Margaret Thatcher once said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

The same holds for being trustworthy or authentic. If you have to claim it, you’re not it.  And if your organization is holding meetings about how to “sound more authentic,” you’re trying to put a monkey in a suit and expecting it to chair the board meeting.

Trust isn’t declared. It’s inferred from patterns of behavior.  And every behavioral scientist worth their salt will tell you: people don’t believe signals that are cheap to fake.  Research backs it up.  Public companies that talk the most about “trust” and “integrity” in their annual 10-K filings are:

• viewed more suspiciously by investors,

• more likely to be investigated by the SEC,

• charged higher audit fees, and

• rated lower in Corporate Social Responsibility.

In other words, the louder you claim virtue, the less anyone buys it and it’s not just corporates, the same tone-deaf phrasing lives in our sector.  These are real examples:

“Integrity is at the heart of everything we do. We uphold honesty and ethical practices in all our relationships, ensuring trust, mutual respect, and long-term collaboration with our stakeholders”

“Integrity — Honesty, justice, and consistency in all relationships.”

“We commit to compassionate, safe and reliable practices … We stand in solidarity … We hold ourselves accountable … We pursue authenticity with humility and simplicity.”“We value your trust.”

These moral/ethical terms proliferate in “About Us,” and “Mission / Values,” or “Ethics / Governance” pages and are almost always unqualified and that vagueness is what makes virtue claims cheap to make and hard to defend.  It’s using moral identity language rather than showing behavior, metrics, exceptions, or transparency about failures. Claims without the tough edges are suspect.

To misquote Shakespeare: the brand doth claim too much, methinks.  The behavioral truth is simple:

• Trust is a byproduct, not a message.

• Authenticity is earned by consistency, not declared by committee.

• Credibility is costly, it lives in what you do that would be hard for a phony to fake.

So if your brand has to tell people it’s trustworthy, it isn’t.  And if you’re still wordsmithing your way there, you’re fixing the wrong thing.

Kevin