Nick Howard: Building Trust in Leadership

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We all know that the communication environment has undergone a seismic shift

over the last decade. Anyone and everyone is now capable of producing content through a “cloverleaf” of traditional, social, hybrid and owned media. Every company is now a media business and every individual is now a publisher.

Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer [see box, right] shows the acceleration of one trend that holds special significance for internal communicators – the diminishing trust in leaders and those who have traditionally held power and influence over others.

This has partly been driven by events in the wider world – whether it’s the inability of business leaders to tackle corruption and excess or the failure of political leaders to fix the economy or respond to changing social tensions. It’s clear that “we” don’t trust “them” anymore.

This trend has also been driven by the changing expectations of citizens (including your employees) who, through social media, are driving a new model of governance that’s more democratic – to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: of the people, by the people and for the people. This makes it increasingly difficult for leaders (including your CEO) to manage messages and build trust.

The importance of employee advocacyIn the 2012 Trust Barometer’s list of those whom people would trust as a source of information about their company, CEOs fell by 12 points, the biggest decline in 12 years. At the same time, trust in

BUILDING TRUST IN LEADERSHIP

a “regular employee” jumped by 16 points [see Figure One, page 36].

This development has massive implications for the way CEOs and employees are used as spokespeople for their organization. As if the public relations management of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill hadn’t already told us, these findings clearly show that we can no longer rely only on the CEO to be the face of the company.

So communicators must look for new ways of connecting “regular employees” with the outside world – building employee trust so they feel able to act as willing advocates for their company when they speak with customers, friends, family and neighbours.

But the traditional ways of communicating with employees are simply not enough. Another crucial finding of the Trust Barometer was that official company-issued communication was distrusted by employees at all levels. Only 29 percent of executives and 21 percent of employees trusted corporate communication. This finding is a wake-up call to communicators to re-evaluate the trustworthiness and effectiveness of all communication activities – checking them for problems with relevancy of content, effectiveness of format or delivery, or lack of opportunities for true engagement.

Building employees’ trust in leadershipThe starting point for any effort to rebuild trust must begin with leaders themselves. They must be better engaged in the business and they must have the support they need to better engage – and build trust – with their employees. Developing an effective leadership engagement program is quite possibly the top priority for every Internal Communication team.

Doing this successfully requires a clear understanding of who

➤What competencies Internal Communicators need to build trust.

Read this and learn

According to the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, regular rank-and-file employees now have more credibility than chief executives. Nick Howard, Edelman’s Director of Employee Engagement, explores what this means for Internal Communicators and their future capabilities and responsibilities.

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AND THE WORKPLACE

Nick Howard is Director of Employee Engagement at Edelman, the world’s largest PR Agency with 4,400 people in 63 offices worldwide. He has over 15 years’ experience advising business leaders across Europe, North America and the UAE. Before joining Edelman, Howard was Retail Communication Director for Lloyds Banking Group, where he led the successful communication of Europe’s biggest financial services integration – Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

TRUST AND LEADERSHIP

The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer is the 12th annual trust and credibility survey.

The survey consisted of 20 minute online interviews conducted from 10 October to 30 November 2011. It sampled 25,000 general population respondents, with an oversample of 5,600 informed publics in two age groups (25–34 and 35–64) across 25 countries.

More information can be found at www.edelmaneditions.com/2012/01/trust-barometer-2012/

THE 2012 EDELMAN TRUST BAROMETER

➲ www.edelmaneditions.com

© Melcrum Ltd. 2012For more from Strategic Communication Management, go to: www.melcrum.com


CSR AND ICTRUST AND LEADERSHIP

Of course, engaging leaders themselves is only half the story. They also need to be supported to build trust with their employees. Given the findings of the Trust Barometer, it’s clear that traditional leadership communication channels, such as newsletters and blogs, on their own are simply not up to the task. The most effective channel for helping leaders build trust is still face-to-face so communicators should help leaders by giving them simple tools and materials that make it easy for them to facilitate discussions with their teams and put broader company messages into context.

Many companies refer to this type of support as “engagement in a box” – a toolkit of messages and materials that leaders receive on a regular basis to help them:n Present consistent company messages

to employees through agreed wording and talking points.

n Share their own perspectives on those messages through credible storytelling techniques [see the box on the right].

n Stimulate discussion about ‘what these messages mean to us’ by encouraging team members to share their own perspectives.

n Encourage decision-taking and action through interactive planning tools based on game theory.

There are different ways of delivering these materials, such as Edelman’s own “Explain, Engage, Act” approach. But whatever the specifics of the approach, the aim should always be to make things as simple as possible for the leader, allowing them to role model winning behaviors and build empathy and trust.

Helping leaders and employees build trust with the outside worldOnce you’ve established a strong rapport and alignment internally, you can turn to empowering employees and leaders as external ambassadors, connecting them better with the outside world. What are practical next steps? Based on the findings from the Trust Barometer, here are three immediate opportunities:

1. Empower your employees to be ambassadors via social mediaWith both employees and social media growing in credibility, there’s a clear opportunity to

bring the two together to create employee ambassadors – people who talk about the company online in a quasi-official capacity. Similarly, the fall in CEO credibility [see Figure Two] makes it more important than ever to prepare employees to advocate on their company’s behalf. Ambassador programs are nothing new, but encouraging employees to engage their online networks can exponentially multiply their impact. And focusing on a company’s own technical experts – who are regarded as particularly credible employees – can further amplify efforts, especially during a crisis. When a product’s quality or safety comes into question, who better to address such concerns than the people who designed it?

To successfully activate and nurture ambassador programs using social media, it’s critical to establish levels of certification within

your leaders are and how you segment them into appropriate populations. For example, the most senior executive team who set the strategy will benefit from a different approach to “next level down” leaders whose role it may be to direct the day-to-day efforts of all other employees.

Through a program of face-to-face working sessions, participative conference calls and dedicated leadership channels, leaders should be given the “big picture” for the company. This will broaden their perspective and help them understand the overall business, rather than just their own day-to-day responsibilities – both “lifting their heads” from their day jobs and making it easier for them to see how their work directly affects business goals. It will also allow them to provide input to important business topics, helping them feel more involved in the business and providing the CEO with valuable feedback and insight.

In too many organizations, leaders are treated in the same way as every other employee for communication purposes. How often has an employee in your company gone to their boss with a question about an important communication only to be told: “I don’t know… I’ve only just heard about this myself”? Timely “heads-up” communication to leaders via email, SMS text message or a dedicated leaders intranet site is a simple and essential way of ensuring leaders hear about important business topics ahead of other employees.

0

20

40

60

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100

2007 2008 2009 201220112010

IndiaJapanS. Korea

ChinaUSAUK/France/Germany

Perc

enta

ge (%

)

Year

Figure Two: CEO credibility returns to low of 2009. [Adapted from original report ©Edelman, 2012.]

Figure One: Credible spokespeople – peers and regular employees see dramatic rise, while the credibility of CEOs and government officials plummets. [Adapted from original report ©Edelman, 2012.]

Academic or expert

Technical expert in the company

A person like yourself

Regular employee

NGO representative

Financial industry analyst

CEO

Government official or regulator

68%

66%

65% +22

50% +16

50%

46%

38% -12

29% -14

70%

64%

53%

50%

47%

43%

43%

34%

2011 2012Academic or expert

Technical expert in the company

Financial industry analyst

CEO

NGO representative

A person like yourself

Government official or regulator

Regular employee

Biggest declines in Barometer history

Greatest increase since 2004

Q119-126. [TRACKING] Below is a list of people. In general, when forming an opinion of a company, if you heard information about a company from each person, how credible would the information be – extremely credible, very credible, somewhat credible, or not credible at all? (Top 2 Box, Credible: Very + Extremely Credible) Informed Publics ages 25-64 in 20 country global total (excludes Argentina, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and UAE).

Q119-126. [A CEO of a company TRACKING] Below is a list of people. In general, when forming an opinion of a company, if you heard information about a company from each person, how credible would the information be – extremely credible, very credible, somewhat credible, or not credible at all? (Top 2 Box, Credible: Very + Extremely Credible) Informed Publics ages 35-64 in the US, UK/France/Germany, China, India, Japan and South Korea

Figure Three: Global trust comparison – although not directly associated with trust in CEOs, we have included this graphic for those global organizations who wish to consider levels of trust among their regions. [Adapted from original report ©Edelman, 2012.]

2011 2012GLOBAL 55

Brazil 80

UAE 78

Indonesia 74

China 73

Netherlands 73

Mexico 69

Singapore 67

Argentina 62

India 56

Italy 56

Canada 55

South Korea 53

Sweden 52

Japan 51

Australia 51

Spain 51

France 50

Poland 49

Germany 44

U.S. 42

U.K. 40

Russia 40

Ireland 39

GLOBAL 51

China 76

UAE 73

Singapore 67

India 65

Indonesia 63

Mexico 63

Netherlands 61

Canada 58

Italy 56

Argentina 54

Australia 53

Brazil 51

Sweden 49

U.S. 49

South Korea 44

Poland 44

U.K. 41

Ireland 41

France 40

Germany 39

Spain 37

Japan 34

Russia 32

Composite score is an average of a country’s trust in all four institutions (Business, Government, Media, NGOs). Informed Publics ages 25-64 in 20 country global total (excludes Argentina, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and UAE) and across 23 countries.



your organization to ensure that employees are social media-savvy and properly empowered in a way that still respects boundaries. In addition to certification, you should create a regular flow of information to your social media ambassadors so they have sufficient content at their disposal and the right channels to provide feedback to leadership on particularly interesting actions or reactions that their discussions inspire online.

2. Engage employees in building customer relationshipsLeaders and regular employees alike point to quality products/services and listening to customer needs/feedback as the top two attributes that drive trust in a company. Since employees heavily influence both, building a sense of shared ownership for the company’s products and customer responsiveness can lend credibility to improvement efforts. Moreover, looking beyond just traditional, corporate-sponsored communication (and perhaps experimenting with social media as one of several channels) may help reach employees at all levels given the current distrust in official company communication.

Companies can explore ways to put simple processes in place that allow employees to

capture customer stories and experiences and then share those with the broader organization. They can also increase the amount of input generated by internal crowdsourcing of innovative ideas, new products or new solutions based on customer feedback.

3. Rebuild trust in the CEO through candid, meaningful dialogueYes, CEO credibility has decreased, but a company cannot survive or thrive without strong leadership. In a world where there are channels for every voice and cutting through the communication clutter remains a challenge, many CEOs and other leaders would do well to increase their connection to employees in ways that play to their personal strengths. There are a number of actions leaders can take to maintain and rebuild trust with employees, such as communicating a clear and compelling vision, taking a conversational tone of voice, encouraging a culture of storytelling, engaging managers and employees in candid dialogue about the business, and demonstrating transparency, especially in the face of challenging issues.

“Stories persuade people by uniting an idea with an emotion” – Robert McKee, Hollywood script doctor“Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories than anyone else” – Alan Kay, Walt Disney

Helping leaders be better at storytelling is a core part of helping them be better communicators so they connect with their employees to build trust. An effective leader is able to rephrase cold facts or complex messages into stories that resonate with employees’ emotions and experiences.

This doesn’t always come naturally to leaders so communicators may need to coach them. Here are three examples of the types of stories that leaders can use to build trust with their employees:n “Who I Am” stories

Team members sometimes make automatic judgments about who leaders are. A Who I Am story gives a powerful insight into what really motivates us and is useful for new leaders who wish to connect with their team. Who I Am stories can break down barriers, build empathy and a connection – they help team members realize that the leader is “a person” just like them. Sometimes a Who I Am story can be used by the leader to reveal some type of flaw about themself or a mistake that they’ve made... and learned from. This shows the team that the leader trusts them with this information. Revealing flaws can also make the leader more approachable, because it demonstrates that they’re only human.

n Teaching stories It can be very hard to encourage people to follow without demonstrating. This is the domain of teaching stories. The story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is a good example that we all know from our childhood. This story alone has taught millions of us not to call for help unless there’s a real need for it. Although it’s simple, like most fables, it’s done an effective job for centuries. Stories and metaphor are powerful in this way.

n “Values in Action” stories When you see the word “integrity”, what do you think of? Honesty? Doing the right thing for the right reason? Every value can mean something different from person to person. So when leaders want to pass on values to their people, they should start by defining what those values mean to them. So, if a leader wants their team to demonstrate a high level of customer service, they might tell a story or share a real experience that reveals exactly what an excellent customer experience feels like to them.

One final point on storytelling – the stories that leaders share with employees must be real, and not made up. Communicators must help leaders identify these authentic personal stories, not conjure them from thin air.

HELPING LEADERS BUILD TRUST THROUGH STORYTELLING

TRUST AND LEADERSHIP

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