When a company is a victim of a smear campaign in the media, the reaction of some officials is too emotional and sometimes filled with anger, which leads to mistakes and officials may say things that may hurt rather than helping and aggravating the already difficult situation.

This is when we read in newspapers that a company is suddenly sued by journalists or media managers. Handling of this crisis is useless because it wastes valuable resources in activities that do nothing to help protect the corporate image which has been damaged.

When emotion prevails over the strategic vision, that is when we start making mistakes and without realizing it suddenly we find officials making statements to the press on the issues of the opponents: From this moment one is setting the agenda and must have lost control of the themes of public debate and not get carried away by emotions.

It is not recommended that the Crisis Committee is led by highly emotional people who confuse aggression with effective action. These people can not act as spokespersons for it is easy to lose control and make mistakes at every turn.

It has been repeated many times in history aggressive managers or directors conducted a series of bold moves that gave them a reaction and apparently great power and control over their adversaries. But this is temporary because of the thoughtless act and strong emotion of the enemies. Being permanently reactive, makes a company and its officials exhausted until they can no longer continue irretrievably. Instead of getting carried away by emotions, the company should hire an expert in crisis management to design and implement a risk communication strategy with a direction and heading with respect.

A communication strategy based on clear objectives or positioning is not based on emotions of anger or impulse by your manager or director, who may have better results in resolving the crisis which is well underway.

In managing a crisis situation, where the company has to act immediately, strategic thinking must prevail even over reason and emotion to take power. The essence of power is the ability to maintain the initiative, to make others react to our actions and to ensure that opponents are always on the defensive. This will enable us to always drive the agenda, thus having the power and control over issues of public debate.

In conclusion: The crisis management must be more strategic than emotional, just as we must be proactive rather than reactive.

Source: Ethan Hill link