Balancing Act: How to Engage Your Board Effectively During High-Stakes Situations 

As communications leaders in a company, effective engagement with the board of directors during a crisis is critical to the success of any organization. This is particularly important given the board also has the fiduciary duty to oversee and manage the organization’s risk profile. As the group representing and protecting the interests of shareholders, maintaining clear and consistent engagement with the board when addressing high stakes issues helps preserve trust, ensures decision-making alignment and supports the existing bottom line and business trajectory of the company. When board members are uninformed or unaware of issues, it can create gaps in the understanding of the severity of the situation and broader implications to the organization, while also threatening the level of confidence in the team to manage high impact events. When there is increasing fear and uncertainty among the board in the wake of a crisis, the result can be added stressors on the response team and business during a fast-paced and highly sensitive time.  

In many cases, an organization can focus too heavily on external communications when attempting to manage its reputation. However, when a significant issue occurs or is looming, most often the board should be consulted and informed before an issue escalates and rises to the level of a crisis to reassure them of the team’s response plans and ability to handle the situation. And part of this includes ensuring that the board understands the context of the situation at hand and the difference between an issue that can be managed or a major crisis threatening to harm the company’s reputation.  

Depending on the board, it is often useful to get input from directors, particularly when many of them may have unique insights and experience that could help inform the company’s point of view and steer the strategic direction of the response. Other times, it may be appropriate to avoid a situation where they have lost confidence in the team and want to take control over the response, particularly if the board does not embody the specific expertise to dictate tactical decisions in the communications space. Either way, proactive and consistent communication will help mitigate the risk of a board losing confidence in the team’s ability to handle the issue and insisting on being overinvolved in an unproductive way.  

Below are some best practices to ensure effective communication, maintain trust and potentially leverage the benefits of the board’s collective brainpower.  

 1. Set communications expectations.  

Gauge the board’s appetite for information and communication and understand what they are looking for from teams during a crisis. Remember their unique role and bottom-line interests. Some board members are more hands-on, and some are more hands-off. What level of severity would require engagement with the board? At what stage should they be notified? Ensure the decision-making framework on this matter is clear to the board so there are no diverging preferences and expectations.  

Board members need to independently be up to date on key topics so that they can bring additional insight to management’s discussion of problems and potential solutions. They need to know where the organization is in the crisis cycle, how it is responding and addressing the situation, and what has been prioritized in short term versus long term. They also need to know when a crisis is slowing down and what are the long-term reputation ramifications stemming from the issue. Ensure that the board knows that your team is prioritizing the needs of the moment but at the same time looking ahead, preparing for what’s next and investing in ways to build reputation resilience.  

 2. Optimize communications. 

Consider the diverse needs and communication preferences of these stakeholders and aim to deliver key messages in a consistent and impactful manner. Optimize engagement with the board by level setting with them on how best to keep them informed and bring them into the fold when it is clear a crisis situation is occurring. Share pre-reads when necessary so conversation is spent less on getting up to speed and more on reassuring them of the tactical response. Installing live dashboards with artificial intelligence (AI) technology to track situations and provide real-time analysis is a more sophisticated way to monitor the situation and proactively flag early warning signs of escalatory moments, capture trends in conversations and track de-escalation in activity and coverage. 

3. Be timely and provide context and data.  

Ensure timely engagement around issues and reassure on response to maintain confidence in the team by providing appropriate context to the situation and showing the data that informed thinking and decision-making. Concrete data and research, such as metrics on stock price, online conversation and sentiment, customer inquiries, case studies from other company experiences, etc. provide helpful benchmarks for board members to understand the scale and severity of an issue and give color to potential outcomes. These can help board members understand how much attention should be invested into addressing the situation and how it compares to other situations.   

 4. Pressure test to prepare.  

Reassuring the board that the team is prepared to handle a crisis may be just as important as managing the issue itself. Board members want to feel confident in the team on the ground and managing the day-to-day activities related to an issue. Pressure testing how ready the team is can help make the board feel confident that they will be able to handle crisis situations going forward. When conducting table-top and other crisis simulation exercises, it’s important to share a high-level readout of what the team did and how it worked to help enhance response infrastructure and address issues with existing crisis response protocols proactively before a real situation happens, thus demonstrating how the team is actively mitigating risk at every opportunity.  

5. Don’t forget about the investors.  

As perhaps the board’s most important stakeholder, their role is to maximize the value of the enterprise so that it can continue to return capital to its shareholders, including investors. As an organization navigates potential issues and crises, they should work in lock step with the investor relations team to ensure that key shareholders and appropriate outside investment analysts understand the scope of the issue and weigh in how to engage the investor community in the crisis response strategy when appropriate. Whenever a public-facing company is in a precarious situation, it is critical to continue demonstrating how the team is protecting shareholder value. Additionally, in any broad communications approach, the investor relations team should be working with the communications team to ensure consistency in its overarching company narrative and stakeholder-specific messaging.  

6. Reflect on performance, ask for feedback and adjust as needed.  

Being transparent with the board on how the team is regularly reviewing and enhancing crisis response infrastructure is a helpful way to maintain trust and buy-in to the organization’s protocols. By staying adaptable and responsive, the board can effectively see how the team is navigating changes, addressing challenges and capitalizing on emerging opportunities. Establish ongoing regular cadence of communication on these matters so when a crisis drops, they are aware of how the team operates, the latest protocols and procedures and how the environment influences priorities and strategic response.  

Moreover, take a moment once a year to conduct a data-driven lookback to reflect on what communications went to C-suite, what issues received the most engagement from them and what issues really mattered the most to help prioritize and streamline approach in the next year and avoid creating strain on resources and team bandwidth.  

With these steps in mind, the board can be assured that the company is prepared for and can effectively manage crisis situations as they arise, and your team will be more empowered to manage the situation and drive the response with board trust in tow.