Category: Jim’s Wisdom

Step One:
Noticing Early Warning Signs

The moment your stomach gets that twinge about what you are doing, just hearing about, or planning to do, or someone else in your company, your family, or the community is starting or plans to start doing, stop and ask yourself, and perhaps others:

  1. What is (is there) ideal behavior here?
  2. How are ethical questions being surfaced and addressed?
  3. What remains unsaid, ignored, actually covered up?
  4. When will leaders address the ethical expectations of others?
  5. Is the profit (personal benefit) motive in balance with your own ethical expectations?

Step Two:
Use the Fitzpatrick Ethical Decision-Making Guide
to Help Resolve, Some Ethical Dilemmas

By Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, JD, APR, Former Member Public Relations Society Of America (PRSA) Board Of Ethics And Professional Standards (BEPS) Found On PRSA.org

For public relations and other professionals, ethical dilemmas arise when responsibilities and loyalties conflict and a decision about the appropriate – i.e., ethical – course of action must be made. Often, a choice is required among actions that meet competing obligations. For example, when might the obligation to serve the public interest override loyalty to clients? When does a particular stakeholder’s interest take priority over an employer’s interest? In other words, just exactly what is “responsible advocacy”? Apply these questions to sort things out:

  1. Define the specific ethical issue/conflict.
  2. Identify internal/external factors (e.g., legal, political, social, economic) that may influence the decision.
  3. Identify key values.
  4. Identify the parties who will be affected by the decision and define the public relations professional’s obligation to each.
  5. Select ethical principles to guide the decision-making process.
  6. Make a decision and justify it.

Step Three:
When We Need to Go Beyond the Fitzpatrick Model
The Moral Questioning Menu

Often at first, it seems most ethical questions have simple direct answers. Closer examination generally requires that we expand our investigations and questions to develop more thoughtful, deeper, and often more complex responses.

This list of questions is a menu of deeper exploration of ethical issues. Pick the questions that are most likely to reveal and explore important information to help you make your decisions and choices.

  • Who does the questionable behavior bother?
  • Who has been involved, injured, afflicted, or victimized??
  • Who made decisions?
  • Who was asking questions, and of whom?
  • What affirmative steps are now being taken to remedy the situation?
  • What are the principles involved?
  • What are the relevant facts of the situation?
  • What alternatives are available?
  • What decisions were made, when, where, and by whom?
  • What did we know, and when did we know it?
  • What ethical standards or principles of conduct are involved or at issue?
  • What is the fundamental cause of the situation?  Omission? Commission? Negligence? Arrogance? Action? Inaction? Denial? Indecision?
  • What is the truth?
  • What lessons can the organization learn as this dilemma is revealed?
  • What other questionable decisions or actions may come to light?
  • What was sacrificed to benefit the outcome or the victims?
  • How could this have been avoided?
  • How will future unethical behavior be disclosed? To whom and how fast?
  • How will our principles be advanced or violated by each alternative action?
  • Is it really our problem?
  • Is it really an ethical question?
  • Are all the critical ethical questions being asked and answered?
  • Are our actions open and honest?
  • As an organization are we prepared to comment on the behavior that led to ethical compromise?
  • Did this happen because there’s an institutional code of silence?
  • Has all of the information been presented honestly and correctly thus far?
  • Was there a serious and prompt attempt to find out what was really going on?
  1. When bad things happen, they often come to our attention as dilemmas – that is, situations where we must choose between two equally bad, sometimes repugnant choices:
    1. “Are you still beating your wife or just being arrogant and obstructive?”
    2. “Did you or your company/organization do this intentionally, maliciously, or negligently?”
  2. Bad situations often have a moral dimension and questions that need to be asked promptly to assess the moral dimension, if any. Asking these moral questions early can trigger prompt, appropriate detoxifying actions and decisions and assess appropriate ethical behaviors.

Failure to ask questions can be considered an ethical failure by omission. Ask the right questions early as suspect situations are developing. Moral questioning may help you to head off serious difficulty or perhaps even enhance the value of your decisions and actions.

Avoid defeat from Color Words and Threats Be Specific – Stop Your Wandering Generalities

Power Words and Phrases have the magical ability to get or keep you out of trouble and to move you and others in positive, constructive directions. These words counteract and detoxify the sticky, corrosive, destructive power of negative words and concepts.

The need for Power Words is essential to most of us, especially when we find ourselves in difficult, challenging and often murky, negative situations. The tendency upon hearing negative, emotional or accusatory language is to repeat and then respond. Power Words enable you to avoid repeating negative words and inflammable phrases, and to move in very constructive directions from the very beginning. Some examples:

Contrast Analysis

Negative, Emotional, Accusatory LanguagePower Word Responses
1. So you admit you bungled the chance to do this properly…1. What we did was essential and important to resolving the issues these individuals faced.
2. Many thought your behavior was simply weird and uncalled for.2. We first identified the crucial issues we felt needed discussion and proceeded to empathetically and powerfully work to resolve the questions.
3. How do you respond to this aggravating and unfortunate situation?3. Three actions: detect the issues; deter future negative actions; and provide essential and critical advice to move beyond the existing problem and situation.
4. Even some Wall Street analysts say your company should be ashamed of what it did. How humiliating is this for your company?4. The significant facts are these: first, we always acted with empathy and responsibility; second, our culture has a strong sense of what is right and what to avoid. Our actions, as well as our words, demonstrate our commitment to these concepts. Finally, the most crucial information is that provided by victims and survivors. They uniformly praise our simple, sincere, sensible and responsible approach to their problems.
5. You stand accused of being callous, careless, arrogant, and insensitive. How many of these allegations are true?5. Three things about our behavior and intentions are true: Everything we’ve been doing are preauthorized by those most directly affected; our actions and intentions are sensible and clear, we have been candid, and we have been truthful in every instance; lastly, as events unfold, responsible and knowledgeable commentary will prevail, but there will always be a handful of critics who remain to be convinced. We are being as direct and forceful with these individuals and organizations as we can be, telling our story and listening carefully for their views and comments.

Power Phrases Packaging and Bundling

Power Phrases consist mainly of numbered bundles of adjectives. The use of this technique in speaking and writing is extremely powerful. In both of these instances, speaking and writing, if you use the technique, you will literally force people to write things down or take better notes than they might have otherwise.

            Package and Bundle Crucial Information:

Keep the number of ingredients or components low, generally five or fewer. Three seems to be an optimal number. We’re talking about:

Three AnglesThree Options
Three AttemptsThree Parts
Three DecisionsThree Perspectives
Three ElementsThree Phases
Three IncrementsThree Stages
Three IngredientsThree Steps
Three OpinionsThree Units

Some other examples could include the use of a single, powerful circumstance, such as, “The single, most important ingredient in this formula is…” or, “The most urgent issue we currently face is…”

The smaller the number, the more powerful the statement.

Some examples of two-component phrases include,

  • “Your choice is between action and inaction.”
  • “Let’s just start with the two worst circumstances you face and see what we can generate from there.”
  • “A couple of things are on my mind.”

These power phrases make you more important, more influential, more memorable and share those enhanced attributes and skills with those around you. Most of all, this technique forces people to write down what you’re talking about, which is one of the most important actions you can create in someone you’re trying to help, guide, direct, coach, or counsel.

Power Words

Power Words are the words of tomorrow. Power words have the energy and the punch to get attention and help surge beyond the negative and the emotional. Power Words provide a sense of constructive positivity that can move your conversation, issues and ideas to much more constructive, helpful and successful territory. Power Words add the simple, sensible, positive, constructive and forceful ingredients to power up your language and intentions. Words like:

1. Aggressive26. New
2. Attack27. Powerful
3. Authorize28. Prevention
4. Avoid29. Prioritize
5. Candid30. Protection
6. Clear31. Purposeful
7. Crucial32. Responsible
8. Critical33. Seasoned
9. Defend34. Sensible
10. Detect35. Significant
11. Deter36. Simple
12. Different37. Sincere
13. Direct38. Steady
14. Emphasize39. Strip
15. Empathize40. Strong
16. Energize41. Surge
17. Essential42. Suprized
18. Exciting43. Tender
19. Fascinating44. Tough
20. Forceful45. Truthful
21. Important46. Unique
22. Intentional47. Unusual
23. Legitimize48. Urgent
24. Necessary49. Valuable
25. Needed

Avoid Color Words

These words always create bad news. Avoid them. Power your way past them with Power Words and Power Phrases.

Crucial negative attributes of color words that make them toxic to your communications. Color words always are:

  1. Always disruptive, destructive, demoralizing, and sometimes devastating.
  2. Always emotional. Just seeing these words on the list can grab your guts and make them feel bad. This is why reporters, opponents and angry people use them.
  3. In many cultures we are taught that failing to answer directly the question asked damages our credibility. Forget that rule and always counter color words with power words.
  4. Review the previous section on contrast analysis to see how power words can be used to defeat color words.

Color Words…Collected from Hundreds of Media Interviews that were Driven into the Ditch by Color Words.

Afraid
Agitated
Aggravate
Alarmed
Alleged
Anger
Angry
Anguish
Antagonize
Anxious
Apathetic
Appalled
Apprehensive
Argue
Arrogant
Ashamed
Assassinate
Attack
Awful
Bad
Betrayed
Blame
Blasted
Bombs
Bored
Botched
Brainwashed
Bungled
Buried
Capitulate
Catastrophic
Collusion
Conceal
Confused
Conspire
Contempt
Corrosive
Cover-up
Cringe
Critical
Crooked
Curious
Damaging
Danger
Deadly
Deceitful
Defeated
Defective
Defensive		Delinquent
Demean
Deny
Despair
Desperation
Despicable
Destroy
Destructive
Deteriorate
Disappointed
Disarray
Discontented
Discouraged
Discriminate
Disdain
Disgusted
Dismiss
Disrespect
Distorted
Distraught
Disturbed
Dopey
Doubtful
Dumb
Duplicity
Ecotage
Embarrassed
Embattled
Endanger
Enraged
Evil
Eviscerate
Excessive
Exaggerate
Exposed
Face-saving
Fat
Fearful
Fight
Foolish
Frightened
Frustrating
Furious
Goofy
Gratuitous
Greedy
Guilty
Harassed		Harmful
Hateful
Hopeless
Hostile
Humiliated
Hurt
Icky
Idiot
Ignorant
Immature
Incompetent
Inept
Inappropriate
Irritated
Lies
Litigate
Lousy
Mad
Mangled
Mangy
Manipulate
Mean
Meek
Messy
Minimize
Miserable
Monopoly
Nag
Negligent
Out-of-touch
Overwhelmed
Overzealous
Outrageous
Painful
Panicky
Petrified
Pitiful
Poisonous
Profiteering
Questionable
Racist
Regret
Repudiate
Resentful
Resigned
Rip-off
Rotten
Sabotage		Sad
Sarcastic
Scared
Scum
Self-pity
Selfish
Sellout
Sham
Shame
Shameful
Shatter
Sick
Silly
Sissy
Skunk
Slander
Slash
Sloppy
Stinky
Struggle
Stupid
Surrender
Tampering
Tarnish
Tense
Terrible
Terrified
Terror-stricken
Terrorized
Threatened
Toxic
Tragic
Traitor
Tumultuous
Ugly
Unbelievable
Uncomfortable
Underhanded
Undermine
Uneasy
Unhappy
Unimportant
Unlucky
Unnecessary
Unreal
Unsure
Weird
Worried

Stop Your Wandering Generalities, Be Meaningfully Specific

A note about the concept of packaging and numbering adjectives. This is the most powerful verbal tool you can use. It works on happy people, sad people, angry people, agitated people, confused people and people you need to convince. Some simple examples:

Wandering GeneralitiesMeaningfully Specific Translation
1. “We’re a great company.”1. “We are a powerful company, leading three important business sectors, digitalization, transmission efficiency and end user acceptance.”
2. “Everybody loves our company.”2. “We use three techniques every month to test our customer acceptance; direct contact with key users; short, direct questionnaires; seeking testimonials.”
3. “We’ve successfully dealt with this problem in the past.”3. “We made three crucial improvements in this process four years ago:  first, we significantly reduced defects, second, we began more careful education of our customers, and third, we introduced a monitoring program to catch defects earlier.”

I Love Working On This Stuff

Getting good at contrast analysis and using power words makes you a better more persuasive and memorable spokesperson, speaker or representative. These are really cool problems to resolve. If you’ve got a particularly sticky circumstance or troublesome set of colorful accusations, send them to me at jel@e911.com and we can quickly detoxify them together.

Steve Harrison, the co-founder and chairman of Lee Hecht Harrison (now LHH Division of Adecco, Switzerland), was truly passionate about constantly finding small decencies for those around him, those actions that people may not even notice but ultimately do, that are done by individuals who expect nothing in return.

He was an executive you could genuinely say was beloved by those who worked for him. He spent time with them, listened to them, and thought about them and countless ways to do small decencies. He had those in leadership positions in his company do the same.

His forceful answer to the question, “…but Steve, how do you get decency started in an existing organizational structure?” “OBSESSION!!, he would practically shout, and often did, Be the one or find the one that is obsessed with decency, civility, and integrity.”

In our 2021 book, The Decency Code, The Leaders Path to Building Integrity and Trust ©2021 MacGraw Hill, Steve outlined his Principles of Decency. These principles are the ingredients for establishing organic goodness in an existing organizational structure. His principles are a roadmap and paths to much happier employees.

The Harrison Organic Goodness Principles of Civility, Small Decencies, and Happiness.

  1. Build trust at every opportunity.
  2. Collaborate genuinely.
  3. Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice profits for principle.
  4. Demonstrate and applaud small decencies – “the exponential power of non-conditional acts of kindness and civility.”
  5. Establish and promote business decencies, i.e. thoughtful, meaningful gestures, offered in ways small and large that can change a corporate culture for the better.
  6. Decencies often happen outside of a CEO mandate or corporate policy. They are spontaneous rather than published as values or ethics statements.
  7. Develop and sustain a coaching culture.
  8. Genuine recognitions.
  9. Preserve rich traditions.
  10. Listen (perhaps the greatest decency of all).
  11. Model ethical-compliant behavior.
  12. Respect innovation failure. Learn the lesson failures teach.
  13. Tell the truth, rather than spinning the truth … the no BS rule.
  14. Vocalize, publicize, and operationalize core values, ideals, and ethical standards:

o In all scheduled operations and performance reviews
o In all group company functions
o In every new-hire onboarding session
o In every CEO message
o In all compliance and ethics training
o In all executive coaching programs
o In all leadership programs and talent development processes

  1. Eradicate negative language everywhere, every time.

Steve knew that Organic Goodness produced happiness for those devoted to his Principles of Goodness and practiced them every day for the benefit of others.

Elements of Organic GoodnessLexicon of Civility and Simple Decencies
Apology“How can I help you?”
Candor“How nice of you.”
Decency“I can do that.”
Empathy“I’m sorry.”
Engagement“Let me help you.”
Honesty“My pleasure.”
Humility“Please ask me, I’m ready to help.”
Openness“Please forgive me.”
Responsiveness“Thank you.”
Transparency“Yes.”
Truthfulness“You’re welcome.”

Eradicate Negative Language Everywhere, Every Time.

The technique is simple and direct. Every time you or someone in your group or the audience mentions a negative phrase you immediately and constructively correct that phrase. For example, “Steve, that’s not the way we do it.” Response, “Help me here and tell me what you would do, could do, or should do.” You may feel a little squeamish the first few times you do this, but you’ll notice that your audience, whether it is one person or a hundred people, begins to settle down when you can give them constructive, positive, and helpful alternatives on the spot.

Your Mini Bad News Eradicators and Conversions of Negatives to Positives.

STOP DOING THIS…DO/SAY THIS INSTEAD
“I don’t want that”“Here’s what I want…”
“No”“Let’s figure it out”
“Never”“Let’s look for what’s possible”
“I won’t do it”“What I can do is limited…”
“I don’t like him”“What I’d like to see from him is…”
“That’s not what I meant”“What I mean to say is…”
“Stop twisting my words”“Use what I said exactly…”
“I hate that”“Here’s what I want…”
“I hate you”“Let’s find a way to work this out…”
“Not that way”“How about doing/saying/acting this way instead…”
“He won’t go for that”“He’s more likely to go for…”
“It’s always no to that approach“Let’s find a way to get this done…”
“I can’t imagine that she will agree to that”“Here’s what I think she might consider to…”
“He’s not done that before”“Let’s find a new approach…”

Using “not” makes anything you write or say a lie, and you the liar.

o I’m not a crook.
o I did not have sex with that woman.
o I am not a racist.
o That’s not possible.
o We are not responsible.

Build and maintain your own negative eradication table that you teach or share over time, every day.

See the Bad News Eradicator.

Negative talkers nearby have a limited and repetitive set of verbal bullets. Write them down.

Practice transforming them. Take the initiative and learn to publicly translate negatives into positive small, decent gestures. I often believe in the transition “Here’s a more helpful way to say that…”.

Be helpful, be decent, and suggest specific positive approaches. The people around you will thank you (privately) for helping bullies and negative leadership into a better way of doing things.

Make the conversion habit a simple, but powerful daily, giant small decency that you share everywhere you go.

A Special Message from Jim Lukaszewski
A Tribute to Steve Harrison
1939-2021

Steve Harrison, co-founder of Lee Hecht Harrison, later LHH Division of The Adecco Group, died July 10th, 2021. We worked together for more than 30 years beginning in 1995. Our last task together, over 2 ½ years, was to co-author a book published by McGraw Hill in 2020 called The Decency Code, The Leader’s Path to Building Integrity and Trust. His business was outplacement, and his leadership style was of extreme humility, his passion, indeed his obsession, was finding ways to encourage others to perform, to rely on, and to teach others how to bring small decencies into everyone’s life at every opportunity.

His life accomplishments are on exhibit in the thousands of people Steve helped learn how to get back to work.

“Only the truth deserves forgiveness.”

Seeking Forgiveness is society’s requirement for relationships, trust, and credibility restoration. Adverse situations using this template are remediated 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 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 #1 Candor: Outward recognition, through promptly verbalized public
acknowledgment, that a problem exists; that people or groups of people, the environment, or the public trust are affected; and that something will be promptly done to remediate the situation.

Step #2 Extreme empathy/Apology: Verbalized or written statement of personal regret, remorse, and sorrow, acknowledging personal responsibility for having injured, insulted, failed, or wronged another, humbly asking for forgiveness in exchange for more appropriate future behavior and making amends in return.

Step #3 Explanation: (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 #4 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 #5 Declaration: A public commitment and discussion of specific, positive steps to be taken to conclusively address the issues and resolve the situation.

Step #6 Contrition: The continuing verbalization of regret, empathy, sympathy, and even embarrassment. Take appropriate responsibility for having allowed the situation to occur in the first place, whether by omission, commission, accident, or negligence.

Step #7 Consultation: Promptly ask for help and counsel from “victims,” the 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 and more acceptable behaviors, and to design principles and approaches that will preclude similar problems from re-occurring.

Step #8 Commitment: 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 be permanently prevented.

Step #9 Restitution: 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.

Liars may be forgiven but they always know and fear that they will be found out.

The Boss’ Most Crucial Roles in Crisis

Few problems are crises. But all crises are serious management problems. Preplanning executive actions can avoid career-defining moments. Include specific executive expectation instructions in all plans and response scenarios.


One of the more powerful weaknesses in crisis response is the lack of specific roles and assignments for top management. The result of this crucial gap in crisis management planning is the mismanagement, lack of management, or paralysis that afflicts crisis response efforts. This defect occurs all too frequently in plans I review, responses I analyze, and scenarios I explore
with client companies.


In the course of directing a client’s crisis response, analyzing past responses to crisis, or developing powerful response strategies, it’s clear to me that crisis response promptness and effectiveness depends on having five essential responsibilities spelled out carefully in your crisis plans for the CEO (or surviving leaders):

  1. Assert the moral authority expected of ethical leadership. No matter how devastating or catastrophic the crisis is, in most cultures’ forgiveness is possible provided the organization, through its early behaviors and leadership, takes appropriate and expected steps to learn from and deal with the issues. The behaviors, briefly and in order, are:
  • Candor and disclosure (acknowledgement that something adverse has happened or is happening) Share response strategy.
  • Explanation and revelation about the nature of the problem (some early analysis)
  • Commitment to communicate throughout the process (even if there are lots of
    critics)
  • Empathy (intentional acts of helpfulness, kindness, and compassion)
  • Oversight (inviting outsiders, even victims, to look over your shoulders)
  • Commitment to zero (finding ways to prevent similar events from occurring
    again)
  • Restitution or penance (paying the price – generally doing more than would be
    expected, asked for, or required)

The Key to Crisis Management is Pattern Recognition.

Managing emergencies, crises, and disasters successfully means recognizing patterns of success and avoiding patterns of failure, and defeat. Understanding these patterns enables us to coach and prepare management’s actions, emotions, and expectations before and during emergency situations. Here’s what I’ve learned:

  1. Neither the media, your toughest opponents, smartest critics, nor the government knows enough to defeat you. Defeat is almost always the work of uninformed or overconfident, overly optimistic bosses, co-workers, and associates; well-meaning but uninformed friends, relatives, or from dysfunction in an organization.
  2. All crises are local, at the beginning. Keeping the issues and focus tight and small will help you solve your problems and move forward. Your “industry,” outsiders, or the media cannot solve your problems (they don’t care), nor can you solve theirs. You must solve your own. It’s your destiny. Manage it or someone else will.
  3. Disasters and problems rarely kill products, brands, or companies unless you let them. It is your silence, negative communication, and attitude that cause tough questions, bad stories, and real damage. Silence is the most toxic strategy of all.
  4. Colorful and memorable language creates headlines that last forever, are impossible to live down, and are among the most frequent causes of top executive dismissal during a crisis. Bad news always ripens badly, especially for those at the helm.
  5. Twenty-five percent of your resources and fifty percent of your energy during
    emergencies go toward fixing yesterday’s mistakes. Crises are messy, sloppy, imprecise situations. Everything gets worse before most anything gets better.
  6. Positive, aggressive, assertive communication limits follow-up questions, focuses on the most important aspects of the problem, and moves the entire process forward to resolution despite a negative environment, antagonistic news media or contentious social media, angry victims and survivors. Positive, constructive, compassionate actions always speak louder than words.
  7. There is no question you can be asked about your situation that will surprise you. You may get irritated, agitated, or humiliated because a really tough or touchy subject is raised, but you aren’t surprised. Promptly answering every question is your ongoing opportunity to get your messages out, and calm things down.
  8. Preparation, rehearsal, and a certain amount of luck will keep you going and help you win.
  9. Luck is limited.
  10. The general public does not care about your problems until you make them care. Fifty percent have no reason to care:
    Twenty-five percent probably have troubles worse than yours, from their perspective, anyway; and If you get the attention of those remaining, they will probably be glad you have the trouble you have.
  11. Leadership that shows compassion, community sensitivity, humility, civility, and ethical response strategies moves companies to victory and out of harm’s way. Timidity, hesitation, confusion, and arrogance bring defeat and long-term trust damage. Keep the positive pressure on to win.
  12. Destructive management communication behavior and language often lead to similar troubling behavior at many levels within an organization. Leadership has three principal responsibilities in crisis: Stopping the production of victims, managing the victim dimension, and setting the moral tone for the response.

Behavior Patterns That Precipitate and Perpetuate Trouble

Sometimes the way to prevent organizations from embarrassment, humiliating visibility, enormous litigation, and just plain stupidity is to powerfully illustrate the behaviors and attitudes that lead to catastrophic reputational damage. I call this pattern “Profiles in Failure,” easily recognized behaviors and their predictable impact. If you seek trouble, here’s the path to multitask your way into long-term difficulty.

Silence:The most toxic strategy. Makes you look like a perpetrator, whether true or not. There is no credible way to explain silence in the face of crisis. Silence is the most frequent leadership career-killer in crisis situations. It’s why the boss gets fired first.  
Stalling:Speed beats smart every time. Failure to act immediately, even incorrectly, is impossible to explain or apologize for. Doing nothing, even for what appear to be good reasons, is never explainable. #1 response criticism: failure to speak and act promptly.  
Denial:Refuse to accept the fact that something bad has happened and that there may be victims or other direct effects that require prompt public acknowledgement.  
Victim Confusion:Irritable reaction to reporters, angry neighbors, and victims’ families when they call asking for help, information, explanation, or apology. “Hey! We’re victims too.”  
Testosterosis:Look for ways to hit back, rather than to deal with the problem.  Refuse to give in, refuse to respect those who may have a difference of opinion or a legitimate issue.  
Arrogance:Reluctance to apologize, express concern or empathy, or to take appropriate responsibility because, “If we do that, we’ll be liable,” or, “We’ll look like sissies,” or, “We’ll set a precedent,” or, “There will be copycats.”  
Search for the Guilty:Shift blame anywhere you can while digging into the organization, looking for traitors, turncoats, troublemakers, those who push back, and the unconvinceables.  
Fear of the Media:As it becomes more clear that the problem is at least partly real, the media begin asking, “What did you know, and when did you know it?”, “What have you done, and when did you do it?”, and other humiliating, embarrassing, and damaging questions for which there are no really good, truthful answers anymore because you have stalled so long.  
Whining:Head down, finger in your navel, shuffling around, whining, and complaining about how bad your luck is, about being a victim of the media, zealous do-gooders, wacko-activists, or people don’t know anything; about how people you don’t respect have power; and, that you “don’t get credit” for whatever good you’ve already contributed.

Execute one, some or all of these behaviors in any order and I guarantee trouble, serious reputation problems, and brand damage. By the time you recover – if you do – look for some career-defining moments including involuntary departure, and a new team may replace you and yours. 

Over the years, I’ve developed, taught, coached, and advocated a very powerful and helpful communication philosophy. At the same time, this approach defines my ethical approach to life, to work and to trouble. I call these “intentions” because this is how I seek to operate my life, intentionally, every day, teach others to do the same. These intentions build trust, respect, and confidence.

1. Candor – Truth with an attitude, delivered now (the foundation blocks of trust).

  • Disclose, announce early.
  • Explain reasoning and reasons.
  • Discuss options, alternatives considered.
  • Provide unsolicited helpful information.

2. Openness, accessibility – Be available for the disasters as well as the ribbon cuttings.

  • Be available.
  • Be willing to respond.
  • Get out front fast.

3. Truthfulness – Truth is 15% facts and data, 85% emotion and point-of-reference.

  • Point of reference matters more than facts.
  • Factual overload victimizes people and makes them feel stupid, angrier.
  • Too many facts irritate and revictimize.
  • Unconditional honesty, from the start.
  • Get good at reducing emotionally negative situations, subjects, and people behaviors.
  • Emotions always outweigh facts.

4. Empathy – Actions that illustrate concern, sensitivity, and compassion.

  • Actions always speak louder than words.
  • Act as though it was happening to you or someone you care about.
  • Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes in any way is literally impossible, from the victim’s perspective. Avoid it.

5. Responsiveness – Answering questions relentlessly in every situation validates your integrity and preserves your reputation.

  • Every concern or question, regardless of the source, is legitimate and must be addressed.
  • Answer every question; avoid judging the questioner.
  • Answer questions as many times as they are asked.
  • Avoid taking any question personally.
  • Remain calm, wage peace, build followers and be nice, even in the face of anger or aggressive negativity. You anger and arrogance create plaintiffs.
  • Answer questions patiently and repetitively until questions stop being asked.

6. Transparency – End the secrets (because important things and stupid stuff always come out).

  • Our behavior, our attitude, our plans, even our strategic discussions are unchallengeable, positive, and explainable.
  • Our families would be comfortable reading about our actions, decisions, and discussions on the web or the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper.

7. Engagement – Face-to-face is the communications approach desired by just about everyone and every victim.

  • Take aggressive positive interaction with those who challenge us.
  • Our base and those who give us permission to operate expect us to deal with unconvinceables and victims.
  • Prompt direct interactive response, even negotiation, empowers the initiator.

8. Small Decencies

  • Small, voluntary, freely offered acts of courage, kindness, helpfulness.
  • Given, provided, or done without expectation of reward or acknowledgement.
  • A life pattern of simple, spontaneous, utterly decent actions.

9. Destiny Management – It’s your destiny, which only you can manage in your own best interest.

  • Manage your own destiny, or you’ll find someone waiting on the sidelines to do it for you.
  • Relentlessly correct and clarify the record.
  • Prompt, positive, constructive elaboration of the facts preempts critics and empowers employees, supporters and those who give us permission to operate.

10. Apology – The atomic energy of empathy. Apologies stop bad things, and bad things from starting.

  • Acknowledge personal responsibility for having injured, insulted, failed, or wronged another.
  • Explain what happened and the known reasons for the circumstance.
  • Talk about what you and your organization have learned that will help prevent a recurrence.
  • Humbly ask for forgiveness in exchange for more appropriate future behavior and to make amends.
  • Make restitution.

You can call this anything you like: communications policy, guidelines, or manifesto. I like the word intentions because it signifies that we are fully engaged in communicating in the most effective, honest, empathetic, and open manner possible, all the time.

By publicly professing these intentions you will set a standard to which you can be held accountable. This behavior can lead to an extraordinarily interesting, useful, and trustworthy life, and besides, you sleep better at night.

Let’s talk about it. I’m always interested in helping colleagues develop their own personal principles. Reach out to me at 203-948-7029 or jel@e911.com.

James E. Lukaszewski
Americas Crisis Guru®

ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus (2015) 


Mainstreet Village, 7601 Lyndale Ave S, STE 32, Richfield MN 
jel@e911.com 
203-948-7029 

    Bad news is caused by intentionally chosen negative language.

    Peace and civility come from intentionally chosen positive language and behavior.

    • How to build a constructive, positive, and happy environment at work, in the community, and home.
    • How to remove the negativity of snipy, nasty, and upset people from your workplace, community, and even your home life.
    • Become obsessed enough to wage peace, eradicate bad language, and have a civil, decent, and productive life.

    Waging Peace

    The crucial ingredients in civil, decent, helpful, and important communication are positive language and behavior. Yes, it’s that simple, but still extremely hard to accomplish every day all day. Experience shows that one of the most powerful drivers of leadership success is a relentless reliance on positive language. Talking about what to do rather than what not to do.

    What’s required first is the eradication of negative language. This step eliminates negative behavior, decisions, and attitudes. How does one really do that? Can peace, tranquility, civility, and decency be that simple to achieve? A passionate commitment to positive language and behavior is challenging and persistently difficult for human beings to commit to. But help is here.

    Eradicating Negative Language

    When I’m teaching leadership how to get themselves out of trouble our first stop and constant commitment is to remove negativity of every kind from our daily lives, and the lives of others. This is a discipline that requires constant attention. The systematic removal of negativity from our lives will have immediate impact on everyone around you. They will notice. They will notice more when you insist that they too be positive as well and eliminate negativity. And you help them do that every day.

    Getting started is the hard part but here’s a tool to help you do that.

    Introducing The Bad News Eradicator

    The Bad News Eradicator was designed to help eliminate defensive words and negative phrases from your speech, writing, decisions, and actions.

    1. Keep the Bad News Eradicator near you. [Click here to see the complete list of bad news eradicating phrases]
    2. Take it with you when you travel. 
    3. Collect your own set of habitual negative phrases and words to eradicate
    4. Add your negative habits to the eradicator sheet, then create their positive equivalents.
    5. Get a whole new life. Give a whole new life to others.

    How to use the Bad News Eradicator

    Examples of Bad News Eradication

    Negative StatementPositive Change
    1. “I can’t comment on what hasn’t happened.”1. “When it happens, I’ll comment.”
    2. “I can’t speak for them.”2. “They can speak for themselves.”
    3. “I don’t know.”3. “Here’s what I know…”
    4. “I wouldn’t say that.”4. “What I would say is…”
    5. “It didn’t happen that way.”5. “Here’s what happened.”
    6. “It’s never been done before.6. “This is the first time.”
    7. “It’s not too expensive.”7. “It’s affordable.”
    8. “Let’s not kid ourselves.”8. “Let’s stay focused on what matters.”
    9. “Nothing is impossible.”9. “Everything is possible.”
    10. “Please don’t hesitate to ask.”10. “Please Ask.”
    11. “That’s not a bad idea.”11. “That could be a good idea.”

    We’ll publish more soon.

    Click here if you’d like to receive all 189 negative language CHANGE examples.

    Click here to read: Time to Eradicate Your Bad News.

    Click here to read: Time to Eradicate Your Bad News Volume 2.

    Click here to read: The Seven Corrosive Powers of Negative Language.

    James E. Lukaszewski
    Americas Crisis Guru®

    ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus (2015) 


    Mainstreet Village, 7601 Lyndale Ave S, STE 32, Richfield MN 
    jel@e911.com 
    203-948-7029 

      Starting Back Up The Path To Decency: a Manifesto

      Why a manifesto?

      Seven big reasons:

      1. To anticipate an answer to the most important questions for those interested in building a decency-based workplace culture, before they are asked.
      2. To trigger and answer in advance the crucial questions you need to see, hear, and resolve. They will be about developing decency, civility, and integrity in your workplace.
      3. To anticipate and answer in advance the questions that bother you most about what’s happening in our culture; the decency denial and deficit in America’s workplaces and in your workplace.
      4. To help you bring your personal views of decency, civility, and integrity from your personal life, family community, and home into your working life.
      5. To reveal the many pathways available to decency, civility, integrity, and trust.
      6. Learn to recognize and prevent the victimization indecency and incivility cause.
      7. Recognize and prevent leadership and management misbehaviors that trigger the incivility, and unconscionable behaviors that contaminate decent and civil culture.

      The Pocket Decency Manifesto is your daily to-do list to inspire, to motivate, and to stimulate your energy and efforts in building a decency driven workplace. There are critical ingredients here designed to help you protect, defend, and preserve what you and others achieve along the path to a decency driven workplace.

      Good luck.

      1. The Nine Pillars Of A Decency Driven Workplace 

      Candor: truth with an attitude delivered right now.  
      Civility: patience, empathy, curiosity, tolerance. Small decencies. 
      Ethics: seek ideal conduct, go the right way first, reject all alternatives and wrong ways. 
      Humility: being humble; maintain modest opinion of one’s own importance or rank. 
      Integrity: honest consideration and inclusion of other points of view. 
      Openness: seeking and promptly addressing the concerns of others. 
      Responsiveness: do it now, change it now, fix it now, stop it now, start it now. 
      Reticence: resist the corrosiveness of negativity, criticism, and arrogance.  
      Trust: Seek the absence of fear because fear is the absence of trust. 

      2. The Three Most Powerful Civilities 

      Listening: the greatest civility we can show another human being. 
      Positivity: the only path to a successful future. All other routes lead only to trouble. 
      Small Decencies: the principal ingredients of trust, respect, humility, acceptance, and greatness. 

      3. The Most Crucial Ingredients Of A Decency Driven Workplace 

      Obsession with civility, decency, humility, integrity, modesty, truth, and trust. 
      Walk the talk: in every assembly, communication, conversation, document, event, meeting, proposal, and pitch.  
      Immerse every idea, suggestion, attitude, and behavior in decency. 
      Interpret everything in the context of civility, decency, integrity, trust, and truthfulness. 
      Aggressively block, expose, and eliminate all barriers, interference, reluctance, and disparagement of decency, civility, and humility initiatives.  
      Shun those who: belittle, demean, deny, denigrate, disparage, or espouse opposition to decency, civility, and truth. Your destiny is up to you to protect, defend, and preserve. 

      James E. Lukaszewski

      ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus (2015) 

      James E. Lukaszewski is a well-known writer, author, teacher, scholar, and lecturer in American Public Relations. 
      Mainstreet Village, 7601 Lyndale Ave S, STE 32, Richfield MN 
      jel@e911.com 
      203-948-7029