It’s hot out there. Keep from getting burned.

If you are a nonprofit leader in today’s political climate, it may feel like hunting season and you’re the prey. Social sector leaders are finding themselves in unfamiliar hot water and unsure how to navigate their way to safety. Often the attacks come from within, as emboldened employees organize and speak out about injustices they perceive their own organizations are responsible for. Social media provides a vehicle for these movements to quickly take shape and grab attention. Before you know it, you have a full-blown crisis on your hands and doubling down on the benefits of your mission is no longer an adequate response.

Adamec Communications supports many of these leaders in real time with rapid response, crisis communications, and reputation management. But what we know about times of high stress is that this is when irrational, fear-based decision making can cause costly mistakes. So how do we plan for a crisis before it occurs, when we aren’t clouded by panic?

Step 1: Know your vulnerabilities. Every social sector leader has those scenarios that keep them up at night. We encourage our clients to identify the top five reputational blind spots. This can start with a candid conversation among staff to see what anxieties you may share.

Step 2: Plan around each scenario separately. No two crises are created equal. They all have their own unique dynamics and should be treated differently for the purposes of planning.

Step 3: Identify your team. A crisis management team will typically include organizational leadership, but it should not necessarily be exclusive to C-suite executives. Depending on the nature of the crisis, you may want other stakeholders in the room. And always – ALWAYS – include communications staff on that team.

Step 4: What’s fueling your fire? Every crisis is accelerated by certain variables, often called wildcard variables or crisis catalysts. These are the X-factors that turn a circumstance into a crisis. They are the emotional fuel that transforms a bad day into a combustible disaster. Why would an audience react negatively to the planned scenario? What are they perceiving?

Step 5: Neutralize the catalysts. Your role as a crisis manager is not to convince people that the crisis isn’t real. It isn’t to persuade audiences to stop caring. It is to mitigate the emotional fuel that is accelerating your fire to the greatest extent possible. What response strategies will best do that?

Step 6: Name your spokesperson. This will not always be the executive nor the communications lead. In situations where credibility is lost, it may benefit your organization to not be its own spokesperson.

Step 7: Determine the evaluation point. One of the most common mistakes in crisis response is pulling back too early. Before the onset of a crisis, identify the point at which you will know that the response strategy worked or did not work. This will help protect against the common instinct to declare a response inadequate before it’s had a chance to work at all.

What if a crisis occurs that you didn’t plan for? Count on it! A crisis will almost never manifest exactly as you imagined. But by cycling through this planning process more than once, you and your team will build the muscle memory that will come in handy at a time of actual crisis.

One last piece of advice…check your assumptions. Reputational attacks can be deeply personal. It’s natural to overreact when you feel under assault. The vast majority of crisis calls we field are not actually crises, but instead some challenging circumstances that just need to be managed. Seek the advice of some trusted perspectives that live outside of your organization.

Want to know more? Adamec Communications would love to connect with you. Explore our website or reach out directly by emailing shaun@adameccommunications.com.