Crisis communications

Overview

This training day will have two areas of focus; managing reputational risk and dealing with an emerging crisis.

Managing reputational risk

This part of the day will help CEOs ensure their organisations are taking the necessary steps to mitigate risks and are prepared with the appropriate plans and procedures to deal with a crisis before any event. It will provide advice and tips on helping to create a culture and understanding across an organisation where the management of risks that impact on reputation become a shared responsibility.

Specific areas covered include:

• Understanding and identifying risks
• Minimising risks
• Communication tools and procedures
• Continuous development and sharing best practice

By the end of this session, participants will have a clear sense of what best practice looks like in crisis planning as well as a plan to take back to their organisations with clear objectives and next steps to create, review or update their own crisis planning strategies and tools.

Dealing with an emerging crisis

The focus of this session is the strategies and skills of dealing with a crisis once it has emerged and entered the public domain. Particular emphasis will be on message delivery including the CEO’s role as a lead spokesperson during a crisis and how to get your point of view across in a way that is sufficiently compelling to hold the media’s attention without compromising the credibility of what you are saying. It will also cover more common and general questions as well as some of the particular and challenging lines of questioning that could arise in crisis situations.

Specific areas and skills covered include:

• Do’s and don’ts of what to communicate
• Effective key messages
• The key rules of media appearances
• Tips on how to prepare for interviews, how to handle hostile lines of questioning, and how to stay on message
• Filmed role-play interviews with each participant
• Play-back of each interview with constructive coaching on areas for improvement

Although the training is most relevant for broadcast interviews, the message delivery skills focused on during the training are also pertinent for print media briefings and stakeholder engagement. This training will equip participants to feel in control of the media scenarios in which they may find themselves – in studio, in the field, live, pre-recorded, down-the-line and so on – and gives an opportunity to practice delivery technique

Cost

£299, £349, £499