The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
Interviews, stories and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Being an effective leader in a corporate or public crisis situation requires knowledge, tenacity, and influencing skills. Unfortunately, most of us don't get much training or real experience dealing with crisis situations. On this podcast, we will talk with people who have lived through major crisis events and we will tap their experience and stories from the front lines of crisis management.
Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC.
Your co-host, Marc Mullen, has over 20 years of experience as a communication strategist. He provides subject matter expertise in a number of communication specializations, including crisis communication plan development, response and recovery communications, emergency notifications and communications, organizational reviews, and after-action reports. He blogs at Blog | Marc Mullen
Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization.
Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast.
The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
EP 59 Which CEO did it better, Round 2 - the Air India plagiarizing scandal
When does crisis preparation cross the line into inauthentic communication? The recent Air India crash that claimed 270 lives sparked a fascinating controversy when their CEO's statement appeared virtually identical to American Airlines' earlier crisis statement.
Crisis communications experts Tom Mueller, Mark Mullen, and guest Destin Singleton dive into this nuanced debate with different perspectives. Is this merely a "tempest in a teapot" where effective templates were repurposed appropriately? Or does it represent a troubling lack of authenticity at a moment when grieving stakeholders desperately needed genuine communication?
The conversation explores compelling angles often overlooked in corporate communications analysis. Was delivering the statement exclusively in English appropriate for an Indian audience? How does cultural context affect our perception of "stiff" versus "professional" delivery? And what happens when stakeholders notice similarities between crisis statements, potentially creating a secondary crisis of trust?
Most fascinatingly, the discussion ventures into AI's emerging role in crisis response. Could AI-generated spokespeople delivering perfectly crafted statements become commonplace? Should they? The ethical implications are immense as organizations balance efficiency against authenticity in their most vulnerable moments.
If you'd like to reach out to Destin Singleton, find her at www.emiccomms.com
Reach Marc Mullen via email at marcmullenccc@gmail.com
Have thoughts to share or a new topic to recommend? Email Tom at tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Hey, on this podcast we talk all things crisis management and we like to share stories from experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. With me today, my co-host, mark Mullen, joining from Washington State.
Marc Mullen:Hi, mark today my co-host, mark mullen, joining from washington state.
Tom Mueller:Hi mark, hello tom. Happy to be here and with us today. Again our friend and special guest, destin singleton, joining us from new bronfels, texas. Hey, destin howdy y'all? Okay, hey, that sounded very authentically texan.
Tom Mueller:Yeah, it comes honest technically Texan, it comes honest. You know, I'm trying to switch from saying you guys and my normal Midwestern approach to say y'all, which seems to be more neutrally accepted when you're standing in front of a group of people doing a training session or something. So y'all. I hope we have a really great podcast today. The subject for today well, hang on, before I jump into that, I just wanted to throw out a quick recognition. Mark, you and I were recognized by a podcast rating company and advertising agency for this the Leading in a Crisis podcast and they actually ranked us number five crisis podcast for 2025. So it's always nice to get a little bit of recognition. But congratulations to us. We're having fun and it's nice to know where people are listening and we're getting some recognition.
Marc Mullen:Right, it's nice to be stretched. It's my favorite. Okay, great. Thank you, destin. We just moved up to number four. It's nice to have a good time and learn a lot and hopefully have a positive impact in the field.
Tom Mueller:We're not the biggest podcast out there, but we are heard in 78 countries at last count, so there's a lot of people around the world who are tuning in just to kind of hear the latest on what's happening with key issues and to hear from experts like Destin and Mark and Tom on issues that are happening in this space. Well done all On our podcast. Today we're going to talk about a kind of an interesting topic. It's around the Air India plane crash that happened on June 12th in India. Unfortunately, 270 people were killed in that plane crash. You may recall this is an aircraft that crashed shortly after takeoff and there was one survivor from that crash, a gentleman sitting in seat. Anybody know which seat he was sitting in 11A be the most famous seat to sit in on a plane going forward, but there was one survivor for that. So it was a tragic thing and Air India got out there and were communicating fairly quickly about this. They had their CEO out issuing a videotaped statement that was posted out on the website for the company, but interestingly, several of us noticed that that statement sounded very familiar to us and in fact, there's been a bit of a phenomenon running around on the Internet now of people comparing the CEO of Air India and his statement to that of Robert Isom of American Airlines and his statement following the unfortunate collision between an American Airlines commuter plane and a Army helicopter over Dulles Airport in Washington DC. Some fun video clips out there showing side-by-side comparisons.
Tom Mueller:As it turns out, destin and I have kind of different perspectives on all of that. I view this as more of a tempest in a teapot that, even if they did copy the same statement that American Airlines used so eloquently, to me that's OK, as long as they delivered it empathetically and it was fit for purpose for the stakeholders that they would be talking to in India from that crash. So in my view, this whole controversy is a tempest in a teapot. But there's a lot of others out there who are taking bigger issue with this. One of those is our very own, destin Singleton. So, destin, tell us your take on this tempest in a teapot, as I call it.
Destin Singleton:Yeah, I'm happy to so really quickly. My name is Destin Singleton, I am the owner of Emic Communications and I help my clients through change and challenge like this kind of situation. Yeah, I actually I see this as quite similar, meaning that you've got a difference between a template and authenticity, because authenticity really matters in crisis situations and you know you've heard us talk about how important it is to have plans, to have your plans in place, to have your templates in place, and that is okay, to have templates that might be similar to your neighbor or might be similar to another organization in your sector, and there have been some discussion that you know these folks were pulling from. You know, provided by an association or something like that. So I think it's okay. Templates are okay because of this statement that was perceived to be a copy or, you know, too close to another.
Tom Mueller:Mark, what's your take on this?
Marc Mullen:Yeah, Well, first of all, there's an old adage that says that truth and trust walk hand in hand, and sometimes truth is pulling trust along and sometimes trust is pushing truth along. And I think that's a little bit of the kerfuffle we ran into. Here is, at a time when you need people to believe what you're telling them, and particularly to accept your actions or your words. And particularly to accept your actions or your words, it's not helpful to be immediately suspected for not using your own words. So, while I see templates as valuable for all sorts of reasons, they have to be personalized. You have to be ready for what you say to have been modified enough to fit both the culture and circumstance and the person delivering it and again to this, it sounded like for what you say to have been modified enough to fit both the culture and circumstance and the person delivering it. And again to this, it sounded like.
Marc Mullen:Unfortunately, both of them pulled it off the shelf template and used it. It sounded good the first time around. The second time around it was noticed. And even if it is a tempest in a teapot, if it happens a third time, the penalties will be higher. Yeah, so this, to me at least, is a clarion call to organizations to go back and look at the templates they have.
Tom Mueller:Right, well, we'll come back to that in just a moment, mark, that's a great call out there. But you know, the issue around trust is an important one. But when I think about you know the stakeholders who the CEO would have been talking to when issuing that statement and subsequent communications, in my mind, you know those people. You know residents in India, families of those who were on the plane, friends, et cetera. I just can't imagine that they're comparing statements, you know, from an American Airlines crash six months ago to this crash now. So that's part of the reason I'm saying if the statements fit for purpose and it's empathetically delivered to the stakeholders you're targeting, then I think it's okay.
Tom Mueller:Now, the point about customizing it is a terrific one and that's an open question in my mind. Right, was that fit for purpose for the audiences they were talking to? If I was a family member and I heard that statement from the CEO, I would have thought, hey, he's saying the right things here. I'm hearing the empathy and the sorrow in there. Even if it was a little stiffly, delivered in his case. What else, destin? What else kind of points would you make around this one?
Destin Singleton:There's two things that really come to mind in this instance, especially if you look at and in fact, tom, let's make sure we provide kind of these videos, side-by-side videos, because they're fascinating to watch, but just delivery. Number one is delivery and second that I'll discuss is audience. You know delivery you mentioned you know. So we actually were able to reach out to somebody in the region to see whether, you know, delivery was taken in that way, and because I'm wondering if there's a cultural difference, that we are perceiving this as stiff, whereas you know otherwise might not across across the world, so always sensitive to that, but no, it was perceived that way. And so how do you? You know leaders that have probably been through a lot of training, how do we make sure that they're present and that they are, you know, using all of their emotional intelligence, at the point when they really need it, when they're under immense pressure, and also maybe the, and when you are able to view these videos, you can see also kind of the presence of the person. One is a little more relaxed and the other is a little more professionally done, maybe the background and such. So all of those are considerations and none of this, none of what one of, not one of these things are the reason it was taken this way. So so there's that, and then the.
Destin Singleton:The second point I had was Audience, audience. Thank you, tom.
Tom Mueller:You're taking notes, I am. I had was audience audience.
Destin Singleton:Thank you, tom, you're taking notes. I am so just really thinking about you know who is it you're actually talking to and, based on our research, hopefully this is accurate, but based on our research, we have discovered that this was only delivered in English. So were we necessarily what? Did it reach the intended audience in the intended way? And so, you know, was that a disconnect To me? I see several things that are kind of pointing to the end result, which was an erosion of trust.
Tom Mueller:You know, it's fascinating to see that that was only delivered in English. That surprises me for an incident that happened in India. I would have thought there'd have been a Hindi version of that and communications in local language, and maybe there was some of that more internet-based or later stuff, but this is your number one point of communications here. This is your CEO delivering this. I was truly taken aback that we didn't see that in local language.
Tom Mueller:Justin or Dustin, sorry to your point about the delivery it you know, it raises the issue again of in a major incident like this, is your CEO your best weapon? Is he or she your best spokesperson? And because we know not all leaders are good in front of a camera, right, there's just something that doesn't work, and we've seen that in various examples from incidents around the world. And we've seen that in various examples from incidents around the world. But yet in a situation like this with a major airline, it kind of feels to me like you got to have the CEO out there doing this. Would you agree with me on that, destin?
Destin Singleton:Yeah, especially if that is, in the sector, the norm, which is what we have seen. And you know, just a few podcasts ago, we praised the American Airlines CEO for his, like super swift and heartfelt response, and this, you know, he knew that, and so you know, I don't, I don't know. It makes me wonder what happened with the communications team and kind of how they came up with this. Had they put it in their back pocket as hey, this is best practice? And then when the rubber met the road, they came back with that and that is obviously ill-planned, but they were trying to do their best.
Tom Mueller:I don't think they were Well Destin you raised an interesting point in a previous chat we had on this, which was or Mark, maybe it was you Could this have been an AI written statement, depending on how recently your large language model is updated and trained? But could this have been something that they snatched from an AI model and used it that way?
Marc Mullen:It could be. But if an AI is smart enough to write that, it should be smart enough to make sure it's culturally contextual, and so I don't see AI in this. I see Xerox, ai and this. I see Xerox. That was cute, wasn't it? But there is a question about the language. Real quickly, too, they say English is the language of business, and so everywhere you go in the world you can speak English and get your work done.
Marc Mullen:I'm wondering if English is the language of crisis response, more than we realize that, in fact, their world at that point, in that setting, was entirely focused on communicating in English. They were probably definitely talking with Boeing, probably talking with everywhere they fly, and so on. And again, that's a role where it's okay for a response to be done in a single language if it helps it run better. That's where a communicator has to step in and say but stakeholder language is their tongue. And again, our communicator is ready to stand up in a room where everything you hear is in English and advocate for the home language. And I think we can miss that really easily because we just hear everybody else in the elevator easily because we just hear everybody else in the elevator and maybe this was intended for a different audience.
Destin Singleton:Maybe we're reading it completely wrong.
Tom Mueller:Right. The stakeholder, shareholder audience potentially right. Or international investors.
Destin Singleton:Yes, the international bodies that are airline safety across the board. So it could be. However, the main problem still exists, right, an erosion of trust because of, you know, a repeat of a message that and it's in. I hate to say it, it's not, it doesn't seem. If you really evaluate the words, it's very close. So you know it's not like we're saying, it's slightly close, it was very close to the previous message.
Tom Mueller:All right, Well, tell you what? Let's listen to a playback of that side-by-side. We've seen a couple examples of that out on YouTube, where people have sort of put these two CEOs side by side and run through it. Let's listen to a minute or two of that.
Robert Isom, American Airlines:I want to brief you on a serious accident that occurred involving an American Eagle aircraft.
Campbell Wilson, India Airlines:I want to brief you on a serious incident that involved an Air India aircraft a short while ago.
Robert Isom, American Airlines:First and most importantly, I'd like to express our deep sorrow about these events.
Campbell Wilson, India Airlines:But first and most importantly, I would like to express our deep sorrow about this event.
Robert Isom, American Airlines:This is a difficult day for all of us at American Airlines, and our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, partners, first responders, along with their families and loved ones.
Campbell Wilson, India Airlines:This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India, and our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, their families and loved ones.
Robert Isom, American Airlines:I know that there are many questions and at this early stage I will not be able to answer all of them, but I do want to share the information I have at this time.
Campbell Wilson, India Airlines:I know that there are many questions and at this stage I will not be able to answer all of them, but I do want to share the information we have at this time.
Tom Mueller:So fascinating. There's a lot of similarities in those statements. Very different delivery though, Destin, as you pointed out earlier, and that to me just makes a huge difference. Any other takeaways from watching that side by side again?
Destin Singleton:Yeah, delivery is, um is key, um, you know, one is very straight, one is very kind of leaning in and and um, and and I, I get it. I am an American and I am taking the American context. So I don't want to be, um, I do not, you know, uh, I know what, where my biases or my blind spots are here. Um, however, I do, you know the authenticity. Authenticity is coming through differently for one versus the other. So, however, what could have been done, maybe physically, to change that approach if it was for an American audience, to my, to my ear and tone my, to my ear and tone um, however, um, you know, I wonder, as we've mentioned before, is it was as intended for a different audience than we were initially thinking um?
Marc Mullen:but, yeah, delivery, huge right, but again, if, if, if your audience is not your stakeholder, if your stakeholder audience is international or american or english speaking, there's a presentation style that matches that, and if your audience is your home population, there's probably a slightly different presentation. It could be down to how he was standing, it could be down to production quality of the video. You know at every point, if you put the two videos side by side, at every point the delivery was better, the filming was better, the body language was better, it was like universal. And so then we're back now to that cultural cloud.
Destin Singleton:Yes, and I have coached people. And I have coached international CEOs right and typically that is, while American is a little more casual, but international business is a little more buttoned up. But I'm with you, Mark. What other aspects of it could have been adjusted slightly to just create that bit of authenticity? But it could also be tone, it could also be, you know, delivery of the words themselves. But there's still the issue of the words.
Tom Mueller:So we kind of recognize that there's potentially, you know, a cultural lens that we're looking at this through and that could have some, you know, impact on, you know, on the authenticity of our arguments here, on the authenticity of our arguments here. But a lot of experience in this room on this call, dealing with international incidents and international executives, and we pretty universally are saying he could have done a better job with that. Hey, I want to turn the page real quick, guys, and look forward just for a minute, and this is a thought that just came into my mildly exhausted brain today. But we talked about AI just a little bit earlier. Maybe the statement was written by AI. How long will it be before we can have an AI version of that CEO delivering that statement and delivering it to perfection, because it's prepped and edited by AI?
Marc Mullen:Terminator comes to mind.
Destin Singleton:Terminator. I think we're pretty close to it and I think it is creatable now, but creating authenticity is difficult, and so it would need to be trained. It requires a ton of additional work rather than just pulling something off the shelf. But yeah, we're very close.
Marc Mullen:One of the challenges with delivering. One of the challenges with delivering messages verbally is when you pick up a script, you're really picking up the persona of the writer, Unless the writer is very careful to match what they're writing is how you speak. So most likely, all of us end up if we don't really understand that. We end up trying to be someone else. We don't know it, but everything about the way it's written is for that other person.
Marc Mullen:And the AI is not going to help, that Agreed, so it's almost like it needs to know. I'd have to take all my writings and put it into the system and then ask AI to write something out, and that would probably be almost indistinguishable.
Tom Mueller:Yeah, but you, you train that AI, though. Right, you would put in speeches from the CEO you know over the last couple of years and Q&A session recordings, and I would think you know it's the whole deep fake thing, but used for official purposes. Right, we're creating a clone and putting them up for public review. Well, that certainly challenges the authenticity muscles a little bit, doesn't it, destin?
Destin Singleton:Yes, it does, and I certainly, in this kind of situation, would not utilize something like that, especially if it's an AI-generated spokesperson. It makes me very uncomfortable, but hey, ai is a tool that most of us use every day, and if you're not, you probably should.
Tom Mueller:She's looking at you, Mark. She's looking at you.
Marc Mullen:She's definitely looking at you, Tom.
Destin Singleton:I can tell that. And in a crisis, ai can be super, super helpful for research, for deep research, for ideation, for re-evaluating what you've already written, for ideation, for re-evaluating what you've already written, and especially if you have trained and this information, and then plus just future automation of processes that we spend a lot of time on, even in a crisis, so making us more efficient. So, yes, ai and crisis is here to stay, but when it comes to golly having an AI-generated spokesperson, I sure hope not. I hope we never get there.
Marc Mullen:Right. One of the challenges of this is that talking about AI helping with crisis response and I assume you're meaning creating content helping with crisis response, and I assume you're meaning creating content it's easy to do that when we're sitting here and we might have just finished our cup of coffee on a nice afternoon. We're not in the 10 out of a 10 scale crisis where the lizard brains are running rampant and the stakes are high on every single thing and I think again, templates, ai, almost everything you plan on doing. You've got to put it into that intense critical, your head's about ready to blow off moment and see if it plays. I'm having a hard time picturing a corporate attorney letting something written by AI go by in a reputation-threatening incident, unless they're very well-versed in AI and they have complete trust not just in the person that brought it, but they know and understand how you primed the tool so it would deliver what you want.
Tom Mueller:Okay, well, lots more to come on this AI conversation. Mark, you've raised some interesting points there and I guarantee you we're going to circle back to this topic again and again in the coming months. I think we'll wrap it up. We'll wrap it up there for this episode team. Thanks, destin, for joining us. Again, mark, always great to hear your thoughts on these things. So thank you both for joining and that's going to do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Hey, if you want to reach out to us, drop me an email at tom, at leadinginacrisiscom. Thank you again for joining. We really appreciate you being with us and we'll see you again soon.
