Click image to play

In the most dissected PR tactic since Bill Clinton first addressed the Monica Lewinsky affair, Tiger Woods delivered a statement in front of a hand-picked crowd unable to ask any questions.  I’ve argued in the past that the real lesson was from his allowing such a disconnect between the perception and reality of his life, but because Tiger is as close to a functioning business as an athlete could possibly be, I believe it’s instructive for professional communicators to assess his performance nonetheless.

My answer: Disastrous (but it’s not all his fault!).

First, the whole staging was ill-conceived.  As author/ESPN columnist Bill Simmons observed, it looked like a Saturday Night Live skit with a velvet blue curtain and an empathetic set of caricatures silent in the audience.  More importantly, by controlling the environment so tightly and taking no questions, he taunted the modern media—in all its social, unremitting, and hyperactive glory—into prying with even greater aggression for answers as the season continues.

But, like a twice-beaten Olympic athlete with one more race for gold, he could have redeemed himself with a winning performance against the odds.  While there are conflicting accounts on how close he came, I saw a robotic, rehearsed, and unsympathetic figure who did little to redeem his reputation.  He made frequent eye contact with a speech, read at a disturbingly staccato pace, and awkwardly placed his hand on his heart.

His critics have largely attributed these failings to continued bad advice from his “people.”  But that’s where I disagree, and where another lesson for professional communicators may lie.  That speech sounded exactly what I would think Tiger Woods, a Stanford-educated millionaire hundreds of times over, would probably write if trying to craft a “professional” public statement.  In other words, it sounded like your CEO wrote it! And that’s the problem: your CEO and Tiger are both capable of writing impressively passable public statements that hit the “right” points, but in their efforts to assume control, they sacrifice the human element that a professional communicator could have offered: the ability to engender sympathy, provide relatable anecdotes and stories, find a true voice, and, perhaps most importantly, accept questions and dialogue.

The related danger for businesses may lie in the increasing number of members reporting that their CEO “gets” communication.  Tiger’s latest misstep reminds one that senior leaders who truly get communication allow their paid communicators to enable the right statements and settings rather than assuming well-intentioned ownership themselves.  I can absolutely imagine Tiger telling his people, “I can handle this, it’s my mess and I’ll take care of it.”  This episode makes me wonder if such a disposition is worse than a CEO who wants no part of communication strategy at all.

Now many commentators did give Tiger qualified praise for his performance, so I’d be curious to your view on Tiger’s statement as a case study in Communications (or if it even is such a thing).