Mind the (trust) gap

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2020 (1857 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the night of the 1952 U.S. presidential election, CBS News’s Walter Cronkite introduced TV viewers to a pundit few in the audience had seen before: a computer.

The 16,000-pound UNIVAC offered just a fraction of the computing power as the smartphone in your pocket, but it was groundbreaking technology at the time, and enlisting it to predict election results helped CBS convey a sense of authority and trust.

Fast-forward seven decades to another U.S. election year, and public trust seems to be in tatters.

Canadians could be excused for thinking a trust crisis exists only in the United States, where a concerning number of Americans reject established science on COVID-19, view mask-wearing as an assault on personal liberty, or openly embrace debunked conspiracy theories, including the belief that Bill Gates is developing a vaccine to covertly implant human tracking devices (a recent poll found nearly 30 per cent of American adults hold this view).

Even in Canada, studies of public trust show Canadians’ trust in business, government, media and non-governmental organizations declining — although public trust in government did jump this spring, pointing to at least momentary satisfaction in governments’ pandemic response.

For companies and organizations, falling public trust is something of a peripheral threat: it’s doubtful most organizations’ customers or employees harbour conspiracy theories about them or would accuse company leaders of malevolence, yet the omnipresence of distrust, disinformation and general abuse of truth means no organization is fully immune from these pervasive undercurrents. Disinformation has simply become an inescapable part of daily life.

How, then, should organizations try and navigate this climate of generally declining trust? The absence of a direct and identifiable threat makes it tempting to hope the challenge just goes away, but wise leaders acknowledge that a trust gap exists and recognize there’s opportunity in trying to fill it.

The best hedge against the threat posed by declining trust is to actively invest in building it. As the adage goes, trust isn’t given; it’s earned, and an ability to project and cultivate trust is already emerging as a core success factor in a post-pandemic world.

Trust is the stuff of human relationships — central to customer experience, employee satisfaction and other metrics organizations deem critical — and a focus on actively strengthening those relationships should be part of any organization’s post-pandemic playbook.

Organizations adept at building trust, regardless of their size, have at least three things in common:

1. They’ve adopted a “listening culture.” Leaders who earn the trust of their employees and customers have a keen understanding of what their employees and customers need and want. These leaders know because they ask, and they ask because they’re genuinely interested and motivated to act on what they hear. They ask in meetings, they ask via surveys, they ask in emails and they ask on social media. Effective listening is foundational to empathy, which is foundational to trustful, enduring relationships.

2. They look after their people. An oft-quoted aphorism coined by Richard Branson — “Take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business” — rings especially true in the wake of the pandemic. Organizations attentive to the wider needs (and during the pandemic, the new realities) of their employees are rewarded not just with employees’ trust, but the trust of clients and customers too. Conversely, there’s renewed risk of an erosion of trust when organizations’ concern for employees is deemed inadequate. Look no further than the negative media attention after Canada’s major grocers ended the pandemic wage top-up for essential workers.

3. They stand for something. As customers or employees, we’re inclined to trust those who adhere to a set of values and are willing to publicly demonstrate and defend those values. The organizations who have gleaned benefits to their reputations in recent months aren’t those who have kept silent; it’s those who have spoken with substance and conviction, whether in the context of anti-racism, equity and inclusion, or supporting community needs in the context of COVID-19.

The pandemic will eventually pass, but our memories of this singular, all-consuming moment will endure. The organizations who work in earnest to garner our trust today are the ones most likely to still have it when fears of the coronavirus finally subside.

David Leibl is founder of the Winnipeg-based communications and executive advisory firm www.oncallcomms.com. He can be reached at david@oncallcomms.com.