What can change communications learn from crisis negotiation
Just typing the phrase ‘crisis negotiation’ makes my heart race and adrenaline surge. It’s not a job for everyone and requires a cool head and a set of expert skills aimed at de-escalating an emotionally charged, high-stakes situation. However, at its core it’s a specialised form of communications, which means there are principles we can learn and apply to critical situations that are more familiar in the corporate world.
I recently read a provocatively titled article by Jonathan Milne of New Zealand media outlet Newsroom,: “Why we shouldn’t negotiate with economic terrorists.” Milne was talking to ex Chief Police Negotiator, Lance Burdett, about how to deal with the avalanche of unpredictable US tariff demands and his key advice was that sometimes standing back is the best course of action.
Burdett told Milne that in situations like an armed hold-up: “Often, when an offender is making demands, dominating the conversation or becoming unruly, we leave them alone to think. Then we come back with a reality check by showing what they have done and the implications of their actions.”
This is the art of the deal colliding with the art of crisis negotiation: trying to manoeuvre a zero sum game that has one winner to a game where winning isn’t the objective but everyone gets to walk away. It’s almost counter intuitive to back off when the going gets tough but explained as a tactic to “let them think they are in charge,” allow the adrenalin to subside and more rational thinking to get a look in, it starts to make sense.
Applied to change communications, it means we need to know when to back off or slow down. When we’re communicating big changes, we instinctively want to drive the communication like an F1 motor car: foot flat to the floor, lots of throttle aiming for the finish line as fast as we can. We communicate a lot and very loudly and we keep doing this until everyone gets the message.
But how much of this is about leaders just wanting to get an unpleasant task over with and how much is about what our audience needs? Because maybe we sometimes need to swap modes and drive more like a bus: lots of stops, keeping to the speed limit and more or less adhering to a timetable. This means sometimes pulling back the communications so it’s not so overwhelming and loud and giving people an indication of roughly when we will communicate again.
Communicating less is sometimes best
We often feel compelled to communicate, communicate, communicate, but if we apply Burdet’s tactics there are some advantages in regulating the volume and intensity of communications surrounding a major corporate change project:
- Employees are often in a highly charged, emotional state when big change is announced. They may be anxious, angry or feeling a loss of control, which can reduce their ability to hear what you have to say and make people more difficult to reason with. Give people time to move past the initial impact of the announcement.
- Going hard all the time is exhausting for you and for those at the receiving end of your communication.
- Communication is a two-way process not a one-way broadcast. Consultation is also usually a required aspect of any major change so you need to provide an environment where you can really listen to your employees’ feedback and concerns when they have had a chance to process the information.
Communicating large-scale change isn’t a zero sum game and can benefit from applying crisis negotiation tactics when it comes to pacing, establishing trust, creating a better environment for a conversation and finding a path forward.