21 Jan Internal Communications and Building Trust In the Age of Distrust
By BravoEcho
Such is the state of things that Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer, released this week, declares we’re retreating into a world of distrust and insularity. Seventy percent of Americans are now hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who has different values, information sources, approaches to societal problems or backgrounds than them. “Distrust is the default instinct,” declared Edelman’s CEO in his notes accompanying the report’s release.
To reach this point we passed through polarization and grievance caused by the rising cost of living with growing income inequality; a battle over truth intensified by the pandemic; geopolitics descending into hostility and acrimony; and the echo chambers of algorithm-driven social media.
The result is what Edelman calls an “insular trust mindset” where our response to deeply entrenched differences and a system we believe is rigged against us is to retreat into a world where we only take in information that reinforces what we already believe, and we only trust those we know – family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers; the CEO of the company we work for; and the social influencers we follow.
Depressing yes, but why must businesses address society’s ills? Because an insular trust mindset stops progress. Edelman reports that this mindset makes grievances against business more likely; creates distrust in business leaders perceived as different; and leads to workplace conflict and intentional drops in employee productivity. And because businesses are more trusted than NGOs, the media, and the government.
So, what can a company do? Edelman suggests they act as “Trust Brokers” and “help to create a path for progress and cooperation despite insularity by surfacing common interests and translating realities.” Rolling Edelman’s recommendations into three buckets, this means:
- Fostering Acceptance – transparency, open-mindedness, and not seeking to change minds; encouraging cooperation without taking sides; unifying around a shared identity; and mandatory training around constructive dialogue.
- Promoting Partnership – bringing employees into the workplace to interact with people different from them; building teams that require people with different values to work together to succeed; and working with unexpected organizations to initiate cross-cultural or cross-political conversations.
- Committing to Involvement – investing long-term in, and hiring from, the local community; having the CEO engage with groups who distrust and criticize the company; and ensuring the CEO consult with people of different values and backgrounds when making business decisions.
What does this mean for Internal Communications (IC)? Well, increasingly, IC is about creating, shaping, and maintaining the employee experience. It is the difference between workers who just show up, and workers who understand why their work matters and take ownership of it and each other. In that role, IC shapes trust’s underpinnings – reliability, psychological safety, and accountability – by:
- Building Capital – ensuring “deposits” (honest updates, celebrated wins, authentic leadership) consistently outweigh “withdrawals” (ignored feedback, missed deadlines, corporate jargon).
- Maintaining Stability – keeping people in the loop and identifying when skepticism is growing, where clarity is lacking, or when rumors threaten to undermine morale.
- Fostering Honesty – by owning the arenas where transparency happens, IC minimizes executive secrecy and middle management opacity, ensuring people know the “what,” understand the “why,” and see the “WIIFM”.
Returning to Edelman’s recommendations, do some feel a bit cringe? Maybe. But it was Hemingway who said that “the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them,” and a lot of what Edelman is recommending – what they say people want – is for employers to create the circumstances where insularity is punctured and people who are different have to trust each other to succeed.
And Internal Communication’s role in that is vital.