Mastering Strategic Communications To Navigate High-Stakes Environments With Chris King

Chris King, the Director of Corporate Services at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and Communications Program Director for the World Association of Nuclear Operators-Atlanta Center, joins the show to discuss how leaders drive safety and excellence. He shares why Strategic Communications is the key tool to align a modern workforce during organizational shifts. Leaders often struggle with team alignment, but building trust on the shop floor changes everything. You’ll learn how to break down institutional silos by practicing management by walking around. True leadership requires showing up with complete humility when things don’t go according to plan.

Show Notes:

• 00:00 – Breaking Silos Through Connection
• 02:02 –  From Order Takers to Problem Solvers
• 04:17 – The Power of Walking the Floor
• 07:09 – Enrolling Your Change Advocates
• 09:28 – Leading With Authentic Humility
• 12:20 – Fighting the Danger of Overconfidence
• 19:51 – Actively Creating Team Margin
• 26:21 – The Unfinished Pursuit of Excellence

Get the newest Change Proof Podcast episode delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

How do we leverage continuous uncertainty to thrive in this unprecedented new world?

The answer is to build the resilience we need to power us through the challenges we face so that we become “Change Proof.” Prepare to tackle the future with confidence by reading Adam’s latest book Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience.

—

Listen to the podcast here

Mastering Strategic Communications To Navigate High-Stakes Environments With Chris King

Breaking Silos Through Connection

Welcome back to another episode of the show. I have an amazing guest in store for you. A very senior leader and an organization that we don’t get to hear from that frequently. I’m going to go ahead read his bio and then jump right in. His name is Chris King. Chris is the Director of Corporate Services at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, or INPO, as it is called. Also, Communications Program Director for the World Association of Nuclear Operators in their Atlanta Center. With over 29 years of experience in the commercial nuclear industry, Chris is truly an expert that we will learn a lot from. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Chris King.

—

Chris, it is fun for me and I mean this. It’s fun to read someone else’s bio and share their accomplishments with the world. Most people haven’t traversed the same ground. That’s obvious, but a lot of people have been to the places you’ve been and dealt with the serious things that you deal with daily. Outside of the bio, my question to you is, what’s one thing that’s not baked into your CV? One thing that you would love for people to know about you that’s not what people customarily or typically learn about you.

I don’t know that you would get it out of my bio. Perhaps, if you dug deep enough, you might be able to. One of the things is, I started in this industry in 1996. I’ve been here a minute, but thinking back then to where we are now when it comes to our organization’s understanding and appreciating the way to use strategic communications to help their business run better, help improve morale and help align our workforce, to all be rolling in the same direction.

From Order Takers To Problem Solvers

Back in the day when I was part of the communications team, we were order takers. It was like, “I need a thing. Here’s the thing I need.” We would take that order. We would do very good things and the chunk machine. We’d push it back out the other end and we gave them exactly what they asked for. We were proud of it. Now, we’ve conditioned the leaders in our industry to understand that while they’re very effective and very successful at operating nuclear power stations, they may not be as good in helping to engage the workforce.

Instead of them coming to us, as professionals, and saying, “Here’s what I need.” They come and say, “Here’s my problem. How can you help me solve that problem based on what you know around engaging a workforce through strategic communications?” That’s been done with a peer group in my industry that is second to none. There’s a group of professionals out there that I’m proud to call friends and comrades in the industry. That’s one area that you probably wouldn’t get out of my bio.

It’s a perfect lead and it usually is this question that leads right into the next thing in the sequence. That is, how important in your industry is the engagement of the workforce? Many things that we’re hearing are driven by and focused on technology, especially artificial intelligence. On some level, people are afraid of it because it feels like it’s like human minus. It’s an augmentation to how humans can show up. At least that’s how I’m framing it in my world but we might dive down that rabbit hole or maybe it’s not a rabbit hole either. I’m curious how important the communication piece is to the workforce in your industry.

The Power Of Walking The Floor

It always comes down to relationships and knowing people. What we have found, it was an aspect of helping us achieve what I described. Which was, when we got involved with leadership teams that may be in a performance challenge space, we could come and sit down with them. We, being it wasn’t just me. The way it would work is, we would go. I would bring two of my peers with me. Two of the stations that may be challenged. We would sit down with their professional communications team but also their station leadership team. We find out what they’re doing. We’d interview them, but what we’ve been able to do is help them see how employing some things around being seen out amongst your workforce.

The whole thing is managed by walking around while it’s somewhat of a cliché but it works. If you think about this giant industrial setting that is a nuclear power plant, and having your senior-most leaders walking through this place and engaging with their employees. It breaks down some of that siloing or that uncertainty that you may have, especially as a new leader that may be created just because those people don’t know you.

If you’re trying to drive for a vision or you’re trying to drive to accomplish a thing and you don’t have buy-in from those folks who are walking the floors. You’re doomed. What we’ve been able to do over a number of years is help prove the reality that being a strong leader, you have to be able to connect with your employees. You can’t manage from your ivory tower, but you have to be around, walking, meeting, and understanding what your employees are doing and what they’re going through every day.

Before we even started, we were talking about change. Again, this is a perfect lead into the conversation around change, which is not just in the nuclear space. It’s in every industry. It’s in every business and in every aspect of human existence. This ever-present change, but I would say even now, what feels like a profound uptick in the velocity, the pace of change. As you said, when it comes to getting people to buy into change or to doing things differently, do you have a personal philosophy that you share in those settings? What are you describing where you’re trying to help that leader that is either a seasonal leader or that newly minted green leader and get other people engaged around change?

Enrolling Your Change Advocates

You think about someone who is trying to change the way that we do business, being able to help those leaders understand that it can’t always be directive even as a new leader. You bring people along with you and you get some early adopters who can be your deputized advocates back out in the field when you’re not around. If you get a group of individuals who feel like they are a contributor to the success or to the direction that that your organization is taking, you get those advocates that are built in to the workforce that you don’t have to be there to sell the idea. You’ve now deputized some folks to be out there on your behalf. Speak the truth that you want them to speak to begin to convince others who may not be early adopters. Begin to bring them along to buy into the changes as well.

What would you say is the greatest headwind to that? In the ideal situation, the leader is out there visible, connecting, and modeling, even perhaps. Whatever the change might be. Being an advocate and then enrolling other advocates. It becomes contagious. Your positivity around something other people pick up and then they pass it on. That’s a good scenario. That becomes a great flywheel.

Yet we know, you know, and I know, in our work too, that when those leaders come to you and they tell you what the challenges they’re facing are. At least what I hear and what our team hears, more often than not, is that people are not only exhausted from all the change, but it’s like they’re white-knuckling. They’re holding your breath, which is my favorite. The most telling thing I’ve heard somebody say is a senior leader saying, “My team is just holding their breath. They’ve been holding their breath since they can’t remember when or like the post-pandemic.”

They just keep holding their breath thinking that at some point they’re going to get to exhale. That’s how they’re experiencing this perpetual change. What are you hearing? Since it’s not that best-case scenario, more typically than what would be the greatest head wins that you’re experiencing in there.

Strategic Communications: We need to use strategic communications to help our business run better.

Leading With Authentic Humility

I don’t know if this is directly answering your question, but think about those leaders who have been exceptionally effective at changing a culture or shifting an organization. Not only are they present, but they’re genuine and transparent. Even when things don’t follow the plan and inevitably, something’s not going to go as planned. You can be genuine up front with your organization and own it.

You’d be like, “That didn’t go as planned. I’m your leader. I missed a step somewhere or I’d misguided someone.” Where I’ve seen that be most effective when they do reach those trip wires or they do meet that headwind is they’re genuine, fallible and they’re human beings. We all make mistakes or we all misjudge or we all misplan. To face it and own it and just say, “We’re going to move past it,” I believe is an attribute that I’ve seen most effective leaders do very effectively. Again, it’s another step in creating that relationship and being genuine with your organization as I said. Also, demonstrating that you’re going to make a mistake and I’m going to make a mistake. Let’s learn from it and let’s move on. I need your help in moving on.

I’m going to answer the question that I posed to you by thinking about what my answer would be. The first thing that came to mind was the idea that there’s not a lot of safety. As a headwind, I find in organizations, there’s a lack of safety for mistake-making. In your industry, there’s probably almost no margin on some level and at the macro level, like the worst-case scenario being some catastrophe and accident, etc., that it impacts people’s health and safety should. There’s little or no room there.

Yet, in every industry, yours included, but I want to get your thoughts on this. Mistakes have to be made. You have to continually learn. You can’t learn except through mistake making. I’m a fan of mistakes being the result of something that doesn’t go according to plan, but everybody was fully committed and fully present in the process so then mistakes happen. Where I have a lack of tolerance and I’m tested in my own level of patience for myself and for other people is in these unforced errors. I see unforced errors that are the result of just not being present. Being multitasking, doing too many things at the same time and being also depleted mentally, emotionally, and physically. Does that resonate with you? Anything you want to add to that?

Fighting The Danger Of Overconfidence

There’s another component that is being overconfident. It’s like, “I’ve done this task 30 times in the past years. I don’t need to do the procedure. I just know I got to go do this, this, and this.” Inevitably, that’s the time where a mistake is made. When you become overconfident, you don’t follow the written rules and the written procedure, that’s a message that we regularly try to impart on our workforces. Have humility and also don’t think you got it. Only because you got it once, doesn’t mean you’re going to get it again.

Being overconfident, but also stopping when you’re unsure. It’s okay if you’re in the middle of doing critical work, but you’re uncertain if that procedure is accurate. It’s going to get you to the end point, it is okay and it’s expected as an individual to stop if you’re unsure. Put the component in a safe place and then go ask somebody if you’re right or wrong.

On the scale of the words or phrases that create the most fear in business, but in so many areas of life but just stick in this arena. The words I don’t know are terrifying to people. What does that mean? What will it mean to my boss or to other people or the respect that I’ve earned or deserve? It’s like, “I don’t know.” Those are dangerous words. When you can’t say them, they’re dangerous.

When you can’t say, absolutely. It’s expected culturally in my business to be able to say and you’re encouraged to say, “I don’t know. Help me understand. I need guidance,” because we are in such a critically low margin industry. We have to encourage our employees to be comfortable in stopping when they’re unsure. Even if they shouldn’t have stopped because they were monitoring or running the right path, it’s okay to stop. It’s okay to shut things down in the spirit of being a conservative decision.

That might be in hindsight, technically called a mistake, as we were saying. Shut something down and then you come back and go, “In hindsight, it didn’t need to. Maybe it cost us something to do that.” That humility that leads to this. In the book Change Proof, which when I spoke for your organization, we were talking about these principles in Change Proof like the PAC or the pause, ask, and choose.

This idea that you pause, and I’ll add your language to it, to have humility to be able to ask and those three questions you just gave us. It’s like, “I don’t know. Help me understand. I need guidance.” Where are those three? Those are questions of a person that has humility to start with. There’s not all good confidence when you ask that. What flows out of that from the standpoint of the collaboration with others, the trust that you have in other people.

At the times when they need your advice, your guidance, then they trust in you. That’s what we refer to as short of a got-your-back environment. As opposed to, “Somebody else thinks I should know that.” The judgment associated with all that whole thing is just ego. More mistakes have been made. More unforced errors have been made in the name of ego probably than anything else.

I agree. Even holistically within the industry. We have a phrase, “We’re only as strong as our weakest link,” from an industry perspective. What happens in one station or in one country affects us all. It raises the question about, whatever happened there could happen here. We have this community that feels strongly that you’re not going to see in any other industry. We have a community that feels strongly about our best interest to serve in your success. We want you to be successful because that makes our industry successful.

Yes, and PR. I hate to use that term, but the world’s confidence and comfort level around what you all do is finally important. It is like the weakest link can destroy the whole thing because an accident that happens in Japan impacts the confidence, the public relations and the world’s confidence and the industry as a whole. Not just related to what might happen in one country or any location.

Strategic Communications: You have to be around walking, meeting, and understanding what your employees are going through.

Correct.

There aren’t that many Industries where if you screw up the shoes that were manufactured in Bangladesh and Nike has to take him back or whatever. It doesn’t mean that people stop buying shoes.

It does not.

Thin margin, as you said. I don’t know that I brought this up during our talk. If I did, then please let me know but I still want to bring it up with you now. When it comes to margin, what we love to do is we play with words. We play with concepts. It’s a part of the fun of the work that we get to do because people need to think not just outside the box. The instructions somebody once said are on the outside of the box. That’s the paradox of it or whatever.

When you think about margin, I know you’re thinking about margin for error. A lot of people when they think about margin, they’re thinking about profit margin in a business context. When we think about margin, we’re thinking about the space between our load and our limits. I’m not sure I had that conversation or had the time to do that with you, folks. This idea of the space between our load and our limits is meaningful because a lot of people are playing with no margin or very little. When you don’t have any space between your load and your limits, the chances of making mistakes are, again, those ones that don’t have to happen.

The chance is that you don’t show up the way that you’re able to show up or to perform the best you can. Whether it’s on the field of play, the literal field of play in sports or it’s in the field of play in your job or in your role as a parent or a leader or have some team in an organization. You don’t have a lot of margin. You’re just on a razor’s edge all the time. It’s stressful.

Actively Creating Team Margin

I 100% agree, but in my mind, what we talk about within these walls is a good leader is going to understand when they’re team members are reaching their capacity and they partner with them to help them overcome it. They’ll help them shed things. We work with them to give them a little bit more margin. We always talk about how a good leader knows their people and can read the individual.

They know them individually not as a group and can relate to them in a way to help them find a way to create more bandwidth in their work so that they do have a little bit of breathing time. They do have a little bit of downtime in their brain to, hopefully, eliminate some of those error likely situations so that they aren’t bouncing from task to task and rushing through things and creating the potential foreign are to be made.

It may well be that your folks are probably better at it because there is this more sensitivity around it than I experienced elsewhere. Do you have an opinion as to how good managers are in what you’re describing? What you just said, if that was the gold standard across organizations, then people would be doing so much better than they’re actually doing.

If we were knocking it out at the park, we wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore. Generally speaking, we do a pretty good job of that here but it takes great senior leadership to be able to make it. It’s an expectation of managers lowering the organization. I would like to think that we do a pretty good job of it here but we ebb and flow. We get those margins that are tied to and we have to manage those as well.

Is there a genetic marker if you will when you’re looking at a leader and wondering, “Is this person able to discern what we talked about?” Even diagnose or evaluate when somebody’s got such a thin margin. It’s only a matter of time before they either screw up their health or their most important relationships or they screw up at work. Whatever that might be. You get ahead of that because you’re that leader that can evaluate that early enough on that you can intervene or be helpful. What are some of the genetic markers of someone who has that capacity? People want to know that this second, Chris.

That’s a big question. When I meet one-on-one with my managers, I am able to ask direct and specific questions about individuals within their teams. Bringing back a full thoughtful, meaningful response that illustrates that they know what their individuals are going through. I don’t know if that’s a genetic marker, but it’s a tactic for me to be able to understand that their exercising that responsibility at least. You could write a book on that if you knew the answer to that one.

It’s funny. This is a terrible plug for the new book Re-Culture that’s coming out. Forgive me. I swear to God, I didn’t plan it. I’m going to skip past that now. As you were answering that, I knew you were up for the question. Maybe it’s something that is “in the person” already. Whether it’s empathy or compassion for other people. Maybe there’s that. I think it’s also something that’s further and this is why I’m glad we’re talking about it for the work you do and the work we do, that is father for training.

This is something you can train and you can be checking in and having an advocacy structure around it. I sometimes use that term like you did instead of accountability. The idea that we can check in on this so that we’re making sure that we don’t leave people behind like in a military context. We don’t leave any person in the field. You don’t leave a person in the field. In the business world, it’s been acceptable for too long that we leave people behind. That’s a personal statement. I get it.

I’ve been to parts of other organizations where it’s my way or the highway. They leave bodies behind and as they plow through, they get something done. Nobody’s going to stay there long. You’re not going to create a strong engaged organization if that’s how you operate. That’s a tough place to be and it sounds like you’ve been there. I know I have.

Personally, I’ve witnessed it. I have kids that are in the workforce now and I could see even in the organization some big ones, which I won’t name. The way that the organization’s burned through their talent. It’s always feast or famine. I don’t know what it is about. About us as a species perhaps, because there was the time, not so long ago, the great resignation. There was a trend. Now, it’s the opposite. They’re calling it like job hugging.

I’ve not heard that term.

Strategic Communications: A good leader knows their people and can read the individual.

They’re making up terms all the time like job hugging. The cycle keeps going back and forth between these two extremes of the pendulum. It’s a sit-back-and-forth.

I’ll be having conversations with friends of mine on the golf course or something. They’ll tell me stories about things that occur in their organizations. I will be shocked and say, “You’ll get escorted off the property if you’ve ever found doing that at my company. That’s a deal-breaker. You would just be gone.” It’s shocking what occurs in some organizations now.

Indeed. I want to ask you one final question, then we’ll wrap things up. I know we talked about resilience quite a bit the day that we were together and how that contributes to a culture. You folks have a culture that is so committed to continuous learning and continuous improvement. Could you speak a little bit more about why that has become part of the DNA at INPO? That’s fine to be on a mission, vision, values statements, and on plaques. People have these things. It’s nothing profound in that but again, spending time with organizations as I do. Few of them live out that and I got the distinct sense that this is so important to you folks. How is that? Why is that?

The Unfinished Pursuit Of Excellence

It’s in our DNA. It’s a core value of our organization. It’s a value of continuous learning but organizationally, it’s that way. Even in our industry, it’s that way. That’s one of the pillars of what INPO is about. It’s around you’re never done. We’re always about pursuing excellence. If you’re ever in the INPO building, we have a big, I’ll call it a carving, if you will. It’s a big marble table with the word “Excellence” chiseled into it. The last E in the word is unfinished because you never achieve excellence.

You’re always pursuing the next thing. That’s a mantra that we talk about with our employees, but we also pursue it within our industry. In our industry engagements, we’re always talking about what’s the next step. Where are we going to go next? How do we achieve the next level of performance? It’s a cornerstone of what we do for our organization and for our industry. It’s a constant pursuit of excellence.

That was part of what I observed. In fact, I said this to you in a prior meeting we had. I felt like the environment that I got to be invited to be a part of, there was an impeccability to it. It felt like that to me. Every detail was being looked after. Everybody’s very much on point. Not on edge.

It’s a proud organization with deep commitment by its workforce.

Credit to you all. Chris, thank you so much for making the time to have a conversation. Thank you for the work you do.

Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed meeting you over the last couple of months. Hopefully, our paths will cross again soon.

I’m looking forward to that as well.

Cheers, my friend.

Ciao for now.

—

I just love that conversation. Chris has got a big time job and the nuclear industry is again thin margin and no margin for error and stuff, and focusing on people in human plus. Not human minus. How do we plus people? Everything that Chris shared with us was about plus people, including the idea that we have to have that humility. Again, in our model, the Change Proof model, the pause, ask, and choose.

The pause IS that moment of humility when you’re questioning whether or not you should go forward with something or do something. React to something even and then you ask those questions. Any questions are powerful at that moment. What don’t I know? What don’t I see? Where do I need guidance? Who can guide me? How do I understand better? Those questions are powerful tools in creating greater performance, but also creating greater collaboration and greater connection to other people.

We don’t have to find those answers by ourselves. They sometimes come to us. I know when I’m sitting in stillness and in prayer, I get lots of downloads and answers, so to speak or not, I get genuine answers but we cannot operate the way we do as a human being, as a species. Not as an algorithm or something artificial but something natural. We need to connect with other people. We can’t operate in a vacuum or in an isolation tank. As we like to say in the business world in the silo. Too many people do. Too many of us try to win in that way. That is not a recipe for success.

I loved everything that Chris was sharing with us. If this was meaningful to you as well, please share this episode with some friend, family member, or colleagues. Sharing is caring, as the old saying goes. It is helpful to us too because it helps the algorithm to put this content in front of more people that would benefit from interacting with it. Any comments you have, you can leave them at AdamMarkel.com/Podcast.

If you’d like to also engage with us further, you can go to WorkWellLabs.com. That’s another resource to find out more about what WorkWell does in the world within organizations dealing with tremendous change and sometimes resistance to change and sometimes other things that are not so helpful to the business succeeding. All those things are fodder for conversation and for solution and blameless problems. That’s what we love to focus on. I’d love to hear from you and engage further. We thank you for being a part of the community. Thank you so much for tuning in and for sharing your time and your energy with us as well. Ciao for now.

Important Links

• Chris King on LinkedIn
• Institute of Nuclear Power Operations
• World Association of Nuclear Operators
• Change Proof
• Re-Culture
• AdamMarkel.com/Podcast
• WorkWellLabs.com

About Chris King

Chris King is the Director of Corporate Services at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and Communications Program Director for the World Association of Nuclear Operators-Atlanta Center, with over 29 years of experience in the commercial nuclear industry. Since joining INPO in 1996, King has held various communications roles, has led communications, business transformation (Innovation, Change Management, Project Management) and administrative services. King has participated in a loaned assignment to a nuclear station, on corporate evaluation teams and led station assistance visits all to help the nuclear industry’s continued pursuit of excellence. King has enjoyed extensive leadership training from institutions like MIT and the Centers for Creative Leadership.