315. How to Handle Crisis in the Workplace, with Andrew Blotky, Facebook's first Director of Global Internal Communications

0:00When some of the world's best known brands hit a very public crisis, like a scandal or a mass layoff or a product recall, somebody has to decide what that company says in the next hour, not in the next week. Our guest today is that person. Andrew Blotky started his career working in US politics, both doing media relations and as a press spokesperson for members of Congress. He then went on to build and run the Crisis Playbook from inside Facebook, as well as Johnson & Johnson. He's coached leaders through COVID, racial justice reckonings, and more recently, the AI layoffs dominating headlines right now.

0:35And he says most leaders make the exact same mistake when trying to handle public crisis.

0:40Andrew Blotky:A lot of times people sort of go into bunker mode. And the reality is we all live in a world where people, their BS meters are pretty high. They're pretty sensitive to like fake information. They can tell when somebody's lying and not being direct with them. And so what we don't want to do is in any way feel like we're obfuscating or being dishonest. That one line explains why so many layoffs, AI-driven or otherwise, land so badly. Today we're asking, what if silence, not honesty, is the real crisis? Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture.

1:17Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Our guest today is Andrew Blocky, a leadership coach, consultant and author of Honestly Speaking. Oh, and he teaches yoga and meditation, which turns out to matter more than you'd think when you're the one holding the room together while everything's on fire. His take is refreshingly simple. It's not about having the perfect words. It's about doing the work on your values before the crisis ever hits.

1:51So after this short break, we'll join Leanne and Andrew, and by the end of it, you'll finally know exactly what to do the next time a crisis lands on your desk. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it.

2:27Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:36Andrew Blotky:So I started my career working in US politics, both doing media relations and being a press spokesperson for members of Congress and then spent time working in-house that it was then Facebook. It's now Meta. I built and led the employee communications function there globally. Loved my time there. And then I've also spent time running employee communications and HR communications at Johnson & Johnson for a couple of years. And I currently now run my own consulting business. I wrote a book a few years ago called Honestly Speaking, How the Way We Communicate Transforms Leadership, Love and Life, meant to sort of really pull together some sort of stories and lessons around how we all can communicate in a more authentic way in all parts of our life.

3:25Andrew Blotky:Happy to talk about that. And in another part of my life, I'm a longtime student and teacher of yoga and meditation. Which I'd imagine is very important to feel grounded and centered when you're in this this type of work and I mean crisis is is a is a broad term and I think particularly more recently there's I don't know if we've been maybe more normalized to or numb to it because there's so much going on um but I guess I want to I would love to start by understanding if there's any common threads in terms of how good leaders manage a crisis or is it completely different every time. You know, I really think you're so spot on, which like we just seem to be living from one crisis to another.

4:11Andrew Blotky:And things that maybe aren't even a real legitimate crisis for some people, people still operate as though it were a crisis no matter what. So I think that your question around leadership is so important. And I think that, you know, the really the best leaders that I've worked with and the ones that I sort of advise have a balance of sort of humanity and there's a human sort of really emotional aspect to how they show up. And then they've also planned for, and there's a very thoughtful way of approaching a crisis. So I'm happy to talk about both, but, you know, I think finding the grounding and finding the connection and the humanness, especially if you're a leader of an organization is really important as is making sure that you have plans and a process in place so that when the crisis comes up, you can walk through it and manage it in as sort of rational and clear and sort of really responsible way as possible.

5:06Andrew Blotky:I see leaders who get into trouble when they don't have one or two of those things. Can you talk us through then in terms of if there's a starting point, say a crisis hit, somebody comes and says, this is happening, we need to tell somebody, everybody, what's the kind of the first step of that management process? So I think that one of the things that you want to think about is what type of crisis is it? Because that will help guide you in terms of how you communicate and how you react. So is it sort of a earth type crisis, like a hurricane or something that's sort of a, you know, out of our control, or is it sort of a man-made crisis?

5:44Andrew Blotky:And if it's a man-made crisis, then maybe there's some sort of more delicate or political sort of issue that you need to navigate through. And then you want to sort of think about, okay, hey, where did it happen? Who is affected? Who might we need to talk to? And I think a lot of times leaders will get into trouble when they don't speak early. So even if you don't have full information, even if you don't know everything, even if you don't have your plan set, it's still better for people to hear from you as a leader. This is what we know. This is what we're doing. We will come back to you by X time.

6:17Andrew Blotky:I think when leaders get into trouble is when they sort of just go into like bunker mode mentality. especially if it's a crisis that's man-made, but that maybe is of the corporation or the company's doing. So for example, maybe they would need to admit wrongdoing or some mistake or error or something. A lot of times people sort of go into bunker mode. And the reality is we all live in a world where people, their BS meters are pretty high. They're pretty sensitive to like fake information. They can tell when somebody's lying and not being direct with them. We all carry devices around that show us, you know, people can get information very quickly.

6:55Andrew Blotky:And so what we don't want to do is in any way feel like we're obfuscating or being dishonest. So really, the first step is assess what did you do? What is the situation? Is it something that's in our control to change, that's out of our control to change? Because that'll help guide you what direction to go. And then how can I speak in a way that is sort of honest and grounded, even if I don't have full information or all the answers where's the line between responding in the moment in a way that doesn't cause more fear or panic or backlash and taking time to set a plan um just to to share why there might sometimes be backlash um it's more than just do people like it or do they not but it's in the absence of information or in the absence of a statement people will impute their own story.

7:46Andrew Blotky:They will create a narrative. It's how the human mind works. We're very good at storytelling, storymaking. We develop narratives in our mind. So in the absence of it, people will come to their own conclusions. And so as a leader, I want to be in the place of, I want to try to guide and control to the extent that I can, what people will think about me or my political party or my organization more than letting other people do it. Because how they come to, what conclusion they come to may actually not be accurate. It may not be what I want them to come to. So that's why we want to be out there a little bit sooner.

8:18Andrew Blotky:And it also is the kind of thing that people just want to hear from you. So this is why when you're not in a crisis, it's really important to do some of the work of what do we do when there is a crisis? What are the criteria that we think about? Or what are the values that we stand for? The companies, political parties all come back to what do we stand for? What are our values? Because those will ground you. They will tell you what the answer is when it isn't obvious what the answer should be. That's what really good values should do. So for me, you want to do the work beforehand. And when you don't, people will come to their own conclusions.

8:53Andrew Blotky:And oftentimes they're far more exaggerated or negative or critical, especially in our political world right now, than otherwise maybe they would be. I'm curious, what does honest communication actually mean when you're in a situation where you feel like things are falling apart. Because again, I'm thinking leaders are thinking when that initial conversation, I can't tell people everything either because I don't know yet or I haven't decided how to fully respond to it yet. Yeah. Well, so the honestly speaking is really about being honest with yourself. Anything that's worth communicating is worth communicating because you want someone to know something or to feel something or to do something.

9:34Andrew Blotky:And so in order to be able to tell what is my audience likely to receive? I need to kind of understand who am I talking to? Is this a bunch of people who are going to be like my supporters? Are these people who are immediately going to be skeptical of me no matter what I say? Are these people who are feeling an immense sense of disappointment? Are they people who are on my side? Try to understand the audience and try to be really honest with yourself about what is it that I want this group of people to feel or to know or do I need them to do something? And so again, we want to do some of that work of like self-reflection.

10:10Andrew Blotky:What do I stand for? What are my values? What does the company stand for? What does my political party stand for, regardless of how any particular election went? You know, we went through this. We've gone through this a lot here in the United States. It's happening a lot of different countries around the world, different, very strongly held oppositional beliefs are being challenged and being, you know, voted on left and right? And there's big swings. And so it's important to be able to state where you stand for. And when you're honest and or when you've done the work of being honest for yourself, it allows you to then know, hey, look, this election didn't turn out really well for us.

10:47Andrew Blotky:Or, hey, you know what? The company made an error. Our product didn't work. Here's what we're going to do to fix it. We assume responsibility. We're going to move forward. But it gives you those values and the sort of thinking through carefully, what do I really stand for? Who am I? What do I really trying to convey here, that really helps. The last thing I'll just say is it doesn't require an immense amount of work or time to do that. Sometimes it's a, huh, okay, I have to go give a press conference in a few minutes. I probably should speak. What is the one or two things that I really want to convey?

11:19Andrew Blotky:What really feels most true to me? And you want to surround yourself, obviously, as a leader, I work on this with my coaching clients all the time. Surround yourself with people who can be honest with you about how are they experiencing you, not just yes people, but people who will be honest with you, and then sort of think, huh, what is it that I want to say? Being honest includes saying, we haven't figured it out yet. We don't have all the answers. Here's that we can't tell you these things for these reasons. Maybe we'll never be able to tell them for a wrench of privacy or legal reasons, but here's the process that we will use to go through to come to the decision or come to the outcome.

11:56Andrew Blotky:That's honest. being super honest people will respond far better to you if you say i don't know we're going to look up the answer and we're going to figure it out hey we lost the election it wasn't good we need to clearly regroup we will run a process to do that we want to hear from people we want to get input from people but um being honest is just you know people can tell when you're not and it undermines long-term trust i really enjoyed what you were saying about knowing honest communication about knowing yourself, knowing your values, knowing what you stand for and what you want to change in the world.

12:34What percentage of leaders do you think know that ahead of going into a crisis? I would say very few, unfortunately.

12:44Andrew Blotky:And I think, you know, what we want to do is try to think out again, what's the system that this leader is operating in? So in a world of politics, for example, a leader is both representative of a party or a political movement and obviously representing her or his constituents but really it's that person it's them like they we are electing a person we're electing donald trump or barack obama or whoever and if you're a leader of a company you in some ways are less about you personally as the leader always and you're really representing the brand or the shareholders or the patients or the buyers the consumers of your product so it kind of the system that you're operating in as a leader will guide you a little bit but i think that very few leaders have actually done the work it's one of the reasons why i do the work now that i do around leadership is because it's sort of like huh what are the values that motivate you as a leader not what are your company values not what are the progressive party values but what do you stand for?

13:50Andrew Blotky:How do I show up? How do I motivate? How do I inspire people? How do I bring people along with me? How do I show hair for people and get them to believe that they should follow me when maybe they have the choice not to? It's my favorite definition as leadership is like, people will follow you when they have a choice not to. So what is it about what you're saying or doing or how you're showing up that really inspires, inspires people to want to follow you. And I'd say, unfortunately, not many have done that work from what I can see. What's the difference in practical terms compared to the leaders who haven't done that and the leaders that have done that?

14:29Is there a visible difference in terms of how successful those crisis communications are?

14:33Andrew Blotky:I think so. I think you see, you know, you use that term grounding earlier in our conversation. And I love that because I think it's really a feeling both of the speaker or the leader, but also if you and I are on the receiving end of it, you and I can tell, huh, this leader seems like they know what they're doing. They feel steady. I feel a sense of confidence because, you know, it's not just the leader who will be shaken by a crisis. The audience will be, and they're looking to this leader to have some sort of sense of steady hand on the wheel, has some sense of direction, or at least has some moral compass that they're going to use to decide where and how and what direction to move in.

15:15Andrew Blotky:So for me, I think it's like you You really can actually tell it's a felt sense. And then you also can just tell because when people don't have this kind of, you know, sense of grounding in their values or in a company's values or haven't done the preparation, you can kind of see because it'll start to seem erratic. Like maybe some leaders will start to speak pretty quickly. Maybe they won't speak at all. Maybe there'll be like cross communications that are like, you know, mixed, missed information or sort of cross messages that are confusing to people. So you start to see it when it starts to get loud and that nervous energy starts to spool up, if you will.

15:54What do you think is the one biggest mistake that a leader could make in say the first 24, 48 hours of a crisis hitting?

16:02Andrew Blotky:I would say to not speak honestly. Like, worse to speak and say the wrong thing or to say something that's not true. But it's also really not a good thing to just be totally silent, right? If you're a leader, part of your job is to bring people along with you and help them understand how to make sense of something that may seem a little bit disordered. So again, if it's a natural disaster, if there's an act of war, if there's some massive product recall to your company, whatever it is, people want to hear from their leader. They want to know, they want a sense of confidence and grounding. So as much as what you say, it's how you say it.

16:44Andrew Blotky:Again, the way that you show up the grounding, you don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to know all the five part plan of how you're going to fix it in the first 24 hours. But to not say anything and to not be visible for the reasons we talked about earlier is just people will impute their own narrative and it's a lot harder to get that back and re-correl it. Have you ever had to communicate something that you didn't personally believe in? Oh yeah. And you know, this happens a lot and I love this question because a lot of times we'll think about a leader as like a president or a prime minister or a CEO.

17:17Andrew Blotky:And really leaders are anybody who's in a position of leadership or influence over other people. So it could be a middle manager. It could be a communications director in a United States senator's office leading just the comms team within that office, for example. So leaders can be in many different places. And I think where this is really challenging is in those sort of middle management layers where maybe the company is making a decision and they're hearing it from the people above them and then they're charged with communicating it to their direct teams. oftentimes the problem isn't so much that they disagree but they don't necessarily understand the reasoning behind it i think the biggest thing that i work on with companies around this and i do a lot of consulting with companies around their employee engagement and experience around this is not every leader is always going to 100 of the time agree with 100 of the decisions a company makes that's we expect that that's fine but what problematic is when people don't trust that there was a thoughtful process or a rationale behind why a company was making a decision that it is, for example, especially if it involves maybe taking something away or changing something that people don't like.

18:31Andrew Blotky:You want to make sure that people really have a sense for, hey, you know what? Look, I don't really like the decision that Andrew made, but at least I can respect him because I think he went through a thoughtful process. He gathered input and heard the feedback from us in making that decision. It's when people feel like it's a leader who's just sort of acting sort of, it's like their fiefdom and they're acting sort of by fiat. People don't like that. And they really like when they can experience or have some sense of agency or at least involvement in the conversation. And the last thing I'll just say about this is it's important, not just in the crisis moment, But that sense of agency that employees feel is what is one of the main motivating factors for them doing their best work, wanting to stay at the organization, wanting to be contributors to the culture.

19:20Andrew Blotky:So if you're not, if you don't feel like your boss cares or the company leadership cares about you and the values, what you're saying, you've not just lost them in the crisis moment, but you've also probably lost them from being able to do their best work and be super committed. School might soon be out for summer, but Marketing School is here to stay. And it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Genuine marketing legends Neil Patel and Eric Su bring you daily actionable digital marketing lessons learned from years in the trenches. With nearly 100 million downloads, probably a million of those are from me actually, and over 2 ,500 episodes, Marketing School delivers bite-sized marketing wisdom you can implement immediately.

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20:39I feel that one of the most extreme examples we've seen recently about not giving people agency is in terms of the mass layoffs we've seen. Recently, primarily because of AI, I'm thinking of Blot and Oracle and tens of thousands of people with the reasoning being, and, you know, as you said, you know, if you can explain the decision, and we did see from Jack Dorsey, you know, an open kind of communication on on that but people are still hearing it is I'm replaceable AI is replacing me and I feel like that's different to other layoffs we've seen in terms of the people that stay in the company and how they're you know valued and how they feel about it I mean what what's your take on on the layoffs we've seen because of AI the reasoning that's been communicated publicly and as you said right at the top of our call you know holding on to that humanity aspect it feels like this is just a yeah it's an example I'd love your your insights on

21:38Andrew Blotky:yeah and you know I love this I mean I don't love the topic because it's very hard for people but I really like it because it goes to a couple of things that I think I just care a lot about so the first thing I'll just say is I've both been laid off and I've laid people off and it's that there's never a good way to do it. I've worked with lots of companies, I've advised them on how to communicate about them. And there just is not a great way to do something that's hard. So we'll just start there. I would say that, especially around some of the layoffs that people are experiencing now, it's hard when people don't really, you know, have a sense that in many industries, this is actually a normal course of business.

22:21Andrew Blotky:And so what we want to do is be having an ongoing conversation around what are the expectations around job performance, around how people progress in an organization, and around how we value people. It's sort of like we were saying with crisis earlier, the time to sort of focus on your planning is not when you're in the crisis. It's when you're not in a crisis that you want to develop your plans for what my criteria are. Same concept here. When you're not in a moment of re-orging and relaying and laying people off, that's when you want to focus on, here's what our expectations are around performance.

22:54Andrew Blotky:Here's what we want. Here's the culture that we want. Because it goes to this idea of like, yeah, it's really hard to be out of a job. But also, if you're one of the people who still has a job, your job has been changed. When other people that you've worked with are laid off, you've probably had to assume much more responsibility. You've had to take on a lot more work. And you're having to do the emotional sort of upheaval of not only, oh gee one of my best friends my work colleagues just got laid off i'm not going to see them anymore i miss that that feels empty to me but also you're wondering am i next is this going to come again when is this going to come again what do i need to do so there's an immense amount of anxiety that is created inside of organizations among the people who are left people sometimes talk about it as like survival guilt but there's really other various aspects and so for me it's about regularly talking openly about here's what the company's going here's what our plans are here's what our expectations are i'm working currently with several clients who are at companies where there have been layoffs there will continue to be layoffs and i see it personally with the clients that i work with it's very anxiety producing i think the narrative around ai is through and it is maybe a little bit oversimplified and so sometimes i'll hear this idea that people say of like oh you know ai isn't going to take away your job but it's somebody who doesn't know how to do ai is why you're going to lose your job and it's like well i think most people in the professional world at least that i tend to have experience with tend to now have some familiarity with some availability a lot of companies are not just encouraging but requiring people to use some of their ai tools for their work and to experiment so again one of the things that's most important as a leader and i took a course on this through stanford university last summer one of the main things we talked about was the importance of framing as a leader for your organization why are we doing this what do we want people to do how do we want people to experiment and where do we want to go so layoffs are never easy ai is definitely changing the ways of people working for sure um and it doesn't take away that discomfort but again it's when leaders don't communicate regularly in a sort of a compassionate way that it's problematic, not just for the people who've lost their job, but especially for the people who are left behind.

25:14Where do you find the compassion in that moment? I'm thinking kind of, you know, the big tech companies, I'm thinking about Oracle, tens of thousands of people, the official word being because we're reinvesting that in AI. And by the way, we posted record profits last quarter. Like, how do you do that compassionately when clearly it is a very cold commercial decision?