Trust is the foundation of any personal or professional relationship. Trust in government, major institutions, big business, non-government organizations and the media has been consistently eroding for years. But trust is imperative for resolving conflict and building consensus. Here you can find our viewpoints, musings, and curated content about this critically important topic of (re)building trust, particularly as it relates to trust in government and institutions. Topics range from why people don’t trust to how we can help to rebuild trust. These handpicked articles seek to educate and illuminate. We look forward to hearing what you think.
One of the secrets to (re)building trust really isn’t much of a secret, but it also isn’t exactly intuitive. The clients that we work with almost always feel that they need to project professionalism and confidence in their dealings with the public. That may certainly be true in almost all ...
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Let’s get to the point: truth and reason are frequently losing. Your measured evaluation, research and reams of data presented in an objective way to an increasingly skeptical and mostly disinterested public, intended to appeal to their logic and common good, is competing with a steady diet of electronic and ...
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Past issues of this newsletter have had lots of pieces on the decline of public trust and the critical need for the public sector to (re)build credibility with the people that it’s supposed to serve. I don’t think there’s a more obvious and glaring example of the consequence of distrust ...
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I’ve been tearing my hair out working to resolve an ongoing problem caused by my (now former) bank for the past several months. If you’ve had to try to find a live, responsive human person hidden somewhere in the phone tree at a bank, insurance agency, cable or other utility, ...
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A Harris Poll just released their 2019 corporate reputation ranking that you’ll find interesting. Perhaps not so much the businesses that occupy most of the 100 listed, but I think you’ll find the institution at the very bottom noteworthy – and check out the listings one and two spaces just ...
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We’ve often referenced the Edelman Trust Barometer as one credible source for a lot of ongoing evidence that shows people just don’t trust institutions – especially government. Turns out, some of the most recent data indicates that women are even less trusting than men when it comes to institutions....
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We talk about (re)building trust in government a lot in this newsletter and it will be interesting to watch the long-term reputation ramifications of the partial government shutdown – still underway, as of this writing. Public trust in government continues to erode and increasingly permeates down into state and local ...
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You’re reading this after the midterm elections and, thankfully, after the conclusion of this year’s onslaught of particularly ugly political ads. A lot of those ads claim that their opponents are liars. So, somebody’s obviously not telling the truth. The problem is that we’re (all of us are) terrible at ...
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There’s no way around it, people don’t trust most authorities or organizations with power over their lives. Public trust in institutions has been consistently deteriorating for decades but seemed to fall over the cliff after the more recent U.S. economic crash. Here’s the cold truth....
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Even if you don’t feel this way yourself, the evidence is pretty clear that we’re generally in a lousy mood in this country. The result is a lack of overall civic trust that shows in the numbers; like only 41 percent of people trusting organized religion – and that’s even ...
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