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This video marks the second time President Obama has teared up during a press conference. We posted the first such instance the day of the Newtown school shootings.

Many have mixed opinions over a president crying. We will let you be the judge as to what affect it has on you.

The post Obama Tears Up Talking About Gun Control first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.

Here’s the clip so you can see for yourself. Not surprisingly, the company’s stock was down over 20% at one point during Monday’s trading.

The post Lumber Liquidators CEO Fails 60 Minutes Test first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.

Imagine the surprise when Bill Belichick took the podium this morning and gave a 7+ minute statement, mostly without reading and came across as credible and sincere. Who ever thought we would be using the words credible and sincere when discussing Bill Belichick?

Don’t get too excited though, when the questions started he was back to his old ways. Someone really needs to introduce Bill to the bridging technique.

Here’s the video for your viewing pleasure.

The post Who is this man posing as Bill Belichick? first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.

1. The right people
2. Doing the right thing
3. At the right time

It’s that simple! Yet many companies, or in this case the NFL are still too slow to respond to events such as the Rice mess, the whole time knowing what their response is going to be. A lot of those “inside” corporations blame lawyers. Of course, once attorneys get involved, the process does get extremely complicated. But it doesn’t have to. I once had an attorney at a major Oil and Gas services company tell me during a Crisis Communications conversation “They are going to sue us anyway, we might as well get it right”. Those words have stuck with me over the years as to how companies should handle crises. If companies spend all their time worrying about legal ramifications, they lose the element of time, and that can be crucial. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of getting things right on the legal side but preparation and planning can help prevent needing to go to the lawyers after the fact in order to get the needed approvals.

So in closing, the lesson to be learned from Roger Goodell and the NFL is next time, have your ducks in a row before something like this happens so when it comes time to make the right decision, you don’t have to run it by your entire legal team to pull the trigger.

The post 3 Things the Public Looks for in a Crisis first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.

If there’s any industry in the world that is prepared for Crisis Communications, it’s the airline industry.  Unfortunately, they have to be.  There’s no bigger global story than when a passenger filled airliner goes down and sadly Malaysian Air has had to deal with two such horrible tragedies already this year.

With that said, facing the hordes of media that come with such a tragedy is never an easy task.  Malaysian Airlines executive Hueb Gorte last week did an outstanding job of giving the company’s first media briefing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

During this 4-minute briefing, Gorte gave excellent, relevant information to reporters.  He did it in a very clear and concise way.  There were very few uh’s and um’s (non-words as we like to call them).  Most importantly, he did an outstanding job of putting a caring and compassionate face on the company.  It was clear after this briefing that the airline’s #1 priority was to take care of the families of those lost.

Kudos to Mr. Gorte for doing such an excellent job, especially considering both the magnitude and extreme pressure of the situation.

The post Excellent Press Briefing by Malaysian Airlines Executive first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.

LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling didn’t give new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver much time to get settled into his new desk chair this weekend.  Silver found himself thrust into the racial controversy and when he finally addressed the media, this is how it went.

It should be noted that Silver is a lawyer by training, so it makes sense that he knows the importance of getting his words right.  That clearly shows as Silver as a heavy reliance on notes throughout the press conference in which Silver was basically just reading a prepared written statement.  Was his eye contact enough.  Yes and no.  Typically you want to have a minimum of 80/20 eye contact with an audience.  80% on them, 20% on your notes.  I put Silver’s right around 50/50.  As I mentioned earlier though, in this situation there’s a little more leeway on looking down since I’m sure Silver wanted to make sure he read the statement word for word to assure he didn’t open open himself or the league up to any legal scrutiny.  Plus, this situation was very fast moving after the alleged comments broke on TMZ.

In a perfect world, Silver could have spent more time reviewing the statement prior to reading it, which would have allowed him to become more familiar with it, thus not needing to have such a reliance on notes.  I wasn’t there so I don’t know how much time he had before he read it but my guess is it was a “rip-and-read” type situation.

We will give Silver a B+ in this instance and advise, if possible, to read the statement (out loud) a few more times before delivering it next time.

Not bad for his first big “crisis” since taking over though.

The post Grading NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s Statement on Donald Sterling Racist Comments first appeared on Spoken Word Communications.