This week I’ve been attending the PwC Trust Academy in Phoenix, Ariz., a multiday conference PwC hosts as part of its “New Equation” global strategy, which aims to help business leaders earn trust in an evolving multi-stakeholder world.
It’s a striking location. From my window I can watch the sunset over the sands of the desert, glinting off the towering slides of the hotel’s mini waterpark. But PwC, which covered my travel and room for the trip (and is also a Trust Factor sponsor), didn’t bring people to this oasis for the pool.
“The firm belief that sits behind the New Equation is that all companies will need to do two things as the world turns: build trust with their stakeholders, and deliver sustained outcomes,” says J.C. Lapierre, PwC U.S.’s chief strategy and communications officer, who spearheaded the Trust Academy in 2021.
There are approximately 80 attendees joining this iteration of the invite-only event—guests Lapierre describes as mostly “C-suite or C-suite rising”—for two and a half days of expert seminars, workshops, and discussions on the practice of building trust.
Regular readers will be familiar with some of the themes that emerged: trust as a business value, the challenge of re-earning lost trust, strategies managers use to build trust with teams, as well as more industry-specific subjects. But for me, another (and often overlooked) theme emerged from the portion of the programming from which observers were excluded: the value of privacy.
“We are very careful about [ensuring] we have small groups that are closed groups with a facilitator we bring in to help aid these discussions. [Attendees] have the confidence that those conversations go no further than where they are and they really build an unbelievable trust amongst themselves as cohorts,” Lapierre says.
Although executives in a lot of my previous interviews for Trust Factor have focused on the importance of transparency in building trust with stakeholders, transparency typically only comes after decision-making, where security is more valuable.
In those breakout discussions at PwC’s event, attendees workshop how practices they’ve been presented apply to their own businesses in cohorts made of peers from different industries. The sessions are kept behind closed doors so that the guests can be candid about the challenges they're facing. This reflects the manner in which executive teams typically make decisions.
For business leaders, the question is how to balance maintaining privacy—needed to build trust among members of an executive team—and practicing transparency—needed to build trust between leadership and stakeholders. With too much privacy, stakeholders feel misinformed. Too little, a company can fumble its inherent business advantage and leadership can falter.
(I’d be remiss not to mention that Wes Bricker, PwC U.S. trust solution co-lead, highlighted that a similar dichotomy exists in crafting regulations when governments rely on corporate expertise to inform guidelines but need to prevent private interests from influencing decisions.)
That’s a tight wire to walk. As we approach the new year, I’m interested to hear how readers plan to manage that balancing act in the year ahead.
Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com
