7 Common Crisis Communication Mistakes to Avoid

This article highlights some crisis communication mistakes many communications professionals make in crisis management that you should avoid if you are looking to have a swifter process for de-escalating negative sentiments.

• Avoiding the issues. This is a very common mistake that must be avoided. When issues are clearly avoided, such a brand is on the way to having serious reputational damage and in many cases, risk their license to operate, depending on the nature of the crisis.
• View the situation from an internal perspective alone: Although the communications professional ought to have the best interest of the organization or business they serve at heart, the aim of problem framing is to understand the cause of the crisis and respond to show care, concern and commitment to improve the system. Therefore, it is bad practice to communicate during a crisis with only an insider perspective because this often leads to an over-confidence which is very unlikely to be acceptable to the raging public. On the other hand, provide an assurance and show an understanding of their point of view. In complex issues, the crisis should be viewed with keen attention to the stakeholder’s sentiments as this is what guides the response.
• Being unclear about the outcome of the communication: In as much as the primary objective is to de-escalate negative sentiments, it is also important to consider what you want the stakeholders to know, feel and do. Clearing stating this helps crisis communications to be more strategic and purposeful.
• Having the regular communications team handle crisis communications without proper trainings in crisis management.
• Thinking that issuing a crisis communications response alone is enough. There is a say and show gap that needs to be bridged in crisis communication. This means that it is not enough to write a press statement or make an appearance/announcement to speak to aggrieved stakeholders or make commitments. It must always be matched up with actions, this is where visuals and data can come in handy to verify what has been said.
• Telling lies: This happens when brands aim to de-escalate negative sentiments at all costs. This is very common in political communications and referred to as propaganda. Lying to the public often makes the matter worse because stakeholders like investors can easily move away from the brand because you lack credibility. On the other hand, be honest and show commitment to improve service delivery as you aim to restore normalcy to the business or organizational operations.
• Mismanaging relationships. This is very typical in Nigerian Educational institutions. An instance is when a student died in an unfortunate situation in Lagos, Nigeria and the conversations on the media attracted the interest of members of the National Assembly. It ended with the then Nigerian President lending his voice on the issue. This crisis escalated to this level because the communicators in the institution mismanaged the relationship with the family involved. They ought to have seen them as very influential in the situation and prioritized above internal stakeholders because the general public took interest in their story.

To conclude, overreacting, being dishonest or ignoring the sentiments are mistakes to avoid in crisis communication. To learn about the best practices in crisis an reputation management, you should register for our upcoming Issues, Crisis and Reputation Management Course where we will be dealing extensively on frameworks and best practices to adapt as a corporate communications professional or brand communicator. Here is the link to join the 2^nd cohort on 31^st October.

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Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications training and consulting firm focused on enabling businesses and organizations to achieve their desired objectives through ethical and strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation management.