Trust Me!

Can we do a better job of looking out for each other?

Last week, I read an essay by Jedediah Britton-Purdy in The Atlantic (gift link). “Americans don’t trust one another, and they don’t trust the government,” he says at the very start. “This mistrust is so pervasive that it can feel natural, but it isn’t. Profound distrust has risen within my lifetime; it is intensifying, and it threatens to make democracy impossible.”

He cites several solid reasons for the decline in societal trust, but one stuck with me: the workplace. His essay came out while several people I know are looking for jobs. For some, it was because the private equity firm that owns their former employer decided that it had over-hired or was changing directions, or the public company they worked for needed to find a penny for quarterly earnings per share, or their employer issued an ultimatum about returning to the office. The economy is strong right now, so I suspect that even the unemployed folks over age 50 will end up getting another good job soon. In the meantime, they and their families are facing a lot of stress and upheaval.

(Another factor Britton-Purdy sites is AI. I’m in the fun position of knowing that my work is being used to train AI (gift link), and also having clients complain that AI detectors are flagging my work as being created by AI. Talk about being trapped between a rock and a hard place. But I digress.)

When employers are so quick to let people go, is it any wonder that their employees don’t trust them? I came across another article on trust this week, in Harvard Business Review, that sidesteps the problem. Because it’s probably a lost cause to get workers to support their managers, the article’s authors suggest ways to get team members to trust each other. It’s an interesting and probably successful approach.

This week, the World Economic Forum is holding is confab at Davos, Switzerland, and all the movers and shakers will be partying and networking around the theme of Rebuilding Trust. The problem is this: trust is earned. Respect is earned. Both must be given before they can be received. These aren’t things that you can schmooze your way toward. Organizational leaders can set the right conditions for helping people earn trust and respect, but they can’t just send out a memo that says, “starting today, our core value is trust.”

Well, they can do that, and probably will. They may even send out t-shirts with the word TRUST emblazoned on them. And the employees will roll their eyes and do their jobs, knowing full well that next quarter, there will be a new CEO or new owner or new initiative that will replace trust with something else. In 2022, PwC did a big survey on corporations, consumers, and trust, and guess what? There’s a big gap between what business leaders think and what employees and customers do.

What do we do about this? Can we do anything about this?