Talk to anyone who teaches leadership skills and what makes a leader a good leader and the word “trust” is always at or near the top of the list.
When it comes to the importance of trust, it’s true in everything from parenting to politics. And it’s also true, and sometimes uniquely true in business.
Especially when your business has to do with social media and the internet.
That’s why the folks at Facebook are probably worried about what a new poll is saying about trust.
Reuters has released the results of a poll that found fewer Americans trust Facebook to obey US privacy laws.
The poll found well under half of Americans say they trust Facebook to protect people’s personal information with only 41 percent of those asked in this poll about how much they trust Facebook.
That compares with 66 percent who said they trust Amazon, 62 percent who trust Google, 60 percent for Microsoft and almost 50 percent for Yahoo.
So it’s no surprise that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several big newspapers to apologize for his company's role in the data scandal involving the political research firm, Cambridge Analytica.
Says Zuckerberg: "This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to ensure this doesn't happen again.”
His apology may not be enough to stave off growing talk in Congress by both Democrats and Republicans about creating new laws that regulate Facebook and how they do what they do even if they don’t “like”it.