Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 09

26 / Canadian Government Executive // December 2017 Leadership crisis communications B ut, I am shocked by how many times I get a call from a stressed- out executive who is in the middle of the storm and hasn’t prepared their team – hasn’t prepared to protect their organization’s reputation or their own. It’s fully preventable and, quite frankly, by the time you hear the thunder, it’s too late to build an ark. As a former CBC journalist, I have seen reputations that have taken decades to build, crumble to nothing in less than a day. Even if the organization survives, someone at the senior level is typically canned – if for no other reason than to show others it is unacceptable to be un- prepared. As a communications consul- tant, these crisis experiences have proven invaluable in dealing with major corpo- rate crisis situations. You can’t teach the things journalists have seen. What we can do in a short article like this is give you some guidance to get you thinking about – and assessing – your level of readiness. Do you have a crisis communications plan? Among many other things, this plan identifies potential crisis situations and clearly outlines who is on the core crisis It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and just moments to destroy it. Perhaps it’s a senior leader caught on tape saying or doing something inap- propriate. Maybe criminal charges are laid against someone on the team. Or maybe it’s a leaked email or document gone wrong. The fact is if you’re a leader of any organization of company, you will be con- fronted with a communications challenge at some point – and the people who survive unscathed are the people who are prepared. Conway Fraser