February 9, 2025 • 15 mins
Destin Singleton joins us on the Leading in a Crisis podcast to unravel the complex dynamics of hosting high-profile figures at your organization. Imagine receiving a call from the White House with just 72 hours to prepare for a presidential visit to your facility. Destin takes us behind the scenes of her tumultuous experience managing a last-minute presidential visit at an oil refinery in 2017. We weigh the potential benefits against the significant risks of such high-stakes situations and explore how to brace for the unexpected when your company becomes the stage for a national spotlight.
Our conversation doesn’t stop there; we shift gears to dissect the art of large crisis exercises. Are you more inclined to "play to win" or "play to stretch your team"? Through Destin’s insights, we unpack these strategies as applied by leading multinational corporations. Whether you’re pondering the impact of social media influencers using your brand as a backdrop or refining your crisis management tactics, this episode promises to equip you with practical advice and thought-provoking perspectives. Join us as we navigate the challenges and opportunities of hosting prominent guests and conducting effective crisis exercises.
If you would like any assistance with your crisis planning or training activities, including tabletop exercises or a case study to stimulate your team's preparedness, reach out to Tom, Marc or Destin.
Tom Mueller - tom@leadinginacrisis.com
Marc Mullen - Marcmullenccc@gmail.com
Destin Singleton -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/destinsingleton
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom Mueller (00:05):
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis podcast.
On today's episode, mark and Iare going to continue our
conversation with DestinSingleton, and on today's
episode, we're going to talkabout what might happen if your
organization was approached by ahigh-profile presidential
(00:25):
candidate or a high-profilesocial media influencer who want
to use your location as abackdrop for an announcement or
an event.
How could you, or how shouldyou, process that request and
what are the upsides and, moreimportantly, what are the
(00:46):
downsides of an event like thatcoming to your location?
Well, destin has a story toshare about that, where she
managed an event and she sharesthat experience with us.
In another topic we cover today, we also talk about large
crisis exercises and thedifference in approaches that we
(01:08):
see when we do exercises withlarge multinational corporations
.
There's a play to win theexercise kind of approach, and
there's the play to stretch yourteam and really build your
capability kind of approach.
I think you can guess which onewe favor, but we talk through
those issues and how we like toapproach dealing or organizing
(01:31):
major crisis exercises.
So let's join the conversationwith Destin now.
Well, I'd like to switch gears,you guys, if I can, and I want
to talk about dealing with highprofile personalities, and you
know how your company can andshould go about evaluating.
(01:53):
You know requests for sitevisits or just things to think
about.
We have so many socialinfluencers out there today.
People who will show up andrecord videos, use your company
location as a backdrop forsomething remarkable or
something ridiculous.
You just never know until itcomes out.
(02:15):
In particular, when thosepeople show up at your location,
there's some things you need tothink about.
Destin, I know you've got someexperience and some thoughts
with that, so walk us throughyour story here and we'll
discuss best practices comingout.
Destin Singleton (02:32):
Yes, thank you .
So, yes, so I was working for alarge oil company, a refiner,
Back in 2017, we got a call fromthe White House and so,
essentially, there was going tobe a presidential visit at one
of the refineries and we had 72hours to prepare.
We had very little informationabout objective that sort of
(02:56):
thing.
So we and we knew, based onhistory and what we had seen in
the public when these kinds ofvisits have happened to others,
we had seen, for example, anorganization host the president
and the president had their logoright next to them and the
(03:20):
speaker actually used their nameincorrectly, say incorrect
facts and potentially even saythis organization was, you know,
was a problem because of thisreason.
So you know, this kind of highprofile mentioning could be a
tweet, could be a visit, couldbe or sorry, not tweets what do
we call X mentions now?
Tom Mueller (03:42):
Tweets.
It still works for me.
Destin Singleton (03:53):
So, anyway, these kind of things can make or
break, or to honestly make andbreak.
Because of our, you know yourreputation, because of our you
know kind of, you know,disparate social beliefs and
values, so anyway.
So really, how do you preparefor what potentially could be
chaos?
Tom Mueller (04:08):
That's a great question, Destin how do you
prepare for what could be chaos?
Destin Singleton (04:13):
Any thoughts before I jump into what we did
in 2017?
Marc Mullen (04:17):
Just say no, how fast can you string barbed wire?
Destin Singleton (04:21):
No.
Honestly saying no was anoption, Right, you string barbed
wire no, honestly saying no wasan option Right, and obviously
I became involved after the CEOhad the initial conversation.
But saying no is an option andbut you know I'm not saying that
could also hurt you.
Tom Mueller (04:37):
So I mean, I'd be inclined to, to consider the
proposal.
It would just, depend there'sa bit of a trust factor here
right In knowing who's comingout.
How much can you control thesituation and how much you know
can you influence the messagingthat's going to use your
(04:58):
facility as a backdrop, andthose are all wild cards, though
.
Marc Mullen (05:02):
Well, and one of the challenges is they're never
coming to bolster yourreputation.
They're not interested in whatyour benefit or cost of this
process.
So maybe the answer is you justmake sure you have a whole
bunch of signage from yourcompetitors and you put that up
(05:23):
around the podium.
Destin Singleton (05:28):
Very good, Marc, but I mean, honestly, that
leads us directly into what wedecided to do.
So, essentially, we treatedthis 72 hours later visit, which
was very quick, but essentiallyas a kind of a simmering
emerging crisis.
We've got a a speaker coming totalk about something we don't
know.
We did not get the speech aheadof time.
Um, we don't know exactly who'scoming.
(05:49):
Um, we don't know exactly whatwill be talked about.
We don't know exactly, um,their objective.
So definitely, let you know,worked really closely, trusted
the White House advance team,worked really closely with them
and let them lead, you know,media from a national standpoint
and tried to work with them tohave a better understanding of
(06:12):
what will happen that day.
Result of all of that at the end, but essentially using our
crisis skills to think about howdo we minimize what could be a
risk to the organization andultimately, what we did was we
acted really quickly, assembleda team, we thought about what
(06:33):
the site was going to look like.
We did everything we could to,you know, make everything look
nice.
We did some signage, but thesignage was a bit distant, was
not on the podium and evaluatedthose risks and tried to
mitigate it by not being thecenter of attention, being the
(06:57):
secondary to the attention, andthat, you know, played well.
We also developed various um,uh, uh scenarios based on what
could happen, what mentions what, what uh could be said about um
, about us, in our, in ourorganization, our industry, even
Um and so uh work to developkind of statements to support
(07:23):
those among other things.
But we just wanted to make surethat the optics were good and
very much engaged our localemployees and local stakeholders
and local media, where it madesense, because those were our
stakeholders and we wanted totake care of those and let the
White House take the lead on themain message that the White
(07:45):
House wanted.
Tom Mueller (07:47):
Yeah, what was the outcome for that?
Destin Singleton (07:49):
In the end the speech was we never saw it
ahead of time and so it wasagain kind of a complete wild
card.
We were told that we would haveit 72 hours later.
Still didn't have it, and so,you know, it ended up.
The topics and discussions weresomewhat benign and discussions
(08:16):
were somewhat benign.
However, I think by our youknow, based on everything that
we evaluated later, that we wereable to kind of minimize our
visibility in order to do to youknow, essentially kind of
reduce that risk.
But in the end we had the CEOand the site leader thank me and
the team for preparing them inthe way that we did and we came
(08:38):
out stronger with our localstakeholders and minimized the
potential broader public risk.
And so, really, just, you know,how do you prepare for chaos?
You think of everything thatcould happen, um, and you work
to minimize the areas where thegreatest risk lived and try to
(09:01):
what is it?
Roman manual said never's nottrue for everything, we all know
that but utilized this event tobuild goodwill where we could,
but in the end, very, very goodlocal support and minimized the
(09:27):
high visibility public risk.
Tom Mueller (09:30):
Yeah, that feels like one of those situations
where you want to over-respondin your preparation so that you
can plan for eventualities.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Marc, go ahead.
Marc Mullen (09:41):
No, that's okay To go back to your spring cleaning
idea.
How do you take that?
And that's an example of whereyou had lessons learned from
that exercise.
And now you take them back andyou fold them in, because four
months from now, when a mayorvisits, in his mind he's the
(10:03):
most important politician on theplanet.
So you've still got to say whatdo we learn from this?
How do we incorporate it in?
So next time we go through this, we don't have to run the whole
circus, we just go right tolessons learned absolutely,
absolutely and and bringing thatum.
Destin Singleton (10:19):
It's just part of the, the ongoing um building
and improvement over time, um,but and and it.
What I'm counseling clients nowreally is, you know, as the,
you know, the communicationstyle that is kind of happening
now in the public sphere is justvery different and it's a bit
(10:42):
chaotic.
And so I mean, and it's not a,that's not a message, you know,
for or against anyone.
This is just a message abouthow we are communicating broadly
, in the national scale rightnow, and global scale honestly.
And so what I'm counselingclients is really just be
prepared for some of thosescenarios Like where would you
(11:05):
come into the public discourseand how would you deal with that
If you get a true socialmention, if you get that tweet,
that X mention, and you know ifyour CEO is called out?
You know, just being thinkingthrough those scenarios.
(11:27):
It's what you were saying, mark.
You know, sit down, talk withyour team.
Where could you end up in thatbroader, you know public
discussion and plan forward andplan various scenarios.
Marc Mullen (11:45):
So if we read them on a B-Principle, you plan on
that kind of discussion over anemerging issue, but you knock on
the CEO's door at 2 am and saywe need to talk.
That's when you decide to goout on your own shortly after.
Yeah, involuntary, but that'ssomething I've seen, though,
with even highly drilledorganizations is one of the
(12:06):
dangers of all.
That is that the focus becomeshow do we do well in an exercise
and everything's built aroundthis and you even get high fives
afterwards and it's like we'rein our little pretend world that
never really quite touches thereal world.
And so what I have to oftenremind my clients is we're not
(12:27):
trying to get ready for anexercise, we're trying to get
ready for an accident or anincident.
And yet exercises are veryinsular and it's easy to end up
and even have a plan that at 3pm over a nice cup of coffee at
your desk.
It works perfectly.
Tom Mueller (12:44):
Well, I try to coach folks in exercises is, as
you've said, marc, you know, thegoal isn't to win the exercise,
the goal is to practice for thereal thing.
So, stretch yourself a littlebit and if I'm in the room with
the team, I'm setting stretchobjectives, you know.
Hey, yeah, the goals say get apress release out, do a press
(13:06):
conference.
Okay, I want to see astakeholder engagement plan.
I want to see a 48 hour, a 72hour communication strategy.
I want to see you know, and howmany, what, where are you going
to have press conferences?
How many?
You know all of that stuff.
So it's pushes the team tothink a little more
(13:27):
strategically rather than okay,let's get a press release out,
let's do this press conferenceand we've won.
Destin Singleton (13:33):
The difference between getting your license to
operate from your regulatorwhich is what you're talking
about, tom and being truly ready, and especially for
communications teams.
That would be a part ofresponse.
That would be a part ofresponse both from the liaison
(14:00):
and PIO sections that you knowin ICS, that you know, yes, you
have to be prepared to work inthe chaos and be, you know, much
more ready, and so I do thesame, tom.
So if I'm supporting anorganization, I help design a
realistic you know externalresponse.
You know how would social work,how would the media, what would
(14:26):
the media be?
coming and asking them andreally trying to develop
something that is ashyper-realistic as possible
especially to support thoseteams and potential incident
commanders, that sort of thing,so that they are ready for that
external aspect of a drill or ofan exercise, of a real
(14:46):
situation Right.
Tom Mueller (14:48):
Well, destin, thanks for joining us on this
episode of the podcast.
Really a fun conversation, andif you want to have more of this
fun conversation with destin,reach out to her directly and
she'd be happy to entertain youand even take you on as a new
client okay so there we go,everyone.
thanks for thanks again forjoining us for this episode of
(15:10):
the podcast.
We really appreciate youlending your ears to us.
Thank you again to Destin andMark for joining me here, and
we'll wrap it here.
We'll see you again soon foranother episode of the Leading
in a Crisis podcast.
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis podcast.
On today's episode, mark and Iare going to continue our
conversation with DestinSingleton, and on today's
episode, we're going to talkabout what might happen if your
organization was approached by ahigh-profile presidential
(00:25):
candidate or a high-profilesocial media influencer who want
to use your location as abackdrop for an announcement or
an event.
How could you, or how shouldyou, process that request and
what are the upsides and, moreimportantly, what are the
(00:46):
downsides of an event like thatcoming to your location?
Well, destin has a story toshare about that, where she
managed an event and she sharesthat experience with us.
In another topic we cover today, we also talk about large
crisis exercises and thedifference in approaches that we
(01:08):
see when we do exercises withlarge multinational corporations
.
There's a play to win theexercise kind of approach, and
there's the play to stretch yourteam and really build your
capability kind of approach.
I think you can guess which onewe favor, but we talk through
those issues and how we like toapproach dealing or organizing
(01:31):
major crisis exercises.
So let's join the conversationwith Destin now.
Well, I'd like to switch gears,you guys, if I can, and I want
to talk about dealing with highprofile personalities, and you
know how your company can andshould go about evaluating.
(01:53):
You know requests for sitevisits or just things to think
about.
We have so many socialinfluencers out there today.
People who will show up andrecord videos, use your company
location as a backdrop forsomething remarkable or
something ridiculous.
You just never know until itcomes out.
(02:15):
In particular, when thosepeople show up at your location,
there's some things you need tothink about.
Destin, I know you've got someexperience and some thoughts
with that, so walk us throughyour story here and we'll
discuss best practices comingout.
Destin Singleton (02:32):
Yes, thank you .
So, yes, so I was working for alarge oil company, a refiner,
Back in 2017, we got a call fromthe White House and so,
essentially, there was going tobe a presidential visit at one
of the refineries and we had 72hours to prepare.
We had very little informationabout objective that sort of
(02:56):
thing.
So we and we knew, based onhistory and what we had seen in
the public when these kinds ofvisits have happened to others,
we had seen, for example, anorganization host the president
and the president had their logoright next to them and the
(03:20):
speaker actually used their nameincorrectly, say incorrect
facts and potentially even saythis organization was, you know,
was a problem because of thisreason.
So you know, this kind of highprofile mentioning could be a
tweet, could be a visit, couldbe or sorry, not tweets what do
we call X mentions now?
Tom Mueller (03:42):
Tweets.
It still works for me.
Destin Singleton (03:53):
So, anyway, these kind of things can make or
break, or to honestly make andbreak.
Because of our, you know yourreputation, because of our you
know kind of, you know,disparate social beliefs and
values, so anyway.
So really, how do you preparefor what potentially could be
chaos?
Tom Mueller (04:08):
That's a great question, Destin how do you
prepare for what could be chaos?
Destin Singleton (04:13):
Any thoughts before I jump into what we did
in 2017?
Marc Mullen (04:17):
Just say no, how fast can you string barbed wire?
Destin Singleton (04:21):
No.
Honestly saying no was anoption, Right, you string barbed
wire no, honestly saying no wasan option Right, and obviously
I became involved after the CEOhad the initial conversation.
But saying no is an option andbut you know I'm not saying that
could also hurt you.
Tom Mueller (04:37):
So I mean, I'd be inclined to, to consider the
proposal.
It would just, depend there'sa bit of a trust factor here
right In knowing who's comingout.
How much can you control thesituation and how much you know
can you influence the messagingthat's going to use your
(04:58):
facility as a backdrop, andthose are all wild cards, though
.
Marc Mullen (05:02):
Well, and one of the challenges is they're never
coming to bolster yourreputation.
They're not interested in whatyour benefit or cost of this
process.
So maybe the answer is you justmake sure you have a whole
bunch of signage from yourcompetitors and you put that up
(05:23):
around the podium.
Destin Singleton (05:28):
Very good, Marc, but I mean, honestly, that
leads us directly into what wedecided to do.
So, essentially, we treatedthis 72 hours later visit, which
was very quick, but essentiallyas a kind of a simmering
emerging crisis.
We've got a a speaker coming totalk about something we don't
know.
We did not get the speech aheadof time.
Um, we don't know exactly who'scoming.
(05:49):
Um, we don't know exactly whatwill be talked about.
We don't know exactly, um,their objective.
So definitely, let you know,worked really closely, trusted
the White House advance team,worked really closely with them
and let them lead, you know,media from a national standpoint
and tried to work with them tohave a better understanding of
(06:12):
what will happen that day.
Result of all of that at the end, but essentially using our
crisis skills to think about howdo we minimize what could be a
risk to the organization andultimately, what we did was we
acted really quickly, assembleda team, we thought about what
(06:33):
the site was going to look like.
We did everything we could to,you know, make everything look
nice.
We did some signage, but thesignage was a bit distant, was
not on the podium and evaluatedthose risks and tried to
mitigate it by not being thecenter of attention, being the
(06:57):
secondary to the attention, andthat, you know, played well.
We also developed various um,uh, uh scenarios based on what
could happen, what mentions what, what uh could be said about um
, about us, in our, in ourorganization, our industry, even
Um and so uh work to developkind of statements to support
(07:23):
those among other things.
But we just wanted to make surethat the optics were good and
very much engaged our localemployees and local stakeholders
and local media, where it madesense, because those were our
stakeholders and we wanted totake care of those and let the
White House take the lead on themain message that the White
(07:45):
House wanted.
Tom Mueller (07:47):
Yeah, what was the outcome for that?
Destin Singleton (07:49):
In the end the speech was we never saw it
ahead of time and so it wasagain kind of a complete wild
card.
We were told that we would haveit 72 hours later.
Still didn't have it, and so,you know, it ended up.
The topics and discussions weresomewhat benign and discussions
(08:16):
were somewhat benign.
However, I think by our youknow, based on everything that
we evaluated later, that we wereable to kind of minimize our
visibility in order to do to youknow, essentially kind of
reduce that risk.
But in the end we had the CEOand the site leader thank me and
the team for preparing them inthe way that we did and we came
(08:38):
out stronger with our localstakeholders and minimized the
potential broader public risk.
And so, really, just, you know,how do you prepare for chaos?
You think of everything thatcould happen, um, and you work
to minimize the areas where thegreatest risk lived and try to
(09:01):
what is it?
Roman manual said never's nottrue for everything, we all know
that but utilized this event tobuild goodwill where we could,
but in the end, very, very goodlocal support and minimized the
(09:27):
high visibility public risk.
Tom Mueller (09:30):
Yeah, that feels like one of those situations
where you want to over-respondin your preparation so that you
can plan for eventualities.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Marc, go ahead.
Marc Mullen (09:41):
No, that's okay To go back to your spring cleaning
idea.
How do you take that?
And that's an example of whereyou had lessons learned from
that exercise.
And now you take them back andyou fold them in, because four
months from now, when a mayorvisits, in his mind he's the
(10:03):
most important politician on theplanet.
So you've still got to say whatdo we learn from this?
How do we incorporate it in?
So next time we go through this, we don't have to run the whole
circus, we just go right tolessons learned absolutely,
absolutely and and bringing thatum.
Destin Singleton (10:19):
It's just part of the, the ongoing um building
and improvement over time, um,but and and it.
What I'm counseling clients nowreally is, you know, as the,
you know, the communicationstyle that is kind of happening
now in the public sphere is justvery different and it's a bit
(10:42):
chaotic.
And so I mean, and it's not a,that's not a message, you know,
for or against anyone.
This is just a message abouthow we are communicating broadly
, in the national scale rightnow, and global scale honestly.
And so what I'm counselingclients is really just be
prepared for some of thosescenarios Like where would you
(11:05):
come into the public discourseand how would you deal with that
If you get a true socialmention, if you get that tweet,
that X mention, and you know ifyour CEO is called out?
You know, just being thinkingthrough those scenarios.
(11:27):
It's what you were saying, mark.
You know, sit down, talk withyour team.
Where could you end up in thatbroader, you know public
discussion and plan forward andplan various scenarios.
Marc Mullen (11:45):
So if we read them on a B-Principle, you plan on
that kind of discussion over anemerging issue, but you knock on
the CEO's door at 2 am and saywe need to talk.
That's when you decide to goout on your own shortly after.
Yeah, involuntary, but that'ssomething I've seen, though,
with even highly drilledorganizations is one of the
(12:06):
dangers of all.
That is that the focus becomeshow do we do well in an exercise
and everything's built aroundthis and you even get high fives
afterwards and it's like we'rein our little pretend world that
never really quite touches thereal world.
And so what I have to oftenremind my clients is we're not
(12:27):
trying to get ready for anexercise, we're trying to get
ready for an accident or anincident.
And yet exercises are veryinsular and it's easy to end up
and even have a plan that at 3pm over a nice cup of coffee at
your desk.
It works perfectly.
Tom Mueller (12:44):
Well, I try to coach folks in exercises is, as
you've said, marc, you know, thegoal isn't to win the exercise,
the goal is to practice for thereal thing.
So, stretch yourself a littlebit and if I'm in the room with
the team, I'm setting stretchobjectives, you know.
Hey, yeah, the goals say get apress release out, do a press
(13:06):
conference.
Okay, I want to see astakeholder engagement plan.
I want to see a 48 hour, a 72hour communication strategy.
I want to see you know, and howmany, what, where are you going
to have press conferences?
How many?
You know all of that stuff.
So it's pushes the team tothink a little more
(13:27):
strategically rather than okay,let's get a press release out,
let's do this press conferenceand we've won.
Destin Singleton (13:33):
The difference between getting your license to
operate from your regulatorwhich is what you're talking
about, tom and being truly ready, and especially for
communications teams.
That would be a part ofresponse.
That would be a part ofresponse both from the liaison
(14:00):
and PIO sections that you knowin ICS, that you know, yes, you
have to be prepared to work inthe chaos and be, you know, much
more ready, and so I do thesame, tom.
So if I'm supporting anorganization, I help design a
realistic you know externalresponse.
You know how would social work,how would the media, what would
(14:26):
the media be?
coming and asking them andreally trying to develop
something that is ashyper-realistic as possible
especially to support thoseteams and potential incident
commanders, that sort of thing,so that they are ready for that
external aspect of a drill or ofan exercise, of a real
(14:46):
situation Right.
Tom Mueller (14:48):
Well, destin, thanks for joining us on this
episode of the podcast.
Really a fun conversation, andif you want to have more of this
fun conversation with destin,reach out to her directly and
she'd be happy to entertain youand even take you on as a new
client okay so there we go,everyone.
thanks for thanks again forjoining us for this episode of
(15:10):
the podcast.
We really appreciate youlending your ears to us.
Thank you again to Destin andMark for joining me here, and
we'll wrap it here.
We'll see you again soon foranother episode of the Leading
in a Crisis podcast.
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