How CEOs can rally the troops in troubled times
By Christine Kent
Speeches need to be upbeat, without sugarcoating bad news
When Sen. John McCain said in September that, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong”—just as the stock market was tanking and investment banks and insurance companies were collapsing—his poll numbers began to sink, never to recover. The incredulous media and the public couldn’t reconcile McCain’s words with the chaos that was happening in the financial world.
When times are tough, it’s natural for leaders to want to rally the troops with some hopeful and reassuring words. However, ignoring the grim reality doesn’t win over the listeners—it makes them wonder what planet the executive is living on. Likewise, a gloom-and-doom speech, even one that’s spot-on, will make employees, customers and partners less likely to stick it out during tough times.
How do speakers walk that tightrope between sugarcoating bad news, and focusing solely on misery?
“Employees know when they’re being snowed,” says Jake Wengroff, director of North American communications for consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in San Antonio. “They now actually welcome honesty, sincerity, and authenticity.”
So the truth may hurt, but much like ripping off a Band-Aid quickly, it has to be done fast or your listeners will suffer silently. Besides, says Nick Morgan, author of the forthcoming book Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, listeners are rarely in the dark about the bad news.
“The audience is always way ahead of you,” says Morgan, who’s also president of Public Words Inc., a communications consultancy based in Boston. “They’re already counting the corpses.”
Since there’s some level of knowledge about the bad news, get it over with.
“Deliver the bad news first,” Morgan advises. “It goes against what a CEO wants to do—they’d rather avoid it. Many of them have gotten where they are because they’ve made people happy.” And making people very unhappy by talking about layoffs, plant closings or reductions in benefits doesn’t make a CEO’s day.
Ideally, a leader has built up a reputation for being forthright and honest, so that when bad news is delivered, there’s a reservoir of trust, says Gayle Gregory, co-founder of Workplace Evolution, a workplace consulting firm based in Ridgefield, Washington.
“Employees are much smarter and savvy than many senior execs give them credit for,” says Gregory. “They know when someone is blowing smoke, and no speechwriter in the world can save an executive when the facts and energy don’t jive. Those same troops will know that something very different is happening when they hear the truth.”
And it’s never too late to come clean, she adds.
“If a leader hasn’t been forthcoming in the past, the road will be much bumpier,” Gregory explains, but that doesn’t mean all is lost. “When the groundwork hasn’t been laid in advance so that people are interested and willing to believe what you say, it isn’t too late. When the troops actually hear honest and responsible words, it will go a long way towards paving new communication possibilities.”
Chris Witt, founder of Witt Communications San Diego and author of Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint, says that leaders need to convince audiences that they’re a part of the comeback.
“It’s your role as a leader to make me feel that I belong to a group that is worth belonging to,” says Witt. Using metaphors may be the best way to tell the story of how the organization will fight back against tough market conditions, Witt says—something like Rocky Balboa.
“It needs to be realistic,” Witt says of these tough-times metaphors. “And it needs to be somewhat optimistic. You have to give your audience a reason to hope.”
The best speeches about comebacks are based on storytelling, Witt says which means PowerPoint slides might be out of place. “People are already overwhelmed with information when times are bad—I’m not sure they need more data,” Witt says. “I would go light on the information.”
Cathy Wolfe, director of marketing services for Toshiba America Medical Systems, advocates following four rules when delivering a tough-times speech: Tell the truth, highlight positives, tell employees what the company is doing to address the challenges, and tell them how they can help.
“It’s not easy—you have to do this without scaring your work force,” Wolfe explains.
Her company’s executives have had to communicate these difficult messages, as the company copes with a challenging healthcare environment. “You can usually find some positives—for instance, maybe your market share has grown, even if profits haven’t.”