In the world of public relations, crisis communications firms are tasked with doing the dirty work: When clients get roped into a public scandal or say something remarkably dumb ― which happens a lot on social media ― these PR pros are the ones responsible for helping the person save face and keep their jobs and endorsement deals. Given their line of work, we figured they must be pretty adept at handling their own occasional verbal fumble, so we decided to ask about what they personally do when they say something embarrassing. Unsurprisingly, they had some great advice.
Read it below. Get in front of it. Evan Nierman is the founder and CEO of the global PR firm Red Banyan .
It rarely happens, but when he does put his foot in his mouth or make a mistake, he knows the fastest way to recover from it is to own it immediately: Not tomorrow, not next week, but right after the dumb words fall out of his mouth. “What you want to do is acknowledge your errors, be accountable, correct any misinformation and steer the conversation back into the realm of the positive,” he told HuffPost. Timing is everything, Nierman said.
“The quicker you address a controversy, the faster you can move on and make material changes in your behavior moving forward.” Don’t don’t dwell on the subject once you’ve corrected yourself. The most important thing to remember when you misspeak is not to make things worse: If you called your new coworker Rhonda “Sharon,” the name of your other co.