Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo
Recent consumer & community sentiment surveys published all around the world suggest that trust, in general, is waning. Customers have become less loyal, more vocally (and socially) critical and much more commercially promiscuous. Meanwhile voters, increasingly disillusioned with both sides of politics, are drifting away from party affiliations or else opting out of the process altogether.
Adding to this are the systematic failures and breaches of trust by large institutions including religious organisations, high-profile politicians, banking and finance corporations as well as government departments and social enterprise. In other words, we now have more evidence that our cynicism was actually, well founded, and a decline in trust is a fairly predictable outcome.
Complicating this trust deficit is a rise in technology that allows us to share our unmet expectations while also holding large organisations to account in a way we’ve not experienced before.
So, how might we build, nurture and, if necessary, rebuild, trust?
Traditional models of trust building have drawn on the ancient Greek thinking around Logos, Pathos and Ethos. In other words, appeals to our logic, emotions and beliefs or values. And, of course, these frameworks are still incredibly useful and valuable. However, it’s also worth considering the expectation inflation we’ve experienced in recent years now means that “good” is no longer good enough. This requires us to do better than what might traditionally have been expected to.
Much of this mistrust is generated by the gap that sits between our expectations and our experience. For instance, when we thought of banks as being vaults to keep our money safe and as profit centres for shareholders, it was rather more easy to live up to expectations that it is today, where we now also evaluate their sustainability footprint, the way they treat their staff, how their CEOs behave in their free time and what their political interests and associations might be.
Human beings are attracted to congruence & certainty
One of my favourite pieces of writing is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance in which he states, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’m inclined to agree, although inconsistency is one of the things human beings find very troubling.
Rarely does anyone say, “You’ve changed,” and mean it as a compliment and people will often observe that, “I don’t agree with this politician or leader, but at least they’re consistent.” It’s almost as if changing your mind or position based on new information is a negative!
Of course, none of this helps us in our quest for trust. What it does mean, however, is that today we need to be far more considered in what we say and write and tweet than we might suppose.
Emerson also famously observed, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” So perhaps the best we can take from Emerson is an amalgam of his advice, to speak with consistency to our values, but to let our actions do most of the talking.
When you tell the truth, it should be inconvenient
Honesty and integrity sound like words that deserve to be enshrined as values on a plaque in a corporate board room. But when it comes to building or rebuilding trust, it means that “truth well told,” to borrow a line from the global advertising network McCann Erickson, is no longer enough and that we must be transparent to the point of vulnerability.
In other words, spend less time thinking how you can spin your situation and more time being genuinely open in your communication. This means allowing others to vent their frustrations at both a personal and commercial level, but it also means being un-corporately frank in your communication.
Not only does the inconvenient truth demonstrate that you are genuine in your redress of an issue, it also takes the weapons your opposition might like to use against you, off the table to some extent.
Learn the art of “Mea culpa”
The inconvenient truth is often an admission of failure. This can seem challenging and even culturally shocking depending on the marketplace or community you are working in. Just try, as I have, running a strengths and weaknesses workshop with a leadership team in Japan… it can be tough.
That being said, apologies issued in the right way can mitigate damage and rebuild trust. To do so, they must be seen as genuine and authentic. Two components of this are, “Who is taking responsibility?” and “On whose behalf is it being made?”
A political apology serves no one, but an apology backed by a commitment and demonstrated intent to make good, is far more engaging.
Engage networks, not just individuals
Influence is rarely achieved by one-way communication. It’s not even two-way communication. Today influence is informed by multifaceted, multidirectional conversations with many players directing the shape of those conversations.
In building or rebuilding trust, we must also factor in the opinions of those who live in our constituent’s communities. Who has their ear? What do they think of us and our actions? How we they view our motives? Will they see us as someone they would recommend and advocate for?
Serve others not just yourself
In the end, the hyper-connectivity that we now enjoy in our world has changed the way we build, measure and maintain trust. Much of this is actually fantastic. The bar has been raised and that serves us all.
However, it also presents us with many challenges such as the proliferation of lies and fake news, websites masquerading as science portals and filter bubbles that may reinforce our biases and prejudices.
In the end, trust is far more determined by our actions than our words. It is built on experience and proof and on the expectation that we are serving more than our own purpose and interests.
It also means that a few uncomfortable truths also need to be considered. Uncomfortable, because we often want them not to be true. These include:
• Trust beats truth
• Beliefs beats facts
• Walk beats talk