On Crisis Management, Holding Off On Advice, and Communicating Data

Over the past year, The Daily Coach has spoken to dozens of coaches, authors and consultants about navigating crises, the value of listening instead of rushing to give advice, and blending data with personal connection.

For this week’s Saturday Blueprint, we put together some of the best thoughts from our guests on these subjects.

On crisis communication:

“There are a couple of things that are really important: Listening and over-communicating. Listening to what is going on around you and being able to have the trust of the people who are dealing with their hair on fire, while also being able to differentiate whether the whole forest is on fire or just one of the trees.

Everybody has their own crisis going on every single day. (You have to) be able to be a bit of a calming voice and have a decent rolodex in your head to be able to talk to people outside to quickly understand how big or small it is. Every situation is totally different. You have to put empathy and humanity into everything you do. You can’t just go to a playbook — even if you have one — and say, ‘This is the way we have to do it all the time.’

Over-communicating is really important, especially in the world of social media. Whether it’s the janitor or the president of an organization, you want to make them feel like they at least know what’s going on and that there’s a plan. Establishing who the one voice is who’s speaking for you alleviates a lot of problems.”

-Joe Favorito, marketing and strategic communications consultant

On resisting the temptation to give advice:

“The way I define coaching is behavioral. Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly?

My mission is less to train coaches and more to (make a greater percentage) of the population more coach-like. Curiosity unlocks insight about the situation and yourself. Curiosity helps people feel seen, understood and encouraged. If you lead with curiosity, it’s a more powerful place to lead from most of the time.”

-Michael Bungay Stanier, best-selling author

“If I want to help someone improve, which is my life’s work, there are two types of feedback I can give. One is constructive advice, which is what should you do differently? The other is positive reinforcement, which is what should you do more of?

The world has misunderstood feedback to mean constructive advice. The ideal ratio of positive feedback and constructive advice is five parts positive reinforcement to one part constructive advice. The world underestimates positive reinforcement.

The second thing is positive reinforcement is only helpful if it’s very clear and very specific. If I just say, “Great job,” you’re not going to get any better. What I call sincere and specific praise is giving someone a Scooby Snack.

It doesn’t make us look soft or weaken other people. It’s the complete opposite. It is the superpower of improvement.”

-Dr. Frances Frei, professor of technology and operations management, Harvard Business School

On blending data and personal connection:

“You’re always going to have players who say, ‘The numbers don’t matter.’ So, I write up $1 million, $100,000, $10,000, $1,000, $100, $10, $1. Do numbers matter or not? I don’t understand. What’s the difference between $1,000,000 and $100,000. ‘It’s just one number. It’s not that big of a deal.’

When you’re trying to maximize performance, marginal gains matter. How do you create marginal gains in a competitive environment to try to improve your shooting, or your individual performance, or team’s performance?

Here is the number. Here is the data. Here is the video behind it. Here is the visual proof of how this helps you. If you just throw 100 numbers at them, guys get overwhelmed. You have to choose the numbers that are most important to what the conversation is.” 

-Ryan Pannone, University of Alabama assistant basketball coach

“I still believe your best level of production comes from a hybrid model of human analytics and statistical analytics and research. It’s a game played by people. When you can show loyalty to your people, it breeds energy. The energy breeds effort. The effort is what gets you the results. Sometimes, that’s easier to do with 10 than with 25.

Some teams are doing a much better job of getting all of the information, filtering it down and putting it in the hands of someone who can disseminate it to the players in understandable language. That’s been the secret sauce for some teams, and other teams are trying to figure it out.”

-Clint Hurdle, former Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies manager  

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