Effectively handling adversity often takes skill, forethought and the ability to properly keep your emotions in check.

I have found, over the years, that, sometimes, those that make their living “communicating” or counseling on communications make the worst communicators behind the scenes. Recently, I was appalled to hear of a workplace scenario where a supervisor totally lost his cool—verbally accosting and nearly physically sparring with an employee. This was during business hours, in the office! The employee took the high road when confronted, yet was still conveniently terminated.

Setting aside the possibility of lawsuits and/or charges being filed in such an instance, what could such a manager be thinking? What could possibly justify such outrageous, entirely unprofessional behavior? In times of crisis, we teach our clients to temper their public reactions—not react in public with a temper! At Tanner Friedman, we also counsel heads of companies that reputation management is paramount as how you act—or react—to a particular situation can have a profound and lasting effect on important constituents, including employees, customers and the business community at large.

To not think before you leap, or speak, or act—in particular when you are supposed to be setting an example at the top—is tantamount to skydiving without a parachute. It all trickles (or falls) downward and can be toxic to a particular environment or workplace. The view from 10,000 feet is much preferable to a 100 mph fall from grace.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm by Don Tanner and is filed under Crisis Communications, Don Tanner, Internal Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.