Podcast Episode - Crisis Communications

We are All Ostriches Now: A News from the Peak interview with Brett St. Clair

By David Ramm, Senior Consultant, Grays Peak Strategies

The first full-length podcast in our recently launched News from the Peak series focuses on crisis communication during the time of COVID-19. 

Brett St. Clair, Western Skyline Marketing and Communications

To get an expert’s view of how to handle both this specific situation and other crises that could arrive at any time, I interviewed Brett St. Clair, an accredited public relations expert with more than 25 years of experience in the field and the leader of Western Skyline Marketing & Communication.

In the podcast Brett gives wonderfully practical, straightforward advice about some of the same topics Brett delved into for a recent blog post, including the elements of a crisis communication plan and how to respond to the current crisis even without a plan these and other topics.

Brett also gives a great example of something that I think public and private sector leaders can never hear often enough: your employees are always your most important audience. They’re the ones hearing first-hand how individual program participants or customers think this situation is affecting them. And that means they’re in the position to give you and your organization, program, or agency the kind of feedback that can improve those policies.

Crises are inherently stressful. And our response even to potential stressors tends invoke what the behavioral economics community calls the ostrich effect—the tendency to avoid information that seems harmful, challenging, or even unpleasant. (This behavior is supposed to be akin the way ostriches stick their heads in the sand to avoid danger. One problem: ostriches do not actually do this.)

Staff and leaders in state, local, and tribal child support programs often see evidence of the ostrich effect in how both parents who pay child support and parents who receive it respond to the program. They may not open their mail because they assume it will be bad news. They may not reach out to tell us about having changed jobs or lost a job because they feel like passing along even the most benign information will lead the person on the other end of the phone to judge them.

What we often forget, though, is that the ostrich effect hits us too. One clear example of that is how often we procrastinate doing things like preparing for a crisis. 

I think a lot of listeners will feel the same sense of relief that I did hearing how manageable he makes it sound to respond even to something as serious as COVID-19.

So put on your headphones and enjoy News from the Peak on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and more.