Trust in Emergency Management
Every manager in business, industry, and government has an important leadership role in building a high-trust environment with his or her employees. As a leader within emergency management, you have a more complex role of building trust at multiple levels. Trust is a necessary element of:
Leading your subordinates to work energetically toward meeting the
organization’s goals.
Developing trusting relationships with other levels of the government
hierarchy to ensure a coordinated response to the needs of the community
in times of crisis.
Working with other agencies in joint prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, including evaluation of hazards, planning, inter-agency exercises, and voluntary agreements.
Teaming with other agencies in disaster response and recovery efforts.
Developing constructive relationships with the media to ensure effective cooperation in public education, warning, and response communications.
Building positive relationships with the public that will foster willing response and cooperation during times of emergency.
The effective response to the first World Trade Center bombing was attributed to the years of interagency cooperation, careful evaluation of hazards and planning, and meaningful interagency exercises. This same foundation of trust undoubtedly played an equally important part in the cooperative response efforts that followed the 2001 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center. In short:
Your relationships with local, State, and Federal officials, with other organizations, with the media, and with the public will affect your ability to manage a disaster successfully. Those relationships are built on a foundation of trust.
The next in this series of blog postings will be on the types of actions that build trust--or, destroy it!
