The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Communicating Under Fire: The Mindset to Survive Any Crisis and Emerge Stronger by Dallas Lawrence

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Communicating Under Fire: The Mindset to Survive Any Crisis and Emerge Stronger by Dallas Lawrence Amazon.com The crisis communications survival guide. Anyone who promises a “blueprint” for managing a crisis today is, frankly, lying. Blueprints might have worked in the 24/7 news cycle of the 1990s and early 2000s, but in today’s 1440 news cycle—when every minute counts—the flames of crisis fires rage too quickly for the old ways of thinking. In his over twenty year–career leading crisis communications for governments and organizations across the globe, Dallas Lawrence has seen it all. His work has taken him from the communications headquarters for the Iraq War to Yemen in an effort to avert the Yemeni Civil War, from the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facilities in Cuba to the Horn of Africa’s command center for anti-pirating activities. Lawrence has helped manage crisis responses for nuclear disasters, celebrity scandals, the Boston Marathon bombing, the collapse of Wall Street, the Boy Scout sexual assault crisis, data breaches, cancel culture, and more. The need to be prepared for the rigors of a reputational assault have never been greater, thanks to: Anyone now being capable of wielding a global platform to swing at their favorite punching bag Every news outlet circulating updates that just five years ago would never have made the editorial cut Political leaders using their bully pulpits to attack everyone, from the media to private companies and high profile individuals Communicating Under Fire provides the desperately needed mindset, strategies, and communication moves that anyone with a reputation worth defending will need when—not if—their crisis moment arrives. About the author Dallas Lawrence is a globally recognized crisis and reputation management expert who brings a unique perspective to the crisis world, having served in the highest levels of the political, government, and corporate worlds. Today, he serves as an advisor to multiple technology companies and executives, in addition to serving as an on-air contributor for Fox Business and Bloomberg TV on the changing media landscape. In his over 20-year-career leading crisis communications for governments and organizations large and small across the globe, Dallas Lawrence has seen it all. His work has taken him from the communications headquarters for the Iraq War to Yemen in an effort to avert the Yemini Civil War, to the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facilities in Cuba, and to The Horn of Africa’s command center for anti-pirating activities. Lawrence has helped manage crisis responses for nuclear disasters, celebrity scandals, the Boston terror bombing, the collapse of Wall Street, the Boy Scout sexual assault crisis, data breaches, and cancel culture. He has served as the chief communications officer for two of the fastest growing technology companies in the world and as the chief global digital strategist for the world’s largest public relations agency. He has shaped the highest profile PR battles in the media and entertainment space for Roku and helped to define the future of crisis engagement in the new streaming landscape. During more than a decade spent in Washington, DC, Lawrence served in the executive branch of government as a member of President Bush’s communications team as the director of Public Liaison for the United States Department of Defense for Secretaries Rumsfeld and Gates. He accepted a further assignment from the President in 2004 to Baghdad, Iraq where he served as a White House spokesperson for the US Ambassador and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Lawrence was previously a commissioned public affairs officer in the United States Navy with service aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, the USS Nebraska. As a Naval officer, Dallas helped lead the crisis communications component of the War Games capstone exercises for the Unite...

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Voss Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, ladies and gentlemen. I'm so glad I don't have to sing that line. Did it for the first 14 years, and then we turned over to automation.

Anyway, guys, we had an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his hot new book that just came out of the presses in October 2024, 22nd of October. We should mention as well, because otherwise people will write me 10 years from now on YouTube and be like, it's not a new book. It's been out 10 years, dummy. So don't do that. It is called Communicating Under Fire, The Mindset to Survive Any Crisis and Emerge Stronger. Dallas Lawrence joins us on the show, so we'll be talking to him.

In the meantime, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfuss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfuss, chrisfuss1, the TikTok, and all those crazy place on the internet dallas lawrence is a globally recognized crisis reputation management expert who brings a unique perspective to the crisis world having served in the highest levels of political government and corporate world today he serves as advisor to multiple technology companies and executives in addition to serving as an on-air contributor for Fox Business and Bloomberg TV on the changing media landscape. Welcome to the show, Dallas. How are you?

Great to be here. Great to have you as well. Give us your dot coms, any places on the internet you want people to maybe get to know you better? Yeah, right now, we're all about the new books. So Communicating Under Fire, you can get it on Amazon, anywhere you buy a book, Barnes & Noble, your favorite bookseller is anywhere you go. But Amazon.com is the best place to go right now. Give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside the new book?

So the basic thesis of the book, and the book was really written for anyone with a reputation worth defending, whether it's your personal reputation, your company reputation, from the local school board leader to the CEO, to the military officer on down, recognizing one fundamental truth. And this is the fundamental goal of the entire book, that it's simply a matter of when, not if your crisis moment will happen. And today's crisis fueled, you know, drive by media scenario, it really is a matter of when, not if. And what the book really dives into is it says, we've changed from that 24-7 media environment to one that I call the 1440 media environment. And that's how many minutes are in a day.

There's 1,440 minutes. And every single one of those, there is an opportunity for a crisis to come your way because the media is so starved for content that things that never before would have made the cutting room to on-air are making it straight into the media and straight into homes around the world. So it's to be prepared for when,

not if. And we walk through in the book, the best things you need to do during your peacetime, quoting the great Machiavelli, use your peacetime wisely, how you prepare to make sure before your crisis occurs, what you do when it hits the fan, and then what you do to emerge out of that potentially even stronger. Definitely. I mean, you're right. As a CEO, you've got to be prepared for this. You know, social media, I think, is an accelerant for some of the things you talked about, you know, media. If it bleeds, it leads sort of thing. If they can throw somebody on the funeral pyre to, you know, light stuff up, they will. You know, it's just one of those things. I mean, they're competing with so much other media content that's out there the kardashians yep and but you know there's a lot

of social media faux pas and gaffes that people can do you know there's been stories i think one of the famous ones was she i think she was a pr agent and she wrote something that was kind of racist or it was something about about South Africa that was awful. She got on the plane. Yes. She blew something off. She didn't have a big following. She didn't think it would make any sort of impact.

And she woke up with her out of a job and her phone blowing up and all sorts of stuff. And so you just never know where it can come from. I've made a social media post. Or maybe I wasn't clear on what I was stating. And people jump your shit. and then they'll share it. And then suddenly the whole world said, hey, dummy. Fortunately, I've never had that quite happen yet, but there's still time. It's funny that you mention that because I actually have a chapter in my book on cancel culture.

And the individual that you talk about is in the book. And she is kind of patient zero for the era and rise of cancel culture where you had an individual who she made a very insensitive joke about being white so of course she won't get aids when she went to africa that was her that was her line that she put on twitter before she boarded a 14-hour flight by the time she had landed, literally an entire global mob was hunting her down. People had tracked her flight, recognized where she was going to be landing. They had already contacted her employer, a major marketing agency, asking them for a comment. And they had sent sleuths to the airport where she was landing to get video of her preparing to land. And the gross part about the whole thing and why it really is patient zero for cancel culture is it identified that folks weren't there to,

people who were commenting online weren't commenting online outraged at her commentary or offended by it. There was almost a gleeful bloodlust to take the individual down and to mobilize a mob to destroy her. And it was a pretty powerful and profound moment. And it taught us a lot about the changing landscape today. A lot about, you know, you mentioned that social media could be an instigator.

And the book, I use the fire analogy a lot, that every crisis is like a fire in that no two burn the same, but there's a science to them and how they burn. And we see social media playing three roles. The first is actually an instigator role that you talked about where it caused the crisis. Or had it not been for social media, the crisis never would have happened. The second that we see far more often is the accelerant, where it's the fuel that's thrown on a small crisis that would have stayed in a small town or country or a small office and now makes this massive issue that we're having to deal with and the third is the most important it's the least talked about and that's the extinguisher how do you use social and digital

tools today to put the crisis fires out and emerge stronger but yeah you're absolutely right in this day and age i love that you remember the the the genesis story of the cancel. Patient zero. I like that. Yeah, I mean, it almost seems like we have an unruly mob of people that are very angry and not happy in life, and we're just moving from one crisis to another. They're almost like a mob with pitchforks and flames, whatever they're called. Yeah, torches. And they're just torches, and they're just wandering the city

trying to figure out which place to burn down next. That's exactly right. And what you're seeing is that, one, there's organization behind it. Many of these groups do it for fundraising. So if they could be seen as taking somebody down, they can then pivot that and raise money from other interest groups. So this isn't just organic. There actually are professional outrage machines out there that are organized to take down cause

X or cause Y or individual A or B of the day. And that's the difference, right? So 20 years ago, you would be, most of these people would be stuck on a Skittles and Red Bulls high in their parents' basement, not able to get out, you know themselves. Now they have a medium they can reach into every home. As we saw with the presidential election, it wasn't ABC, NBC, and CBS, and Fox, and the Wall Street Journal that was the most trusted news sources. It was Joe Rogan. No discredit to Joe Rogan. This is actually a compliment to him. He's built a network outside of the mainstream media. And that's what all these outrage groups have managed to do. That's able to get their story amplified so quickly. And it's almost like they're fighting over who can create the most outrage. You know, you've got both sides of the political spectrum and it's a fight over who can,

what's that line that they use, who can basically rue the day, you know can rule it's a fight over who can get the loudest voice for that day or that week or whatever that project or you know whatever we're arguing about this week and so you help people with the book you help them understand how to navigate these prepare for them you know we've had people like yourself on the show before and like you communicated at the beginning you know preparing you you have to prepare for it you got to know what to do when it happens instead of just flying blind and thinking well you know we'll figure it out when it happens because when the world's on fire it's a little it's a little hard to decide how do we put this out again yeah you

know it's interesting there's a reason why the the subtext of the book, the subtitle is the mindset to survive any crisis and emerge stronger because, because it's, you know, if, if someone says, I've got a list of the 20 things I have to do, you know, that's not going to prepare you for, to have the, the, the mental, emotional, and kind of reflexive needs to know how to react in those crisis moments. You know, as I said at the beginning, when you embrace the mindset that it's a matter of when your crisis is gonna occur, you completely change how you plan for it. Because most humans plan to avoid a crisis.

They put all their effort into, how do we make sure we never have one? How do we have all the protocols in place to ensure we never have a crisis? They don't then take the next step to say, let's assume we're gonna have one. And in our peacetime, what are the 10 things we would like to have if our crisis moment

occurred? And the book goes through, the first half of the entire book is broken up into what do you do before your crisis moment occurs? How do you identify your saints, saviors, and sinners out there? Those who are likely to come to your defense, those who maybe don't know you yet and could be won over, and those who are absolutely against you. How do you understand who the loudest voices are? You said something that was very spot on, and that is that not all voices in a crisis are the same. Some are actually the ones leading the charge that all the lemmings are following, and others are just

blindly picking up the pitchfork and chasing. You don't need to worry about those folks. They can't turn a crowd, and they also can't stop the crisis. So how do you understand who those key voices are? How do you understand how to train your employees in your workforce to be crisis ready? One of my most profound experiences and memories to this day was I was in South America working for a large oil and gas client. And we went in to do a huge crisis drill. And this is a client that has crises quite regularly and they're the oil and gas business. And I saw the general counsel hand his business card to the head of communications at the company. This is the first time they've ever met each other at their crisis drill.

And I said, this is a problem. You guys should know each other and should be well associated with one another. So that's really kind of the key mindset. Once you've embraced that mindset, that it's a matter of when, then you start shifting what being prepared means. Being prepared means it's going to happen. What are the key things I need to have at my disposal? And then you move over to the second phase, which is, okay, it's hit the fan.

How do I deploy all those things that I put in place? Yeah. And having them placed and ready to go. I mean, it's just battle. But yeah, it's interesting to me how people go looking for these things and jumping on them. You know, we saw, we saw that a lot with me too, where initially, you know, I would say that there were some things that need to be corrected. Maybe, you know, everybody knew about the red couch or the red couch, the casting couch in Hollywood.

I used to own a modeling and acting agency in the nineties or the early two thousands. Everybody knew about the casting couches. And so, you know there were some things that need to be corrected there but it kind of became a thing where you started to see parts of the mob just looking for a way to be a part of it as to get a financial gain from it or some sort of leg up you know and it became so fevered and mob fever i guess you could call it that you know i think one of the last things that kind of broke It was when you know people started attacking. I had a bad date. So I must have got me too

This way. I don't think this is what the original contents of this was, you know, woke ism started out, you know As something it was important. It came from what black people struggled But then then it kind of got all hijacked and messed up and turned into all sorts of other things to a point you're just like i think i think we've you know but the mob just it just goes you know kind of it's been really interesting to me see the corner on this vigilante murderer who killed the health and the health executive health insurance executive it's friday the brain's gone and to see people celebrating the murder of someone with an opposing idea in what used to be a healthy culture of ideas and we could have discussions about things

i mean to see the mob take that and run with it it's really discerning to me you know because if you study history and how these things work this isn't a good turn when we we go when we turn to violence to reconcile what we should be debating and discussing it doesn't end well for anybody the people who roll out the guillotine are the ones who end up eventually on the guillotine. Yeah, and it actually speaks to the broader topic that we're talking about, and that is that in today's interconnected world,

you can find your tribe, no matter how demented they might be, anywhere, and find a group of folks who are like-minded and mobilize against a like-minded target. And that used to be a lot harder to do. It used to have to be more in the mainstream. It had to be more in the daylight. The benefit, however, for those who have a reputation worth defending, is almost all of that is still happening in broad daylight. They're just using social tools.

So if you're paying attention to it, one of my favorite examples was I was working for a large hotel chain, and we knew we were about to have a massive union strike coming against us to protest labor negotiations. They just didn't know when and where it was going to happen. And we looked online and we discovered they were using an online organizational tool that had a calendar that said exactly what time you're supposed to meet at the bus, who was bringing the coffee, who had the donuts, what the shift schedule was, what hotel they were going to be at and what quarter. It was organized. Yeah. So they were very organized, but they were doing it in broad daylight. And so that's the other side of this coin. While they have all this technology to be more connected in ways they've

ever been before, it's equally easy to kind of take down that technology and recognize what's happening if you're out there and actively listening. You know, I think the heartbreaking thing about the CEO issue is I dealt with something similar back in the financial crisis 15 years ago. We had bus tours going out. If you recall, if you go back in the time machine, bus tours looking and tracking down the home addresses of the CEOs of Wall Street to try to kill them. They called it the Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous Tour. And they had postings where they would take pictures of kids at their school saying, this is so-and-so's kid, this is a school he goes to. And with just some basic good crisis communications and messaging skills,

we were able to identify how they were finding that out. All of these CEOs in this example had given political contributions. And when you give a political contribution, you list your home address and it's listed on a public file. So they quickly identified that every single one of their executives was exposed by their home addresses. So we're seeing some of that kind of realization again today. The story of the healthcare CEO is heartbreaking, because if you actually look at his life, this was a guy who came from nothing, he built himself up, this is not a billionaire, he was born of the money is the American dream. He was it was a so it's I mean, any any American dream. So any death is a sad one. But how this has been so spun to not actually recognize and value his life story is heartbreaking.

And the battle of, you know, it's kind of become a joke on social media that like, oh, this week everyone's a health insurance executive professional. And last week, I don't know what last week's thing was. I mean, it's just everything is on fire nowadays. So it's just one burn. Everyone's an expert. Everyone's an expert this week of whatever's on the viral. And the challenge, when I talk about that 1440 news cycle,

where every minute of the day has to be filled, because the real experts aren't leaning in to feed that beast, a vacuum is created. So you have this need for both the mainstream media, social media, and others to have constant updates every few minutes. And when they don't get it, they turn to less reputable sources. And that's when the bad things happen. That's when you start to see the misinformation spread. That's when you start to see really damaging effects happen to a brand or reputation, because you've assumed you've told

your story and you've gone back to your office to try to put out the fire and you've assumed everyone else has kind of kind of moved on but they haven't they're taking the story and going in their own different direction yeah and then and then you're trying to contain it and it's you know like you said it's spreading and taking on new different legs you know and you know suddenly they're accusing you of i don't know murdering people in the 13th century and you're like we what the fuck you know, and, you know, suddenly they're accusing you of, I don't know, murdering people in the 13th century. And you're like, what the fuck? You know, I mean, you never know where conspiracy theories are going to get. I think Tom Nichols wrote a great book, The Death of Expertise.

And like you say, how we, you know, we move where we don't trust scientists, you know, but we'll trust the quack down the block who, I don't know, she decided that, you know, coil we'll trust the quack down the block who, I don't know, she decided that, you know, coil silver is, is a great for animals. And, but you know, she has a really shiny bum. Just wrote that joke. Sorry. I'm caught up on the shiny bum part. So you help people do this. You help them go through this crisis. How long have you been in the business doing the crisis management? I started working for the president of the United States 25 years ago this month. I served him for six and a half years and then had so much fun doing that. I decided to go into professionally as a corporate crisis counselor.

So I did work for the two largest corporate crisis communications firms where I, you know, it's a unique job where the client at the end of the day says, thank you so much. I'm grateful. I hope I never see you again. Because you've just managed the most painful moment of their lives. It also gives you a front seat. I mean, I've been, you know, the book, what's kind of unique about the book's approach is I break down each kind of key lesson. There's 23 or 24 key lessons in the book. And each one's based on a story. So I helped manage the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. There's a story there.

I was brought into the Boston terror bombing. There's a story there. I've managed product recalls for some of the largest companies in the world. Each of those have stories. I've had celebrity clients where we've managed through the crisis and the cancel culture world. And each of those has a nugget or a story that comes out of it. So it's really designed to

be a fun read, believe it or not, around crisis communication. So it's like a mini vignette, each one that comes through. But at the end of the day, where it comes from is when I left politics and I left the crisis communications corporate world full time, I moved to California and was asked by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School to come create their graduate course in crisis communications, which I was thrilled to do. And I went out there and I said, I had to build the book list for my students. And I was shocked that I couldn't find a single book that was any good. They were all terrible. There was how to write a press release, how to write a tweet. These are not useful things in a crisis. And it was then

that I said, I'm going to write the book that anybody could pick up and not need to hire someone for $900 an hour, which is the billing rate of a crisis counselor when the building's on fire. I'm in the wrong business. I know. That's why I said they say thank you, but never come again for a reason. That's what the goal of the book is, to give you kind of that crisis counselor in your pocket mindset so that you know how to operate when it happens that that crisis counselor in your pocket mindset so you know how to operate when it happens i just put in president 25 years ago was it bill clinton no george w bush george w bush yeah you helped you know the the one problem with the george w

was you know dodging those shoes getting thrown them all the time in iraq and problem he was excellent that you gotta watch that video again yeah he was i should say yeah he's in the middle of i think he was in iraq but he literally dot you see him just do that it was it was quite good actually yeah it was it was kind of funny actually but i'm glad i didn't hit him that's that's not appropriate it would have been embarrassing embarrassing i mean and he did enough gaffes on his own i mean i think the next week or the week before didn't he go through he walked to the wrong door that wasn't open and i mean i what's amazing is when you're president of the United States, 365 days a year, every minute you're on camera.

We've got a lot going on. But you also, you know, it's pretty easy to make a blooper reel of that many days into 10 or 12 things. I mean, I have a biased opinion of the man having spent a decent amount of time around him, seen how he operates and see how he cares for people and the thoughts he puts into things. It was easy for the media to put him into one bucket because that was kind of where they wanted to land him because he sounded like a Texan. It didn't sound like he was from the Northeast.

But at the end of the day, what I would say is he was a good man. And I value having a good man as president yeah i hold on dick cheney was president no i'm just kidding that's a joke also a good man also a good man but nowhere near the president i always i always joke that it was the it was the dick cheney presidency but i think i think his father mr bush threw some shit at that that he really felt like Dick Cheney should have maybe taken a bigger backseat. There was a reference something about how there was a little bit too much mucking about in the back office. The family politics are fascinating. Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush fought about running against each other for president at one point way back in the 70s and 80s.

Cheney was a Rumsfeld guy. Rumsfeld thought about running against george hw but so there's there's a lot of family issues that you got to go back into the 60s and 70s and 80s that parts out oh yeah i'm thinking there's a couple other ones too yeah was it steinbrenner or am i thinking the new york yankees anyway moving on it's not the bill clinton or the george bush show presidency show but no I was just kind of curious. I mean, working for president, you'll learn some communication under fire, you know, it's definitely. Yeah.

Part of the reason why we came up with the title is I, one of my jobs is I was a White House spokesperson for the war in Iraq. So I lived in Baghdad for a year and we literally were shot at during a press conference. So it was a, you know, I would tell my students what I would teach this class. I would say, you probably won't ever come under live fire from RPGs while you're trying to do a press conference. So it was a, you know, I would tell my students what I would teach this class, I would say, you probably won't ever come under live fire from RPGs while you're trying to do a press event. But it'll feel like it at that moment in time when you're when you're getting a blog post or a tweet fired at you. So it's important to have perspective and recognize that, you know, you're not actually being fired at, in most cases, and then be able to kind of move forward once you

have that awareness yeah i wish we'd get out of the cycle i think you and i remember a day i mean if you're if you're president you're in politics this is kind of par for the course but this whole thing of just lighting anybody on fire i remember somebody i'd written something on twitter you know we put the podcast on twitter and and somebody you know started trolling me they were just being hateful and they were being very bad at it and so I I said I said hey man what are you doing you know we're trying to do something good here and he goes this is Twitter you know it's our job to troll each other on here and I go no it's not actually I don't know what manual you got about Twitter but you know technically this can be a place for good or bad it could be a place where

we all kind of lift each other up and rising tide lifts all boats or we can you know try and cut each other down and maybe we can maybe we should look to elevate the conversation as opposed to just attacking each other with just shitty ad hominems or whatever. It's always been easier to point out the flaws than to offer constructive criticism on how to move forward. Talking to my ex-wives, huh? This was my aha moment. This was about 15 years ago. I love wine.

Wine is my escape from the kids and the work and the crisis. So I started a wine blog way back in the day and I would, and I would do, I would review wine and I would write if I hated it or I loved it, I would still write both. And what I found was really a fascinating insight on humans that I've tried to embrace going forward. Which blog posts do you think got more viewers? Wines that had a low rating or wines that had a high rating and the answer is it's the wines that had the high rating because people wanted to know what to buy versus what not to buy they were interested in and where help me help me get better don't tell

me what's bad and i think that that's how we're intuitively wired it's harder to tell you what which wine you should go by versus laying out all the ones that are terrible it It's harder to say, here are the three steps you should have taken in your crisis versus saying, man, you're an idiot. You made these 10 bad steps, but people react better to that, that guidance that empowers them to be better themselves. It's harder though. That's the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you would think that we would, I don't know, or human nature, whatever it is, what is final thoughts as we go out, tell people where they can pick up the book, any.com. You want people to find out more about you? Yep. You can go to amazon.com. The book is communicating under fire. I would love,

I'm on Twitter at Dallas Lawrence. Hit me up there or on LinkedIn. I love that conversation. One of the things I love about doing this is I give speeches around the country and talking to folks. And I always love hearing people's stories. People come up and say, Oh my gosh, I, you know, I actually had somebody come up and said, I read your book. That was me in chapter six. And I was like, Oh, okay. But it's, it's been a real blessing. I've enjoyed it very much, but yeah, communicating under fire is a book. You can get it wherever you buy your books on Amazon or online, and that's the book right there. Thank you very much, Dallas, for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Thanks so much. Have a happy holidays. Merry Christmas. You too. And thanks, Miles, for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold, Communicating Under Fire, the mindset to survive any crisis and emerge stronger. And if you're married, you might need it to keep that marriage happy, too. You never know.

You never know when the wife's going to be like, did you leave that toilet seat down again? Oh, geez. What's the PR book say again? Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.