If we’re asked to give a speech at a wedding, not one of us will use the services of a public relations or marketing professional to deliver our speech for us.
Imagine that you’re attending a wedding, a beautiful, impactful time. When the bride’s and groom’s families and friends gather, we all experience a mixture of relationships. Some of us know the bride, some the groom. Some know people on both sides, some know only one individual. But we all know what goes on at a wedding and we all know what to expect. One thing we expect is a lot of words, words from different people. The officiant is there to be sure the legal boxes are checked, usually including some formal presentation featuring an exchange of vows, as well as (often) an homily. The bride and groom have their statements to deliver, their own version of vows. Serious or humorous, the ceremony is planned and conducted in order to deliver the penultimate moment: A declaration of wedded bliss.
Then the reception begins. There’s food, drink, laughter, dancing, music. And there often is… more talking. This talking is different from the ceremony. In the ceremony, a premise for the state of matrimony was given by the officiant, promises were made by the participants. In many cases, the bride’s father utters a short ‘giving away’ phrase. You could say that the ceremony contains the ‘what’ and the ‘how’: What we’re all doing today, and how it is being done.
Reception speeches are very different. They are the personalized ‘why’. Delivered by different people from different families and different life spaces, they still all boil down to ‘why’. Why we’re happy these people are now together. We may poke fun, we may be serious. We might read a poem or quote a philosopher. We might deliver a comedy routine or fumble our way through a words that sound better on paper than they do coming out of our mouth. Regardless, we all still deliver our personal reasons for being there, why we are happy for the couple and why we think they’ll be great together.
There’s only one chance of getting it right
These speeches are a big deal. Like wedding photos and reception food, there’s only one chance to get it right. There are no wedding do-overs, so when we’re called upon to deliver a speech at a wedding, we want to be sure it’s a good one, and that we’re ready to deliver it.
Some quick Google search figures bear this out:
- ‘Groom’s speech’ = 1,440,000 results
- ‘Bride’s speech’ = 3,590,000 results
- ‘Father of the bride’s speech’ = 53,200,000 results
- ‘Best man speech’ = 1,040,000,000 results
Conclusions? A lot of grooms take their speech very seriously. Three times more brides do. Fathers of the bride are almost desperate in their desire for help in delivering a perfect speech. Best men are practically frantic in their search for help. While I didn’t look at every one of the cumulative 1.1 billion search results to see what tips or techniques were offered, but I’ll wager you one certain finding:
If we’re asked to give a speech at a wedding, not one of us will use the services of a public relations or marketing professional to deliver our speech for us. The idea of having a stand-in give our wedding speech is as unlikely as a bride or groom having a stand-in. The concept is laughable. We’re on our own.
What about funerals? A Google search for ‘funeral speech’ delivers 137,000,000 results. Of course, a wedding speech is, or at least should be, significantly different from a eulogy! But still, many of us implicitly understand that in either event we have a responsibility to deliver an effective presentation regardless of the stress or emotional duress of the moment.
In both weddings and funerals, we have one chance to make our best impression. So we plan and prepare, step to the microphone and do our best. Life’s most important moments require this of us.
What does this all have to do with crisis communication?
Weddings and funerals impact a specific audience. People closest to the situation are in the room, for better or for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. What we say at these events is important to them, so we step up and deliver to the best of our ability. We do not shirk, and we seek no substitutes.
When your organization is in a crisis, the event has already impacted a specific number of people. They are interested in hearing what you have to say. They are as ‘in the room’ as a wedding or funeral audience. But they have ALL been negatively impacted by the event. Nobody is happy.
If your organization has impacted people’s lives due to an incident or issue, consider who they want to hear from. They don’t want a stand-in any more than a wedding party wants to hear from a professional speaker. They want to hear truth from someone who matters, and that person is the leader of your organization. When you’re deciding who should speak for your organization, let your default selection be the top person.
Remember, in any of life’s most important moments, we have one chance to make our best impression. So we plan and prepare, step to the microphone and do our best. Life’s important moments require this of us.
So, who should be your company spokesperson in a crisis?
This is an eternal debate, with some siding with a tiered approach in providing access to the top person in an organization. Some advocate for restricted access, saving the top person for the most escalated response. Many encourage use of company spokespersons rather than ‘line’ leadership. Some advocate for immediate top-level involvement and exposure.
Communication professionals tend to advocate for a careful measurement of incident impact to help determine if it’s time to’ bring in the CEO’. We plan on spokesperson escalation to match the incident escalation. We use an internal sliding scale to determine how escalated the incident is. And we miss a key point. We use internal escalation metrics. We measure the impact as dispassionately as possible and we come up with different levels of incident impact, so we can assign different levels of leadership availability.
We miss the point
We don’t get to define our incident’s impact: The people impacted get to do this. And to those impacted by an incident, the incident is already escalated! Affected stakeholders have an on/off switch for impact, not our internal sliding scale. Affected stakeholders will always consider your incident to already be fully escalated.
If you want to make the best impression, you can’t go wrong going to the top. That’s what your stakeholders expect.