Trust is the foundation for any institution

TRUST matters most during times of high uncertainty, which is exactly where the Church of England finds itself today. Paradoxically, leaders more generally often acknowledge how critical trust is only at the very moment when it starts running out of the building.

How to assess trustworthiness, when to forgive, and when to repair

TRUST is “the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intentions or behaviours of another”. People judge the trustworthiness of others by four criteria:

• Ability: Have they got the right competencies to do their job?

• Benevolence: Are they bothered about others or entirely self-interested?
• Integrity: Are they guided in their decisions and actions by an admirable moral code?
• Predictability: is there a consistency of approach over time?

Research shows that lapses in ability/competence can be forgiven. Each of us is fallible. Someone has forgiven you that lapse of competence and allowed you to continue in your vocation. But betrayals of integrity and benevolence are of a different magnitude and decimate trust fast. The old Dutch proverb says: “Trust comes on foot but leaves on horseback.” Trust is hard to gain but all too easy to lose.

How to repair serious breaches of trust in the short, medium, and long term

SOMETIMES, breaches of trust involving lapses in morality and/or integrity are so profound that little can prevent a serious loss of trust. Research on trust repair shows that addressing a profound breach requires varied responses in the short, medium, and long term.

In the immediate few days after a breach of integrity or morality is exposed, best practice recommends that the most senior person takes responsibility, expresses regret to others, apologises, and orders an immediate review. They will also exit all of those who were tainted by the scandal while awaiting the outcomes of the investigation. The rest of the organisation, at every level, then doubles down on demonstrations of trustworthiness to the outside world.

In my informed research opinion, some of this has already happened in the Church of England.

Often, once the investigation has reported, critical questions arise. They determine the focus of resources for the institution over years.

The first question is whether the investigation concludes that the incident in the institution is a “blip”: a one-off event in an otherwise trustworthy organisation. Or has there been an individual rogue bad apple? A review may stop short of suggesting that the whole institution is corrupted. If an investigation concludes that it is a one-off event or a rogue individual, or team, efforts to repair trust may simply involve the tightening of controls to prevent reoccurrence of the risk. In this scenario, some may conclude that there is no need for deep transformational change.

The danger with this level of response is that it can exacerbate a crisis by failing to respond with a process that is trustworthy enough in terms of deployment of scope, empathy, and resourcing. Worst still is a process that might attempt to conceal the crisis from others by failing to admit its existence — a cover-up.

If a review reaches the conclusion that both cultural and structural transformation is necessary, then the institution should prepare itself for a long period of organisational change.

Changing behaviour, attitudes, values, routines, or rituals to rebuild a trusting culture goes to the heart of any institution. To deliver a complete cultural reset, human-resources systems are overhauled at critical points. How are trustworthy behaviour and attitudes assessed at the point of recruitment/selection, what happens at induction, how is this reinforced through training and development, and in promotion criteria?

A word of warning, though: successful repair is not a given. Occasionally, efforts to reset culture are too little, too late. The institution may fail to recover. This is called the “Humpty Dumpty syndrome”. As the rhyme says: “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men Couldn’t put Humpty together again” In these circumstances, a public-sector organisation is often broken up, merged into other departments, or relaunched as a separate entity with a different remit. In the private sector, a business may not recover.

Moving forwards

THE Church of England needs to acknowledge the gravity of its situation: no one thinks that rearranging the deckchairs is now enough. The Church continues to be criticised from outside and within. The Church needs to acknowledge that it does not deserve trust because of its charitable purpose or its longevity. It now has to earn trust.

The serious cases of abuse in the Church of England are not just about the horror inflicted on the victims by the perpetrators, or the decisions that were taken at a national level, but how the acts themselves were allowed to go unnoticed by others in the first place.

Systems of safeguarding can be tightened once again, but, if systems are embedded within a culture and structure that perpetuates a lack of “noticing” by colleagues, the opportunity for “wilful blindness” remains. Arguably, long-term racism can also be perpetuated by such a culture. Leading this cultural change is just one of the challenges awaiting the new Archbishop of Canterbury, whoever she or he is.

Regeneration of trust will happen at the parish level. In our pilot study, we found inspiring everyday trustworthy behaviour among clerics and laity working together despite differences. Most positive examples were found when God’s mission was being delivered to those in need outside the Church in the local communities. We noted a deep hope from most of those interviewed, for the Church of England to regenerate, wherever they sat on a continuum of debate.

Society, however, will want to see significant reform at national level. It may be that it is the middle/senior structures/cultures that need to undergo transformation. It’s not that national or diocesan structures are redundant, but tough decisions are needed on where dwindling financial resources are deployed.

Yet, it is always about balance. Not everything can be decentralised. The collapse of Barings Bank happened because too much autonomy was given to an individual trader, and the culture in the Singaporean trading team of this British bank facilitated the turning of a blind eye to the activities of the rogue trader. There are lessons here for the Church of England.

What is it essential to manage nationally because it is too risky to have decisions taken locally? What areas can be decentralised? Safeguarding would be an example of where there must be a consistent national system from which there can be no deviation at a local level. Society is unlikely to ever trust the Church again without evidence of such a system. It may also be necessary to reform governance so that it fits the purpose of a smaller, 21st-century Church.

Every little helps

THIS crisis now affects every individual member of the Church of England. It is not just about what happens in Lambeth Palace or Church House, Westminster: it is how every member of the Church behaves in their local high street. If you are reading this and consider yourself a church member, remember that you will be scrutinised by others every day throughout this crisis.

To restore trust, for sure it is about deep institutional change, but it is also about every member of the Church acting locally to deliver “small things with great love” (to quote Mother Teresa). That is what society now needs to witness on an everyday basis. To borrow from the novelist Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These may save the day.

Professor Veronica Hope Hailey is Inaugural Dean of the Business School at the University of Bristol, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Her thoughts are her own.

This article is adapted from the report on trust delivered to the General Synod last July, of which she was one of the authors (News, 12 July 2024).

If you are interested in learning more about general trust research, helpful references are included in that report. We are continuing our trust research into Stage 2 with a survey and additional interviews. We will report at subsequent Synods. Until then we thank those who have given up their time to be interviewed and we implore as many as possible to complete the survey on trust and trustworthiness which will be distributed in early 2025.