Patrick McKendry

The Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has been an unmitigated disaster. The train’s cargo included a mix of hazardous materials cars¹, 11 of which derailed and were compromised to varying degrees when a wheel bearing overheated and failed.² The failed bearing did not trigger any initial alarm response until a critical alarm was thrown and the crew saw that the bearing had caught fire and threw on the brakes.³ The derailment included cars carrying butyl acrylates, a hazardous material used in making paint which were lost in the initial fire.⁴ Concerns continued to pile up in the days following the derailment as multiple cars containing liquid vinyl chloride heated towards a gaseous state, risking an explosion that could send shrapnel as far as a mile from the site.⁴ As a remedial practice, crews released the vinyl chloride from the cars and burned off the chemical over two days, which created toxic by-products like hydrogen chloride⁴, requiring the evacuation of the town around the crash site.

The impact on life was immediate. Residents of the area have been diagnosed with acute chemical bronchitis at alarming rates and have also reported headaches, eye issues, and bloody noses, among other reactions.⁵ Ecologically, authorities have counted around 3,500 dead fish in waterways near the site with chemicals from the crash measured miles away in the downstream Ohio River. Further, high exposure to vinyl chloride significantly increases risk for rare liver cancer, so we may not know the full effects of this tragedy for many years.⁶ The concerns of mental health from the trauma also remain to be fully realized.

Across this story are a number of failures of leadership that have taken a bad situation and made it into a terrible one. In the days since the crash, trust has been destroyed between residents and both government and industry authorities. I hesitate to cover a topic like this, which has such a profound and unjust effect on people’s lives. Yet, I think it is important to learn from failure with the goal of preventing its future occurrence. Further, this is a harsh reminder that operations and decisions within a business construct can have real impacts beyond their immediate scope and should not be made frivolously. Here, we will break down each of these problems to more deeply understand what the problem was, why it matters, and what could have been done differently.

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What Happened

The lives of the residents of East Palestine, Ohio were abruptly turned upside down. When you dive into the event past the initial news lines and start to listen to their stories, a primary recurring emotion comes into central focus - distrust. The previously comforting sound of the trains running through the town is now a source of stress as the tracks reopen. Now, every action taken by authorities responsible for enabling their well-being seems to create more questions or highlight an ulterior motive. Trust is a fragile, yet crucial, factor in healthy societies and also in healthy teams. When a problem creates personal impacts, our senses go on high alert. The result can be that trust is sustained or even built up if the response to the problem is handled well and fairly. This was not the case here as a number of different things went wrong.

First, officials failed in how they handled updating residents. In any emergency situation, communications have to strike the right balance of getting details out with speed against getting details out with full clarity. Initially, residents were told of the presence of vinyl chloride in the derailed cars given that its potential dangers were an important concern. However, additional hazards were present on other cars that residents were not informed of until days later, which lead to understandable concerns around what other information could be unknown or being kept secret. Striking that balance of speed and clarity comes from the intent to make people aware of what is happening while also trying to instill calm and comfort that everything is under control. Authorities also got this balance wrong as different organizations delivered seemingly different messages. In the days after the spill, the EPA messaged that water was safe to drink and was measured to have no harmful levels of contaminants. Meanwhile, the local government recommended an abundance of caution and encouraged residents to drink bottled water. Again, residents were left with questions on what details could be trusted.⁷

Second, as clean-up efforts began to conclude, disconnects appeared between the reported data on hazard levels and people’s lived experiences. The EPA had been tracking outside air quality and had done internal air quality tests for vinyl chloride and hydrogen chloride in hundreds of homes. Their readout was that air quality was in all cases below dangerous levels and safe for people to return to their homes. Yet, residents still smell the residue of the chemical spill and burn in the air. Many people continue to experience worsening health conditions in their homes that improve when they leave and get away from the town. Despite these consistent experiences, officials continue to promote that things have returned to normal. People trust their experiences above all else. The stark differences between what people are feeling and the data they are being provided further seeds distrust.⁴

Third, in difficult times, people can often persevere through extreme struggles if they know that others are committed to making things right. This is a key tenet of trust. Do we trust that the other person has our best interest in mind? For the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, this is unclear. The federal government’s response has been opaque to them with minimal information being shared about ongoing coordination between different agencies. The multi-week delayed visit of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg did not help.³ Support from the private sector has been suspect as Norfolk Southern backed out of an informational town hall at the last minute. Further, residents are concerned that short term reimbursement funds by the company are intended as a way to avoid or limit future liability that may arise.⁷ And across both sectors, residents have been perturbed by the apparent alacrity for re-opening the railway line even though residents were only just returning from the evacuation. Protestors in town have held signs stating “Profits over people / They poisoned the community”.⁷

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Why It Matters

In no way do I consider myself to be an ecological scientist. I cannot realistically evaluate the clean-up and emergency remediation practices that were pursued. Nor do I have reason to doubt the safety testing done by the EPA in the weeks since the disaster. Still, I also cannot doubt the stories and feelings that residents have been voicing in response. I think it is important to highlight that both can be true. We can have experts executing on best available methods while still hearing concern and distrust from citizens or consumers. In fact, recognizing this potential dichotomy is a necessary first step to resolving it.

Whether reviewing EPA efforts or the work of a team manager to drive professional growth and business results, the general evaluation is the same - did leadership get individuals to follow proposed guidance in order to work towards an outcome. Within this framing, we can find an easy parallel where the importance of trust is well understood - medical adherence. Adherence is the measure of the degree to which people follow the recommended dosage and frequency of their prescription treatments. Research shows that adherence to medication was associated with physician trust, belief in the medication to work, and the patient’s belief in their ability to stick with the medication. Further, physician trust mediated the factor of belief in the medication. Said differently, the importance of belief in the medication was largely an outcome of the patient's amount of trust in their physician.⁸ This is significant as we think about management because it highlights that trust in authority not only improves people’s likelihood to follow guidance but also changes their belief in the validity of that guidance.

In the framework of business, trust can be measured and tied to performance results. The impacts are clear. The Great Place to Work Institute places trust at the core of their model for defining quality companies.¹⁰ They find that companies with high levels of organizational trust beat the annualized returns of the S&P 500 by three times.¹¹ Similarly, the advocacy group Trust Across America developed a model which it uses to track financial performance of 100 of the top 1,500 public companies. The group found in an analysis of 10 years of backtesting that their high-trust companies outperformed the S&P 500 and the iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF.¹² Interaction Associates found through a 2015 study that high trust organizations were more likely to be high performing revenue organizations than low trust organizations.¹¹ When it comes to leading through any situation, trust is a necessity and not a nice-to-have.

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What Could Have Been Done Differently

The evidence supports that being trustworthy, internally and externally, is a top trait to support organizational performance. It is then key for us to understand what leaders should do to establish a culture of high trust in their organizations. Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, led his company to top tier shareholder returns among its peer set and some of the highest employee engagement scores in the Fortune 500 during his time. In the 10-year turnaround, Conant identified “Inspiring Trust” as his primary corporate objective. With renowned author Steven Covey, he wrote about three ways to build an environment of trust.¹¹ In addition to their impacts for our teams, we can see how these tactics could have meaningfully contributed to a more effective response in the East Palestine, Ohio disaster.

Declaring Intent

Conant describes intent as our fundamental motive and states that sharing our intent gives others a reference against which to measure our actions and hold us accountable. He especially recommends this tactic in cases of new leadership or when there is turmoil or large change in an organization. This makes sense as, in these situations, group members do not know what to expect from leaders or what agenda is behind the actions that they see. It can be hard to distinguish whether a new leader who is pushing work automation is looking to improve employee job fulfillment from tedious tasks or is looking to cut staff size. For leaders, it can be tempting to think that our intentions are clear, but we have to recognize our inherent bias based on our familiarity with our own context and thoughts. Try to flip the question around and ask yourself how clearly you understand your employee’s thoughts and goals, and suddenly the picture does not seem so clear.

In Ohio, leaders did a poor job of declaring intent, leaving it up to residents to determine how they should interpret various actions. For example, Norfolk Southern never clearly stated their intention to do right by the people who live in and around the area and were effected by the disaster. This lead to rumors that the company’s initial $25,000 donation - roughly $5 per person - was their only intention of a payout. The company has described this as completely false and pointed to subsequent $1,000 per person payments they are making.¹³ Still, residents are skeptical of these payments and some are interpreting that they are an attempt by Norfolk Southern to prevent future liability suits.⁷ Whether true or not, people deserve to understand the company’s intent.

Similarly, residents have highlighted the speed at which they were encouraged to return to their homes and the railway was reopened, stating that they think the EPA is taking money from Norfolk Southern to return to normalcy as soon as possible.⁷ I think it is far more probable that the controlled burn was a needed remediation to prevent a tank explosion and that EPA staff is working to get people’s lives back to normal as quickly as possible. However, this is a powerful example of how people can fill in the blanks when you fail to declare intent.

A good example of what declaring intent can look like comes from Alan Shaw, CEO of Norfolk Southern - yes, the same Norfolk Southern. The problem is that it came far too late. More than two weeks after the derailment, Shaw held a town hall with residents. Here he addressed the indemnification rumors behind the $1,000 inconvenience payouts and stressed that there are no strings attached. And he repeatedly stated his company’s commitment to work in East Palestine as long as needed to get things right.¹⁴ It remains to be seen if the messages are too little and too late to repair the distrust that has already mounted.

Demonstrating Respect

Conant’s next recommendation for developing trust seems simple, yet it is commonly overlooked and under-delivered. Respect is key to any healthy interaction and is particularly relevant to building trust. We show respect by being courteous, listening to others and their opinions, addressing our mistakes, and acknowledging and thanking others. When we show respect, we highlight our care for others and desire to do right by them. This builds trust because people feel recognized, understood, and sees that the other party has their best interest in mind.

As mentioned above, it took two weeks for Norfolk Southern to apologize to the residents of the town whose lives were disrupted. This is a bad start to showing respect. However, the company is not the only group that fell short here. Residents have continually voiced their concerns over health conditions as many have continued to fall ill in recent weeks. The response from the EPA has been constant, stressing that the measured contaminant levels are low in both air and water readings. While true, it fails to acknowledge the experiences of residents and shows incredibly low empathy or desire to help. A better trust-building response would be to highlight test results, acknowledge residents’s symptoms, and expand testing and reporting beyond vinyl chloride and hydrogen chloride which have gotten the primary focus so far.

Delivering Results

The final recommendation from Conant on building trust is to deliver the results you promised and doing it in the right way. The phrase “actions speak louder than words” rings true here. When looking to build trust, our ability to deliver against our promised vision is important in getting others to believe our intention declarations. As we think about integrating this advice, I find it helpful to consider it in terms of delivery over time. Obviously, it is not enough to uphold our promises just one time if we are looking to build a brand of trustworthiness and accountability. We must deliver consistently time and again. However, the concept is more than this. In many cases as a leader, we need teams to trust us to deliver on big ideas or transformative visions - in order to achieve this, we need people to be along for the ride.

We need to think about how we can deliver results in order to build trust while we are still on the journey towards our goals. In this case, a useful tactic is to define that vision for the team, then clarify where the group is today, and finally work backwards and place checkpoints all along the path in between. This creates ways for the team to check us as we go. By hitting the revenue or engagement checkpoint goals, we can create trust and help accelerate delivery of the larger vision.

Again, in the Ohio chemical disaster, leaders failed to follow this advice and broke trust with local residents. Norfolk Southern and the EPA defined long term goals of success - to re-establish the community as it was and recover the ecological well-being of the area. However, they failed to set and meet other deliverables to build trust throughout the clean-up process. As a result, residents have no way to evaluate the group outside of the long-term vision they set. For example, residents report still smelling chemicals in the air which does not seem “as it was”, so trust in delivering results gets diminished.

Instead, authorities could have broken that end goal into smaller ones that would occur over time to give residents the chance to evaluate them for trustworthiness sooner. Some example sequential smaller goals could have included:

Communicate information in near real-time, updating as things change - This could resolve concerns such as information being withheld about the nature of the chemical materials.
Prevent further physical harm to people or property - This could explain the decision to burn off vinyl chloride as remediation to a potential tank explosion.
Eliminate vinyl chloride from water and air
Eliminate other signs of chemical exposure in water and air - This pairing could help explain the disconnect between the EPAs reporting and resident’s symptoms, so long as the EPA continued to act to resolve other potential problems.
Respond to and test for any remaining resident area of concerns - This is the ultimate display of respect and trust, showing empathy for the residents and allowing them to set the definition of done on recovery.

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On multiple occasions, I have stressed that leadership is demonstrated in difficult situations. The leadership of company and government officials for the people of East Palestine, Ohio has fallen far short of expectations. My thoughts go out to all of the residents of the town and those in the surrounding area as they face a hellish situation that they did not ask for and that they did not deserve. We must demand better from those in leadership in this situation. For the rest of us, I hope you never find yourself in a situation of needing to navigate a similar disaster. But, in any team situation, the importance of building and maintaining trust will always hold, holding low trust teams back and accelerating high trust teams forward.

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References

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Ecological Disaster & The Loss of Trust