Trust

I am awfully proud of myself.  I was just on a trip a few days ago and walked through not one, but THREE airport bookstores without purchasing a single book!  I haven't purchased a book on Amazon for over a month! That is highly unusual for me (see an old post, Today's word is..."Tsundoku").  Okay, I confess that I checked out a couple of books from our local library fairly recently, but I have also read a couple of the books (there are several) on my nightstand that I have left unread for quite a while.  The most recent was the book Trust: America's Best Chance  by the current Secretary of Transportation, Navy veteran, former U.S. Presidential candidate, and two-time Mayor of the city of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg.  Overall, it was a fairly quick and easy read, but it wasn't different than what I had expected.  Rather than telling the story of his personal journey from small town mayor (South Bend is the fifth largest city in the 17th largest state in America) to presidential candidate, Buttigieg focused on what he believes is ailing the United States, namely a break-down of trust.  

Buttigieg opens the second chapter of his book with a story about tobacco advertising.  It is a well-known story that the tobacco industry downplayed the link between cigarette smoking and cancer (this was actually the subject of a movie called The Insider starring the actor Russell Crowe, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of a Brown & Williamson advertising executive who blew the whistle on the tobacco industry).  Buttigieg mentions a 1969 report by the tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, titled "Smoking and Health" which suggested that "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy...if we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health."  In other words, counter all of the clinical evidence linking cigarette smoking with cancer, lung disease, heart disease, etc by sowing distrust!  Tobacco companies didn't just lie about the overwhelming body of evidence suggesting that cigarette smoking was harmful, they actually tried to convince the public that smoking was actually beneficial to one's health!

How about this strategy?  The tobacco company Phillip Morris published a study ("Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic") performed in the Czech Republic that suggested that smoking, even if it was harmful to the public, actually helped the national economy!  The study found that found that the combination of smokers' early mortality (from the increased risk of cancer, lung disease, heart disease, etc), as well as the revenue from the tax on tobacco products outweighed the costs of health-care and lost tax revenue from early death (when people die, they no longer pay income tax).  The study found that the effect of smoking on the public finance balance in the Czech Republic in 1999 was positive, estimated at +5,815 mil. CZK!  Here, rather than trying to sow doubt and mistrust in the clinical evidence, the tobacco companies accepted the dangers due to smoking.  However, smoking was still helpful to the economy!

The Philip Morris report was unusual in that historically, tobacco companies had disputed the link between smoking and early mortality.  Here, the report used the early mortality as a selling point!  Of course, when the report was leaked to the public, Philip Morris was widely condemned by just about everyone.  As a result, the tobacco company disavowed the report and apologized for the study's conclusions.

We live in a time and place where you simply cannot believe everything you hear.  There is a concept known as Brandolini's Law, also known as the "bullshit asymmetry principle" that states, "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."  A lot of what is out there is blatantly false, and fact checkers can't keep up with it because it is harder to refute falsehoods than it is to produce them.  And unfortunately, others are using misinformation and the lack of trust that is so prevalent today for their own nefarious ends.  Pertinent to current events, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2018 suggested that fake social media accounts masquerading as legitimate users create falsehoods about vaccination, which leads to further mistrust, vaccine hesitancy, and danger to the public health.

There is a crisis of trust in America today.  Clearly, we have work to do.  Good leadership (as opposed to bad leadership) will help rebuild and regain trust that has been lost over the last several years.  We need trustworthy leaders!  Stephen Covey said, "Without trust, we don't truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate.  It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team."  He goes on further to say, "Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships."  Warren Benis would agree, stating, "Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work."  Secretary Buttigieg would build on this and suggest that (and I'm paraphrasing here), trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for governments and nations to work.

So how do leaders build and establish trust?  Leaders can start by making a conscious effort to "walk the talk."  Leaders should model the behaviors and attitudes that they want their teams to develop.  Leaders can also build trust with their teams by keeping their promises and being both transparent and consistent.  Angela Civitella, writing in Forbes magazine lists five ways that leaders can build trust:

1. Be a good role model

2. Tell the truth

3. Be part of the team

4. Be transparent

5. Don't micromanage

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman analyzed the 360° leadership assessments from over 87,000 different leaders and identified three key elements of trust:

1. Positive relationships

Leaders need to create positive relationships with other people and groups.  Leaders who are transparent and honest are more likely to establish trust and rapport.  Similarly, leaders who genuinely care about their teams are the ones that the teams will trust the most.

2. Good judgement/expertise

Leaders that are well-informed, knowledgeable, and experienced enough to understand the technical aspects of the job are more likely to be trusted.  If a leader is not a technical expert, showing that they are willing to listen and learn from their teams (and who defer to the experts) is critically important.

3. Consistency

Leaders who walk their talk and do what they say that they will do are more likely to be trusted.

Secretary Buttigieg concludes his book on a good note, "Trust is easily broken, but it can also be built - and, where necessary, rebuilt.  And the tools for such rebuilding lie, more often than not, in the hands of the people."