Build Trust and Credibility with those Affected by Crisis

When you collaborate with other individuals or organizations to mitigate large, complex or ongoing crises, an important component of your communication is community involvement. Among the many facts that need to be disseminated to affected stakeholders during and after any crisis are the risks involved and how an incident management team is handling them.

The good news? The more people or organizations involved in the incident response and recovery, the more potential community spokespeople you’ll have available.

Trust and credibility are two of your most important commodities when mitigating a crisis. If your stakeholders already trust you and believe that you’re capable of getting the job done, your goal is to maintain that goodwill. When stakeholders don’t trust you, or feel like you’re not up to the task at hand, you have to change the emotional course they’re on before you can get through their mental noise and actually…