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Knowing your values and sticking to them works in even the most dire of situations. I am going to highlight a good example that we can learn from, but first let’s look at a sad situation I experienced directly.

The inspiration for the title of this blog comes from a crisis I worked on long ago. I have changed the specifics enough to uphold my commitment to client confidentiality. It starts with a hostage-taking. The location and the people involved are not central to the story, other than to say the elderly man who was taken hostage survived. I had often advised my clients, and this one in particular as they had many crises due to the nature of their business, that in every crisis there is an opportunity. Even if the only opportunity is to demonstrate that you will do the right thing, it is still an opportunity.

This hostage-taking was quite grim, not that anything of this nature can be good. It had been going on for quite a few hours and we were communicating to employees and people impacted by the business, which had to be shut down. It was around hour three when the person I was dealing with at the crisis centre (via phone from another city) said the CEO wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of the media glare and advise people how they could access their service from another location and even give a price, hoping to attract more customers. Controlling my initial reaction, I calmly started to explain why this was a bad idea, when the CEO grabbed the phone and started barking to me about how I had said there was an opportunity in every crisis and he was just seizing the opportunity. Now, I know that when people are upset they don’t think clearly and I did know this individual scored low on the sensitivity scale, but this was beyond ridiculous. I talked him out of it but clearly this man had lost his ability to know what was right and appropriate. I often wonder how the public would have reacted to that bit of advertising during this horrendous situation.

Now for the good example. Making sure your own values are clearly set will make any dicey communications easy. Bill Marriott, the chair and CEO of Marriott Hotels, when questioned about his own beliefs about the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community during Proposition 8 (legislation to ban same-sex marriage) in California in 2008, blogged:


As many of you may know I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some might conclude given my family's membership in the Mormon Church that our company supported the recent ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. This is simply untrue. Marriott International is a public company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, and is not controlled by any one individual or family. Neither I, nor the company, contributed to the campaign to pass Proposition 8. The Bible that I love teaches me about honesty, integrity and unconditional love for all people. But beyond that, I am very careful about separating my personal faith and beliefs from how we run our business. Our principle is backed up with a formal diversity program, which we established more than 20 years ago. Our board of directors has also focused on this priority and helped us be a leader and a better company. We were among the first in our industry to offer domestic partner benefits, and we’ve earned a perfect 100% score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index for two years in a row. Many of our hotels have hosted LGBT community functions and events for years. 


The values of this man and this company shone through. They could walk the talk and he was transparent about his own beliefs and where they fit with his business.

Making a list of your values and thinking of how they were or could have been helpful in past experiences is a good exercise for you and others in your work or personal life. I have listed three along with commentary on what they mean to me in the world of communication. I’m keen to hear feedback on this.

1. Honesty – Such a classic value but one open to much interpretation. I do try to practice honesty but also know there are times that perhaps my opinions should be kept to myself. There are degrees of honesty and I, now (after a few mistakes on this front) think about the following before being “honest.”

a) Is my honesty self-righteous or is it intended to benefit someone?
b) Will my honesty hurt someone and can I accept that responsibility or is there something else I need to do?
c) Have I ever made similar mistakes and am I being judgmental or doing the right thing?
d) Confession: I do cheat at card games but declare my intention before the game begins and never cheat when money is involved.

2. Participation – Not acting or not saying something is as much about living your values as doing something. I try to participate when I see someone being mistreated and believe that is value-based. Whether I am helping a friend communicate better with a spouse or at work or I call 911 when I see someone being hurt, I think participation is a value.

3. Caring – Respecting others’ feelings and helping people who do not have the ability to look after themselves is a value that I regard highly and strive to achieve on a regular basis. My husband has this value in spades — one of the reasons I love him so much.

Attempting to put these values into practice in my work life shows up in a couple of ways.

When I facilitate meetings, I have to believe in my heart everyone brings something to the table and I respect their point of view, even if I don’t agree with it.

When I am teaching public speaking or media training, I put myself in the participant’s shoes, remembering my own shy beginnings. One of the tools I use to create a safe zone in my “presentation training” session is to get people to write down their baggage about public speaking anonymously. I put their slips of paper into a suitcase so I own their baggage for the day. Got that idea from a wonderful woman, Dorothea Helms, aka The Writing Fairy, who did this exercise in her writing classes to help struggling authors open up. At night, after the sessions, I sit quietly and read the comments. Some are heart-wrenching tales of snide comments made by teachers or family members that are still like open wounds waiting to be poked and hurt again. People have said they want to run screaming from the room or feel like they are going to vomit uncontrollably when they stand up. I never want to forget other people feelings.

What are your values? How do they appear in your communication or actions? I am including a survey with this post to get a gauge of how you would rank a list of five principles. You can also include comments and your own most prized value. Please take a minute to add your voice. All replies will be anonymous and I will post the results in a few weeks.


All this focus on values made me think of a list I came across online – 10 rules for being civil. I keep this list posted in my office as it is fundamentally about communications. The list comes with examples of high-profile people from Keith Richards to Martin Luther King, whom the originator of the list thought exemplified those attributes. Intrigued? Come back next week for the Civil Celebrity List and see if you agree or could do better. I will add some thoughts at the end of the list as to how being civil helps you be a compelling communicator.