Hosted by veteran communications strategist and leadership trainer J.Marie, Your Friend in Leadership is an inspiring and approachable podcast created to empower today’s public leaders. Each episode delivers strategic insights, transformative ideas, and actionable communication tools to help you better connect with your communities and move your mission forward. With deep appreciation for the important work of public leaders and the knowledge that leadership and communication are skills that can be built and improved, this podcast is your guide to confident and effective leadership every step of the way.
Greetings, friends, and welcome back to this podcast on leadership and communications. Today, we're gonna talk about a topic that comes up a lot in my consulting work, and that is, you know, many times leaders of public agencies are dealing with issues that have an element of confidentiality or just content that can't be talked about. And that creates a real tension because generally, public organizations on the side of transparency. And in fact, public agencies often have laws related to, you know, we sometimes call them sunshine laws or public records laws. And so you actually have not just a responsibility as a leader to be transparent and engage the larger community, but you have a legal obligation to conduct your business in public.
J.Marie:And yet there are some times when it is appropriate to maintain confidentiality or neutrality or discretion in what can be talked about. And so when those kinds of topics come up and that tension emerges, it puts public leaders in a bit of a sticky situation. And if those topics aren't navigated well, it can undermine the public's trust in you as a leader and in your organization in general. But I'm here to tell you, it doesn't have to be that way. You can navigate these kinds of topics in such a way that it actually builds community trust.
J.Marie:And that's what we're gonna talk about here today. The class that I teach on this is kind of colloquially called what to say when you can't say much, and so that's what we're gonna dig into. Before we get into the things you can say, and I've got some biases about that, I believe strongly there's always things that you can say, and so we'll unpack that in just a minute. But before we get into that, I think it's helpful to understand, well, what are these what are the topics that can sometimes feel like a a landmine, and what are those topics where it is appropriate to have confidentiality or discretion in what's shared. And a handful of examples include things like disciplinary action.
J.Marie:When you are navigating personnel matters, oftentimes it's it is appropriate to maintain confidentiality around disciplinary action, either for staff or in the case of public schools, particularly for students. The policies and procedures that you follow related to disciplinary action are public, but the specific actions you take for any particular staff member or student are generally protected. That's protected information that doesn't become public knowledge. Any kinds of issues related to legal liability, you know, you have while on one hand you have an obligation to be open and transparent, you also have an obligation to protect the taxpayer interest. And so you don't want to create a bigger liability issue that will cost taxpayers more money by by being inappropriate in what you share publicly.
J.Marie:So you have to really attend to your legal guidance around the intersection between Sunshine Laws, public records, you know, open records requirements, and confidentiality related to litigation and legal matters. So it's important to to be clear about what the boundaries are on that. Negotiations with your employee associations. There's it's often appropriate. Both sides will typically, not always, but will often agree at the outset that they will maintain confidentiality of the details of the negotiation that's happening at the table.
J.Marie:And there's often really good reasons for confidentiality in all of these settings. You know, for example, when it comes to negotiations, there are often multiple complicated interrelated sets of interests that are being negotiated at a labor management table. And a lot of times, if you're sitting at the table, you'll hear examples where someone might say, well, what if this, you know, we could give a little on this issue that's important to us if you're willing to give a little on that other issue that's important to you. The details of of that might take several meetings to work their way out. And if you were to go public with the details of that conversation before you've actually found a creative solution to to those conflicting interests, it could kill the dialogue and make people less creative, less willing to go out on a limb and explore alternative approaches.
J.Marie:And so a lot of times, both parties will agree to confidentiality at least in the beginnings of that process, for example. So there's a handful of different topics where it's absolutely appropriate, even though you're a public agency and have an obligation to be transparent, you have a counterbalancing need to maintain privacy or discretion or confidentiality. So when those things come up, though, the public is custom to being able to ask for information and you being obligated to share it. And so when you shift gears and become more circumspect about the information, it can lead the public to then feel like you're hiding something, especially, oh, please do not use the phrase no comment. There's a million other things you can say.
J.Marie:Just strike that out of your vocabulary as a leader in general, because the minute you say no comment, it implies there's more to the story, makes people feel like, oh, there must be something really juicy there, and it makes them more curious. So do not ever say no comment. And so what can you say? Here's some things you can always talk about. You can always talk about your organization's values, and I encourage you to pull that straight out of your mission and vision work.
J.Marie:And if you don't have a clearly spelled out mission and vision, then I hope that you as a leader have some clarity around what are the values that guide your organization. You know, do you have value around student safety? If this was a public school, for instance, you might say, you know, while our primary mission is around educating every student, we also know that that children can't learn unless they feel safe. So safety is a foundational value and priority for us in our school community. You might have a value around service.
J.Marie:Whatever the case may be, you can always speak to your values and how those values apply to the topic at hand. You can always talk about your policies and procedures, and I encourage you to do so because by referencing the fact that you are guided by policy and procedure, what that implies is that while it might be a stressful issue that we're dealing with right now, maybe there's an accusation of misconduct by a staff member, Maybe there's a an issue of potential liability related to someone getting injured. A lot of times, the things that we have to be careful how we talk about them are things that are likely also to bring up big emotions. So when we reference policy and procedure, what we're also conveying is that this has been while this is a big deal to us right now, this is not the first time this kind of issue has ever happened. And we have thought through this at a time when when we were calm, when we weren't in the heat of the issue.
J.Marie:This was something that has been thought through, and other districts or other agencies have faced this before. There is a sense of what are the best practices related to this issue, and those best practices have been documented in legal policy and the procedures that we follow associated with that. And it gives people a sense of, confidence that you as leaders are following a guidebook, that you haven't gone rogue, like, you are being led by rational, well thought out guidance. So you can always talk about that. You can typically talk about the big picture of what has happened and what's going to happen next.
J.Marie:Like, you may not know the outcome of a personnel investigation, but you could describe that you have hired a neutral third party investigator and have given them permission to access all of the materials related to this. Or you can describe that you are working closely with law enforcement on this matter and that you are collaborating fully and that you are taking cues from them on how to move forward. So you can give those kind of big picture ideas of what's happened so far, how are we addressing it, how are we thinking about it, what are the values and policies that are guiding what we're doing and what's gonna happen next. And you can also I really encourage you to offer helpful, supportive materials whenever possible. So for instance, many agencies have an employee assistance program of some sort that's available to their employees.
J.Marie:And so you might, when you're communicating about an issue, like if you were having to alert us let a staff know that one of their colleagues is on leave pending the outcome of an investigation, you might also notice that sometimes these kinds of allegations can bring up strong emotions amongst their colleagues and that you encourage them to get the help and support that they need to navigate those strong emotions. And here's the phone number for the employee assistance program, if you have one. Or perhaps you are a public library and maybe you are communicating about an issue that's happened in another community that has to do with maybe there was violence at a library in a neighboring community, and so you are communicating about that in your community. There are often agencies and organizations that have thought through and provided tip sheets for how to navigate these kinds of issues. So for instance, if you're maybe talking with students who use your, you know, children who come into your library who might be nervous because of either an act of violence or a natural disaster, you might then be able to point towards, you know, there's the school psychologists associations have tip sheets about how to talk with children about natural disasters or how to talk with children about acts of violence.
J.Marie:So if you're gonna provide resources, the one thing that I would share as a caution is be sure that you don't go outside the scope of your own organization's expertise level. So if you aren't personally the School Psychologists association or an appropriate expert in an area, don't go generating a fresh tip sheet about the issue. Go to the organizations who are experts in this issue and find those resources and point your audiences towards those other third party tip sheets and and expertise. All of these things to say, while it is appropriate sometimes to limit what you talk about, there are things you can say, and please don't ever say no comment. And in fact, in a future episode, I'm gonna walk through a skill set around.
J.Marie:It's called bridging and converting, and it's a that's a classic interview skill to help you shift from a question that someone might ask you that is more detailed than what you can answer and shift their attention to what it is you want to focus on and what you can dig into. And that is a topic that deserves a whole podcast all to itself, so we'll dig into that. But for today, what I hope you take away from this is the idea that while there are legitimate things that you can't always talk about in the kind of detail that you might like to in a public setting, There always are things you can say. It's important as a leader that you show up and talk about the things that you can talk about, that you don't retreat from the topic altogether. Because when you step back and leave a vacuum, I promise you that vacuum will get filled, and it'll get filled with what they're nervous about.
J.Marie:It will get filled with rumors and conjecture. And so when you're dealing with these hard topics, what I hope for you is that you have the courage to go out and talk about the things that you can talk about and to step into that leadership role to help frame the issue and make clear to your community that you and your team are competent, that you are navigating this appropriately and responsibly, and that you can be trusted to lead the organization through this difficult issue. And we will dig into some more elements of this in future podcasts. But for today, I appreciate the work that you do, especially when the topics are challenging, and I hope you have a great day. Take good care, friends.
J.Marie:Be well.