I swear I’m nearly done writing about Tiger Woods and his transgressions/situations and any other indirect descriptor he’s used for his actions during the past few days.
One thing has caught my eye a few times in reading the various blogs and news articles on Woods public relations nightmare – “What were his PR people thinking?”
It’s a fair question, but most of the speculation has centered on how those around Woods must have failed and not advised him properly.
Not so fast.
I’ve worked with a number of clients over my time in the PR industry, and spoken with even more PR people and the reality is it’s not that uncommon for someone to hire an advisor, pay them, and then disregard their counsel in whole or in part.
Why do they do this? A few reasons:
Fear: They’re afraid to do what their advisor is suggesting. Maybe it involves something that feels counter-intuitive. For example an advisor to Woods may have said something like ‘You’re in trouble, you need to rush head first into the fray and address what is being said. Yes it will be hard. Yes it will be painful. But yes it is the right thing to do.’
Control: There are individuals who absolutely do not feel comfortable losing control of a situation. The sad irony is the surest way to lose any semblance of control is to not participate in your own story. Sound like anyone you’ve heard about lately? Also, the idea of ‘control’ is considered a dated concept by the more thoughtful communications pros today. With social media, blogs, the internet, cable news etc etc etc…there is no control. There is participation and engaging your audience.
Trust: The client may want to do the right thing, but lacks the relationship with the advisor so they can truly trust what they’re being told. This could be for a number of reasons. Maybe the advisor is new and the relationship is still forming when crisis hits. Maybe there have been past issues that impact the trust, and if so then the relationship is shot and one of the two should have the courage to recognize it and move on. Or maybe the client just has a hard time trusting anyone.
With Woods’ resources it is unreasonable to think he doesn’t have some top notch communications talent advising him. Ultimately though, as is the case with the root cause of this entire situation, Woods owns the final decisions and is fully accountable for how it was mismanaged.
If he was getting counsel he didn’t listen to – he owns that. If he was getting bad counsel, then it was fairly obvious within the first 24 hours of this crisis and it still took him nearly three days to step back and say ‘No, we’re going to do this instead’ - he owns that too. If he’s surrounded himself with yes men (or women) because he has shown an intolerance for people telling him things he doesn’t want to hear – he especially owns that.
Where were his PR people? Probably right beside him talking into a deaf ear.
Editor’s note: I ran this post by @golferwriterguy as I often do for input/praise/’what are you nuts?’ reactions and he made what I thought was a very astute observation.
All the things I pointed out above around fear, control and trust have contributed greatly to making Woods such a phenomenal golfer and are often cited as key to any level of player doing their best on the course.
Woods has mastered fear on the course, and routinely takes shots that would leave your average PGA pro trembling as they swung the club head away.
He doesn’t try to steer his shots by controlling them. Like any golfer, when you do that, things start to go sideways.
And he has trust in himself, his judgment his game. Another component to playing great golf – trust in your swing, your preparation, your judgment.
No real big ‘a-ha’ point with this note, just an interesting observation I thought he made upon reading.
Hack is a pen name for a marketing and media relations professional who enjoys blogging as a means to pursue his passion for his favorite sport – golf. He represents the yin to his collaborator’s yang. He doesn’t so much play golf, as the game plays him to his delight and likely demise. Follow his perspective on Twitter at @
Thanks, Hack. Great piece.
The very things that make Tiger Woods great on the golf course — overcoming fear, letting go of control and having faith/trust — are the same things that he seemingly abandoned in dealing with the situation from a public relations perspective. Confounding.
We all know people (maybe we are one) who are great at work but have a messed up personal life, or the opposite. They are organized at the office but maybe romantically they are a wreck. Except with a golf club in his hands, it seems Woods is no different from the rest of us.
You forgot one key point. No matter what happens (e.g., takes advice or disregards), the publicist always takes the blame if/when things go wrong.
Not sure if I forgot or blocked it out, but either way…there’s no shortage of other people seemingly to blame for t-dubs mistakes.
I am not sure what I feel more disappointed about-that Tiger did this “stuff” to begin with or that he will not face us and tell us that he is sorry in his own voice.
This whole situation seems so strange. I’ve always taken Tiger to be a pretty intelligent and logical person. Taking this situation “by the horns” has seemed like the only logical thing to do since the day the car crash happened! Every day that goes by without Tiger speaking publicly baffles me even more. I would have thought he would be aware of that too.