396: Lessons in Crisis Management- with Dave Oates

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Today's guest is Dave Oates. Dave holds 30 years of strategic crisis public relations experience dealing with a wide array of adverse public events, starting as a U S Navy public affairs officer, and later as a corporate chief marketing officer and nonprofit president. He excels in expertly addressing a myriad of crises that spans sports, entertainment, nonprofit, military, government, corporate education, charity, and startup events. Dave is the author of several Amazon eBooks and co produced for LinkedIn Learning Courses. Dave is an accredited PR specialist who received his MBA from San Diego state university and his bachelor's from the University of Maryland.

Dave, welcome to the show. Hey,

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[00:02:20] Lori Highby: Wow. That's a lot of great background. Impressive.

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that.

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You know, marketing is my zone of genius, and PR kind of fits into that umbrella. And that's probably one of the areas of marketing that I have, I know enough to be dangerous is the best way to say that. And I always tell my clients, if you have PR, I've got someone else, I'd rather you, you know, refer you to someone else, basically. So.

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[00:03:00] Lori Highby: So can you explain for our listeners what exactly is a crisis PR situation? That sounds really scary.

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So the kind of things I get involved with are like accusations of harassment or wrongful termination, hostile work environments internally to, hey, this product didn't work as I thought, you provided me a poor service. I got shafted on this type of expectations that I had or a business partner who all of a sudden didn't get their cut on particular revenue or investors didn't get the returns that they thought. So they just run the gamut. I've literally done everything over my 30 years in PR with crisis all intertwined there, from relating to a owner of a pet who got ticked off at a veterinarian or something that they perceive they didn't do in the care of their pet to some real horrific worldwide news making events like mass shootings, mass scale accidents and things like that. You name the crisis, and I've seen a flavor of it and I get involved in those matters.

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[00:04:45] Dave Oates: You know, I appreciate that perspective because the question is, well, how do you, how do you maintain your own sanity with that? And, and I do two ways, right? I make it a point, and I'm proud of the empathy with which I conduct my client activities.

I do not take on a client unless I believe two things. One is that I can be of service to them. I can help good organizations and good individuals communicate their way through bad situations and give them the space to correct whatever the issue is. Even if the issue is miscommunications. I mean, there are some times where a company or a nonprofit has somebody making accusations that are completely false, but I want to give them the opportunity to be able to correct that and be able to get back into normal operations and in the good graces of most of the people. So I'm very proud of that empathy. I don't take on organizations or entities that are trying to use me as what I call a human shield, ones that are wanting to continue, whatever it is, the poor service, the poor product manufacturing sort of I'll call cutting the corners, if you will, and financial legal entities. But they want to just, you know, use me as basically to buffer themselves against audience members who are voicing their objection. I'm not a public defender. So I toss those fish back in the water.

But to get to your specific question, it's still stressful, the situations in which I find myself in helping clients. One is while I express empathy for that, ultimately, I am at the service of the business owner, the executives to help empower them to make the changes. So I don't necessarily take on the energy level to do that and yet still maintain an empathetic posture and service minded aspect. The other thing is, I do practice self care. I picked up the guitar after a long absence with a couple of buddies. We do regular jam sessions. I go on hikes with my wife. I love to cook. I do other things to sort of reset my mental state to make sure that I don't run myself into the ground from that.

But I got to tell you, I get energy from the work I do. When I can help good organizations be questioned, they might not survive this and be able to show them a communications path to be able to give them the chance to actually restore their good reputation. There's really not a whole lot better. I love what I do.

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So what are some absolute must do is when an organization is dealing with a crisis PR situation?

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First is you have to express empathy in action when your reputation is being called into question. And by empathy, I don't mean they necessarily have to admit culpability, you have to admit wrongdoing. Particularly when none is being made, but you do have to recognize that people are screaming and shouting on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever the platform or to a news reporter because they feel voiceless. They feel disenfranchised, they feel disconnected, they feel helpless. And that anxiety will turn into anger very easily because we've all carried around these wonderful little mobile devices in our hands with our camera, our microphone, and our social media accounts, we can broadcast that without any sort of second thought or filter. And so an organization has to first convey that they hear them and that they feel their pain. And then it has to be quickly followed up with action. So empathy and action are two cardinal rules. And the action has to be if you've, if you've done something wrong, admit it. Be transparent about that and take appropriate steps to fix that.

If the accusations are not based on fact, then do your best to communicate the truth and get other people to recognize that, but do so in a way that doesn't diminish somebody's feelings, right? Don't discredit that, don't discount, don't be condescending, don't be angry when you do that, because all you do is we see in any sort of, you know, 24 hour news channels, all they do is they just have two people that are shouting at each other and that animosity just grows. Organizations will never get themselves under it. So express empathy and action in a way that actually looks like you care about the entity because you actually do.

And that brings to the second part. You gotta be transparent. You have to be open. If you are not conveying an issue that brought up or an entity because it's uncomfortable, then you're doing yourself and you're doing the audience members a disservice. You'll only extend the crisis for that. I use the term confidently vulnerable. At times, you have to have some reasonable expectations and a degree of confidence in yourself that you can admit when you didn't do something perfect, you didn't do something exactly right, you missed the mark.

People will give you a second or third chance if you just open yourself up a little bit. And that's hard to do for a lot of organizations, in particular individuals. Especially in this day and age where everybody looks like they're having the perfect lives on Facebook, which we all know is crap.

Nobody's got the first like everybody's going through something, but it's really hard to sort of have that vulnerability. So you got to show empathy and action along with vulnerability.

And the third is you've got to act fast. You don't have a day or two or three to respond because people can post something instantaneously. And if you do not correct the narrative, or you do not add to that, or you do not show that you care, within sometimes an hour, that narrative gets set to the point that it becomes a de facto truth, even if there's no basis for that.

Either way, You will look like you don't care or that you're incompetent. So you've got to act fast. And I tell every organization, those are the three cardinal rules, express empathy and action, be as transparent and vulnerable as you can, and do so quickly if you're going to get through in this day and age where everybody's a broadcaster.

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[00:11:25] Dave Oates: Yeah. And I get why organizations and executives and business owners do that. First off their reputation, their identity oftentimes is tied to the organization to which they represent or they work or they founded, right? It's an extension of themselves.

So when there is some party that is taking a pot shot at them, whether because of something they did or because that individual may just had a bad day and has taken out on you, the recipient of that is going to feel like their integrity, their personal identity is being unfairly called into question, right? So our natural reaction in that case is to respond with the same animosity, the same anger, because we feel overwhelmed. We feel unfairly criticized, and most people will respond with anger at that real quickly. But even if you believe you're justified in that, you will not get through the situation in the most efficient and effective manner. Because meeting that anger with anger, I promise you doesn't get you there.

So I oftentimes will spend the bulk of my time getting those executives to sort of come center. We've all got to be I mentioned vulnerability or before and we all have to sort of at least understand maybe the role we may have played in creating the crisis. And people are like, well, what, you know, this is all BS. Why, why do I have to do that? Granted that does happen, but most of the time there's at least a little element of truth. There's something that maybe you did, or maybe you didn't do not, not by any sort of purposeful action, not malicious action, but by and tell we all have blinders on there.

My grandmother had a great saying, and I don't think she coined this because I've heard other people say this, but there are three sides, three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the truth. And what I try to do is get people to sort of recognize, because if you can admit a little bit of fall, like, Hey, we should have communicated this better. We're sorry for the misunderstanding. We're going to go through that there. It makes everything you say more credible. That means that if you didn't do this and you recognize that this is sort of what caused everything else to get blown out of proportion, then the other audiences will say, okay, yeah, so they're not the evil empire that this person is portraying them to me on Instagram.

And they're fixing this problem. They're real. They're authentic. They're honest. I'm going to still do business with them. I'm going to still pay them for these services and things like that. And I think that's important.

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[00:14:14] Dave Oates: You know, it's easy enough, right? It's just the opposite of what we talked about. It's waiting to respond. It's responding with anger. It's not planning for that. It's not being vulnerable. It's not showing empathy in action, right? It's the, it's the other side of the coin. And that may seem obvious now when you talk about it, but in a time of stressful situations where all of a sudden there's this comment that maybe you ignored right in the beginning because you didn't want to dignify it with a response. You didn't find it credible, but other audiences members did. Your employees, your customers, your partners, now everybody's wondering should I work for this company? Should I buy from this company? Should I partner with this company? Should I invest in this company? Now you're in a stressful situation where you are may not necessarily be thinking straight because it's coming so quickly and so far at you that you are seeing literally your professional life, and by extension your personal life, flash in front of your eyes.

So I tell people, yeah, it's followed those three do's and never do's, but the underlying principle with all that is plan for somebody to take a pot shot at you. And people are going, well, how do you plan for a crisis? There are inherent risks in every business. You're dealing oftentimes with people and people are flawed beings on this earth.

And I don't put myself above any of that, right? I've got my own idiosyncrasies my own shortcomings. And we all have to sort of plan for what happens if an employee misunderstands something, or or a boss, a supervisor says something out of turn. Maybe nefariously, maybe not. But what do you respond to that?

What happens if we don't get a customer order? Right? What happens if this product all of a sudden doesn't get made well? What do we do about that? And not only just from an operational standpoint, which is where if any organization does disaster recovery plans. That's where they focus on. But how do we communicate that?

How do we keep our stakeholders informed? Because if you can plan for those type of contingencies and the what if scenarios and the questions that they'll ask when you have to execute it god forbid you do but the reality is you probably will at some point, you'll be better prepared for it. It'll be muscle memory. You won't default to those fight or flight boats that we all will do just because that's the type of human nature in which most of us operate.

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[00:16:49] Dave Oates: Yeah, 100%. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that most executives and business owners are dealing with genuine fires throughout the day, right?

They walk in, they walk into work, and there's usually three or four imperative items that must get, you know, that must get attention that day. So these sort of what if scenarios get pushed to the back burner.

I think also a lot of organizations, particularly one sort of in specific niche industries, or maybe, you know, smaller to midsize industries don't feel that they are big enough, large enough, or visible enough to have a crisis reputation issue fall upon them. And I would tell you in this day and age, everybody on this earth has a mobile device with a phone, a camera and, and through their social media accounts and distribution system, any organization of any size will likely, it's not may, it will likely have a reputation crisis at some point in their lifetime. If not multiple ones. That's just the nature in which we live. And so you should prepare for that because is essential, not just to stave off disaster, but to preserve your current customer base and give you the opportunity to expand that market share. Because if you do not respond well to a reputation crisis, you will lose customers you never got for the rest of your business life. You will shrink your market share and anybody's in business to know. Ray Kroc was right. The founder of the McDonald's corporation franchises.

We know it. You said, if you're green, you're growing. If you're ripe and you start to rot, if you have exhausted your market potential, you need to sell that business and go on to something else. So it's inherent to the success and viability of a business long term that they plan accordingly. I get why they don't But they should.

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[00:18:58] Dave Oates: I asked this question of guest lectures I have come in to the class I teach at San Diego State University, the juniors and seniors who are in the Journal of the Media Studies, I say I would tell my 20 year old self don't be afraid to take a chance on yourself. Do not worry about your success or failure in the shortcoming there, because it's not about whether you succeed or not succeed at that moment. It's about the lessons that you learn that will build upon greater success. And it's something that I didn't learn until really my later 20s in professional life, and quite frankly, far later than that in professional life.

It is not about whether you do something well or not that determines success or failure. There is a difference between failure and not succeeding. Not succeeding means you didn't try, something, that you tried didn't work out the first time, but it doesn't mean you didn't learn from that one and we'll pick it up and do it again if you've got the courage to dust yourself off and keep moving. The only time you fail in life is when you give up on yourself, when you don't move forward. We've all had situations where, where I have major regrets. I love people who are like, I don't have any regrets. Oh, I got a ton of them, but the regret that I don't have, and I never want to have is the ones where I didn't learn from life's hard lessons and pick myself up and move forward. And I'm grateful for that one there. So I would suggest that's what I would tell my 20 year old self.

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[00:20:25] Dave Oates: I've got some time to think about it.

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[00:20:33] Dave Oates: What do you like to do when you are not working?

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[00:20:56] Dave Oates: I love that. Thank you for sharing that answer. And I asked that question a lot to people. I don't, I don't ask them like, what do you do in your personal life or what do you do? You know, sort of personal private information, but I think that question is always so great. So for me, it's, I love to cook. I love to hike. I love to play guitar. Sort of the things we talked about from before for how do we maintain our mental health because I think you get the total picture of the individual, right?

You get the picture about what it is they don't what it where it is that they sort of see themselves in the world. And I love when people get to talk about that because you really get an understanding of the whole person. And in my job as a, as a communicator and your job, certainly in digital marketing and, and quite frankly, most jobs, even if you're not necessarily in what we would classify the people business, you still interact with people. If you get to know them as people, you get to really understand where opportunities lie, not just in their service toward you, but more importantly, your service to them. Because karma is a legitimate currency. And the more service you give others, The more rewards you get. Not just in sort of feel good mentalities, but truly in business terms. There's a genuine return on your financial investment by getting to know people.

So thank you for sharing that.

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[00:22:18] Dave Oates: It's all intertwined.

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[00:22:24] Dave Oates: Look, the one last thing I will say, and just getting back to the crisis PR, is please don't be the last person to know that somebody's talking about you online. There are free tools you can use and low cost sort of freemium based tiered pricing tools that you can use to find out if somebody's talking about you, because I get involved sometimes when an organization's had a comment that appears on Yelp, Google, Facebook, into something like that, and has been there for days, if not weeks, and sometimes even months. And only after sort of they see this really massive drop off and new customers or returning customers or employee churn, they look, they do a Google search on them.

So I was like, Oh my God, where's this been? It's on the first page. No wonder people are leaving. This is what they see about us. And so you can set up free alerts on Google. Alerts. google. com. You should Google your name and your entity's name, right? Your nonprofit or company's name. You should do searches on X, formerly Twitter, and some of the other social media platforms to see if anybody's talking about you.

Don't be the last person to know, because the sooner you know, the more apt you are in being able to respond to something before it becomes a crisis. So I'd say I don't care what business you're in, I don't care if you get business through the web or not. It doesn't matter. Your reputation is won or lost, obviously, in the ability for somebody to do a quick search on you.

And so please take that to heart and don't be the last person to know somebody's talking about you.

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It's fascinating how fast too, like, wow, that was just published and I got an email an hour later about it.

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[00:24:34] Lori Highby: 100%. Yeah, this is great. So Dave, if anyone was interested in getting in contact with you, what's the best way that they can reach you?

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But if you do and call me, it will likely be after hours because that's when crises occur. And by all means, please do so. Lori, this has been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

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Appreciate you being on the show. This is great conversation, Dave.

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[00:25:26] Lori Highby: All right. This wraps up our episode of Social Capital. A huge thank you to Dave Oates for taking the time to connect with us. If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show.

And as mentioned before, connect with me, connect with Dave on LinkedIn. We both love to hear from you and I hope you enjoyed today's show. And I encourage you to go out there and get noticed.

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