How can Emergency Management leaders build effective stakeholder relationships?

I have put together a diagram regarding what I think would be the appropriate holistic emergency management & governance cycle. It is the basic foundation needs from which you then would have your policies, plan - specifically tailored to your external operating and internal working environments, Organization emergency response committee - strategic level oversight and deliberations, incident command system (ICS) - Operation level on scene action group, Immediate Action drills, Standard Operating procedures (SOPs) and Emergency Response Procedures (ERPs), Recovery and Resilience procedures, Emergency Response Warden roles/responsibilities/guides to action/SOPs

It also requires Clarity, Simplicity, Transparency, scalability, repeatability, 'Buy-in at all levels, Understanding, visibility, and the ability to initiate action expeditiously. The Holistic approach also means Emergency management and response (EMR) should be linked with protective security management (PSM) and enterprise security risk management (ESRM). The Diagram 1st element (at12 O'clock) is to identify, analyze, and assess the realistic/relevant risks*, potential threats, and vulnerabilities specific to the external operating and internal working environments and the potential Severity, impact on operations, staff, and reputation, as well as recoverability, level of damage and loss mitigation. Brief explanatory notes to follow.

Existing emergency management programs often have identified partners and stakeholders. Asking these coworkers to invite their partners and stakeholders can exponentially expand relationships across the community. Studying various state and federal funding opportunities can introduce partners who have an expectation to integrate with emergency management, and can expand emergency management understanding of those professional needs, capabilities, and resources. During the COVID–19 response, public health relied heavily on partnerships with long-term care facilities to relieve overcrowded hospitals of recovering patients. Through state and federal contracts, the financial burdens were also lessened.

Prior to any relationships being built, each agency must ensure that they select the appropriate representative or none of the collaboration or partner building matters. It’s important to choose someone who is collaborative and does not have a gigantic ego. Don’t pick your buddy or the loud mouth in the room. Pick someone that is intelligent, listens well, but isn’t afraid to speak up, offering their opinion, and has “people” skills. I’ve been at many incidents where the partner representatives in the command center are arguing and pounding their chests. Meanwhile the poor workers in the field are not getting what they need to accomplish the mission. When the correct people are in place, relationships can be built.

No matter the sector, all emergency managers within an area need help. Identify who those people are and grab a beverage or lunch together and actually build the relationship. This is more than an introduction. Invite them to exercises, help them build their experience, share lessons learned, how can your organization help them, etc. List out the stakeholders within your jurisdiction, region, etc. and discuss how there can be benefits for both sides. They might not have an emergency manager but someone similar that does the job. Consider Public health, NGOs, Community Leaders, Education Institutions, Media Outlets, Utilities, Transportation, Local, State and Federal, Public Safety, Businesses and Industries (critical infrastructure).

The first two steps must be done in preparation, not during an event. This is where most organisations lose any chance of effective stakeholder management. Relationships are critical.

For me, the key to developing effective and enduring stakeholder relationships is finding ways to meet the needs and interests of those stakeholders. It’s important to take time to understand a stakeholder’s perspectives, culture, and goals—then find ways to help them improve those aspects of their organization. It’s also important to not always be the one asking for something; rather, offer assistance to them, even when it may not be convenient.

Continue to learn from others. Someone most definitely has experienced something that you have yet to experience but when the time comes you'll revert back to the knowledge and lessons learned from that conversation you had with a stakeholder.

In my experience trust and credibility are established through ongoing relationship building during non-emergency times. By participating in a variety of stakeholder meetings, training sessions, exercises you will meet and get to know your counterparts. During these encounters you must be candid, honest and approachable. This will lead to the needed trust and credibility during an emergency event.

Relationships take time and effort with the hope that the result is trust and credibility. Learning about strengths, weaknesses, skills, resources and interpersonal traits is invaluable for when the chips are down in a stressful emergency.

Expanding on James Podlucky's contribution about conducting joint exercises, it can be helpful to use those events to find common ground between your partners. Each organization involved in disaster response has its own authorities, its own roles and responsibilities, and is collecting the information they need during a disaster. It can be frustrating to learn that a response partner had information that could have helped you during a disaster. By developing effective collaboration and coordination platforms and events that allow for information sharing with everyone involved in disaster response and recovery, emergency managers can prevent many of the incidents that lead to conflict with their stakeholders and partners.

Conduct joint exercises with various stakeholders. This is helpful in understanding roles and capabilities. Your organization may have a limitation that can be fulfilled by building a relationship with a stakeholder. If you wait there won't be a plan for that limitation when activating the EOC. Prepare for it by assisting your stakeholders with projects, exercises, etc. that will help maintain strong relationships instead of only meeting one time before an incident occurs.

You should know your team individually in order to be able to determine that something is going on among the team and they must trust you for that. At the beginning of my career as ERT captain I found it really hard to tell when the team had a problem as they could hide it from me. As the time passed by I started to understand them more individually and could tell when they had a problem. I bult trust with them and they could even come see me for solutions. As a leader we must have no favourites in the group . When two of them argue we must sit with them and listen actively , preferably in separate sessions and after with both.

Public safety needs to adopt unified command in most situations avoid being a silo. We can do more working together in the same room for the same goal than separately.

There is a saying in Emergency response team : Teamwork and Boddy system. A leader will never be considered a leader by himself. Cooperation and collaboration must exist in the team. Being in top position requires deep consideration of the people who really execute the task. Everyone should be included and heard in planning phase. As ERT captain many things that I do in daily basis the result came from a simple conversation that I had with them. I trust my team and I always make sure that I get their insight in the decision that will impact all team. When you show your team that they are trusted and they are valuable part of the team , you empower them and bring more interest in making the team their own.

In a crisis, time is of the essence. Unified command enables a quicker and more synchronized response, as agencies can work together seamlessly without delays caused by disagreements or lack of coordination. In certain jurisdictions this happens as a matter of necessity. Others should put aside egotistical or personal reasons- work together.

This is really important. The biggest reason we do drills is to get familiar with the existing protocols. all our Deltas and Pluses must be captured and worked on later on as a recommendations to improved in the next drills. The best way to do this is to assign someone during the Drills to work as observer. very important, no direct blames. Delta is not a person but action that were taken and are willing to be corrected next time.

I'd say this is a really important one in this field...be aware of how you may be inadvertently creating silos and/or isolating people whom you need to work with by using industry jargon, speaking in acronyms, and/or holding fast to the "that's how we've always done it" mantra.

The more diverse backgrounds we can get represented in this field the better! I love working with EMs that come from different professional backgrounds because at the end of the day "whole community" resilience, or success cannot be achieved by a group of people who have the same experience, the same narrow perspective, and the same narrow definition of success.