In Crisis, Sustain Trust

“I DON’T TRUST MY UNIVERSITY.” ¹

Trust is an essential ingredient for effective leadership, and during the pandemic health crisis trust in leaders is under threat. As COVID-19 spreads, presidents and governing boards will likely need to make unpopular decisions, potentially undermining stakeholder trust. In extreme cases, leaders who lack trusting relationships falter and fail during crises, causing individual and institutional damage that can last for years.

Leading Under Intense Pressure During the Crisis

In 2018, the outgoing chancellor of the University of Texas system, William McRaven, who served as a military commander orchestrating special operations prior to assuming an academic leadership role, claimed that being a chancellor or president is “the toughest job in the nation.”² During crises, college and university leaders shoulder even greater pressure and face higher stakes. Universities and colleges often suffer after a crisis from reputational damage, loss of enrollment and associated revenue, unexpected costs, and legal fees.

Crises can originate in natural events, failure in institutional infrastructure, or in the actions of people inside or outside the university community. For instance, pandemics or natural disasters caused by extreme weather, wildfires, or flooding threaten lives. Cyber criminals attack university information technology infrastructure, compromising confidential data, and exposing institutions to legal liability. Protests at universities staged by students, faculty, or public citizens may ignite smoldering conflicts and turn violent. Even a president’s poorly chosen words reported in the media may trigger controversy that damages institutional and individual reputation while undermining a university’s progress.

During COVID-19, presidents and board members are learning quickly to lead and to govern in crisis, facing threats not just to safety, institutional viability, and mission fulfillment, but also to their own leadership capabilities during this chaotic time. As university leaders and institutional stewards face an increasingly uncertain and volatile future, sustaining relationships of trust with stakeholders becomes more critical and more difficult as leaders must safeguard individual and institutional health during and after the pandemic.

Fragile Trust

In extreme cases, when presidencies end abruptly during crises, stakeholders completely lose trust in leadership. For example, a prominent student activist accused a president who resigned during a crisis of failing to fulfill commitments: “All we get is emails and empty promises.”³ In another crisis that ended a presidency, faculty issued a letter condemning the president, saying he “irreversibly lost the trust of students, their families, and the faculty and staff,” adding that “a person cannot brag about manipulating others and then expect that he will ever earn back their trust.”⁴ In another high-pressure crisis episode that marked the end of a long-serving president’s tenure, a trustee supporting the beleaguered president garnered a torrent of critique after making statements deemed insensitive to survivors of sexual assault and by doing so undermined stakeholder confidence in the governing board.

Outrage and fear proliferate on social media, where emboldened individuals condemn college and university leaders with forceful language. Interpretations of leaders ricochet online, at times multiplying and leading to stakeholder loss of faith in leadership. When stakeholders interpret presidents and board members as no longer worthy of their trust, continuing to lead becomes increasingly difficult and even, at times, impossible.

Why Trust Matters More During a Crisis

The speed at which leaders make decisions during a crisis conflicts with the norms of academic culture, where stakeholders expect careful, extended, consultative deliberation, and violation of these norms can undermine trust in leaders and governing boards. Decisions made by presidents and boards may be viewed as illegitimate, especially by faculty who expect to have input into institutional decisions or alumni committed to maintaining an institution’s traditions.

To maintain credibility and stakeholder trust, presidents and board members leading in crises can align actions with institutional mission, vision, and values. Ralph Gigliotti, director of the Rutgers Center for Organizational Leadership, suggests that higher education crisis leadership necessitates flexibility and rapid response facilitated by a “culture of preparedness that allows for agile and swift—yet also sound and thoughtful, values-based, and stakeholder-centered—decision making when crisis situations occur.”⁵ Decisions may adhere to these principles, but if others cannot interpret decisions as such, leaders risk failing to resolve a crisis effectively as trust can quickly erode.

In the coming weeks and months, trust in presidents and boards will continue to be tested. Leaders will continue to engage in the debate about when and how to begin in-person instruction (if the institution started virtually) and research, framed at times as a choice between health and safety or institutional financial viability. Some institutions will necessarily implement measures to reduce expenditures, such as furloughing or eliminating staff to meet significant budget reduction targets. Navigating the minefield of upcoming decisions may prove fatal for those leaders unable to nurture and sustain trust among stakeholders as they precariously balance the competing needs of those who have entrusted leaders with their educations, health, and livelihoods. Even as leaders make difficult decisions, presidents and board members can communicate to engender trust during and after a crisis and inspire confidence in stakeholders.

Key Ingredients for Building Trust During a Crisis

Presidents and board members establish and sustain trust among stakeholders during a crisis by leading with empathy, communicating honestly and consistently, responding rapidly, and conveying information frequently.

Empathy

Harvard professors Michaela Kerrissey and Amy Edmondson suggest that leadership “in an uncertain, fast-moving crisis means making oneself available to feel what it is like to be in another’s shoes—to lead with empathy.”⁶ By exhibiting a high regard for the experiences, perspectives, and feelings of others, especially those who are suffering, presidents and board members can lead and govern with empathy.

People expect to be heard, especially now that social media provide ample opportunities to speak, and listening can facilitate empathetic leadership in crisis. Presidents and boards can create opportunities for two-way communication, to listen and to respond thoughtfully, especially involving individuals significantly impacted by a crisis. By using what is learned through listening, leaders can adapt crisis strategy and tailor communications.

Honesty and Consistency

Former president of the University of North Texas Gretchen Bataille and Northwestern University professor Diana Cordova emphasize the potential consequences of failing to communicate openly: “…honesty and forthrightness of the messages can make the difference in how the final story is slanted, and evasion and dishonesty will leave a mark forever on an institution’s reputation.”⁷ University presidents and boards sustain trust by speaking honestly and operating transparently. If something is not yet known, leaders can be open about it, describe when critical details are expected to be known, and then report back to stakeholders.

Presidents can communicate consistently to all stakeholder groups and any messages issued by representatives of governing or institutionally related foundation boards should also be consistent with institutional communications. Former Texas A&M executive director of university relations Cynthia Lawson, whose tenure coincided the collapse of a bonfire in 1999 that killed 12 students and injured another 27, observes that inconsistency can be damaging: “inconsistent messages can, and will, increase anxiety and quickly undermine the credibility of an institution’s experts.”⁸ Public communication should also be consistent with statements made privately, as exchanges and documents will likely find their way into the light during or after a crisis, especially at public universities and colleges subject to sunshine laws. If institutional direction or crisis management objectives change, a president, in partnership with the board chair as appropriate, can describe the rationale for shifting focus to avoid the perception of inconsistency.

Timing and Pacing

To sustain trust, leaders can respond to critical incidents quickly and share information frequently with stakeholders as a crisis unfolds. After critical incidents, leaders who communicate a response rapidly can forestall or at least temper the proliferation of misinformation. Social media and 24/7 news cycles enable almost instantaneous comment from any perspective. If institutional leaders hesitate, they miss the opportunity to tell the story of crisis events. In the absence of communication from presidents, other people will fill the information gap, often speculating or sharing misinformation.

Tell Your Crisis Story

The story of a college or university is disrupted during a crisis. Stakeholders facing chaos and uncertainty grasp at fragments of information to shape a new story: projecting, speculating, and rationalizing. As crisis events unfold and stakeholders build new stories about institutions responding to critical incidents and associated impacts, leaders’ statements and actions contribute to the emerging public narrative. A significant moment in an institution’s saga, a crisis can shape perception and stakeholder action for years or even decades. In the absence of a plausible story about how an institution handles a crisis, others will craft new narratives based on conjecture.

Presidents, trustees, and foundation board members applying the principles outlined above can sustain relationships of trust with stakeholders. By doing so, they can shape the story of their institutions’ futures. Start by asking:

Are we communicating with empathy? Honestly and consistently? Quickly and frequently?
Are we listening to stakeholders, learning about their crisis experiences, and using that learning to inform our crisis response?
What decisions are on the horizon that will need to be interpreted for stakeholders?
What story will be told about how our institution (or institutionally related foundation) handled the crisis? How might that story influence the likelihood of successfully achieving the institutional future we envision?

Any one of these principles for building and sustaining trust practiced in isolation can lead to failure. A leader focusing wholly on empathizing with stakeholders may be paralyzed when faced with the decision to reduce an annual operating budget by 20 percent. Disregarding collective bargaining processes in the spirit of operating transparently can backfire. Combining efforts to build and sustain trust with thorough risk management and strategic leadership will increase the chance that those you lead will be ready to follow when tough decisions are necessary to ensure your institution’s future may be bright, even in these dark times.

Amanda Walker serves as the vice president for advancement at The Evergreen State College and as the executive director of the college’s institutionally related foundation. She also facilitates the executive team’s work, leads strategic planning, and advises college leadership. This fall she will defend her PhD dissertation, a multi-case study of university presidents resigning during high- profile crises, at University College London.

Endnotes

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz, “‘I Don’t Trust My ’ Readers Share Their Fears of Returning to Campus in the Fall.,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2020, https://www.chronicle.com/article/i-dont-trust-my-university-readers-share-their-fears-of-returning-to-campus-in-the-fall/.
Lindsay Ellis, “UT System’s McRaven: College Leadership ‘Herculean’ Task,” Houston- Chronicle.Com, May 1, 2018, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/education/cam-%20pus-chronicles/article/UT-System-s-McRaven-College-leadership-12877779.php.
Ruth Serven and Ashley Reese, “In Homecoming Parade, Racial Justice Advocates Take Different Paths,” Columbia Missourian, October 10, 2015, https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/in-homecoming-parade-racial-justice-advocates-take-different-paths/article_24c824da-6f77-11e5-958e-fb15c6375503.html.
Edinboro University Faculty, “An Open Letter to the Edinboro Community (Draft),” March 2018.
Ralph Gigliotti, Crisis Leadership in Higher Education: Theory and Practice (New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020), 130.
Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson, “What Good Leadership Looks like during this Pandemic,” Harvard Business Review, April 13, 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/04/what-good-leadership-looks-like-during-this-pandemic.
Gretchen Bataille and Diana I. Cordova, eds., Managing the Unthinkable: Crisis Preparation and Response for Campus Leaders, (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2014), 158.
Cynthia Lawson, “Crisis Communication,” in Campus Crisis Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Planning, Prevention, Response, and Recovery, Eugene L. Zdziarski II et al. (San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 97–119.

Takeaways

Trust is fundamental to effective leadership at colleges and universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. As presidents and governing boards make unpopular yet essential decisions, they must sustain trust or risk institutional damage that can last for years.
To maintain institutional viability, trust, and credibility with stakeholders, leadership teams must align their crisis action plans with institutional mission, vision, and such alignment promotes transparency and accountability with stakeholders in ways that sustains trust during these unprecedented times.
Board members and presidents may cultivate trust by leading with empathy, communicating honestly and consistently, responding rapidly, and conveying information frequently to stakeholders. These principles combined with strategic leadership and risk management safeguards institutional help during and after the pandemic.

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Crisis Leadership