally fail.
Step #1Candor: Outward recognition, through promptly verbalized public acknowledgement (or outright apology), that a problem exists; that people or groups of people, the environment, or the public trust are affected; and that something will be done to remediate the situation.
Step #2Explanation (No matter how silly, stupid, or embarrassing the problem-causing error was): Promptly and briefly explain why the problem occurred and the known underlying reasons or behaviors that led to the situation (even if we have only partial early information).
Step #3 Affirmation: Talk about what you’ve learned from the situation and how it will influence your future behavior. Unconditionally commit to regularly report additional information until it is all out or until no public interest remains.
Step #4Declaration: A public commitment and discussion of specific, positive steps to be taken to conclusively address the issues and resolve the situation.
Step #5Contrition: The continuing verbalization of regret, empathy, sympathy, even embarrassment. Take appropriate responsibility for having allowed the situation to occur in the first place, whether by omission, commission, accident, or negligence.
Step #6Certification: Promptly ask for help and counsel from “victims,” government, the community of origin, independent observers, and even from your opponents. Directly involve and request the participation of those most directly affected to help develop more permanent solutions, more acceptable behaviors, and to design principles and approaches that will preclude similar problems from re-occurring. Accept outside oversight or independent monitoring to certify that what you say you will do is what you do.
Step #7Commitment: Publicly set your goals at zero. Zero errors, zero defects, zero dumb decisions, and zero problems. Publicly promise that to the best of your ability situations like this will never occur again.
Step #8Restitution: Find a way to quickly pay the price. Make or require restitution. Go beyond community and victim expectations, and what would be required under normal circumstances to remediate the problem.
By James E. Lukaszewski – ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus
This document was originally developed some 20 years ago following an incredibly serious incident involving a very reputable medical product company and their illegal altering of two key medical products, that were sold to the public without FDA approval. A couple dozen patients died and several hundred needed to have the devices that were inserted in their bodies surgically removed and their bodies repaired.
It was, at the time, a disaster for the company. But amazingly, the company hired an ethics expert who I advised. A tremendous number of employees and many stakeholder groups were interviewed to determine just how management should have behaved in this crucial and catastrophic event. The results of a couple of years of work were boiled down into this single powerful page. I commend it to you as a model based on real-life experience for how executives should act in an ethical manner during an ethical crisis, and, well, every single day.
The Roadmap to an Ethical Culture
Find the truth as soon as possible: Tell that truth and act on it promptly.
Promptly raise the tough questions and answer them thoughtfully: This includes asking and answering questions yet to be asked or thought of by those who will be affected by whatever the circumstance is.
Teach by parable: Emphasizing wrong-way/right-way options. Brief true stories, that are people-oriented, in plain language, positive, with self-evident truths, constructive lessons, morals, purposes, and powerful action instructions.
Vocalize core business values and ideals constantly: Many core value statements are ideas thought up on a management golf outing, brought in on the back of a clubhouse napkin, then printed and posted without another word being spoken. The values and ideals of a business should be what employees and others bring to work every day.
Walk the talk: Be accessible; help people understand the organization within the context of its values and ideals at every opportunity.
Help, expect, and enforce ethical leadership: People are watching their leaders; people are counting; people know when there are lapses in ethics causing trust to be broken. When bad things happen in good organizations, it’s those occasional lapses that deepen the troubles.
Preserve, protect, defend, and foster ethical pathways to the top of the organization: Constantly identify, explain, explore, and warn about situations where ethical processes can be compromised, especially among more junior executives who are on upward career trajectories.
Be a cheerleader, model, and teacher of ethical behavior: Ethical behavior builds and maintains trust. In fact, to have trust in an organization requires that its leaders act ethically constantly.
Make values at least equal to profits or personal gain: Most people seem to enjoy working more in organizations they respect, people they trust, and leadership they can rely on.
Value everyone and be respectful: Being respected has a more personal impact than any perk, recognition, accolade, or even raises. Feelings of acceptance and respect are the two principle forces that drive employees back to work every day.
The Lesson
The main lesson of this roadmap is that it is continuously used, reused, explained, and reinterpreted at every meeting, gathering, event, and circumstance where employees and perhaps their families are gathering. Where, the most junior executive or manager in the room steps up and picks one of these pathways and tells a story, solicits other stories from the people in the audience. The habit is developed where one of these values is talked about at every opportunity.
The Script for the Conversations
What are the most important aspects we should consider about this particular pathway?
What are the most interesting things we can think about when employing this pathway?
What are the most memorable aspects of this particular pathway?
What questions does this pathway raise that our organization needs to respond and clarify?
What will be done differently tomorrow based on what we talked about today?
PRSA Announces the Election of 11 Outstanding Senior Practitioners 11 Outstanding Senior Practitioners
*NEW YORK, July 15, 2024 – PRSA announced today the 11 new members selected to the College of Fellows. Established in 1989, the College of Fellows includes more than 750 professionals and educators who have made a significant impact on the public relations and communications profession.
This is the time of year when senior public relations practitioners are nominated for election to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) College of Fellows. As I begin my 31st year as a PRSA Fellow (I’m also an International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Accredited Fellow), it’s interesting to reflect on the experiences of all those I have coached and mentored over the years, on my way to becoming a Fellow in both organizations. Just about everyone comes to the Fellow’s process with few clues about what a Fellow actually is.
Becoming a Fellow is really all about the footprint left on our profession. There are Fellows who have worked their entire careers in a single market and have left a powerful footprint. There are Fellows who have worked in a single state and have left a significant footprint. There are Fellows who work regionally and nationally and, in the process, have left a meaningful footprint.
A “footprint” is about the quality of practice and the level of influence rather than how many projects done, clicks, or likes for whom, or where completed. This is the hardest part of becoming a Fellow. It is such a mindset shift from counting projects and activities, to really understanding personal impact, ideas, behavior and ethics that have helped others to become better practitioners, citizens, public officials, leaders, more honorable advisors, and people of professional substance.
The footprint goes beyond activities within the public relations profession. It is about the impact and influence of the nominee in their vicinity and marketplace; it’s about how nominees use their influence, experience, insights and presence to make change happen – perhaps bringing reality and sensibility, as well as reducing contention and bringing peace to contentious parties. Or, it could be the preservation of core community values and interests.
I think sometimes it’s easy to mistake proficiency or expertise for leadership, impact, or influence on others. Those who wish to analyze their careers, to assess their footprint, ultimately go through an interesting and introspective analysis of their lives and work. These are the steps I recommend: How many on this list apply to you in your life?
Examine your life for the lessons that were shared with others. What did others learn from you?
Reach back and make contact with those whose lives you have affected. What value came from knowing you?
Ask those who have known, worked and benefited from your efforts, presence, and insights to answer five basic questions:
What is/are/were the most important things, ideas, or concepts that these individuals learned from you?
What is/are/were the most interesting things, ideas, or concepts learned or remembered?
What is/are/were those things these individuals feel they might never have learned if you were absent from their lives. What do they know now that they didn’t know before, that mattered, because they met you, whatever the circumstance?
What meaningful questions did you help others to confront, consider or explore that might not have happened had you not been present?How has knowing you changed people’s lives?
How has knowing you changed people’s lives?
These questions matter because once a practitioner becomes a Fellow, all of these impacts and significant impressions on others continue and intensify. It is more than an honor to be elected a Fellow. Accepting the nomination is a public recommitment to helping our profession and our professionals find ways to improve their skills, yes, but also to begin to look at their practices and their practice circumstances from larger and broader social and cultural perspectives.
Becoming a Fellow is about reinterpreting your professional metrics from an entirely different and deeper perspective. It’s about understanding what matters, what is helpful, what is sensible, and often what is powerfully simple and true. It is about professional integrity, honesty, and having a truly meaningful personal and professional life.
It’s their professional footprint that makes a Fellow, a Fellow.
Congratulations to these extraordinary professionals.
The 2024 inductees are:
Jill Spiekerman Bonham, APR, Fellow PRSA, Teaching Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota
Missy Burchart, APR, Fellow PRSA, President & CEO, Wilbron
Vivian T. Dávila, APR, Fellow PRSA, Public Affairs & Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company
Karen Garnik, APR, Fellow PRSA, President & CEO, Global Vision Marketing & Communications
Michael S. Gross, APR, Fellow PRSA, President, AKCG Public Relations Counselors
Kevin P. Kane, APR, Fellow PRSA, Corporate Communications Special Project Manager, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield
Eva Keiser, APR, Fellow PRSA, Principal, The Pural I
Michelle Olson, APR, Fellow PRSA, Managing Partner, Lambert by LLYC
Susan van Barneveld, APR, Fellow PRSA, President, Copernio
Candee Wolf, APR, Fellow PRSA, Founder and Principal, Wolf Olson Communications
The College of Fellows Class of 2024 will be inducted at a gala celebration on Monday, Oct. 14, prior to PRSA’s annual conference being held in Anaheim, Calif. this year.
Be Quick, Be Careful, Be Candid, Have a Management Mindset
My practical and empirical knowledge combined with the research of others demonstrates consistently that bosses expect these crucial attributes and behaviors from trusted strategic advisors:
Real-Time Advice: Typically, staff advisors come to listen to their leadership then, head back to their office to figure out how to help them or if they can. The trusted strategic advisor gives cogent advice on the spot without having to leave the room.
Candor: Truth with an attitude delivered immediately. Something that Public Relations practitioners have difficulty with as evidenced by the recent research by Dr. Marlene Neill revealing ten troublesome issues that practitioners face every day. If your reaction to this definition is, “Jim, you don’t know my boss!” That’s probably true, but it’s time to leave the organization if your boss has a problem with candor.
Coach at Every Opportunity: This is really what one of the greatest values we provide to those we advise. Coaching rather than having a specific answer for things, is the art of options, and suggestions, that is offering three approaches to respond to an issue or question before management.
Consequence Analysis, Being Insightful: This is the trusted strategic advisors greatest challenge, to be more than relevant, and to be able to comment on much broader areas than just what the news media is going to be doing or thinking.
Knowing What is Important: Senior people, contrary to their behavior, are interested in input on what they should be dealing with and should be thinking about or in fact are dealing with or thinking about. How does one find this out? Ask and keep asking. Be an intelligence collector and sharer.
Early Warning: Another value of the trusted strategic advisor is their knowledge of what’s happening throughout the organization. Rather than being the first to acknowledge what others have revealed or spoken about, your credibility is really built on being the first person to alert management to issues and questions they need to be concerned about. When I asked top leaders what the worst problem is they face every day, almost unanimously it is, “Being the last to know.” The trusted strategic advisor worth their salt, skips all those filters, sidetracks, and barriers to information and brings intelligence information immediately to the attention of top people.
What To Do Next: Seems ironic but one of the great problems in leadership is knowing what to do and what the next steps are. In dozens and dozens of conversations over the years with leaders and managers who were having difficulties, offhand I would say 90% of the problem came from really not knowing what to do next and not being able to get some reasonable advice on what those actions and decisions and problems should be or are. This questions actually is at the top of every leaders list, “What the heck do I do now?” One of the great techniques of the trusted strategic advisor is the, “What if” exercise. What if this happened? What if that happened? What would you do? What would you say? What would you decide? What is the first step you should take? If you can play a role in the, “What’s next?” game. You’ll be among the first to be invited to every important meeting.
Now, let’s talk about the current reality.
The purpose of examining this list is a way of analyzing yourself, how you operate, what you think about yourself, and how you approach the task of being a trusted strategic advisor.
This is hard but please listen up.
Public Relations tends to rely on what I call the Liar’s List of communication tactics. This is the tendency to avoid positive declarative, definitive, evidence-supported communication in favor of nine alternative communication strategies:
Allegories
Analogies
Euphemisms
False Comparisons
Lies
Metaphors
Similes
Stories
Verbal Translation, “In other words…”.
Each of these techniques are obvious attempts to state anything but the simple plain truth. This is the list liars use by those with whom we disagree or who are disagreeable. The two most abused of these techniques are metaphors, explaining something and using a substitute reality, and stories, which unlike life, have obvious beginnings, middles, and ends, usually attention-getting opening, statements, and a conclusion in the form of a lesson, message, conclusion, punch-line, insight, moral, or self-evident truth. If only life would behave this way.
The whole problem with stories is that they are completely artificial (euphemism for lies). Life does not have a sensible beginning, middle, or end, A Situation rarely starts with snappy opening headlines and rarely concludes with the definitive statement of purpose, accomplishment, or an obvious ending. They are fabrications. The truths of stories are almost always fabricated. So now you’re asking me, “What if a story is half true…?” Half a truth is always all lie.
Too often, one of the biggest values senior executives can count on us for is our skill in creating an alternative universe of information about something that may be difficult, unpleasant, or unwanted to communicate. That is intentional untruthfulness.
The goal has to be candor.
Be More Careful
Our function has a reputation for avoiding conflict and candor. This is one of the reasons we’re often left out of important meetings at senior levels. If the issue is important, management is still taught to arrive at important decisions through conflict and aggressive argument. If that makes you feel uncomfortable it shows quickly and without mentioning anything to you, you will be automatically excluded from meetings where intensive discussions take place. Advising leaders requires a tough stomach.
Also, we tend to avoid naming what we see, or worse, we find ways to euphemize and therefore avoid getting the benefits of candor and clarity. Anger, even violent anger being described as, “Tempers boiling over…” or, “Softening harsh language. Truth is usually blunt and hard.
Our inability or unwillingness to accurately and dispassionately assess skills, competence, strengths, and weaknesses of other members of the senior team and staff. We don’t have much of a taste for evaluating the skills of others the way senior executives must. Most of the major business problems organizations face are created by people in positions of importance. If there’s one thing that most senior leaders need it is staff who can accurately, helpfully, and purposefully assess strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings, skills, apititudes, accessibility, and other attributes of those on the senior team including themselves. If that responsibility tends to make you uncomfortable, you become less valuable in everything else you do for the senior team.
The notion that we are an organization’s conscience. This is a pretty big and important burden. One of these days I hope that someone actually defines or lays out a job description of corporate conscience. The idea seems to work in some organizations. I’ll be writing about this in a future Jim’s Wisdom. Many of those who consider themselves corporate consciences also consider themselves experts in ethics. Sometimes accurate, but often oversimplified.
Changing the Management Mindset
A number of years ago I was a senior advisor to a fortune company going through a very devastating criminal proceeding. People had died, were injured, the behavior of certain individuals at the company was intentional, several were prosecuted and six went to prison. The Chairman was acquitted during the trial and retired.
The company itself, however, took it’s problems seriously and worked to begin to understand how a company this successful and this important, saving lives every day could get into the mess that they had.
They hired several forensic compliance consultants to interview many employees to get a sense of what employees expected of company leadership during times of crisis. Here is that list. For those of you who act as corporate consciences, I urge you to examine this list and see if you could actually deliver useful advice to senior management based on employee expectations.
Employee Expectations of Leadership During Emergencies and Tough Times (i.e. All the Time)
a. Find the truth as soon as possible: Tell that truth and act on it immediately.
b. Promptly raise the tough questions and answer them thoughtfully: This includes asking and answering questions yet to be asked or thought of by those who will be affected by whatever the circumstance is.
c. Teach by a truthful parable: Emphasizing wrong-way and right-way lessons.
d. Vocalize core business values and ideals constantly: These include the values and ideals, the ways and behaviors that employees bring to work each day.
e. Walk the talk: Be accessible; help people understand the organization within the context of its values and ideals at every opportunity.
f. Help, expect, and enforce ethical leadership: People are watching; people are counting; people know when there are lapses in ethics causing trust to be broken. When bad things happen in good organizations, it’s those occasional lapses that deepen the troubles.
g. Preserve, protect, defend, and foster ethical pathways to the top of the organization: Constantly identify, explain, explore, and warn about situations where ethical processes can be compromised, especially among executives who are on upward career trajectories.
h. Be a cheerleader, model, and teacher of ethical behavior: Ethical behavior builds and maintains trust. In fact, to have trust in an organization requires that its leaders act ethically constantly.
i. Make values as least as important as profits: Research shows that most people seem to enjoy working more when they are with organizations they respect, people they trust, leadership they can rely on, and who respect them. Wherever you find an organization or company that puts values on the same level as profits, there is often even more loyalty and support because companies who do this sacrifice for principle. Everybody notices and wants to be a part of these kinds of organizations.
j. Be respected: Research also shows that respect is more desired by employees than any number of perks and preferences. Respect is what draws employees back to work each day.
The First Axiom of Successful Victim Management: Of all things victims want, need, and expect, an apology is the most important.
The First Corollary to Successful Victim Management Axiom #1: Failure to apologize when an apology is clearly appropriate has a huge cost in reputation damage, prolonged embarrassment, and often significant unnecessary legal expenses.
Start With What Victims Expect, Need, or Want.
Victims have four powerful needs: validation, visibility, vindication, and most of all extreme empathy/apology. If these four needs are provided promptly, humanely, and with empathy, preferably by the perpetrator—victims will more easily move through their state of victimization and be less likely to call or respond to attorneys or the media, or even to call attention to themselves. The reality is that if the perpetrator fails to meet their needs or does so only partially, victims will find ways to provide for their own needs, often at the perpetrator’s reputational expense. It only takes one victim to be ignored, humiliated, revictimized, or just treated without respect to cause an earthquake of reputational disaster.
If your response starts anywhere else, see first corollary #1 above.
There is a tragic and all too common failure strategy which happens time and time again. Each of these behaviors, silence, stalling, denial, victim confusion, testosterosis, arrogance, or searching for the guilty and worst of all whining. This is the track to failure, every time. And remember, there is only one career at stake in a crisis, and that’s the person whose running the place.
Victims require validation that they are indeed victims. This recognition is best rendered by the perpetrator. If not, public groups, government, or the news media will do it. Victims will seek it. “I’m not crazy, this really did happen, and someone else is responsible.” Victims rarely sue because they are angry, because their life has been changed dramatically, or because lots of plaintiff attorneys are chasing them around. Generally, victims sue because their situation is not acknowledged and their feelings are ignored, belittled, or trivialized. If they are prevented from publicly discussing what happened to them in meaningful ways, and no one is taking prompt constructive action to prevent similarly situated individuals, animals, or living systems from suffering the same fate, victims will be looking to take more aggressive action.
Visibility:
Visibility involves a platform from which victims can describe their pain and warn others. Preferably, again, the platform should come from the perpetrator or a credible independent organization that can help victims explain what happened for the purpose of both talking it out and convincing others to avoid similar risks or take appropriate preventive action. Some victimization lasts a lifetime. In the case of major disasters, invariably there will be monuments, remembrance sites, even living memorials that victims, survivors, and responders visit, talk about, and rely on. These are permanent visible symbols that recognize, redescribe, and remind the world of the suffering and sacrifice that took place. Name any major disaster dating back hundreds of years, and there is a memorial someplace, perhaps a place of worship, a graveyard, even some extraordinary monuments. And to this day you’ll find tourists, relatives, survivors, and responders at these places, visiting and coping.
Vindication:
Vindication occurs when victims can take credit for any actions the perpetrator takes to ensure that whatever happened to them will never be allowed to happen to others. Victims will describe these remedial actions and decisions as proof that they had an impact and that their suffering will now benefit others because of these new decisions, actions, and practices. Let it happen; let them take credit. It’s part of their rehabilitation and part of the restoration of the perpetrator’s reputation.
Extreme Empathy and Apology:
Apology has the atomic energy of empathy. If you want to stop bad news almost dead in its tracks, apologize. If you want to generally stop litigation and move to settlement, apologize. If you want to dramatically decrease the newsworthiness of almost any adverse situation, apologize. If you want to demonstrate that you truly care about the victims or the victimization you caused, apologize. While the lawyers may strongly advise against any form of apology because, under law, an apology is an admission, there is a growing body of evidence and data to demonstrate that apologies, promptly and sincerely delivered, virtually eliminate the potential for litigation. This means that while the lawyer’s advice needs to be listened to, if the victim refuses to sue, it may be time to find a lawyer specializing in negotiation, effective settlement options, rather than pursuing a futile effort to deny what the victim needs most— someone taking responsibility through settlement.
How Perpetrators Avoid Apologizing
In my experience, there are five general approaches executives and leaders use to avoid apologizing:
Self-forgiveness
Self-talk
Self-delusion
Lying
Conventional but false “Truths”
You’ll recognize each one by the language these executives use. All apology avoiders deny and deny until they are caught. Then they blame those around them. I always recommend talking about these avoidance excuses, if given the chance, as widely and as soon as the subject, or argument, about apology arises which is usually early in crisis (where there are victims) and reputationally damaging situations. It is crucial that those around leaders and Managers be able to identify, speak up, and call attention to these falsities and fallacies repeatedly as apology denial starts.
The number one excuse is, “The lawyers won’t let me apologize.” Look, lawyers are important consultants, yet they can only advise. It’s always up to the client to decide. In crisis, if you are a trusted strategic advisor, your advice will have sometimes as much weight as the attorney’s, sometimes more. It’s still up to the client to decide. When it comes to apology your leadership advice should at least equal the weight of the lawyers advice. Apologies are leadership decisions. The possible legal consequences are widely known.
The reality is that apology is always a leadership decision, first. Rarely just a legal decision. Wait a minute. Yes, an apology is always an admission whatever the circumstances and has legal implications. That’s one of the reasons we have attorneys.
As always, consult qualified legal assistance in any situation which would appear to have legal implications or where required.
The main point of this piece is that leadership, especially top leadership, has far broader responsibilities for making crucial decisions and actions when there are victims: damage or death to people, animals, or living systems. A higher level of compassion, truthfulness, and empathy are required very quickly, to get serious matters settled to the satisfaction of victims.
Let me repeat my definition of apology as the Atomic Energy Of Empathy because, when genuine apologies are given, bad things start to stop happening. Bad decisions are slowed or stopped before they can cause more damage. One of the most common things to stop happening is “get even” behavior and victim-driven litigation. There frequently is litigation over damages, that’s what insurance is for. Following an apology, the tone is different, and settlement becomes the focus, although your legal preparations also continue.
There could still be court time when there is an apology. You will prepare as your lawyer instructs, but here’s another powerful twist. Where there are especially inflammatory or damaging and embarrassing issues, hire a second independent law firm, one specializing in reconciliation and settlement to start settlement talks immediately. No law firm is large enough to litigate and negotiate a settlement at the same time. Give settlement a chance to occur faster than the traditional pretrial defense litigation steps. Besides, the odds of a litigation actually getting to trial in the U.S. are very small (like one out of more than a hundred). Courts encourage and support settlement talks at the earliest possible time. It’s litigators who tend to get in the way.
Note: This is Public Relations Advice. When there are legal issues and questions, always consult an attorney.
Running settlement negotiations simultaneously with litigation preparation seems to be a novel idea. In the few times when a client I’ve encouraged has used this approach, settlement happened very quickly. High-profile, hugely embarrassing, and revictimizing circumstances were avoided.
An Effective Apology Has Five Must-Be-Done Components
admission of doing something that hurts of victimizes
explanation of specifically what the harm is/was
discussion of lessons learned and behaviors that will change
direct request for forgiveness from the victims
penance to be performed to atone for the damage done
Often, the first refuge of troubled leadership and management.
The Four Apology Avoidance Strategies
Strategy 1. Self-forgiveness:
“It’s an industry problem; we are not the only ones.”
“This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last time.”
“Let’s not blow this out of proportion.”
“We couldn’t have known.”
“It’s not systemic.”
“Don’t our good deeds count for anything?”
*The “Not, Can’t” Warning: Whenever not or can’t appear in a statement, either are almost always preceded or followed by a lie. Avoid using not and can’t at all times.
Strategy 2. Self-talk:
“It’s an isolated incident.”
“It couldn’t have been done by our people.”
“Not many were involved.” (Injured or Killed)
“If we don’t do it, someone else will.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Strategy 3. Self-delusion:
“It’s not our fault.”
“It’s not our problem.”
“We can’t be responsible for everything.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“It was only one death, in one place, at one time. Why is everyone so angry?”
“Life can’t exist without risk.”
*The “Not, Can’t” Warning: Whenever not or can’t appear in a statement, either are almost always preceded or followed by a lie. Avoid using not and can’t.
Strategy 4. Lying:
“I don’t know.”
“We’ve never done that.”
“It hasn’t happened before.”
“It can’t happen again.”
“We won’t give up without a fight.”
“I’m not a crook.”
“I did not have sex with that woman.”
“I’m not a racist.”
*The “Not, Can’t” Warning: Whenever not or can’t appear in a statement, either are almost always preceded or followed by a lie. Avoid using not and can’t at all times.
Share these lists with every executive so they know all of these excuses are off-limits. Don’t worry the urge for avoidance is so strong they will begin thinking of new ones immediately. As you hear the new avoidance language, build another list and circulate immediately to executives to re-inoculate them against apology avoidance.
Maybe, have the boss call his/her mom (they probably have already) and ask their advice before trying any of these avoidance strategies. We both know what her advice will be. Take it and have a better life, maybe even keep your job. Only the attorneys will be angry, but apology, humility, and compassion are the real work of leaders when bad things happen, and victims are created.
Note: This is Public Relations Advice. When there are legal issues and questions, always consult an attorney.
Though not an attorney, James (Jim) E. Lukaszewski has been one of America’s most visible corporate go-to people for senior executives and their attorneys when there is trouble in the room or on the horizon. Jim was often retained by senior management to provide personal coaching and executive recovery advice for executives in trouble or facing career-defining moments, problems, and succession or departure issues. Corporate Legal Times once called Jim one of “28 experts to call when all hell breaks loose” and PR Week called him one of 22 “crunch-time counselors who should be on your speed dial in a crisis.”
