Botsman: Traditional institutions face trust crisis due to top-down design
Rachel Botsman · Build stronger trust on your teams (author Rachel Botsman) | Masters of Scale · Sep 26, 2025 · at 2:36
Trust researcher Rachel Botsman analyzes why trust in traditional institutional hierarchies is collapsing.
0:00 / 0:31exact quote · 31.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Trust is in crisis in traditional institutions. We all know that, but the reason why it's in crisis when you separate our individual characters is because many of those systems and many of those structures have a design problem when it comes to trust in that they were built like pyramids. They're very top down. They're very, very hierarchical. They think of power in this like over form, and that is not how human beings relate anymore.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rachel Botsman
Botsman: Gen Z trusts information based on emotion, not source credibility
“And the thing that has changed is that they are now forming opinions or arguments based on how they feel in that moment. It's not to do with what's being said or who's being said. It's based on how it makes them feel.”
Botsman: AI shifts technological trust from capability to human character traits
“For such a long period of history, we've trusted the technology to do something. And now we're testing, trusting technology to decide something and to create something. And the reason why this is so important for entrepreneurs and designers and business leader…”
Botsman: AI excels at cognitive empathy because it avoids emotional overwhelm
“So the fact that it can't absorb emotions, that it doesn't get flooded, allows it to be empathetic in a way that humans can't, like whether you're a therapist or whether you're a doctor. And the interesting question is whether, where it stops. So it's really g…”
Botsman: No platform has figured out how to signal trustworthy information
“What no one has figured out is how do you really signal trustworthy information?”