The Battle for Trust

To win public issues and policy debates, you need more than good facts. You need to battle for trust to win over supporters and overwhelm opponents.Issue managers must do more than dispense facts. They must battle for trust.

Widespread skepticism is one of the biggest handicaps in trying to manage a public issue. You may have all the facts and figures, but if neighbors, community activists and even policymakers don't believe they are true, you are nowhere. 

There is no formula for building trust, but there are some tried and true principles in the battle for trust. Here are some of them: 

Tell Your Story — the Whole Story

You need to tell your story, but you gain credibility by telling the whole story. Better to hear it all — good and bad — from you than from your opponents.

Telling the whole story won't automatically build trust, but it establishes you are trustworthy, which is a very good beginning in the battle for trust.

Be Proactive, Don't Wait

Avoid the temptation of letting sleeping dogs lie. They aren't asleep. If your project, legislation or business model faces opposition, don't wait to address it. 

Go to the source of opposition, listen and find out what the real problems are, then deal with them. Concerns you can erase by quick, decisive action make it harder for opponents to gain traction, while helping to win the battle for trust.

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Look the Part, Act the Role

Whether press conference or presentation, people watch better than they listen. You need to look the part and act your role, paying as much attention to your body language as your words.

From the first time we open our eyes as babies, people learn by seeing. We take cues, form judgments and sense emotions by watching the movements of people.

Studies show body language conveys even more emotional information than facial expressions. Together, they speak volumes. 

If you fidget at a podium or garble your words, your audience will sense a lack of confidence and may discount what you say, regardless how persuasive or profound your point.

So, in addition to carefully crafting your words, the effective speaker and presenter meticulously practices his or her delivery — exactly like an actor.

In fact, you should think of a media interview, press conference or presentation in the same way as a stage play. You have a role to play and you need to look the part and act the role.

Here are a few tips:

Avoid weak postures

You tip off your audience that you are nervous or unsure of yourself by slumping, sticking your hands in your pockets or clasping your hands behind your back. These are seen as weak as opposed to power postures. Leaning forward at a podium or a table signals confidence and a desire to connect with your audience.

If you answer questions following a speech or press conference, don't cross your arms, which is a sign of defensiveness.

The key is to be mindful of your movements, especially your hands. They can underscore your meaning or confound and distract an audience if out of sync with your message.

Start Strong

Great speakers don't begin with apologies or lame jokes. They lean into their topic and form bonds with their audiences.

Start with a strong first line — an intriguing question, a startling admission or a thought-provoking statement. 

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Digital Game-Changers

Websites, microsites and online newsrooms have become ubiquitous, but not always as useful as they could be in helping to manage a tough issue.

Here are six ideas to make your digital platforms matter — with more relevant, engaging and persuasive content: 

Make your site a "linkable asset"

That requires developing content of interest to your target audience. Dense backgrounders or self-serving fluff won't pull viewers or keep them engaged very long. But solid, credible information will — especially if displayed in visually accessible ways with charts, videos and well-packaged text. Providing valuable information, which is updated regularly, will convince people to bookmark your site and return. It even may lead to your site being linked to other sites, expanding your viewership and outreach.

Give viewers "information snacks"

Giving viewers good content doesn't mean trying to tell them everything you know about a subject. The concept of less is better than more prevails. Design your information as if people were eating snacks instead of a 7-course feast. Yes, provide details —in layers that the most interested and devoted readers will click to find without bogging down the more casual, quick readers. Here is a great example of snack-size information in a CNN post about a host of developments in the Boston bombing case.

Create a "content panorama"

When people enter a room, they scope it out to see who is there and where the bar is located. The same holds true for websites and online newsrooms. Online viewers start with a big view to see what's available before diving in to read specific content. Your job is to make the panorama fetching with eye-catching visuals, snappy headlines and content that gets to the point. Don't forget to make your design clean and your content clear so scanners can find what they are looking for without squinting or searching. This is a perfect assignment for an online newsroom, which can be home to a wide range of content that tells your story in many different ways. 

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The Power of Listening and Observing

Click and Clack, hosts of Car Talk on NPR, have an uncanny knack for translating odd, funny noises made by vehicles into credible car repair recommendations.

Last weekend, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, also known as the Tappet Brothers, were chatting up a caller who had developed a chronic pain in his thumb because of an uncooperative gearshift on his Jeep Comanche. The brothers teased the caller, who described himself as the "outside man" for a Memphis law firm.

But they couldn't diagnose what was wrong until the caller impersonated the sound when he shifts gears. When they heard the weird whirring noise, Click and Clack knew instantly what the problem was.

They proved the power of attentive listening.

An alert homeowner in Watertown, Massachusetts proved how important it is to be a keen observer when he noticed blood on the canvass covering his boat in his backyard. He peeked in, saw a body and immediately alerted the police. The body turned out to be the at-large second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing and the object of an intensive, day-long manhunt. 

That tip helped law enforcement capture the suspect alive and end a metropolitan lock-down that made greater Boston seem like a war zone instead of an iconic American city.

Listening and observing don't require degrees from MIT, though coincidentally the Magliozzis both have degrees from MIT. These are skills anyone can develop and hone. They are essential to effective communications, especially when you are trying to manage a contentious public issue.

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Engaging Community Partners

Public involvement has become a staple of review processes for major public projects. However, public expectations for genuine engagement have outstripped the techniques most commonly used to collect public input.

Typically, project sponsors schedule meetings in a public library or school auditorium to present their idea and solicit opinions. Just as typically, about a dozen or so people show up. The exception is when the project is highly controversial. That can draw hundreds of people, some to listen and others to protest loudly. Neither scenario equates to engagement.

Engaging affected publics means affording them an opportunity to participate at the ground floor of a project. This could involve a poll to measure support for relative project sizes, locations or costs. It also could involve in-person or online focus groups to understand how respective publics view different project options.

Even these one-off techniques may not fully satisfy the public urge to engage. As with consumers of products, constituents increasingly want to have a role in decision-making. With more access to information than ever before, consumers and constituents feel empowered. Smart public project managers tap into — not resist — that empowerment.

Too often, public project managers give people the facts, but not any simulated levers to see how those facts could play out in different ways. Little wonder that many skeptical citizens don't waste their time going to public meetings, which they feel are already rigged to reach a preordained conclusion. 

That's unfortunate, because many public officials are sincerely interested in public viewpoints. But they have been trained to develop solutions to public problems and they see public involvement as a way to share and validate their solutions. It can be enormously frustrating to them to discover the citizens they serve are upset, in part because they had no real role in coming up with the solution.

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Putting the Best Fact First

Headlines grab attention, but the first sentence of a story or press release is what determines whether a reader will continue or move on. That's why journalism instructors teach students to put the best fact of a story first.

This seems like obvious advice, yet writers disregard it all the time — to their readership peril.

It doesn't matter whether you are writing a news story, press release, crisis response or blog. Your readers want you to cut to the chase and tell them what you've got.

Some readers never go beyond the lead, as a matter of habit, so you risk missing your narrow window of opportunity with a cloudy or convoluted start.

Other readers are totally turned off by a lead in the form of a question. They wonder, "Why is the author asking me a question? Why doesn't he or she answer it instead?"

Journalism textbooks preach the need to include the who, what, when, where and how of a story in the lead. That can be challenging when faced with the practical problem of pulling the reader into a story. That's where the best-fact-first strategy comes in handy. Instead of cramming all the detail into the first sentence, focus instead on showcasing what the story is about and why it's important.

Borrowing an example from Bill Stoller's PublicityInsider.com, here is an example of a lead that has all the "whos" and 'hows," and one that is aimed at plunging the reader right into the story:

"A Web-based herbal products company conducted an online forum that collected six month's worth of comments by American teenagers about weight loss and pressures they feel to be thin."

"American teenagers voiced anger in an online forum at the continuous pressure they feel to be thin because of images of super-skinny people projected on TV, movies and music videos."

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Symbol of Support or Alienation

The red equal sign signifying support for gay marriage exploded onto social media just as the U.S. Supreme Court heard two major cases challenging a federal law and a California initiative banning same-sex unions. 

While the symbol, launched by the Human Rights Campaign, has been hailed as a brilliant tactic to rally supporters, sympathizers and politicians, questions have arisen about whether it was a smart PR move for many brands that also embraced the red equal sign.

The question seems pertinent because of the hub-bub over Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's foray into the same issue, which polarized its customer base.

Matt Wilson, writing for ragan.com, says there has been widespread support for same-sex marriage from brands ranging from Bud Light to Kimpton Hotels and Martha Stewart Living. The difference, Wilson suggests, is that these and other brands assessed their core customer constituencies and concluded it made sense to take a public stand.

That was an easy call for brands that overtly cater to gay customers. But for others, it had the character of jumping on the bandwagon of rapidly shifting views on an issue that not that long ago was discussed in the context of moral and spiritual terms.

Even Chick-fil-A seemed to follow the trend, according to Wilson, as its California outlets offered free meal coupons to gay marriage supporters.

While same-sex marriage appears to be rushing toward broad acceptance in the United States, certainly by younger generations, there is still the possibility that brands will alienate a chunk of customers for their support or opposition of the issue.

Wilson explored that in his blog, quoting Starbucks Chairman Howard Shultz reply to a shareholder who complained about its early support of gay marriage. Shultz reportedly told the shareholder if he could find another company generating a 38 percent return, he should invest his money elsewhere. Not every brand has such an unassailable financial perch to defend its action.

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Plant Tours: Seeing is Believing

When facing a contentious neighborhood dispute, don't overlook the persuasive power of the plant tour.

In an age when social media, YouTube videos and infographics have more sex appeal, the plant tour offers the irreplaceable virtue of letting people see for themselves what you are doing. That's often all it takes to turn critics into advocates.

Plant tours have the distinctive quality of being something that virtually any business or organization can organize. There are always restraints – sensitive operations, tight quarters or personal privacy issues. But there are almost always work-arounds that allow your neighbors or skeptics to get a first-hand view of your factory, educational facility or medical clinic.

Nothing is more authentic than opening the doors of your facility and letting people talk with your employees and see where they work. It can change people's minds because it erases their fears of the unknown.

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Framing an Issue, Changing a Mind

How would you argue for scrapping Oregon's iconic Bottle Bill or sacrificing personal privacy to keep the Internet free? That was the challenge my Willamette University MBA students faced as they learned the skill of issue framing.

Effective framing is critical to give people a quick, memorable way to see an issue with your point of view. It is an advocacy tool that plays a fundamental role in issues management, in congealing the views of a broader group and even in changing people's minds.

Here are some of the best issue frames for retiring the venerable Oregon Bottle Bill and its 5-cent redemption fee and having beverage containers collected curbside along with other recyclable material instead of returned to grocery stores:

  • "Kick your cans to curbside."

  • "In recycling we trust."

  • "Ban the Bottle Bill. Recycle instead."

  • "Recycle at the curb, the way GREEN was intended."

  • "Curbside recycling. A simpler choice for you. A cost savings for all."

  • "Kick the Bottle Bill to curbside. Don't pay twice to recycle responsibly."

  • "Save your nickel. Recycle at curbside."

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Pope Francis and Issues Management

Okay, I was just kidding about applying for the job of Pope. But I would like to apply for the job of issues manager, which is a position Pope Francis should create right away.

The former Argentine cardinal of Italian descent has created an appealing first impression with both Catholics and non-Catholics. But that won't shield him from enormous challenges ranging from sexual abuse to financial mismanagement to eroding congregations in Western Europe to restive congregations in the United States.

The conclave of cardinals that chose Pope Francis are banking on the evangelical zeal stirred by the first Vicar of Christ from the Americas and the Global South, which are now the bedrock of the Catholic Church. However, evangelism isn't the answer to the Church's problems any more than talking louder is the way to silence critics.

Pope Benedict XVI made headlines by tweeting on an iPad. But using social media is a tactic, not a strategy.

Pope Francis faces a sea of people, both in and out of his religious flock, who are more cynical and distrustful. His challenge is to find ways to engage people and rebuild trust, much like anyone employed in the business of issues management.

That won't be easy because some of the issues to manage include the role of women in the church, homosexuality and gay marriage, a shrinking clergy, contraception and abortion and economic justice, a topic Pope Francis is already well versed on.

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