Today we attended Emergency! Communicating in a crisis, hosted by Aberfield PR as part of Leeds Business Week.

The session was a two hour hands-on crisis training exercise; learning by doing, handled with expertise by the team at Aberfield. They offered guidance, information, input and teaching as we went.

We established the how and why of crisis management, putting a crisis plan in place and how to actually go about addressing and implementing it

This interactive meeting saw us all presented with the same details of a fictional company and an outline as to the issue at hand, before each of us was presented with a job title. Let’s just say, my MD and Jeremy Paxman interview aspirations are well behind me!

All in all, the key points for dealing with a crisis are:

• The initial response is critical
• Establish clear teams and roles
• Prioritise tasks
• Accuracy over speed
• Don’t forget internal audiences
• Plan ahead: know your next steps

My key take out? (Without wanting to sound ridiculously cliché…) Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!