Trust is not a new topic in the business/organizational world. Patrick Lencioni’s (awesome) Five Dysfunctions of a Team cites lack of trust as the root of all team dysfunction, and Stephen M.R. Covey’s book Speed of Trust makes a very compelling case for the importance of high trust organizations. And as Lindy pointed out yesterday, Charlene Li’s new book highlights trust as a key component of “open leadership.”
But trust is one of those concepts that absolutely everyone supports (when’s the last time you heard someone argue about the value or importance of distrust?), yet few people have a concrete sense of how to build it or why they trust some people or organizations more than others. There are obvious cases where a blatant betrayal causes trust to vanish, but in most relationships (both personal and organizational) you don’t have that kind of drama. Even without drama, though, trust levels vary, and they can have big impacts on how things get done in organizations.
There are many ways to build trust, but the simplest one has a direct connection to social media in organizations, and that is transparency. Both individuals and organizations always have a certain amount of information about themselves that is kept behind a curtain, and a certain amount that is placed out on the table. The ratio of visible to hidden will vary depending on the nature of my relationship with the individual or organization, but in general, the more that is out on the table, the more easily I can trust.
Think about it. If there’s very little on the table and most is behind the curtain, then I am forced to come up with a story in my head about who you are, and without a lot of evidence to the contrary, it’s easier for me to at least entertain a story that you are not trustworthy. That I can’t count on you. That you won’t do as you say. But if I see more about what you think, what you feel, how you interact with people, what your values are, how you handle mistakes, who you were ten years ago, why you like or don’t like Obama, etc., then you become more of a known quantity, and that makes it easier for me to trust you. It’s not that I have to like you or agree with you, and it’s not even that you need to show me data that proves your trustworthiness (though that obviously helps). The simple fact that I know more about you makes you easier to trust. Your decision to NOT hide things makes you trustworthy.
So you can see the connection to organizations and social media. Social media is built around the concept of revealing information. It thrives on transparency. As an organization, use of social media allows you to instantly shift things from behind the curtain to out on the table, and as such it can help you build trust. But expect some resistance here. We’ve spent decades running organizations with a tacit understanding that the only things we need to put “out on the table” as an organization are our marketing messages. We took pride in the consistency of our brand. So it will feel wrong and threatening to many as we allow social media to open up a much more diverse and less controlled package of information out on the table.
But the diversity makes you real. The diversity shows me you are not hiding. True, if your “diversity” includes direct contradictions between your brand promise and your marketplace behavior, then trust will be damaged, but that’s the exception not the rule. And frankly, that’s a problem that goes way beyond social media. But in most cases, the diversity you reveal to me will help me trust you more. So as an organization you may need to spend some time acknowledging and then removing the resistance to transparency. And you even have the opportunity to be strategically transparent–to put some intention into what you reveal. But it’s time to start shifting some things from behind that curtain to out on the table. It’s a prerequisite for the trust that drives the relationships that build the community.
That will make some people nervous, but I think the train has left the station on this one. It used to be that organizations were really only required to put out on the table messages that went through marketing. When I interact with an organization, and all I get is the polished material that comes out of the marketing department, it’s hard for me to trust them.
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