All incidents start locally
A truism of response is that all incidents start locally, and all incidents end locally. A spill starts somewhere. A forest fire starts at a specific location. Earthquakes have epicenters. Every response starts with a specific event, at a specific time and in a specific place.
This is important when you are crafting a response communication plan because communication structure, staffing, activity and messaging all change throughout a response. You start out with maximum pressure and minimal staff or structure; you rush to the office, to the incident, to the EOC, wherever you have to be, suddenly and hurriedly. The first hours of a response are frantic with activity as you create and distribute the very first messages about the incident and the response. You wrestle with minimum staff, scarce facts and maximum demand for information. You fight for traction.
Then the response gains traction. More bodies show up and a structure emerges; initial information is verified, corrected, expanded on. The information flow broadens and deepens, as extra resources are mobilized with extra facts. The pace settles into a solid rhythm; press releases, press conferences, town halls. Staff rotations are set and people start rolling through shift changes, briefings and debriefings. And you settle in for the long haul.
Then the ultimate Unified Command goal is attained; the incident is over. The response is complete. Command is ‘stood down’. Assets are demobilized. People are sent home. Catering is cancelled. Communicators pack up their laptops, grab their cell phone chargers and head for home. The hero rides off into the setting sun.
Stop the presses! Not quite accurate!
The incident has been resolved. The response is completed. The response apparatus is demobilized. But the communication process is NOT over, nor will it be for some time.
Physical response activities and response communication activities exist in two different spheres. Physical responses deal with things, all the nouns of a response. Response communications deals with the verbs; thinking, feeling, doing. And verbs don’t go home when nouns do.
All incidents end locally
Back to the truism that all incidents end locally. This is true for communications. The ‘verbs’ are all local, even if they aren’t. What? Right! Many people were impacted by the incident, and regardless of their distance, their hurt and betrayal remains fresh. Until their feelings are dealt with, they remain fresh and real, and their outrage simmers, looking for an excuse for venting.
No matter where these stakeholders are, they are vigilant. Even when response activities are done, and the responders have gone home, the incident remains close and vivid. And until these stakeholders are settled down, they keep a platform of rage that draws the attention of conflict-starved media. Even a successful response can bear bitter children.
So what does a a communicator do?
Become Us. Engage for the long term.
Engage with these people, help them face their anger and resolve it with you. How? Trauma counseling often includes specific steps for an individual to take to overcome the effects of trauma in their life:
Empowerment: Each of us has to be in charge of our healing in every way to counteract the effects of the trauma where all control was taken away from us.
Validation: We need others to listen to us, to validate the importance of what happened and to understand the role of this trauma in our lives.
Connection: Trauma makes us feel very alone. As part of our healing, we need to reconnect with others.
Hope: It is important that we know that we can and will feel better. In the past we may have thought we would never feel better, that the horrible symptoms we experience would go on for the rest of our life.
Responsibility: When we have been traumatized, we lose control of our life. We begin to take back that control by being in charge of every aspect of our life. It is important that we make decisions about our own life.
Telling: Telling others about the trauma is an important part of healing the effects of trauma. They should know, or we can tell them, that describing what happened is an important part of the healing process.
Relationships: As a result of our traumatic experiences, we may not feel close to or trust anyone. Part of healing means trusting people again. We need to become involved in other people’s lives, and let them become involved in ours.
Become Us. Put a face on the recovery.
While not trained in trauma counseling, communicators have an opportunity to incorporate these steps in order to guide a community through this process of dealing with trauma (incident) foisted upon them.
Calling an incident ‘over’ and leaving the affected people without recourse is like walking out in the middle of an argument. Resolution comes from staying put and making it through together. Post-response communication requires this commitment, or the response will remain in suspended animation on stakeholders minds and hearts. It will ‘bubble up’ again and again, whenever someone is reminded by a subsequent event. And your organization gets to live in this suspended animation of bubbling resentment and pain.
Break this cycle with deliberate and persistent post-response outreach. To do this, you have to leave the ‘them’ behind and become ‘us’, a member of the affected stakeholders lives. Effective recovery communication requires this.
Let’s talk about how to do this, using the same key steps of healing:
Empowerment: Recognize and reinforce that affected stakeholders are in charge. You engage in recovery communication to show stakeholders that their opinions and concerns are valid, they need to be heard and they need to be settled. They are in charge of the process. Remind them of this. Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Validation: Listen to the stakeholders affected by the incident. Don’t try to explain what happened or excuse your actions, instead acknowledge their feelings and concerns. Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Connection: Reach out in every available venue. Schedule community meetings, reply to every question expressed, either in the setting or one-on-one later. Offer interviews, presentations, activities that engage with stakeholders. Set up a web inquiry form and respond individually to each one. Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Hope: Share good news! As each recovery objective is met, share it with your community of stakeholders. Remind people of your organization’s commitment to stay until the job is done. Provide this information as personally as possible. In addition to press releases, tweets, etc., remember the people who were most concerned about each step, and reach out to them personally to share the update. Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Responsibility: Remind stakeholders that they have a say in the outcome. After a major incident, it is becoming common for local advocacy groups to be involved in the recovery planning and progress. Join them and support them! Announce and attend any planned meeting, offer to serve on any task force. Encourage their decisions and support them. Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Telling: By engaging with stakeholders, you are encouraging them to tell their story. Welcome this. Encourage people to share at meeting venues. Always ask for questions. Stay afterwards to listen to people. Acknowledge their pain or concerns. Listen and hear! Put a face on the recovery – yours. Become Us.
Relationships: Done properly, your recovery communication strategy will allow your organization to develop a relationship with affected stakeholders. They will begin to open up to you, share with you and then trust you. When you have developed trust, you have developed effective response communications. You HAVE put a face on the recovery, and it is yours! You HAVE Become Us.
This sound like a lot of work, but it is really just a continuation of good communication planning. You communicate with people so they will trust you.
As people, we innately want to trust wherever we can. There is too much to keep track of, and trust lets us dismiss specific concerns and save our ‘brain power’ for new ones. We all do this. We face risks every day but we don’t dwell on them. We’ve learned how to live with them by ranking them in subconscious order. It’s the new risks that alarm us!
Giving people a face and name they can trust frees them to turn their focus elsewhere, and the act of doing so becomes an internal endorsement to themselves that you’re OK. This core, unconscious commitment to your credibility is what keeps old wrongs from popping up again. It builds resistance to attempts to re-ignite an issue.
Become Us.
People who see you as ‘Us’ are latent advocates, not pent up opponents. Invest in the recovery communication process. Become Us.