Lately I have been finding it hard to trust what I am seeing and hearing. I scroll through social media and catch myself second guessing everything. Is this real? Is it AI? Who is behind this? What is their motive?
And it is not just online. With everything happening globally, it feels constant. I hear one version of events, then another and it becomes impossible to know what is true. Even simply knowing where to look for information on issues that are emotional and complex but often spoken about as if they are black and white is challenging.
This is a big shift in how people experience trust. If that is how people are consuming information every day, it makes sense that it becomes harder to trust what organisations are saying too.
Seeing good engagement in practice shifted how I think about communication and how trust is built. Involving communities early in a project changes everything that comes after.
One of the first times I saw this properly was on a client project where we thought we understood the problem. It made sense. It was logical, clear and aligned with what we thought we knew about the community.
But when we engaged with the community and listened to their everyday experience, it became clear we needed to rethink it. The problem we had defined was not quite the problem people were actually dealing with.
If we had kept going, everything that followed would have missed the mark. The messaging might have been polished but it would not have resonated or connected. And something else shifted as well.
The people we spoke to could see that they were being heard and their experience was being taken seriously. They saw our project was not something being designed for them, but something being shaped with them.
It does not mean people control the outcome or that every decision is handed over. But it does mean their experience is shaping the direction and being genuinely heard. They are influencing the outcome; making it better.
There are different ways to do this. It always starts with listening and understanding and in some cases it involves people more directly in shaping decisions. Not every project will take the same approach.
What matters is when communities are first involved.
If they’re involved at the end, people are reacting to something that already exists. If it happens at the beginning, they shape what the problem is, what options get considered and what decisions are made. That is the difference.
In the current environment, where trust is low and people feel increasingly disconnected, this matters more than ever.
The value of genuine engagement is higher. When trust is harder to come by, organisations get more value from doing this well. People place more weight on being asked, being listened to and seeing their experience reflected in decisions.
Deliberately involving people in those early stages is what builds trust and makes for better outcomes for communities and organisations.
For me, that has been the biggest shift.
