by Steve Adubato, PhD

Any time you are in a leadership position, things happen. Mistakes are made. Crises occur, and you are forced to communicate under heavy pressure. Many leaders wind up saying stupid and inappropriate things that make no sense to their audience. When this happens, these leaders, through their communication, make a bad situation a lot worse.

Such is the case with Homeland Secretary Chief Janet Napolitano, whose communication was inexplicable in response to the near fatal disaster on Northwest flight 253 on Christmas Day. Napolitano has served in executive positions in the past, and clearly has had to communicate under pressure. So, there is no reason to think, when she was dispatched by the Obama White House last Sunday, to be their chief communicator in response to this terrorist attack, that she would say; “When it came right down to it, the system worked…once this incident occurred, everything happened as it should have happened.”

What? “Everything happened as it should have happened”? That’s just not true. By any reasonable standard, serious intelligence mistakes were made. The failed bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, never should have been able to get on that plane. We don’t need to go into the details, but just consider that he had a one-way ticket, which he paid for in cash, he was on a list that said he was a potential threat to the US, and his father had gone to the US Embassy in Nigeria warning them that his son might be a terrorist in the making. How does this add up to the “system working?”

Simply put, what was Janet Napolitano thinking when she communicated in this ridiculous fashion? Clearly, she must have realized that her effort to put a positive spin on this near tragedy was the wrong way to go, because the next day, she had this to say; “Our system did not work in this instance…no one is satisfied with that….an extensive review is under way.”

Further, when pressed as to whether the system had “failed miserably,” Napolitano responded; “It did.” What a difference 24 hours can make. But there are lessons for all of us from this communication debacle.

When mistakes are made, fight the urge to defend and minimize. Spinning and shaping a message to look “positive”, only makes a leader look weak, evasive and less than honest.

Realize that no matter how hard your organization works, mistakes will be made. Most people understand this. You won’t get points for it, but you won’t be vilified if you communicate in a straight up fashion; “We screwed up. This never should have happened. We’ve got to get this right. The stakes are too high. We apologize to the American people.” If Napolitano had communicated like this (while taking a hit for security lapses) she would have been recognized as a hands on, let’s “fix it” manager, that we could respect and empathize with.

The biggest lesson here is that no matter what the so-called communication, PR and legal experts tell you, covering up is never the way to go. The cover up is always worse than the mistake. Go with your gut when communicating under pressure. Ask yourself; “If I were on the other end of this message, would it seem credible to me? Would I believe the person saying it?” If your answer is “no”, you can be confident your communication strategy is on a very dangerous path.