St. Paul - Spin Sucks

TL; DR

A widely shared image from Minnesota shows federal agents inside a Target store—an unforgettable reminder that, for employees and customers, the question isn’t ideological; it’s safety.

When companies respond with silence or vague calls for “de-escalation,” they communicate at a distance—creating a vacuum filled by fear, rumor, and the message nobody controls: “declined to comment.”

This piece breaks down why leaders default to silence, why that rationale fails, and what communicators should demand instead: decisions, protocols, manager scripts, and clear internal and external messaging rooted in duty of care and business continuity.

Key Insights

Silence is not neutral. It’s messaging by omission, and stakeholders interpret it immediately.
“Declined to comment” becomes the narrative when leaders refuse to communicate with clarity.
Leaders default to silence because of legal fear, moving facts, misalignment, and lack of a plan—but none of it is appropriate when people need guidance.
Vague statements and broad letters increase risk by creating confusion, inconsistency, and distrust.
The job is not a manifesto. The job is a plan, a protocol, a manager script, and a steady cadence of updates.
Your message must match your operations, or you create a trust problem you cannot PR your way out of.

Corporate Communications and the Cost of Silence

There’s a photo that keeps getting used in coverage of Minnesota: former U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino walking through a Target store in St. Paul with four masked agents in his wake. It’s the kind of image that’s hard to unsee—because it collapses the whole story into one of safety: am I safe at work? Am I safe while shopping? Am I safe at all?

Target is headquartered in Minneapolis. Videos showed federal agents detaining two Target employees earlier this month. Reuters reported that two workers were taken from a Target store in the suburbs, including a 17-year-old employee. And Target’s public response has been…basically nothing.

Until last week—when Target joined more than 60 Minnesota CEOs in signing a Chamber of Commerce letter calling for “de-escalation.” The letter doesn’t name immigration enforcement. It doesn’t address the arrests at businesses. It doesn’t say that people are scared, managers need guidance, and “de-escalation” isn’t a protocol.

From a comms standpoint, that’s not neutral. It’s choosing distance and abstraction when your workforce needs clarity.

When you communicate at a distance, here’s what happens: someone else fills in the blanks. Reporters write “the company declined to comment.” Employees hear “we don’t care about you.” Customers hear “not our problem.”

“Declined to comment” is definitely a message; it’s just not a good one. It’s not the kind you get to write, approve, or control.

And when leaders won’t speak on the record about the guidance they’re giving employees—and their owned channels don’t address what people are living through in real time—it creates a vacuum. Vacuums don’t stay empty. They get filled with fear, speculation, resentment, and rumor.

Not every organization needs to issue a sweeping, emotional “statement of values” the minute a story breaks. But treating silence like an invisibility cloak is a mistake. Silence is messaging by omission—and stakeholders interpret it immediately.

When something is unfolding in your backyard and your workforce is watching it happen, “we’re saying nothing” or “we join the business community and ask the government to work together” lands as one of three things: we don’t have a plan, we have a plan but won’t stand behind it, or we’ve decided the reputational risk of speaking is greater than the human cost of staying quiet.

None of those builds trust. And trust is the whole job.

Why Companies Default to Silence

If you’ve ever worked inside an organization during a tense, fast-moving situation, you already know how this goes. Someone pings legal. Legal says, “Do not comment.” Someone else says, “We don’t have all the facts.” Someone else worries that whatever you say will get screenshotted, forwarded, and misinterpreted—by employees, by customers, by the media, by regulators, by your competitors. Then the CEO (or the board, or both) decides the safest move is to keep their head down until the whole thing blows over.

And yes. I get it. Truly. Silence can feel like self-preservation.

But silence doesn’t take you out of the story. It just guarantees you show up in it as a bystander.

And when something is unfolding in the same communities where you recruit talent, operate stores, run plants, build products, and ask people to bring their whole selves to work…bystander is not a good look.

The “reasonable” rationale usually sounds like some version of this:

Legal risk. Counsel is trained to reduce business exposure, and in the moment, the lowest-risk sentence is often “no comment,” even though we know it carries the greatest reputation risk.
Fear of becoming the headline. Leaders worry acknowledging what’s happening will make them the story—even if the story is already happening in their backyard.
The facts are moving. Nobody wants to say something that turns out to be wrong, because credibility is hard to earn back once you lose it.
Internal alignment is a mess. HR is thinking about employee safety and resources. Operations is thinking about disruptions. The CEO is thinking about reputational heat. The board is thinking about risk. When those people aren’t aligned, comms gets stuck holding the bag.
Their priority audience is not the vocal one. They mentally categorize the people affected most as “noise,” not customers, and then act shocked when that “noise” becomes the headline, the lawsuit, and the employer brand problem.

Sometimes there isn’t a plan yet (which is a strong argument for ensuring you have a crisis comms pro on speed dial). And when there’s no plan, leaders have nothing they feel comfortable explaining.

All of those reasons are understandable. None of them are appropriate.

Stakeholders don’t experience silence as neutral; they experience it as information (or lack thereof). Staying quiet does not eliminate risk. It just relocates it.

Instead of managing reputational risk directly, you create internal trust erosion—because employees fill the vacuum with rumor, fear, and “are we on our own?”

You create operational risk—because without guidance, managers improvise, and improvisation leads to inconsistency, which is where mistakes and liability live. And you create narrative risk—because “declined to comment” becomes the quote that follows you around, whether you like it or not.

So yes, if you’re reading this and thinking, “That’s great, Gin. Your armchair QB’ing is great. But we can’t make a public statement right now,” fine.

But you still have to communicate. You still have to lead. You still have to give people clarity.

Not a grand manifesto. Not a performative values statement. Clarity. Because the worst-case scenario isn’t that you didn’t publish a statement. It’s that your employees are living through a stressful, chaotic moment—and the most powerful institution in their daily life says nothing at all.

You Need a Plan and a Script

This is where communicators can earn their keep.

Saying something does not mean “take a big public swing and hope you nailed the tone.”

It means you should reduce uncertainty, protect people, and keep the organization functioning—with clarity that’s specific enough to be useful and boring enough to be credible.

The mistake companies make is thinking their only two options are (1) a sweeping values statement or (2) total silence. That’s lazy. There is a third option, and it’s the one that works in chaotic, high-stress environments: lead with duty of care and business continuity.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

First, you communicate internally like you actually want employees to feel safe and informed—because right now they’re getting information from group texts, TikTok, neighborhood Facebook posts, and whatever rumor hit Slack first. That’s not a communications strategy. That’s a liability.

Your internal message doesn’t need to be eloquent. It needs to be useful:

What we know (and what we don’t).
What we’re doing right now.
What resources are available.
What employees should do if they feel unsafe or witness something concerning.
Who to contact, and what happens next when they do.

Then you give managers a script. Not “talking points.” A script. Because the moment you leave this to manager interpretation, you get fifteen versions of the truth—and at least one of them will be unhinged.

Second, you align communications with operational reality. If your comms team is writing confident language while operations and HR are improvising behind the scenes, employees will feel it instantly.

That means you need a real, documented protocol (built with HR, operations, and legal) for the scenarios that are actually happening:

What happens if an employee reports an incident near or at a workplace?
Who is authorized to engage with law enforcement on-site?
What gets documented, and how?
What do we do about employee anxiety, attendance disruption, and mental health strain?
What protections and resources do we offer, and how do people access them?

This helps ensure the organization is not winging it—and it communicates the plan clearly.

Third, you go external in a way that is calm, factual, and leadership-forward. This is where companies get scared because they think external equals debate. It doesn’t have to.

Your external posture can be simple: “We are aware of the situation. Because our priority is employee safety and clear workplace guidance, we are sharing resources and protocols internally. We will continue to communicate as circumstances evolve.”

That’s it. No grandstanding. No empty “we’re monitoring the situation” fluff that says nothing. No asking for de-escalation or for the government to work together when it’s already been made clear that isn’t going to happen.

When people ask, “What are you doing?” and your answer is silence, they assume the answer is “nothing.” And in a moment like this, “nothing” is the worst possible brand position.

What to Say

Most corporate statements fail for one of two reasons: they say too much (and wander into commentary they cannot back up operationally), or they say nothing (and pretend “monitoring the situation” is leadership).

The fix is not to become more eloquent. The fix is to become more useful.

Before you write a single word

Do two quick checks.

First: who is this for? Not “the public.” Not “everyone.” Choose the audience you’re trying to steady: employees, managers, customers, community partners.

If you try to write one message for all of them at once, you’ll end up with a bland smoothie of words that satisfies no one and irritates everyone.

Second: does your message match your operations? If you say “employee safety is our priority,” but managers lack a protocol, a contact list, and a clear escalation path, you’ve just created a trust problem. The easiest way to lose credibility is to communicate certainty while the organization is improvising.

This is also where the “comms can fix it” fantasy goes to die. Communications can clarify. It cannot substitute for policy. It cannot replace HR. It cannot cover for the absence of a plan.

If leadership will not make decisions, your statement will read like exactly what it is—a placeholder.

The message architecture that works

Whether you’re talking to employees or the public, your message needs four pieces, in this order:

Acknowledge reality. Not dramatic. Not detailed. Just be clear that you know what’s happening and that you’re not pretending everyone is fine.
State the priority. Employee safety and clear workplace guidance. Business continuity. Calm, consistent operations. Pick the priorities you can actually deliver on.
Explain what you’re doing. Concrete actions, resources, protocols, and who to contact.
Commit to updates. When you will communicate next, and where people should look.

That’s it. Short. Useful. Credible.

The one-sentence test

Here’s a fast way to check if your message will land: remove the filler and see what’s left.

If the core message is “we’re monitoring the situation,” you’re not communicating—you’re stalling. People do not need to know you’re aware. They need to know what to do.

If the core message is “we don’t want to get involved,” you may as well say “we’re leaving you to figure this out on your own,” because that’s how it will be heard.

The gold standard here is not “beautiful writing.” It’s reducing uncertainty. Your message should answer, in plain language:

Where do I go for the latest information?
Who do I contact if I’m worried or something happens?
What will the company do (and not do) in specific scenarios?
What support is available to me right now?

That’s leadership. That’s duty of care. That’s also business continuity.

What to avoid

Vagueness: “We’re aware,” “we’re monitoring,” “we care deeply.” Great. Do you have a plan?
False neutrality: “We don’t get involved.” If it affects your people and your operations, you are already involved.
Over-promising: “We will ensure everyone feels safe.” You cannot guarantee feelings. You can guarantee actions and resources.
Manager improv: “Leaders should discuss with their teams.” No. Give them a script.

And please, for the love of Thor, stop outsourcing this to managers. “Talk to your manager” is not a plan. It’s a way to guarantee inconsistent responses, accidental misinformation, and a thousand micro-crises you could have prevented with one clear script.

Give managers the plan and the words. Give employees the steps. Give everyone the same source of truth.

A simple internal script

The tone should be calm, direct, and practical.

“We know many of you are anxious and distracted. That’s understandable.”
“Here’s what we’re doing right now: [resources], [protocol], [contacts].”
“If you experience or witness a situation that concerns you, here is exactly what to do: [steps].”
“We will share updates every [cadence], and you can always find the latest information at [place].”

A simple external script

And for external audiences, you don’t have to write an OpEd. You do have to demonstrate leadership.

“We are aware of the situation unfolding in our community.”
“Our priority is employee safety and clear workplace guidance.”
“We have shared protocols and resources internally, and we will continue to communicate with our teams as circumstances evolve.”
“If you are looking for our updates, they will live at [owned channel].”

That’s enough to avoid the vacuum without turning yourself into a debate stage.

And if legal truly will not let you speak publicly?

Then do not hide behind silence. Shift your energy to what you can control: communicate internally, publish operational guidance where appropriate, and make it easy for employees to get help.

You can lead without performing. You just cannot lead without communicating.

De-escalation Isn’t a Plan

When leaders say nothing—or hide behind a vague, committee-written letter—employees don’t hear caution. They hear absence. Managers improvise. Rumors fill the gaps. Customers assume the worst. And the media prints the only line it can: declined to comment.

Which brings me back to that image I described at the start. It’s hard to unsee it because it forces a question that isn’t ideological. It focuses solely on safety. Am I safe at work? Am I safe while shopping? What happens if this shows up while I am the manager on duty and they come after our employees or customers?

“De-escalation” doesn’t answer any of that. It’s not guidance. It’s not a protocol. It’s not a plan.

If you’re a communicator inside one of these organizations, you already know you don’t need a manifesto.

You need decisions. You need a script. You need a documented playbook that matches reality—and then you need to communicate it like you actually care whether your people feel informed and supported.

Because when your workforce needs clarity, and you choose distance, you’re still communicating. You’re just letting everyone else write the story for you.