Crisis Communication in a Chaotic World

• Business schools can focus on six communication strategies that will enable top executives to communicate confidently during times of crisis.
• Leaders must be courageous listeners who carefully consider others’ values, and they must craft clear messages that they share through a variety of targeted channels.
• Maintaining the public’s trust requires leaders to know when to act with incomplete information and when to avoid speaking out too soon.

 
In today’s uncertain times, organizations must increasingly weather and respond to disruptive and emotionally charged events. Whether triggered by political conflict, social unrest, geopolitical instability, or technological change, crises rarely produce a single shared interpretation among stakeholders, including leaders, employees, customers, and communities.

In such situations, effective communication is not a secondary concern—it is the strategic infrastructure through which leadership is enacted. When communication is delayed or incomplete, the effects of a crisis can be worsened.

A recent example comes from Minneapolis, where agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been deployed to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. After two protestors were killed by ICE agents, the heads of more than 60 companies commented publicly in an open letter about the unfolding events. The leaders of Target, which is headquartered in Minneapolis, were among those who signed the letter.

However, days later, when Target’s new CEO sent his first message to employees, customers, and partners, he didn’t address the impact of ICE’s presence on the city’s population and the retail giant’s workforce. This failure to communicate on a key stakeholder issue triggered a backlash against the company.

Around the world, other organizations and their leaders are encountering crises that are affecting their stakeholders and strategies at breakneck speeds. Because of war in the Middle East, for instance, the global energy supply is being threatened as tankers avoid the Strait of Hormuz between Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Some banking and payment services provided by Amazon AWS went out after drones struck three Amazon data centers in the UAE.

Global trade wars and tariff impacts, fallout from the Epstein files, AI investment scares, and a volatile cryptocurrency market also have put companies on their heels. The CEO of Metaplanet, a Japanese cryptocurrency investment company, was pushed to publicly defend its communication practices after nontransparency allegations.

Unfortunately, most organizational leaders are not professionally trained in strategic communication beyond presenting and writing. As a result, in crisis situations, they lack the ability to communicate strategically and carefully in both internal and public contexts. To survive ongoing chaos and confusion, organizational leaders must quickly develop six core strategic communication skills.

1. Engaging in Courageous Listening

Courageous listening involves developing comfort with, and even an eagerness for, interacting with people who hold opposing views. Importantly, such listening does not require individuals to change their minds or try to change anyone else’s. It does require them to stay present and curious even when their brains want to shut down and their bodies say, “Get me out of here!”

When leaders embrace courageous listening, they can:

• Build relationships across differences.
• Practice emotional management in high-stakes moments.
• Develop respectful adversaries they can turn to when their thinking needs a critical eye and they want someone to help them move ideas from good to great.

This type of listening is called courageous for a reason; it is not easy, and it requires practice. But the benefits are worth the work.

Courageous listening requires individuals to stay present and curious even when their brains want to shut down and their bodies say, “Get me out of here!”

Business schools can equip future leaders with these skills by prioritizing courageous conversations in their curricula. To do this, professors can assign students to take pro or con stances on divisive issues, conduct research on the topics, present their conclusions to the class, and then engage in additional debate.

2. Adopting Tactical Advocacy

Courageous listening is the grounding for tactical advocacy, which is the ability to work toward what leaders and their stakeholders need, even under dynamic and challenging circumstances.

Uniquely different from but related to persuasion and negotiation, tactical advocacy asks leaders to carefully consider their audience’s values alongside their own priorities. It acknowledges that asking others to change their beliefs and behaviors requires leaders to be open to changing their own, though they should never lose sight of their top priorities.

Instructors across all functional areas can help students develop this skill by requiring them to communicate with a variety of audiences as part of their classwork.

3. Focusing on Message Development

Authenticity is created or lost in the message development stage. That’s why effective communicators spend time creating and refining their core messages. Strategic communication helps people understand, support, and act on issues because consistent messaging builds trust. Message development is built around these central principles:

• Clever statements turn heads in the moment, but clarity carries meaning forward, allowing people to understand what matters and why.
• Facts establish legitimacy, but stories turn information into something people remember and repeat.
• Fear might grab attention or create urgency, but purpose builds confidence and motivates lasting support.

Business schools can weave message development skills into the fabric of their institutions by providing professional development opportunities for administrators, faculty, and staff. Topics could include trust-building, stakeholder messaging, crisis communication, and leadership storytelling.

4. Selecting the Proper Channels

Even the clearest message can fail if it travels through the wrong channel. Communication channels determine how people encounter information, how credible it feels, and whether it registers as sincere.

Any company facing a crisis will need to reassure a variety of stakeholders. These audiences all consume information in different ways, but they share a common expectation: They want to hear directly from authentic leaders when decisions matter.

Leaders often must use several channels and approaches if they are to reach multiple audiences at once. To communicate with external stakeholders, executives might speak with human voices through social media and news interviews. To communicate with employees and top executives, they might share similar core messages through internal updates and one-on-one conversations.

Stakeholders all consume information in different ways, but they share a common expectation: They want to hear directly from authentic leaders when decisions matter.

When channels align with both the message and the audience, leaders reduce confusion, create coherence, and establish credibility. These objectives are the foundational pillars of influence in a crowded and skeptical information environment.

Schools that offer courses on personal branding and corporate reputation management will enable students to practice communicating with diverse audiences in different ways.

5. Being Willing to Act During Uncertainty

In a crisis, if leaders don’t communicate until they know everything about the situation, they will be left behind—or worse, viewed as complacent. Waiting for certainty is frequently indistinguishable from failing to act.

Strong leaders are willing to move before they have perfect information, and they take full responsibility for what they communicate. Admitting uncertainty, while difficult, inspires confidence—but only when leaders are clear about why they are making certain decisions. Leaders will lose credibility fast when their decision-making appears ill-conceived, chaotic, and/or inconsistent with previous viewpoints.

Learning to act before all information is known is a skill students can develop in the classroom. For instance, instructors can present students with a developing crisis scenario and require them to issue initial responses before they have all the relevant data.

6. Maintaining Strategic Silence

But while leaders should act confidently under uncertain circumstances, they should avoid a major communication error: speaking up loudly in self-defense when their credibility is threatened. Leaders might feel that it is urgently necessary to defend their organizations, especially when they are under attack or undergoing a crisis. However, no one is properly served if communication does not build trust or highlight real engagement.

Staying silent is different from avoiding speaking on a topic or issue. Intentional restraint involves thinking clearly and adopting a long-term mindset, while topic avoidance usually comes from being afraid. Silence can speak volumes, so leaders must use it strategically.

For example, Target’s new CEO could have waited to send his welcome email instead of issuing it during a moment of crisis in Minneapolis. He could have used this silent delay to gather information on how ICE’s presence would affect the company and the community, to continue working with other organizations to influence a resolution, and to craft a response that was consistent across stakeholders.

Case studies can serve as valuable teaching assets for helping students understand when it is better to remain silent. As they evaluate real situations in which companies chose not to make immediate responses, students can debate whether the silence was strategic or damaging.

Ready for the Moment

Now more than ever, skillful communication separates the leaders who merely survive from those who thrive in business and society. Moments of disruption reveal which leaders stand ready to communicate effectively and meet the task at hand.

The future belongs to those who can communicate with clarity and conviction even when the work is contested and the path forward is unclear.

The authors are members of a Research Triangle Area Business and Professional Communication Working Group.