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Leaders as Connectors: Building Trust Across Agencies and Communities

Aaron “Arrow” Foster, MA, LAC, CRC, CRSS

VP, Peer & Crisis Program Development and Training

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The Crisis Before the Crisis

A person in emotional distress calls for help. The call center does its best to respond. A mobile crisis team is available, but the dispatch pathway is unclear. Law enforcement has prior history with the person, but not the behavioral health context. The emergency department is already crowded. A peer support specialist may be exactly who the person needs, but that role has not yet been integrated into the response protocol.
No one involved is trying to fail. In fact, every agency may be working hard.  The problem is not a lack of commitment:  The problem is a lack of connection.
Across crisis systems, leaders are often asked to solve challenges that sit between organizations: behavioral health and law enforcement, 988 and 911, hospitals and mobile crisis, state agencies and local providers, tribal partners and county systems, clinical teams and peer support workers, funders and frontline staff. The work does not move forward simply because each organization improves internally. It moves forward when leaders build the trust, habits, and shared language that allow agencies and communities to work together.  That is why connector leaders are essential.
SAMHSA’s 2025 crisis care guidance emphasizes a coordinated crisis continuum that includes Someone to Contact, Someone to Respond, and a Safe Place for Help. It also highlights the importance of collaboration across 988 contact centers, mobile crisis teams, stabilization settings, hospitals, peer services, 911, public safety, and other partners.

Connector leaders make that coordination real.

Why Connector Leaders Are Essential:  A crisis system is not a single program. It is a network.

A strong crisis continuum may include 988 contact centers, mobile crisis response, crisis stabilization, peer support, outpatient providers, hospitals, emergency medical services, law enforcement, schools, shelters, tribal partners, community-based organizations, managed care organizations, Medicaid agencies, and state behavioral health authorities.
Each partner sees a different part of the person’s experience. Each partner also operates under different rules, funding streams, documentation requirements, liability concerns, staffing pressures, and cultural assumptions.
Connector leaders understand this complexity. They do not pretend that collaboration happens because people attend the same meeting. They build the conditions that make collaboration possible.
Connector leaders help partners answer questions such as:
  • Who is responsible for what?
  • What happens when a person moves from one part of the system to another? How do we share information appropriately?
  • What does safety mean from the perspective of the person in crisis, the responder, the family, and the community?
  • How do we reduce unnecessary emergency department use, law enforcement involvement, or hospitalization while still meeting urgent needs?
  • How do we include peer support and lived experience as core system assets, not afterthoughts?
SAMHSA’s Crisis Systems Response Training and Technical Assistance Center describes its goal as supporting crisis care that is integrated, sustainable, equitable, and aligned around evidence-based and evidence-informed practices. Connector leadership is one of the practical ways those goals become operational.
A connector leader is not simply a good networker. A connector leader is someone who can translate across systems, identify shared purpose, reduce mistrust, and help partners move from agreement to action.

Trust-Building Strategies for Crisis Leaders

Trust is often discussed as if it is a feeling. In crisis system work, trust is also an infrastructure. Trust is built through repeated behaviors that show partners they can rely on each other when the stakes are high. Connector leaders build trust intentionally, not accidentally.
1. Start With Shared Purpose
The strongest partnerships begin with a shared commitment that is bigger than any single agency’s role.
For crisis systems, that purpose may be: people should receive the right support at the right time; crisis response should be accessible, compassionate, and effective; communities should have alternatives to emergency departments, jail, and unnecessary hospitalization; and lived experience should shape how crisis services are designed, delivered, and evaluated. 
Connector leaders return to this shared purpose when partners become stuck in operational disagreements. Shared purpose gives partners a reason to stay at the table.
2. Build Relationships Before There is a Crisis
Many systems try to build collaboration during the emergency. That is too late.
Connector leaders create regular opportunities for partners to understand one another’s roles before they are under pressure. This may include cross-training, tabletop exercises, case reviews, ride-alongs, listening sessions, community forums, or leadership learning communities.
The goal is not simply to exchange business cards. The goal is to understand how each partner thinks, what they are accountable for, what constraints they face, and what they need from others to do their work well.
3. Use Shared Language
Different systems use different languages. A behavioral health provider will talk about engagement, de-escalation, recovery, and trauma-informed support. Law enforcement will talk about scene safety, duty to act, and legal authority. Hospitals will talk about medical clearance, risk, and discharge planning. Community members will talk about fear, dignity, access, and trust.
Connector leaders do not force everyone into one professional language. Instead, they help partners translate.  Shared language reduces confusion and prevents partners from assuming bad intent when they are actually using different frameworks. In crisis work, shared language can also reduce delays, improve handoffs, and create more consistent expectations for people receiving services.
4. Make Commitments Visible
Connector leaders help groups move from broad agreement to clear commitments. That means documenting decisions, naming responsible parties, setting timelines, and returning to unresolved items.
A trust-building meeting does not end with “we should collaborate more.” Trust grows when people can see that their time leads to action.
5. Address Power Honestly
Cross-agency collaboration often involves unequal power. State agencies may hold funding authority. Law enforcement may control access to a scene. Hospitals may control admission and discharge decisions. Community organizations may hold trust with residents that formal systems have not earned. Peer specialists may bring lived experience while still being excluded from decision-making spaces.
Connector leaders do not ignore these dynamics. They name them respectfully and design meetings, governance structures, and decision-making processes that allow meaningful participation.
A system cannot claim to be community-centered if community voice is only invited after the major decisions have already been made.

Practical Leadership Tools

Connector leadership can be taught, practiced, and strengthened. Below are practical tools leaders can use to build trust across agencies and communities.
Tool 1: The Partner Map
A partner map helps leaders identify who is involved in the crisis continuum and what each partner contributes. Include primary roles, population served, authority or decision-making power, current pain points, what they need from other partners, existing trust level, and opportunities for stronger coordination.
This tool helps leaders see gaps. For example, a community may have regular meetings with hospitals and law enforcement but no structured process for including peer support, family advocates, schools, tribal partners, or people with lived experience.
Tool 2: The Shared Purpose Statement
A shared purpose statement is a short, plain-language statement that explains why partners are working together. This statement can be used at the beginning of meetings, in project charters, in training materials, and in public-facing communications.
Example:
“We are working together so that every person experiencing a behavioral health crisis can access timely, compassionate, and coordinated support in the least restrictive and most recovery-oriented setting available.”
Tool 3: The Cross-Agency Handoff Review
Many crisis system failures happen during handoffs.  Every time you respond, you are shaping what happens next for someone in crisis.  Small, intentional actions during these transition times are where real change happens.
A cross-agency handoff review examines what happens when a person moves from one part of the system to another. For example:
Examples of these transition points can include handoffs between 988 and mobile crisis, coordination between 911 and behavioral health response, movement from mobile crisis to stabilization services, discharge from the emergency department to community-based follow-up, transition from crisis stabilization to outpatient support, diversion after law enforcement contact, and connection from peer support engagement to ongoing recovery resources.
Tool 4: The Trust Agenda
A trust agenda is a meeting structure designed to strengthen relationships and move work toward. This keeps meetings from becoming complaint sessions or abstract discussions. It also helps partners experience progress together.
Tool 5: The Lived Experience Check
Connector leaders ask whether policies and workflows make sense from the perspective of the person in crisis. A tool helps leaders avoid designing systems only from the perspective of agencies. 

Supporting Connector Leadership Financially, Legally, and Strategically

Trust-building takes time, and time requires support. Connector leadership should not be treated as extra work that happens only when leaders can fit it in.
To sustain connector leadership, organizations and systems can build it into contracts, training plans, interagency agreements, quality improvement structures, crisis system governance, learning communities, data review processes, Medicaid and managed care expectations, grant deliverables, memoranda of understanding, and community advisory structures.
This matters because collaboration often fails when it depends only on individual personalities. A strong connector may build relationships, but if those relationships are not supported by structure, they can disappear when staff change roles.
The goal is to move from personality-based collaboration to system-based collaboration.  That does not mean removing the human element. It means protecting it.

Success Stories From Project Work

In crisis workforce development and system transformation projects, success often begins with a simple shift: partners stop asking, “Why aren’t they doing their part?” and start asking, “What do we need to understand about each other’s part?”
One current project offers a strong example of connector leadership in action. RI is working with a state that faces uniquely challenging conditions across its crisis continuum, including extreme rurality, geographic isolation, limited service access, and the realities of supporting people across large distances with a workforce that is already stretched.
Rather than beginning with the assumption that the state must build an entirely new crisis continuum, the work is focused on strengthening the continuum scaffolding that already exists. State leaders, RI, and community stakeholders — including hospitals, higher education partners, behavioral health providers, and other key system partners — are working together to create training models and build a learning community that supports the current crisis workforce.
The emphasis is practical and grounded: How can the existing workforce improve coordination with the resources already in place? Where do handoffs break down? What happens when a person moves from one part of the system to another? Which partners need to be in the room to identify gaps, clarify roles, and create a smoother flow through the system?
This work requires more than a training plan. It requires strategic planning, relationship-building, and knowing which partners must be invited into the conversation. It also requires respect for the realities of rural and isolated communities, where solutions must be flexible, locally informed, and responsive to workforce capacity.
Momentum is building because the project is not asking partners to imagine an ideal system disconnected from their daily reality. Instead, it is helping them strengthen the system they have, improve the connections between entities, and create shared learning across the continuum. This is connector leadership at work: bringing the right people together, focusing on the moments where coordination matters most, and building trust through practical, sustained action.
The most important outcome will not be a single document or meeting. It will be a change in how leaders approach one another.  They will begin to see the crisis continuum as a shared responsibility.
That is the power of connector leadership. It creates the conditions for agencies and communities to solve problems together.

Future Vision: Connector Leaders as System Builders

The next generation of crisis leadership will require more than technical knowledge. Leaders will need to understand funding, workforce development, community engagement, data, equity, peer support, clinical practice, public safety, and implementation.
But even that will not be enough.  Crisis systems will need leaders who can connect.
Connector leaders help communities move from fragmented services to coordinated care. They help partners move from distrust to shared action. They help systems move from compliance to purpose. They help ensure that people in crisis are not left navigating disconnected systems at the very moment they most need connection.
As crisis systems continue to evolve, the most effective leaders will be those who can build bridges strong enough to hold under pressure.

Call to Action: Explore Training Opportunities

If your agency, community, or crisis system is working to strengthen collaboration, improve handoffs, integrate peer support, or build trust across partners, leadership development is a practical place to begin.
Recovery Innovations offers training and consultation designed to help crisis leaders, behavioral health providers, peer support teams, and community partners build the skills needed for coordinated, recovery-oriented crisis response.
Explore training opportunities to strengthen connector leadership, build cross-agency trust, and support a more effective crisis continuum of care.

About the Author

Aaron Foster is the Vice President of Peer and Crisis Program Development and Training at Recovery Innovations. He is a Licensed Associate Counselor and Certified Recovery Support Specialist, and a national advocate for the integration of peer support within behavioral health systems. Aaron collaborates with institutions of higher education on workforce development research and is a co-author of the competencies chapter in Best Practices in Psychiatric Rehabilitation, 2nd Edition. He consults nationally on peer support and recovery education across integrated health systems in the United States and Australia.

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