Just Be Right a Lot

An Open Book

CHRISTINA: Ask me anything. Listen, I'm an open book. I've been through a really interesting... when you're working at a global corporation that is highly regulated, that has a media piece, that has a workforce development piece, which is what automotive gently and lovingly calls unionization factors, you get all kinds of calls and all kinds of interesting "you've done this and you've done that."

I think as communicators, we're all over the place, because a lot of times we're the spokesperson, or we're the contact people. In the past, before LLMs started to scrape any and all things, we would put the quotes out and we would have the CEO or the executive leadership saying something, but then in the boilerplate of the press release it's like, "Contact us for conversations, press inquiries," and so on.

So we're really surfacing now, in a way that I like, for an old school reason: on work that we did and work we were a part of. I very rarely have to ask or explain or prove, because my little tag as I've been running around in my career, the guy behind the guy, is sort of there. So it's interesting.

Stories That Lead title card

Quoted by the People Who Write the Talking Points

VERNON: Yeah. I saw a quote. You were quoted on, was it the CBS or PBS NewsHour, about something that you said. I'm like, that is pretty cool, to be quoted by a media personality because it was relevant to the thing that was happening. I think it was somewhere around some election. I'm like, oh, that's a pretty cool thing to have happen, to be quoted by the news media.

CHRISTINA: Well, people from HR know. That's communicators, because we write the talking points. And so we think they're brilliant. We're usually sitting behind a camera saying, "Please let them say it. Please let them use the talking points." Or you're threateningly staring, like, "You better say whatever. Don't go off script. We had to get those approved. Don't stress me out. Don't make me have to follow up and clean up." So yeah, we love our own writing because it's brilliant. We just wish everybody else would use it.

VERNON: Exactly. I found it was where you were talking about the crisis plans. That it's a rehearsal. It's not something that you just have sitting on the shelf, that you don't review, that you don't look at, that you never try to wonder, how do we implement this? You don't run through it, and then when it's time, you pull it off and think that everyone's going to execute the crisis plan perfectly, because they haven't looked at it in two years.

CHRISTINA: That's right. Well, they were right, because I think that. Past Christina did a good job quoting me correctly. It's a living, breathing document, for sure. And there are two groups of people who really get it, speaking specifically about executives.

It's the parents who are running a phone tree, or on the PTA, who understand what's the plan for this kid's sport, or what's the plan if there's an emergency at school. They're in their K through 12 community and are super plugged in. They're like, "Of course you have to practice it. Otherwise how will you know?"

And the other group of people are people who are in a faith-based community, who are in a church, who have that prayer tree. What happens in a crisis, and how do we come together as a community and support someone losing their home? Fires, floods, and failures. That's what religious communities rally around.

And those two groups of people really know and understand when I say, "Okay, we're practicing this thing. Everybody get out your card." They're like, "Okay, let's do it," because in other parts of their lives they have seen the value of practicing the plan instead of just writing it and filing it away.

Four Sisters, Eighteen Months Apart

VERNON: I think that's a really good transition to ask a little bit about how you grew up. You grew up across Europe, in the UK, and of course here in the US. The two and a half languages, I think, is fun, because you speak a little bit of German, a little bit of Spanish, and of course English. Tell me a little bit about the first substantive move that you made. It's one thing when you're a smaller kid, but what was the move, particularly in Europe, where you really recognized: I'm having to kind of start over?

CHRISTINA: So when I look back at my childhood: I have three sisters, and we're all 18 months apart. We're really close in age. We kind of grew up moving around the world as this little starting lineup of a basketball team. This small group of people who, depending on when our birthdays fell, were either one year or two years apart in school. There was a lot of trench survival, siblings who are all in this together.

When I remember my childhood, I think back on: was there or was there not a tree house in the backyard? What was our adventure scape for that home?

We grew up... my father's an Air Force chaplain. He was in the Navy and then got out, went to seminary, and got back into the Air Force as an officer. So there was always movement. Either we were the preacher's kids moving around, or we were the military kids, or we were the military preacher's kids moving around the world.

My grandparents on both sides of my family are from a little town called Ligonier outside of Pittsburgh. That was our touchpoint. We would always go back: all the holidays, all the visits, every summer, as much as we could.

But the very first time that I remember a big move, I was probably around 10 years old. We were in military housing, moving from military base to military base, which is strikingly similar across the world. It doesn't really feel like you're in a different country until you leave the gates of the base.

I remember when I was 10 and we moved from Virginia to Texas. I remember thinking, "Oh, Texas. How different can that be?" Man, Texas is a whole other country within a country. The culture is so different, and it's just a magical and beautiful place to grow up. We lived there probably three different times, and then I went to college there. I'm an Aggie, I went to Texas A&M. My parents actually retired there, they're in San Antonio now. So Texas is sort of my unofficial other home. Not because I lived there for any length of time, but because I lived there so many different times all growing up.

Run for President. Lose. Make Friends.

CHRISTINA: I always hit the good points in school. Some of my sisters weren't as lucky, but I got to do the end of middle school and the beginning of high school in England, over in the UK.

When you go to another country, you're slapped into a community of people who are used to moving around. Kids coming and going every year, forget about every three years. So it's a very welcoming community and you make friends very, very quickly.

I remember we landed and I thought, "Man, how am I going to make friends? What's the deal?" And I thought, well, let me just run for president of my class, and let's see where it goes. Why not?

There's a lot of efficiency and tactical logistics in me. I can pack a house, pack my stuff, move around. So I'm like, all right, what's the best and fastest way to get from point A to point B? My sister's like, "You don't know anybody. No one knows you." I'm like, "I'm going to win this election, and if I lose, then everybody will know me, and then I've made friends, and I have an excuse to walk up to someone and go, 'Hello, I'm running for class president.'"

It really worked out. The one girl I was running against, her name was Cheryl. She's so cool, and we keep in touch to this day, sporadically. She was like, "Who is this new kid who no one knows, who came in over the summer and is running against me?" She had lived there all growing up. And so we became best friends.

I lost the election to Cheryl by a razor's margin. But then I thought, well, instead of being the president of my class, I'll just be the VP of the whole school. And because I had done the work in my class campaign, I ended up winning student council. It just went from there. That was one of my most impactful moments.

I don't know if I was an extrovert before that, or if the military just kind of makes you that way, but I never meet a stranger. I've had really good training in how to talk to people, learn spaces, and understand that communication is really critical.

I graduated high school over there in the UK, from Lakenheath American High School on the military base, and then came back to the US, to Texas, to go to college. That was the first move I made on my own.

My older sister and I went to college at the same time. She went to California, I went to Texas. My mom flew us back, dropped me off, bought me a dorm lamp, and was like, "All right, you good? You got towels? You're fine?" Then she dropped my sister off in California and flew back to the UK. I remember sitting in my dorm going, "Wow. It's just me. That's crazy." And then I thought, oh thank goodness, it's just me, because I'm 17 and I'm sick of my little sisters.

But yeah, I've moved many, many times since then, and I found that everywhere you go, there's great people. Everywhere you go, there's beautiful things. Everywhere you go, there's tough people. The world is a lot less different than we think it is. That's probably what moving around so much taught me.

I love to rearrange my furniture in my house. I'm like, "Mm, I've been here too long. Let me put the couch on the other wall." Feel better.

The Day the Office Didn't Celebrate

VERNON: I think that's really interesting, because it speaks to an adaptability you have to have just growing up in that environment, but it also translates really well to how communicators have to be adaptable to the audiences they're dealing with, because it's ever-changing. Particularly if you move companies. If you look at your career, going from a prosecutor's office to a major car manufacturer: two completely different audiences. One doesn't trust anything that you say from a compliance standpoint, always worried about the gotcha stuff, and then a major car manufacturer, a global brand. Just those two dichotomies. How do you think all the moves informed the way that you listen to those audiences in those different environments?

CHRISTINA: It definitely highlights the importance of listening. When you land in a new spot, whether it's a new job or a new country or a new situation, talking less and listening more is always the move. Figuring out what's going on, the lay of the land, what we have facing our team, our task, our challenge.

And I think, too, we forget sometimes that our own past informs what we hear and how we hear it. A lot of times you have to give people a lot of grace and understand a little bit of where they're coming from.

When I was at the prosecutor's office in New York, the DA at the time, her name was Janet DiFiore, and she is one of the most incredible women that I've ever worked under in my entire career. One, because she was a woman in a high-power position, and I got to see at a very young age: okay, this is possible. Representation is so important at those levels. Some of the most incredible people practicing law start out in the prosecutor's office, or stay, or return to it at different times in their career. It's a group of people who are so passionate about the work, really dedicated to doing the right thing and to justice.

It was one of my first experiences with subtlety, and with having to really listen. The very first time I got to sit in the court, I had worked on the case and had been with the district attorney the whole way up. Fast-forward: the judge rules in our favor. We walk out of the court, and I get so excited. I just want to start high-fiving. And the DAs looked at me with a dead stare and went, "Absolutely not."

I was like, "Oh my gosh, what did I do wrong? We just crushed it in there. We worked so hard. We got this amazing outcome for the victim and their family."

So we get on the elevator, we go back up to the DA's office, we walk down the hall, we get behind two layers of security, and we're walking like someone died. And then that second door closes, and they erupt. They're so excited. They're high-fiving.

This really incredible DA I worked with, she said: "You don't celebrate in front of people. Because the other side worked so hard as well. There are families down there. There are people who are experiencing the worst moments of their lives sitting up and down the hallway. And so out of respect, we are going to honor the process and honor the experience of everyone involved. And when we get back home is when we can celebrate."

That taught me a really important lesson: in every situation, regardless of where you are, there's always two sides. There's always people who are working equally hard against each other, or for two different outcomes. And so that really helped shape how I approach crisis comms, how I approach PR, how I approach even just dealing with a colleague in a meeting.

That part of listening is crucial and important. And you're always learning. I don't think there's been a time in my career, or anyone I've worked with, where I haven't gone, "All right, that's new to me. Let me take that note. Let me take that lesson." It comes from everywhere, all the time, daily.

Air Traffic Control for Five Million Cars

VERNON: I can imagine. So, leading internal communications at Mercedes-Benz International: what's the craft of that type of communications? Because you have two or three very distinct audiences. You have an executive contingent, but you also have the people on the factory floor, and they're two different audiences with two different motivations for why they do what they do on a daily basis. How would you explain the craft of understanding those audiences to someone just getting into the communications field? Even recently, you did a thing at a community college where you were talking to college students about it.

CHRISTINA: Mercedes, just like many household names, is a global matrix organization. It has a product side, it has manufacturing, it has all kinds of other factors that play into everything you do, all the time.

To answer your question really quickly: what is it like? It's like being an air traffic controller. You are dealing with so much input, so many things happening. You're trying to run this process, and oftentimes you're just a wizard casting these spells that you hope land.

The beauty of it is that it's a large organization. There are a lot of really exciting things going on. The cars are beautiful. The product is really fun to work on. But the people-product divide is pretty big. In a lot of companies, your employees are also your customer. That really isn't the case when you're working in luxury automotive, or with any luxury brand. The people who are making the product, manufacturing and building and touching and curating that product every day, aren't often the people who are driving it home at night.

So that is really the larger disconnect: the customers and the executives and the C-suite, and the people who are touching the product. They have a very different experience than the people who are building the cars.

Understanding that difference, understanding that audience, and really helping translate. There are executives at Mercedes who started out on the shop floor, who graduated high school, got into a tech program, were in the body shop or the paint shop, and worked their way all the way up over a 30-year career to running operations for the whole plant. That person has a really valuable perspective. Then there are people who graduated college, went to engineering school, dropped directly into an office role, and who are brilliant at the tools, but haven't stood that 10-hour shift, or done the work, or understood why the shoes you wear matter more to your back than they do to your outfit.

At Mercedes, that has been the biggest challenge for me: understanding that both perspectives are correct and both perspectives are real and necessary. They're just very, very different.

Audience segmentation is your best friend when you're in a global matrix organization. But you could be saying the same thing to three or four different core audiences, and you really have to understand how they're going to receive it and what's important to them about it. And then you layer in: we aren't all speaking English as a first language. We didn't all learn our craft in the same country, or even the same region of the United States. You have a lot of people who are very different coming together to try to do one thing and do it really well.

I Hate a Town Hall

VERNON: You were on a panel talking about beyond town halls. I often see that communicators will sometimes town-hall their communications to people internally, to folks in the press, and it's all almost the same thing, just a slightly different version of whatever you would put out for a town hall. How do you avoid that? What do you think about when you're crafting that message so people are not looking at it like, "What is this and why am I reading it?"

CHRISTINA: Well, first of all, I hate a town hall. I hate it. They're only good if you are running for dog catcher or school board.

Especially now that we are in the age of instant communication. We can reach exactly who we want to reach, and know when they clicked on it, know when they opened it. We have user behavior data that is all over the place in terms of where we can pull it from. It's really accurate. It's very available. And you're just throwing out a generic town hall because that's the way we did it 10, 15, 30 years ago.

And you have an executive who just wants to sit on a stool and have their collar slightly unbuttoned and answer fake questions from the audience that aren't even... because if you're going to have a town hall, then do it. Open it up. Let's bring it.

I think the desire behind town halls is for leaders to speak directly to their people. I love that desire. I think that's wonderful. I think there are much better ways to do it. Any time a town hall could have been an email, it infuriates people. Any time a town hall could have been a video message: let me just click on it from the privacy of my own wherever I am. Let me take in the information and understand what you want me to do.

We really do lose the standards. It needs to have a call to action. We're not just spending 10 or 15 grand on lighting and a stage and some really nice pipe and drape so that a bunch of people in suits and jeans can sit around and speak way above the head or interest of the people in the audience.

So we really do rely on video content. We really rely on audience segmentation. We do a lot of focus groups. We do a lot of anonymous listening, and we do a lot of direct listening that's identified, so that it's not just one channel, not just one avenue. It's constant. It's all the time, where we are open to feedback. Because we're a just-in-time manufacturing plant, which means that we need to be a just-in-time communications team as well, so that we can understand what needs to come in and what needs to be flowing out of our office.

Loop Us In Early

VERNON: Do you find that you have executives pushing back on that? Because it's communications' role to control the messaging, but you have these overactive C-suite folks that want to try to...

CHRISTINA: No. What are you talking about? I don't even understand anything you're saying. Of course. Of course. Every time.

You have to build trust. And sometimes you have to let it break, and tell the executive, "I believe that we should do this." They push back, and you go, "Okay, I'm going to say it one more time. I've been doing this for 20 years. You do what you have been doing for 20 years. Don't ask me to build a bridge. I didn't go to engineering school. I don't know how to do that."

An executive team that trusts you, where everyone's staying in their lane and you're coming together when you need to work on a project: I find that's the most successful recipe.

I do love it when my advice is adhered to. I love it when I'm asked ahead of time. My very favorite little Teams message is, "Hey, my leadership told me I need to loop in communications." I'm like, "Yes." Then my work is done in terms of spreading the message of: just call me, I'm right here. You can text me, you can Teams me, you can email me, you can send a pigeon, you can send it through an intern or a co-op. Just let me weigh in before it's a disaster. I can help.

And in those meetings, people are like, "Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that." They see that you are good at your job, that you have their best interests at heart, and they understand that you're a value add to the process ahead of time.

Or they don't listen, and you gently say, "Well, remember two weeks ago when we discussed this? Had you gone with my suggestion, potentially we could have avoided XYZ." It's okay to bring that up. You don't want to spend your whole career in sour grapes and I-told-you-so, but a little bit of that is okay with the executive. Because the executives are there for a reason. They're most often very smart people who understand that they need support across the different disciplines. If you can provide that value add and show it to them... a couple of blunders in the relationship helps build trust, and then you go forward.

I've been very fortunate. I've been a trusted advisor at every stage in my career, save a couple. It's really nice to establish that early on and help people understand that you're there to help.

It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There are executives who love a town hall because their leadership likes a town hall, because they're sitting somewhere in Germany and like to see their North America leadership doing well. And sometimes the way to do that is to take a picture and write an article and publish it on the social internet.

So: really understanding the clear goals of everything you're trying to do. If we're just trying to get something out to the team members, that's one thing. If we're trying to mitigate something with the media, that's another thing. If we're trying to communicate up the chain that we're doing a great job, that's a third thing. Can one town hall do all three of those things? Maybe. But if you have the resources and a little bit of savvy, you can do it in ways that are cheaper, smarter, and faster.

Just Be Right a Lot

VERNON: You mentioned being a trusted advisor. How do you establish that early? I find when I talk to other folks in the communications field, or learning and development folks, building that trust can be a real challenge when you're new to an organization or stepping into a new role.

CHRISTINA: So, the best advice I could give is just be right a lot. That kind of is what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to.

As communicators, yes, we jump around to different organizations, we move to different verticals inside the same organization, but we have a trusted group of people who we lean on. And with the tools now available... can you imagine having the resource of an LLM 15 years ago, or even five years ago? I look at the comms folks who are coming up now, and it's a different game. For us, the challenge was information, accuracy of information, speed of information, controlling and managing information. It's a different game now.

But I really love how AI as a speed tool helps someone with experience. I think that experience is what makes that speed safe. It's an incredible speed tool, and I love being at this point in my career and having it dropped on me when I have the skills and experience to use it really well.

It's got to be tough for young people coming up. To your point about speaking to college students: I think it is our absolute required activity to be training up and bringing up and pipeline-building for comms folks who are early in their career. That goes all the way back to high school, honestly. College for sure. We should be in the student groups, the PRSSA, the IABC chapters, the AAF chapters. We should be exposing the current profession to the young people coming up, because they keep us young and smart, and we bring the experience to them.

I love a diverse team. Part of that diversity is having young people, and having people at the end of their careers who were there before us, showing some of that experience and some of those skills that are differently necessary in today's world. Mentorship programs.

I'm so excited that this year I'm serving as the corporate advisor to the Bateman team at the University of Alabama. We have our first meeting today. It's a wonderful young group who are getting together to practice this very real and very critical part of our profession. Staying involved in that is really important to me, and I hope everyone finds time to do that. However large or small, get involved.

The Kids Nobody Let Touch It

VERNON: Tell me more about that. Since you're dealing with this generation of kids coming out of college, have you found fear of LLMs influencing communications, whether you actually need communicators to do this now? Because people tend to think, "Oh, I have this amazing system, and it can pretty much do all of this." Have you seen fear from that generation? Because I know I have. How do you help them with that?

CHRISTINA: Yeah. It's so unfortunate. If you do the math, this particular group of young people coming out were in middle school or late elementary during COVID. We were quarantined, trying to figure out how to educate, how to go to school, how to go to work, all remotely. And so it was drilled into their heads: don't cheat, don't cheat, don't cheat, original work, original work. Because they weren't able to be in a classroom, and it's impossible to manage that environment. The teachers were figuring it out. This was before the Turnitin software and all the interesting and wonderful things that are in the field now.

Then they get into college, and there's this catch-up, this return to fundamentals: these kids are behind in math and behind in reading and behind in writing. A tactical moment of pen to paper, upskilling them to catch up for that COVID time. And the professors, with the new technology, are saying, "We're trying to teach you a craft. We're trying to teach you how to learn. So please don't engage in these technologies. Again: no cheating. I need your original work. I need you to learn how to write."

Well, then they get into the workforce, and the first thing their employer says is, "Tell me you're AI fluent. We're a Microsoft enterprise team, so I need you to know Copilot better than I need you to know Chat." And these kids are like, "No one would let me touch it. Nobody would let me use it."

Just now, over the last year or two, the different comms departments in higher education are saying, "No. We're not worried about you cheating on a paper. I want you to write this whole paper with AI. I want you to use AI for this press release. I want you to understand where it gets its information, what it looks like when it hallucinates. I need you to understand how to ask it to write you the best prompt possible, and to tell it not to make things up."

So it's not their fault. They come by it honest. But releasing anybody with a lack of experience on any new tool... gosh, you remember back when Al Gore invented the internet, right? Everybody was spinning up websites. Then Dreamweaver came along, and everybody had a website, and these servers under desks, and the IT department was like, "Stop it." Then the firewalls. Just like that, there are going to be early adopters, there's going to be the messy organization of what is happening as the technology gets adopted, and the frauds that come forward. And then it settles, eventually, into being a great tool that you use.

My best advice is to have a new person, a mid person, and a senior person on a team, knocking out everything. All of those people have differently needed skills and abilities. Where those are needed and how those are needed really changes, but you need everyone equally. I think that's how you build your strongest team. It's not like a wildly forward idea that diversity breeds a better outcome. That's my plug for having people on your team who aren't like you in every way possible. That's going to get the best outcome.

A Race Car They Let You Drive on the Road

VERNON: That was a great answer. So, to shift gears a little bit, no pun intended...

CHRISTINA: Please use all the corny car analogies. You can. We love them. In automotive, we're going to stay in our lane and do all that stuff.

VERNON: I love it. Your favorite Mercedes. What is it, the GLE?

CHRISTINA: It's the Coupe. The Coupe. It's my favorite one because it is a tiny little race car that they let you drive on the road. I don't know how, I don't know why.

I'll tell you something. The first time I drove it: they let us check the cars out if we have to take them to an event, or if we're displaying cars somewhere. It's kind of like, everybody grab a set of keys, we're taking these five cars up to this amphitheater. And I'm like, "Oh, I've never driven that before. I'll drive it."

There's a stretch between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. It's I-20, and it's a straight shot of nothing but interstate. At the right time of day, nobody's on it. And I'm driving, just got the music on, listening. It's usually about a 45-minute drive, and I'm like, how did I get here so fast? I look down at the monitor and I'm like, whoa. This can't be correct.

It's just such an odd feeling to be in this incredible machine, where the tires are about this wide, the whole interior is designed for comfort and silence, the car practically drives itself with all the driver-assist technology. It's incredible. I looked down, I'm like, 120? That can't be right.

So we had the event, I bring the car back, I turn it in, and I say to the guys at the carpool, "Do you guys mess with the speedometers, turn them up so employees don't speed?" And he looked at me and he said, "I know you've been to college twice. What are you asking me?" I said, "Well, you know, because I was driving..." And he said, "Is it your first time driving the Coupe?" I said yeah. He goes, "First of all, we can't tamper with speedometers. That's illegal. But those things float. They float, and you drive so fast."

Then you add the AMG package on top of that, which is really the muscle. They're beautiful, they're comfortable, they're fast, they're loud. They're everything that I love in a fancy car.

VERNON: I love it. The Rossetti... I think it's the 250 convertible... that is one of my favorites. One day, with the AMG package on it. I've seen it at a couple of classic car places here, and they're beautiful.

CHRISTINA: They are. They're German engineered. They are designed so beautifully. And they're built in Alabama by a dedicated workforce of incredible people. It's really amazing to be part of such a strong community, and to work on a product, and with people, that I'm just so proud of. And it's fun, too. It's not my worst day when I get to take the Maybach out, or one of the really incredible products that we manufacture here in Alabama.

VERNON: Well, awesome. I think that's a lovely note to end it on. And I need to come hang out with you more.

CHRISTINA: You want to drive one of those? I can definitely hook you up, for sure. But no, this was really great. Thank you for having me. I really enjoy talking about what I do. I love the communications profession. I think that a strong communicator makes or breaks any executive team. I'm grateful, I'm very fortunate that I've been on some incredible teams and got to do some really neat stuff. So thanks for letting me talk about it today.

VERNON: It was wonderful, just to hear your perspective in a slightly different way. So good. Well, call me anytime. We'll do it again.

CHRISTINA: And let me know when you're ready to come back down to Alabama. We'll get you on one of these incredible vehicles. We'll have some fun.

VERNON: Absolutely. That might be sooner than later.

CHRISTINA: I'd love to have you. We'll talk soon. Thank you.

VERNON: All right. Thanks, Christina.