Corporations Can Learn From How Trump Handles Critics

Steven Schlein

At a recent dinner with an old friend – a lawyer and former Democrat Senate staffer – I was regaled with standard criticisms of President-elect Trump’s cabinet appointees. “They have conflicts of interest,” “They haven’t been vetted,” “They’re rich and therefore will be insensitive to poor people” and “Appointing his son-in-law to a senior White House job, is wrong because,”—much of the same argument. I asked him, “If these people were better vetted and proven to have no conflicts, would you support them?” The answer was, “Of course not.”

And therein lies the effectiveness of Donald Trump’s approach to high-stakes communications. Don’t try to win over your critics because they can’t be won over. They want you to jump through hoops and once you do, they will put up more hoops.    

Read other articles on crisis communications in O'Dwyer's Jan. '17 PR Buyer's Guide & Crisis Communications Magazine

Had Trump released his tax returns during the campaign, it would not have won him more votes. Only his critics were clamoring for his returns and only because they hoped to find something in them that they could use to bludgeon him. He knew that.  And, today, he understands that only his critics are bashing his and his cabinet appointees’ potential conflicts.   

Wearing my hat as a high-stakes communications advisor, I give Trump an A+ for strategy and execution. He wants certain outcomes: his team in place, his agenda passed. Appeasing his critics won’t get him that. 

Corporate America faces similar challenges all the time. There are media antagonists, environmental groups, consumer advocates, competitors, and over-reaching government regulators that aren’t going to go away because of concessions to them. There is no incentive for them to go away. More often than, not, these adversaries are going to ask for more concessions.

I’ve sat through hours of meetings listening to corporate leaders agonize over how to respond to a demand from a state attorney general for internal scientific data, or an advocacy group threatening a boycott, or a hostile media inquiry. What I’ve learned is that corporations are culturally wired to assuage critics. They are not in the business of looking for fights. So, the first thing I hear is: “Why don’t we educate stakeholders?” which often translates into “How can we get people who will never like us to like us?”

We frequently find ourselves gently telling them, “Critics are not stakeholders, and they don’t want to be educated, they want to hurt your company.”

Once we get the conversation back to discussing specific goals: protect the brand, save a business practice, reduce media attention, we develop a campaign that isn’t focused on giving in to critics. It’s focused on building tactics and tools that make the critics go away.    

Of course, in an election, a victory is easy to define: you win or lose. In the corporate world, it’s trickier. Sometimes a victory is reducing the size and scope of an onerous regulation. Sometimes it’s as simple as limiting – but not ending – media hostility. But ultimately, appeasing your critics is not an achievable victory and it certainly should never be the goal. It may sometimes be a necessary strategy, but never the goal.

That’s not to say we would follow Donald Trump’s tactics. He would probably advise Corporate America to tweet out disparaging remarks about their critics and sic battle-tested surrogates on them. While Donald Trump can get away with that, corporations can’t.  Trump has unique advantages that corporations don’t: passionate defenders, experienced spokespeople that relish combat, and a willingness to say anything that helps him win. Corporations also don’t have his luck: a shtick the perfectly fits the current cultural and political zeitgeist, at least the zeitgeist of half the country.

But corporations are not defenseless. ExxonMobil had a strong response to several state attorneys general (AGs) demanding internal memos and reports on climate change strategies. The company’s attorneys fought back on sound legal grounds. Connections between environmental groups and the AGs were exposed. Allies amplified these points in the media. Over time, the media began to incorporate these counter-points into their stories.  One by one the AGs have begun to back off. The company is on the verge of victory. 

When facing critics, corporations need to ask one question: Are these critics reasonable or are they implacably hostile to your company, industry or business model? If they are like my dinner companion referenced above, take a lesson from Trump and don’t try to please them. Instead, push back against your critics and focus on long-term success by building a winning counter-campaign. Then like Trump, declare victory – just perhaps not on Twitter.

***

Steven Schlein is an Executive Vice President at Dezenhall Resources, crisis and high-stakes communications firm.  He can be reached at [email protected].