WATCH: 3 ways to strengthen trust in the comms function

Trust is one of the most cited goals in communications, but it’s also one of the least precisely defined. You’re asked to build, protect and restore it. It’s measured in engagement surveys and after crises. But pinpointing where and how it shows up is often tricky. The Edelman Trust Barometer only goes so far.

The most effective comms leaders focus less on measuring trust directly and instead measure the conditions and outcomes that make trust possible in the first place.

The following clips from recent Ragan Training lessons show a sample of the different dimensions where trust can show up: how it surfaces in moments of data-driven storytelling, verifying AI outputs and managing crises.

Strengthening trust in comms through data-driven storytelling

When comms starts measuring with business goals in mind, you send leaders the signal that you understand what your organization is trying to achieve by measuring against it. This builds trust by showing that comms is aligning with the outcomes the business actually cares about.

In this clip from Ragan Training’s “Data-Driven Storytelling: From Output to Impact” module, Meaghan Baumwald, senior director of internal communications at XPO, walks through her five-part approach to creating KPIs that connect communication efforts to meaningful business outcomes.

This approach helps communicators move from reporting activity to demonstrating value, growing trust and credibility with leaders in the process.

Strengthening trust in AI adoption through a ‘trust and verify’ process

In an age hen AI adoption among your employee base greatly minimizes risk and drives the organizational transformation decision-makers are pushing, many communicators still struggle with a process for empowering employees trust and verify their AI outputs.

In this clip from Ragan Training’s 2025 Future of Communications Conference, Mark Cearley, global managing director, future of work at FleishmanHillard, shares his practical three-step “trust and verify” process for using AI responsibly in communications.

As AI becomes more embedded in daily communications work, the risk isn’t just efficiency, but accuracy, credibility, and judgment. Cearley outlines a simple, human-centered framework communicators can use to validate AI-generated content before it goes live.

Strengthening trust with internal and external stakeholders during a crisis

When comms can reframe crisis management as a system of relationships and readiness, the foundations of trust are established outright. More than just a reactive playbook, a sound crisis management strategy engineers stability, foresight and internal credibility by building trust through early signal detection, respect for internal champions as primary stakeholders, and acknowledging the fragility of trust in this age of misinformation.

In this clip from Ragan Training’s “Strengthening Your Crisis Management House of Cards” module, Lee Gordon, CCO at The Brunswick Corporation, introduces a powerful model for understanding how crises form, escalate and collapse when the foundational elements of trust are ignored.

This framework helps communicators understand crisis management as an interconnected system where every decision, relationship and signal either strengthens trust in the response or destabilizes it.

Strengthening trust through training

While none of these videos offer a tidy trust score or a silver-bullet framework, they demonstrate how dedicated comms training provides a clearer view of the comms-driven signals, decisions and dynamics that build trust long before it shows up in a survey.

Check out these three lessons on Ragan Training, and if you’re not already a member, join today!