Good Rule-of-Thumb: Over-Communicate in a Crisis

Gini Dietrich, editor of the “Spin Sucks” blog, published a post this week titled “Over-Communicate to Be a Better Leader“. Within this post Dietrich tells some great stories on how over-communicating can be very helpful when it comes to preventing internal, as well as external, issues from arising.

To quote a quote by Christy Wyatt, the CEO of Good Technology, that Dietrich uses within her post:

“[…] people look for symbols, and they look for meaning where maybe there isn’t any. […] You have to talk about the little stuff as well as the big stuff, just to make sure folks aren’t running away with ideas.”

This is a great point that applies to your crisis communications as well. Of course you don’t want to stick your foot in your mouth and reveal things that you legally or otherwise can and should not reveal; but over-communicating as a general rule-of-thumb is far better than under-communicating in a crisis.

This means that even when there’s no new news or information to reveal, if people are waiting to hear from you, say so. It’s perfectly alright – in fact, it’s best-practice – to communicate to your stakeholders that “we have nothing new to report at this time, but we will be back in 1 hour with another update.”

Keeping people in the loop in a crisis will:

• Show them that you care and are taking the situation seriously
• Keep them coming back to your platform(s) for news and updates (in real-time, I hope)
• Help prevent rumors, speculation and unwanted further issues (or worse, crises) from developing

Communication is essential in a crisis. So much so that under-communicating can get you into some additional and unwanted hot water, while over-communicating can help get you regain control of the situation and suffer less long-term repercussions. Don’t believe me? Just ask Domino’s, KitchenAid, Buffer, The City of Calgary and countless others!