Leadership in building public trust

There has never been a time when trust in business and public institutions has been more needed. Populism has increasingly taken hold as people around the world voice their frustration with business and government leaders in addressing the very real economic disruptions that are affecting their lives.

But while the need for trust has never been greater, when it comes to building trust, it’s also clear that what we’ve been doing as business leaders simply isn’t working well enough. We know the headline statistic – only just over half of consumers have a favorable view of business.

Building public trust is one of the three central pillars of our vision at KPMG, and is at the forefront of the conversations we have within our firm. So I was very pleased that the theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos this year was “Responsive and Responsible Leadership.” Rebuilding trust is at the heart of being both responsive and responsible to our immediate stakeholders and society as a whole.

The role for business

First, business needs to take ownership of building trust. The common view among the many CEOs I spoke with at Davos, was that business leaders need to take personal responsibility for rebuilding trust. This starts with demonstrating core leadership behaviors that drive trust: integrity, competence and empathy. In other words, being clear about the values that guide your behaviors, demonstrating that you are competent, that you care about others, being honest and keeping promises, and taking a longer-term view of success.

We are in an era where it is incumbent on leaders to explain how and why their business operates and makes decisions. In other words, why our businesses exist, why what we do matters in terms of creating jobs and opportunities, contributing to the social good and our communities, and why the choices we make are not solely driven by short-term financial gain.

It is also important to remember that trust is built from the inside out. Before you can build trust with your customers and the public, you need to build trust internally with the people in your organization.

One of the ways we can do this as business leaders is to engage people to think more about their purpose and the wider impact of their work. We have found that as our people become more connected to their purpose, and explicit and conscious about the value of their work, not only for clients and our firm, but for society as a whole, they feel more empowered and in turn, gain greater trust in KPMG as both an employer and a purpose-led global citizen.

Increasingly, business is recognizing trust as a core asset – in fact, we see many clients making investments and decisions on that basis. That is the right direction. Building trust needs to be central to business vision and strategy, and drive the actions business leaders take every day. While the headline statistics could lead to a sense of pessimism, I came away from Davos with a sense that a large and growing proportion of business leaders share this view: trust has to be a strategic priority, and something that leaders need to personally steward within their organization.

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