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#39 Rachel Botsman: How to regain trust after a crisis

Written by Oslo Business Forum | Sep 14, 2021 10:17:44 AM

- If you told people this is how they were going to work, that trust leap might have taken twenty, thirty, forty years… It may never had happened, this redesigning of how we work. It is interesting how external pressures can force or enable new kinds of trust leaps.

Rachel Botsman is our special guest in the 39th episode of the podcast All In with Oslo Business Forum. Botsman is recognized as one of the thirty most influential management thinkers and her TED talks has been viewed more than four million times. The 29th of September, Rachel is a keynote speaker at Oslo Business Forum.

In this podcast, she talks with host Tor Haugnes about many different aspects regarding trust. Trust as a social glue, trust in uncertain times and how to cope with a trust crisis.

Two things leaders do wrong

So, if people do not trust you anymore, is it possible to regain trust?

- I have studied many trust failures and trust crisis in terms of what leaders do wrong.
There is a couple of things, Rachel says, and sums up:

- The first thing, and you can look at Boeing, you can look at Facebook, you can look at any major trust crisis, and what a leader comes out with first is that they point to what I call a capability problem.

Rachel Botsman says leaders tend to blame the system, the product or the algorithm – something external. This is a huge mistake, Botsman argues, because the audience have to understand the intention and motives of the leader.

- It is when people start to see the character and how you are going to change the culture and behaviours, that the repair can happen, Botsman says.

- The second thing I have seen, and this goes for politicians and business leaders, but also in personal relationships, is that we try to jump to the repair stage of trust, repairing trust, before we’ve really identified what the disconnect is, Botsman explains.

Join Rachel Botsman at Oslo Business Forum: Rethinking Business.
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Challenging misconceptions and myths

Botsman also discusses trust as a fundamental need during the pandemic, as trust in science, the governments, public health system and the information flow was foundational.

We also get a little sneak peek into what Botsman is going to talk about during her keynote speech at Oslo Business Forum.

- I actually am going to be challenging many misconceptions and myths that we have about trust, Rachel says.

- I am going to be really looking at this relationship between trust, risk and uncertainty. Because we don’t always connect those things, and I think many of us has realized during the pandemic that trust is the social glue that gets you through.

In the episode you’ll also hear about leaders as a deer in the headlights, the worst apology ever, the pandemic as a stress test and what the Airbnb guys were doing the first time Rachel met them.


Maybe you’ll also get some deeper insight regarding questions like:

  • Why is humility the real superpower of the 21st century?
  • What led to Rachel's first book «What’s mine is yours»?
  • What was so fascinating about the Clinton-Obama election in 2008?

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You can listen to the podcast on spotify, itunes, the service of your choice as well as the player above. Remember to subscribe for future episoder!

Big thanks to our host, Tor Haugnes

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