You Can't Automate Trust
As AI replaces people in so many areas of business, building trust emerges as one of the few irreplaceable, truly human skills.
For years, trust in institutions - government, financial services, the media, public health bodies - has been ebbing away. This decline has been exacerbated as generative AI has given everyone the ability to create polished presentations, proposals and sales materials. Some of it is valid, some misleading and it is increasingly hard to tell the difference.
Most business relies on trust. Once a seller passes a basic plausibility test, even the most straightforward transactions rest on the belief that companies and people are who they say they are and the product will broadly do what it promises, something scammers know only too well. Customers might do a few comparisons and a bit of benchmarking, but few have the time or inclination to evaluate everything they are shown and make a detached, rational judgement. Instead, they do what human beings have always done: they evaluate the person sitting opposite them. Before they even hear your arguments, they are already making a quieter judgement: Do I believe this person? Would I feel safe giving them my business?
This is not to say that the product doesn't matter. But when competitors have similar offers, perceptions of human trustworthiness increasingly become the deciding factor.
Trust is an emotion, not a thought. Customers leave meetings with a feeling of confidence or they don’t. And the easier it becomes to produce shiny AI-generated collateral, the more important these human judgements become.
The messenger is the message
Over the past twenty years I've coached thousands of executives across Europe, Asia and North America. A small number have one invaluable characteristic in common: people trust them intuitively. They are not always the most technically expert or the most polished presenters. But they make the other person feel they are in safe hands.
This feeling is created by dozens of micro cues, most of which happen below the level of conscious awareness: the quality of eye contact; the timing of a smile; the steadiness of the voice; answering the question that was asked rather than the one that was prepared for; explaining things simply instead of emphasising the speaker’s expertise.
It would be easy to dismiss these as performance techniques. They are not. People can tell the difference between someone who is merely exhibiting the outward signs of trustworthiness and someone who is genuinely engaged with them.
The latter rests on something simpler and more profound: taking care of the listener.
Many capable professionals unintentionally do the opposite. They speak too quickly and overwhelm with detail. The intention is often a commendable desire to be factual and comprehensive. But their attention is focused on the quality of their own explanation rather than the experience of the person listening. And the more someone feels they are being pitched to, the less persuasive the pitch becomes.
Customers are continually, and mostly unconsciously, asking themselves a simple question: is this person trying to get something from me, or are they genuinely trying to help me reach a good decision? Trust grows when people feel understood and when the conversation is a genuine dialogue, rather than a rigidly managed presentation. And trustworthiness is less about what you do than where you put your attention. Focusing fully on the other person is a skill you can develop; it’s what great actors do.
Leadership and culture
This principle of taking care of the other person also has significant internal implications for business leaders and the culture they create. Trust in the leadership makes the difference between engagement and disengagement, with all the discretionary effort that brings. And it’s based on similar unconscious human judgement of the individuals, more than on analysis of the latest reorg or strategic plan.
Are the company’s values lived day-to-day? Are leaders genuinely interested in others’ perspectives? Are potentially awkward questions welcomed or sidestepped? Is their concern real or performed? People sense whether a leader's decisions are driven by personal benefit or by the real purpose of leadership: serving the long-term interests of those they lead.
In the rush to improve productivity with AI, it’s easy to overlook the significance of the human factor. Trustworthiness is one of the few qualities that cannot be artificially generated and businesses should cultivate it as a strategic imperative.