Dee Cowburn, who judged the crisis communications entries with Ruby Bhattal, and is no stranger to a crisis herself, tells how blown away she was by the breadth and depth of entries in her category.
Keeping your head in the eye of the storm.
Understanding what you need to do and when you need to do it.
Keeping people at the heart of anything you are doing.
Providing measured reasonable insightful advice and guidance to your peers and to your leaders.
These are all key ingredients for managing a crisis from a communications perspective.
And I saw all these in abundance while judging the Crisis Communications category of the fabulous UnAwards. Invited by the marvellous Ruby Bhattal, who sponsors the UnAwards, to join her in judging this category, I was utterly blown away by all the entries and found it very difficult to shortlist.
The theme that came through in all of them was the absolute need for humanity and to protect communities during a major incident or crisis.
The level of work communicators undertook with stakeholders was breathtaking and impressive, more so because of the pressure people were under.
Professionals demonstrated how to keep a clear head while dealing with unprecedented situations that hadn’t always been planned for, and with some of them you could see why you couldn’t have planned for them at all.
I read about communicators being brave, making decisions that weren’t part of policy and advising leaders why that was the best course of action to take. That is always a calculated risk and you must have the courage of your convictions when doing that which I saw in abundance.
Courage, compassion and humanity.
Communities ripped apart, parents terrified and worried, organisations suffered losses, tragedy in suburbia as people went about their daily business, and amidst all of this, you have a team behind the scenes trying to keep people reassured, informed, safe. While simultaneously giving the media what they could when they could.
None of that is easy. It is a high wire balancing act, no matter how experienced you are.
Going through the entries with Ruby gave me hope that so much good work is going on in the background when a major incident unfolds.
This is the stuff local journalism, which used to feed into national journalism, is made of.
Solid, decent, hardworking people making a difference in their communities and working all the hours without recognition or complaint. This is why these awards are so, so important because they recognise people doing exceptional work with no fuss and they are free, which removes a huge barrier.
Humanity was at the core of all the applications for me and it gave me hope, both in humanity and in life, because when tragedy hits there are people who will spring into action and do what’s needed to be done to bring the community back together. With zero fanfare or expectation of recognition.
When a story breaks, all you see are the headlines and the constant breaking updates.
However, when the headlines and the attention fade, those in the background are still trying to repair communities, restore trust, build confidence, reassure and give people hope that their community will recover. All while the media may have moved on.
Honouring those who have tragically lost their lives or been seriously injured.
All of this was encapsulated in the applications.
The sheer breadth and volume and magnitude of incidents, some planned for, others unprecedented, really surprised me.
All the applicants painted the pictures of devastation, repair, recovery and how they supported that at the start, in the middle and at the end. And they all may have dealt with it slightly differently, but all of them kept people at the heart of what they were doing.
I can’t stop thinking about all the award entries and the events that unfolded and how it must have affected those dealing with the crisis. Being at the forefront of the challenges and ensuring people had what they needed in terms of information is a huge undertaking when there are so many moving parts.
To choose a shortlist was near impossible.
Everyone whose entered has a hugely valuable set of skills and their organisations are very lucky to have them!
Dee Cowburn is owner of Dee Cowburn Communications
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