Logos team blog posts

Adam Tiouririne Guest Lectures at Columbia Engineering Professional Development & Leadership Program

Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership senior fellow Adam Tiouririne guest lectured on Friday April 20, 2018 at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, also known as Columbia Engineering.

(Adam teaching)

The students Adam spoke to are not typical Columbia graduate engineering students; they are members of an invitation-only intensive leadership program for the top one percent of the first-year graduate student body, known as Professional Development & Leadership (PDL) Fellows. In Adam’s half day session with the PDL Fellows he lectured on leadership communication strategy, including the effectiveness of framing and the physical aspects of presentation performance. He also worked with the students in crafting individual leadership communication strategies, which many said they plan on using in upcoming interviews for summer internships and long-term employment opportunities.

The PDL program’s objective is to build the engineering leaders of today and tomorrow, by equipping its students with the skills and tools necessary to maximize performance. The program’s curriculum was developed in part by Logos Consulting Group president Helio Fred Garcia, who teaches elective courses on ethics and leadership in crisis open to all graduate engineering students. He also teaches half-day intensive workshops to the PDL Fellows on the power of communication as a leadership discipline.

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Logos President Recognized for 30 Years on NYU Faculty

Logos president Helio Fred Garcia was among dozens of New York University School of Professional Studies professors who were honored on April 24, 2018 at the school’s Long Service Recognition ceremony. He is currently wrapping up his 107th NYU course. He is an adjunct associate professor of management and communication.

Garcia was appointed to the NYU faculty in 1988 to teach Investor Relations in the Management Institute of the School of Professional Studies. In 1990 he received the school’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Starting in 1991 he taught courses in ethics, advanced ethics, crisis communication, spokesmanship, and communication strategy.  Also starting in 1991 he became a curriculum development consultant to the Management Institute’s Public Relations program, and a recruiter of public relations faculty, a role he served in until 2000. Starting in 1991 he taught a faculty skills development session for all new faculty and for veteran faculty who wished to take the course.  For many of those years he team taught the workshop with his NYU and current Logos colleague Raleigh Mayer.

At the Longer Service Recognition ceremony, April 24, 2018

In the 1990s he also ran or co-ran the annual Summer Institute in Public Relations, a multi-week immersion learning experience for students from around the world. For several of those years he co-ran it with his current Logos colleague Raleigh Mayer.

In 1998 Garcia received the school’s Award for Outstanding Service.

Beginning in 2003 Garcia teamed up with NYU colleague John Doorley to develop a proposal and curriculum to launch a Master of Science degree in Public Relations and Corporate Communication. That program launched in 2005, and Garcia joined the faculty of that program and recruited many of the initial professors in that program.  The M.S. in Public Relations and Corporate Communication was twice named by PR Week as the top public relations education program in the United States (2010 and 2011).  In that program Garcia launched and taught for many years the required courses in Communication Strategy and in Communication Ethics, Law, and Regulation. In 2013 he developed the elective in Crisis Communication, which he teaches three times each academic year. In 2017 he again received the school’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

In 2003 Garcia also joined the faculty of NYU’s Stern School of Business Executive MBA program, where he has since taught an annual elective in Crisis Management.  In 2016 he was named Executive MBA Great Professor by the graduating class. At Stern Garcia is an adjunct professor of management.

In addition to NYU Garcia has been on the faculties and a contract teacher at other institutions, including:

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Humility: A Competitive Advantage for Leaders

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How humility works as a leadership strength in the case of Jack Ma

Leaders in business and politics continue to pay high prices for arrogance. Just one example is the Trump administration, which has suffered from chaos and trust issues due in part to the high turnover rate of White House cabinet members, arguably a result from a president who’s not willing to listen. An antidote to that is humility, which has become an increasingly powerful competitive advantage for those who recognize and capture its value. Humility deserves a fairer evaluation in order to better serve leaders and organizations, as for too long it has been considered a vulnerability in leadership.

I studied charisma and humility in my master’s thesis on How These Characteristics of Presidential Candidates Influence Presidential Election and Retention in America. This blog is the first in a series of blogs where I will analyze how humility functions as a valuable asset for some of the greatest leaders worldwide, starting with Jack Ma, the founder and chairman of Alibaba Group.

 

September 2009, on Alibaba’s 10th anniversary celebration in Hangzhou, China, the company had grown into a team that filled 16,000 seats of the Yellow Dragon Stadium. The audience was full of cheers and applause when Jack Ma took the stage in a leather outfit, long white wig, and a wild-colored lipstick. Unlike other typical billionaire CEOs on this important night, Jack started to sing, like a ludicrous punk from the 70s. People outside of the company assumed him to be crazy and weird, but it wasn’t surprising at all for his employees; that was exactly their Jack, a guy they joke with everyday who just happens to be their boss.

(Jack Ma (center), together with his managers perform at the firm’s 10th anniversary celebration)

Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, has become one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of $46.9 billion. In the past 19 years, the e-commerce conglomerate has won a war with eBay in China, made the biggest IPO in the history of NYSE, and become one of the world’s largest technology companies and the world’s largest retail platform in terms of revenue. Jack was also ranked second in Fortune‘s 2017 “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” list.

Jack’s success as an entrepreneur and a leader can be credited to his judgement, strong will, and courage, but most importantly, to his distinctive charisma blended with humility that draws brilliant people to him and keeps them with him. His selflessness and genuine care for others are defining traits of his leadership. And this particular leadership style draws followers by crystallizing a mindset in them –  that is “I have faith in this person, and I want to be part of what he/she is doing.”

Humility & Leadership: How Jack Ma Does It

Let us first take a look at the humility embodied in the leadership style of Jack Ma, before analyzing how humility functions as a leadership competitive advantage using the example of Jack.

Jack came from a humble beginning. He started his career back in 1995 in his hometown Hangzhou, working as an English teacher making $12 USD a month. After his first trip to the U.S., where he was introduced to the Internet, he built the first Chinese internet company called “China Pages,” an English-language directory for Chinese companies and information, in the hope of attracting business and visitors overseas to China. While he failed to convince the Chinese government to corporate with China Pages on providing information, he realized how important it was for China to enter the international market before it was too late. “It doesn’t matter if I failed; at least I passed a concept to others. Even if I don’t succeed, someone will succeed one day,” he said in 1995 in a documentary.

In 1999, Jack took another shot at an internet idea. When the tide of the Internet finally came, he saw an opportunity to help small businesses in China sell more products domestically and globally. He founded Alibaba with 17 other people in his apartment. It often puzzles people how Jack convinced his co-founders to embrace such an audacious, unthinkable idea back in 1999 in China, and to be willingly led by a person with no money, no computer background or any government relations. A deeper dive in his personality and leadership style resolves the puzzlement.

(Jack and some early members of Alibaba)

Interestingly, Jack himself is never the center of his dreams, ambitions, or even thinking process. It’s always about doing good to his home country and empowering other people. A constant message Jack sends to his employees is that what they do is “making it easier to do business across the world,” and that this ease brings positive change that ripples through society. In a letter he sent to “Ali people” after the company’s IPO, he crowned their success to the reform and opening of China, and to the fortune of living in the era of the internet. He did not, however, applaud himself.

This egolessness and self-forgetfulness seems almost idiosyncratic in his level of accomplishment. However, this self-forgetfulness is paradoxically what has made Jack so successful as a leader.

Another remarkable aspect of Jack’s humility is a great level of empathy and genuine care for people. Jean Liu, the president of Didi Chuxing, the Chinese equivalent of Uber, and a longtime friend of Jack, learned from family friends that Jack repetitively visited a seamstress, whom he gets his clothes tailored by, after learning she was ill. “He genuinely cares about the people around him, ” Liu says.

After choosing to step down as Alibaba’s CEO in 2013, Jack devoted himself to advocating for causes related to the environment, health care, women’s empowerment, and education. He became the chairman of the board for The Nature Conservancy’s China Program, has hosted the annual Alibaba Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship, and has donated personal wealth to hospitals and schools in rural areas.

(Jack speaking at 2017 Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship)

How Humility Works

Since humility is a broad personality trait that is open to various interpretation, there are many ways to demonstrate it. In my master’s thesis, I defined humility as “a virtue allowing people to have an accurate self-assessment and think less of themselves.” I also created a five-item scale to measure humility; they are openness, tolerance and forgiveness, an accurate self-assessment, self-forgetfulness, and being highly secure.

Management expert Ken Blanchard says: “People with humility do not think less of themselves; they just think about themselves less.” (Dasa, 2014) JP Tangney also defines humility in her 2000 work, Humility: Theoretical Perspectives, Empirical Findings and Directions for Future Research, as “a relatively low self-focus, a ‘forgetting of the self,’ while recognizing that one is but one part of the larger universe.” The two definitions depict Jack’s humility best.

Jack has a very distinctive way of embodying humility. His most noteworthy aspects of humility are selflessness and genuine care, which are also the aspects of humility the article focuses on.

This type of humility serves as a leadership strength in two ways: first in creating a sense of inclusion (for existing employees), or a predilection to be included (for indirect stakeholders or even general public). Second, it inspires trust and loyalty.

A Harvard Business Review survey conducted globally among 1,500 workers found that “when employees observed altruistic or selfless behavior in their managers…they were more likely to report feeling included in their work teams,” and what’s more, “they were more likely to report engaging in team citizenship behavior, going beyond the call of duty, picking up the slack for an absent colleague.”

In Jack’s case, he is able to direct his ego away from himself in order to lead the company to a greater good, in benefiting both stakeholders and humanity at large. It makes it possible to instill a bigger-than-oneself sense of mission in his employees and cultivate a strong morale of championing for a shared cause.

With this type of humility, leaders are also able to inspire trust and loyalty by demonstrating genuine care and compassion.

Trust and loyalty don’t come naturally with a title; they have to be earned. According to an article published in Forbes, one important factor in earning trust is compassion; “People put faith in those who care beyond themselves.”  President of Logos Consulting Group Helio Fred Garcia said in a Columbia Leadership Course that followers tend to describe a great leader in three ways, one being a sense of protection and affection from that leader. The other two are an identification that they have something in common and a sense of that person is further along in capacity than they are.

When it comes to Jack, humility enables Jack not only to care for his people, but also to abandon the autocratic management style that he grew up with in China and to be open to different opinions and feedback. In an article in 2015 in the peer reviewed journal Global Journal of Management and Business Research, Chanttel Tham Jo Ee analyzed Alibaba’s management style stating that Jack’s style is highly advantageous in terms of “engendering loyalty from the employees, and leading to a lower labor turnover.” When people feel well taken care of and that their feelings, contributions, and opinions matter, trust and loyalty in leadership are natural outcomes.

 

Conclusion

Through a thorough study of charisma and humility in my thesis, I concluded that a prophetic vision is one of the attributes that make a leader charismatic. Nevertheless, vision itself is not enough. Humility lends credibility and persuasiveness to that vision, as well as to that leader.

One of the key factors that contributes to Jack’s success is his sincerity and trustworthiness, and consequently his ability to make others believe his idea. Even with President Trump, who is all about “America first” and anti-globalization, Jack was able to sell a China-U.S. e-commerce partnership proposal. It is his humility that makes his vision so convincing that the idea of fighting with him or under his lead so irresistible.

That is how humility sparkles in leadership.

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Logos President Quoted by Major Media on Facebook’s Crisis Response Failure

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Logos President Helio Fred Garcia was quoted extensively by major media in the March/April 2018 timeframe about Facebook’s ineffective crisis response regarding Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook users’ data.

The crisis broke Friday evening, March 16, and Facebook’s initial response was muted and legalistic.  Between Friday night and Tuesday morning Facebook stock was down 9 percent, losing more than $50 billion in market value.

Garcia was quoted first by Bloomberg View’s Kara Alaimo. In her piece, titled “Facebook’s PR Crisis Is a Mess of Its Own Making – Transparency is the best policy for one simple reason: The truth always comes out,” Alaimo says,

One reason Facebook may have decided to withhold the information for so long is that it was trying to figure out how to prevent such episodes from happening again. However, companies don’t need to resolve a problem fully before they disclose it.

 

Helio Fred Garcia, president of the Logos Consulting Group and author of “The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis,” says that a company determining how to address a crisis should ask itself this question: “What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization or leader to do when facing this kind of situation?”

She added,

Reasonable people wouldn’t expect a company that just learned that its data has been improperly shared to have developed a full plan within minutes to prevent such a situation from recurring. They would, however, expect the company to be transparent, express remorse, pledge to take action to prevent the problem from happening again, and follow up with an announcement about what it was doing to solve the underlying issue. If Facebook had done this, it wouldn’t be dealing with the mess it’s in today.

Garcia was also interviewed by the Associated Press. In its story titled “Crisis Management: What Not to Do,” appeared initially in The Washington Post.

The AP story says,

The point is to at least make an effort to seem remorseful to win back public trust, experts say. But despite user outcry on its own Facebook page and a call from Congress for Zuckerberg to testify about Facebook’s role in election-meddling, Facebook seems to be charting its own course.

 

It’s a pattern Facebook has long followed, said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of crisis management at NYU and Columbia University in New York. Facebook hedged during its early days in 2007 over a controversial advertising program called Beacon that did not alert users it was sharing their activity, and it did so again in its response to Russian bots hijacking Facebook ad software during the Trump campaign in 2016.

 

“Facebook has been too late. Facebook has done too little and has been too legalistic’ each time, Garcia said. ‘I have yet to find a crisis Facebook handled that I could stand in front of crisis management classes and say, ‘Here’s an example of how to handle a crisis.’ They’ve never been able to handle a crisis.”

 

Once Zuckerberg addresses the public, the PR flap may eventually be forgotten. But it will take a lot longer than if the company had addressed public concerns immediately, Garcia said.

 

“It’s much harder to restore trust once it has been lost than to preserve trust before it has been lost,” he said.

About an hour after the original AP story appeared, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, released his first written public comment. The AP interviewed Garcia for his reaction, and then updated its story to include Mr. Zuckerberg’s statement and Garcia’s comments on it.

“My biggest skepticism is that we’ve seen this play before,” said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of crisis management at NYU and Columbia University in New York. “They’re caught coming short of customers’ privacy expectations. They tweak procedures. But they  don’t seem to learn from mistakes, don’t really seem to care.”

That night Mr. Zuckerberg made his firs personal public statement, on an exclusive interview on CNN. You can see the entire interview here. The Associated Press asked Garcia to comment on the interview. It reported:

“On Wednesday, the generally reclusive Zuckerberg sat for an interview on CNN and conducted several more with other outlets, addressing reports that Cambridge Analytica purloined the data of more than 50 million Facebook users in order to sway elections. The Trump campaign paid the firm $6 million during the 2016 election, although it has since distanced itself from Cambridge.

 

Zuckerberg apologized for a ‘major breach of trust,’ admitted mistakes and outlined steps to protect users following Cambridge’s data grab. His mea culpa on cable television came a few hours after he acknowledged his company’s mistakes in a Facebook post, but without saying he was sorry.

‘I am really sorry that happened,’ Zuckerberg said on CNN. Facebook has a ‘responsibility’ to protect its users’ data, he added, noting that if it fails, ‘we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.’

While several experts said Zuckerberg took an important step with the CNN interview, few were convinced that he put the Cambridge issue behind hm. Zuckerberg’s apology, for instance, seemed rushed and pro forma to Helio Fred Garcia, a crisis-management professor at NYU and Columbia University.

‘He didn’t acknowledge the harm or potential harm to the affected users,” Garcia said. “I doubt most people realized he was apologizing.’

The next morning Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News interviewed Garcia and asked him to grade Mr. Zuckerberg’s apology.

Garcia said,

‘The most charitable grade I can give Mr. Zuckerberg for last night’s interview would be a B-minus. But it’s in a context where an A was necessary to get out of the mess that he is in. That interview called for leadership and confidence and commitment. And we got something just short of that.’

Regarding the apology itself, I’m really sorry that this happened, “Garcia said,

‘When I heard that I said, Gosh, I hope that’s the only time we hear Sorry in this interview. Because he didn’t say what he was sorry for, he didn’t say whom he was sorry to, he did not say it in a manner that suggested regret or remorse. He suggested it in a way that he seemed to be getting through it and checking off a box.  Even the word ‘sorry,’ he swallowed the word when he pronounced it. Someone would have been forgiven for not noticing the apology. And he didn’t repeat it later in the interview.’

Asked about testifying before Congress, Mr. Zuckerberg said that he’d testify to Congress if it was the right thing to do, but that his inclination was to send the person at Facebook who had the most detailed knowledge on the topic that Congress wants to speak about. And that if that were him, he’d be happy to testify. Asked what he heard in that statement, Garcia said,

‘I heard an opportunity where a leader is needed and instead we heard from a technocrat. The burden of leadership is to represent the company to those who matter the most… The leader’s duty is to represent the company.  He is speaking as if it’s about an exchange of knowledge, but Congressional testimony is about leadership accountability, and that’s what was missing here.’

Asked about Facebook’s response to the crisis, Garcia said,

‘One of my criticisms of Facebook in general is that we’ve seen this play before. We saw it eleven years ago with their first first big crisis involving a product called Beacon, where the pattern was silence, then, oh, it’s not that bad, and then an apology and then a tweaking of procedure.  We saw it again after the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook for privacy violations. The same pattern: Silence and then acknowledgement and then a kind of apology and then a tweak in procedures. We saw it after the Russian advertising in the American political process scandal last year.

 

This pattern happens again and again.  I give them credit for saying ‘We got it wrong.’ I give them credit for saying ‘We’ve got to get it right.’ That’s why it gets to a B-minus.  But the idea that 50 million customers had their information compromised and that Facebook knew about it three years ago, and only now commits to notify those who were affected that they may have been affected, that is a failure. It is a failure of leadership and a failure of responsibility.’

You can watch the entire interview here.

The following week, on March 27, Garcia was interviewed live by Canada’s CTV News on what Zuckerberg apparent hesitation to commit to testify before a Senate committee on April 10, two weeks later, but rather offering to send Facebook technical experts instead.  Garcia said,

‘This is a moment that calls for leadership.  But Mr. Zuckerberg is behaving like a technocrat. It is the duty of the CEO to represent the company to all who matter. And a parliamentary hearing, a congressional hearing, calls for a leader to be there, for the boss to be there. Congressional hearings are not about a transfer of knowledge. Congressional hearings are about accountability and and responsibility. Now if Mr. Zuckerberg were to show up with his technical experts, that would be fine. But he seems to be evading an important responsibility of being the CEO.’

Asked what the hesitation could be about and whether Mr. Zuckerberg would be getting counsel from lawyers, Garcia said,

‘I would assume that that’s the case. One of the things we know is that congressional hearings aren’t merely about public policy. They are also about politicians using the bully pulpit of a congressional hearing to show themselves to be tough, and to be tough on companies that are seen to be behaving inappropriately. And can see the human impulse to want to avoid that kind of embarrassment, but that’s the one of the burdens of leadership, to face into the difficult situations.  The idea that he would not appear in front of a congressional committee when his stock has lost already more than $100 billion in value, when customers are worrying about whether Facebook has misappropriated their data, these are all very concerning things and he is not behaving the way a CEO is supposed to behave.’

He was asked whether this is the beginning of the end, and whether the world could continue without Facebook, Garcia replied,

‘The company has made the wrong choice at every turning point since the crisis began. And the crisis began three years ago when they discovered that 50 million customers had their information misappropriated and chose not to notify those customers. They didn’t commit to notifying those customers until a week ago. The company is facing a critical turning point. There was a time when I couldn’t live without Blockbuster Video. That time has passed. There was a time when I couldn’t live without Borders bookstore. That time has passed. And it is completely within the control of the leaders at Facebook whether Facebook remains relevant and trusted. But for that they are going to have to step up in this turning point because if they fail to step up someone will build a better mousetrap and people will move to a different platform.

You can see the entire interview here.

On Sunday, April 1, the Associated Press quoted Garcia on the preparation Mr. Zuckerberg would likely need to do before his scheduled April 11 testimony. As it appeared in Mr. Zuckerberg’s hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, the story quoted and paraphrased Garcia as follows:

“Helio Fred Garcia, who as president of Logos Consulting Group has prepped unnamed banking, pharmaceutical and other executives, said a CEO client of his went through a mock hearing in which someone said very harsh things to rattle him. He was shown video of his expression to make sure he wouldn’t replicate it in front of the Senate. The verdict? ‘He kept his job, so it went fine,’ Garcia said.”

It added,

“CEOs may be used to getting their own way, but they aren’t in control during hearings. Garcia said that can cause them ‘a great deal of distress.’

Zuckerberg has to understand he’s a target and swallow his pride. His job isn’t to try to persuade the senators of anything, but to let senators express their anger.

‘This isn’t an educational forum,’ Garcia said. ‘It’s a highly ritualized piece of theater.’

It continued,

“At the same time, Zuckerberg can’t get too bogged down in technical explanations, Garcia said. A hearing puts the spotlight on leadership and accountability, not technical details. Garcia said Zuckerberg has to ‘speak in leadership terms: ‘This was a massive failure and I apologize.””

April 11, the day of the Senate hearing, Garcia was again quoted by Associated Press.  As appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post, Garcia was quoted assessing Mr. Zuckerberg’s testimony as follows:

[The senators] allowed Zuckerberg to repeat his talking points — that Facebook doesn’t own or sell users data, that he and other senior executives weren’t proactive enough with Cambridge Analytica but they’ve changed that, and that using artificial intelligence in elections to stop fake accounts is a top priority.

The result?

“He’s giving the same responses to the same questions from different senators,” said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of crisis management at NYU and Columbia University in New York.

Zuckerberg seemed often to retreat to three “safe havens,” Garcia said:

One, diffusing responsibility to his “team.”

Two, when pressed on policy issues, agreeing to a principle without committing to details.

And three, never failing in answering questions to start by addressing the questioner as “senator” or “congressman.”

“He’s diligent in showing deference and respect,” Garcia said.

In addition to his client work through Logos Consulting Group Garcia is an adjunct professor of management at NYU’s Stern School of Business Executive MBA program, where he teaches crisis management. He also teaches crisis communication in NYU’s School of Professional Studies MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.  He is also an adjunct associate professor in Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering, where he teaches crisis management, ethics, and leadership in the Professional Development and Leadership Program.

Garcia is the author most recently of The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis, available in both paperback and as an e-book from Kindle here.

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Anthony Ewing Addresses Business and Human Rights Forum in Bogotá

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Logos Senior Advisor Anthony Ewing is speaking this week in Bogotá, Colombia at the Business and Human Rights Forum: Goals and Challenges, a conference organized by the Ponitificia Universidad Javeriana Law School and the Government of Colombia’s Presidential Office on Human Rights.

(Ponitificia Universidad Javeriana Law School)

Anthony’s talk addresses the importance of teaching “business and human rights” at law schools worldwide. Anthony has taught the subject at Columbia Law School since 2001 and co-directs the Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum, a global platform for collaboration among teachers.

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(Un)Necessary? Corporate Stances on Social and Political Issues

Should businesses take public stances on social and political issues? The simplest answer to such a complex question is, it depends. But more and more, the answer is yes. Below are three reasons that help explain why this expectation exists for organizations to take a public stand on controversial issues and how organizations can effectively fulfill this expectation.

  1. Trust in the U.S. government is at a record low.

Public trust in government to do the right thing has plummeted to historic lows, due in part to the unprecedentedly unpredictable current administration (e.g. the turnover rate of White House staffers, the latest antagonistic economic strategy). This has left many Americans in search of a different, more reliable entity or entities to be the steward(s) of our nation’s integrity and wellbeing. Cue big business.

Like government, big business has responsibility to many people (e.g. employees, shareholders, customers) with different needs and interests. Also like government, big business is tasked with finding ways to responsibly meet these needs. Unlike government (the U.S. government that is), big business is not as burdened with bureaucratic bloat, infighting, and resultant stagnation. This is not to say big business is completely free of these roadblocks. Rather it is freer, and therefore more capable than the U.S. government currently is to enact some of the changes society is demanding. This helps explain why there is an increasing amount of pressure on American businesses from the American public to fill some of the voids being left by the government.

Case in point: public outrage over U.S. gun legislation has reached a fever pitch in the wake of another mass shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead, 14 of whom were students. Considering no major legislative changes were made at the federal level in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre that left 28 people dead (20 of whom were children under the age of 8), many Americans are frustrated the government has still not made substantial changes to federal gun laws.

Image source: Lorie Shaull, Flickr

While this has not deterred many Americans from continuing to demand change at the federal level, some U.S. businesses have taken steps within relevant domains to meet this demand. Car rental company Hertz, as well as Delta and United airlines, and insurer MetLife are just a few of the large corporations that have removed discounts out of protest for National Rifle Association (NRA) members. The NRA has contributed millions of dollars to political campaigns to cement their beneficiaries’ support of keeping gun legislation as-is, and for this reason the NRA is the biggest target of the public’s outrage on this issue.

  1. More and more Americans expect organizations to take a stand.

Why are businesses doing this? Because more and more stakeholders expect them to. And for American businesses, American citizens make up a majority of these stakeholder groups. Below are three key findings from the latest annual Business and Politics study, now in its fifth year from Global Strategy Group, a U.S. based public relations firm:

  • 81% of Americans believe corporations should take action to address important societal issues.
  • 76% believe CEOs specifically have the responsibility to implement positive change on societal issues.
  • Intensity in these beliefs has grown; there was a 6% increase from last year’s study in the number of people who “strongly agree” with the statement “corporations should take action to address important issues facing society.”

Fulfillment of stakeholder expectations is the cornerstone of effective reputation management. This is because trust, according to the Ethics and Compliance Initiative‘s definition, is the natural consequence of expectations being met. Without the trust of its stakeholders, an organization cannot survive. This means that with increasing numbers of Americans expecting organizations to take public stances on sociopolitical issues, that organizations’ failure to do so means running the risk of damaging key relationships and their reputation. Which begs the question, how can organizations go about effectively meeting these expectations?

  1. Taking a stand on a controversial issue can boost an organization’s reputation, but it depends on two key factors. Taking a public stand on a sociopolitical issue does not automatically lead to a reputational boost for organizations, as national retailer Target learned firsthand in 2016 when it changed its bathroom policy to allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their gender identity. Whether the consequences of taking a public stance on a controversial topic are positive or negative are heavily dependent on the following:
  • There is a clear connection between the issue and the organization’s business. Business leaders have fiduciary responsibility to their stakeholders; therefore, in order to minimize risks and maximize opportunities when taking a public stand, leaders need to always align these stand(s) with the needs or interests of the company or industry. Positive financial impact can happen only when stakeholders clearly perceive that connection and negative impact can happen when the organization is seen to be “jumping on the band wagon” or inserting itself in an issue (and exposing itself to risk) unnecessarily.
  • The organization’s actions align with its position. Recall the definition of trust, as being the natural consequence of expectations met; when an organization takes a public stand on an issue, it then sets the expectation among its stakeholders that its actions will align with those beliefs. When there is dissonance between the two, trust falls as doubt and anger rise. With the advent of social media, stakeholders are more capable than ever to take action against companies they view as insincere and untrustworthy. Take for example the #DeleteUber fiasco from last January. Not only was the ride-hailing giant criticized for seemingly taking advantage of a vulnerable moment to make an extra buck, Uber’s decision to continue operating during a protest at JFK airport against President Trump’s travel ban contradicted the company’s stated values. On Uber’s “Our Story” webpage it says “Across borders, cultures, and languages, we’re proud to connect people who need a reliable ride with people looking to earn money driving their car. Your journeys inspire us. Thank you.”  Uber customers saw its decision to continue operating during the travel ban protest as a contradiction of its stated value of inclusivity, and resulted in nearly a quarter million customers deleting their Uber accounts.

What should businesses do?

Organizations and their leaders find themselves increasingly called upon by their stakeholders to take stances on issues that may (seemingly) have no connection to their business. It is up to the organizations and their leaders to make the connection between their stance and the business, and to follow through with actions that align with the stance if they choose to take one. Only then can the organization maintain or earn stakeholder trust.

 

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Logos President and Climb Leadership CEO to Team Teach Columbia Leadership Courses

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Logos Consulting Group president Helio Fred Garcia and Climb Leadership Consulting CEO Chuck Garcia will jointly teach several leadership courses this spring at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, also known as Columbia Engineering.

Fred and Chuck, who are brothers, are both adjunct associate professors in Columbia Engineering’s Professional Development and Leadership (PDL) program.

Chuck is also a professor of organizational leadership at Mercy College. He is the author of A Climb to the Top: Communication & Leadership Tactics to Take Your Career to New Heights.

Helio Fred Garcia, Left, and Chuck Garcia, Right

Columbia Engineering’s Professional Development and Leadership program enhances the talents of graduate engineering students and broadens their skills in life and work. The program aims to build the engineering leaders of today and tomorrow.

PDL’s core modules provide engineers with skills and perspectives needed to succeed in a fast-changing technical climate.  All 1,500 incoming Columbia Engineering graduate students are required to take core courses in a range of PDL disciplines. Chuck teaches modules in Communication, Networking, Emotional Intelligence, and related fields. Fred teaches the module on Engineering Ethics. Fred also teaches PDL electives in Advanced Engineering Ethics and in Crisis Management. He also teaches the ethics module for the introductory engineering survey course for undergraduates.

This spring Chuck and Fred are team-teaching two separate leadership courses. The first is a required module for all graduate students on Leadership, Followership, and Teamwork.  This course is delivered entirely in video format. Chuck and Fred delivered the Leadership and Followership portion; The Teamwork portion was delivered by PDL Executive Director Jenny Mak.

The second course they will team teach is an invitation-only intensive leadership program for the top one percent of the first-year graduate student body, known as PDL Fellows. Chuck will focus on off-campus experiential learning, including a mountain hike up Bear Mountain and a briefing on logistics of industrial-scale food production at Culinary Institute of America.  Fred will take the students through multiple intensive half-day workshops on the power of communication as a leadership discipline. The course will also include individualized instruction and mentoring.

Below is the video module on leadership and followership:

 

 

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Logos Publishes E-Book on Crisis Communication Best Practices with Leading Media Monitoring Firm Critical Mention

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Logos Consulting Group is pleased to announce that it has authored a brief e-book on best practices in crisis communication for public relations professionals that was published by the media monitoring firm Critical Mention.

The e-book is part of Critical Mention’s series on Resources for Public Relations Professionals. Critical Mention has been a key resource for professional communicators since 2002, providing near real-time media monitoring across online, social media, radio and broadcast coverage to help professionals excel at what they do. Professional development has become part of Critical Mention’s mission.

Chris Cunniffe, Digital Marketing Director at Critical Mention notes, “We aim to provide relevant content to encourage career growth for our customers. Plus, we help them identify and measure their success—because their success is our success.”

The Primer on Crisis Communication for PR Professionals is an adaptation of the book The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis by Logos president Helio Fred Garcia.

Garcia said, “I applaud Critical Mention for its commitment to professional development of its customers. Logos is also committed to helping leaders in all fields plus those who advise them, including public relations professionals, to be more effective with their communication strategy. We welcome the opportunity to share our insights in this new forum.”

The primer is available for download free of charge here.

The Agony of Decision is about how leaders and the organizations they lead can maintain reputation, trust, confidence, financial and operational strength, and competitive advantage in a crisis. It is written for leaders across sectors and at all levels of leadership, including those who advise those leaders, whether in public relations, law, or other business disciplines. The primer will support these leaders in three ways: 1) help them understand the dynamics of crises; 2) help them to make smart decisions in a timely way; 3) support the stewardship of reputation management, trust building, and the advancement of competitive advantage.

The Agony of Decision has been adopted in graduate level crisis courses in the NYU M.S, in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program and Executive MBA program, and is also being used in a number of other universities and at schools affiliated with the U.S. military. The book is the first installment of the Logos Institute Best Practices Series.

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2018 Leadership and Crisis Preview: The Importance of Humility

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2017 is a year defined by arrogance.

Arrogance in national affairs, as the president and his senior staff persistently refused to acknowledge any facts that failed to align with their world view, and attacked those who dissented as purveyors of “fake news.”

Arrogance in business, as we saw Pepsi mishandle an ad alluding to the Black Lives Matter movement, and then be surprised by the backlash before pulling the ad. And then it bungled its apology, in a remarkable display of victim confusion, by apologizing to the ad’s star, reality TV personality Kendall Jenner.

And arrogance as United Airlines’ CEO failed initially to express empathy for a passenger who had been assaulted and severely injured by Chicago Aviation Authority security officers removing him from a plane.

Whisper Networks No More

And we have begun to see the consequences of arrogance in professional relationships, particularly the sexual entitlement of powerful men toward others in subordinate positions. This was brought to the fore initially by a New York Times expose in October of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s decades of systematic sexual abuse. The sexual misconduct of dozens more prominent men in entertainment, politics, business and journalism was revealed in the weeks following. The year ended with news that a two-star U.S. Army general had his nomination for a third star withdrawn as a consequence of treating a female congressional staffer disrespectfully in October.

The year saw backlash to this pervasive arrogance of male leaders in the form of the #metoo movement, a hashtag used on social media by victims of sexual misconduct to empower each other to stand up to their abusers, and find solace in their shared experiences. Just about every woman I know has disclosed that at least once in her life she has been the victim of sexual abuse or harassment, at work or otherwise. Time magazine put some of the women who came forward, whom it dubbed “The Silence Breakers” on its cover as 2017 person of the year.

What these various crises and scandals have in common is a particularly pernicious form of arrogance: a sense of entitlement; an inability to see others as worthy of respect and dignity; a failure of empathy. But mostly they reveal a lack of humility.

The Need for Humility

Humility isn’t a word we often see in business. Humility all too often is interpreted as weakness, especially in competitive cultures like Wall Street, politics, or the top of big organizations.

But in  2018, the best leaders will exhibit humility; the best-handled crises will be those where humility prevails.

One of the common patterns in mishandled crises is the absence of humility. Such bungled crises reflect what my friend, America’s Crisis Guru® Jim Lukaszewski, calls “testosterosis,” which he labels as a “powerful and hugely costly affliction.” He defines the affliction this way:

“Testosterosis: Men and women both have it. It’s that state of extraordinary irritation and agitation when something goes awry which makes us want to lash out rather than fess up; to slap a few folks around to see what happens; an agitated state caused by adverse circumstances which we regret about the time it begins, but is most often one of the things leaders, lawyers and other top people wind up apologizing for.”

But a little humility can prevent testosterosis.

A dollop of humility tempers other attributes, and makes a leader even stronger. Humility helps a leader to recognize that maybe – just maybe – he or she might be wrong; that there may be other valid perspectives; that he or she doesn’t have to be the smartest person in every room, at every meeting; that he or she doesn’t need to prevail in every disagreement.

The best leaders take responsibility in a crisis by using what Good to Great author Jim Collins describes as the paradoxical combination of humility and fierce resolve. He admonishes that humility must not be mistaken as weakness. He notes that the most effective leaders are a study in duality:

“…modest and willful, shy and fearless. To grasp this concept, consider Abraham Lincoln, who never let his ego get in the way of his ambition to create an enduring great nation… Those who thought Lincoln’s understated manner signaled weakness in the man found themselves terribly mistaken.”

Emotional intelligence guru Daniel Goleman, in a Harvard Business Review article “What Makes a Good Leader?,” identifies self-awareness as the preeminent leadership skill:

“People with a high degree of self-awareness know their weaknesses and aren’t afraid to talk about them.”

He notes, however, that many executives mistake such candor for ‘wimpiness.'”

Pope: Power Without Humility is Dangerous and Self-Destructive

Indeed, Pope Francis, in a TED Talk recorded in April, 2017, noted that humility is not weakness; rather, it is a kind of fortitude.

He said,

“Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.”

The Pope used a metaphor to illustrate the consequence of having an imbalance of humility and resolve:

“There is a saying in Argentina: ‘Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach.’ You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you don’t connect your power with humility. Through humility… power… becomes a service, a force for good.”

Humility Enables Empathy

Humility is what makes empathy possible.

Humility helps leaders to connect with others up, down, and across the chain of command; to build organizations and cultures that are more likely to thrive; to understand the perspectives of other stakeholders. The best leaders have a temperament that blends both power and humility that allows them to create a culture of accountability in all directions.

The end of 2017 revealed a powerful example of effective leadership as the tempering of power with humility.  As covered by military.com, the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, was addressing troops in Afghanistan just before Christmas.

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General Robert B. Neller

He told of the time as a one-star general commanding Marines in Iraq in 2006 he acted grinchy because he was away from his family at Christmas. He initially exhibited some testosterosis:

“It was was Camp Fallujah, it was cold, it was wet, rainy… I just got up in the morning… Overnight they had put up all the Christmas stuff, and Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus, Rudolf, and little trees and lights, and I’m like, [shouting] Who did this? Why are you doing this? I don’t want to be here for Christmas. And this is reminding me that I’m here. Take it all down!”

That could have been it. He was the boss, a general, addressing subordinate staff, in a war zone. But what happened next is remarkable. General Neller recounts,

“And this female sergeant, name escapes me, maybe 5 foot 1, stands up and says, ‘General, you need to knock that sh*t off. I don’t want to listen to any of that whiny sh*t. We’re here, it’s Christmas, we’re your family, you’re not going to be home, so suck it up… Sir!'”

General Neller was taken aback.  He stood silently:

“And I kind of stood there [pause]… didn’t quite know what to say [pause]…  looked at my boots [pause]… and I raised my head and said, ‘Yes, Ma’am, you are correct. I am sorry. This is my family for Christmas. And I will do my very best to have as good a Christmas as I can.'”

This expression of humility, this acknowledgement of his initial failure, this apology and acknowledgment of the rightness of the sergeant’s admonition, is an extraordinary demonstration of leadership. It is also remarkable that despite the disparity of rank and power the sergeant felt empowered to address him directly. General Neller had created an environment in which accountability in the form of such push-back was appropriate.

You can see General Neller tell this story here.

Humility as a Leadership Discipline

This ability to understand the perspectives of stakeholders is critical to being an effective leader and to getting through a crisis effectively.

Finally, humility recognizes that there’s a big difference between responsibility and blame; that taking responsibility regardless of where the blame may lay down the organization is a first step in getting people to focus on a solution rather than simply point fingers.

As we begin 2018, we can look for and notice examples of effective and ineffective leadership and crisis response. My prediction: Humility will mark the best leaders and the best handled crises.

Happy New Year!

Note: The principle of humility as a leadership discipline is covered more deeply in my latest book, The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis.

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Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Lessons from two of the biggest corporate social media mistakes from 2017 for a successful 2018

The ending of a year and beginning of a new one is always cause for reflection; what has been learned over the past year? How can these lessons learned be implemented to create a better future? One of the best ways to learn is to fail. Fortunately, it is possible (and advised) to learn from the mistakes of others without having to endure the ramifications of those mistakes directly.

In 2017, there were multiple social media missteps committed by organizations that ultimately paid a heavy price for their failures. Below is an examination of two of the most notable – in terms of reputational and financial damage inflicted – corporate social media blunders from 2017.

But first, it is important to note the four expectations for behavior on social media for all users, including organizations. Successfully and consistently meeting these expectations is the pathway to protecting and ultimately enhancing one’s reputation, the benefits of which include minimizing risks that’s harm can extend beyond the online space and maintaining a healthy rapport with those that matter.

  1. Be real. Demonstrate consistency between offline and online selves, over time, and across social media platforms.
  2. Be interactive. Readiness to respond personably to and collaborate with others is essential to effective online reputation management. According to a 2015 study from Nielsen, a consumer trends research agency, 83% of consumers believe the recommendations of their friends and family more so than any other form of advertising. This means it is essential for organizations to pay attention to what consumers say about them online, since it has a tangible impact on their purchasing decisions.
  3. Be fast. Beyond simply responding, these responses must be delivered in a timely fashion to maintain healthy relationships with followers; a 2017 report from research agency Rational Interaction shows that 72% of Twitter users expect a response from a company within one hour, if tweeting about a problem or concern.
  4. Be open. A willingness to fully share all relevant information (without provocation) with stakeholders who the information effects, is essential to maintaining or gaining their trust.

Knowing what these behavioral expectations are (and routinely meeting them) is critical to effective online reputation management, because the natural consequence of meeting others’ expectations is trust. And in order to effectively respond to or recover from a crisis, whether it unfolds on social media or not, an organization must maintain or regain the trust of those that matter to the wellbeing of the business. And to maintain or regain trust, expectations must be consistently met.

There are two notable corporate social media blunders from 2017 that demonstrate the severe reputational and financial fallout from failing to meet one or more of these four behavioral expectations.

#DeleteUber

Image source: Rolling Stone

What happened: On the evening of January 28, a protest was held at JFK Airport in opposition to President Trump’s announcement that a travel ban on several countries with prominent Muslim populations would be immediately enforced. In the hours leading up to the protest, the New York Taxi Workers Association tweeted at approximately 2 p.m. they would not be servicing JFK Airport between 6 – 7 p.m. that evening, out of solidarity with those opposing the travel ban. Uber NYC tweeted at approximately 4:30 p.m. that surge pricing had been turned off for all rides going to and from JFK Airport, which may result in longer wait times. The implications of the tweet were 1) Uber will continue to operate during the protest and 2) Rides will be cheaper for users going to JFK Airport since surge pricing was turned off.

The fallout: In lieu of explaining its stance on the travel ban (which it was against) Uber suffered the wrath of thousands of users who tweeted screen shots of them deleting their Uber accounts, expressing their disgust at such a blatant attempt to capitalize off the misfortune of others. Uber tweeted five hours after the initial tweet in a half-hearted attempt to clarify, as well as offering a vague apology in its statement to media inquiries. In all, Uber lost nearly a quarter million of its customers as well as its competitive position as a result of the #DeleteUber fiasco (the first of many for the ridesharing behemoth in 2017). As of today, Uber has still not regained its pre-protest ridership levels in many U.S. cities.

What Uber got wrong:

Be real. On Uber’s “Our Story” webpage it states “Across borders, cultures, and languages, we’re proud to connect people who need a reliable ride with people looking to earn money driving their car.” Uber’s decision to continue business operations at a time and location where a protest was being held defending the same values Uber proclaims to have, came across as insincere.

Be fast. Five hours is a lifetime within the context of crises and social media; had Uber been more timely in responding, it may have been able to reduce the reputational damage it suffered.

Be open. As in this instance for Uber, it is possible for companies to fail to be transparent without maliciously or selfishly meaning to do so. Had Uber included in its first tweet (as opposed to the one delivered five hours later) that as an organization it opposed the ban, and that former CEO Travis Kalanick set up a $3 million relief fund for affected employees, it likely would have stymied the outpouring of negative reactions.

 

#Equifaxhack

Image source: Shutterstock

What happened: On September 7 Equifax announced on its social media platforms and corporate website it became aware of a massive data breach on July 29 that exposed sensitive personal information of approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers and a smaller number of UK and Canadian consumers. The crisis was compounded by Equifax’s incompetence in the days following the announcement to help affected consumers, providing them with confusing instructions on how to verify the status of their credit and directing them to malfunctioning websites.

The fallout: In addition to the firestorm of outrage on its social media accounts (that’s still burning), Equifax’s stock price dropped 13.7% the day after the September 7 announcement. On September 8, it was reported that three high level executives sold nearly $2 million in company stock two days after the July breach. Within two weeks of the September 7 announcement it was revealed Equifax lied about how many breaches there had been (two), when they knew about the first breach (March 2017, not July) and how many consumers were affected by the second breach (143 million, nearly 800 times greater than the number they initially reported). The March breach did not involve the exposure of sensitive consumer information, but rather alerted Equifax to security vulnerabilities they failed to address, resulting in the July hack. This led to the forcible resignation of multiple senior level executives, including CEO Richard Smith. As of this writing, Equifax’s stock is still trading roughly 17% below its pre-announcement price.

Image source: Google Finance

What Equifax got wrong:

Be real. As an organization with a 118-year history of protecting consumers’ sensitive financial information, Equifax’s gross failure to do this elemental task is a severe contradiction of its stated purpose as an organization.

Be fast. The fact Equifax waited six weeks before alerting consumers their information had been hacked is egregious, and made even more so by how ill-prepared Equifax was in helping affected consumers despite its six week heads up.

Be open. It is bad enough to deliver bad news six weeks late; it is even worse to deliver bad news that is false because it diminishes the amount of harm actually caused, as Equifax did by initially reporting only 182,000 consumers were affected when they knew it was closer to 143 million. Tell it all, because it will all come out eventually anyway.

A simple reminder to all social media users out there (both individual and corporate) as we head into 2018: Be real. Be interactive. Be fast. Be open. Your reputation depends on it.

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