Why communities fail to build trust

I once worked with a team that was, quite frankly, toxic. The same two team members routinely derailed meeting agendas. Eye-rolling was a primary form of communication. Side conversations overtook the official discussion. Most members had disengaged, emotionally checking out while physically present. Trust was nonexistent. This wasn't just unpleasant—it was preventing meaningful work from happening. The transformation began with a deceptively simple intervention: establishing clear community agreements. Not generic "respect each other" platitudes, but specific behavioral norms with concrete descriptions of what they looked like in practice. The team agreed to norms like "Listen to understand," "Speak your truth without blame or judgment," and "Be unattached to outcome." For each norm, we articulated exactly what it looked like in action, providing language and behaviors everyone could recognize. More importantly, we implemented structures to uphold these agreements. A "process observer" role was established, rotating among team members, with the explicit responsibility to name when norms were being upheld or broken during meetings. Initially, this felt awkward. When the process observer first said, "I notice we're interrupting each other, which doesn't align with our agreement to listen fully," the room went silent. But within weeks, team members began to self-regulate, sometimes even catching themselves mid-sentence. Trust didn't build overnight. It grew through consistent small actions that demonstrated reliability and integrity—keeping commitments, following through on tasks, acknowledging mistakes. Meeting time was protected and focused on meaningful work rather than administrative tasks that could be handled via email. The team began to practice active listening techniques, learning to paraphrase each other's ideas before responding. This simple practice dramatically shifted the quality of conversation. One team member later told me, "For the first time, I felt like people were actually trying to understand my perspective rather than waiting for their turn to speak." Six months later, the transformation was remarkable. The same team that once couldn't agree on a meeting agenda was collaboratively designing innovative approaches to their work. Conflicts still emerged, but they were about ideas rather than personalities, and they led to better solutions rather than deeper divisions. The lesson was clear: trust doesn't simply happen through team-building exercises or shared experiences. It must be intentionally cultivated through concrete practices, consistently upheld, and regularly reflected upon. Share one trust-building practice that's worked well in your team experience. P.S. If you’re a leader, I recommend checking out my free challenge: The Resilient Leader: 28 Days to Thrive in Uncertainty  https://lnkd.in/gxBnKQ8n

I asked a funder: “Do you know the names of the people your funding goes to help?” She paused. Then answered: “Not personally. We believe in trust-based philanthropy, so we focus on investing in good organizations.” I followed up: “How do you make sure your funding is solving issues and aligned with the core needs of the community?" Her response: “These problems won’t be solved in my lifetime. The best we can do is fund good organizations and ask them to share their impacts.” Her answer was honest — and not uncommon. But it reveals a key gap: Many funders have priorities, but no strategy that will lead to the type of transformational change our communities need. They move money, but not in coordination. They care about outcomes, but rarely track whether their dollars actually produce them, especially for those most impacted. This isn’t about bad intentions. It’s about an ineffective system we’ve come to accept — where funding flows, but often without a community-wide vision, strategy, or connection to the people it’s meant to serve. Let me be clear: This is not a bad person. This is a good person operating in a broken system, with an approach that won’t work. A system that teaches us to fund programs, not people. To trust process over proximity. To aim for comfort over coordination. To give up on change before we’ve even tried. I’ve been in rooms where hundreds of millions of dollars were being allocated to fight poverty. And I’ve walked away heartbroken. Because too often: → Funders make decisions in isolation, without a comprehensive plan for creating impact  → Nonprofits compete instead of collaborate  → Community voices are completely left out of strategy and funding decisions  → Everyone works in silos while the root problems persist It doesn’t have to stay this way. There’s a better way to fund — one that builds power, not just programs. Here’s what it looks like: 1. Map the ecosystem – Who’s already doing the work?  2. Understand the relationships – Where are the gaps, overlaps, and invisible power lines?  3. Align the strategy – What does shared success look like?  4. Build together – Not around brands or boards, but around impact. This is how we've helped organizations like the Kansas Health Foundation and the Southern Communities Initiative — helping them map the players, align efforts, and center community voice in funding decisions. Until someone maps the field and calls the plays, we’re all running in our own corners — while the people we claim to serve continue to struggle in the middle. You care. I see it in every grant you make and every hour you put in. But care alone isn’t enough. It takes coordination. It takes strategy. It takes courage to lead differently. When funding is aligned, communities don’t just survive — they build, own, and lead. That’s what it takes to move from charity to transformation. That’s what it looks like to fund liberation, not just effort.

The first session of our Candid Discussions on Resource-Based Development was a rare, refreshingly honest exploration of why resource-based development remains elusive, why avoidable disputes so often materialize—and what we need to do differently. These were some of my own personal take-aways: 💥 A deal that’s “too good” isn’t sustainable. Whether heavily favoring investors or states, asymmetric deals prove politically or economically untenable. Negotiators are incentivized to get the best deal at the time rather than the most durable for decades-long projects. That mismatch becomes combustible when market conditions or political leadership inevitably change. ⚖️  Impacts and benefits fall on different shoulders. Those who live with the environmental and social impacts of mining projects are often not the ones receiving the benefits—and those impacted communities are internally diverse among themselves. Cost-benefit analyses and legal frameworks often ignore this misalignment. 📉 The promise of transformational revenue is rarely met. Very often, mining projects have failed to deliver the fiscal windfalls governments expected. Optimism at the outset routinely outpaces financial reality, leading to disaffection. 🚨 The system is built for escalation, not resolution. Existing legal frameworks—whether under contracts or treaties—tend to push parties quickly into adversarial stances, rather than encouraging sustained dialogue. In the absence of structured, incremental mechanisms to revisit and resolve disputes, companies often resort to the threat—or use—of international arbitration. Once that line is crossed, battle lines harden and the stakes become existential, with multi-billion dollar claims jeopardizing both national budgets and project continuity. ❤️🩹 The trust gap must be acknowledged. Decades of unmet expectations, social and environmental harms, and opaque decision-making have eroded trust among communities, governments, and companies alike. Rebuilding that trust is possible—but only if it’s done honestly, and only if the underlying causes of mistrust are meaningfully addressed. 🔁 Social license is not a box to tick. It must be renewed over time—through genuine, continuous engagement—not assumed based on early consultation rounds that quickly fade from memory. 🧩 We still haven’t built lasting capacity. Despite years of technical support and training, capacity within governments remains fragile—because the systems are complex, the support often short-term, and the people constantly changing. I strongly recommend watching the robust discussion, posted here: https://lnkd.in/eFDZYp4i. This discussion seeded some critical ideas, not often discussed. Now we need to build on them. Thank you so much Todd Clewett Scot Anderson Vanessa Rivas Plata Saldarriaga Nneoma Veronica Nwogu Christophe Bondy Next session in the Candid Discussions series is April 30! (info at the same link) Please add your reflections below! 👇

“You Can’t Solve What You Don’t Understand: Addressing the Root Causes of the Protracted Farmer-Herder Conflict in Benue and Plateau”- Idris Mohammed You cannot address a conflict effectively if you don’t understand its roots. That remains the central problem with the persistent cycles of violence in places like Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, and other northern Nigerian states. Banditry and farmer-herder tensions are often approached with ready-made solutions that ignore the layers of history, grievances, and local realities. Too many actors jump in with assumptions, not insight—and that’s why we keep seeing reprisals and recurring attacks. I have spent years working on these issues across the region. One pattern I have seen, particularly during my recent presentation at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC, is that many interventions are reactive rather than grounded in long-term community-based dialogue. I assessed some interventions including a three-year study in Benue, Nasarawa, and Plateau showed clearly, where mediation fails, it often fails because those facilitating it are not perceived as neutral. Without trust, there is no dialogue. Without dialogue, there is no peace. What is worse is that some interventions unintentionally harm the very communities they claim to support. These are places where people live with decades of trauma, growing ethnic and religious suspicion, and rising economic hardship. The dynamics today are far more complex than they were ten years ago. I have shared before the lessons we learned in Plateau, Katsina, and Zamfara—where genuine dialogue happened only when local actors were involved as partners, not just as beneficiaries. But even there, progress is fragile. So I ask: Who is defining these solutions, and for whom? Why are those most affected by the conflict still left out of the decision-making rooms? What does “participation” really mean when peace processes are led by outsiders or politicized actors? How do we ensure neutrality in a landscape where every actor is viewed with suspicion? There is no shortcut here. Conflicts that took decades to fester cannot be solved in a few weeks. We need to stop rushing for outcomes and start building processes, slow, inclusive, and locally grounded ones. That means not only listening to communities but involving them directly in designing, leading, and monitoring peace interventions. Until then, we are not solving the problem, we are just circling around it.

TRUST IS THE ROOT ISSUE IN POLICING‼️ Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with and interview a select group of active police chiefs. I was impressed by their generosity with time and their willingness to open up about the challenges they face. I wanted to dig into two of the most pressing issues in policing today: 1. Community relationships 2. Officer retention Most acknowledged they were experiencing poor or negative results in both areas. So I pressed further. I asked why they thought the outcomes were so negative. Their answers came quickly—almost rehearsed. Why does the public struggle to trust the police? • Inconsistent performance • Lack of transparency • unfocused strategies • Media and politics Why are so many good officers leaving the profession? • overwhelming workload • Low pay and benefits • Constant politics/media • Lack of training and career growth Do those answers have truth? Yes. But here’s the problem—none of them actually pointed to the root cause. And without naming the root cause, we can’t create solutions that stick. The real issue is a lack of trust. The public doesn’t trust us because performance is inconsistent and leadership is reactive. Officers don’t trust their own organizations because most are being managed—not led. And there’s a massive difference. When we “chunk up” and ask better questions, the solutions become clearer. The path forward is about rebuilding trust on two fronts: 1. Community trust: Deliver professional, high-level service through well-trained officers led in an elite way—not in an average way. The public doesn’t want slogans or BBQs. They want excellence and consistency. 2. Officer trust: Leaders must actually lead, not just manage. Officers are A Different Breed. They are servant leaders by nature, not employees to be herded. Chiefs must stop acting like business managers wearing a uniform. A chief is still a cop—and when they lead like one, officers will recognize it. This is about building a total team concept—from top to bottom, for ALL. When leaders invest in people first, trust grows. When trust grows, performance improves. When performance improves, retention stabilizes, and the community begins to believe again. The bottom line: trust is the foundation. Without it, you have politics and excuses. With it, you have culture, performance, and purpose. The question is—are today’s police executives ready to stop managing and start leading? #ADBNation #ADifferentBreed #GuardianCulture #LawEnforcementLeadership #PoliceCulture #CommandAccountability #LeadFromTheFront

I had a revealing conversation this week that perfectly captures why we're often spinning our wheels in the anti-trafficking movement. Leaders of an Enhanced Collaborative Model task force shared the same frustrations I've encountered across the country: ❌ "Reporting takes so much time." ❌ "We can't require partners to collect data." ❌ "Everyone's protective of their information." ❌ "We don't know what we can legally share." ❌ "We lack the systems to analyze what we have." Sound familiar? Allies Against Slavery learned that these aren't just data problems - they're symptoms of deeper issues in how we approach collaboration: 1. Trust Gap When partners won't share data, they're really saying "I don't trust you." Whether it's fear of misuse, concern about privacy, or protecting turf - the root cause is almost always trust. And you can't mandate trust through MOUs. 2. Leadership Gap Most task forces are led by people amazing at their day jobs (investigators, service providers, prosecutors) but who lack experience in data governance, measurement, and analysis. We're setting them up to fail. 3. Technology Gap We expect task forces to transform complex systems and gather data without giving them real authority or the right tools/technology. Then we're surprised when they can't deliver sophisticated data analysis and reporting. I don't have all of the answers. But this is something I've thought a lot about. In fact, I wrote a chapter for a new book by Kirsta Leeburg Melton, JD about building effective collaboratives. (You should check out the book, aimed primarily at helping law enforcement stakeholders and service providers work together to build better cases! Link to book in comments below.) What if instead of being stuck in this endless cycle, every coalition and task force in the country had: • Consistent measures of trafficking • Secure systems for data sharing • Analytical tools to derive insights • Platforms to turn data into action • Feedback on what's working • Trust to collaborate deeply The technology exists. The frameworks exist. The knowledge exists. What's missing is the will to move past "the way we've always done it" and real leadership from the top. I'm tired of watching passionate people burn out trying to solve complex problems with inadequate tools. We can do better. If you're ready to build something different - something that actually works - let's talk. The solutions exist. We just need the courage to use them and the leadership to move toward action. If you run a collaborative group or task force, what promising practices have you seen around data collection? Drop a comment below 👇 #HumanTrafficking #CollectiveImpact #Data #SystemsChange