5 Tips for Your CEO to Manage Crisis Communications

During a crisis, companies need to communicate from the top – starting with the CEO. Leaving it up to different offices and departments to manage their own communications sews the seeds of confusion. But when the CEO seizes the reins and manages internal communications, a business is more likely to act cohesively and confidently. Here are five tips to keep in mind to help your CEO communication in a crisis:

1. Micro-manage. Normally good CEOs allow their teams to flourish independently. But during a crisis, your CEO needs to manage every little detail of how they communicate. This is not a time for a CEO to rubber stamp an email someone else wrote. The CEO needs to remain actively involved in reviewing and approving everything – every single communication. Why? Because in a crisis, a CEO’s words carry even more weight. Everyone – employees, clients, and shareholders – listens to a CEO’s words even more closely than they normally would. Those words need to convey consistent messages.
    
2. Watch the tone. You don’t want your CEO to be tone deaf amid a crisis. But you also want your CEO to be confident and decisive. When a crisis rocks a business, employees need reassurance, but they’ll sniff out any kind of message that seems like it was written by Pollyanna. The most effective CEOs admit when they don’t have answers, but they also show a commitment to leading amid uncertainty. The right tone reinforces that leadership.
    
3. Be personal and human. It’s OK for your CEO to open up and share how they are reacting to a crisis – especially an unprecedented global pandemic. It’s OK for your CEO to discuss how they and their families have personally adapted. They should not be banal. They should real-life anecdotes about their experiences. Personal stories make a message – and the CEO – more relatable.
    
4. Be authentic. No one wants to hear corporate-speak especially during a crisis. No one wants to read an email ridden with clichés. To be sure, during a crisis, a CEO needs to make quick decisions, but sometimes rapid-decision making results in a CEO lapsing into the use of clichés to express their thinking because clichés are easy to write. Have someone work with the CEO to ensure their words feel real, not canned.
    
5. Be visible. Send emails for rapid-fire communication to employees and use social to do the same for everyone else. But schedule time to give employees a chance to look their CEO in the eye and listen to the tone of their voice. Now more than ever, a CEO can make a difference by using a webcast to reach out to employees, listen to them, and interact with them. Consider the role your CEO can play with a virtual town hall.

The COVID-19 pandemic will subside eventually. When that day comes, will you be able to say your CEO did everything they could to lead?

To learn more about how to manage crisis communications during a crisis, including COVID-19, contact Investis Digital. We have expertise helping clients in all industries.