Communicating for trust. Three dimensions to focus on.

Trust underpins the many exchanges essential to doing business, including those underlining the relationship between employees and their employer. 

Simply put, trust matters when you want to get things done and the benefits of high-trust cultures are substantial: from being able to implement changes faster to having greater team stability and performance output with higher overall levels of employee engagement.

But with so much uncertainty and change in the world, what can we do to nurture and strengthen trust in the workspace?

Building on years of research, we commonly understand trust is built against three dimensions: ability, honesty or integrity and benevolence.

Senior leaders undoubtedly have significant influence over the degree of trust experienced in their organisation, but they are not single-handedly responsible for creating a culture of trust. Trust is strengthened or weakened through the real experiences people have at all levels and aspects of the business.

Viewed against the dimensions of ability, integrity and benevolence what should internal communicators focus on?

Ability and competence 

In trust terms, competence speaks to an individual or organisation’s ability to get the job done and deliver on what it has promised others – be they employees, customers or partners.

Communication supporting this dimension should focus on helping leaders outline a clear vision for the way forward and instilling confidence in people that the plan is achievable. 

In outlining the plan to employees, take time to explain the steps your organisation will take. Give clarity on how you will tackle challenges, which priorities need focus, which behaviours are game-changers.

Using a clear and compelling strategic narrative as the basic underlying structure that shapes your communication plan can be a powerful tool. It can help employees better understand your company journey and how their efforts help you reach those big goals.

Importantly, don’t forget to celebrate positive outcomes and the small victories on the way – these moments provide powerful reasons to believe in the credibility of the plan and the team’s ability to deliver on it.

Honesty and integrity

The dimension of honesty or integrity aligns to the consistency with which you walk the talk and keep your organisational promises. 

Trust is strengthened or weakened based on the real experiences people have every day. There is nothing like inconsistency to breakdown trust. 

To build trust, focus on communication consistency. Don’t chop and change your position on an issue. Make sure your communication efforts give proper context to plans when needed and explain the reasons for decisions with clarity, simplicity, and honesty..

Integrity and honesty also speak to fairness and showing accountability for decisions taken and their outcomes – whether good or bad.

Leaders who connect meaningfully with employees and actively seek to understand what people are experiencing and feeling will quickly identify areas of misunderstanding or inconsistency, allowing them to take steps to address the issues.

Benevolence

Benevolence as a word is not commonplace in everyday conversation, but it captures a powerful idea – the conscious effort of engaging with genuine care for others.  

This final dimension of trust, benevolence, is centred on the belief that an individual or organisation has your best interests at heart and cares about you.  It is easy to think of this dimension as only being focused on social investment, but benevolence in the context of trust, asks more of us.

Building trust against this dimension is all about showing genuine care, respect, honesty and fairness in all engagements between people. 

Organisations showing a high degree of benevolence, take real steps in making sure people are supported and able to do their best. 

There are numerous ways internal communication can support this dimension. A focus on making support initiatives, tools and resources more accessible to employees can contribute to how well people feel supported and enabled to their best work. Supporting managers with the tools and information to help their teams and establishing employee communities that encourage a culture of care are other ways. 

Finally, implementing listening and feedback programmes can help you understand the pressure points in your organisation. When listening is followed-up by action to address concerns, it puts benevolence into action. 

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Building trust is not a passive process, especially not during turbulent times when levels of predictability are low. Organisations with high-trust cultures reap the benefits because they have been deliberate about prioritising trust and direct their efforts across all three dimensions.