Jane Goodland: Welcome to the LSEG Sustainable Growth podcast where we talk to leading experts about the big issues touching on sustainability, business and finance. I'm Jane Goodland, your host. And this week I'm joined by Richard Edelman who is CEO of the global communications firm Edelman. And today we're going to be talking about the 2026 Trust Barometer which has been going for a staggering 26 years. So welcome to the show, Richard. Thank you so much for giving us some time because I know that you're super busy this week, you're in Davos on the ground. What's it like over there?
Richard E: It's been a week of high drama. I mean, President Trump came and gave a quite strong speech and was trying to negotiate for the Golden Dome in Greenland and came out with the result he wanted. And I think in the end, the idea of the European alliance is still alive, we have NATO, and so we came to a good place. But there was a lot of business done this week, too. It was really very, very busy.
Jane Goodland: That's certainly what I'm hearing back here in London. So as I said, we're going to focus on the Edelman Trust Barometer. But before we do that, I wanted to start by touching on something the way that Edelman describes trust as 'the ultimate currency between institutions and their stakeholders'. Tell us a bit more about that. Why is trust so important?
Richard E: Trust matters because it enables frictionless transactions. It also makes possible your reliance on others, and therefore, in a way, efficiency. If you have to check at every step, if you have run looking over your shoulder backwards, you don't run very fast. And so, it's partly the legal system, but it's also partly what is standards of behaviour. And there have been violations. People felt violated in 2008 in the Financial Crisis. People felt they were violated during COVID because they got wrong information. So all of these have caused questions in people's minds.
Jane Goodland: Which leads us onto why it's important to have some measure of trust. And of course, that's what the barometer has been doing for 26 years. So let's go back to 2001 when it started. I'm interested to know kind of what stimulated you in the first place to say, I'm going to go and measure trust. I am curious to know whether or not that was a one-off exercise and whether or it was intentional to be running it all this time later?
Richard E: We were very curious in the wake of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in 1999. Who are these NGOs, non-governmental organisations, why were they protesting, what was their level of trust relative to business, government and media? And we were stunned to find out that NGOs were the most trusted institution and that maintained position for the next 19 years until COVID when it became government for a year because it had the big bazooka. And then after that, it's been business for the last 5 years, because it's the only institution both competent and ethical.
Jane Goodland: And did you, when you sort of set about the barometer, did you mean to make this an annual affair or was it a one-time thing that you thought, let's repeat this afterwards?
Richard E: So there were intervening events like the Iraq war, the Financial Crisis. We also had the rise of populism, COVID. So it's been important to continue. And also I really wanted to pioneer intellectual property for PR companies because the IP has been dominated by consulting firms. And so I figured on topics that we know something about, this could be important.
Jane Goodland: So over the course of the last quarter century, when you've been doing this kind of measurement exercise, have you seen any kind of long-term trends over that time? Are there a few that would stand out to you that have been kind of a permanent feature?
Richard E: We've already talked about how business has risen to be the most trusted. The second is the mass class divide. In other words, the top quartile versus the bottom quartile of income have completely different appreciation of institutions, bottom quartile being much lower. The third is that developed countries are trailing developing countries in trust by 15 points. The highest in our study of 28 countries are China, India, UAE, Saudi. The bottom are Japan, France, Germany, the UK. And so that's important. Then also, trust is local. It used to be conveyed top down. Then about 2005, it started to go horizontal, peer to peer. And now it's in my employer, my CEO. And then the last is the battle for truth. People cannot discern what is fact and what is disinformation. And some people are turning off for media altogether, it's too upsetting and then others we have a huge rise in the belief that foreign actors are Invading the media space. And by choice people by the way are narrowing their own media prism, so that they're into Substack or podcasts or curated social, so they're just seeing that which they agree with.
Jane Goodland: I think that's particularly relevant in today's and this year, in fact, in terms of some of the things that are coming through, that we're really seeing that coming to fruition. I'm curious to touch on the title of the 2026 barometer because you've called it 'trust amid insularity', which of course, you know, takes us to a very, very pertinent time and it's very relevant, which is really about kind of the favouring people and institutions where the values and beliefs are more similar to ourselves. So tell us more about why that theme is coming through so strongly in this year's study?
Richard E: So there's been a 10-year progression. Polarisation is political. And so left and right, which is normal. You know, if you're in the UK, for example, you have Tories and you have Labour. But people started just reading the media in those thought bubbles. And so then about 18 months ago, we started to see the rise of grievance. It really kind of started post George Floyd, and whatnot, but the system doesn't work. I need to protest. And in fact, last year, we found that Gen Z literally sanctions hostile activism, literally throwing paint on somebody's store or even shooting an insurance executive in New York. And so this year, we see the rise of insularity, which means I only trust those with the same values, with the same media choices, and also the same answers on important social issues. In the US for example, guns or abortion or in the UK immigration. So what insularity does is it makes you brittle. It makes you self-convinced. It makes you unwilling to have dialogue and compromise. You're self- convinced. Tortoiseshell. It's a hard tortoiseshell.
Jane Goodland: And have we seen that in the results in the past or is this a new phenomena that you've seen coming through in this year's study?
Richard E: You know, I think of this as Dante's Divine Comedy. We're getting closer to the inner circle of hell. And you can see in the study that it comes with side effects. You know people who are insular are also aggrieved. Also a massive rise in nationalism. So the preference for domestic companies over multinationals in choice of products in Canada, in Germany, in Japan. You know, these are long-standing countries where they have had multinationals for hundreds of years. And so companies can't tolerate that. Also, the big new phenomenon this year, which has really caused people to get nervous, is AI. In developed countries, you see literally two-thirds of people saying, I don't want it. I don t want AI because I think it's a job killer, or it's going to take away my privacy. The end product is lack of optimism. And in the end, what you see is in developed countries, not a single one of them is over 20% belief that their families are going to be better off in the next generation. And in France, it's 5% and in Germany, it is 6%. That's horrendous. Without optimism, you can't have a viable economy because no companies are going to invest ahead unless they believe they're going to get a return.
Jane Goodland: And would you say that insularity is as a result of other factors or is it the driving factor?
Richard E: Insularity is definitely a result of lack of quality information, a deep belief that the system is rigged, also that I don't have a chance. My future is limited and so I may as well stand with my brothers and sisters who agree with me to fight back.
Jane Goodland: You mentioned some of the reasons why this type of feeling is relevant for business, but can we go into that a bit more deeply? Because this has quite profound consequences, both in terms of the talent pool or the consumer base or simply the business partners that you're working with. So tell me a bit more about kind of what the results show as to the consequences of this kind of move?
Richard E: I think the biggest consequence for business is dysfunction in the workplace. Literally half of our respondents said, 'I don't want to work for a CEO whose values are different than mine'. That's quite extraordinary. Same with, I do not want to work with somebody as my supervisor who I don't agree with. And so, on top of the problem of being a multinational and needing to have global brands, on top of rejection of innovation and this is profound, because companies depend on innovation. If you're a drug company, you know, you've got to have a constant pipeline of new offerings. And so again, if it's a domestic player favoured, if I basically don't want to change, and I'm afraid I don't I don't want to change my approach because it's the one that I'm secure in. That's a very negative way to look at the world.
Jane Goodland: Yeah, and I think, presumably, it kind of limits the possibilities for business in all of their, like I said, in terms of the talent pool as well, which is I think one of the key things.
Richard E: I think actually the workplace becomes the most important place for discussing of hard issues. You can't do that in your neighbourhood anymore. There are rules within the workplace about how you can address others and therefore safe space. And, again we started to see this two or three years ago on Safe Workplace, but now the belief in my employer and my employer's CEO and that it's in fact the sanctuary for me, where I also meet all kinds of people from overseas or different age groups. So it's a melting pot that's a very positive one. And so we're introducing this theory of trust brokering, which means that you want to offer employees a safe place to sit and talk. You do not seek to persuade them. You only offer opinions, which can be debated in a coherent and kind way. And you're not an advocate, you're simply, in a way, arms around and making sure that people have a chance to talk and process.
Jane Goodland: Yeah, I mean, I must say, when I was looking at the results of the barometer, it's quite a sobering read. And I'm not going to say depressing, but you know, verging towards that way. But then actually, I think there are some, some sort of positive points because you talk about this trust brokering, and it starts to provide that kind of solution around how employers become a really, really important part of an individual's life ecosystem, really. So you talked a little bit about some of those trust brokering practices. What does it look like when it's done really well? And is trust broking only something we should be thinking about in an employment context at the workforce? Or actually, is there a role more broadly kind of within sectors or between sectors?
Richard E: Well, Richard Dixon started doing this at Gap because San Francisco had a big homeless problem and also people had gotten used to not coming to the office. And he wanted to create some sense of both action on San Francisco, meaning getting his employees back involved in charity and other and I think also he wanted to change the culture. Make it more positive, can do. So he's made it work. He does these. He has other people do these trust brokering sessions. I can also tell you that Oliver Bate, who is the CEO of Allianz, has basically charged his top 70,000 people with doing trust brokering and sitting down, whether it's in China, whether it is in the US or Germany, they are graded on whether or not they are trusted. They get a trust score. And part of his grade of them is whether they've done these convenings.
Jane Goodland: That's interesting, isn't it? Because we were talking about the fact that insularity means that you, I guess, are aligning yourselves and becoming closer with those who share your same values and beliefs. But at the same time, we're saying that trust brokering is needed to be able to trust people who perhaps aren't like you and perhaps don't share those values. I don't really, I'm struggling to see how you get through that. How do you how do you kind of get through that that kind of wall of insularity if you like?
Richard E: I think we have to confront conflict entrepreneurs, we need to say, we don't want to give you advantage for stirring up trouble. And whether it's unsocial by giving this information, whether it is, you know, somehow in being a quite an aggressive advocate. Part of it is how you listen, part of it is how you speak. You shouldn't speak to win, you should speak to discuss. And you should listen before you talk. And there's a wonderful programme run by in the US by the National Governors Association started by the governor of Utah and it's called Disagree Better and they go around and two governors, one Republican, one Democrat, and they talk and they discuss issues and they shake hands at the end and say we hope the audience has been informed. That's the same sort of thing that should happen in the office. You have people who want to have a pride flag up. You have other people who have different views. The company has to take a position, ultimately, do we use the flag, do we not use the flag? But more broadly, people need to feel heard and appreciated. Because employees feel very shaken by all of these consecutive revolutions. We have a geopolitical revolution, we have the AI revolution, we have information or disinformation revolution. So all of this is discombobulating.
Jane Goodland: And I think when you look at kind of the average tenure of CEOs in very large companies as well, that doesn't exactly make things any easier, right? Because actually those tenures can be quite short in terms of number of years.
Richard E: The safe place for business the last two years is put your head down and assume that the storm is going to pass.
Jane Goodland Yeah.
Richard E: I'm arguing that we're going into the tortoise shell, but we're sitting in the middle of the road and big trucks are coming by so it would be a lot better to get out, get off the road, and join the other turtles. A strained analogy, but I think an important one, because again, business is 40 points more trusted than government. And business is the one institution which is seen as being able to do something and trust actually is based on action. And people want to see tangible change, whether it's your supply chain, whether it's who you hire, whether its training and reskilling for AI, because there are going to be job reductions because of AI. Repetitive jobs will be replaced and it's coming for white collar workers before blue, and they're not used to this. So I think you just have to speak directly, be honest, but also be clear that you have a responsibility to upskill and continuous education throughout somebody's career.
Jane Goodland: And lastly, I think coming on to the role of CEOs, so you talked about that 40 point lead between business and government, but actually, I think the report pulls out something really interesting as well, which is around the role and the agency that a CEO has in this kind of context around trust brokery. Tell me more about what CEO's should be picking your report up and looking for, because it feels to me that there's some gems in there and CEOs could be utilising these insights in a way that would really help their organisations. What does your 2026 barometer say about CEOs?
Richard E: CEOs have to be self-confident enough to meet their critics. They need to, again, lead in a different way. The humility of being able to sit with people 20 or 30 years younger and treat them as equals and respect their views is an urgent kind of change of approach. And I think also to recognise their own insularity. In my case after October 7th in Gaza, I became quite insular and defensive. And I also narrowed my world view that way, because I don't know, I felt under siege. And I didn't feel that way in COVID. I felt strong and that I had to lead. It was really the first time I'd ever felt like that. And so I made a public commitment in Davos that I'm going to change. That I'm going to open my eyes to the views of others and respect it and debate them in a different way. And also I gave up some friends who I thought were too aggressive on the subject and I'm going to change. I'm going to ask them to be my friends again.
Jane Goodland: Interesting. I think that that's a perfect place to finish. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a fascinating insight into what the barometer can tell us, what trust means, and how we should be looking out for trust brokering. So thanks so much for joining us on the show, Richard. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your time in Davos. But that's it, that's all we have time for today, thank you very much indeed.
Richard E: Thank you.
Jane Goodland: And so that's all we have time for at the LSEG Sustainable Growth Podcast for this episode. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with Richard. If you've got comments or questions, then you can get in touch with the show at
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