DO PEOPLE LIKE YOU? IT’S MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU THINK!
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: ”If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this Earth.”
– Roberto Clemente, 12 time Golden Glove winner with the Pittsburgh Pirates
We are not talking here about the playground/recess conversations of “So-and-so LIKES you.” We’re talking about very high stakes situations where your personal credibility and the reputation of your company are on the line in a major way with long-lasting repercussions.
Think for example of Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, as he and his company tried to navigate their way through one of the biggest crises to ever hit a corporation. What did you think of him? Did you find yourself understanding that he was tasked with trying to organize the most complex crisis response operation required in our lifetime and appreciating that he has done many things right? Or do you think of some of the many highly publicized negatives that have surfaced as this story drags on that make you not like him? I dare say there are more people in the latter camp. Let’s look at the whole picture.
THE GOOD…
Yes, I think there have been some good things. I have been particularly impressed with the ads that have been running on TV and the full-page ad in USA Today. When the best minds of the BP Public Relations professionals (and possibly some consultants) were put together, they came up with the right messages. (1) We are accepting responsibility. (2) We are working hard to contain the oil and have made significant progress. (3) We realize that this is a huge environmental issue and are using major resources to try to control the impact. (4) We recognize the financial and emotional impact this is having on thousands of people and have set up a claims procedure to deal with those folks as quickly as possible. (5) We will stay with it until the oil has stopped gushing into the Gulf, and beyond that until the damage is righted. (6) We will undertake a rigorous investigation into what went wrong so that we can put measures in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. These are all the right things to say.
And when Tony Hayward himself was the spokesperson on the TV ad, he had the appropriate facial expressions of concern and empathy. His voice sounded sincere. He delivered the well-crafted messages well. So then what was wrong?
THE BAD…
It was in the moments of unscripted answers to questions and unsolicited comments where Mr. Hayward tripped up, and actually fell flat on his face. The absolute worst example occurred only several weeks into the crisis. When asked by someone how he was holding up under all of the stress, he casually replied, “I’d like my life back.” When I first heard it on the news, I was dumbfounded. I know he didn’t take even a split second to think about how that would sound to those eleven families who had lost loved ones in the initial explosion and all those thousands of people whose ability to make a living would be impacted drastically. But the question everyone was asking within moments of his uttering those words was, “How could he be so insensitive?”
The public was not about to feel sorry for him. They were going to identify strongly with that grieving father who immediately said, “I’d like my son’s life back.” And they would feel sorry for those who would say, “I’d like my livelihood back.”
Surely Mr. Hayward did not mean it the way it sounded - that he cared more about the fact that he was under a lot of stress and couldn’t get on with his normal pursuits. But there it was - endlessly aired on news programs and in the social media.
Regardless of all the right things he said in the slick ads, he is likely to be remembered for this one unplanned and disastrous off-the-cuff remark. If you are in the midst of a crisis, you can never, ever forget that every word you utter may find itself reported - and it could be reported widely and loudly if you fail to think it through. As the old saying goes, “A closed mouth gathers no feet.”
AND THE UGLY…
But it gets worse. There may have been some people out there who were willing to give Tony Hayward a break. Maybe they’d said something they shouldn’t have at one time or another. They could see how it could happen when you have been under unrelenting pressure for days and weeks on end. It was a mistake that occurred in a moment.
The same cannot be said for Mr. Hayward’s participation in the yacht race back in London in mid-June. It took a lot of planning to schedule his appearance there. There was that long plane ride across the Atlantic where he could have had time to consider how this would appear to the American public. I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t someone among those PR professionals who crafted the TV ads who was begging him not to do this. Sure, as the BP spokesperson tried to explain after the uproar had exploded, Mr. Hayward is a human being and had a right to visit his family in England. No one would deny him that, assuming that he’d left competent people in charge in his absence. But to be frolicking on the clean waters around London with his peers, the elite yacht owners, was just too much to bear - especially for the next-of-kin of the accident victims and the beleaguered fisherman and owners of tourist attractions on the Gulf Coast. What was he thinking? I can’t begin to guess. I only know he was not putting himself in the shoes of the human victims of this environmental disaster.
SOME CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE
On the June 24th NBC evening news show, Brian Williams introduced us to the new face of BP. Mr. Bob Dudley will now be in charge of BP’s response to the accident. The officially announced reason for this change is that this will free Mr. Hayward up to run the company. However, I am quite sure it has a lot to do with the fact that Mr. Hayward has lost the “likeability factor” with the American public. Consequently he has to step out of the public view if the company is going to have a chance to repair its image. We probably won’t see his face on TV as much any more.
Unfortunately for him,the way he’ll be remembered is not at all positive. A lot of people just don’t like him any more, mostly because - as communicated in those unscripted moments noted above — he didn’t seem genuinely concerned and empathetic. It remains to be seen if Mr. Dudley (who has the advantage of having spent some of his growing up years in Hattiesburg, MS) can do better.
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Of Special Note: I know that I preach the value of planning and practicing presentations so that they can be as effective as possible, whether you are being interviewed by the media or speaking in front of an audience. I believe it strongly. However, when you are a master orator and you are speaking with passion from your heart about things you believe deeply and understand well, you can sometimes excel in memorable ways.
I was reminded of this in mid-June when I visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN (what had originally been the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968). Visiting there had been on the “List of Things to Do in Tennessee Before Our Daughter Moves from Nashville.” That time is quickly coming to an end as she just officially received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and will be moving to Washington, D.C. in September on a Congressional Fellowship to be a legislative aide. At any rate, while visiting the museum, we learned that, for his famous speech on the Washington Mall on August 28, 1963, the words “I had a dream” did not appear on the page of his prepared remarks!
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Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you prepare for those moments of unplanned visibility when you are caught in the glare of the media spotlight or have to stand up in front of an audience of concerned, angry, upset people.
Until next month…KEEP COOL!
Judy Hoffman
1-800-848-3907 PIN 2145
www.judyhoffman.com
jchent@earthlink.net
