Maybe sorry is the hardest word...

So the apologies by the four ex-bankers called before the Treasury Select Committee to be called to account for the collapse of the UK economy, didn’t win over many media hearts and minds.

Variously described as over-coached, insincere and practiced, The Sun’s “Scumbag Millionaires” were fighting a tidal wave of public opinion or, at the very least, an onslaught of unfavourable media opinion in headlines and leader columns across the land.

So what are four bankers who have lost their jobs, their combined salary of £3.7million, and a lifetime of credibility, supposed to do when faced with an investigatory committee and a hostile environment.

Backed by a host of well-meaning and, I’m sure, highly talented PR professionals, our men rightly choose to apologise – in depth and a total of 25 times according to The Guardian.  They also choose to invest in some training to prepare them for the very public grilling.

I’m sure that the training was good and that the four men became more comfortable and improved during the process, but maybe, just maybe, we saw a twist on that old adage that you can fake almost everything apart from sincerity.

Now let’s be clear here for one moment.  I don’t suggest for even one minute that our bankers were not truly and genuinely sorry for any mistakes they made or decisions they took which are now being portrayed as the catalyst for the end of the banking world as we know it.

However, too much media training and rehearsing can sometimes take the spontaneity out of a response and it can become seen as simply a ritualised answer.  I think that may have happened here and we were Ieft with an apology devoid of its true, heartfelt message.

I often say that when it comes to presentation training, there is no single right way to presenting well.  There are a number of things you shouldn’t do, but the trick to a good presentation is to find the way that lets you be comfortable so that you can be yourself. It takes some practice and usually a little experience, but you need to find a way to make the art of presenting, second nature – a natural but projected extension of your true self.

Media training adds into that mix the presence of sometimes hostile questioning, but you know what you want to say and the trick is to get those messages across “naturally”.

I think the problem that faced our bankers was that they effectively faced a public grilling in a hostile environment where, one way or another, the right response to what they were facing time and time again was to apologise. However, the effect of the all the repetition was to remove the natural sincerity and replace it with what seemed like ritual.

They were trapped in a cycle from which there was no obvious escape. They could not carry the fight to the opposition, but to again apologise, created the ritual effect which doomed them to an already hostile media. The classic lose-lose situation.

I’m not sure that there are too many people out there who are feeling an awful lot of sympathy for these guys, and trying to create any well-wishers is not the objective of this posting.

However, I do have a lot of sympathy with the people drafted in to train them for the ordeal – that too was a tough assignment and I’m not sure that there was a right answer.

Comments

[David Phillips]

And so our profession stands indicted on two counts. For me the presentation of Bank officers before the Select Committee is the lesser evil.
Part of the remit of public relations is to aid in the management of relationships between organisations and their publics.
Some relationships, so stakeholder theorists suggest, are critical to the short and long term survival of the organisation.
Good relationships are the foundation of good reputation and build trust.
An example for the banks was the relationship between banks that provides the ability for them to lend to each other and create liquidity.
Yet somehow the one profession that has this remit among all other bank offices was not able to manage this fundamental relationship.
As for banks so too for regulators. The FSA did have an opportunity to identify the effects of poor relationship management leading to a banking disaster. It is not mandated to do so but without such perspectives it let a whole industry down.
Compliance offices and risk managers have their role but so too does the PR professional.
Pointing fingers in retrospect is only useful if we learn from the mistakes of the past.
As we inch slowly towards a better regulatory environment perhaps it is incumbent on the PR profession to look to how it can offer better safeguards to shareholders, the wider economy and the public at large (and the next generations of tax payers).
It strikes me that industry regulators need to be mandated to have regard for sector relations in the public sphere. In global economies, this is a critical requirement as significant as any other.
Meantime, there is a need to provide the practitioner with the tools by which the long term interests of shareholders can be protected. This can only be safeguarded with greater transparency – a difficult concept in banking.
For the future we have an opportunity to press for mandated responsibilities incumbent on the responsible practitioner to evaluate and explicate the changed relationships arising from the actions of companies to the regulator. Such reporting about relationship effects reported as board reports and transparently lodged with the regulator would, together with comparable compliance and risk management reporting be a powerful capability for future avoidance of the mistakes of the last few years.
It would require very professional practice but would elevate PR to the place at the top table that is obviously required.
To give such reporting its final authority is to create a transparency role for the regulator to make an informed statement about the condition of relationships between the organisation and its publics at times of mergers and acquisitions, re-financing of organisations and recourse to the public purse.

[Paul Seaman]

If you accept - as I do - that the current crisis is systemic, the bankers and their PR advisers got the balance spot on in front of the Treasury Select Committee.

Because the crisis is systemic, bankers are not the only professionals who should be making public apologies. In my recent WSJ Editorial & Opinion column - No Mr Nice Guy - I wrote that during the boom years:

"PR became part of the problem. We were the froth on a frothy time, a party to the trivialization of business.

"At the heart of capitalism's current hiatus is a failure of professionalism. Bankers didn't look after their banks or their customers. PR professionals didn't look after the quality of the messages and narratives of their clients. Now, both business and PR must put things right. We need to come out fighting for our clients."

There is an urgent need for PR professionals to also say sorry for helping create the mess that has trashed confidence, trust and reputations. Will CIPR take the lead?

The full article can be read here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122894759489495973.html

[Kevin Taylor]

These are big issues - and I enjoyed the wsj article by Paul which made some excellent points. I also agree with David that we PR professionals need to fight to get our seat at the Boardroom table so that we can influence policy by providing a view from the outside in.
In terms of regulation I have always said this: "The role of good regulator is to protect the consumer without stifling commerce". Regulation in the banking industry has manifestly failed that simple test and no amount of PR (good or bad/before or after ) would be able to alter that simple fact.