I'm looking at introducing a new workshop session to boost the general communications skills of business leaders.
If you run one or more business leaders groups, you are most welcome to copy and past the survey into an email and send the completed version to me at michael@michaeldoddmedia.com
Your thoughts will be much appreciated as I plan the new session.
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Survey for chairmen of business leaders groups on improving the communications skills of your members.
1. On a scale of one to ten, where one is very poor and ten is excellent, how effective do you think your typical members are when it comes to communicating with:
A. You
B. Other members of their group
C. Their staff
D. Their customers
E. Their prospects
F. The public
2. Looking at the poorest communicators in your group(s), what difference do you think it might make to the performance of their companies if they were able to communicate more effectively?
3. Looking at the best communicators in your group(s), what difference do you think it might make to the performance of their companies if they were able to further enhance their communication skills?
4. Without identifying specific names or companies can you briefly outline a story you’ve come across through dealing with your members where poor communication from a business leader had a big negative impact?
5. Can you outline a story you’ve come across from dealing with your members where excellent communication from a business leader had a big positive impact?
6. Looking at your members in general, what aspect(s) of their communications skills most needs improving?
7. How useful would a workshop session – or a series of workshop sessions - aimed at boosting the communications skills of your members be for your group(s)?
A. Highly Valuable
B. Valuable
C. Of minimal Value
D. Not worth contemplating
8. What is your name?
9. What's the name of your group and where is it based?
10. What is your email address?
Please send completed form to michael@michaeldoddmedia.com
Many thanks for your time and thoughts. Michael
Sunday 29 May 2011
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Giving Great Answers To Tough Shop-floor Questions
The toughest professional questions to business leaders come primarily from just three areas.
They’re asked by customers, prospects and your own employees.
These rate even higher than tough questions from bank managers, journalists and other sources.
The information comes from the pre-session surveys that I’ve been conducting with members of business leadership groups before running master classes on “Give Great Answers To Tough Questions”.
Out of all the sources, it’s the nightmare questions that come to you from your own people which are often the ones which are the most challenging.
There are two particular reasons for this.
INSIDERS KNOW THE TROUBLESPOTS
One is that questions from your own people can spring from a much more detailed factual basis than questions from outside.
Your managers and staff often know where the bodies are buried (metaphorically speaking only, one would hope).
So living in the business day-to-day as you do, they know the challenges and the underlying facts in their specialty area as well as - and in some cases better than - you do.
When I run exercises preparing leaders to answer tough questions in press conferences I like to get some of their own people to pose as journalists.
This is because, however much research I’ve done on their organisation or industry, their own people have the inside information to lob especially explosive verbal hand grenades at the weak and uncomfortable spots.
If your people ask “Are you going to lay off staff in this particular area?” or “Why can’t we have a pay rise given the great demand forecasts?” then they may well have solid underlying reasons for asking.
So the answers you give to inquiries from your own experts need to be particularly bombproof.
YOU NEED TO LIVE WITH YOUR ANSWERS
The second reason that questions from your own people can be particularly tricky is that you have to live with your answers day-in day-out, in a way that isn’t quite so obvious with a prospect or customer who you only see occasionally.
If you promise something you can’t ultimately deliver on, or predict something that turns out not to be true, then you can be potentially reminded of it on a daily basis….or an hourly basis if it’s your PA!
As you’re effectively on show with your own people in all your working time, there’s a particular need to get the answers to their questions spot on.
The need is all the stronger in these days when your answers can be tweeted, emailed and blogged to a wider audience in an instant.
PLAN, PREPARE AND PRACTICE
And the best way to ensure this is to approach the nightmare in-house questions in the same way as a sports professional approaches a big match – you plan for it, you prepare for it, you practice for it.
There are various formulae for satisfying your questioner and getting your positive point across – but they all work best when you’ve worked out what to do in advance.
In this way if one of your people asks “Is our company going to survive the current downturn?” you won’t to be giving an answer off the top of your head.
But neither do you want to say “I’ll go away and check the figures and get back to you on that.”
Contrary to what is often thought, when people are really good at answering tough questions without notice it usually isn’t because they are good at “thinking on their feet”.
It’s more likely to be because they’ve anticipated the question and worked out a factually correct, practical and hopefully inspiring answer in advance.
You can do the same – and impress those people who are hardest to
impress – your own people.
Monday 9 May 2011
BP And The Media - What Businesses Of All Sizes Can Learn
It’s been hard to keep up with the multitude of ways BP mishandled the media over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
But for BP and everyone else in business, the critical thing is to learn from the errors rather than repeat them.
Being prepared before bad things happen is a key part of this, even if your worst business nightmare is something less catastrophic than an oil spill.
Incredibly, for the chief executive officer of such a large firm, Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive officer at the time of the spill got it wrong at practically every stage.
If Tony Hayward had been through a media crisis training course – and had been fully receptive to the learning points – it would have saved BP literally billions in share price losses and reputational damage.
So to stop you from following in his wake, I’ve identified BP’s top seven gaffes – and put below each the key lesson which would have minimized rather than maximized the fallout.
Gaffe 1: “There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." Tony Hayward talking to reporters on 30 May 2010 in Florida.
Lesson: When your company has been responsible for something bad, never use an encounter with the media to express sympathy for yourself. All the more so if people have died in the disaster – not to mention a devastating impact on countless other living creatures. Keep your concern entirely fixed on the victims and their friends and family.
Gaffe 2: "The drilling rig was a Transocean drilling rig. It was their rig and their equipment that failed, run by their people and their processes." Tony Hayward in an interview with NBC on 20 April 2010.
Lesson: Don’t blame others when your company is at least partly responsible. The key thing when something bad has happened is to demonstrate a responsible attitude – and you can word this, if needs be, in a way without admitting legal liability. You look responsible by taking ownership of dealing with the problem, regardless of whether it was 100 per cent your fault or not.
Gaffe 3: "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." Tony Hayward in an interview with The Guardian published 14 May 2010.
Lesson 3: Put things in a wider context by all means, but don’t be ridiculous. Trying to talk away a problem which is appearing day after day on our screens is never going to work.
Gaffe 4: “I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest." Tony Hayward in interview on Sky News on 18 May 2010.
Lesson 4: Don’t deny the bleeding obvious. Your audience isn’t stupid. Admit the size of the problem and speak about what you’re doing to tackle it.
Gaffe 5: On 17 May 2010, BP fitted a siphon to the wreckage which managed to collect around a thousand barrels of oil day. According to BP, this was roughly a fifth of the oil leaking out, though some scientists suggested there was much more oil escaping than the company was admitting. The siphoning effort, which was later abandoned, prompted Tony Hayward to declare "I do feel that we have, for the first time, turned the corner, in this challenge."
Lesson 5: Don’t declare light at the end of the tunnel when you aren’t certain. If you’re wrong, you just build public expectations higher for the subsequent big let down. Be cautious, and if things turn out better than predicted so much the better.
Gaffe 6: As billions were wiped off its share price, BP issued a statement on 10 June 2010 saying “The company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”
Lesson 6: When you have a problem, don’t pretend it isn’t there. You come across so much better in the media if you’re talking about how you’re seeking to solve the problem rather than denying it.
Gaffe 7: On 17 June 2010, Tony Hayward watched his boat take part in the JP Morgan Asset Management yacht race around the Isle of Wight – a decision defended by a BP spokesman saying Mr Hayward had not had a break since the spill began and was merely “spending a few hours with his family at the weekend”.
Lesson 7: It’s not good to be seen leaving the scene and certainly the country where your problem is located without very good reason. But if you want to spend a little time with your family during a media storm there are ways of doing it which don’t involve flaunting yourself before the world – especially in an activity seen as one for the rich when victims less well off than you are suffering.
Underlying these gaffes – and the many I’ve had to leave out - is a fundamental. Whatever you’ve done and whatever you’re doing, you really have to care about the impact of what you do.
Then in media interviews you can seek to demonstrate how you care.
Trying to tell us you care first, before totally convincing yourself that you really do care doesn’t work.
If this is what you choose to do, battalions of problems will flow.
Being prepared is everything.
And there’s another bonus in going through this process. Preparing for the worst can sometimes even prevent the worst from happening
But for BP and everyone else in business, the critical thing is to learn from the errors rather than repeat them.
Being prepared before bad things happen is a key part of this, even if your worst business nightmare is something less catastrophic than an oil spill.
Incredibly, for the chief executive officer of such a large firm, Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive officer at the time of the spill got it wrong at practically every stage.
If Tony Hayward had been through a media crisis training course – and had been fully receptive to the learning points – it would have saved BP literally billions in share price losses and reputational damage.
So to stop you from following in his wake, I’ve identified BP’s top seven gaffes – and put below each the key lesson which would have minimized rather than maximized the fallout.
Gaffe 1: “There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." Tony Hayward talking to reporters on 30 May 2010 in Florida.
Lesson: When your company has been responsible for something bad, never use an encounter with the media to express sympathy for yourself. All the more so if people have died in the disaster – not to mention a devastating impact on countless other living creatures. Keep your concern entirely fixed on the victims and their friends and family.
Gaffe 2: "The drilling rig was a Transocean drilling rig. It was their rig and their equipment that failed, run by their people and their processes." Tony Hayward in an interview with NBC on 20 April 2010.
Lesson: Don’t blame others when your company is at least partly responsible. The key thing when something bad has happened is to demonstrate a responsible attitude – and you can word this, if needs be, in a way without admitting legal liability. You look responsible by taking ownership of dealing with the problem, regardless of whether it was 100 per cent your fault or not.
Gaffe 3: "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." Tony Hayward in an interview with The Guardian published 14 May 2010.
Lesson 3: Put things in a wider context by all means, but don’t be ridiculous. Trying to talk away a problem which is appearing day after day on our screens is never going to work.
Gaffe 4: “I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest." Tony Hayward in interview on Sky News on 18 May 2010.
Lesson 4: Don’t deny the bleeding obvious. Your audience isn’t stupid. Admit the size of the problem and speak about what you’re doing to tackle it.
Gaffe 5: On 17 May 2010, BP fitted a siphon to the wreckage which managed to collect around a thousand barrels of oil day. According to BP, this was roughly a fifth of the oil leaking out, though some scientists suggested there was much more oil escaping than the company was admitting. The siphoning effort, which was later abandoned, prompted Tony Hayward to declare "I do feel that we have, for the first time, turned the corner, in this challenge."
Lesson 5: Don’t declare light at the end of the tunnel when you aren’t certain. If you’re wrong, you just build public expectations higher for the subsequent big let down. Be cautious, and if things turn out better than predicted so much the better.
Gaffe 6: As billions were wiped off its share price, BP issued a statement on 10 June 2010 saying “The company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”
Lesson 6: When you have a problem, don’t pretend it isn’t there. You come across so much better in the media if you’re talking about how you’re seeking to solve the problem rather than denying it.
Gaffe 7: On 17 June 2010, Tony Hayward watched his boat take part in the JP Morgan Asset Management yacht race around the Isle of Wight – a decision defended by a BP spokesman saying Mr Hayward had not had a break since the spill began and was merely “spending a few hours with his family at the weekend”.
Lesson 7: It’s not good to be seen leaving the scene and certainly the country where your problem is located without very good reason. But if you want to spend a little time with your family during a media storm there are ways of doing it which don’t involve flaunting yourself before the world – especially in an activity seen as one for the rich when victims less well off than you are suffering.
Underlying these gaffes – and the many I’ve had to leave out - is a fundamental. Whatever you’ve done and whatever you’re doing, you really have to care about the impact of what you do.
Then in media interviews you can seek to demonstrate how you care.
Trying to tell us you care first, before totally convincing yourself that you really do care doesn’t work.
If this is what you choose to do, battalions of problems will flow.
Being prepared is everything.
And there’s another bonus in going through this process. Preparing for the worst can sometimes even prevent the worst from happening
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