| There are big lessons about communications for all of us in the aftermath of Malaysian Airline's ill-fated Flight MH370 - even if we never have the misfortune to be personally touched by such a bizarre tragedy ourselves. Admittedly this heart-wrenching disaster - with so many mysteries still to be unravelled - would be difficult for any country, any company or any team of officials to handle well.  But amidst the muddled briefings, contradictory official statements and massive bouts of corporate insensitivity, there is much to learn. And we can apply these lessons to communications challenges involving situations which are far less dramatic - but still important for all those around you. One of these lessons is to choose your channel for communications with great care. The Malaysian Airlines decision to send out this week's final "loss of hope" message by text to relatives already overwhelmed by despair should never have been contemplated. Communications needs to be a two-way process. So the worst of news - whether it involves death, injury, redundancy or whatever - is best delivered face-to-face. This ensures that there's an avenue for vital live interaction - however painfully emotional it might be. |
TOUCH EMOTIONS BEFORE FACTS
One of the key rules in a fraught situation is to talk to the heart before you talk to the head. Distraught humans find it difficult to deal with raw unpalatable facts - unless you connect with them at an emotional level first. My professional speaking colleague, Nicci Roscoe, who publicly condemned the texting decision, wisely followed the "talk first to the heart rule" when interviewed about the plight of the relatives on Sky News. In the interview which starts about a minute into the following clip, notice that Nicci talks briefly about her heart going out to the relatives BEFORE she directly addresses the question asked by Sky's Eamonn Holmes.  Tough emotional topics are the one area where the normal rule of answer the question immediately doesn't always apply. Malaysian Airlines chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya (pictured), defended the texting decision by saying his company wanted to ensure that the families heard the tragic news before the world did.  His officials said it was a "last resort" way of contacting relatives who could not be reached any other way. If any texts were necessary, they should have merely invited the recipients to call a number or to make themselves available for a face-to-face meeting. To make things worse, the first version of the texts were sent in English which most of the grieving relatives - being Chinese - could not read. Alas the Chinese version didn't follow until later. So the Malaysian Airlines team didn't look impressive at this point. If you want your team to look, sound and feel great - visit: michaeldoddcommunications.com/ |
PREPARE BEFORE IT HAPPENS
Getting all the important details right is hard when the pressure is on. This is why I run communications skills-building master classes which enable teams to try out handling emergency situations before they happen. These sessions enable organisations to plan, prepare and practice in advance for their worst nightmare. The rehearsing process means that if the worst happens, your team members have already worked their way through tough scenarios and so are better placed to cope. This applies to dealing directly with the tragedy itself, dealing with media and dealing with victims.  There's an additional advantage too. Working through scenarios - even though they are fictitious at the time - is still emotional. Participants are sometimes surprised at how genuinely distressed they feel even though the "deaths", "injuries" or other problems they face in the sessions are pretend. But it helps equip them for the real emotions they have to cope with when a genuine emergency strikes - and that's a plus for everyone involved. |
FILL THE VACUUM WITH SOMETHING
One of the big communications challenges of the Malaysian Airlines crisis - before hope was officially abandoned this week - was what to say at times when there wasn't much to say. This is a challenge for all organisations when they are working on something really important, but feel they can't reveal anything until they know the full picture. The answer is sometimes to make a point of giving out whatever small bits of information you can along the way. And it's equally important to tell affected parties why you can't reveal more. This was one thing which the Australian Government largely got right over the past week. They kept the media and public informed in great detail about the search flights they were conducting over the Indian Ocean. And they kept providing dashing military leaders for the cameras to say what they'd seen...even when they'd sighted nothing of significance whatsoever.  This was good practice as it kept the world aware of how hard they were trying to find clues and what they were doing to try to clear things up for the relatives. |
CRAFTING THE RIGHT SOUND BITE
When you're involved in a difficult mission, it can be advantageous to keep telling those affected just how difficult it is - especially when instant success is unlikely. When it was first suspected that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean way off the coast of Western Australia, officials from the Australian prime minister down were careful to explain how testing the search operation was. There was one particularly well-crafted sound bite which cleverly illuminated the challenge. It came from Australia's Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin (pictured).  Speaking to reporters in Perth, he summed up the situation by saying: "We're not searching for a needle in a haystack - we're still trying to define where the haystack is." There is an artform to communicating when there's little to say. And in fact I'm now running sessions on it. They're designed for a customer services centre in a highly impressive globalised company where calls flood in from around the world if something technical goes wrong. The service centre is staffed by technicians with great engineering skills who are determined to fix customer's problems as quickly as possible. They tell me they always eventually fix the problem. But the challenge is what to say to sometimes agitated clients while they trying to work out what the problem is...and how to fix it. So I'm working with the team to help them keep the callers as reassured as is reasonably possible while their service interruptions are sorted. Two other companies who have heard about the sessions are also potentially interested in having their own version - because it's not such an unusual challenge. If you'd like to see a sample version of the programme email: enquiries@ |
GETTING YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS IN 30 SECONDS
A new attendance record has just been set for a regional event of the Professional Speaking Association with nearly 100 turning up for our London meeting this month. So when the association's two dynamic, glamorous national co-presidents - Eilidh Milnes and Jane Gunn - told members we could send in a video to advertise our speaking services at the forthcoming spring convention, they knew there would be so many speakers interested that we would have to keep the videos short. In fact, 30 seconds short. But it's amazing how much you can pack into half a minute if you plan it. I took the liberty of including cameo appearances from both Eilidh and Jane in my 30 seconds - in order to illustrate my message about picking up the right people. Here's how it came out:  So if you need a professional speaker to turn your conference audience or offsite day attendees into inspirational communicators let me know. Showing your team how to pick up dynamic powerful women on stage and make them shriek - as demonstrated in my video - is an optional extra. Keep smiling, Michael P.S. You can check out the next Professional Speaking Association London Regional Event on 17 May at: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ |
