Bill Coletti is the CEO & Founder of Kith, a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management.

Bill has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both Fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns.

In this episode, we discuss what reputation management is and what it looks like when he helps companies achieve it, the four A’s of reputation management, some of the main mistakes companies make when they attempt to manage their reputation or they enter a reputation crisis, the role transparency plays in managing a reputation crisis, the three common reactions to a reputation crisis, how to help employees at every level the actions needed to obtain an organization’s desire reputation, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Bill Coletti’s Website
• Bill Coletti’s Book | Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management
• Bill Coletti on LinkedIn
• Email Bill Coletti | bcoletti@kith.co
• Fascinate Assessment

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Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today we have with us Bill Coletti who is a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal, Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management.

 

This is going to be interesting, folks.  He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns, which is interesting.  Bill is the CEO and founder of Kith.

 

Andrea:  Bill, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

 

Bill Coletti:  Andrea, it is my pleasure to be here and I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

 

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so what is Reputation Management and what does it look like when you’re actually helping companies or individuals achieve it?

 

Bill Coletti:  So, the beginning part of what we do at Kith is primarily crisis communications and crisis response.  A company finds themselves misaligned with public expectations.  And so think of United Airlines relative to the gentleman that they dragged off the plane or a credit card company or a bank that’s had a data breach, or a healthcare provider that is in the midst of litigation or some sort of lawsuit that’s there.

 

So, it’s a company that has somehow found themselves in the public eye and they’re misaligned with what the people expected them to do.  The pivot to that is reputation management is that how do you control and how do you manage this very, very intangible asset of a corporate reputation.  And we’ve introduced this concept of the 4As to allow corporations actually the ability to manage that.

 

So, we come in the door typically through crisis when companies find themselves misaligned and then we continue the relationship in this construct of, well, a “we don’t want to have to ever go through that again and how do we build a reservoir of goodwill,” or “We want to avoid that overall and never would sort of want to experience that again, but never for the first time.”  And “How do we use reputation management as a means to sort of grow the benefit of the doubt if something would to happen to us?”

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, you just mentioned your 4As, would you like to kind of go into that a little bit?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  So, there’s this concept that a lot of people may be familiar with in marketing called the 4Ps of marketing, it’s Price, Product, Place, Promotion.  It’s a pretty, you know, 1960s generation of thinking.  And so, I was sitting with a client in New York, we had just finished a crisis engagement.  They were through it and we’re now in the process of recovery after this crisis.  They had been subject to, you know, pretty withering media coverage for about 10 days and then we sort of found a solution and move forward.

 

And I was sitting with the CEO and the CEO said, “OK, I’ve heard you talk about reputation management before.  What do you mean?  What are you talking about?”   And so I tried to explain the concepts behind how we can try to get ahead of these issues that may impact our company moving forward.

 

And I was explaining it before I had developed the 4As and he said, “Oh, you mean like the 4Ps of marketing, price, product, place promotion,” because prior to that there was no such thing.  What it created was a structure for companies actually to assign resources as well as headcount to solve a marketing problem.  So you had someone responsible for price, for product, for placement and promotion.

 

And so the 4As that came out of that conversation, when I realized that most people think about the 4Ps, was to articulate this concept of what are the 4As.  And what I came up with is the structure of it begins with awareness.  Companies have to be aware of who they are, aware of their marketplace and to have a sense of sort of self-awareness much like we would to talk about in a human development context.

 

So, the first level is Awareness.  Can we pull it off?  How do we think about ourselves?  The second step is this notion of Assessment, which is asking others, both, asking your employees internally, asking stakeholders externally, asking your customers, asking regulators, and asking others that influenced your corporation.  So the first step is very much personal self-awareness, looking inside your company.  The second step is asking and having ongoing assessment of how we do and where do we stand in the context of reputation.

 

Then the third A is Authority.  And with authority is, is that once you’re self-aware and understand what your corporation has the capacity to do, you then understand what the public and your stakeholders expect of you.  You can then get authority and give yourself permission, the company permission to actually begin the process of developing reputation management initiatives.

 

And that authority certainly comes from senior leadership buy-in; it comes from asset allocation budget in order to execute it and then probably headcount in order to do that.  And so you need the authority from the organization to do it because too often CEOs and leaders that I work with sort of think about this as, “Oh yeah, yeah, that’s nice.  Let’s just write a bigger check to the United Way or let’s just write a bigger check to some organization.”

 

And so this notion of authority is you got to get buy-in from your leadership, but you also have to then make sure that you have more than buy-in, but actually budget and resources and whatnot.  And then in the model there is a hard blue line on top of those three things.  So from awareness, assessment, to authority and that hard blue line is to stop you from going to the final, the fourth A, which is Action.

 

Because too often consultants, PR firms, and myself 10 years ago would immediately run to action and say, “Well, you need to do this that’s the other thing.”  “You need to have a big sustainability program, you need to be able to talk about all the great things you’re doing for your employees.”  But if you’ve not gone through that journey and you jumped to action, and that’s why I put that a blue line separating the third step in the fourth step, is that the action is foolish.  It’s foolhardy.

 

And so, Andrea, I’m sure in the work that you do with your clients is that you’ve got folks and individuals that want to just immediately jump to action and don’t want to do the assessment.  They don’t want to be self-aware and they don’t want to give themselves permission to actually change.  And so, I think that that notion of don’t immediately jump to action, but let’s go through a little bit of a journey in order to turn the corner sort of resonate.  So, it works in a human context, but it also works in a corporate context.

 

Andrea:  Hmm, definitely.  There’s always a need for truly looking for the actual problem that’s there and finding the real solution before moving forward.  So, you said that one of the things that leaders tend to do is write a big check right away instead of really taking care of this in a sustainable kind of way.  What would be one of the biggest mistakes that you see leaders making sort of immediately when a crisis comes up?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  So two separate things, there’s in the crisis when the crisis comes up is one way a leader shows up.  And then the second way the leader shows up is actually how do they sort of develop reputation management.  And so the writing a big check is in the context of reputation management.  One of the biggest mistakes that I see companies make in a reputation management context is that this is easy, that you can get away with a tactic or a set of tactics and that could be write a big check or have an employee townhome meeting or, you know, do something that is good for the LBGTQ community or something like that.  It’s not one off, because people form opinions based on constant interaction with corporations over a long time.

 

So, the greatest challenge that I see companies take is that they’re looking for the silver bullet, the one thing that can kind of bring about that change from a reputation standpoint.  In a crisis, I think what I see, and it’s almost the polar opposite, where people tried to be too thoughtful for too long in a crisis while Rome is burning and stakeholders, the media and others are frustrated, you have to fill the vacuum with information as fast as you can.  So, there’s actually a polar opposite sort of in crisis.  You have a set of behaviors and then reputation management.  You have a set of behaviors and they’re almost at opposite ends of the perspective.

 

Andrea:  I know that one of the things that you talked about as seven levers that companies need to manage or to grow their reputations and that first one is transparency.  When it comes to that moment of crisis, some things, you know, are not going as planned.  There’s that misalignment with what people expect.  Maybe a lot of people inside or outside of the company do not understand what’s really going on, how much transparency is necessary on the front end at the very beginning to fill that vacuum?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  You know, transparency is directly related to authenticity and these are all sort of jargony buzzwords that we all sort of toss around that’s there.  And so if transparency in a crisis, it’s critical.  And transparency relates to authenticity.  So, for a preventable risk, something that has happened to accompany that there simply should be a zero tolerance support.

 

So, a meat company, a producer of ground beef or any meat and there are metal shavings in the ground beef, there should be zero tolerance for that.  That is absolutely preventable with the right amount of resources and the right amount of technology that can be avoided.  When that happens, the transparency comes in.  You simply have to apologize, fix it, and get back to normal as fast as you can.  And that’s where transparency comes in, is that “We’re sorry we made a mistake.”  “Here’s what happened.”  “Here’s what we’re doing to fix it and here’s how we’re going to get back to normal to try to earn your trust.”  And so that is very transparent.

 

That was not the typical response probably 10 to 20 years ago.  That was not the typical response.  Typical response was, “Let’s hope nobody finds out and sort of bury our head a little bit and we’ll just sort of fix the problem in a small scale way.”  “We’ll recall the product and move forward.”  I think the risk of getting kind of caught, if you will, is greater than the risk of transparency.  I think in a reputation context to people that are transparent; they gravitate to companies that are transparent, that are good to do business with, that are honest and open partners.

 

And so that’s the context of transparency.  It’s not oddly cathartic where every thought and feeling you have is broadcast on social media.  That’s not what I mean.  That’s kind of weird.  We all have kind of friends like that on Facebook.  That’s not what I’m talking about, but I’m talking about that companies do business in a way that is open and fair dealing and people are comforted by that.  While they might not be interested in it, they’re at least comforted by it.

 

Andrea:  I’m thinking of some situations that I’ve seen before where maybe a leader, I’m just taking this little step further, where there might be a leadership change at the top and people are wondering what’s going on or why, how much of that information, and it could be in a crisis situation, but how much of that information should people know, you know, employees or the public depending on how involved the public is with a particular leader.  Sometimes leaders have a very charismatic presence, so people are drawn to them and want to stick by them and that sort of thing.  How does a company deal with that sort of, I don’t know that attention, I guess, between how much do we share and how much do we not?

 

Bill Coletti:  Sure, and this is hypothetical, is it a sudden transition or is it a planned transition?

 

Andrea:  Probably sudden, yeah.

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, sudden.  So, I think we’re acutely seeing that in the context of MeToo.  I think we’ve seen a number of men particularly in leadership roles that are now no longer in leadership roles.  So it has been very, very sudden and these have been, you know, popular people, popular certainly within their small subset of their company.  But some people we’ve seen, you know, have been popular in a pop culture context.  The old adage and the old line that we’ve all seen a hundred times is that, you know, “Mr. X has decided to spend more time with his family.”  And that’s almost become kind of code for, “There’s something going on.  We don’t want to tell you about.”

 

And so I think that there are legal tensions.  We can’t call somebody out that said, “You know, Mr. X is no longer here because of these following transgressions.”  There’s disparaging clauses and there are all kinds of negotiated contracts that are there.  I think companies don’t really care or individuals, they’re curious about why this happened.  But I think what they really need to hear is from the new leader that said “What happened, happened,” but here transparently is how we are going to get better moving forward.”

 

So, sort of the People Magazine view of “Oh my gosh, what happened, give me the inside scoop?”  We’re all interested in that.  We’re all curious about it.  But I think scratching that itch is not very necessary.  I think the transparency comes in about the path forward and acknowledging that we’re in a situation of change, acknowledging it’s a change that we didn’t want to be in but it is a place that we’re going to get through and that’s where the transparency comes in.  It’s less about the voyeuristic, you know, who shot John or what happened in the events.  That open up to a litigation and legal risk, which is really unnecessary, and it’s frankly unfair to someone who’s going through a pretty bad, difficult situation to begin with.

 

Andrea:  OK, so you’ve been in the room with a number of people who are in the middle of crisis and a team dynamics.  You see these team dynamics sort of at play.  What is it like for you to walk into a room and try to assess where everybody’s at or how to meet people where they’re at, what are those team dynamics like?  What do you see when you move into a crisis situation with the leadership team?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, it’s a great question, terrific question.  So, typical engagement starts with someone from the company where their head of communications to CEO, board member of general council calls and has an initial conversation and they say, “Here’s where we are and my ears are wide open from that moment forward.”  And that usually one person, maybe two people on the call and they’re all sort of sharing their perspectives.  From then, I’m really sort of taking mental notes of how is this information getting flowed to me.  What’s missing?  What are people hiding?  What do they not want to tell?

 

And it’s usually in that first call, we’ve not really been engaged but we’re pretty close to being engaged because a lot of our business comes from referrals, where people find themselves in crisis.  They do an initial call to make sure that I’m legit and then it moves to the next meeting, which is more than likely means, I jump on a plane in that afternoon and the next morning, we all gathered together and meet as a team.

 

There is a handful of different leadership responsibilities when I walk in.  So, there’s typically somebody from legal, typically somebody from operations, someone who actually does the work of whatever the enterprise does, someone from communications and then an executive leader.  And all four of those career choices, if you decide to be a lawyer or if you decide to do business or in business operations and, actually sort of do the work versus communications versus executive.

 

So, I have a gross general perception of those types of four archetypes just based on the career choices that I’ve made is that, you know, the communicators typically are looking for the silver lining and are looking for sort of the positive constructs that are there.  I think the general council are looking at the worst case scenario, you know, “What could go wrong?”  I think the people in operations are like, “What are you worried about, this is really normal.”  “Something broke.  We’re going to fix it and, we’re going to get back to business.”  The big wild card is the CEO, the leadership team that’s there and it really depends on their leadership archetype.  You know, who are they, where do they come from?

 

I believe in the adage that the crucible of crisis doesn’t develop your leadership, it reveals it.  And so I think when we see ourselves in situations, I really, really, really quickly try to size up the CEO.  I’ve recently used, I know you’re a fan of sort of the Sally Hogshead stuff and there’s a Gallup’s StrengthFinders, while we certainly don’t have time to do any sort of, you know, an assessment in a real time situation like that is that I do try to use some sort of paradigm archetype to quickly sort people because it just sort of helps me interact with them.

Because what I did earlier in my career was I would just sort of walk in and say “I’m in charge, here’s what we’re doing, step 1, step 2, step 3.”  And that will work in a fire.  You know, if you’re in a fire, you don’t really care about the personality of the firefighter, you just want to be told what to do and how to get out safely and you want them to fight the fire.  But if it’s smoldering or not actively burning, if you will, that’s when it’s really beneficial.  And that’s where I found great benefit of sort of understanding the dynamics of the individuals in the room.

 

But there are times where you just got to go in and say, “Here’s what we’re going to do and we’ll deal with the casualties kind of afterwards.”  It’s there.  I don’t know if that directly answered your question, but as it develops, I try to look at some sort of personality traits or some sort of paradigm to help sort people because that’s really, really valuable to let me empathize.  But also, let me sort of, you know, lead with passion and cajole people into doing things that they might not necessarily want to do.

 

Andrea:  Hmm.  And I really think that when you have a voice of influence, you are trying to meet people where they are, not just trying to bring them to where you are.  And so that’s sounds to me like sort of the epitome of that, like trying to figure out where are they and how can I meet them there.  That seems very, very important.

 

Bill Coletti:  It is, but it’s time-bound.  And I would ask you as you’re imagining situations like that and the people that you serve and you’re trying to help them, it’s usually in a committee meeting as they are planning the next event and it’s a little bit slower paced as opposed to something like this.  So, I’ve got to cheat the process.  I’ve got to short circuit things in order to do that.  I’m glad to hear you say yes.  That it is different than if I’m meeting with my team to perform our quarterly task or an annual, you know, major goal that we have versus, you know, “We’ve got to get back to a reporter by 4 o’clock and I don’t even have any idea what happened.”  Those are two different paradigms.

 

Andrea:  Hmm, definitely.  Have you always been good in a crisis?  How did you know that this was, you know, your thing?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  I don’t know about always.  I always try to improve and get better at it.  I think I have had a leadership trait and I’ve always used that and from elementary and middle school and manifested itself in student government and things like that.  I sail and I enjoy sailing and they say that sailing is, you know, hours of boredom with moments of stark terror.  And I tried to stay calm in those situations, so I don’t know about always.  I think the stakes are a little bit different when you’re in sixth grade versus now.  But I don’t recall having big shifts or swings of panic or concern and my dad is amazing 95 years old and still alive.

 

You know, I’ve watched him and he has a little bit of a higher drama panic meter than I do.  So, it has been really nice to watch that and try to do the opposite of it.  Not in a disparaging way, but just try to craft myself and to craft the way I show up in a little bit of a different way than the way I’ve seen it.  So, I manifest with him in our sailing that we did as a family.

 

Andrea:  Sure.  I think there’s a little bit of that some people just kind of tend to shut down in a crisis, others really kind of dial up.  It’s almost like the spidey senses turn on and so I was just kind of curious, I assume that that’s kind of how it goes for you.

 

Bill Coletti:  Well, I would add in so typical is that third is just panic.  One is that spidey sense is awesome.  I want people in the room that are intuitive see things and have centers of influence where they can learn really well.  So, there’s the shutdown, which is, “Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever.”  And we never hear from them again, the spidey sense folks in the middle love that analogy.  But there are also folks that just chicken a little and are freaking out in every little thing and those two extremes have very little use.  And there are subcategories underneath that.  But I think you hit on something with those two and then we add the third.  But I think those are the three general ways I see people show up.

 

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  What foundational things do you think that companies should do or provide to really ensure that whatever the reputation is that they’re trying to establish, that it actually reaches the frontline employee in service or sales.  The people that are actually, you know, face to face with customers, how do you hope that reach all the way down?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, so a clear and simple articulation of mission and values.  What do we stand for as a company?  And that is most personified by the voice of the CEO.  And so, I think getting CEO voice right and then once you get it and you think you got it right repeat it over and over and over again so that that line employee simply gets it.  But more importantly, the manager of that line employee really, really gets it.  And that people are empowered for reputation management standpoint to make smart decisions not simply follow the rules that are there.

 

And so, there’s a famous marine corps general named, Krulak, and Krulak articulated the concept of the strategic corporal.  And basically what that is, is that his theory was that the frontline of the marines at the actual front have more impact on American foreign policy than any policy or strategy decision that’s made.  That frontline person shows up like a jerk that is going to have more impact on what we do.

 

So, Krulak’s law, pushing that down into the organization and the concept of the strategic corporal is, it’s one thing for the counter clerk at McDonald’s, which is the equivalent of, you know, the fighting marine on the grunt, if you will, on the very front line.  What you need is, yes, frontline is important, but what you really need is that strategic corporal or that store manager for them to really get it.  That’s what really, really critical.

 

And I don’t want to disparage the frontline because I think we’ve all been there and in that early first jobs that we’ve had, but I think the way that that gets pushed down is mission and values articulated by the leadership, by the CEO specifically, but then for that strategic corporal, that person at the second round, if you will, having them have it dialed in is sort of the best way to push it down to the organization.  It’s not a memo, a webinar, or a podcast or anything like that.  It is the embodiment of that in the individuals that are the strategic corporal at the frontline.

 

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much, Bill.  How can the listener find you?  Where should they go to find your book, Critical Moments?

 

Bill Coletti:  Awesome!  Well, kith.ceo is the website of our firm.  I’m really active on LinkedIn.  I try to publish some content weekly about crisis and reputation management on LinkedIn.  So, those are two really good places and then I’m just kind of old fashioned email, bcoletti@kith.ceo.  So, our website is the great portal to find us.  LinkedIn is a great resource and I read emails still.

 

Andrea:  Great!  And we will certainly put all of that in the show notes.  Any last words that you would want to share with leaders who are wanting to have a voice of influence in time of crisis?

 

Bill Coletti:  I think to kind of really do what you suggest, learn who you are as an individual and play your strengths.   Not everyone has to be good in a crisis because we need players in the B team, the second round.  And I don’t mean that B is less than A, but I think the important thing is that when you show up in a crisis, understand what your strengths are and understand how you react.  I think the simplest, best advice I give folks that find themselves in corporations to do this is read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and just say, “If that had happened to us, how would we react?”

 

So, if companies or if individuals do that and maybe a brown bag lunch type of thing and say, “Hey guys, if this had happened to us, here’s an article.”  “If this had happened to us, what would we do?”  Simple best actionable advice that’s there after that, get to know yourself and know how you’re going to show up because that notion of the crucible of crisis doesn’t develop your leadership, it reveals it.  And so you want to like what you see when it gets revealed.

 

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

 

Bill Coletti:  Thank you very much!