How Crisis Comms Became My Favorite Life Skill

Overthinking worst-case scenarios turned into a weirdly practical hobby

The first time I started to take my editing/consulting business full-time (I didn’t fail… was just momentarily interrupted by a full-time job), I told some friends about my plan to use social media as a marketing tool. “Aren’t you some kind of scientologist?” one of them asked, following up with, “They don’t tend to do well online... maybe get some PR advice.” I was (then). He was right. And that’s how I became addicted to crisis communications.

When I first started looking into crisis PR, I wanted a quick-fix tool I could use to mitigate any online attacks. I got one. Thankfully, I have never needed to use it—in truth, I’m not interesting enough to be an online target (besides one minor rant about university overheads and funding changes that ended up on the wrong side of the Instagram algorithm). But I wanted to be prepared. Just in case.

Thinking about things that will probably never happen and planning for those instead of the ones happening right in front of you that you’re happily ignoring is a life skill you’ll get from academia.

(Note that that specifically says life skill, NOT useful life skill. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t be skilled at something just because it’s negative).

Anyway. My interest in crisis comms was initially driven by self-protection. I never expected to become a person who obsessively analyzes other people’s crises and responses like some kind of sport. But I am. Because I started looking into how I’d need to apply these new tools. Having a tool isn’t enough. You have to know how to operate it, and I didn’t want this to end up being another version of that time I bought a sewing machine to make my own figure skating dresses. (You will never see me wearing a homemade figure skating dress. I’m sure you can guess why). That focus on application quickly diverted my interest away from whatever might happen in my own world toward the wider field of human communication. Something much more fascinating.

Communication was already an interest. I’ve always enjoyed analyzing how and why communication does and doesn’t work, primarily because I was once extremely bad at it and often surrounded by people who were worse. I’m also a somewhat pathological fixer of things, so when I see something that’s not working, I want to know why, and I want to know how to do something about it (with varying degrees of efficacy). Bringing social media PR crises, badly behaving celebrities, and other entertaining stories into that mix made crisis comms appealing to me as a way to continue exploring human communication on a deeper level.

And from a ‘safe’ place… nobody wants to be the crisis. It’s not fun to think about when it's your life you’re applying it to.

Someone else’s? Give me all the drama!

I’m partially kidding about the drama. It keeps me coming back, for sure, but what really drives my passion for this (relatively) new hobby is how useful everything I learn is in everyday life as well. You don’t have to be on the front page of a newspaper or buried in thousands of online hate comments to benefit from crisis comms techniques. I use them in day-to-day interactions and at work (though still hope I will not have to use them on a public scale).

Sometimes, our poor choices and the strange situations we get into lead us to things we love that we probably wouldn’t have thought about had our pasts been different. If I’d never felt the need to look into options for crisis PR for myself, I likely would never have known of its existence, or at least not paid enough attention to it to find out how much I like it and how useful it is.

I always like to think about things like this—how choices I likely wouldn’t choose to make again have directly or indirectly resulted in something I’m grateful to have in my life. I think it’s a healthy perspective to have, especially immediately after a mistake when you can’t see how things could possibly turn out well.

Don’t want to invest as much time as I have into learning crisis comms tools to get the benefit of them in everyday interactions? Here’s some things you can start using without opening a book (note: I’m not advocating against reading, of course) for managing client interactions, handling a difficult boss, mediating family/friend drama, and addressing internet trolls:

Hold your initial response (even if you know you’re right)

• It’s easy to respond immediately when someone criticizes you or your work, sends you a snarky email, or cuts you off in an important meeting. But when has the easiest option even been the most productive? (OK, I know you have a few examples, but those aren’t the ones I’m thinking of—easy is not often best). However, your first reaction is just that. Reactive. And when you act from a reactive mindset, you’re getting into emotional knee-jerk reaction territory and at risk of saying something you’ll regret.

• Taking a short pause and asking yourself, “What am I trying to achieve here?” before responding gives you a moment to choose to handle the situation calmly rather than escalating any drama. If that means saying nothing… silence is not necessarily a bad response. If it’s between silence and calling your boss an asshole, you can probably guess what the better choice is. (No, I said the better choice. Not the one you want to make.)

Focus on solving a problem, not winning a fight

• Everything negative always feels personal. It doesn’t matter if it is or not. How many times have you taken it personally when someone cuts you off in traffic? They don’t even know who you are. The point is, we get very defensive very easily, and for the most part, we hate being considered wrong. When people are in a conflict or even just a minor disagreement, the desire to be right on both sides can completely obscure the main issue and take the focus away from solving the cause of the problem. Even though the conflict itself is rarely about being right. If you’re in a situation with someone who just wants to ‘win’ and be right about the issue, put your own desire to be right aside for a moment and ask yourself what the problem that needs to be solved actually is, then focus on that.

• Ask questions that don’t make the other person feel defensive (i.e., don’t make them feel like they’re wrong)—shift the conversation toward finding a solution. You’ll get further with this approach. It will build trust as the other person won’t feel like you’re fighting them, the problem will be solved faster, and you’ll come across as the more professional/’bigger person’ in the situation (even if you’re still raging internally).

Be concise and consistent

• As a person who has a tendency toward overexplanation (I just want to be understood, OK?), it kind of hurts me to share this one, but… overexplaining kills your point every time. Justifying, covering every possible angle, trying to imagine what people might be thinking, and providing details you think they might want before they’ve asked for them… these things usually backfire.

• Take your time in your response, focus on the problem being solved, and decide what you want to say. Then say it as concisely as you can, consistently. Resist the urge to jump into long explanations when people push back. Stay consistent—it’s much harder for people to twist your words and exacerbate a problem if you’re being consistent in what you’re saying.

Take accountability (strategically)

• Things don’t actually have to be your fault, intentionally or otherwise, for you to take accountability for them. Taking accountability doesn’t mean you’re throwing yourself under the bus, taking all the blame, and apologizing for existing. Even if you know you’re not wrong, if someone else thinks you are, it can be much easier to take accountability to diffuse the tension. Maybe you don’t think you asked your husband to take the trash out in a “mean tone of voice”, but if that’s what he heard, it’s easier to say, “You’re right; I should have said that nicer” and repeat the request than it is to get defensive and end up actually using your mean voice.

• Taking accountability, even when you don’t agree, shuts down any blame cycles that extend disagreements and make everyone involved look bad. This works in professional and personal settings and leads to more productive conversations.

Save the emotion for later

• You can only respond to something once. You can feel your emotions whenever you want. I’m not saying don’t feel anything, but that it’s best to put the emotions aside and focus on them later than let them run the show in the moment and leave you with even more emotion to deal with later. It’s natural for us to get emotional, but it’s possible to choose to keep how you feel about a situation out of how you actively respond to it. If your fear, anger, irritation, shame (or even excitement—how many bad decisions have you made because it seemed like such a good idea due to your emotional investment) etc. take over, you’re not managing the situation. You’re letting the situation manage you.

• When you feel the emotion taking over, remind yourself, “I can feel this way whenever I want, but I can only have this conversation once”. Ask yourself if that feeling is serving you in the situation in the moment. If it’s not, put it aside. And if you can’t put it aside, remember silence is always an option. If you’re in a meeting, saying you need to take a break to get a glass of water is almost always an option. Putting a little space between yourself and the situation can help control emotional spirals and get you back into a rational approach.

Think about the bigger picture

• Everything feels like it matters more than it really does when there’s a conflict, a mistake, a communication error etc. Whatever situation you’re in, it’s temporary. Sure, it might have lasting effects, depending on what it is, but the thing you’re going to remember the most in the future is how you feel about how you handled it, whether you were able to maintain the relationships that matter to you/your team/your family etc.

• Zoom out and think about what this might look like in a week, a month, a year, and focus on how you want to feel about how you responded when you look back on it. Keeping a focus on the long-term can help you avoid short-sighted decisions that feel good in the moment but hurt you later.

So… I went looking for crisis comms to survive internet mobs, but got better at managing passive-aggressive assholes instead. Not what I planned, but 10/10 would recommend.

Sources:

• Klingelhöfer, Janina. The Power of Crisis Communication: A Qualitative Study of the Establishment of a Scientific Field. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43419-9.

• McPherson, Molly. Indestructible: Reclaim Control and Respond with Confidence in a Media Crisis. Austin, TX: Mandala Tree Press, 2021.

• McPherson, Molly. "Indestructible PR Playbook." Molly McPherson. https://www.mollymcpherson.com/prplaybook.

• Ulmer, Robert R., Timothy L. Sellnow, and Matthew W. Seeger. 2022. Effective Crisis Communication: Moving From Crisis to Opportunity. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.