Quote of the Month: “Listening is more than waiting for your turn to talk.”
Becky McCrary

WHO DO YOU TRUST?

In the midst of a number of hotly contested political campaigns on national, state and local levels these days, this question has been coming up a lot. Voters have a hard time distinguishing between the positions of candidates on various issues. Or they get confused by contradictory statements made by both sides. Or they are jaded because they’ve heard so much campaign rhetoric over the years that doesn’t translate into positive action once the politicians get into office. What it often comes down to, when people walk into the polling booth, is voting based on a gut feeling about who they trust to do the right thing and make the right decisions.

As in Politics, So Too for Business

Trust plays a very important role in business. Customers of products need to be able to trust that companies make those products with their safety in mind. Donors to not-for-profit agencies have to trust that their money is going for the purpose they intended. Shareholders need to believe that the management team will do the best thing for their interests, not their own. Patients need to be assured that their doctors and nurses will take every precaution to prevent medical mistakes from making them a sad statistic. Neighbors who live close to facilities that use hazardous materials in their processes want to be able to trust those who operate those facilities to do so with great attention paid to safety and environmental concerns.

Unfortunately for all of us, there have been way too many examples in the past of organizations which did not live up to the trust placed in them. Recent stories include: the alleged fudging of scientific studies in support of a pharmaceutical; embezzlement of funds from not-for-profits; company executives telling shareholders to hold their stock while they are busy dumping their own; the administration of the wrong strength of a drug in an operating room that caused serious damage; telling employees that everything is fine until there is a big lay-off announced; a fireball that explodes in the middle of the night at a facility that has no employees there after 6 p.m. who could take action to prevent a conflagration and community evacuation.

When one organization’s reputation is tarnished, sometimes the black brush paints everyone in the industry the same way. And it sometimes leads to legislation being enacted that is an over-reaction that hurts everyone, including those who were trying to do the right things.

You Better Be Proactive

It’s too easy to sit back and say there’s nothing you can do - “Either people trust us or they don’t.” A much better approach is to spend some time thinking creatively about things you can do to promote trust within those audiences who are important to you, be they your employees, hareholders, donors, customers/clients, suppliers, neighbors, or others. What channels can you establish for honest, two-way communications? How can you demonstrate the openness of your operations? What information would people value having about you and your organization? How closely do you interact with those in your community? Do you give people an opportunity to get to know you? All of these things help to develop trust.

As Noel L. Griese of the Crisis Research Council once said, “Whether people LIKE you and TRUST you determines in part whether they believe the risks to which you expose them are acceptable or not.” This applies whether those risks are operational, financial, physical, or emotional.

Trust Matters

You might think it is just a nice thing to be trusted. It’s a whole lot more important than that! There could well be a major impact on your profitability or your viability as an organization. If people basically trusted you before an incident, they may be more willing to overlook one accident or mistake. If they perceive that you are genuinely sorry about something that occurred and are very empathetic with their concerns, they may not jump to calling the lawyers in to sue you.

My own work experience, as most of you know, was in the chemical industry. I spent the majority of my 17 years there doing things as the manager of community relations — going out to localclubs to educate people about our operations, answering their questions, inviting them in for open houses and plant tours, contributing to worthy causes, underwriting the costs for a community emergency notification system, participating in career days at the schools, etc. (If anyone wants to talk about these types of activities, feel free to call me at 1-800-848-3907 PIN 2145).

For those of you who work in other industries or for other organizations, I recommend that you spend part of a staff meeting one day discussing together what you could do to start to develop or enhance trust in your organization. It is not a frivolous matter for the “touchy-feely” types. It should be part of your organization’s ongoing efforts in reputation management. When that day comes when something bad happens - when you are faced with a crisis - you will want the people you care about to say something like, “I know this is a bad thing. But I know those people. They are basically good folks who have tried to do the right thing. I believe I can trust them now.”

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SPECIAL OFFER: For those of you who work for an organization that has people get angry with them from time to time, I have a great deal for you! My new books on dealing with the media during a crisis have arrived — all 1,000 of them! I’m running out of space in my storage cabinets. To make room, I have decided to put the materials on “Dealing Effectively with Angry People” on sale. Usually the 28-minute audio CD that explains this four-step process is $29.95. And the book where this subject is a chapter, “Walking with the Wise,” normally sells for $16.95. For my e-zine subscribers this month, I am making the CD available for $19.95 and the book for $10.95. Or you can get them both for $27.95. Shipping and handling and sales tax for NC residents would be added to each order. Do not go through the website to order because you can’t get the special prices that way. Just send me an e-mail telling me what you want and providing me with your snail-mail address. You can either provide me with your credit card information or have me invoice you.

UNTIL NEXT MONTH — Keep Cool!

Judy Hoffman
1-800-848-3907 PIN 2145
www.judyhoffman.com

JCH Enterprises, 116 Nelson Lane, Clayton, NC 27527, USA