Executive education in crisis media training and crisis communications prepares top managers to communicate effectively to their staffs and media public relations during crisis training situations.

When Martin Stoller asked an executive education corporate crisis management class how many course attendees served on their companies' crisis communication training seminars, not one hand was raised. Mr. Stoller, who teaches a workshop and seminar in school crisis management at Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg School and is himself a former crisis PR manager, calls this 'corporate reputation denial.'

Most executives don't want to study something they may never use, so they don't learn or understand corporate crisis management until it's too late - when they're in the thick of a crisis. Or so says Mr. Stoller, who devotes two full days in his workshops and seminars to crisis communications, a subject most companies spend much less time on.

Such crisis management training courses transcends crisis media public relations, moving into the realm of what he calls 'basic tools of persuasion': how to project character, make an argument and use language that has meaning and hasn't been watered down into corporate-speak. Nor do these skills come into play only in extreme, public situation like the Exxon Valdez spill, Dow Chemical's Bhopal explosion or Tylenol packages that had been tampered with. Barrings Plc.

Executives had to confront a crisis management situation that was ultimately much more damaging to the company’s corporate reputation; and there are smaller such fires every day in large corporations.

A crisis management plan is one of those things that people don't know they need until they need it.

Managers need training on how to understand and work with the media and, above all, how to provide information. Says Dick Kwartler, publisher of the MBA Newsletter: "As we move into the so-called Information Age, a lot of corporations are providing less and less information." he says. "They're obsessed with confidentiality when it’s unnecessary."

In a crisis, instead of getting out the corporation's side of the story, unprepared executives may come across as stonewalling the public. Susan Lowance, director of MIT's Sloane School Continuing Education, knows that the subject of corporate crisis management was being given more prominence by at least some forward-looking companies when she was invited to help the Boeing Corporation formulate classes on 'Crew Crisis PR Management' - a cooperative-sounding name for crisis management - for its Center for learning seminars and workshops in Seattle.

"That was an indication that we should be paying attention to corporate crisis management ," Ms. Lowance says. Appropriately, the airplane manufacturer took the pressure of a cockpit as the dominant metaphor for the decision-making process in a corporate environment. Sloane's crisis management course, entitled 'Situational Strategic Planning', gives managers the tools they need to communicate effectively in crisis PR situations.

"Whether it is managing change or a dramatic announcement or responding to an environmental crisis, we build it into the crisis communication course," says Ms. Lowance.

The Syracuse University School of Management is able to use the public relations faculty at its sister school, the Newhouse School of Communications to teach a corporate crisis management course included in its MBA Upgrade Crisis PR program. For most schools, however, the corporate crisis management subject remains on the periphery of management courses as now offered. "It's not a big deal," comments the University of Maryland's Howard Frank. "Our executive education deals with updating crisis communications courses and crisis PR information management." As Robert Mittlestaedt, director of executive education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, puts it: "It's one of those things that people don't know they need until they need it."

Even so, he adds: "I've never seen the market for a separate stand-alone crisis management course. It's like selling a course in ethics. No one signs up."

Source: Reprinted from the International Herald Tribune, 23 March 99

Related: Crisis Training