Building Trust Before the Crisis:
A Conversation on Public Risk and Communications Preparedness
By Samiha Fariha
As Public Risk Management Awareness Day approaches on March 1, it offers an opportunity to reflect on how organizations prepare for uncertainty and how communications plays a central role when risk becomes reality. While risk management is often associated with operational planning and insurance frameworks, public risk today is deeply connected to trust, transparency and decision-making under pressure.
In an environment where confidence in institutions continues to fluctuate, communications leaders are increasingly tasked with helping organizations navigate complex, high-stakes situations while maintaining credibility with diverse audiences.
To mark the day, we connected with Josh Cobden, Executive Vice President at Proof Strategies. Josh provides senior counsel across crisis management, corporate reputation and executive communications, and helps lead the firm’s annual CanTrust Index, which examines trust in institutions across Canada.
We spoke with Josh about how declining trust reshapes public risk, what meaningful preparedness looks like before a crisis emerges, how leaders should approach transparency when information is still evolving, and why internal alignment is often the difference between steady leadership and reactive messaging. From audience prioritization to values-based decision-making, here is what he had to share.
How do you personally define public risk in a communications context today?
We spend a lot of time studying trust at Proof Strategies through our annual CanTrust Index, a leading source of insight into trust in Canada, analyzing key topics, institutions, events, and population segments nationwide. Public risk today is closely tied to declining trust in institutions. When trust erodes in government, business, media or public services, people disengage from the systems meant to keep society functioning. We see this all the time. For example, when people don’t trust the police, crimes go unreported. When they don’t trust the electoral process, they don’t vote. When they don’t trust vaccines, they avoid them and get sick. In a communications context, public risk arises whenever low trust magnifies the consequences of uncertainty, misinformation or institutional failure.
From your experience, what does strong communications preparedness look like before a risk or crisis emerges?
Preparedness begins long before scenario planning. It starts with defining and communicating your organization’s values. Crises are unpredictable and can change rapidly, but values are constant and provide a stable foundation for decision making when information is incomplete or evolving. I often say, “values are the compass you use when the map disappears.” When stakeholders understand those values in advance, they can make sense of the decisions you make under pressure. They may not agree with every decision, but they’ll recognize the principles behind them, which helps maintain trust.
When information is incomplete or still evolving, how should leaders approach transparency without causing confusion or panic?
Transparency is not about providing every detail instantly. Over-communicating early in a crisis, particularly one involving human harm, can shift attention away from what truly matters, which is empathy, immediate safety and clear next steps. Leaders should focus on what is confirmed and meaningful to stakeholders, acknowledge what is not yet known and commit to providing updates as facts are verified. This approach demonstrates competence, empathy and engagement and helps sustain trust when uncertainty is highest.
In high-pressure situations, what behaviours distinguish effective communications leaders from reactive ones?
Effective leaders demonstrate clarity, consistency and empathy. They communicate with precision, align messaging across the organization and show they understand the human impact of the situation before anything else. These behaviours are essential to building and preserving trust during periods of volatility.
What is one common mistake organizations make when managing public risk that could be avoided with better planning?
A common mistake is failing to recognize that different audiences often have very different priorities. A message crafted to reassure one group may unsettle another. Employees, customers, shareholders and regulators all care about different aspects of a situation. Without deliberate audience prioritization and thoughtful message planning, communications can easily create unintended consequences and increase the very risk an organization is trying to manage.
How important is leadership alignment and internal readiness in risk-aware decision making, and what role should communications play?
Leadership alignment is fundamental. It begins with a shared understanding of organizational values, which act as guardrails when a situation is unfolding quickly and unpredictably. Internal readiness requires clarity on roles and decision authority, especially regarding who leads and who must be consulted. Communications teams often find themselves at opposite extremes, either being asked to make decisions that belong to legal, operations, HR or IT, or being excluded from decisions entirely despite being responsible for explaining them. In short, you can’t communicate your way out of a bad decision, and you can’t operationalize your way out of bad communication.
What advice would you give communications professionals who want to build confidence and credibility when navigating risk, uncertainty and public scrutiny?
First, understand that trust is not a given. In fact, our annual CanTrust Index reveals that about half of the adult population has a low trust disposition. Specifically, they are likely to agree with the statement “you can’t be too careful in dealing with people.”
Second, trust is dynamic, not static. People move from trusting to untrusting based on the situation that confronts them. It’s useful to think of trust as behaving like a battery that loses its charge over time and must be recharged through actions that demonstrate competence, integrity and care.
Third, anchor your decisions and messaging in your organization’s values. People may not agree with every action you take, but they will respect decisions that clearly align with established principles.
Finally, understand what matters most to your audiences and map those priorities against the situations you might encounter. When the moment arrives and pressure is high, that clarity becomes one of your strongest assets.
Samiha Fariha is the current Communications Chair on CPRS Toronto’s Board, a Senior Associate at Golin’s Toronto office, and a professor in The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University. She brings a strong focus on media relations, content strategy, and digital communications, informed by her experience in both agency and academic settings.