Fourth, leaders, managers, supervisors, and technical professionals require training in the principles of trust, stakeholder perceptions, and communication about risks, high concerns, and crises prior to encountering situations that require effective communication.
If the facility managers and engineers in this story had learned and applied the principles and values discussed in the chapters to follow, the research reactor would likely be in operation today.
1.2 What Will Readers Find in This Book?
This book identifies the principles underlying effective communication in situations where there is risk, crisis, or other causes of high concern. This book describes both the differences between and similarities among the situations of risk, crisis, and high concern, describing principles that underlie all such situations and practices specific to each. Previous books have written about these topics, but there are now important new fields of scientific inquiry and enormous new challenges in the communication environment. Inquiries are taking place on diverse fronts, including scientists and experts in anthropology, economics, engineering, epidemiology, law, psychology, sociology, media studies, medicine, statistics, toxicology, and neuroscience. Each discipline has generated publications related to risk, high concern, and crisis communication, and each adds to the understanding of the practice. However, with few exceptions, nearly all existing resources focus on a specific subset of the literature, on a specific area (e.g. bioterrorism, nuclear power, climate change, or genetically modified foods), or on topics of direct interest to the authors’ discipline. As a result, the literature has become highly specialized and dispersed.
While this literature specialization serves experts within specific disciplines, it is less useful for the many professionals who work outside of these explicit fields and who may encounter any one of a wide range of challenges. This book offers a common framework of the major principles, strategies, and tools and shows how they relate to inform the work of communicators in high concern or emotionally charged situations.
This book provides the background and practices essential for successful communication in risk, high concern, and crisis situations. It describes what often happens when feelings and facts collide. It explains why leadership accepts some ideas for managing a risk, high concern, or crisis issue and rejects others.
Why do some projects that encounter high concern and controversy go forward and others do not? Why are some facts, information, and guidance recommended to stakeholders in high concern situations heeded more than others? Why are some presentations about high concern issues well received, while other presentations are ignored or incite anger? Why do some team interactions proceed without a hitch and others fail? Why are some interactions with upper management effective and others are ignored? Why are some people trusted with challenging communication responsibilities and others are not? Why do some meetings about high concern issues succeed while others fail? Why are some people better able to handle difficult or controversial situations than others?
This book addresses and answers these questions. The answers often come down to knowledge of risk communication principles and practices.
1.3 Why You Will Use This Book
I organized this book around two primary aims. The first is to help professionals understand the best communication practices for a high concern or emotionally charged situation. My second goal is to give readers the skills to apply these best practices in a variety of situations.
How you communicate in high concern situations will directly influence the course of the events you manage. In a crisis, stakeholders (i.e. interested and affected individuals and organizations) demand timely and accurate information. Leaders, managers, engineers, scientists, and technical professionals will be asked to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities. Those involved in the crisis will be surrounded by uncertainty, ambiguous information, high emotion, and upset people. Beyond the situation of an immediate crisis, competence in risk, high concern, and crisis communication is a prerequisite for navigating through the many situations where feelings and facts are at odds, whether it is concern about a health‐threatening risk or high anxiety about an impending change. Performed well, high concern communication can enhance trust and confidence, calm nerves, reduce anxiety, encourage cooperative behaviors, provide information for informed decision‐making, and help mitigate or reduce potential adverse outcomes. Poor, inadequate high concern communication can disrupt processes, fan emotions, undermine trust and confidence, and result in adverse outcomes.
I have organized this book to introduce theory and best practices in high concern communication, focusing specially on meeting the communication needs of those who work as engineers, technical professionals, leaders, or managers in fields that may encounter health, safety, occupational, and environmental responsibilities and challenges. Communications related to health, safety, occupational, and environmental issues are often stressful. They often raise complex technical, economic, social, political, policy, and ethical questions and then place the resulting demands on organizations.
I also wrote this book for technical professionals, leaders, and managers at all levels who desire to communicate more effectively in high concern situations within their organizations. For example, organizational change often raises concerns and emotionally charged issues from employees, including such questions as: What is the proposed organizational change and why is the change needed? Will I lose my job because of the change? How will the change affect me and my relationship to others? How technical professionals, managers, and supervisors respond to these and related questions is critical to the successful initiation and sustainability of change.
During high concern situations, ineffective communication can cause inefficiencies; disruption; low morale; and wasted time, money, and other resources. Ineffective communication results in messages being garbled by the noise, unintended adverse consequences, rejected messages, and unnecessary fear and confusion. When deployed effectively by leaders and managers at all levels, risk, high concern, and crisis communication skills serve as invaluable tools for engendering trust, protecting organizational value, and helping people make informed decisions.
Leaders, managers, supervisors, and technical professionals can benefit from effective risk, high concern, and crisis communication skills by ensuring their customers, potential customers, and the public have the information they need to evaluate the company’s products and operations. Effective communication often determines why some ideas and products are accepted over others, and why some individuals are accepted as leaders over others.
By keeping internal and external stakeholders informed about potential risks, corporations can reduce adverse outcomes and protect themselves from reputational damage. Internal stakeholders are particularly important because of their high credibility, especially when their views about a risk or threat differ from those of management. Similarly, nonprofit and governmental organizations can benefit from effective risk communication by educating and informing their constituents about threats and issues. With the ever‐widening array of information sources, the negative effects of misinformation are more likely and damaging. People may not be aware of critical information or may take actions based on misinformation.
Engineers, technical professionals, leaders, and managers, as well as students aspiring to these positions, can read this book, gaining a comprehensive overview of the most important aspects of the field. I wrote each chapter to be self‐contained and have provided additional resources for those who want to further probe particular topics. The intent is to make it easier for readers to home in on issues, such as stakeholder engagement, communicating numbers, decision‐making tools, warning systems, working with the media, theory, message development, or evaluation.
1.4 The Need for This Book – Now
Critical changes have occurred in the field and in the environment in which high concern communication occurs, changes further magnified and intensified