t’s a tough time to work in the trust business. Sounds dramatic, but for public relations practitioners who guide their clients’ actions in an effort to build trust with stakeholders, the task has never been more challenging.

My clients tell me it has become increasingly difficult to decide how and when to communicate with their stakeholders. Will anyone believe them? Is it worth the risk of saying the wrong thing and making a situation worse? For my part, I almost always counsel them to put in the work to build trust on the front end. Those hours are always well spent.

In fact, recent data compiled by Edelman and reported in its 2021 Trust Barometer backs up what I’ve witnessed. The report tells an alarming tale of the loss of trust in our bedrock institutions. A sizable majority of survey respondents believe that government leaders (57 percent), business leaders (56 percent), and journalists (59 percent) are purposefully trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false. These are stunning statistics, especially when you focus on the word “purposefully;” no one, not even these often well-respected leaders, receives the benefit of the doubt. The belief that people in these positions of power and influence are intentionally sharing bad information reveals much about the collapse of trust in our society.

Here’s an oversimplified but easily understood example. I trust the organic fruit I purchase from the farmers’ market is free from pesticides. I trust my Big Mac will taste the same whether I purchase it from the McDonald’s in Chicago or Miami. I trust the clothes I pick up from the dry cleaner will be the same ones I dropped off. What happens when that trust is broken? The relationship is jeopardized and at risk of failure.

The same dynamic is true in business, specifically in the workplace. I know as a team leader that if I fail to build trust among my employees, I will not be effective. In order to get things done and make a company successful, trust must be present, and it must be nurtured. Employees who trust you will follow your lead, even during times of stress and uncertainty. We are all painfully aware that the workplace has seen an abundance of both these last two years. In some respect, the businesses and organizations left standing after the worst of the pandemic can point to trust, along with hard work, resilience, and more than a little help, as the primary reason they survived. Employees who didn’t trust their employers to keep them safe quit. Customers who didn’t trust a business to follow safety guidelines went somewhere else. Boil it all down, and of all the factors impacting a business’ ability to function, both internally and externally, trust is the strongest and most important common thread.

I would like to share three important benefits of trust followed by four steps to building trust in any organization.

2. Trust fosters loyalty and develops future leaders.
Employees who trust leadership to have their backs embrace opportunities to learn and grow in a supportive environment. They are more likely to stay with an organization that trusts them to identify new challenges and withstand setbacks, empowering them to own their work and find ways to improve. The goal of any effective leader is not to develop followers, but to identify and mentor future leaders. This foundation is built on trust.

3. Trust is tangible and measurable.
I think of trust as something exchangeable, like currency, and as something that bears value. The same is true of a dollar bill: on its face, it is worth no more than the paper it is printed on. But inject that dollar bill into the marketplace, and it brings with it a trusted value and is used to purchase everything from pizzas to luxury cars. Trust is much the same; it holds no value of its own, but can be “saved” (earned), or “spent” (lost). As such, leaders who work at building trust among stakeholders are able to achieve things that move society along. Imagine the trust it took for Apple to give Steve Jobs the opportunity to bring paid digital streaming to the masses for the first time. The entire paradigm shift from recorded music to streaming music was based entirely on trust: trust that Jobs had identified an emerging need in society, and trust that he could build a team to deliver it. In terms of sheer number-based performance, public companies rated the most trustworthy have been found to outperform the S&P 500.

2. Lead with empathy.
Great leaders must be humans first. It is imperative that we act in a way that places just as much emphasis on the human experience as the bottom line, which, as we can show, are directly correlated. Recognizing and meeting the human needs of our employees, customers, clients and colleagues will go a long way in creating two-way, trusting relationships. During the height of the pandemic, my business partner and I stayed in constant touch with our employees, giving them honest assessments of the state of our business and laying out fair expectations for remote work taking place under extraordinarily trying circumstances. This open approach paid off, with our staff voluntarily reporting satisfaction and gratitude for our human-focused approach to management.

3. Live your values.
Employees notice when employers don’t walk their talk, and few actions are more likely to breed mistrust than perceived hypocrisy. Actively seek out opportunities to demonstrate your values in a visible way. Share what matters to you as a person, and then live it out loud. Being consistent in what we say and what we do is crucial to establishing trust.

4. Embody what it means to be an ethical leader.
In the public relations profession, we adhere to a code of ethics outlined by the Public Relations Society of America. Practitioners like myself are held to the highest standards of loyalty, pledging faithfulness to those we represent and doing so in a way that is fair to all stakeholders. These behaviors, while obviously the right things to do in a business setting, also build trust. My clients know I will support them faithfully, and conduct myself professionally in a way that inspires confidence.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and trust is not earned overnight. Trust cannot be achieved by occasionally making an investment in a relationship; it must be continually tended to, cared for and cultivated. That said, we leaders are human, and will make mistakes. If we have taken the time to foster open, trusting relationships with those we serve, we can overcome those mistakes and build upon the foundations we have worked so hard to establish.