No kidding, guys, actual headline about a big league community manager: “…the White House press secretary’s candor may be a sign he should switch to less visible role.”
It is a standard of conventional wisdom that people are idiots, can’t handle the truth, and facts must be dressed up and spun in order to be palatable. And it’s a fact that people who do tell the truth are usually “in trouble” at best and run out of town on a rail at worst.
Now here’s my problem with the conventional wisdom, besides it being cynical: It’s not actually true.
An audience is always composed of two groups – one, actual customers (or voters or whatever). Two, people with their own agenda. You might as well blow off the second group entirely, because they are never going to listen. It does not matter how much time you spend on spin and packaging and whatever. They are going to find a way to twist your words, take quotes out of context, and if all else fails, lie. Why waste time catering to their nonsense? I’ll tell you what, if your community is bigger than a thousand people, you don’t have time. Your only hope is to break people off from the herd at live events and get through to them when they don’t have an audience.
The actual customers are different. You still want to put your best foot forward. You still want to choose the perfect words, the words that will communicate your feelings and your intent as well as the facts. You still want to convey a sense of inclusion, of partnership, of value. You need to be in sync with your team in terms of your message and your timing. And you should never be rude to an individual (rude to hypothetical groups/strawmen – we CM types call that a “technique”) and you don’t need to say every little thing that pops into your head at the instant it does the popping.
But you really, really don’t have to avoid candor with actual customers. When you think you do, then… and only then… is it time to switch to a less visible role.
This is just one of the many recent signs: 14th amendment racial angst, religious freedom (not in my backyard), and more.
With a notable increase in political commentary, shall we just go ahead and assume you’ve been asked by Sarah Palin to be her Vice-Presidential running mate? If not, at least it’s a good rumor …
Oof. Avoid politics.
Gibbs’ candor didn’t consist of speaking a ‘truth’ that was too hard to hear, it consisted of him injecting way too much of his personal opinion into a political discussion. That’s not his job.
It’d be like a community manager writing a diatribe about how F2P players are more trouble than they’re worth. That may be the manager’s honest opinion, but do you really think that’s appropriate ‘candor’?
There’s probably a better example around somewhere to make your point.
I’m not sure candor is the right term to use in criticizing Gibbs lately.
I’m a big fan of candor in politics, but press secretaries are supposed to phrase things well enough that you can infer the criticism they’re offering, not state outright that they think the President’s opponents are drug-addled nuts. (Even if they are.)
If you’re thinking of it in terms of community management, (which I admit is a useful comparison) Gibbs is getting more and more like Abashi was on the EQ boards – confrontational, dismissive of large segments of the community, and inclined to pop off when he’s angry about something. These don’t seem like useful qualities in a press secretary or a community manager, no matter how much you value candor.
Hrm. I see what you guys are saying, and you’re probably right.
What set me off was the headline *itself*, saying candor is a reason to stop doing a public facing job. I wish there was a better example of candor, because I do truly believe that we need more candor instead of so much packaging and spin – not to be confused with rudeness.
Sanya as Sarah Palin’s running mate… if you only knew.
While candor is an import aspect of the job I think it would be harder to speak at the level of your target audience, aka the masses, and still get a complete and complex message across.
Two audiences to be sure, but in American politics who your audience is tends to ebb and flow. What might be candor one day could be insult the next.
How would you say the customer to agenda camps fluctuate in the communities you manage, can you be sure who is who on any given day?
I want to say, I rememer trying to get this across many years ago…