How can we build trust, bridge divides, and engage communities?

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. Today, I am delighted to be joined by two folks I’ve known for many decades in the world of nonprofit communications, Doug Hattaway and Erica Pelletreau. And we are going to ask the question: How can we build trust, bridge divides, and engage communities? So, let me tell you about Doug and Erica. Doug Hattaway founded Hattaway Communications to help visionary leaders and organizations use the power of strategy, science, and storytelling to achieve ambitious goals for people and the planet. Doug uses he/him pronouns and is passionate about sharing insights from the social sciences to power up the impact of strategic communications. Erica Pelletreau started The Pelletreau Group after more than a decade leading strategic communications initiatives at the Ford Foundation, and a career dedicated to helping strategic impact organizations harness communications to achieve their missions. Erica uses she/her pronouns. Together, Doug and Erica developed a guide available at TrustPlaybook.org for The Communications Network. The guide offers ideas to help nonprofit leaders advance their organization’s goals in a climate of distrust, division, and disruption. Doug and Erica, welcome to the show.

Erica Pelletreau: Pleasure to be here.

Doug Hattaway: Good to be here.

Farra Trompeter: Well, before we get into the details of this very helpful resource you co-created, I’d love to hear a little bit about its origin story. Erica, what led to creating the guide?

Erica Pelletreau: It’s an interesting story. The idea behind the guide was actually co-created by a group of chief communications officers from foundations in the US. There was a convening that Doug and I were a part of. A meeting. A bunch of us were invited to Montana to spend some time thinking together about communications and communications in the philanthropic space. And coming out of that conversation, there was a sense that right now in America, we know a lot of things are broken. And one of the things in particular was this idea of trust coupled with the idea of civic engagement. The premise being that in order to have active civic engagement, you need to have trust. You need to be able to build trust with individual people. You need to build trust within communities, with organizations, et cetera. And so that group kind of charged Doug and me to go out there and do some research to see what we could find about people doing really smart work in the fields of polarization, bridge building, finding ways to work together to overcome difference.

Erica Pelletreau: And Doug and I have talked to an awful lot of folks, a lot of academics, practitioners, scientists. And through our work, we kind of pulled together what is this resource that the intent for it was always to be available to everybody who’s interested in it. It’s available to the field of people who do communications in the social impact space. So it was started by and came to fruition through the ideas of a group of chief communications officers who really collectively thought this was something that they together wanted to support, to help, you know, upskill the field and to upskill all of us who are trying to think about our communications in a way that are broader than just one issue, one campaign. But how do we actually do communications in a way that’s in service to a broader agenda, which is to build trust, increase civic engagement, and knit together the fabric somewhat of America.

Farra Trompeter: Great. And when we think about this moment we’re in, where we’re full of distrust and division and disruption, I know Doug, you dug into a bit about, you know, why is this political polarization happening, and what does brain science tell us about why this is occurring, and what can we learn from it? So could you talk a little bit about what you learned there?

Doug Hattaway: Sure. And a lot of the learning I can speak to comes from working with a group called Beyond Conflict, which is brain and behavioral scientists who study political polarization, defined as when people, groups of people, don’t trust each other. So when we talk about trust, there’s lots of angles here. We’re seeing in research across the board that trust in institutions of all kinds is very low. And that depends on who you’re talking to, interestingly. It’s particularly low among young adults, for example, do not trust nonprofits, universities, and government, and all kinds of institutions. You’ve got to prove yourself. Political polarization speaks to when people distrust each other, such that they start to dehumanize each other, and that can even lead to violence. So that’s called toxic polarization. And one of the interesting insights from the brain science on that, which shows that communications is part of the solution, is called “meta misperceptions”.

Doug Hattaway: Meta perceptions are, “What do I think you think about me?” right? So if I think that you think I’m stupid or I’m evil or whatever, I’m not going to trust you, and I might be afraid of you, and I need to protect myself from you. So those are called meta. They say they’re misperceptions because often those aren’t accurate. And those misperceptions are often driven by toxic political narratives and demonization of people and stereotyping people. And there’s a lot of partisan narratives about Democrats and Republicans and socialists and capitalism, whatever it is, right? All that feeds into polarization, where people aren’t trusting each other. And you can actively take on misperceptions like that. And the guide helps you think through how you might do that in your content.

Farra Trompeter: That’s great. And I just want to come back to something you just said, because I love hearing it, that communications can be part of the solution. Can you talk for a second about that piece where communications can show up, as we are understanding how this polarization is occurring?

Doug Hattaway: Right? By definition, it’s misperceptions that are driving the polarization. So correcting misperceptions is part of the solution. Beyond Conflict, the organization we talk about in the guide actually did an experiment, won a big award from Stanford, where they simply showed Democrats and Republicans videos of each other talking about Democrats and Republicans, and talking about issues where you would think from the media and political rhetoric that there was no common ground. And just listening to each other, literally they saw there was plenty of common ground and that disrupted those misperceptions.

Farra Trompeter: Great. Well, I know there’s a lot of case studies on the website, including some of the things you’ve already mentioned. And I’m curious between what’s on the website and things that you have seen in the time that you’ve been working on this. What are some of the ways organizations are actually addressing these issues and dealing with these misperceptions, this distrust, and really trying to flip it and really bridge divides and engage communities? You want to start us off, Doug, with that one?

Doug Hattaway: Yeah. One of my favorite examples is UnidosUS, which is the largest Latino civil rights organization in the country, who started what they called Recipe for Unity, which was getting people together who represent different groups in a local community. They did it, this program, in a number of sort of mid-size cities around the country. So there might be folks from different faith communities, different neighborhoods working on different issues, at the local level who had never met each other, and brought them together over dinner, to meet each other and to talk about the what are common sort of goals or issues that they’re addressing in the community. And so it’s very simple, but it also speaks to what all the research says is the way to counter polarization. (1) Act locally, because a lot of the division is driven by political narratives that are spread in social media and so forth, often at a national level.

Doug Hattaway: Get together face-to-face with people, not try to understand people through stuff you see online, but get together with people and listen to them with an open mind and find shared aspiration, shared goals, shared concerns. And for a long time, the social scientists showed the fastest, most direct method to bridging divides is to get people working together on a common goal. So that was a great example of a simple, straightforward approach that any organization can do. I think that’s one of the things I’d like your folks to know about this toolkit. We did it with the vantage point of: Help any organization learn from all this research and science about how to engage people in achieving their goals, no matter what those goals are. So it could be public health, and folks in public health know there’s a lot of division around public health issues since the pandemic. These will help you achieve your goals.

Farra Trompeter: Great. And what about you, Erica? Have there been any case studies or examples that you’ve seen?

Erica Pelletreau: Yeah, there are a couple of really awesome ones that look at not focusing on one issue or one community, but doing the deep bridge building that you have to do to really make sustained difference amongst communities. There are two examples that come to mind. One is the National Rifle Association, and they work in different communities, they build community, and then they leverage community for issues and for campaigns. One of the reasons they’re so successful is because they have that deep set of relationships upon which to build. Another one is Color of Change, and Color of Change was so successful doing a series of brunches, bringing people who were members of Color of Change together for a brunch where they would get to know each other. No specific ask, no hard “Sign here”, “Call there”, “Show up here or there”, but just a brunch to come together and get to know one another. And those are two examples where we see that it’s the community-building aspect that drives the actual engagement and the issue involvement. Without the community engagement, you are not going to get the kind of turnout that you need to advance your issue, whatever it might be. But those are two that, by simply diving into relationships and prioritizing the building of relationships, felt very strong bases.

Farra Trompeter: That was really helpful, Erica. And I want to ask you another question. Let’s say somebody within their organization wants to work on building trust and bridging divides. What are some questions they should ask?

Erica Pelletreau: In this series, we come up with seven steps. And within each of these seven steps, there are specific questions, specific prompts. And I think it’s important for folks to know that what Doug and I have created here isn’t a checklist. This, in fact, is a series of questions to really prompt you to think intentionally about different aspects and elements to your communications and how you think about and learn with your audiences. So we start at the very beginning, and your strategic communicators will understand this, that you need to start by being very, very clear what you’re trying to accomplish, who it is that needs to take which action to accomplish that goal. So just to start by being very clear on who your audience is, and in that, kind of, internal checking in and seeing if you’re getting it or not, also knowing who isn’t your audience. And so as you design your campaigns, to be very clear about who it is, who can take the action that you need to have happen to achieve your goal.

Erica Pelletreau: So we start with questions like that, and then we go a little deeper to the importance of listening. And kind of the difference between walking into a room with an agenda (a persuasive meeting), and actually being able to issue real invitations where you are listening with the humility to really understand what other folks may be saying to you, even if you disagree with them completely or what they may be saying may counteract what you thought they were going to say. But to really hone that skill of checking your assumptions and checking your perceptions at the door. And being able to really listen to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, to understand and think about audience, of course, in service to your goal.

Erica Pelletreau: So those are the types of questions that we have in here to get you to really think about how you’re going to, not just win your campaign, but how are you going to build trust with different peoples in different communities to be able to build a deeper infrastructure that’ll benefit all of us. We also have an interesting series of, kind of, questions and prompts around: Who are the unlikely allies? Who are the people that we often write off? Because we, for a variety of different reasons, assume they won’t be with us. But actually, really to think about and to find opportunities to have conversations with people who are your unlikely allies, people who you may not assume would be interested or supportive of what it is you’re trying to do or what you’re trying to achieve. And there are a couple of really powerful success stories of doing that, that illustrate how you can really reach across borders, reach across boundaries to find shared solidarity in ways that may not be, kind of, intuitive. Shared experiences or life viewpoints, and how you build with the unlikely allies, and being able to do it in a way that is both humble, curious, and also self-aware enough to know that you may not have all the answers. You may not be the right spokesperson. There may be a lot of other things at play here that you can kind of tap into and help orchestrate to achieve your goal with different communities and different audiences.

Farra Trompeter: Very helpful. Well, in addition to lots of questions that folks can use to ask, there are also seven steps in the framework, and I just want to jump to step six. So step six says, “Speak plainly and strategically.” Now, Big Duck helps many organizations with their organizational messaging. We also develop language guides, and every year we produce a list of words to avoid aimed at really trying to get people to eliminate jargon and question the phrases they use. Doug, what do you see as the connection between language and trust?

Doug Hattaway: That’s a great question. It’s interesting, we speak about jargon, which is really important for any organization because jargon requires translation. So, jargon is defined as language used by people in what’s called “a discourse community”. We’ve all been trained in this field, and we know what these words mean, so it’s efficient for us to use them. And anybody outside that circle, it literally sounds like a foreign language. So right there, if you’re using words other people don’t understand, you’re literally not speaking their language. And that’s step one toward distrust. I remember this from early in my career working with amazing coalition of organizations in the Florida Keys to help protect the marine ecosystem in the Florida Keys. And had a great idea to bring together a summit, bring together people who rely on the marine ecosystem for their living, like tour guides and fishermen, stuff like that, and environmental scientists who could explain, you know, the threats to the ecosystem.

Doug Hattaway: And the scientists didn’t translate any of their language, and a lot of local people felt they were being talked at or above, and it actually backfired, right? So an attempt to bring people together and learn failed because people didn’t take the time to translate jargon into everyday language that everyday people could understand, and missed the whole point. And that could be with “the community you serve”, right? You might be talking right past the people that you represent or aim to serve, much less people who might disagree with you on things. And so much language is now politicized. So, for example, diversity, equity, inclusion, very important ideas and work. The term DEI is a shorthand for that. And that’s become politicized and weaponized as a term, right? As good communicators, your audience knows, we have to stop and translate those really important ideas into language that our audience can understand. But we often don’t think about it as part of driving distrust. But if I don’t understand what you’re saying, another theory called Fluency Processing Theory says that people are more likely to trust information and ideas they understand easily. So as soon as I don’t know what you’re talking about, I trust what I’m hearing less.

Farra Trompeter: That’s helpful, and you’re reminding me of a very recent podcast we recorded back on episode 203 with Sadé Dozan called How to bridge belonging in your narratives, really looking again at that connection between language and belonging. So for folks who are interested in this topic per se, I would definitely say to listen to that, and there’s been other conversations we’ve had about messaging, but that’s really pertinent. Well, before we wrap up, I just want to ask, you know, I know this is a resource that was created by communications professionals and shared by our professional association of nonprofit communications professionals, The Communications Network, but there really is so much here beyond communications itself. I’m curious, let me start with you, Erica, who do you think this resource is for? And can you talk a little bit about the aspects of this idea of, you know, building trust, bridging divides, and particularly engaging communities? Let’s talk about that community engagement piece.

Erica Pelletreau: One of the reasons we wanted to do this and create this resource is that there are a lot of questions that happen in organizations that start with the comms team. And the comms team is often the ambassador to help organizations think about and navigate different issues internally as well as externally. So in this guide, it’s not just for comms people to go and implement for their comms campaigns, but it’s also to help equip them so that as they’re going through different conversations in their organization or in their institution, they know and understand ways that these principles can be applied. So they can be applied to policy, they can be applied to different types of advocacy, different types of engagement. They can be applied to fundraising, they can be applied to building networks of thought leadership. But the core principles that we have in here are applicable across so much of the different work that we do.

Erica Pelletreau: And one of the ways that we see it really resonate, and one of our findings as Doug and I have done this work, is that the biggest appetite for this work is for people to work in community. And so to think about what does “in community” mean? And the relationships that we want to have, that we build, that are going to be the most effective are those with the people who we, who we know who are already in community with, like, you know, “I’ve got a firefighter down the street,” or “The guy at the bodega at the corner”, or “The school teacher Miss Cindy, who sang nursery rhymes to my kids at the public library”. These are pieces of community and ways to pull them together. That’s where we find the most fertile ground to really do deep work around trust building and supporting one another.

Doug Hattaway: And building on that. We did make this for communications people to help spark conversations, but it’s not just a communications job. We’re finding senior leadership at organizations and program people–we’ve talked with lots of foundations and programming officers–are seeing, like, informing their thinking about the programs and designing programs. And one of the things you’ll see if you go to the website and check it out, if you can adopt some of this, you’re going to reach more people, engage more people in achieving your mission. That’s to me, back to the bottom line of this: “Why would I use this, as a busy communications person at a nonprofit that’s like struggling to raise money and all deal with all this stuff?” Because this will help you do those things. And I would sort of end on a positive note down those lines. Research we’ve done at Hattaway Communications and others show there’s a big opportunity here. In our studies, we see record numbers of people saying that they, it’s very important to them personally to make a positive difference in the world, right now. 76% of Americans we’ve surveyed said they want to increase volunteering and donating, and 70% told us they feel a responsibility to connect with others who are different from them. So think about your organization offering opportunities for people to do things like that, which they actually say they want to do.

Farra Trompeter: Well, I do hope people go visit the website and check out this amazing resource. Again, it’s available at TrustPlaybook.org. You can also connect with Doug Hattaway and Erica Pelletreau on LinkedIn. We will be sure to link to their profiles and all of this in the show notes at bigduck.com/insights. But before we go, Doug and Erica, any last words or ideas you’d like to share, or you want to make sure people take away from this conversation? Why don’t you start us off, Doug?

Doug Hattaway: I would say, sort of the big takeaway for me, is getting people together locally to help solve problems that your organization is trying to solve and then telling that story, right? We call that strategic storytelling. Using your communications resource to shine a light on the people who are coming together, particularly those coming together across sort of different boundaries or divides, to work on something together locally. That is what this country needs. People need hope that it’s possible and need to know they can help. So, that kind of storytelling can be really powerful for your organization.

Erica Pelletreau: I’ll build on that a sec, Doug, because you’re absolutely right. To put it back into the research for a second, like, we know that Americans are aspirational people, like, we have hope, we do want to work together, believe in a future. And we know that comms folks are storytellers. So one of the steps in the guide is to really do storytelling based on who the problem solvers are. Give your audience examples of people who have adopted your issue, who may have even gone through a change, who were not in favor and then switched and became in favor of your issue. Tell that journey, that arc as a storyteller, and that resonates so powerfully because it’s the one-on-one of a person’s individual story. But it also helps fill a need that we have as people in this country to connect with each other and to see and understand each other’s journeys. So I would just encourage all your storytellers out there to, to hold that tightly. Give us the aspirational stories. Show us the folks who’ve made a difference. Make us believe that we can do it, too.

Farra Trompeter: Love it. Well, everyone, I hope you do check out the resource. Doug and Erica, thank you so much for being here today, and for all you out there listening, keep hope alive. Thanks, everyone.