Crisis Communications for COVID-19
By: Harvard Ash Center
Tags: Crisis Communications, Leadership, Coronavirus, Crisis Management, Covid 19

Effective communication between leaders and stakeholders is crucial in the face of trying conditions. The COVID-19 crisis confronts leaders in the United States, and in the global community at large, with unprecedented challenges for which no existing playbook, plan, or set of tactics can reliably provide a best-practice roadmap — or even the promise of a good outcome. The situation is extremely uncertain, ambiguous, even chaotic. And there is no reason to think that this uncertainty will abate any time soon. COVID-19 as a medical phenomenon may continue to evolve to produce additional surprises — while the unprecedented actions that many jurisdictions are now taking will almost surely produce unforeseeable follow-on effects and new challenges to surmount. Leaders and their organizations will need to operate in an agile, problem-solving mode for an indefinite time to come.[3]

Communication with employees, customers, investors, constituents, and other stakeholders can contribute decisively to the successful navigation of these stressful circumstances. But how should leaders think about what they are trying to say — and how to say it?

This short note lays out simple frameworks that can be used to formulate the messages that leaders can and should — indeed, must — convey to help their communities and organizations make their way forward as effectively as they reasonably can.

The Stockdale Paradox, Slightly Modified [4]

In difficult circumstances, leaders must help their stakeholders understand and face up to their ultimately unavoidable reality. Admiral James Stockdale, the senior American officer incarcerated in the POW camps in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, was responsible for trying to help his fellow inmates. He has been credited with saving many of them. Asked how, he said that in dire circumstances leaders must do two things:

First, they must be brutally honest about the reality;

Second, they must offer a rational basis for hope.

To the original version of the Stockdale Paradox (or, perhaps better, the Stockdale Principles), we suggest adding a third element:

Third, they must show empathy for the losses and suffering of their followers.

First, Stockdale explained that people who did not grasp the reality but instead harbored false hopes were the first to die — because they were inevitably devastated as their hopes proved false. By contrast, those who were helped to understand reality but had a rational basis for belief that things might eventually be better were able to withstand extremes of deprivation, mistreatment, torture, and disease — and still survive.[5]

Second, in crafting messages about COVID-19, you need to combine honest description with rational hopes about how to navigate a more positive path forward. For example, leaders might say, “Rigorous social distancing will certainly create very difficult hardships for us all — separation from loved ones, personal economic woes, difficulties securing groceries and medications, among other problems. But, hopefully, by slowing the spread of COVID-19, we will keep the load on hospitals manageable and give ourselves time to develop a vaccine, as well as medicines to alleviate the symptoms of those infected.”

Third, in our view it is important to acknowledge the challenges, difficulties, and suffering created by the difficult circumstances you are leading people through. This must be authentic, and appropriate to the way in which you express yourself — but it is important not to seem aloof from the situation or from the grave realities faced by your constituents.

The Four Canonical Questions

True crisis events — large scale, highly uncertain circumstances, like the COVID-19 pandemic and its myriad of follow-on consequences — are “whole of community” events: literally, all of us are in the event together (though different groups may be affected in different ways). Generally speaking, however, we all are implicitly or explicitly seeking answers to four central questions:

(1) Situation: What is happening? What is this event? What are the key facts and defining circumstances?

(2) Identity: To whom is this happening? Who is included in “we” when people say “We are in this together?” Am I part of the group that is affected? Do leaders notice, care about, and pay attention to me and what matters to me — and others like me?

(3) Values and Interests at Risk: Why should we care? What are the things that “we” especially value that are threatened by this event?

(4) Action: What should people like us, with values like ours, do in a situation like this?

People constantly seek — and will inevitably find — answers to these questions, whether or not leaders directly address them. They will find the answers in what you and others say, and in what you don’t say, and, critically, in how you behave.

As a leader, you will do better when you speak explicitly to these questions, and when you then behave in ways consistent with what you said. (It doesn’t help much if you say people should keep personal distance from one another and then you are seen on television shaking hands at press conferences.)

A major priority for a leader in crafting crisis communications, therefore, is to decide what answers to give to the four canonical questions — and then to ensure that what you say is consistent with what you want to convey. The following provide some guidelines for addressing the questions:

(1) Frame and describe the event in the terms you want your stakeholders to internalize and respond to. How serious is it? How long is it likely to last? Who is particularly likely to be affected?

(2) Clearly indicate how you are defining the community involved. Who is included? Whose interests are you taking into account? Are there significant differences among subgroups within that larger community?

(3) Describe what values and interests are at risk. What is likely to be affected that matters to us? What are we most interested in preserving? What is essential to us? What may we be forced to leave behind as we move forward?

(4) Describe how you want people to behave. What are they supposed to do? What should they not do? What sacrifices are they going to have to make to preserve what they really care about?

Speak intentionally, repeatedly, and authentically to this set of questions. Always remember that your stakeholders are looking for — and will surely find — answers whether you provide them or not. Better to articulate thoughtful answers to these questions clearly and authentically. Because people will be stressed and distracted during crises, it is crucial that you speak not only clearly but also concisely, so that stakeholders can comprehend and retain the critical information you are trying to convey.

A Template

To frame public communications in high-stress events, there is a simple “template,” derived from analysis of both effective and problematic messaging. These rules are designed to be very general, so as to cover a wide range of circumstances:

(1) Say what you know (and the basis of your knowledge), speaking especially to the first three canonical questions.[6]

Situation: Frame and describe the event in the terms you want your stakeholders to internalize and respond to. How serious is it? How long is it likely to last? Who is particularly likely to be affected?

Identity: Clearly indicate how you are defining the community involved. Who is included? Whose interests are you taking into account? Are there significant differences among subgroups within that larger community?

Values and Interests: What is likely to be affected that matters to us? What are we most interested in preserving? What is essential to us? What may we be forced to leave behind as we move forward?

You will generally have a better grasp of what is happening (better “situational awareness”) than your stakeholders. Share what you know, but be careful to describe how you know what you know. In crisis events, early information is often wrong.[7] It is fine to say “on the basis of what we have learned so far from ____, we currently believe ____” (so long as there is reason to believe that the stated source may be reliable). If your sources later change their view, you are in a better position to announce the changed information than if you put it in your own voice.

Note that an important rule embedded here is that you should not say things that you do not know:

Don’t speak from hope. You can speak to hope — that is, you can say why you think there is reason for hope. But don’t confuse your hopes about the future with the facts as they are now on the ground.

Don’t speculate about exactly what has happened (which you may not know yet) or about why it happened (which you almost surely don’t know yet).

Don’t make predictions. You don’t know what will happen next, so forecasting is risky; any prediction you make is most likely to draw attention if it turns out to be wrong. (But an exception: you can say when you will be back to say more — because that you can control.)

Don’t suggest that you can control the future — this power is not given to you. “We will (characterization of a hoped-for outcome)” is a very risky statement to make.

(2) Say what you are doing.[8] Let people know what actions are being taken and how they relate to your understanding of the situation. Importantly, this should include how you are seeking further information and what perspective you can offer on what may be a rapidly evolving event.

(3) Say what others should do, thus answering the fourth canonical question. Provide guidance and direction to your stakeholders. What should employees do? What should your customers or your suppliers or the public do? In stressful situations, people want to be proactive rather than passive, so providing ideas about what they can usefully do may be helpful to their sense of well-being. It is not therapeutic to be told to sit quietly and do nothing — try to help people find something useful that they can do, because most will want to actively contribute. In some situations, this may be nothing more than telling them where, when, and how they can access further information. But avoid suggesting actions that are make-work or likely to prove inconsequential, which can damage your credibility and authenticity.

(4) Offer perspective. In high-stress situations, people may find it hard to acknowledge danger or, in contrast, appropriately bound their concerns. Some may be in denial and may not be paying attention to the seriousness of the situation. For others, shock or fear leads them to overstate the severity of the event. To the extent possible, help people get perspective by explaining how to regard the new reality and by providing realistic comparisons that help ground their perceptions.[9]

Considerations in Crafting the Statement

A framework that many have found useful in thinking about how to craft the message you are formulating is the “Four M’s:”[10]

Messagee: Who is the message addressed to? What is her or his frame of mind or reference / state of knowledge / degree of understanding / world view / means of absorbing and processing information / preferred channels of communication?

Message: What, exactly, are you trying to say to the audience you have chosen?

Messager: Who is the right source of the message / person to say the message is coming from? Whose authority / legitimacy / standing / political capital / expertise is best invoked to make the message persuasive?

Messenger: Who is the best person to carry / deliver this message? In whose voice will it be best heard, received, and positively responded to? From whom will the message be most likely to seem legitimate and acceptable?

In crafting these four elements of the message, it is useful to bear in mind two key determinants of the power of the message as it will be encountered by the audience:

Empathy It is important to start with an understanding of the messagee’s approaches to the world and the state of their information. An empathic analysis is crucial to crafting the message in a form that will be persuasive. A common mistake is to imagine that the argument that convinced you will convince others as well. The point, you need to remember, is not to persuade you. (You are already persuaded, presumably.) Since others do not necessarily share your prior information, priorities, world view, or means and methods of absorbing and processing information, they will not necessarily be impressed by the same arguments that persuaded you. Instead, you need to work the problem from their perspective. Given their premises and approaches to reasoning (or narrative), what formulation of the relevant facts and arguments would most likely persuade them?

Whose Voice? We often think of an argument, by and of itself, as being persuasive. But people can almost always resist being persuaded if they do not wish to be. It is useful to remember instead that being persuaded is a gift from the persuadee to the persuader. What would make the intended persuadee willing to make this gift of allowing her or his mind to be changed by this message? Who has standing with this audience? By whom will its members be willing to allow themselves to be persuaded? Will it be an expert or scientist, a political leader, a prominent business person? If you can figure out the answer to this question, you can more effectively solve the problem of voice: from whom should this be coming, and by whom should it be carried?

Crisis Communications as a Sequence

Each of your messages will be part of a sequence of communications conveying important information to your followers and constituents. Thus, you need to make sure that the messages are both individually well-crafted and also that they make sense when viewed across time. Seeing each message as part of a larger fabric or pattern makes it important to focus for each message in turn on “the Five C’s:”

Clear: make the ideas in each message as precise and crystalline as possible;

Concise: within the bounds required by accuracy and clarity, make each message as succinct as possible — your audience has a lot going on, so your message needs to focus on the essentials (only!);

Coherent: make sure that if your message has different parts, they are aligned with one another and that your overall message is thus internally logical;

Consistent: make sure that your messages at different times are aligned with one another and make sense as a group across time … and that if your message is changing over time that you explain what is driving the changes; and

Credible: make sure that the facts you convey are accurate; stay within what you know, to preserve your long-term believability.

Pacing the Unwelcome News

Finally, leaders must be conscious of unfolding bad news in a way and at a rate that their stakeholders can manage and adjust to. In his work on “adaptive leadership,” Ronald Heifetz formulated the problem of leadership as helping stakeholders adapt to new realities.[11] In our teaching about leadership in crisis situations, we have found it useful to formulate this idea in this way:

Leadership is the process of bringing a new and generally unwelcome reality to an individual, group, organization, or society, and helping her, him, it, or them successfully adapt to it.

Pacing therefore is extremely important. Undertaking this form of leadership — dosing the organization with an unwelcome reality — tends to raise the level of stress in the organization. Some people respond with “avoidance mechanisms” — things they can say or do that would allow them not to have to undertake the “adaptive work” that would be implied by facing up to the real circumstances you are describing. Some people go into denial, some make excuses (we are too busy, we need more resources, …), some attack the leader (that is, you). Knowing that there will generally be resistance, you need to calibrate the process of educating the group, organization, or society at a sustainable rate. Too much, too fast can lead to panic or rejection; too little, too late will leave the problem festering and unsolved. A major challenge for you, thus, is to find the right rate — fast enough to deal with the problem without causing a wave of resistance that will undercut the effort.

Leaders can benefit from the ways of thinking about public communication outlined in this brief, crafting their messages for stakeholders with honesty about the facts but with a rational element of hope for the future. To be effective, this basic purpose requires thoughtful analysis of the audience for the message, the way in which it is framed to be informative and persuasive, and how it can best be presented as authoritative and legitimate.