the blog

The signs are unmistakable… rising interest rates, trade tensions, market volatility. After an unusually long, post-Great-Recession bull market, things were bound to pull back.

I’m not predicting a recession; that is way above my pay grade. But I’ve been an entrepreneur and global business observer long enough to know a correction of some kind always happens eventually. I also know the extraordinary length of this expansion means many workers have never experienced one. It’s not fun.

But it is manageable.

Here are some new ways to manage your leadership message to grow your business and brand even during uncertainty:

• Get ahead of it. For all we know a recession is already underway. That’s how it works. By the time a recession is officially declared, it has been in effect for some time. Get a communication plan in place, and start implementing, which includes speaking (not writing) clearly and confidently to all stakeholders: customers, clients, Boards, vendors, and don’t forget your staff.
• Check your aggression. There is constructive aggression and destructive aggression. Elon Musk is the poster child for the latter. He never passes up an opportunity to make a bad situation worse through his poor communication skills. He – and you – should focus on the constructive kind… calling out factually incorrect reports yet facing up to bad news and reporting it to the people who you need to care. Not everything is an unfair personal attack.
• Align your business model and your business story. Leaders who lost trust because their stories about what went wrong didn’t pass the smell test during the last recession are gone. The ones who faced the music, stepped up and told an honest, plainspoken, easy-to-understand story and did so regularly are still here. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg refuse to honestly confront the reality that their business model completely contradicts the story they’ve been telling about themselves and the company since its founding. Tim Cook, on the other hand, has been a marvel. He’s no Steve Jobs as a speaker (although he’s gotten much better), but he tells us the bad news as skillfully as he does the good. He comes across as the grownup in the room and investors (including yours truly) are less likely to bail.
• Motivate your top talent. The hiring market is a bright spot (for now) and workers have a lot of options. Retaining the best talent will be key to survival should the market really begin to tank. Let your most valuable employees know how much you value them. This can mean bigger paychecks, but it also means telling them directly. While you’re at it, start listening to what they tell you. They will likely have surprising insights that could get the company through dark times. There is nothing more motivating for an employee than feeling they have the CEO’s ear.
• Show, don’t tell. Showing your confidence in your team, in your product or service, isn’t something that gets done sitting behind a desk or via press releases by the comms team. Show some emotion… whether passion, confidence, authority, or even frustration… speaking from the heart in personal terms always wins the day. There is a crisis situation I have with a public company client right now where all the statements put out to journalists have been attributed to the “Company.” No. The CEO needs to be telling the story. As the founder, he knows the company best and can thus speak most passionately and knowledgeably.
• Use the platform. This can consist of industry speaking, holding your own customer or user events, and media. The magic inherent in all these platforms only comes if you are really, really good. Think of your favorite TED talk or keynote speaker, or a similarly situated executive whom you’ve seen doing a TV or press interview you thought really nailed it. Then figure out how you can emulate them. Hint: they got help and they didn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• Visit, videoconference, or phone: In that order. It’s so sad that in-person and, particularly voice communication have gone by the wayside, replaced by text. This is a mistake. Every single leader should be calling and visiting their most important customers. Videoconference technology has finally lived up to its promise. While you’re at it, call and visit Board members and vendors. If face-to-face is King, then videoconferenceing and voice-to-voice are Queen. There are nonverbal cues that give your words much greater meaning and are completely missing in text, which should only be used as an adjunct, not a substitute, especially in turbulent times.

There’s much more to managing your leadership message and I’ll be putting out more over the next weeks and months, but this is a start.