Communicating Clearly in Uncertainty

Atrocities against innocents in the Middle East. Another mass shooting in the U.S. Every day, something new to absorb and process. Now more than ever, PR pros need to lead the way in communicating clearly in all of this uncertainty.

 

Read Hope and the Hard Things on the Solo PR Pro blog.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. How are you doing today?

Karen Swim, APR (00:36):

Hi, apparently Michelle, I'm doing better than you. You are soldiering through in spite of a major allergy attack here.

Michelle Kane (00:46):

Yay. This is what I get for peopling. Yeah, it happens. It happens. You get around the wrong things. That just anger your sinuses. And here we are. So it's supremely annoying, but I'll put it up against, there are unfortunately real problems in the world, so I'll soldier on. There's no joy in Mudville. Our Phillies are out of it, but I thank them for a wonderful ride and go, Rangers.

Karen Swim, APR (01:16):                                                 

In the past three years, I think that we've all learned that because the world has continuously been on fire, literally, and it's just been one thing after another. So I think that we've learned how to both mourn and still have joy because you cannot live in despair. You just cannot. So there are real things happening in the world, but we do try to find some space for laughter, for joy, for friends and loved ones and having lighter moments. And today we have a pretty serious topic to talk about, but we hope to inflect it with a little bit of hope for all of you out there. So let's dig into it.

Michelle Kane (02:01):

Let's do it. Yes. I mean, certainly with the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and I know conflict is a mild word, there's been a lot of horrific scenes taking place in the name of power in just thousands of years of animosity. We know that. And as communicators, our eyes and ears are attuned to the messaging that's out there. There's a lot of propaganda. There is a lot of hurt feelings on both the Jewish and Muslim, I hate to say sides, but amongst people of, Hey, why aren't you standing up for us? Why aren't you standing up for us? And it's just, again, as with anything we've seen, I hate to say in recent years because I know we can go back hundreds of years and point out misinformation and propaganda, but it just seems, especially with the onset of our digital world, the waters are so incredibly muddy and murky. I mean, one thing we know is true outright murdering innocents is never right. Let's start there.

Karen Swim, APR (03:16):

Let's start there. And I always think about, there's this newsletter that I subscribed to and it's called 1440, and their tagline is “Facts Without Motives.” And they share just the facts. So all the headlines, all the news, unbiased reporting, and I love reading it because it is a good reminder as a communicator that is also my job. Facts without motives, whatever your personal feelings are about politics, what's going on in the world, the wars, who's right, who's wrong as communicators, we have to understand that we do serve diverse audiences and that our communication does need to be factual and we cannot inflict our personal opinions and biases upon our communications. And so we've seen a lot of missteps that have been hurtful, but I also am encouraged by the public relation pros who have stepped up and who have taken the rhetoric out of it all and said, we focus on human life, period does not matter because it's very troubling to me that there have been communications put out by organizations that have actually incited and incentivized hatred against any group, against Muslims, against the Jewish community.

This is horrific to me. It pains me. And it's so hard when you see that because number one, in the United States of America, there are so many different religions. You cannot, cannot paint everyone with the same brush. Every Muslim is not a terrorist. Have we not learned one single thing from 9/11? These are our neighbors, these are our colleagues, these are our friends. They're often our family members. Please value human beings and human life. Yes, there's a time and a place for political activism. Yes, there's a time and a place to debate how you feel about this, but it is not as a professional communicator. And I would encourage you to counsel your clients and the organizations that you serve that when putting out statements, if you put out a statement that supports one side or the other, you are eliminating a big swath of your audience. You have to hold space for everyone because I think that we can all agree that decapitating babies is not okay in anyone's book, holding people hostage and torturing them, murdering families who are just families. They're not part of a terrorist organization. I cannot personally stand behind that. But as a human being, I think that we can all agree on those facts, that none of this is okay, and that we have to be careful and inclusive in our messaging that we're not going too far to either side.

Michelle Kane (06:28):

And it's the old adage until you walk a mile in someone's shoes, because the way that that attack was done was I'm sure intentional to trigger the generations-old feeling in the bones. I forget the title, but there's an Irish history book called, I think it's called The Stories in Our Bones, and all of us, all of our people groups, we have those stories of, yeah. So there are certain things when they happen to other people groups, it does trigger something of, yeah, no, that's not right. And just to empathize, because it is sad. Our Jewish friends, our Muslim friends are going through this. We're going about our day. I'm thinking, am I going to have tuna fish for lunch? I'm not worried about stepping outside of my house today. And whether some listeners might think, oh, what's the big deal? Well, it is a big deal, and we just have to be cogniscent of that from a professional perspective. Hey, where's our audience sitting today? Especially if you're working in the social media sphere, if you're creating content, not that you have to be super, super intentive. I'm not saying that, oh, you need to create content about this. Don't take that the wrong way. Sorry, my allergy head is spinning.

But just be conscious of what's happening. And I think that's with anything that's if, let's say you're a small town and there's a big fire that's affected a lot of people, we're just reminding ourselves foremost and all of our fellow communicators to just keep this in mind. And if you are working with a client that feels compelled to issue some kind of statement, please know that most of our clients don't need to do that. But if you do feel compelled to do so, make sure you really, not only you factually check it, but you also do a good gut check.

Karen Swim, APR (08:29):

Yeah, I mean, that goes back for me, always, always in companies, in every single action should be aligning with their mission, vision, and values. And this is where living that daily from the basement to the boardroom becomes so important. It is a foundation for ethical practices and integrity. It should be important to organizations, and you should definitely allow that to guide you as you craft statements. And as you said, it is really important if you do not have to make a statement. But I understand that with this conflict, it really does impact your employees in the PR world. It affects the people that we work with, the companies, the media. This is on the hearts and minds of everyone. But we have to be careful too as we speak out about these things because there are many other conflicts globally that are impacting populations that are often ignored. It's interesting because I know that there are many people that use the word woke as a political weapon

And regular people. Americans seem to have fatigue with feeling like they have to watch what they say about every single thing. To some degree that's true because we've learned better, so we should do better. Good example, I saw someone today post about someone who was perhaps mentally ill, and in a post, they used the word, they described the situation that had happened and said, has anyone else saw this crazy person? And I was horrified. That is the most demeaning thing to say, and I know that, but people still use these words. I believe that this person was not being mean, did not intentionally want to be mean. It's just something that they have become accustomed to saying. And so to the audience, I would say our audience is professional communicators. So we've learned that there are certain terms that we no longer use, and we try to correct that.

It does often feel like a mine field of stuff that's out there as a vegan. There are things that bother me. There's a phrase that people say, killing two birds with one stone, and it's like, please don't kill the birds. That bothers me. I'm not going to go off on you if you use that expression. But everybody has their stuff, is what I'm saying. And we do the best that we can to ensure that we are not isolating human beings and that we're being kind, gentle, and respectful, and that as we see things that are out there that are incorrectly phrased, if we have the opportunity to educate and advocate for proper language, then we should all join in that people have such misunderstanding about so many things today.

Michelle Kane (11:31):

Yes, yes. And then when you do enter that arena, you also are treading carefully of, whoa, what am I stupid? No, no one says you're stupid. We're just trying to bring to light some information. It's like everyone, I think we're just societally, we're still in just defense mode of what? What'd you say? How'd you say it?

Karen Swim, APR (11:55):

We are, and we feel like we have to speak a certain way or use a certain bit of language, at least our audiences do, and that somehow aligns them with their political ideologies. That's especially true in the United States, less true I believe, in other parts of the world. And so it's a tough time for communicators. It's also, I think for us, it is an exciting time because I feel always that we can be light bearers, that we can be the people that are able to communicate with just that right touch of bringing people together. And we can show people how to speak to their audiences respectfully in ways that will engage them, in ways that will not create further division. But to be clear, there are times when division's going to happen and having a PR pro on your team, having a solo PR pro is where this is super important in this day and age because PR posts can help you to be prepared and to guard against that because there's no way that any of us can just 100% avoid conflict that just doesn't exist in today's world. I'm sorry to inform you that something that you do, even when it aligns with your mission, vision, values, even when you've done the right thing, is going to anger somebody. I promise you it will. And we also cannot live our lives or run our companies trying to be free from hatred. The hatred is going to come regardless of what you do.

Michelle Kane (13:26):

That is so correct. But I love that you are always looking for the brightness and everything, and I think there are always opportunities to do better. Like you said, there are always opportunities to know better and then to do better. And if I could point our listeners to the Solo PR Pro blog, Karen has written a wonderful blog recently about hope and that we need to keep hope in our lives. We really do. So I would encourage you to read that. I just encourage you every day, just know that whatever you are feeling, especially in light of these current events, please know that you're not alone. You are never ever alone. And as communicators, the Solo PR Pro community is here for you. We are here for you. Please reach out to us at soloprpro.com. We really cherish every one of you. And until next time, thanks for joining us for That Solo Life.