In this episode, we’re talking to top Public Relations Executive, Adele Gambardella, and former FBI Hostage Negotiator, Chip Massey about crisis communication, negotiation tactics, and crisis management and mitigation. Listen in to find out how to “enjoy” crisis, as much as possible!
Crisis communication, and this conversation, are so important because everybody thinks they’re good at crisis management but nobody knows what they’re actually going to be like until they’re in one.
And while we can't prevent crises from happening, we can predict and mitigate them.
Join me as I speak to top Public Relations Executive, Adele Gambardella, and former FBI Hostage Negotiator, Chip Massey about:
- How stressful situations are relative
- The hardest crisis to handle
- How to "enjoy" crisis (as much as possible, given the circumstances)
- The one thing you need to avoid in a crisis
- Tips for dealing with difficult people (from those who know--see former job titles above!)
Adele and Chip also graciously shared a couple of free resources with our listeners, you can grab them and/or check out their book, Convince Me: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results in Any Business Situation, here: convincingcompany.com/crisis/
—
Adele Gambardella, honored as “a woman who means business,” has over 20 years of experience owning and managing her own private Top PR firm in Washington DC. She has run PR campaigns for US President Joe Biden, the CEO of Lockheed Martin Marillyn Hewson, and many more.
Adele has spearheaded major crisis PR campaigns for brands such as SAP, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson. She has also been invited to speak at the United Nations twice, where she gave 2 speeches on crisis communications.
Adele is a co-author of Convince Me: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results in Any Business Situation and maintains her writing chops as a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Entrepreneur magazines. She has taught crisis communications and business at Princeton, Cornell, George Mason, and Georgetown Universities.
An Ex-FBI hostage negotiator and special agent for 22 years, Chip Massey investigated 9/11 terrorist attacks and led the New York FBI Office’s Crisis Negotiations Team—in
all five boroughs.
As the Co-Owner of the Convincing Company, he teaches executives and their teams how to apply the FBI’s techniques to every workplace scenario. Clients include C-suite executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Facebook, Samsung, and Goldman Sachs. Chip is the co-author of Convince Me: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results
in Any Business Situation.
A natural communicator and teacher, Chip has trained FBI agents, police officers, and various federal officials in hostage negotiation techniques, de-escalation, and other law enforcement issues. Additionally, he has taught thousands of military personnel and civilians at West Point, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, and other high-profile colleges.
You can learn more about them and their book at convincingcompany.com/crisis/.
Or, connect with them on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/convincingcompany/.
I am Céline Williams, and welcome to the Leading Through Crisis podcast, a conversation series, exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guests today are the co-founders of the Convincing Company and Co-authors of Convince Me, Chip Massey, and ex FBI hostage negotiator, and Adele Gambardella, an award-winning crisis communication expert. Welcome, Adele and Chip.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, as we always start this podcast off, I ask the question I'm gonna ask each of you the question, the name of the podcast is Leading Through Crisis. When you hear that phrase, what comes up for you? Or what does that mean to you?
So I was listening to one of your other podcasts, Céline, and one of the guests said that they, they do some work with a former Marine, and they're described, you know, hey, if nobody's shooting at you, it's a good day kind of thing, right? So right. That's kind of how I see it, you know, is that crisis can take many forms, and we talked a little bit about that ahead of the call, and it just depends on the person and the circumstance. You know, it's, and really we're talking about a stressful situation and stress, as we know is relative. So that's how we see it. But I'm always amazed now, is that when I first started working with Adele, and we had, she brought me into one of her first, one of the first client meetings. It was a big situation about an email that was sent out, and they were losing their minds, and there were some people crying in a corner. There was, you know, ringing of hands. They, you know, voices were getting raised. And d I leaned over to Adele and I said, are they really this upset about this email? She said, yeah. I said, all this is because somebody hit send. She said, yeah. I said, oh boy. So that's the thing. But for them, you know, the same feelings of I'm under attack, you know? It's true, anyway.
Yeah. Well, Adele, I wanna hear your answer, but I love that example Chip 'cause it so highlights the difference between ex FBI hostage negotiator, right. That experience and an email. Yep, that's gonna feel very different I imagine. That's a great example. Adele, how about you?
The thing I always say to like, introduce what it is I do for a living is I help people get into the news. I help people get outta the news. I help people get the spotlight, and I help people hide when necessary. Which I think really sums up what crisis management is about, the type of crisis management we do, which is very much a parachute in situation, solve the crisis, solve the issue, and parachute out. And so that's what it means to me.
So I am, I wanna know more about how you connected, because your backgrounds are so different, but I do wanna ask the question of, for each of you, what does leadership mean or what does leadership look like? Because, you know, I imagine that Chip with your background, it is likely different or specific, or has a, what, you know, a particular focus, let's say a way of showing up that might be different from Adele's because your backgrounds are different. That is, you know, leadership is different for different people, it means different things.
And so, right. So for me, it was always the idea of, hey, we have a task to do. There is a thing that's in front of us. There is a specific objective. We will do X things, and I expect the those that are with me to follow. You know, so that wasn't a thing. It wasn't up for debate, it was the, the leader has the baton, you go. And what I've learned in consulting work is that leadership is, is is more than the title that it conveys. You know, you could be the CEO, but really it's the CFO that leads it sometimes, right? It's the person that you don't know where the real power and integrity and where the troops are in alignment behind, but they're the ones that will eventually carry the day and bring about what is needed to happen.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Adele.
So the question is about like, how to lead through a crisis.
Or even it could be, or like what leadership means to you. Like what does that, you know, because leadership it's part of crisis right? Leading happens all the time, but also during crisis. So whether it's during crisis specifically or in general, how do you view leadership? What does that look like for you?
I think the strongest word would be accountability, right? Because I think like the hardest crisis to handle is when the leader will not accept any level of responsibility at all. Like, it's like, I'm not fill in the explicative apologizing to anyone about anything, right? Like, and that sometimes happens like they're allergic to an apology, they're allergic to any responsibility. They're allergic to saying, we messed up. Even if it's in a small way. And if you don't do that and you have a leader who's like that from the beginning, it is really, really difficult. We can get them there, but it just makes everything just so much harder. Wouldn't you say Chip?
Hmm. Absolutely.
I think, look, I think that that is a great, I think accountability is a great word to associate with leadership, whether it is self-leadership or leadership in an organization, or leadership in other ways. I think accountability is meant to be inherent in the concept of leadership and is often separated from it for the reasons you're talking about is that people don't wanna take responsibility. So I think that is very real. So I'm curious, given the difference in your backgrounds, how this all came together, I mean, I know you mentioned how you met before the call, but I'm sure the people here would love to hear how you met and how you decided to work together. Because it doesn't seem just like the, you know, like the most obvious connecting point necessarily for working together. When you know a little bit about it, yes. But if you were to just throw two people in a room, you wouldn't be like, ooh, that makes sense.
I agree. Oh, no, it was done by force. Just kidding. I mean, I think, no, I mean, I went to this entrepreneurial dinner. I knew who generally who would be there, and I started to look into Chip's background. I checked out his website. I was like, this is really interesting. This is very complimentary to what it is I do. And so when Chip introduced himself and he said what he did, what I recognized was, you know, while I know a lot about crisis management and what to do to fix it, like what the steps are, sometimes it is very difficult, or for me, it was very difficult to both be the implementer and be the person who's emotionally leading people through a difficult situation. Because I wanna get it fixed. My reputation is on the line to get it fixed, and I wanna get it fixed as fast as possible. And now Chip's goal is to also do that as a hostage negotiator, right? Like, he wants to fix it as soon as possible. That's a thing, right? Like it's obviously we both have the same goal. It is very hard to be both the person who implements and the person who leads through the emotion. So I recognized that he had this amazing skillset that I'd never learned as a communicator, which is like the forensic listening. A lot of the stuff we talk about in the book, like getting to someone's unstated narrative, like targeted validation, like, and even a convincing continuum that we've developed. And his skillset really took, I feel took the company to, to a point it never had been before. And people enjoyed as much as they could under high stress situations, going through it felt heard, felt validated, felt comforted, which you can't do both. It's very hard to do both.
Yeah, I laughed there because the idea of enjoying crisis, like, you know, you're enjoying going, but to feel safe and heard, it's the version of enjoying that one would hope for in a moment of crisis.
Right.
So Chip, do you have anything to add to that? Do you have a different perspective on anything?
That's right. I guess I was, again, you know, to my former story there about being amazed about an email that is, that, is that people, you know, Adele knows exactly what to do when she first steps into a crisis situation. I mean, in her mind, she's already worked out the steps, she's taken them through it in her mind, and she sees it through its conclusion, says, okay, if we do these following things, we're gonna be okay in that order. And the timing, what is amazing is that people are often reluctant to take that advice from go. Again, it's on, you know, they will sit around and they'll talk about how unfair this is. You know, that's one of the things we call it is is the fairness fallacy is that, you know, they just wanna sit around and gripe about, man, this is horrible. This has happened to us. It's just not right. You know, we've done so many other things perfectly and this one thing, yeah, it's horrible. And they're wasting time. And they don't realize that the reluctance is all a part of the fear, and they have to work through that, but they have to do it double time. It's a luxury to sit around and gripe. And what we need to do, what Adele knows that they need to do in a timely manner is steps one, two, three and five. They gotta do it. And so my job is to offer mitigation to a lot of time leaders that are just fearful of saying, you know, of feeling like they're a failure. They've messed up. It's all coming on their shoulders. Though, they'll never say that. They will never actually say, you know, ah, this is my fault, my bad, you know, I screwed this one up. And it's always like, oh man, they're completely unfair. You know, they got this wrong. I don't know how they could, you know, gets it wrong. It's like one person, whatever it is. Like, okay, but the emotion is present, just like in any high stress situation, whether it's life, you know, actually physical life or the physical life of your career, it's the body. The brain interprets it the same way. So I talk to them like I would've talked to a kidnapper or a hospice taker, and I work them through that fear so that, you know, after they deescalated, now they can hear the instruction and then go ahead and implement it. It takes time.
So I'm curious, Chip, when you, it sounds like, and fully acknowledging that this may not be true, but it sounds like that, you know, in these situations, people aren't often, maybe most of the time, maybe never actually naming and acknowledging the fear even when they step through. Is that fair to say?
One billion percent right. And to your point, what we find is that, again, depending upon the gender of the executive, if I go in and I talk to, and I talk to a male and I say, hey buddy, you know, dude, can you tell me about the fear that, that you're feeling right now? They're gonna say, fear, fear, that's not here. You know, go two doors down, you'll see fear there. But I don't know anything about fear. If I couch it as, hey, how stressful is this for you right now? Oh man, you know, sit down, you know, bring a lunch, they're gonna talk right? Now, if I transpose it and put it in front of the female executive and I say to you, hey, you know, how much, how much is fear holding you back? She will tell me to an nth degree. It's like, but that's where we are in a lot of the times, especially in this country, is that people, you know, assign themselves these gender roles. And they assume that as a male alpha or whatever you wanna call it, that they can't have aspects that say fear, they feel it's bad for their leadership. It makes them weak, you know, all the typical, you know, tropes, but it's when they really get down to brass tax, and you know, we've worked through some time and we're like, so how you feeling? It's like, yeah, you know, I'm a lot less fearful now that I see the steps, right?
Right. It's so interesting because it seems like it would be much smoother if we were able to acknowledge the emotions in the moment, whether it's fear or something else. I like it would make your job easier, Chip to then work through it and Adele your job significantly easier if that was acknowledged. And part of if it was okay and people felt safe to say that and acknowledge whatever it was to then move through it and hear what you are talking about, and you know, what your plan is, Adele, to actually get into action.
Yeah I mean, but you know, they're just so, they're so gripped with emotions a lot of times. Like when we're dealing with folks who are in these like really, really stressful situations, they're at their worst. So they're taking it out on you. That's why we have a premium price for what we do, because it is truly like they are at their worst. They're going to act their worst. Everybody on your staff is gonna act their worst. I mean, they're all just like people who are essentially drowning and grabbing for the same life, you know? And so, you know, that is the thing. And they often take it out and then, and then they'll write you back like the next day and they'll like, you know, I'm sorry, you know, I didn't mean to do like, what, what have, but they don't even see it as it's happening. And sometimes it takes, they'll be done with a crisis and six months they'll be like, wow, that was really bad? You know? And they'll tell us like how bad they were and why they were bad. And we're just like, you don't have to apologize. We know, we've seen it, like there are different personalities that come out in a crisis that we've identified like, you know, the person who, you know, is the control freak who wants to control every single aspect of the crisis and wants to be in everything. And then the person who's the macromanager who wants nothing, they just want the problem to be handled. And it's just, you just come across so many different types of personalities. I was sitting around the pool one summer with my kids and there was a bunch of moms, and it's funny 'cause everybody thinks they're good at crisis management. Everybody thinks they're good at it. It's an interesting thing, right?
She goes yeah.
Right? Like, you know, you know this to be a fact, right? So I'm sitting around and all the moms and, and everybody who's going around and they say, what do you do for a living? And I was like, oh, you know, I do crisis crisis management. I'm like, I'm good in a crisis. And they told me the reason why they were good in a crisis and the next person and so on and so forth. And it's like, none of those skills apply and nobody knows what they're going to be like in a crisis until they are in one. And usually the personalities are sort of surprising. You know, one person who seemed to really together will be super anxious and like, you know, it's fascinating to watch people go through these negative things, but then also to offer them mitigation, to understand their perspective, to make them feel comfortable that it's okay to be scared. It's okay to feel these ways, and here are the following decisions you have to make. Here's the outcomes. We know what they are and you know, we can predict with a certain level of certainty, if you follow these steps, there's gonna be outcome. But sometimes people don't listen.
It's also interesting, yes, lots of times people don't listen. Let's just acknowledge that for a moment. Let's not let that slide. Lots of times people don't listen, especially if you're telling them something that they don't want to hear. If you're validated, people are great listeners. If you validate what they already think, right? Then everyone is like, ha, I was right. Let me repeat that to everyone who will listen to me. But if you're telling someone something that they don't wanna hear or that confirms something that they don't want to be true, they're not great listeners ever.
Yeah. There's a way to kind of avoid that. And Chip's masterful at this, I'm not as good at it as he is. I really think you are so much better at dealing with people in their worst moments Chip than me. I mean, I can take you through exactly what it is and Chip can make you feel better. Like, it's like, but feel better about doing the things right? And I think it's, I don't know, that's a special skill. People can learn how to do it, but it's not easy.
It takes, you know, my experience has been with people and you know, Chip, you may also speak, wanna speak into this, is that it, anyone can do it, but you have to be practice. So first of all, you have to have the awareness, the actual self-awareness to know what you are like and what your strengths and weaknesses are. Not just, I'm good in a, like, to your point Adele, I'm good in a crisis for these things where it's like, you're missing the point. There has to be real self-awareness as a starting point, but also the willingness to put the practice into whatever skills, to balance out the, let's call them weaknesses but not strengths when you don't need to be doing those things. Because if you are relying on, when in the moment I'll be fine 'cause I've thought about these things, that's never the case. You have to have, I'm calling it practice, whatever that looks like. But there has to be practice in low stake situation in order for you to actually be able to do anything in a high stakes situation. That's my experience. And Chris, or Chris, sorry, Chip, you could say like absolutely not. I disagree with that and I'm very open to it.
No, no, that's, you're exactly right. And one of the things that we do for teams and executives is that we take them through a kind of lower stakes role playing situation. Just like you described, it's the same training that I went through at Quantico, just kind of formulated a little differently. And the idea is this, that what in part of it, we set up a hostage negotiation situation, right? So you've got a hostage taker and you're, you know, I'm telling the group after I've pulled, you know, six people outta the audience and we give them instruction. This is what a host negotiation team in the FBI looks like, here are the roles, these are the responsibilities. And before that, we give them a little bit of a teaching of some of the very basics, again, like a thumbnail sketch from Quantico. And then we bring in a role player by via telephone, who in this case is, is Emmy a nominated actor and screenwriter, and he plays the part of a hostage taker.
Matthew Nelson Haynes. We should say his name. Yeah, he's great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's amazing. And so what happens is you think, okay, this is probably just gonna feel like a game. Like I'm involved in some kind of, I don't know, like who done it kind of murder theater. It takes on a whole different thing. The people start to feel the stress of dealing with somebody who, you know, theoretically here could kill somebody.
And they're in front of their peers. So there's the stress of this feeling of life could be lost. There's a stress of I've got people watching me and it's a new skillset that I've never learned before. But still all make believe it's just role play. But again, like we said, the body, the brain interprets it the same way. So as long as I can, when we present this, and it's so, it's a Adele, me and Matt presenting this, it is it, if we do it right, they're elevated, they're feeling this, it's happening to them. And you will be surprised Céline, is that you will see people like, they're so into it. I mean, it is like, you know, hey, don't quit on me, man. You know, you will hear the most crazy stuff. And because they're really invested. They're really into the reason why we do that, just as you, as you pointed out, is that it immediately embeds the skillset. They come away from that with a feeling of ah, you know, and they've seen where, where when they messed up, they got a bad reaction, you know, wasn't working well, if they regrouped, if they were able to handle the stress of the moment, they did better.
Yeah.
But it takes 'em through those, you know, the ups and downs. The peaks and the valleys, and yes, they feel a confidence. And that's the thing is that it's kind of a transformative experience. You know, if they really get into the role and feel it, it will translate next time they have a stress event. You know, that's how the body learns and adapts to it. So I 100% agree with your statement.
I would love to be a fly on a wall for one of those sessions to watch people.
You should come definitely.
Because that sounds very fun. And, and I love, look, I think humans are fascinating in general. It's one of the reasons I have this podcast. But watching people as they, especially when someone goes from like, oh, this is just a role play. It's gonna be fine to getting it, I love that. Just that transition that people go through.
People love it, and the thing about it is, is like there's business benefits to it too. And just the very applicable business benefits are, you know, after you get done with that, it's like you can get people to buy into your vision because you have a skillset now to do that. You can solve tough business problems that you couldn't maybe before 'cause you didn't have all of the, or you didn't look at yourself. The self-awareness of like, how do I deal with these things? And you can be cool in a crisis because you have had the experience. Chip has this like very like FBI related thing that he says, which is like, what is the fallback on, what's the fallback on your training?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You rise to the occasion, but you fall back on your training is the quote that's used from various services that use that quote.
Yeah, yeah. I think that's, I mean, I think that's a really important quote. And it's true, right? It's like the, it's, I do a lot of work in culture and I talk about culture is that like, you know, we want, the idea of culture is that you want it to elevate to the highest level of leadership, but the reality is that it falls to the, you know, worst behavior that you accept as part of your culture. That's really what your culture is.
You're what you tolerate. I 100% agree. The worst behavior tells other people what they can get away with.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's a similar idea.
Oh my gosh, Céline. So can I tell you a story that was like, okay, so I had a staff and they were all very young, right? Like, I mean, like, I had an agency and I went away to London to interview Tommy Hilfiger. That was like, that was my like job to go to London for like 48 hours to interview Tommy Hilfiger. And I'm on a plane and I'm watching the director of my office post on Instagram. And this is during working hours now, right? That she took the entire staff to goat yoga while they were supposed to be working. And they posted pictures of the goat on top of that at Goat Yoga. And I'm like, so it doesn't seem like anybody's working. Hello. Like, it's like, I mean, what could you do? Like I had to fire her. I had to fire her because like, it's like if I didn't, everybody would be like, when Adele goes away to do an interview, we should all go to go yoga, you know? Like, so specific. Very weird, but okay. Like that's where I was.
But I mean that is a great, I love that example. I also love how specific it was that it was goat yoga. And it's one of those things, it's one of those things that I hear and I'm like, if she had come and said to you, and I imagine this also applies in crisis, if she had come and said to you, hey, I would like to take everyone out to do goat yoga this afternoon. You know, we've all been working really hard. I think this would be a, like, there's a way to communicate that and handle that, where you would've been like, go enjoy goat yoga. That's a great idea.
I actually was, I think it's like, it's the same like argument my mom used when I snuck outta the house when I was 17 to go see my boyfriend. And she was like, I'm so disappointed that you didn't ask me. And I was like, that's the crusher. It's like she could have done anything else, right? I was like, yeah, you could go anyway. And it's like, you just feel like a terrible person. But I mean really that's, that's the culture I had, which was very open and like, we wanna have fun, we wanna, and it was so it felt like a betrayal of trust is what it was. So like, I was just like, no to the goat yoga and yeah done.
And it's interesting 'cause you know, I hear that and I think there are so many times in crisis and leading up to like really big crisis where I imagine that, you know, you get popped into fix and deal with where that communication, those breaches of trust have happened and could have been prevented. It didn't have to get to where it is. And it's one of those things that like absolutely you are needed. People need to get better at managing and dealing with crisis in the moment. And the skills that you're talking about with like the workshops that you're running that is also gonna help people prevent the crisis from happening initially.
I mean I think here for years, and Chip and I have talked about this, right? And just like what we do for a living, right? Because then we could do crisis prevention.
Sure.
And we have great plans and we have fantastic things, but it's like taking an aspirin for a heart attack you think you might have in 20 years. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to do the things before the event. They just do not wanna do the preventative measures. And what I've come to the conclusion after doing this for 20 plus years is this, you cannot prevent a crisis. You can't, they will happen.
Yes.
Even the best leaders have them. And it's more about how do you predict a crisis, right? Like what are the signs, what are the signals? What in like in the culture is broken, right? With what you do that will tell you this is coming. Like if you have like a huge uptick in Glassdoor reviews and they're really bad, they're really negative and you're just like, eh, I'm gonna ignore that. And then there's a dedicated Reddit feed for your company that's getting nastier and nastier and nastier and you're getting letters from people about issues that they don't feel heard about. Or you're getting emails. Those are signs that somethings about to blow. And then sometimes it's not even your fault if you're the leader 'cause you inherited mistrust. That is often, sometimes when we get called into, it's a new leader who's inherited people who just don't trust. And so we work on that and we can, and we can help with that too. But like, that's what's really interesting is, you can't prevent them. You really can't. They will happen but how do you predict them? I think it's that predict is a better, is a better term.
I agree actually. I like that. And I would say to some extent mitigate as in like let's maybe let's not have them end the world and be really like they're gonna happen. But how do we mitigate them a little bit? Because I do, I think I agree. Prevent is not the right word. I do think predict and mitigate is like, that is kind of, that's a sweet spot to be able to do.
And I mean I think it's optimistic. Maybe too optimistic to think you could prevent them because they just, they they happen. It's human.
Well, unfortunately, and fortunately the world continues to be the world that we cannot control and the humans around us continue to be humans that we also cannot control and therefore.
And we'll be always employed. So that's a good thing, right? I mean like that's the thing. It's like I've got some good insurance on that.
Exactly. I wanna ask, I wanna give you, so we didn't really talk about your book. I wanna touch on that really quickly because I'm curious why a book I guess is the real question that I have. It's like, why a book? Where did that come from? 'Cause I'd imagine that you would have plenty of business and be very busy regardless of the book.
Yeah I think, well I am first and foremost, you know, in the beginning of my career, a publicist, right. So I just, I feel like, you know, for just good credibility.
Yeah.
You know, a book is needed. And I also think it's a really good tool to say, here's what we know, here is what we know world. Do you agree with it? If you wanna hire us, this is what we believe. Do you believe us too? And I think that's what a book is, right? A business book especially. It's like this is what we know to be true. This is how we can help you. And it is really an extension of your knowledge. And I think, you know, I think it's a good tool. For social proof too.
Yeah. And a great way for people to connect with you and learn more about you ahead of time, which is wonderful. Before we wrap up, I do wanna ask, is there anything that we didn't get to that you wanted to bring up? It's why I want to mention the book really quickly 'cause I was like, I don't wanna overlook that. I do think it's, everything that you do is really fascinating. So I could talk to you about 400 other things, but is there anything we didn't get to that you wanna bring up or something that you wanna just emphasize? And, you know, I would like each of you to be able to speak into this, but is there something that you wanna emphasize as like, this is a keep this in mind or this is a key takeaway that we like people to have or whatever the case may be.
Yeah, just that like, when you're facing a crisis, you are making those decisions for the first time and it's scary and it's really hard to go it alone. And what I would say is we've made them hundreds of times and we know what the outcomes are gonna be. We know what, how and what and how people are gonna react to certain issues. And with that in mind, it's a heck of a lot easier to bring us in to help you through it than it is to figure out all of those things the first time.
Yeah, I appreciate that. Chip?
And I think I would add, and especially in keeping with the kind of work you do, Celine, is that, you know, we are for better or worse, the people that organizations are made of. And we bring with us our own set of values and cultures and norms and ways of dealing with stress. And I think that the better we're able to really dial into somebody else. You know, as you know, over here in the states, Céline, everything is such a faction now and we're really kind of at a point of we're not hearing, we're not listening anymore. We're just reacting. And there's a lot that can be done with somebody like yourself being brought in to a situation where people have stopped listening. They're no longer connecting. They're, you know, they're forming sides. You know, I think that's part of it is that to be able to read somebody, figure out what's on their mind, what is it that that is prompting this kind of behavior? Is it something inside? Is it in the organization or is it inside of them that they, they brought to it? But if we understand it, you know, we're always afraid of differences as humans, we just fear differences. But it is in the understanding that we can, we can shed a lot of those fears away and then start to make change, the kind of work that you do, Céline. So yeah, I think it's about dialing into people.
I love that, clearly biased 'cause I think dialing into people is what we do not do enough of in business these days. It's so transactional and that can be the difference maker. And I know that's a big piece of what you do as well, is to go in and dial in and hear what people are really saying. I want to thank you both for your time today. There will be in the show notes for anyone who's listening there is gonna be a link to Adele and Chip's company and the book and they've set up a special webpage for anyone who's listening. So that'll all be in the show notes. And I've really enjoyed speaking with both of you, so thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today and for sharing and for telling some very entertaining stories. That's always the best part of this.
Thank you.
We appreciate you.
[Céline] Thanks for joining me today on the Leading Through Crisis podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast app. If you're interested in learning more about any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca.