Learning Crisis Management the Hard Way Teaches You So Much

     This week’s blog comes with a heavy heart on my part as I learn more about the Brazilian soccer team that lost most of their members along with 50 other passengers when their plane crashed.  Social media footage from the team before the crash showed jovial players full of smiles aboard the plane travelling to Colombia to play in the finals of their successful soccer season. Many families are mourning, but it heart-wrenching to me being an avid sports fan that most players on a team family have died in a plane crash.  When I saw the news of the tragedy it was devastating knowing that most of the 78 people on board had lost their lives as the plane went down during a bad storm on Monday.  As of today, Thursday, most reports say that the probable cause of the crash is that the plane ran out of fuel.  Reports also say that the pilot continuously called in asking for permission to immediately land because of low fuel but that air traffic could not clear the ill-fated plane in time and that it crashed waiting for permission to land.  This week in Leadership and Media Strategies we are looking at crisis communication management and in keeping up with this major news story, my thoughts go to the several organizations that are dealing with crisis communications during this horrible event that took so many lives during what was to be a great celebration of a team’s success. 

     Our resources this week come from several studies and a couple of videos from YouTube and TED Talk concerning crisis management. We covered information looking at crisis communication from the September 11 tragedies, health scares, banking and automobile incidents to oil spills and so much in between.  From all of this information, several things stand out to me but the most important are preparations for the three stages of a crisis – before, during and after an event.  In looking at the Brazilian plane crash, I figure that there are several groups trying to strategically manage this incident, and they include the country, the airport, the airline, the soccer team, the soccer federation, and probably the manufacturers of the airplane plus so many more. There are endless stakeholders involved including the families of everyone affected.  Chances are that all involved have worked diligently to prepare for a tragedy like this – the before stage. During – this is of course the most trying stage.  Here many communications professionals are working this very moment in order to “exchange information based on balanced communication between the organization and the public” according to one reading.  In the publication from the Business and Society Review entitled “Toward an Ethical Model of Effective Crisis Communication” by Young Kim, emphasis is on ethics in crisis communication and it talks about communicating truthfully, transparently and in a timely manner during a crisis but ensuring that you are ethical during the whole process. 

     Effective strategic communication comes from diligently seeking information, strengths and strategies that will work within your organization. When an organization is prepared and knowledgeable about themselves and about what works, they may know how to deal with a crisis but no one says that it will be easy. The article, “Eight Best Practices for Applying Change Management in Crisis and Emergency Events” by Tim Tinker, Ph.D. and Booz Allen Hamilton states that it is during emergencies that organizations truly discover what works in crisis situations.  The publication “Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies: The Role of Human Resource Development” by Lynn Perry Wooten and Erika Hayes James says that effective management and leadership “encourages members to actively engage in knowledge acquisition and the formulation of strategies to resolve the crisis.” They conclude that knowledge, skills and abilities to help you in crisis management comes from actively working and gaining an understanding of what it takes in these situations.  Then you should come up with implementation strategies if something happens. They also state that often organizations do not know who is best suited to deal with certain situations until after a crisis occurs.

     Our staff took a group of students out of town one weekend, and by the end of the first night there were a couple of emergencies.  Five staff members traveled along so there were enough adults to deal with everything, but I was put in charge of a medical emergency.  I thought my supervisor would have handled this situation because up until this point I figured her to be the calmest, most logical and level headed of our staff.  When we realized we had a student that had signs of a serious internal injury, she turned to me and said that she wasn’t good at dealing with things like this.  I almost freaked out, but something within me told me to handle it.  One thing that I will never forget in this incident is dealing with teenagers and social media.  Before I even began dealing with the sick student, the staff had to put out fires on Facebook.  Apparently when the student first started feeling ill, some of her friends went on Web MD, and diagnosed her with a brain aneurism.  I was traumatized at learning this, and thought that I wouldn’t make it through the night. First we worked to stop the posts on Facebook about an aneurism before her family found out. Then I calmed down, assessed the student and her symptoms and found a hospital where she was treated.  All along I also handled communications by informing our whole group about what was going on and I also communicated with the student’s parents who were hundreds of miles away. Thankfully, she had no aneurism, but a minor head injury.  

     Usually I am the anxious one during emergencies, but this time I took charge and calmed our group and managed to keep the student’s parents calm also. We were also successful at shutting off the Facebook inaccuracies before they caused more problems. This is one area of crisis communications that I am sure causes a lot of problems nowadays because one of the first things to do when there are injuries or death is to contact family before information leaks.  I have no idea how communications professionals can deal with this since it poses a big problem with instances such as the plane crash.  It is just something that has to be studied and dealt with on a case by case basis, but it is hard to manage because there is no way to stop social media postings and time them before you prepare a family for a loss of a loved one. This used to be more manageable, but it is one of the problems with communication innovations that reach so many instantly.   

     The Wooten and James article’s point that during a crisis, you can learn a lot about your personnel is important and proved true to us.  Not only did I learn a lot about myself, but our team learned who the stronger more level headed one was in emergencies.  Never did I think I was capable of being in charge of a major medical incident, but I did. Success came after much planning and training and my personal dealings with small emergencies along the way.  We also knew each other well enough and knew the students and parents well enough in order organize, strategize and to keep communications flowing and helpful during this incident. To this day, I am thankful that I was able to see that side of myself.  The student turned out fine and my perception of my crisis management abilities grew tremendously. Our staff took a long look at this incident and at our organizational structure and we are still training and re-structuring some responsibilities after looking at how things worked out – After, the third stage.  Again this week in class, I learned a lot.  Hopefully, our crisis management will not be tested any time soon, but just in case, I think we can handle it and learn a lot along the way.