The Five Signals of Trustworthiness
/Disbelief has become the signature of our age. We’re inundated by news that may or may not be true. We can no longer agree on what is and is not a fact. Our institutions have let us down and, even when we want to believe, our instincts tell us to hold up. We’re experiencing a crisis of confidence not in ourselves, but in the truth. We just don’t know what or who to believe anymore.
This disbelief has been growing for decades. Daniel Yankelovich, the father of public opinion polling, described “waves of mistrust” that began with the Great Depression and triggered a collapse of trust in business that was “so widespread it threatened to topple capitalism itself.” The second wave of mistrust came in the 1960s and '70s. As Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic, “After the tumultuous assassinations of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the resignation of President Nixon, and the stagflation of the late 1970s, public trust fell from 80% in 1966 to about 25% in 1981.” The third wave of mistrust occurred after the 2008 financial crisis. As the economic impact hit average households, sometimes with tsunami force, confidence in financial institutions dropped dramatically and the government recovery program was seen largely as a corrupt bailout for Wall Street.
We just don't know what or who to believe anymore.
We’re now experiencing a complete implosion of trust, according to a range of surveys. Less than a fifth of Americans say they trust government to do what’s right all or most of the time. Only two out of five Americans say they trust clergy to be honest and ethical. 70% of Americans say they distrust social media. And traditional news media has become the least trusted of all institutions for the first time in the history of the Edelman Trust Barometer, one of the most enduring and reliable monitors.
This collapse of trust is not sustainable. Disbelief is dangerous.
“The lifeblood of democracy is a common understanding of the facts and information that we can then use as a basis for negotiation and for compromise,” says David Bersoff, lead trust researcher at Edelman. “When that goes away, the whole foundation of democracy gets shaken.”
Disbelief is dangerous.
And yet, there are encouraging signs that a fifth wave of mistrust doesn't have to be inevitable. In Edelman’s 2018 survey, experts’ voices have gained strength as people look for leaders who will act as a counter-weight to false information. While trust in news media overall has plummeted, trust in individual journalists has increased.
“Journalists have risen 12 points,” Edelman says, “and CEOs recorded a seven-percentage point gain since 2017. Technical experts, financial industry analysts, and successful entrepreneurs now register credibility levels of 50 percent or higher.”
This presents a tremendous opportunity for leaders who have the courage to send signals that they are worthy of people’s trust.
People are looking for signals that leaders are worthy of their trust.
I believe there are five signals of trustworthiness that each of us can build into our communication virtually every day:
Clarity
Candor
Context
Conviction
Compassion
Clarity means being so simple and precise that you cannot be misunderstood.
It’s harder than it might seem, but it’s achievable. A.G. Lafley, the former chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble with whom I worked closely for more than a decade, pushed for what he called “Sesame-Street-Simple” communication. “I’m not looking for perfection,” he often reminded me. “I’m after precision.” We both believed that good writing is re-writing, and we worked through draft after draft of speeches, letters to shareholders, and other materials to strip out complex or confusing language and replace it with the simplest, shortest, easiest-to-understand words we could find. It was painstaking work, but it was always worth the effort.
“Simplicity,” he told me, “is the only response to complexity.”
Candor means seeing things as they are and saying so.
Candid communication is incredibly rare, but not always for the reasons we might suspect. There will inevitably be business, political and other leaders who go out of their way to deceive people, but we tend to see them for what they are and often from a mile away. More common, as I’ve learned from my friend and mentor Laura Rittenhouse, who has made candor her life’s work, is that communication often lacks candor for less-than-malicious reasons: we refuse to see reality for what it is, we’re too polite to simply speak the truth, or we bury the truth in poorly written messages.
The single biggest enemy of candor is denial. It’s human nature to want to see things as we wish them to be rather than as they are, but this is a prescription for failure. The most effective leaders don’t dodge reality. They see it and they share it in unequivocal terms.
The second enemy of candor is politeness. Most of us don’t like to tell the truth if we think others can’t deal with it (and, if we’re honest, we probably don’t want to hear the truth ourselves sometimes). Effective leaders operate with a belief that respect requires candor — delivered with care, but delivered nonetheless.
The third enemy of candor is poor writing. Think about the content you consume every day. How much of it is burdened by jargon, overly complex sentences, unnecessarily elaborate language, indecipherable logic, and other barriers to understanding? In all likelihood, the answer is: almost all of it.
We have to combat these enemies.. Clarity and candor go hand in hand. Telling the truth and telling it simply are the cornerstones of trustworthy communication.
Context means answering the question that is always on everyone's mind: "Why?"
There’s been a lot of emphasis on EQ — emotional intelligence — as well as IQ over the past several years, but I believe CQ — contextual intelligence — is just as important, particularly when the scope and pace of change is so overwhelming.
People need and value context — the perspective that a leader can provide because he or she sees the world from a different vantage point than others. But too often, I see communicators who don’t take the time to help people see the world through a bigger lens. I’ve worked with leaders who have stripped out sections of a talk or a post that provided context, concerned that it was a detour. I have always worked hard to keep that content intact.
Context puts things in perspective. It explains why a strategy will work, or why a change is necessary, or why a failure happened and what can be learned from it. Context respects people’s intelligence and their ability to hear even difficult messages if they just understand why.
Leaders who take the time to provide this context demonstrate their credibility, their insight — and their trustworthiness.
Conviction means taking a stand, clearly and sometimes courageously.
Leaders who are willing to say, unequivocally, what they stand for and stand against — and who invite people to hold them accountable for their beliefs and actions — send powerful signals of trustworthiness.
This is equally true for companies, brands and organizations. I was in a meeting recently when a millennial entrepreneur challenged a large corporation for its “toothless values.” The company’s values were respectable but abstract; they didn’t force clear choices, which is what genuine convictions require. That young woman’s challenge was clear and inspiring: “Tell me what you will do and what you won’t do based on your values. What choices will you make?”
We demonstrate that we're worthy of trust when we take a stand, when we share our convictions openly and invite people to challenge us if we fail to live up to them. Stating and acting on conviction is not without risk, but the rewards are clear. Nike’s recent decision to feature NFL quarterback — and controversial protestor — Colin Kaepernick in its advertising is a great example. Their message conveyed deep conviction and was entirely consistent with what they stand for as a brand: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just Do It.” Their stand prompted a boycott and criticism from President Trump, among others, but they did not back away from their decision or their belief.
In the wake of their campaign, Nike’s stock surged, adding $6 billion to the company’s market value.
Honest conviction tells people they can trust you, even if they don’t agree with you.
Compassion is the most human-centered signal of all: it means demonstrating that we care.
It's human nature. People want to know we care about them, sincerely and transparently. This is the most-difficult of the five signals to send, however, because our BS meters are generally on high alert when leaders tell us how much they care.
The other signals of trustworthiness that I’ve laid out — clarity, candor, context, and conviction — are the building blocks of compassion. If I speak clearly and simply to ensure you understand; if I tell you the truth because I respect your intelligence and maturity; if I take the time to provide the context you need to make a decision; and if I share my beliefs so openly that they invite you to disagree or to hold me accountable … if I do these things, then I demonstrate that I respect and care about you as a human being. There are other signals of compassion, of course, but these acts of communication speak volumes.
And they have impact. Maya Angelou’s words of wisdom resonate: people never forget how we made them feel.
Give people what they need most: something real to believe in.
My challenge to leaders — no matter whether you lead a business, a non-profit, a church or a campaign or a neighborhood — is to embrace these five signals of trustworthiness in every important communication. Test your content to ensure you’re meeting these demanding standards and sharpen it when you fall short. Commit yourself to using your credibility and influence to give people what they need and expect most in today’s cynical world:
Something real to believe in.