Creating the conditions for trust

This month, myself and a couple of colleagues have started out on a new journey. We've launched a brand / comms / ad agency that features TRUST as its central tenet. www.thesaturnagency.com

Part of our proposition is to work with brands and clients exploring the underlying conditions that create trust and how these can be built into a brand's marketing strategy. We believe this is a vital component of a future-facing brand.

John Hagel who heads up Deloitte's Center for the Edge has written a thoughtful piece on this subject, which I've paraphrased below. To read the full text, click here.

Resolving the Trust Paradox

"Listen to all the management experts on how to build brands and the message is clear. You build a brand by identifying your key strengths and aggressively communicating them… If you have any weaknesses, hide them. Brands are not built on weaknesses, but strengths…. Think about it. In a more and more challenging world where we constantly confront situations that we never encountered before, what is our reaction when someone presents an image of great strength and complete control, with no weaknesses? We don’t trust them…. If someone only presents strengths and accomplishments, we know they are not sharing with us the full picture. If they don’t trust us enough to share their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, why would we ever trust them?… At a deeply personal level, trust is built by sharing vulnerability. If you really trust someone, you will share your vulnerability. It is not only OK, but necessary – it is the foundation of a trust-based relationship. But this is exactly the opposite of what we were taught… Trust used to be largely backward looking – did the person or the institution have a track record indicating that they had the necessary skills to deliver results? In these more uncertain times where skills have a depreciating half-life, the focus shifts to a forward looking question – does the person or institution have the values and disposition required to learn faster by working together in times of increasing uncertainty and rapid change? Can they be relied upon even though their existing skills are increasingly challenged and undermined by rapid change?… So, how do we overcome the natural instinct we all have to avoid expressing vulnerability? How do we build trust today?… Success in the future will involve scaling back the masculine archetype and giving the feminine archetype more prominence… The masculine archetype is all about projecting strength and not sharing weakness… the feminine archetype expresses vulnerability much more readily."