The polarised court of opinion

Every senior leader, and corporate communicator, faces an intense challenge when an issue with sociopolitical implications breaks and a decision must be taken if and how to engage. Organisations from every sector are being pulled into commenting on issues as wide ranging as gender politics, global conflict through to leadership perspectives on WFH as a result of social media and demand for corporate accountability. With such issues attracting highly polarised opinion, it begs the question, how can organisations possibly prepare?

It my experience, it demands leadership teams consider corporate reputation as a strategic function fundamental to their organisation and effective operation. By including reputation within any operational risk register, a process is then established that ensures leadership teams are made aware of reputational issues and are clear on what actions are needed. It means a response can be made confidently and quickly.

Providing clear recommendations on how a leadership team, and the organisation, should react relies on the communications team having in place ways of understanding and contextualising the commentary. By using data in audience reaction including where its happening, how influential the commentators are and scale of reach, any decision to respond and how is made based on the actual risk from the commentary.

This approach helps the leadership, and organisational response, to be objective. Rather than being led by the visceral, subjective feelings that negative commentary can often prompt, the response can be considered and framed against existing policy, values or previous public statements.

Ultimately, it reinfoces that corporate reputation has to be ‘owned’ by leadership teams rather than considered something that can be siloed to communications teams. Get this right and not only will a leadership and organisation will able to mitigate risk, but also there is the opportunity of a more direct, responsive relationship with key audiences.