What is the difference between confidence and trust?
Confidence is a projection; it's a way of presenting yourself that is meant to tell people you know what you are doing, they just need to step back or follow directions and let them do their thing.
We have a lot of confident people running the show in government, in the Private Sector and in bridging fields like Public Relations and Government Relations. These are people who are absolutely convinced they have the answers and/or the fortitude to make things happen. The flip-side to this equation, however, is that they feel a sense of entitlement to the levers of power; they are smart, we are dumb.
These kinds of people don't ever make mistakes - how could they? That would undermine the confidence people are supposed to have in them. Instead, mistakes get off-shored, downloaded or thrown under the bus with convenient scapegoats. Equally, when presented with a question they can't answer or aren't prepared to answer, it's considered bad form to say "I don't know" - to admit you're not omniscient is to admit weakness, a no-no when it's confidence that defines your brand.
Confidence is fundamentally about superiority - feeling more important than others and communicating that message to the public at large. In the workplace, the confident people are the boss - no need for the team to think, because they have all the answers.
In public consultations or any sort of service transaction, the same holds true - people are consumers and the confident men are sales agents; when discussing new policies or system reforms, the trick is to sell, with confidence, the changes you are making to their world, not to get input.
One of the most successful businessmen I know, who in the grand scheme of things is really just a middling player, once gave me this nugget of advice: "you don't have to know what you're talking about, you just need to sound confident while you're saying it."
Stephen Harper is really good about sounding confident on everything from the soundness of his economic strategy to his lack of knowledge about the Senate Scandal. Rob Ford is equally confident, even ebullient as he talks about not being a user of crack cocaine and having never missed a day of Council.
The truth behind all these statements is being chipped away at, but these confident men hold true to notion that so long as you keep your message simple, say it often and say it with confidence, people will eventually just go along with it.
But people aren't going along with it. They hear the voices of single-minded confidence and see the world around them increasingly at odds with what they're hearing.
There's a reason why voter turnout is decreasing and why decision makers are increasingly viewed with disdain in our country, and in countries around the world. The jig is up; partially thanks to social media, the behind-the-scenes sausage-making process of politics is increasingly coming to light.
We're seeing that the confident messages we're hearing are empty. We're told to trust our leaders, because they have all the evidence that matters, but we're also seeing not only how they don't have the evidence, but are discarding any facts that don't fit their message. Sometimes, they are contradicting themselves, with the new message delivered as confidently as the old one, despite the fact that they are completely the opposite.
Harper's stance on who knew what when in relation to the Senate Scandal is a great example of this. It doesn't matter if he tells us his position has been clear all along, with confidence - we can see that's not the case simply by stacking his various statements up against each other.
In business, the usual suspects are lining up inside of fragmenting fields, like Public Relations, insisting they have the expertise to message better than competitors in this changing field, focusing on the confidence piece. Yet they're using the exact same language as any of their peers.
The public has grown wary of confident tones - we have grown sceptical of righteousness. We no longer believe the talk when we hear politicians promise new eras of transparency, because we've heard that line before.
Trust is not about projecting uber-confidence and convincing people just to follow along; trust is about competence. As such, particularly now when people have so lost faith in decision makers, leaders can't walk in to a room, talk boldly about their abilities and expect people to immediately line up behind them. Trust has to be earn and for that, competence and commitment need to be demonstrated.
There are several consultations going on right now at the municipal (Toronto) and provincial (Ontario) level; these consultations are meant to solicit public feedback on how to better present public services, how to do Open Government and how to create an actual dialogue between citizens and policy makers rather than a one-way message track.
Few people are ready to believe these processes are sincere - why should they? Sincerity has never been part of the equation before. Studies released today are bringing forward the same recommendations raised in the last several cycles of studies, meaning the recommendations found within have not been acted upon. We see structural deficits growing, we see the strangulation of the middle class and yet we hear policy makers saying they have all the answers (and their opponents have nothing but harmful, self-serving agendas).
But there are also an emerging pocket of leaders and teams that aren't focused on hyper-partisan, hyper-confident message tracks and who recognize that trust must be earned and that the best way to lead is by example.
The people behind the Open Ontario and Toronto Strong Neighbourhood Strategies are conscious about the perception challenges they face. As such, they are working hard to be open, transparent and to actively listen. They even realize that who they put forward to engage in conversations sends a message to their prospective audiences and are trying to match people to the crowd.
This is not a one-off project for them, a paycheque they collect and move on from; open governance and citizen engagement is a passion. People like Fenicia Lewis-Dowlin, Zeena Abdulla, Leslie Church and even Don Lenihan have recognized we are at a turning point in society, a culture shift that they want to play a positive part in.
But they realize it's not something they can do alone. If anything, they recognize their job is to be crystals to focus attention, stones in the collaborative soup.
That's the key difference between confidence and trust, which is the same difference between being a boss and being a leader;
Bosses project confidence and demand subservience. Leaders work hard to earn trust and empower their teams.
Communication is a tricky business; it means thinking differently, challenging your own point of view and thinking laterally, which is the exact opposite of what we've been taught to do in a goal-oriented society.
It all comes down to this: we need to start figuring things out. We need to figure out how we're going to survive here. We may have been strangers before, but we're all here now, together. If we can't sort out how to live together, we will die alone.
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