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Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine that you’ve been put in charge of an effort to improve the level of trust that people have in your organization (which could be a company, an institution, a business unit, whatever).

You have two choices, I would suggest. One I’ll call “outside-in,” and the other “inside-out.” Both have a role, but one should get more emphasis.

The outside-in approach might involve hiring a PR or consulting firm to help you, and focuses on such issues as messaging, metrics, process and procedures design, publicity, incentives, market research, designated trust officers, behaviors, KPIs and the like.

The inside-out approach involves improving the personal trustworthiness and the propensity to trust for all employees of your organization.  It also involves messaging (though mainly internal), but as well such methods as leading-by-example, education, role-modeling, performance reviews, and mentoring.

Which works more quickly? Probably the outside-in approach. Which lasts longer? Probably the inside-out approach. Which provides the biggest impact? Again, probably the inside-out approach.

What’s Going On Here?

What’s going on here is the interplay between institutional trust and interpersonal trust. It raises questions like, “Which comes first?” “Can you have one without the other?” And, “How do they interact?”

If your objective is to improve the perceived trustworthiness of your organization (the thought experiment I proposed above), then do you best get there by working at the institutional level (“outside-in”) or at the interpersonal level (“inside-out”)?

I’m not trying to set up a forced dichotomy. In most cases you should use a little of both approaches. This is not an “either/or” situation, it’s “both/and.”

BUT: my decidedly unscientific research suggests that the typical business response is to lean far more heavily on the “outside-in” approach, and to downplay the “inside out” approach. This is unfortunate.

It’s unfortunate because people – customers, clients, employees, the public at large – trust institutions only narrowly, whereas they trust people more deeply. If I ‘trust’ FedEx, it doesn’t mean I trust the FedEx driver to babysit my grandchild; but if I do trust that driver, I will probably trust FedEx too.

I trust an institution to behave consistently in certain ways, to have certain policies in place, to provide relevant expertise and capabilities. I trust people to do the same things – but I also want more from them.  I want people to be flexible, good listeners, to be curious and empathetic and to care about my experience. These are traits that only people can have.  If the people I deal with have these interpersonal traits of trust, I am more likely to generalize and assume good things about the organization they are part of.

If I’m right about that, then why do organizations default so heavily to the “outside-in” approach to institutional trust? I think it’s because the toolset of business these days is overwhelmingly analytical, data-driven, and behaviorally biased. We are taught to “trust but verify,” and that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” An entire online generation is being taught to eschew “common sense” and “gut feel,” yet to pursue automated imitations of those very human instincts.

Improving reliability and expertise is easy; you can come up with dozens of metrics and qualifications. These can be measured and trained for. Not so when it comes to empathy, curiosity and paying attention. They are implemented by “messier” human processes like imitation, Socratic questioning and stories. And yet, the presence of those abilities not only creates trust with an individual but reflects on the institution as well.

Suppose you are the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, facing concerns about ethical violations. Do you a) promulgate legal guidelines (and get critiqued for lack of enforcement rules), or b) gain consensus among the individual Justices that “going forward, we’re just not going to behave in ways that even hint at raising ethical questions, and if you have a doubt about an issue, surface it with the group?”

Suppose you are in charge of customer acquisition for a SaaS consulting firm. Do you develop an outreach program that a) solely and self-centeredly promotes the track record and capabilities of your firm, or b) recognizes and emphasizes something unique and interesting about the potential customer as a key part of reaching out to them?

Suppose you are head of LinkedIn’s efforts to increase networking and linkages between members. Do you create a program that a) automates a linking process with a self-seeking message header like “I’d like to connect,” or b) encourages members to seek out and comment on the members’ relevant shared spheres of interest?

And here’s one about which you don’t need to make suppositions – Wells Fargo, which endured a self-inflicted scandal in 2016. It brought down one CEO, and then another three years later, and the bank incurred billions in fines. Wells Fargo ran two big marketing campaigns admitting wrongdoings and focusing on how the bank was rebuilding trust.

Sounds good, but how did that play out? As the new vice chairman of public affairs said in 2023, “you can’t tell a story that isn’t true…if you’re going to say what you’ve done, or what you plan to do, you better be doing it.” In his telling, this classic outside-in approach was false, and still failing. In early 2023, the bank paid $1 billion to settle a shareholder lawsuit that accused the firm of overstating its level of compliance with orders stemming from the 7-years-prior scandal.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying that “problems aren’t solved at the levels at which they’re created.” It applies here. If you’d like your organization to be more trusted, don’t rely just on institutional tools. Instead, remember organizations are made up of people, and they interact with people. Operate at that level as well.

Personal trust doesn’t exist solely outside of institutional trust. Among other things, it is a necessary condition for achieving institutional trust.

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It’s been 20 years since the release of The Trusted Advisor. As we began the process of creating the 20^th Anniversary Edition, we dived into deep reflection on how building trust has changed over the last two decades.

Surely it had to be vast… when the first book was released many people didn’t have an email address. Business was done face-to-face, and Zoom’s inception was 10 years away. But as we analyzed further, the initial presumption that so much would need to be changed for the new book to be relevant shifted.

Technology and digitization have brought the biggest transformations over the past two decades, causing ripples that affect all aspects of our lives, both personal and professional. And yet, the models for building trust that we laid out 20 years ago have remained steadfast, and many have actually become more important in creating meaningful relationships. The fundamentals of trust-building – that is, what creates trust – haven’t changed. It’s how we do them that has evolved.

Trust is (and always will be) the result of an interaction between a trustor and a trustee. When one person takes the risk to trust another, who in return is trustworthy, the end result is trust.

The Trust Equation is the trust model that has been impacted most in the last 20 years. It is also still the best guide to create impactful relationships built on trust.

Here’s what we’ve seen changed within the Trust Equation:

Credibility

Twenty years ago, credibility could only be established through interpersonal interaction. In business, that meant investing a large amount of time – in-person meetings, lunches, numerous phone calls – was the only way to verify someone’s credibility. And it took a lot of time. But time spent does NOT equal trustworthiness.

Credibility can now be ascertained largely online. We can determine if we want to take the first step to trust by looking at a website, checking a LinkedIn profile or filtering online reviews. We have intel before the introduction is even officially made, which can be a double-edge sword; it can move the process along more quickly to the emotional aspect of credibility (if the person accepts the digital info as positive) OR it can discredit immediately (if the person accepts the digital info as negative).

Reliability

Reliability is about dependability – delivering on one’s promises – and predictability. Technology can be a conduit to reliability, but people trust people, not algorithms. True reliability takes multiple interpersonal interactions to give the other person a sense of what to expect. If used correctly, technology can be a great aid in achieving reliability by providing more channels to show up authentically. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years it’s been more of an impediment than an amplifier when people rely solely on tech and avoid the human aspect.

Intimacy

Intimacy is the biggest builder of trust and is purely interpersonal. Because the time-frame of trust building has been shortened by the internet (as the world is altogether moving at a faster pace), it’s more essential than ever to get this piece right. If face-to-face interaction has decreased 80%, the remaining 20% must be qualitatively sharper (especially since it’s probably virtual today). Even though we can now come to the table with commonality and connection due to online research, true intimacy only happens between two people who meet each other half way. The fact that the overall time available to build intimacy has decreased means the time spent building intimacy holds even more weight.

Self-Orientation

The biggest impact in self-orientation isn’t a change to self-consciousness (“Am I smart enough? Did I say the right thing? Do I belong here?”) but to focus. Constant technology distractions have shortened our attention spans, and it’s more difficult to give someone the necessary attention to build trust, especially virtually, when you can hide the fact that you’re checking devices when you’re supposed to be engaged. Even in-person interactions have flailed. Try to think of the last time you had a meeting with two or more people where at least one of them didn’t check their smartphone. It’s an anomaly these days.

In Summary

Although some elements of trust have changed in the last 20 years, the Trust Equation as a model to build trust has remained solid and is more relevant than ever. When we think about the digital world, we might assume that more information and improved processes would make it easier for us to connect meaningfully, but that hasn’t happened. When vital aspects of trust building are lost or overlooked due to the convenience of technology, trust will falter.

Give trust building the time and energy it deserves, and use technology not to replace important interpersonal interaction, but to amplify it.

 

– With contributions from Sandy Styer, Client Manager – Diagnostics and Stewart Hirsch, Senior Coach – Business Development and Executive Leadership 

Pandemic. Coronavirus. Covid-19. _____.   ______.  . ______.

Fill in the blanks with adjective(s) of your choice [apocalyptic; unprecedented; crisis; game-changer; etc.] Add a flourishing punch line, and you’ve got the intro to this piece.

There, that’s done.

But I want to talk about something specific: the fact that the business world has lurched toward operating in a virtual manner. A major client of ours had a 5-year plan to migrate training to fully online. The plan got compressed to 6 months. And so it is with most of us.

This move to virtual affects two ways in which we engage to create trust;

• 1-to-1 virtual interactions
• Interacting in a group / video conferencing

As we’ve written elsewhere, even in normal times the role of human emotions in trust plays a slightly stronger role than that played by our rational, brain-based activities. In the trustworthiness-based Trust Equation, that means Intimacy and low Self-orientation are more powerful than Credibility and Reliability.

In times of Pandemic etc. – multiply that by 10.

Which raises the pointed question:

How are we to do an already tough job when we can’t be physically next to or in front of other human beings? 

Our most obvious sense – visual – is at best reduced to a 1-inch square 2-dimensional image on Zoom, Google Hangouts or Teams. Worse, that image is subject to fuzziness and to periodic disconnect with the disembodied voice accompanying it.

Our sense of hearing, as noted above, is significantly affected – most nuance gone. Smell and touch – among our least conscious senses, but powerful nonetheless – are completely eliminated.

And that’s with video conferencing. What about phone, email, texting, social media, etc. Are they not incomparably weakened when it comes to creating trust?

The Good News: It CAN Be Done

Count me among those who think the shift to virtual is here to stay: we’re not returning to those days of yesteryear. And yet: human beings have not been rewired. We’re fundamentally the same. So if we do not change – the way we interact must change.

We remain the same products of eons of evolution that we were three months ago. The imperative for interpersonal social connection remains wired into our DNA. Whether we will continue to seek it is beyond doubt: we will. The only question presented is how we will contrive to meet the imperatives in a new operating environment?

So let’s dig in.

One anchor we can count on: the strongest form of trust is personal – even when you’re interacting in a group.

And it’s not like we don’t have experience. In particular, lessons can be drawn from an eclectic set of sources:

• Public speaking and oratory
• Communicating with blind and deaf people
• Non-business writing
• Etiquette – the rules of social behavior
• Speaking to another person in not-their-first-language

Following are 7 lessons drawn from the above fields. I’ll group them according to 1-to-1 virtual interactions, and group virtual interactions (though there is some cross-over).

1-to-1 Virtual Interactions

1. Seek more (emotional) bandwidth. For any given interaction requiring an emotional connection, seek a higher medium of communication than you did three months ago.
   • Instead of texting, use email. Instead of a terse email, add more thoughts and words. Instead of long emails, remember the forgotten application embedded in our iPhones – the phone itself.
2. Do a little more homework. Find out a bit more than usual about the group you’re speaking to.
   • LinkedIn is a fast resource to get a feel for people.
   • You may use only one tenth of what you find out, but that’s OK – the point is not to show you did your homework, the point is simply to know, going in, more about the group.
   • On phone calls, have in front of you photos of people you’re speaking to (again, LinkedIn is a good source.)
3. Use the Rule of Reciprocity. That is, you get back what you put out. For example:
   • If you listen attentively to others, they will be inclined to listen attentively to you.
   • If you (substantively and accurately) praise others, they will be inclined to do the same to you.
   • If you share the agenda up front with others, they will respect the agenda you jointly create.
   • If you take an emotional risk (e.g. commenting on your own feelings, or on your perception of their feelings), they will be similarly inclined to take emotional risks in return.
   • If you trust them, they will become more trustworthy, and more willing to trust you.
4. Dare to be personal. Not private, necessarily – but personal. Remember: In these pandemic times, the realm of the emotional is 10X more important than before; and it was always a bit more important.
   • You don’t need to reference outside lives – kids, sports teams – to establish emotional connection. You do need to reference emotions, feelings, reactions, perceptions, elephants-in-the-room, the unspoken issues. All these can be raised in the context of the-personal-in-business: things that are happening in the workplace.
   • To talk about the feelings of others, use first-person language like, “I’m sensing hesitation,” or “I’m picking up a bit of concern there,” or “I thought you looked a little perplexed there,” or “I’m trying to think if it were me, and I think I’d probably feel…” (As opposed to second-person language like “You’re hesitating there…”)
   • To talk about your own feelings, use first-person language like, “Maybe it’s just me, but that makes me feel a little nervous,” or “I’ve gotta tell you, I’m feeling a little concerned about…,” or “at the risk of being the only one who feels this way, I’m not on board yet with this idea…”

Interacting in a Group / Video Conferencing

1. Find ways to connect personally with your audience. And do it one individual at a time.
   • Address participants by name, especially when replying to a specific question.
   • Just as in public speaking, speak to one person at a time – don’t be shy about using their name, everyone in the group will sense the personal connection
   • Look into the camera most of the time, not at your screen, while you address that one person.
   • Single out individuals on the call – inquire about the local weather for one person, comment on the video background of another.
2. Eschew emotionally barren communications. They lend themselves to fear, suspicion of motives, ALL-CAPS flaming, and withdrawal.
   • Violate Hemingway’s rules of writing – use more adjectives.
   • Modulate your voice more; make gestures bigger; move to and away from the camera; use hand gestures (thumbs up, the OK sign, handshake gesture, point to the camera, etc.)
   • Selectively use emojis in text-based or online communications.
   • Use more words, and simpler words, to convey the thought.
   • Use more stories.
   • Evoke the senses: make reference to sounds, smells, touch, sights, temperature, nature.
   • Mix your media: for any meeting over 20 minutes, include things like images, video clips, interactive exercises, breakouts.
   • For web-based video calls, master the tools of toggling back and forth between sharing your desktop and looking at the screen full of participants.
3. Ramp up the level of interaction. The desire to interact must counteract the low-bandwidth nature of the medium you’re using. Be thoughtful about how others perceive you.
   • Use polling capabilities.
   • Become familiar with electronic breakout rooms.
   • For web-based video calls, use non-technical means – ask questions, use the chat feature, ask for thumbs-up or thumbs-down reactions, call on individuals.
   • Have an interesting background, rather than a ‘beige’ or neutral background: bookcases, views, furniture. The point is not to be distracting, but enough that it personalizes you. Virtual backgrounds are now available to all, either digitally or through green screen.
   • Lighting – particularly foreground lighting – is important. People want to see your face; oblige them.
   • Audio is even more important. Experiment – with mics, headsets, earphones. You want no-echo, no ambient noise, good distance.

If there’s any single point to be gleaned from the above suggestions, it is that Trust is Personal – even, and perhaps especially, in a virtual world.

Which particular suggestion do you find most useful? And please add your own to the list.