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‘Today crime is down by 90pc, foreign investment is up 20 times and tourism up 100 times. Colombia was just named the third happiest nation on earth!’
months and millions for due diligence and lawyers.” In the same way, it is vital that we rebuild societal trust
after several years of crisis, when it was lost in govern- ments, in the private sector, in media and, in particular, in financial services organisations. Can it be done? “Even before the crisis we were moving down,” says
Covey. “The crisis accelerated that because people saw there was behaviour that violated trust,” says Covey. “People weren’t confronting reality, they weren’t talking straight, they weren’t being transparent, and the banks were loaning people money that they couldn’t pay back, and they knew it. “No one wanted to ask those questions and everything
was fine as long as the markets kept moving up, but when the bubble burst suddenly we were caught in the situation and so the principle is that you can’t talk your- self out of a problem you behaved yourself into. The real- ity is trust has been shattered, and particularly in finan- cial institutions. “If you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer, they
went from about five years ago being one of the highest trusted industries, to the least trusted,” he continues. “So it’s clearly affected them. But it has affected all of society, and it affects so many different dimensions of society. It affects the basic feeling of whether people feel they can trust other people. It affects people’s trust in institutions in business, in government, political parties, in media, in so many different institutions. We’re all kind of painted with the broader brush of no trust, and the data on this is pretty compelling.” Covey believes trust can always be restored, although
it is more challenging in certain cases. “Here’s the posi- tive,” he says. “There’s actually been a little bit of move- ment upwards in the last two years. I mean it’s not a lot, but a little is better than continuing to be in freefall and going down without a bottom. “It does show that if people consciously and explicitly
focus on behaving in ways that grow and earn trust, in many of these situations they can behave their way out of it. However, this is not an easy thing. It will take time and it will have to be sustained, it will have to be sincere, but that’s the danger we have in a lower-trust society, in a lower-trust world.
“I believe that in a low-trust world we really need peo-
ple, leaders, companies, organisations that can be trusted, that can help give hope and optimism, that show there’s an alternative, another way versus continuing down that vicious downward cycle because that can be disruptive for all society, “Just think about it. On Saturday I fly out and I will
get on a plane. I’ve never met the pilot, but I trust in the airline, I trust in the British authorities that they have an inspection and a process. But imagine a world in which you didn’t trust that. Imagine a world in which it was like taking your life in your hands to walk out in the street, to drive, to fly – and there are some societies where it’s almost like that, where the trust is that low. “This is the essence of society and if we lose the trust
we’ve really lost what makes us civil as a human race. Because the stakes are so high, I’m hopeful people will recognise that we need to behave our way out of it.”
Communicating trust Organisations also need to communicate effectively and transparently to build trust. In his book, Covey describes the four cores of credibility as integrity, intent, capabil- ities and results. “We talk about the four cores of credibility and how
results is one of those cores, and sometimes we need to also appropriately communicate results, or communi- cate our accountability to our commitments, and to do it in a way that doesn’t come across as self-serving. “Rather, your purpose for doing this is to offer more
confidence in who you are and to declare your intent. Rather than having people wonder ‘Why are they telling us this?’, tell them why. Say, ‘Hey, we’d like to communi- cate our performance against this intent, because 1) we need to hold ourselves accountable, and 2) we want to earn your trust and we know that you trust people who do what they say they’re going to do. We want to report on what we’ve been saying we’re going to do and how we’re doing it’. “If you declare your intent, then people don’t question
your agenda. It’s not a hidden agenda, it’s an open agenda and you can accelerate the process. I think some compa- nies are maybe a little bit better at it than others, but in
16 Irish Director Summer 2011
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