CorpComms Magazine

Your star employee is fired after a string of colourful drug and sex scandals but sues the company for $100m alleging wrongful dismissal and embarks on a 20-date tour dubbed the 'Violent Torpedo of Truth'.

Your long-admired creative genius ostracises his industry and is forced to resign after issuing a tirade of anti-Semitic insults in a Parisian bar.

Or your national leader is commonly accepted to be delusional and suffering from mental illness after declaring that all his citizens would die to protect him whilst ordering troops to fire on them.

Take your pick. As communicators' nightmares go, the very public meltdowns of Charlie Sheen, the former star of Warner Brothers' sitcom Two and a Half Men, former Christian Dior head designer John Galliano and Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi should be x-rated, save for the thought that this could not possibly happen to their own paymasters.

Couldn't it? Sadly, there is no shortage of other examples, from the furore over the friendship of UK trade envoy Prince Andrew with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to the 2007 resignation of former BP chief executive Lord Browne after admitting he lied in court over a relationship with a former male escort.

So how should communicators cope when the nightmare becomes a reality for their boss or figurehead? What can they do to mitigate the crisis and salvage the reputations of their organisations?

It is a bit like the old joke about asking someone for travel directions and being advised not to start from your present location.

Identifying the warning signs

However, Warwick Partington, managing director of leadership and management communication skills coaching firm MTM Communication Skills Training, believes there are definitely actions that can be taken to prevent or at least mitigate future implosions.

The first, he says, is to recognise the signs. 'When personalities are under severe stress, not only do they become increasingly less productive, as pressure builds even further, they eventually pass into an internal panic,' he says. 'Their personality may suddenly switch to exhibit almost the opposite traits of what they would normally do.

'Someone who one might associate with being very neat, smartly dressed and well-ordered may, when under severe stress, switch and suddenly turn up to work very casually dressed and exhibit a very laid-back style of social interaction. Normally caring people may suddenly snap and shout and bully.'

He says some highly pressurised industries, such as banking, are generally good at training young managers to watch each other for symptoms.

However, such mechanisms and human resources support may not exist in more creative industries, where flamboyant, artistic or prima donna behaviour is tolerated as the norm.

Nonetheless, spotting the signs is only the start. 'One of the issues is that people very rarely have

sudden meltdowns,' comments Deborah Saw, managing director of financial public relations agency Citigate Dewe Rogerson. 'People around them tend to see the signs coming. The key is knowing when to intervene. When you see that even a very creative person's behaviour is more eccentric than usual, you have to be able to confront that behaviour.'

That may involve organising time off, special support or close liaison with their fellow directors. Saw says it should also focus minds on a succession strategy, which should be in place in any case.

'What you say depends on whether you are hoping the person will come back or not,' she says. 'Internally, you have to do without this larger-than-life figure and let everyone know that it's still business as usual.

'You have to move really fast. You tend to find that internally more people than you think know when there is eccentric behaviour. You usually find that the jungle telephone has been beating for some time.

'Externally, it's difficult because a lot of time and effort has gone into building the reputation of an individual but all companies have to be aware that when they build a star culture there cannot be just one star. There needs to be a continuing line of stars so there's someone to take over.'

Ideally, this should be built into the fabric of a company and the way it communicates, she says, suggesting Dyson as an example of a company that is commonly accepted to be the work of several key designers, rather than simply its eponymous founder Sir James.

Conversely, accentuating the importance of the team when a figurehead implodes is a good way to begin to start changing a culture from that of a fallen star.

Christian Dior, for example, sent its design team down the catwalk together at the end of its first show after the initial suspension of Galliano, who previously took that star turn alone.

'Dior handled it really well,' comments Rod Cartwright, managing director of corporate and public affairs for public relations agency Ketchum Pleon in London. 'They came out with all guns blazing. The continuity within the business and its design team was what was lauded. It was a really nice touch.

'The point is that reputations are not limited to a single person even if we are gravitating to a cult of the celebrity chief executive. A brand has to be more than just an individual. The brand has to be core. Otherwise, you are letting people focus on the wrong thing.'

Weathering the storm

In the corporate arena where leaders are usually more sober figures, meltdowns tend to be more about what they say in unguarded moments than any scandalous actions, though the resignation of former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd last year amid expense account allegations is an obvious recent exception.

More common are foot-in-mouth gaffes, such as former BP chief executive Tony Hayward's comment after last year's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster that he would like his life back and Gerald Ratner's infamous 1991 remark that a decanter sold at his eponymous jewellery retail chain was 'total crap'.

When they occur, however, it's a case of unwise words speaking just as loud as foolish actions.

The problem, according to Mark Hutcheon, associate director at international reputation management consultancy Reputation Inc, is that in such instances, the chief executive becomes the story.

'When there's a meltdown, you have to move the story on as quickly as you possibly can,' he says. 'That's very hard.' It normally means the figurehead who has precipitated or worsened the crisis has to be sacrificed, says Charlie Methven, managing director of corporate, City and political communications consultants, New Century Media.

'When the top guy loses the plot and stops behaving rationally, it is almost impossible to do anything very constructive,' he says.

In such circumstances, he believes the best that can often be achieved is eliciting sympathy for the fallen figure by emphasising the immense pressure he or she is under and how much the comments or incidents are outside their normal character.

'Then you've got to get people off the turf as quickly as possible. Sometimes it's a case of booking the flights and advising them to get themselves out as soon as they can,' he says. 'You have to communicate internally as well as externally that things are fine. Remember that people working for companies in these situations become very fearful very quickly. They fear for their jobs, their mortgages and their families. You have to convince everyone that it's in their interests to remain calm.'

Thereafter, loyalties tend to focus on the entity paying everyone's salaries and the crisis management consultancy's fees but even then it is difficult to move forward if there is not a well-formulated plan of action.

'It's all about succession planning and crisis communications,' stresses Ross Gow, founder of reputation management public relations consultancy Acuity Reputation. 'You have to have a plan. It's basically about stability. Get the investors behind you and the employees pulling together so everyone can see the crisis is being managed. And if you're publicly-quoted, do all this very quickly before jitters hit the stock market.'

Communicate calmly

Amidst this need for speed, however, there's an even greater need, which is for the right messages to accompany the correct corporate actions in the most appropriate language and tone.

This doesn't naturally occur with an adrenaline rush so Fiona Noble, vice-chairman of public relations firm Weber Shandwick, advises communicators to take a breather before going into battle. 'There's always pressure to respond immediately but you can still take time to stop and think, even in today's 24/7 media culture,' she says. 'It might just mean 15 minutes but take them to be calm before entering the eye of the storm. Understand what the facts are. Then take your position and get your messages out.'

It is still a high-risk game that most communicators would rather never play and Partington's view is that they should not have to if they plan how to support their highest-profile and most creative leaders through high-pressure situations in the goldfish bowl of fame.

If they fail in this, however, double trouble beckons. 'Unless companies properly analyse what went wrong and why and learn from the events, putting in place proper training, they risk continuing the cycle with their next leader.'

The wisdom of Charlie Sheen

• 'If you borrowed my brain for five seconds, you'd be like Dude! Can't handle it, unplug this bastard! It fires in a way that's maybe not from, uh... this terrestrial realm'
• 'I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars'
• 'You have the right to kill me, but you do not have the right to judge me. Boom. That's the whole movie. That's life'
• 'I'm not Thomas Jefferson. He was a pussy'
• 'Fastball; this just in, Thomas Jefferson comes forward to sheepishly admit, Sheen's right. I am a pussy.
• 'The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them look like droopy-eyed armless children'
• 'I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words - imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists'
• 'C'mon bro, I won best picture at 20. I wasn't even trying. I wasn't even warm'
• 'I am on a drug, it's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body'
• 'I will not believe that if I do something then I have to follow a certain path because it was written for normal people. People who aren't special. People who don't have tiger blood and Adonis DNA'
• 'I'm sorry man, I got magic and I've got poetry in my fingertips, you know, most of the time, and this includes naps'
• 'The title of my book has finally been delivered thru vast and extensive Lunar channels. Apocalypse Me Warlock Latin for WINNING'

Source: @charliesheen, which has almost three million followers

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