Silence is golden? Not.

“They just trusted me. Which of course spurred me on to do my absolute best.”

Her special brand of frankness and candour is something Beatrice Tschanz learned already in her own family circle. “My father used to tell me and my sister: ‘If you’ve botched something up, come home and we’ll talk about it.’ Being trusted like that makes you absurdly strong.” She’s seen what the opposite has meant in friends who as kids were constantly badgered and not trusted to do anything right. “They only managed to build up a semblance of self-confident straightforwardness much later in life. I, on the other hand, was spoon-fed giant portions of it already at an early age.”

Beatrice Tschanz grew up in a well-to-do family home on the Zürichberg. Her father was strict, she says, but always fair. She nevertheless felt the urge to spread her wings. She wanted to go to Brazil. As a student of history and philology, she was an avid reader of the job adverts in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. One day, she ran across a listing from the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) – they were seeking an assistant for a small new branch in Brazil. “Of course, they wanted a man, but I realised: That’s my job!” Instead of submitting a written application, she went to the bank’s headquarters and trotted directly to the cubicle of the newly named manager of the foreign rep office. “He thought I was pretty cheeky, but somehow he liked my brazen way.” Naturally, at home dear Dad went nuclear at first. “But then he heard ‘UBS’ and decided in his supreme wisdom: ‘You can handle that.’” Fourteen days later, Beatrice Geiser (her maiden name at the time) was sitting on a plane to Brazil. Once there, instead of taking dictation from her boss, she travelled the country with Swiss invest­ors.

“They just trusted me,” she says, “which of course spurred me on to do my absolute best.”

Upon her return to Switzerland two years later, she started her career as a journalist – all of 18 years with Ringier. But she didn’t want to “grow old” writing articles her whole life, so it was an easy decision when Michael Ringier offered her the job of Communications Head for the company. Ringier financed her advanced training at UC Berkeley. “A news­paper doesn’t really need a communications department,” says Tschanz, “but for me it was an ideal opportunity to practice my act.”

And boy did she make mistakes! For example, by announcing the discontinuation of the “Blick” for women with a look on her face as if she were attending a funeral, or overenthu­s­ias­­tically trumpeting Ringier’s participation in the federal government’s first “Stop Aids” campaign. “Wrong. Totally wrong,” she hollers and then laughs herself to tears. “Later, I showed my employees video recordings of these monumental press conferences as examples of what a no-go is all about.”

But if you’re allowed to make mistakes – like Beatrice was as a young girl – you become stronger and more self-confident. And that’s the basis for others trusting you. She benefited from this again with her next employer, Jelmoli AG, where she experienced her first thorny professional situation; namely, the “streamlining” of her 157-member team.

“That was hard. But I learned that you have to communicate clearly and honestly, not ,with crocodile tears and false promises.”

Because one thing always holds true: communication is important, but the job’s not finished with just that. Communication is only authentic when it is followed by actions and adherence to what has already been communicated.

Staunchly upholding this principle, she gained international renown and respect as SAir’s communications head. After the airline was permanently grounded in 2001, she was taken on board by Sulzer Medica. The company was in a severe crisis at the time: in the USA, its sale of faulty hip implants had led to multimillion-dollar class action suits being filed. Indeed a challenge for Tschanz, but also a major step: she was appointed to the Executive Board.

Alas, as illustrious as her career has been, this communications expert has also suffered heart-wrenching moments. Like when she learned she couldn’t bear children of her own. When in 1985 she was diagnosed with cancer, or in her late 50s lost her first husband after 25 years of marriage. Not to mention when Sulzer Medica was sold in 2003, resulting in her being granted a sizeable severance payment only to then be criticised as a rip-off artist, even though the amount was much smaller than the sums received by her male colleagues. “But I always knew that I’d just keep on keeping on,” she says. “The solid fundament I got from home helped me a lot.”

As we say goodbye and she goes to get her jacket, she’s approached by someone at a neighbouring table. Tschanz responds with her typical warmth. Afterwards, she chuckles: “That happens to me to this very day. Total strangers walk up and greet me.” Trust grows slowly; it’s lost quickly. But if carefully nurtured, it clearly lasts a long, long time.