No Time for Heroes

 

 

It’s a familiar narrative, the new CEO: bold, brave, and ready to carry the entire company on their shoulders. The question remains, is this truly the time for heroes?

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In the eight years since 2008, The Bedford Consulting Group has hosted dozens of CEO and Human Capital Roundtable events attended by top leaders in Canada’s most resilient and successful businesses. While invitations to these events are limited, the knowledge gained from the gatherings is not. Over the years, these leaders have shared their experiences helping their organizations thrive in an uncertain present and create a more sustainable future. As such, we have identified a number of consistent success factors to win in today’s business environment. In the first of our series, we learn of the death of the hero (circa 2008).

CEOs and executive search leaders often agree; A-List candidates for senior leadership roles in the period before the 2008 financial crisis would rarely make the short-lists for current leadership searches without significant evolution away from one of their key traits of the past – being the hero.

Bedford Roundtable CEOs described how they (or their predecessors) were often promoted in this period based on old school autocratic behaviors that saw them ride in to single handedly save stagnant or struggling firms with “The Plan”. These popular hero CEOs were often effective but also created stiff, hierarchical structures that cannot prepare the firm or its young leaders for our current business climate. If being the stand alone hero is no longer ideal, what does an aspiring leader do differently? Top CEOs suggested three simple points on how to create sustainable change without enacting an idolized separation of the CEO from the company body. 

1: Be Visible, Be Accessible

The hero CEO can often be placed on a pedestal that creates a sense of inaccessibility within an organization. Today’s winning CEO must instead be of the people, not separated by personage. The evolving leader can take a cue from Tangerine Bank CEO Peter Aceto, who has emphasized the vitality of CEO visibility and authenticity in all levels of a business. Aceto himself has been known to put in shifts in the company call centers in order to break down barriers and better understand the needs of the company and the potential for growth from the ground up. Tangerine and similar firms are setting themselves apart by developing this internal, external and online accessibility on an ongoing basis.

2: Recognize Talent No Matter What Package it Comes In

If we are to learn anything from the traditional hero’s narrative that can still be applied to fostering winning businesses, it is that great power does not always come from the places we tend to expect. Whether it is in the C-Suite, HR Leaders, or our workers in the field, today’s leaders must be compelled to act as mentors rather than as idols for new talent. In a 2013 report, the International Labour Organization indicates that we will see a significant shift by 2020 as Millennials step in to comprise half the workforce. Top leaders are already working to engage this population, recognizing their potential without falling into the myth that this incoming workforce is entering with an inherent sense of entitlement. In light of this incoming workforce evolution, CEOs such as David Labistour of MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) continue to emphasize the crucial role of senior leaders in creating a workplace culture and strategy that will keep fresh talent engaged.

3: Promote Engagement and Accountability

We must recognize that there is no such thing as a perfect hero, CEO or otherwise. In order to create sustainable change in our businesses, we must be able to learn from our shortcomings and be willing to share that pragmatic experience. Labistour notes that, “leadership is about being human, and accountability” (Canadian Business, 2016). As such, our CEOs must be able to stand for what they believe in while humbling themselves to be accountable for their mistakes, treating shortcomings as an opportunity for collaborative learning and the development of a new vision for the future.

The real movers and shakers of today’s business environment can still learn from the heroic model, as among other traits they retain the tenacity and vision that came along with it. In the new business world, however, top leaders recognize that, much like the head is useless without the body, the individual is only as strong as their team. Heroes can no longer save the day alone.

© 2006-2016 The Bedford Consulting Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

How to Be a Leader, Not a Manager

The trick to being a master of both skill sets is understanding the nuances that distinguish true leadership.

 

By Ilya Pozin

Founder, Pluto.TV

Let's get something straight: manager and leader are not synonymous terms.

Manage implies maintaining the status quo. It's a manager's job to ensure that things go as planned and that the team meets expectations. Leading, on the other hand, has an inherent forward progression. Leaders encourage change and take us someplace new.

Now those semantic differences don't mean that being a manager and being a leader are mutually exclusive. But finding a great manager who is also leader, that's like finding a flying unicorn. The trick to being a master of both skill sets is understanding the nuances that distinguish true leadership.

These are the three things that separate a business leader from a manager:

1. You're paid for managerial duties, not leadership ones.
It's common to say that someone has been promoted to a "leadership role," but in reality they just become a manager. After all, their job title becomes "Senior Sales Manager" not "Sales Leader."

The sad truth is that, while leadership may be rewarded with occasional bonuses or just a pat on the back, very few people in the business world are paid to be leaders. A good manager makes sure their team has the tools they need, is there to answer questions, and fairly evaluates performance. Because that's what they're paid to do.

A manager who is also a leader goes further that. They focus on taking their team beyond what's expected of them and empowering them to be successful at whatever it is they're best at. And none of it for their own personal glory, but all for the good of the team and the organization. It's ideas and possibilities that motivate a leader every day, not a paycheck.

2. Leaders focus on and respect individual strengths.
The 2015 Gallup State of the American Manager report found some key differences in effective managerial leadership. One of the big ones was whether a manager focused on improving employees' weaknesses or on building their strengths. Comparing engaged and disengaged employees, 67 percent of employees who said their managers focused on strengths were engaged. Only 31 percent of employees whose managers focused on weaknesses were engaged.

A great leader knows that their team's strengths are their biggest advantage and they strive to let each employee make the most out of their skills. This means giving employees some autonomy when it comes to picking their own roles in different projects. It's then up to the leader to provide coaching and guidance for employees so they naturally pick up the tasks that are best suited for their strengths.

Take the company I founded, Coplex, for example. Every member of that team has a broad range of hard skills, soft skills, experiences and interests. These will even change and grow over time. We recently had a customer that joined us to build a yoga e-commerce app. One of our UX designers on the team has been a yoga junkie for years and was a big advocate of their brand. Naturally, she selected to join that product team. This allowed her to leverage her interests and brand history but also her hard skills and the work output has been incredible.

Leaders don't just view their employees within the confines of their job descriptions. They know and understand what each individual can offer on a deeper level and use that knowledge to set their team up for success.

3. Leadership requires accountability.
Many people shy away from accountability. They equate being held accountable for their actions as being punished for their mistakes. But a real leader knows that's not true. In fact, effective leadership relies on accountability.

There is no quicker way to lose the trust of your employees than passing the buck onto them. Aside from the ethical implications of blaming someone else, not holding yourself accountable sends the message that mistakes are unacceptable; that they're bad. On the contrary, mistakes can become great opportunities.

Leaders not only own up to their screw-ups but explore what went wrong and how to do better. If done effectively, this will trickle down to those you oversee. Employees will not only openly talk about their mistakes, but use them as a discussion that can help the entire team improve.

It might seem like it's a thin line between manager and business leader, but in reality it takes a lot to grow from one to the other. Becoming a leader means rethinking the way we conduct day-to-day business, as well as what we have to offer our employees. Being a leader means you're prepared to take your team forward.

Successful Companies Don't Have Mediocre Employees

There's a reason it's tough to get hired by the most successful companies. Can you name a top-rated company or organization with nothing but mediocre employees? Successful companies consistently hire, develop, and retain superior performers. The best advice successful leaders, CEOs, and business experts have ever given is: hire the right people for every job in your company, develop them to the fullest, and keep them on board as long as possible.

Author Jim Collins says in Good to Great, "People are not your most important asset, the RIGHT people are." I'd take that a step further; not only do you need the RIGHT people, you need them in the RIGHT positions -- jobs that fit their personal motivational needs, behavioral patterns, and core-skills as determined by a validated assessment.

Here are seven areas an organization may want to consider to consistently hire the right people for every position in the company, develop them to their fullest, and reduce turnover by retaining those employees. These steps can take employee engagement from an art to a science. 

Identify key job accountabilities

A Key Job Accountability is a task or activity the person on the job must do on a daily basis for the position to exist. You need to know the Key Accountabilities for each job and rank them according to their importance in getting the job right as part of the Job Benchmarking process.

What are the Key Accountabilities required *by the job?* What does the job itself require - not what the manager or the people doing the job think it requires or even what they prefer. Examine the “unspoken” part of the job description and address it, quantify it, and decide to include or exclude it from a position’s key accountabilities. 

Job behaviors

What specific behaviors are required for superior performance on the job? If the job could talk, what would it say? "I need [X] to be done this specific way to be done right." Not the way it's being done now or how the employee would like to do the job or how it’s always been done before or how someone else does it or even how certain people wish it were done - but how it should be done for maximum performance and success. 

Job motivators

What attitudes and motivators does a job require for superior performance? What values does the job reward? For example, if the job calls for someone with a strong social/humanitarian attitude - someone who puts other's needs above their own - then a person with that value will be happy on the job and naturally do it the way it should be done. If a job requires continual learning and study to be successful, then someone who values learning will be happy in that position and do it well.

Can you imagine putting people into positions that actually matched their natural behaviors and internal motivations? What would that look like long term at your organization? 

Employee behavioral styles

Next, identify the behavioral styles of those currently in the job to determine if each matches the behavior required by the job. Those who match the job's behavioral requirements will do the job as it should be done and have a higher level of job satisfaction and employee morale.

Some jobs require a supportive behavioral style, some require caution, some require an outgoing, persuasive style, some require a strong results orientation. All positions may require a bit of each of those but each position will have one or two styles that mesh best with what the job requires. 

Employee attitude and motivators

Do you know what motivates your employees ... really? When employers know, really know, an employee’s motivators, it’s easy to match them to the job primary motivators. When a job rewards certain values and motivations, the people who have those values will fit the job, be energized by their work, and perform at a much higher level than those who have to force themselves to be motivated to do what the job requires. Employers must know each employee’s motivators in order to increase employee satisfaction and reduce employee conflict and disengagement. 

Job applicant’s behaviors and motivators

What are your applicants' behavioral styles and attitudes? Have you matched them to what the job requires? There's no better way to know for sure that people will be superior performers in a particular position before hiring them than to hire only those whose behavioral styles and motivators match those of the job itself. This is the one of the most powerful resources you can employ if hiring top talent is important to you. Additionally, a well structured assessment will give your specific questions to ask a potential employee. 

Motivate your employees

How much easier would it be to retain great employees if your managers had a "people manual" composed of assessments that could tell them exactly how to motivate, manage, and communicate effectively with each individual person reporting to them? NewsFlash: not all employees are the same! Each individual is motivated a little differently, communicates a little differently, and has a different skill set. As a manager, you can learn how to best connect with each employee with the proper (validated) assessment.

A recently validated assessment can take most of the mystery out of hiring and developing top talent and make employee engagement a crucial part of your retention process.

Once you take these seven steps, establishing a performance review process that includes employee evaluations based on the job's Key Accountabilities, Behaviors, Attitudes, and Core Skills is relatively easy. You have an outline of what needs to be done and how.

How do you accomplish these steps? First benchmark the job itself, not the people in the job … even those who are doing it well. Benchmarking a job (rather than an individual) removes the bias, personality contests, and non job-related elements from the hiring and managing process. Once the job benchmark is complete, then assess your employees and future applicants comparing them to the requirements outlined by the job itself.

Image by stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Ron Haynes

Leaders Eat Last

Being a true leader, says Simon Sinek, author of Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’'t (Penguin), isn’t about being in charge, having all the answers or being the most qualified person in the room. Instead, it’s about creating a “circle of safety,” a culture that leads people to feel protected and free from danger inside the organization. That, in turn, allows them to focus their time and energy on protecting the organization from outside threats and on seizing big opportunities.

Here, from Sinek, are five precepts of his leadership vision. 

1.  Leaders have to accept that their responsibility is not the performance of the company but the performance of their people, and that doesn’t mean numbers but whether people are working to their greatest potential. Are they being given opportunities to try and fail and try again?

2. Leaders, whatever the size of their organizations, are those willing to put the interests of other people before their own. For entrepreneurs or small-business owners, that means committing ourselves to the success of our clients and our customers and showing up every day not simply to grow our own bottom line but to help somebody else’s bottom line.

3. Online communities function like any other community. You can’t just milk social media to tell people about your company without being willing to serve. Instead, use these platforms to offer and share information that has value to other people even if it has no direct impact on you whatsoever.

4. When an employee is going through a slump, don’t fire them, coach them. Consider the tech company Next Jump, which has a policy of lifetime employment. Once firing wasn’t an option, more care was taken to hire the right people—evaluating not just skills and experience, but character as well. Training became much more comprehensive; peer counseling groups were formed in every part of the company, and performance evaluations became more open, honest and real. Turnover went from 40 percent—average for the industry—to 1 percent. The best leaders don’t come down harder on people whose performance is lagging; they come to their aid.

5. Temper idealism with realism and accountability. While we’d want all our client relationships to be long, fruitful and marked by reciprocity, the economic realities of business sometime require us to say yes to clients that we know are going to be difficult. If someone rakes you over the coals during the contract negotiations—guess what?—they’re going to rake you over the coals later on, too. Treat the relationship for what it is: a short-term hit. When you’ve gotten what you need—better cash flow, say—politely move on. We sometimes need to take on difficult and unreasonable clients, but let’s do it consciously.

Shelley Levitt 

7 Ways Leaders Maintain Their Composure in Difficult Times

Leaders need to show more composure than ever before in the workplace.   With the change management requirements, increased marketplace demands and intensifying competitive factors that surround us, leaders must have greater poise, agility and patience to minimize the impact of uncertainty.   How leaders respond to these and other growing pressures is an indicator of their leadership preparedness, maturity and acumen.

The composure of a leader is reflected in their attitude, body language and overall presence.   In today’s evolving business environment, it is clear that leadership is not only about elevating the performance, aptitude and development of people – but more so about the ability to make people feel safe and secure.   Employees have grown tired of working in survival mode and thus want to be part of a workplace culture where they can get back to doing their best work without the fear of losing their jobs.

I worked with a colleague that lacked composure and was always in a panic.  Though he had tremendous credentials, he lacked the ability to remain calm and thus often made his employees feel uneasy. His leadership role was just too big for what he was capable of handling.   He was often too dramatic and the smallest of problems  launched him into crisis management mode.   Needless to say, his wasn’t an effective leadership that could deal with real crisis and change.    Because he was unable to reinvent himself and adapt to the unexpected, his tenure was short-lived.

The 21^st century leader sees adversity through the lens of opportunity.  Rather than panic, a leader with composure takes a step back and begins to connect the dots of opportunity within adverse circumstances.   These types of leaders quickly detect the causes of adversity and solve for them immediately.  They then enable the opportunities previously unseen that could have avoided the adversity to begin with.  Many times crisis results when composure is missing.

The next time a problem arises, ask yourself if you or your leader could have shown a greater sense of composure and avoided the problem from surfacing. 

When leading – especially during times of uncertainty and adversity, crisis and change – you must avoid showing any signs of leadership immaturity or lack of preparedness that will make your employees feel unsafe and insecure. Here are seven ways to maintain leadership composure during the most pressure-packed moments:

1.  Don’t Allow Your Emotions to Get in the Way
Seasoned leaders know not to wear their emotions on their sleeves.   They don’t yell or get overly animated when times get tough.  These types of leaders have such emotional self-control that even their body language does not give them away.

When you allow your emotions to get in the way, employees interpret this as a sign you are not being objective enough and too passionate about the situation at hand.  Strong-willed leaders can maintain their composure and still express concern and care, but not to the point that their emotions become a distraction – or that they can’t responsibly handle the issues at hand.

2.  Don’t Take Things Personally
Leaders shouldn’t take things personally when things don’t go their way.   Business decisions and circumstances don’t always play out logically because office politics and other dynamics factor into the process.    As a leader, remain calm and don’t get defensive or think that you always must justify your thinking and actions.

When you begin to take things personally, it’s difficult to maintain your composure and make those around you believe that you have things under control.  In fact, when leaders take issues too close to heart, they allow the noise and politics around them to suffocate their thinking and decision-making capabilities.

3.  Keep a Positive Mental Attitude
Employees are always watching their leader’s actions, behavior, relationships and overall demeanor.   During the most difficult of times, leaders must maintain a positive mental attitude and manage a narrative that keeps their employees inspired and hopeful.  This is where your leadership experience and resolve  can really shine – by staying strong, smiling often and authentically exhibiting a sense of compassion.

Leaders set the tone for the organization they serve.   A positive attitude can neutralize chaos and allow a leader to course correct through any negativity.    Employees feed off the attitude of these leaders during times of uncertainty.   Keep a positive mental attitude and never stop moving forward.  Stay focused on building positive momentum for the betterment of the healthier whole

4.  Remain Fearless 
When leaders project confidence, they instill it in others.  During uncertain times, leaders must remain fearless and project a cool persona that communicates composure to those they lead.

I’ve been through ups and downs in my career and have learned that when you begin to fear adverse circumstances, you not only put yourself in a position of vulnerability, but it becomes extremely difficult to act rationally and objectively.    When you panic, you mentally freeze and your mind loses focus.

When you begin to get fearful, ask yourself:  What is the worst possible thing that can happen?  If you are objective about it and have the will and confidence to face it, you will eventually realize that the situation is manageable and can be resolved.  Faced with adversity several times over, your fears will eventually vanish and uncertainty will become your best friend.

5.  Respond Decisively
Leaders who maintain their composure will never show any signs of doubt.  They speak with conviction, confidence and authority – whether they know the answer  or not!  With their delivery alone,  they give their employees  a sense that everything is under control.

Recently, Mack Brown, the former coach of the University of Texas (UT) football team, was put under a lot of pressure to resign as a result of his team underperforming in 2013.  Though the University handled his forced resignation poorly  – considering Mr. Brown had coached the team successfully for the past 16 years – his decisiveness the day he announced his resignation made you feel that his transition out of the job was a positive thing for the university.  Human nature will tell you that he must have been hurting inside, but his decisiveness and presence of mind made those that were watching him speak believe that the future looked bright for UT football.

6.  Take Accountability
Leaders are most composed during times of crisis and change when they are fully committed to resolving the issue at hand.   When you are accountable, this means that you have made the decision to assume responsibility and take the required steps to problem solve before the situation gets out of hand.

When leaders assume accountability, they begin to neutralize the problem and place  the environment from which it sprung on pause – much like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did when he announced that he did not have any prior knowledge of the decision his aides made to close down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.  Though there may be legal woes to come, the manner in which he handled the initial news conference (temporarily) neutralized the crisis – as he answered all of the reporters’ questions and took full responsibility and accountability to punish the perpetrators and keep something like this from happening again. 

7.  Act Like You Have Been There Before
Great leaders know that one of the most effective ways to maintain composure during difficult times is to act like you have been there before.   Leaders that act to show they have been through the problem solving process numerous times before are those with strong executive presence who approach the matter at hand with a sense of elegance and grace.    They are patient, they are active listeners, and they will genuinely take a compassionate approach to ease the hardships that anyone else is experiencing.

Just ask any technical support representative.  When you are on the phone with them, their job is to make you feel that even your most difficult challenges can be easily resolved.     They are there to calm you down and give you hope that your problem will soon be solved.    Pay attention to their demeanor and how they are masters at soothing your frustrations.  They always act to show that they have been there before; their composure puts your mind at ease.

It’s easy to lose composure during times of crisis and change if you let concern turn into worry and worry turn into fear.  By maintaining composure, the best leaders remain calm, cool and in control – enabling them to step back, critically evaluate the cards that they have been dealt and face problems head-on.  A show of composure also puts those you lead at ease and creates a safe and secure workplace culture where no one need panic in the face of adversity.

As the saying goes, “Keep Calm and Carry On!

 

Glenn Llopis

Closing the CEO skills gap

HARVEY SCHACHTER

When Toronto-based consultant Nick Forrest meets the chief executive officers he counsels, the first question he asks is how many employees they manage. On average, they say eight, referring to their direct reports.

“No, you have 2,500 employees,” he will typically reply, “and your success depends on your ability to reach them and empower them. You have to figure out how to manage 2,500 employees.”In most cases, they have little idea how to do that. They have never led that many people, and managing 2,500 employees or 1,000 or even 500 is very different from leading 70 or 100. They are now the big boss, and this requires a change in mindset.

“A CEO coming into the job has to realize that, for the first time, they own it all. Until now, they always worked in someone else’s system. They blindly accepted that system,” he said.

CEOs like to complain about the skills gap in others. But Mr. Forrest said there’s a skills gap in chief executives and other top leaders. That gap is illuminated by three insights incoming CEOs must have:

1. Now I have more people to manage – not fewer, as might be assumed if looking only at direct reports. Managing those people can involve a quantum leap in complexity.

2. Now I’m accountable for everything. Yes, everything. The CEO is responsible for strategy, and how it is implemented. The CEO is also responsible for the structure of the organization, which she may not have given thought to before, but that may be the key to unlocking the potential of the employees working for her.

3. Now I need to manage more, not lead more. We continually hear that CEOs are leaders, not managers. But Mr. Forrest argues the opposite. “The higher you rise in an organization, and the more employees you influence, the more management matters,” he writes in How Dare You Manage?, his book about addressing the skills gap.

The CEO must now learn the craft of management. This involves understanding how to manage large groups of people in a way that provides clarity and consistency, so they can do their work well.

“CEOs who do not practise the craft of management fall into the trap of implementing haphazard initiatives that are not thought through and integrated into the overall organization’s structure and management and accountability processes. They kick these initiatives off with great fanfare and then watch them atrophy and die because the organization’s systems are unable to support them,” he writes.

While his book offers seven principles to close the CEO skills gap, he focused on two in an interview.

First, CEOs must define the work for employees. In many companies, he finds the employees have no idea what work they should be doing – in terms of how their everyday toil can help propel the company toward the intended strategy. “This applies whether there are 120 employees or 10,000. So you get employees spinning or trying to invent what they should do,” he said in the interview.

As a manager, you need to tell your employees what success looks like – specifically, what output you want from them. What activities they actually perform each day isn’t the focus. You must stress what the individual must achieve, which defines his role. As well, the employee needs to know five or six accountabilities – a word used to stress responsibilities for which leaders must hold people accountable – that are required to accomplish this role.

Before doing this with staff, you need to define your own role and accountabilities. In an example in the book, the CEO declares that the organization will be positioned as a national leader in its market. Accountabilities include creating the corporate strategy to achieve its business goals; building the talent and capability of employees so the company has a competitive advantage; ensuring operations perform at a high level; and establishing key performance indicators so organizational progress can be determined and all managers can manage effectively.

These priorities must cascade down throughout the organization. If not, employees will come up with work they think should be done but might undermine the actual strategy. “What is the role of a manager if not to define the work of their employee?” Mr. Forrest asks.

He also urges CEOs to adapt a series of management practices, highlighted by setting the context for employees, delegating tasks, monitoring and coaching. When delegating, employees must be aware of quantity, quality, time and resources, which he calls QQTR – how much of something needs to be produced, what standard is being applied to determine whether the work is good enough, when the activity needs to be completed, and what resources are required to complete the task.

“If you have that in place, you can manage and coach,” he said. “If you don’t have context, and haven’t set QTTR, how can you manage and coach?”

Harvey Schachter is a Battersea, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues. He writes Monday Morning Manager and management book reviews for the print edition of Report on Business and an online work-life column Balance. 

The 10 commandments of crisis management

HARVEY SCHACHTER

When organizations hit a crisis, fear sets in. The instinct is to avoid comment or, if comment is mandatory, look for ways to evade the truth.

To Vancouver-based corporate reputation expert John Barr, who has served as a crisis consultant and recently wrote the book Trainwrecks: How Corporate Reputations Collapse and Managements Try to Rebuild Them, those reactions can lead to deep trouble.

“Our basic instincts in a crisis often don’t serve us very well. Lying and hiding don’t work very well,” he said in an interview.

Because most organizations haven’t been in a crisis before, uncertainty and fear abound, particularly in the executive suite. “They worry they might lose their job, will be blamed, will be sued, might even go to jail. It’s very easy for fear to take hold and management to seize up,” he said.

In such situations, he suggests abiding by these 10 commandments of crisis management, many of which will feel counterintuitive:

1. Accept responsibility
Unless it’s starkly clear that the crisis was triggered by something done to your organization, it’s vital the chief executive officer immediately step up and accept responsibility.

“That doesn’t mean you have to wallow in mea culpas and declare everything is rotten and you are responsible for all that is bad in the world. But you must acknowledge that we, the company, are collectively responsible,” he said in the interview. It used to be that lawyers blocked such admissions but they now realize it won’t increase your liability and may reduce it, since juries hate companies that don’t accept responsibility and punish them.

After last summer’s train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Que., the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway chief, Edward Burkhardt, initially seemed to accept responsibility, but then blamed an employee. While most tragedies are caused by one person messing up, Mr. Barr argues that the company hired, trained, and oversaw the employee – and is responsible.

2. Frame the issue
The CEO needs to define what the issue is about to help guide debate. The company’s stance on the issue must be supportable and repeated often. In plane crashes, the airlines will frame discussion around how the company is helping those affected, trying to find the cause and fix any problems.

3. Demonstrate concern for public well-being
The public wants to hear that the company cares, that it has basic human compassion. “You have to say the company is chagrined and unhappy and deeply sorry, and sympathizes with those affected,” he said.

4. Don’t lie
Lying kills your credibility; even equivocating can hurt badly. “A lie will be exposed and will destroy what little public trust you retain. No matter how hard you are tempted to tell just one small lie, even a minor fib, to avoid embarrassment, don’t. Soon you’ll have to tell a bigger one to cover the first; next week, you’ll be checking into the Watergate Hotel and you won’t like your stay there,” he writes.

5. Stick to the facts
If you don’t know something, say so. Also, don’t hypothesize. Early in the crisis, rumours will proliferate. Stick with what you know to be true.

6. Look after traditional media first
Some crisis consultants believe that social media should be used to respond, but Mr. Barr said you should initially deal with traditional media. “At the end of the day, the story told by traditional media – especially the respected media like The Globe and Mail, New York Times and Wall Street Journal – carry more weight than social media,” he said.

7. Monitor online social media
Pay attention to online and social media, include them in your announcements, reply to their questions and address their inaccuracies the same way you address those of traditional news media. Online and social media are trusted sources for many people, but the problem is that some might say almost anything. “There isn’t the editorial filtering, fact-checking and perspective taking of the traditional media,” he said.

8. Feed the hog
You have to feed the hunger that people have for information. This means actively engaging with the media to provide information and respond to questions. Besides, if you don’t try to drive this process of information seeking, somebody else will, probably not to your liking.

9. Dramatize your accountability
Go to the scene of the incident immediately, and look for other ways to demonstrate your concern and accountability, such as withdrawing tainted products or cleaning up the oil spill as quickly as possible. “It’s equally crucial that you find words that leave a lasting public impression that, while your organization has screwed up, it is run by decent human beings who are trying their best to fix it and who aren’t just mouthing something they learned in media training,” he writes.

10. Fight back against lies
If you have accepted responsibility, and lies are being hurled your way that you can show are untrue, you can respond, as long as it’s not an attempt to change the channel and avoid taking your legitimate lumps.

Harvey Schachter is a Battersea, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues. He writes Monday Morning Manager and management book reviews for the print edition of Report on Business and an online work-life column Balance.