Heidi Otway: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State's brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida, and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode, executive producer April Salter, the CEO of SalterMitchell PR talks to crisis management advisor and bestselling author, Melissa Agnes. In their conversation, they discuss best practices for anticipating and dealing with crisis. They also talk about the changing communications landscape, and dissect some of the new and existing social media platforms.

April Salter: Well, good afternoon, Melissa. I'm April Salter and I'm so glad to have you on our show, Fluent in Floridian. Thank you for your time today.

Melissa Agnes: You for having me, April. I'm happy to be here.

April Salter: Well, great. Well, Melissa Agnes has written a great book called Crisis Ready, is a blog. Tell us a little bit more about your background, Melissa.

Melissa Agnes: Background. I've been in this profession, in this line of work for over a decade now. I'm approaching 15 years, which is kind of scary to think about. And I start, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 21. I started in this my mid-twenties, early mid-twenties when out of, I think everything of, we were talking about it, pre-starting this recording, April. Everything in my career has stemmed out of a frustration. How can I? What's frustrating me about the world and how can I do my part in trying to evolve it, or fix it, or overcome it, or whatever the case? Support people through it.

And, this part of my career started as the world was really becoming digital, for a lack of a ... Social media was a thing, digital was a thing, digital IP was a thing, personal data. And I was frustrated with the fact that crisis management professionals, in of their time, so over a decade ago, weren't addressing it. They weren't. Look, they were still saying, "No comment is okay." They were still saying, "It's all about the press release."

So different things. And I started this, I started just reading about it and learning about it. It just was a kind of a passion project on the side, and getting more and increasingly frustrated with the fact that the advice isn't great and it's not top. It's not really hitting the pain points and the realities of today. And then my clients started facing crises, and those would have a digital impact or evolve, kind of really take place on digital platforms. They had no idea what those digital platforms were, because we're talking over a decade ago, but yet we had developed, my firm had developed their website, or their social strategy, or their digital strategy. So then, they would come to us.

And slowly over time, I went through a, "This is so fascinating. It feeds my being of learning about this. I know there's something here, but I don't quite know what it is yet," to having one client have a potential catastrophe of a crisis call me in. Because again, it was a digital thing and he didn't know what to do. The next day, his stock price, their stock price actually went up as a direct result. And that's when I went, "Oh my goodness, I can serve." And I would ask, I was in my early to mid-twenties. I didn't have a network in this. I was in Montreal, had no idea where to start. But I had a lot of frustration. I had a lot of ideas. I had a lot of ... writing is my art form. So I started a blog, and my blog was the first in the world to actually start addressing these different topical issues and not just creating solutions, but inviting people to take part in the creation of the solution.

So creating network, creating community around it and right time, right place, right aptitude. Those crisis management, I'm doing this. They were real crisis management professionals. For people only listening, I kept doing air quotes. They ended up, started reading the blog and started coming to me and saying, "We don't know if this whole digital thing is a fad or a trend, but we do know that our clients need what you're talking about, and we don't necessarily want to learn it if we don't have to. If it's just the fad and we're nearing retirement, why do the extra work? So can we partner?" They became incredible mentors to me. They opened up their client list. We did some incredible work together, and then everything grew from there.

April Salter: Melissa, you are known as a true crisis consultant and expert, and have written books and blogs and done TED-Xs and have just a ton of experience dealing with crisis communications. So, why don't you just give us a little bit about your background and your philosophy on crisis, because it really does affect so many things that our listeners are interested in, because our listeners are business leaders, they're government leaders, public relations folks, so crisis is always an interesting topic. So, tell us a little bit about your philosophy.

Melissa Agnes: My philosophy. So, my philosophy, I think obviously, has evolved over time. So at this, and it's all remained right, but it's kind of building blocks. So I guess that's what evolution is. So starting what differentiated me in the market, especially as a thought leader and different things within the field of crisis management, was that, it's going back over a decade, I never saw it as okay to simply create a crisis management or crisis communication plan that is a siloed, stagnant document, linear document that gets a line item that gets checked off, and put it on a shelf. Anybody who had that, would invest in that, just as COVID as an example, pre-COVID, quickly, unfortunately learned at the start of COVID, that did very, very, very, very little to serve them the way that it was meant to, the way that they thought it would, the way that they had invested in it.

And so, the approach that Crisis Ready, Crisis Ready is a term that I coined again, over a decade ago. And I had no idea that it would become a brand, that it would start to have legs of its own. It's the name of my book, it's the name of my now company. But, Crisis Ready was always a philosophy, an ideology, and a methodology that was different from the status quo. So instead of just investing in that generic crisis management plan that checks off a dot or checks off a box, it's always been to invest in planning, but the mindset, the skillset, and the capabilities behind that. So it's really a cultural component.

How can you create this culture within your organization and attach to your core values, which we will likely talk about later in this conversation? Whereby, every single member of the team has the right mindset, has the right skillset, and has the right capability serving them to actually identify risk at its onset. To understand what they're looking at, how to categorize it. Is it an issue? Is it a crisis? What do they do with it? And then how to respond more intuitively, more instinctively, rather than going, "Where's the book, where's the plan?" But knowing, okay, one, they know where the plan is, and two, that plan is really just like a comfort blanket on the end of the table. They have the skillset, they know what to do, and they know how to work together collaboratively, because time is of the essence today in crisis management, in crisis communication especially.

So that's always been the philosophy. And then now today, that evolution has been my fascination, I think. My core fascination is around things like people, like not humanity, but the human experience. Like emotion and communication, and how people process, and understand and resonate with one another and view the world. And taking all of that and saying, "Okay, in a hectic time of crisis when emotions are running extremely high, one of the Crisis Ready rules is, you cannot beat emotion with logic."

So if you can't beat emotion with logic in a highly, highly emotional situation where you need to have your logic get through and resonate so you can actually lead people through crisis, how do you communicate? How do you understand those emotions, your own emotions and the emotions of others, and be able to communicate through that, so that you can resonate with the logic and with the directives and the information, the facts that people need to have when their emotion is clouding their judgment. So that fascinates me, just in general as a human, that's kind of like what I find fascinating about the world and about life. And so, I adopt that into obviously, the work that I do. I've just kind of built a career around that.

April Salter: And its, crisis communications is such an interesting aspect of public relations because, and many people are afraid of it. They are afraid to deal with the crisis. But I find it one of the most invigorating and exciting things that you can do, in large part, because when people come to us in crisis, you know that you can really help. They're in a very vulnerable state. And, having been through myself, I worked for a governor, I've dealt with many corporate crises, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, cyber hacking, election hacking, you name it, it makes me feel good as a practitioner that I can assist people in their time of need, and really help them deal with their leadership and with the emotions, and the people part of crisis.

When people come and say, "What are the things I really need to be thinking about during this time?" And I read some of this in your book as well, we look at people first. The most important thing I always say to people, "We're kind of looking at a series of concentric circles. And what is the most important part of those concentric circles? It's the very center. It's the people in your organization. It's your board members, it's your customers, it's your vendors. Those people are more impacted by your crisis than anyone else. They're the ones that really matter. And that's where, that's who we need to be speaking to first." So, tell me a little bit about how you frame up the strategy for your clients. Just talk a little bit about the framework that you use.

Melissa Agnes: So, talking about people first, that is, I like to say that, "Well, one, there's a crisis study rule that says people above process and bottom line always." And when organizations get that reversed, so completely in agreement with you, when people get that, when organizations and leaders get that reversed, when they're looking at the bottom line, when they're looking at their operations first, they tend to fail. When you look at the people first and you prioritize that, everything else falls in suit. Everything else follows in a positive kind of domino effect. So I'm completely in agreement.

And from a communication and leadership standpoint, because that's my area of expertise personally when it comes to crisis, is, I mean, there's so much. First in a world of controversy, we live in a highly divisive, highly controversial landscape right now, no matter where you are. And even just the idea or the thought, the hesitate, the concern that you might get launched into a controversy, like it or not, it's something that's at the forefront of leaders' minds right now. And communicator's minds especially. They're left with the brunt of that when that happens. Understanding, you mentioned core values earlier, understanding a few core things.

So in terms of strategy or in terms of framework, as you asked, helping professionals understand the difference for their organization between an issue on a crisis, that's one of those fundamental components. Most people, even so we have Crisis Ready programs and different things that, coaching programs that we have developed over time to serve teams and leaders. And even that, I've worked with some of the most incredible leaders, smartest people in the world. And in my opinion, it still takes them time, a few months to really grasp the concept of issue versus crisis and making that real for their organization, because it's not something that's intuitive to us. It's not something we're taught and then emotion gets in the way and it blurs it. So really incorporating that.

April Salter: Can you define that a little bit?

Melissa Agnes: Yeah, absolutely.

April Salter: Talk about how you look at issue versus crisis.

Melissa Agnes: Absolutely. So, I'll tease your word framework and definition. So a crisis is an event or situation. It doesn't have to stem from a negative event, it can stem from a positive event. But it's an event or situation that stops business as usual to some extent, requires immediate escalations straight to the top of leadership. So no matter what they're doing, they're getting pulled out of whatever that is, whether it's vacation or sleeping or meetings, because it threatens material impact on one to all of the following five things. So we have people, environment. Environment, to me, depending on the organization, depending on the industry, can be the planet, it could also be the economy, the organization's operations, its reputation and or its bottom line. So a venture situations stops. Business as usual, to some extent, requires immediate escalation straight to the top of leadership, because it threatens material impact on people, environment, operations, reputation and or bottom line.

Whereas, an issue is an event or situation that doesn't do any of those things. It doesn't stop business as usual. It may interrupt your day, it's disruptive, or I wouldn't even say it's disruptive. It's interruptive, but it's not a showstopper. It doesn't require immediate escalation straight to the top of leadership, because it doesn't threaten material impact in this moment, as long as you respond effectively. And, teaching the skills and the mindset, and the capability to be able to respond effectively.

And what's really challenging to grasp in making that real is the thresholds of impact. So looking at always, apples to apples. So a lot of people go like, "Well, if we had a natural disaster, that would be a crisis. But a cybersecurity threat wouldn't be," just saying it like that. That's not the right way to really address that within your organization. It's to say, "At what point would a natural disaster become a crisis from an issue? What are those thresholds of impact?" Same thing for a cybersecurity incident. At what point would it go from issue to crisis and back down, and then down to non-issue? So understanding those thresholds of impact it's, crisis is about capacity-

April Salter: Which are going to be different for every organization and every situation.

Melissa Agnes: For every organization. Absolutely.

April Salter: And, I think that's one of the things that is hardest for organizations to do, and it's one of the things I hear often is, when we talk about crisis preparedness is really, "Well, these things are going to be so unpredictable." And my response is, "You can predict." My advice to people is, "You come up with a list, as long a list as you can, of all the possible things that could go wrong."

Come up with that list, then you can group them. And then you can see, these are the types of risks, and then you can prioritize them and say, "Of all of these crises, this is the most likely ones to happen." And prepare for those, for example, with a holding statement so that you have a head start on those things. And frankly, I learned this from a dear friend at Disney World who was the head of communications, and that's how they approached it. And with that, they were able to be prepared for 85, 90% of the things that would happen. And of course, there's always the Looney Tunes things that could happen, but that we cannot predict. However, having written holding statements for so many other types of things, chances are you'll be prepared. You'll have that headstart.

Melissa Agnes: One of the changes, one of the things that I think that is really important for people to evolve with the times, with regards to a holding statement is to, you ask about frameworks and pillars and things. So understanding issue versus crisis, defining, identifying what you're referring to, what I call your high risk scenarios. Your most likely high risk, high impact situations. And then looking at each of your stakeholder groups and understanding, in order to say, it used to be okay for holding statement to just be like, "Hey," you wouldn't say, "Hey." But, "We're aware. Here's what we're doing, X, Y, Z. We'll be back." That's no longer sufficient. So making sure that you evolve with the times and truly understand today, everything really is, we live and breathe and work in an environment of high emotion. Everybody's emotions are up here, and they have been since 2020.

And, because we keep getting hit with different world crises and issues, and impacts and different things, those emotions haven't really settled on a global kind of, just talking generally across the landscape field. So understanding that and making stakeholder mapping, understanding who every single one of your stakeholder groups and subgroups are. And then saying, "Okay, in scenario one, what would each one of our stakeholders, what would they feel? Why would they feel? Or what can we anticipate or imagine that they would feel? Why might they feel those things? What do they expect of the brand? What is their emotional tie, emotional relationship tied to those expectations of the brand? Are we able to meet those expectations? Is that actually realistic? If not, how do we address that?" So really truly digging in to understand the expectations and the emotions involved in each one of those scenarios will help you develop a holding statement that isn't just three sentences anymore, that 10 years ago that was okay.

Heidi Otway: The Fluent in Floridian podcast is brought to you by SalterMitchell PR, a communications consultancy focused on helping good causes win. We provide strategic insight and guidance to organizations, seeking to make an impact in the nation's third most populous state. Learn more at smprflorida.com. Now back to SalterMitchell PR CEO April Salter's interview with crisis management advisor and bestselling author, Melissa Agnes.

April Salter: You have a lot of experience, particularly dealing with responding on social media. So how is that preparation, how does that apply on social media? What are the differences there?

Melissa Agnes: So, I've used social media as, it's just a means of communication. Another one of the Crisis Ready rules is that there's no such thing as a social media crisis. Like anybody who uses that term, I'm like, "A crisis is a crisis. Social media is a platform."

April Salter: It's a tool.

Melissa Agnes: It's a means of communication, absolutely. Just like the media isn't the crisis you're speaking to through the media, to whomever you need to speak with. So it's really, again, it goes back to being individual to the organization. Where are your stakeholders and constituents? Where do they play online? How can you make sure that, also knowing that that's rented real estate. So if one of the social media platforms goes down, can you still communicate with them? What would that look like? So having, for example, your or all the URLs that you own, housing that information so that people can still go to Google and search, in the ways that we used to more often.

So that, and then on, I mean, obviously understanding, it goes back to understanding the people, understanding how people interact with a given platform, not just the rules of engagement on that platform, like knowing how many character counter, whatever that might be. But how does that platform resonate? Why is TikTok, and TikTok, if you have stakeholders that are on TikTok and you want to use TikTok as a way to communicate directly with them on the platform that they're on regularly, TikTok is not the same as Instagram. It's definitely not the same as Facebook. It's definitely not the same as Twitter. So understanding not just the rules of engagement in that platform, but what makes something popular or go viral on TikTok? What captures attention that people stop searching for-

April Salter: Versus YouTube.

Melissa Agnes: Exactly. Absolutely. And then of course, everything is about developing trust prior to crisis. So, how are you interacting with? If that's going to be one of your means of crisis communication, then, and we revert to this, the fact we revert to default in times of crisis. And I talk about having the mindset and the skillset, that's a piece of it. Making sure that if you're highly likely to experience these types of crises and they would go viral, in whatever capacity viral means for your organization. So be materially impactful for your reputation, and your stakeholders are on these different platforms, make sure that your communication team understands those platforms within its marketing strategies, within its daily interactions, because they're going to revert to default in times of crisis. And you want the whole concept, the whole premise of having Crisis Ready culture is working, investing in your people and working to upscale, to uplevel that default over time continuously, so that it does become instinctive and intuitive, which gives you the best shot.

April Salter: Yeah, one of the things that I think is so fascinating because of the proliferation of so many different social media platforms, I have to look at YouTube as such an important base holder for crisis communications. Because I tell clients, "Whether you use YouTube to promote your products or services or whatever, you need to be using YouTube as a very important fallback for video that you want in times of crisis." So you want people who are searching during a crisis to be able to quickly find your YouTube videos that explain who you are as a company, what your core values are, how you do what you do, and those things that are important. So that when ABC News is looking for video, they're searching and they can find what they need, to not make mistakes about your company and not say things that are wrong.

So it's such an evolving area and really a challenge I think, for people to stay on top of all of the different platforms. Even with Twitter, we now see the split between Twitter and Threads, and what's what's going to happen in the next big crisis? Is everyone going to be on Threads rather than Twitter? So it's, we're living in very interesting times.

Melissa Agnes: We absolutely are. And it's honestly, and it's not about being everywhere. It's really not about ... It's really about understanding where are the people who matter to your organization? Because everybody doesn't matter. The people who, who do you need to still be a sustaining company? A sustaining company at the end of-

April Salter: Right. It’s your regulars, right?

Melissa Agnes: Exactly. And so for YouTube, even that is an interesting thing. Gen Z-ers are not, especially early Gen Z-ers or younger Gen Z-ers, they're not going to YouTube, they're going to TikTok. If they hear something, they're going to go on their phone, they're going to open an app. They're not going to open Google search. Meanwhile, I have friends who are about my age with kids, with children who are like 20, and what, I guess that's an early millennial or a late millennial, however, you'll frame that. They don't go to Google, they go to YouTube, and YouTube is their search engine of choice.

So really, truly, and especially because everything, I'm picking up my phone here, everything is so app specific, people don't even necessarily go, they just don't open the search engine anymore. So truly understanding, it's not about being everywhere. Don't dilute your time, your energy, trying to be everything for everyone. Understand who is important, how they use this device in particular, not their laptops, not their desktops, but that device in particular. And make sure that you are developing trust and engaging with them, and understanding how to engage with them on those platforms. That's what's important.

April Salter: I think I could probably talk to you about crisis communications for many hours, and I very much look forward to having an adult beverage at FPRA and talking through some of our experiences. But if you had to give advice to government leaders or to corporate leaders, what are maybe three things that you could say to them? Here's what you really need to be thinking about when you're in a crisis.

Melissa Agnes: Pre-crisis, what you need to be thinking about now, so that you're ready for it. Because again, default right. Back to default. Three things, I got two off the top of my head, and then we'll see where the third one goes. The first one is never, ever, ever betray your core values, ever. No matter who's screaming and yelling and making you feel any kind of way, understand what your core values are, make them have them be important, and never, ever betray them. Because you betray them and you are just, you're now dividing your stakeholder, your market share, put it that way, over and over and over again. And that's very, very challenging to recover from. So know that no matter what they are, stick to them and stand behind them, stand firm on them.

Two is, we aren't ... I'm frustrated. I think we're all frustrated with the world in different ways. What I'm frustrated with right now is the fact that I look around the world, and the work that I do around the world, and I realized that I was frustrated with leaders, both in the private and the public sectors globally, not picking on anyone, anything. Because there's this inability to really truly stand up for the most part and lead through crisis, to lean into the vulnerability that's required today in order to lead effectively through crisis, and to communicate, which is one of the most challenging things to do as a human, to communicate in times of high emotion.

And I was frustrated with people, and now I'm frustrated with the fact that it's not our fault. We didn't prioritize. I don't know about you, April, but I certainly have never ... I've asked thousands of audience members literally, to raise their hand if at any point in their academic careers from kindergarten on, whether there was a prioritization in understanding emotion, working through emotion, and resonating, communicating in a way that resonates through emotion. I've never had one person raise their hand.

And so to me, that is a failed piece of crisis leadership and crisis communication that we just weren't equipped with as a society. And so, I think this is long-winded, so maybe I'll just end with this one. But, understand, choose to understand emotion. Brene Brown recently did a study, or a few years ago, at the beginning of her most latest body of work, which is Atlas of the Heart, which is on my desk, which is why I keep pointing that and looking in that direction. And she did a survey, she did a study over 7,500 adults of varying different disciplines and backgrounds and life experiences, to name all of the emotions that they felt in their lifetime, that they could put words to. And the average adult can list three emotions, happy, sad, and angry. That like out of the spectrum of emotion, that is the human experience and that we feel in times of crisis.

So as a communicator, as a leader, never go back on your values. And do the work now, start digging into, what are the different emotions that come up in times of crisis? How do they feel in one's body? How do they usually come out, be exhibited, come through action, or through choice and then action? And then, what do you need to do as a communicator, as a leader to resonate to and through those emotions? Because understanding that, honing that skill, one, it's not something we were taught, generally speaking in our society, in our world. And two, it is one of the biggest secrets to successful crisis communication and crisis leadership. And we need to see it, in my opinion. We need to see more professionals, more adults knowing this stuff.

April Salter: Can you just define that for me a little bit? Give me maybe an example of people not getting it, and then people who are getting the emotional response.

Melissa Agnes: So for example, I think it's a hard thing to touch, talk about so generically, and it is going to be the topic of my keynote, so I don't want to give too much, at FPRA. So for those listening, I know that there's a lot of people coming, so to tease that, because we're going to get into it in that keynote. But for example, right now, I don't know about you, but I see a lot of fear on all kinds of ends of the spectrums. No matter what we're talking about, for the most part, people are making decisions based on fear. When we start to truly understand fear, how it manifests in our body, what it does, how it plays, how it's so fastly reactive, that oftentimes people don't even realize that they're in fear, that they're acting or making decisions out of fear. So understanding even just that, digging into what is fear, how does it live in the body, how does it kind of take over us when we feel it, and how do we make decisions from that?

And then on your end, and then what about when you're speaking to stakeholders who are in fear due to a crisis that you're leading them through? So simply just, and then being in a position where I see a lot of fear-driven response right now. In my work, in the world, just looking around and observing the world, there is a lot of fear-driven response by people who don't actually consciously realize that they're responding out of fear, because we aren't taught these things.

So it makes it extremely hard to do something that's extremely vulnerable, which is lean into emotion, have empathy and compassion in times of crisis. And actually, lean into that space of emotion in order to connect emotionally, is extremely hard to do that when one, that's already scary, intimidating, vulnerable, uncomfortable. And two, you may or may not already be driven and be, I'm going to say being controlled. It's not the right word, but quote, unquote, "Being controlled by this emotion," that is such an overwhelming emotion. Or overcoming it, like overcomes us.

April Salter: You've written a lot about crisis, you've written a lot about the emotion of crisis, and you've got a great book out called Crisis Ready. Melissa, we are just so delighted to have been able to talk to you today and really look forward to hearing more from you at FPRA, and wish you all the best.

Melissa Agnes: Thank you so much, April. This was fun.

Heidi Otway: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, brought to you by SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, creative services, and media relations. You can learn more about us at smprflorida.com. You can also listen to all of our podcast episodes at fluentinfloridian.com, or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app.