[Leadership] Chapter 10: Leading through Effective External Relations

Leadership Communication

Chapter 10

This chapter focuses on leading through effective external relations that include developing an external relations strategy, building and maintaining a positive corporate image, working with the news media, and handling crisis communication.
Effective external relations require a sound communication strategy. You can use the communication strategy framework. With the framework in mind, you can take the following steps to create a strategy for external audiences:

1. Clarify your purpose and strategic objectives.
2. Identify your major audiences or stakeholders.
3. Create, refine, and test your major messages.
4. Select, limit, and coach your spokesperson(s).
5. Establish the most effective media or forum.
6. Determine the best timing.
7. Monitor the results.

Building and maintaining a positive corporate image require having an external relations strategy that is vigilant, vigorous, and comprehensive. It involves developing a strategy for managing the press and media, making meaningful and sincere philanthropic contributions, being actively involved in the community, obeying all of the legal and regulatory requirements of investor relations, and ensuring all external communication vehicles carry honest, clear, consistent, and meaningful message to all stakeholders.

To increase chances for favorable treatment, it is important for a company to establish a positive relationship with the media and for every senior manager to know how to work effectively with them. Any leader of an organization should know why the media are important, when to talk to them, and how to manage encounters with them.
Most companies will face a crisis so they should know how to handle with it. Although establishing positive relationships with external audiences prior to a crisis will help in all but the extreme situations, no amount of goodwill can guarantee the positive coverage that is necessary to avoid permanent damage to a company’s reputation. The following guidelines will help companies respond appropriately in most crisis situations.

1. Develop a general crisis communication plan and communicate it.
2. Once the crisis, respond quickly.
3. Make sure you have the right people ready to respond and that they all respond with the same message.
4. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
5. Do not overlook the value of the Web.
6. Revisit your crisis communication plan frequently.
7. Build in a way to monitor the coverage.
8. Perform a post crisis evaluation.

All leaders of organizations must realize that their companies’ reputations depend on their internal ethos and the perceptions of their many external stakeholders. They cannot ignore the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive reputation or the necessity of effectively managing external relations to obtain and keep it.