Managing Negative Situations

byHarveyBrown

9.7K followers

7 years ago

Did any of you watch the International Association of Athletic Federations’ (IAAF) World Championships that were staged in London, England? The games were interesting on several fronts. The United States of America’s (USA) team seem to have found their mojo again and are winning in several of the track events including sprint. The Jamaican team seem to have fallen on hard times with the reality that thee 100 metres sprint and the 4x100 are the final events for Usain Bolt and it appears that they desperately need someone to take his place as the leader of the team.

With the humbling experience of not doing as well as is normally expected of the Jamaican team, this could be viewed as evidence that they do not use “performance enhancing,” drugs to achieve what they have been able to achieve since 2004.
That is not the reason however, why I decided to write this post. What struck me is how Usain Bolt managed defeat or failure, depending on which end of the stick you are viewing the situation.
When I saw how he embraced Justin Gaitlin, the American sprinter, at the end of the race and how he conducted himself, I had a flashback and an image of a company taking responsibility for a mishap that occurred in 1982, with Tylenol, a Johnson and Johnson product came to mind.
Usain Bolt did not get the fairy tale ending to his golden career that started in 2002, with the World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica. He had to settle for the Bronze medal in the Men’s 100 metres sprint. He was beaten by the American sprinter, Justin Gaitlin, a man he had beaten several times before.
What struck me was in defeat he had nothing but praise for his opponent. He could of used many excuses as to why he did not win, but he chose to take the high road and accept what had occurred. He decided to set the tone for how people and fans accepted the outcome. There are many other thinks that can be said about Bolt’s management of a very difficult moment, but I wanted to focus on how he managed a very difficult situation and retained the respect of fans. To me what he did showed his leadership qualities and why I said the Jamaican team needs someone to take his place as leader.
Now what has that got to do with Wealthy Affiliate (WA), or Tylenol for that matter?
In 1982, Tylenol was the leading pain killer in North America, but in October of that year seven people died in Chicago from taking it.
It was labeled the Tylenol Crisis. Apparently the product was tampered with when it hit the shelves. It was found that the product was removed from the shelves, infected with 65 Milligrams of cyanide,10,000 times the amount needed to kill a human.
How Johnson and Johnson handle the crisis is a study in how to manage a very negative situation. Tylenol was the companies biggest money earner. Before the crisis it controlled 37 percent of the market. After the crisis, that share dropped to seven percent. The company could have distanced itself from the situation since the tampering occurred at the pharmacies. It could have stalled for time to see what else might happen. Its reaction however was to take responsibility and warn the public about the danger of taking Tylenol and it removed every capsule from the market across the United States, a loss to the company of approximately $100 million dollars.This approach and coupled with its marketing strategy not only won back customers but established Tylenol once again as the most popular pain reliever on the market.
What has both these situations got to do with us at WA? We are all trying to establish a business that will either sell products to the wider community or provide information that will attract people to our webpages, where they can purchase something from our affiliate links.
Not everyone will be happy with how the webpage looks or they will find something wrong with the information we provided. How we manage that type of situation will determine how our current and future customers will react.
The first thing is to take charge of the situation, whether you agree or not. Do not look to provide excuses. Same as when we are stuck here at WA, try and find a solution for the problem or criticism by communicating with the individual. By managing the situation you are demonstrating that it is not the webpage or information that is important but the customer or individual providing criticism. In this day and age, that customer or critic has access to a large audience thanks to social media. So it is far more beneficial in the long term to provide the customer with an extraordinary customer experience or to let the critic know that you value their criticism and will see how you can improve or incorporate their suggestion. By conversing with the person you may find out why they felt that way about the website or information and together come up with a workable solution.
I think Usain Bolt galvanized his fan base by showing the world how to handle defeat rather than finding excuses why things did not go the way he dreamed. He did not get angry and blame everyone. He took responsibility and that is one of the signs of a good leader or a company that values its customers.
On a side note, Johnson and Johnson’s handling of the crisis was all based on its mission statement that was created in 1944.

References: www.iml.jou.ufl.edu.projects/f...