Seth Godin
The obvious
and rational equation is that being trustworthy plus being transparent will
lead you to be trusted. Verification of trustworthiness should lead to trust.
This makes
sense. Being trustworthy (acting in a way that's worthy of trust) plus being
transparent so that people can see your trustworthiness—this should be
sufficient.
How then, do
we explain that brands like Coke and Google are trusted? The recipe is secret,
the algorithm is secret, and competitors like DuckDuckGo certainly act in a
more trustworthy way.
In fact, trust
often comes from something very different. It's mostly about symbols,
expectations and mystery.
Consider the
relationship you might enter into if you need surgery. You trust this
woman to cut you open, you're putting your life in her hands... without the
transparency of seeing all of her surgical statistics, interviewing all
previous patients, evaluating her board scores.
Instead, we
leap into surgery on the basis of the recommendation from one doctor, on how
the office feels, on a few minutes of bedside manner. We walk away from surgery
because of a surly receptionist, or a cold demeanor.
The same is
true for just about all the food we eat. Not only don't we visit the
slaughterhouse or the restaurant kitchen, we make an effort to
avoid imagining that they even exist.
In most
commercial and organizational engagements, trust is something we want and
something we seek out, but we use the most basic semiotics and personal
interactions to choose where to place our trust. And once the trust is broken,
there's almost no amount of transparency that will help us change our mind.
This is trust
from ten thousand years ago, a hangover from a far less complex age when
statistical data hadn't been conceived of, when unearthing history was
unheard of. But that's now hard-wired into how we judge and are judged.
Quick test:
Consider how much you trust Trump, or Clinton, Cruz or Sanders, Scalia or RBG.
Is that trust based on transparency? On a rational analysis of public
statements and private acts? Or is it more hunch-filled than that? What are the
signals and tropes you rely on? Tone of voice? Posture? Appearance? Would more
transparency change your mind about someone you trust? What about someone you
don't? (Here's a fascinating story on that topic, reconstructed and revealed).
It turns out
that we grab trust when we need it, and that rebuilding trust after it's been
torn is really quite difficult. Because our expectations (which weren't based
on actual data) were shown to be false.
Real trust
(even in our modern culture) doesn't always come from divulging, from providing
more transparency, but from the actions that people take (or that we think they
take) before our eyes. It comes from people who show up before they have to,
who help us when they think no one is watching. It comes from people and organizations
that play a role that we need them to play.
We trust
people based on the hints they give us in their vocal tones, in the stands they
take on irrelevant points of view and yes, on what others think.
Mostly, people
like us trust people like us.
The mystery
that exists in situations without full transparency actually amplifies those
feelings.
I'm worried
about two real problems, each worse than the other:
a. The
trustworthy person or organization that fails to understand or take action on
the symbols and mysteries that actually lead to trust, and as a result, fails
to make the impact they are capable of.
b. The immoral
person or organization who realizes that it's possible to be trusted without
actually doing the hard work of being trustworthy.
We may very
well be moving toward a world where data is the dominant way we choose to make
decisions about trust. In the meantime, the symbols and signals that mesh
with our irrational worldviews continue to drive our thinking.
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