Building trust and informed decision-making are the ultimate aims of our engagement practice.
In 2026, the Edelman Trust Barometer reports that Australia’s trust in institutions has risen, outperforming other developed economies. However, the not so good news is that this increase masks widening gaps across mindset, income and worldviews.
Last year there was a descent into grievance, with sixty percent of respondents telling us they felt business and government actions harmed them, served the interests of only some, and that the system unfairly favoured the loudest voices.
Today our mindset has pulled back from alarm and anger into the hard shell of insularity.
Seventy percent of respondents across 28 nations are now hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who has different values, information sources, approaches to societal problems, or backgrounds than them. This majority holds across income levels, gender, age groups, and developed markets.
Trust is now local and in my social circle. We’re moving deeper into the ‘what’s in it for me’ (WIFM) over common advancement, the ‘we’.
Some of this is not new, it’s compounded over time with COVID-19 breeding doubt about government edicts and scepticism about science, and the current geopolitical tensions leading to nationalism and a reorientation of trade flows.
So how do we get cut through in our engagement with stakeholders and community in the year ahead?
Shift the Insular Mindset
We are becoming inflexible, intolerant, and incoherent in our cocoons.
Distrust is the default instinct and asks the question: Do I trust my neighbour if they hold these different beliefs?
Countering this insularity requires us to look to visible members of the community such as doctors, community champions and elders to partner with us to drive conversations and potentially overcome a narrowing of opinion.
Lived experience also needs to play a greater role in providing the narrative to the baseline data in order to give way to a belief in the future.
Overcome Conversation and Compromise Withdrawal
We’re opting for the safety of the familiar over the perceived risk of innovation or change.
Consistently making our engagement activities accessible to communities, young people and those harder to reach brings greater diversity into our conversations.
Tailoring messengers to the audience further build engagement. Overall, the most trusted sources are informal and identity-based: “friends and family” and “people like me.”
Approaches such as kitchen table conversations can help with kick starting some of these conversations. These informal small-group gatherings – often around someone’s kitchen table, at a local café, or even virtually – provide a safe environment where you can explore a particular issue. People speak more freely and openly in these familiar, low-pressure environments often led by trusted community members, which helps conversations reach deeper into community networks and the values that drive them.
Provide Clarity Amid AI Disruption
We have two challenges of economic uncertainty and rapid AI adoption driving anxiety, particularly among lower-income groups.
AI needs to be recognised as a tool. As such, we need to upskill and close the gap for everyone in how to apply AI to our everyday. It also asks us to continue to question: How good is the advice? Is it trustworthy? What’s the source?
Clarity comes from iterations based on feedback and outcomes. You don’t have to get it right the first time, you need to keep pace and momentum and get it right over time.
Value will come from how well you allocate the tools, methods and systems. Our engagement recognises that technology is powerful, but our wisdom still matters more.
Upgrading our thinking by keeping things simple, succinct and consistent while sticking to the facts predicts trust across audiences and gives us leverage.
So Where to Now?
We need to rethink how we actively broker trust across these differences in order to sustain long-term social confidence in our engagement practice and approaches – as well as our communities.
Rather than trying to change people, facilitation can help surface the common interests of insulated parties and opposing views by translating their needs, goals, and realities for one another into a tangible spectrum of action.
Finding and committing to alternate methods of engaging beyond the more traditional surveys can generate the innovation we often talk about but rarely implement.
But above all, our engagement has to be clear upfront about what we can do, where we will focus our attention and how we will reconcile the rest.
Resources to Support Your Engagement
- Engagement Methods Tool
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Engagement Principles and Guidelines
- Quality Assurance Standard
References
- AICD Australia defies global trust trends
- McKinnon’s Democratic Dashboard
- Who do we trust on climate change, and why?
Submitted by Gabrielle Martinovich, Engagement Institute trainer, Director at CreativePivot, NSW and member of the Engagement Institute Environment and Sustainability Community of Practice.
