Education

Communicating During Life's Crises
by Mary Schnack

One of the toughest challenges today for a business owner or business executive is controlling the media. The media is everywhere and it seems as if they have less and less ethical standards, especially when you’re on the receiving end of their attention.

Being in business, if you don’t learn how to control the media, the consequences can be grave. One employee can go crazy, one product can be tampered with, and you’re in the eye of the storm. You’ll lose business, you’ll be under 24-hour stress, and consequently your personal life will suffer, too. Communication in a crisis is the ability to re-direct negative, hostile communications and resolve conflicts. By taking control of a potentially volatile situation and keeping the conversation on track, you can keep poised and confident and ultimately, reduce the level of stress.

The top tips of media crisis communications can also be applied to other areas of life. The same techniques used to neutralize media storms can be used to enhance communication and personal crises in your own personal life. Have you ever felt attacked while communicating? Do you ever feel that you’re not being heard or you’ve gotten way off topic when you have difficult communications with someone?

When you are attempting to relate to your significant other, a colleague, an employee, a friend, or even more challenging… a teenager…these media communication techniques can not only help avoid disaster, but help turn a crisis into a positive connection.

The benefits of this type of communication are tremendous. Do you ever lie awake at night, going over and over something that was said and how it could have been handled better? This is crisis communications management AFTER the fact. Crisis communications management is what needs to be done BEFORE that important conversation even takes place.

With the proper crisis communication techniques you can turn anxiety into confidence, fear into self-esteem, and live with the knowledge that you can solve the communication issues in your business or personal life.

One of the primary tools used to build these basic skills is the concept of Message Points. When confronted with a difficult situation, whether it’s an employee, client, or spouse, it is common to react from an emotional state of mind. The first tendency when faced with a situation of conflict is to fight or take flight. Common responses are to fight back without thinking, get angry and have a quick knee-jerk response, or simply just ignore it. The situation can feel out of control. By having clear message points in mind, you can get out of being reactive and offer clear responses to the issue.

Message points consist of three to five basic points of what you want to be HEARD. Having your message points ready, allows you to step back and get your focus. What are the things you need to say? What is important in this situation, this relationship? How can you help avoid this from getting out of hand?

Think of a tree. You want to stay on the main trunk. What happens if you go out on a limb? You crash. It’s the same with communication. You don’t want to go off on this branch and then that branch. You want to stay on the “main trunk” of the communication where it is safe and steady.
Focus on the outcome; don’t get lost in the emotional reaction. When you know what you are going to say, you can stay calm and feel confident of your message. This process creates a win-win situation for both parties in the difficult or conflicted communication. You help the other person stay focused by steering them back to the matter at hand, rather than going off on a tangent with them.

It is important in any conversation to follow these three steps: listen, think, and then respond. Too often, the “think” step is left out. You don’t need to respond within a second. It is okay to take your time to think of the proper response to keep the conversation productive.
You may argue that “I can’t always have message points ready, because I don’t know these conversations are necessarily going to happen.” Usually, that is just not true. You know when there are difficult situations. Think in advance, if you are approached by this person, what will you want to say? Or, perhaps you want to initiate the conversation to get the dark cloud from hanging overhead.

Using these skills and techniques will increase your opportunity to interact effectively in daily conversations, whether at the office, the grocery store, or at home:

- Responding not reacting
- Thinking before you respond
- Being assertive, not argumentative or critical
- Periodically breaking the (negative) rhythm of the conversation
- Listening, with attention to body language and nonverbal signals

The Chinese symbol for opportunity is exactly the same as the symbol for crisis. By employing your skills to diffuse a potential communication crisis, you can also use it as an opportunity to build stronger relationships in all areas of your life.