Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

What do we mean by ESG? 

Investopedia offers this summary: Environmental criteria consider how a company safeguards the environment, including corporate policies addressing climate change, for example. Social criteria examine how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and the communities where it operates. Governance deals with a company’s leadership, executive pay, audits, internal controls, and shareholder rights. The conversations around the role of “S” (how companies treat their stakeholders) and “G” (how they are governed) have recently come into focus and for good reason.

What do we mean by a “trust deficit.”

At Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) we consider trust as the “outcome of principled behavior.” If the principled behaviors are absent, a trust deficit is created.

What is Causing the ESG Trust Deficit? 

Reading the current headlines one might concluded that the ESG trust deficit is “all political.” That one side wants ESG and the other does not, and so one group is “right” and the other is “wrong.” But while politicizing ESG may be convenient for some, blaming politics ignores the root causes of the trust deficit (the behavioral ones), and they are plentiful.

The Employee Perspective

According to the Public Affairs Council members of the public don’t trust corporate CEOs as much as they trust the companies these CEOs lead: 47% place a lot of trust or some trust in major companies to behave ethically but give CEOs poor marks in this area. Only 7% believe CEOs to have high standards for honesty and ethics, and almost half (47%) believe their standards are low. October 2020

And Gallup recently reported that low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion or 9% of global GDP.

The Sustainability Perspective

Elaine Cohen, a leading global voice in sustainability and reporting offers the following:

For me, the ESG Trust Deficit shows up as publicly stating a commitment to ESG but not following through with actions:

• inconsistencies between what the company talks about in its (financial) annual report and its sustainability report
• lack of integration of ESG as part of the business strategy
• lack of clear ESG targets and transparent report of progress against targets while declaring a strategic approach to ESG or sustainability
• lack of understanding of the financial implications of ESG impacts
• public commitment but poor performance against commitments
• lack of Board understanding or and visibility on sustainability matters
• lack of accountability for Board members for ESG matters

The Governance Perspective

Lawrence A. Cunningham an authority on corporate governance, corporate culture, and corporate law has this to say: The traditional “G” in ESG refers to allocation of corporate power among and between directors, officers and shareholders. The “E & S” (and now the “P” for political) is a nouveau addition addressing allocations of corporate power to other constituencies as well, especially fellow citizens, employees, and customers. Among the pairs between traditional governance and nouveau ESP some are (1) mutually compatible in theory (so both can possibly be implemented without necessarily compromising), (2) mutually exclusive and (3) mutually compatible in theory but often not in practice (the nouveau ES focus crowds out traditional G priorities).  The related classifications in the following infographic are subjective judgment rather than scientific truth but they illuminate the changing landscape and stakes.  

What does this chart reveal about the role and value of trust? Walking through the exercise and sensing the variability and uncertainty of the practices and priorities will likely raise questions for many readers about the compatibility of the nouveau ESP practices with fundamental notions of trust.

The Leadership Perspective

Finally, Barton (Bart) Alexander who has worked to effect positive change from senior executive positions within government, Fortune 500 corporations and NGOs weighs in on a third cause of the ESG trust deficit.

The longstanding cycles of labeling and then criticism of the labeling are just in another phase. We used to have corporate citizenship, then corporate responsibility, then shared value, then ESG, then purpose.  Each creation of the “new framework” says the old one is misdirected and incomplete.  Even governance for a long time was just about the basics of transparency and accountability.  In one of the current cycles, we have ESG being criticized as PR oriented, then Woke, and now we have green hushing as much as green washing.  

Companies are challenged to meet investor expectations amidst pressure to adhere to environmental and social imperatives. Taking a stand exposes them to accusations from both sides — being too slow and prioritizing “woke” issues over profits. 

In conclusion, thriving companies adhere to sound business strategies, without succumbing to polarized debates. Their sustained success depends not only on short-term profits, but on building value for all of their stakeholders, starting with their employees.  They need not exaggerate nor hide what they are doing — their results speak for themselves. Senior executives who make principled behavior a priority tend not to “take stands” or make bold claims via corporate communications about their purpose or the organization’s positive environmental and social programs. Instead they simply choose to do the right thing without much fanfare.

For Trust AcrossAmerica-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) this is not a new revelation. When we built our FACTS® Framework over ten years ago to evaluate the trustworthiness of public companies, we recognized the need to create a holistic model of principled organizational behavior that gave equal weight to the E, S and G. This was long before ESG became a “household name.” The FACTS® Framework is an acronym that includes five drivers or indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Read more at the link.

One solution to the ESG Trust Deficit: Our Trust 200 Index

TAA-TAW maintains an index of our FACTS® Top 200 most trustworthy public companies. The Index is updated daily. The twelve year performance against two benchmarks (iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD) and SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) ETF) is shown below (as of August 3, 2023) and the results speak for themselves. Over time the most trustworthy companies outperform.

Why? The best leaders create long term value through principled behavior which builds trust instead of breaking it. They know it begins with integrity which enables trustworthy leaders to attract and retain top talent who then willingly owns and model the values flowing from the top. These values then organically tend to extend to all stakeholders. Said another way, trust is built over time and in incremental steps by the actions of trustworthy leaders, not through weak or politicized ESG “programming” or “talk.” The public has watched these misdirected messages backfire time and again, resulting in an accelerating erosion of trust. And this is why the ESG trust deficit exists.

The trustworthiness of an organization is determined equally by its environmental, social and governance structure and practices, incorporating not only shareholder interests but those of other stakeholders as well, beginning with employees. ESG programs don’t create or fix trust, but principled behavior will do both.

More information on TAA-TAW can be found at www.trustacrossamerica.com

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an author, speaker, product developer and global subject matter expert on trust and trustworthiness. Founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World she is author of the award-winning Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust and Trust Inc., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. She majored in International Affairs (Lafayette College), and has an MBA (Baruch- City University of NY). Her expertise on trust has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.

FROM THE SUMMER ISSUE OF TRUST! MAGAZINE trustacrossamerica.com/magazine.shtml

Last week we published the summer issue of TRUST! Magazine. It includes 14 essays on our current ” state of trust.” These are some thoughts from the authors.

Trust in Turbulent Times: Interestingly, the etymology of “trust” is rooted in old Norse and English words meaning “strength” or “to make safe and strong.” In times like these, we crave leaders who will keep us safe and make us strong. Bart Alexander

The Formula for Building Trust: If it feels like your world isn’t going ‘round right now, or it’s going slower than you’d like, I recommend looking at trust first. The reality is, that low trust is almost always the root of the problem — or the most impeding barrier to the solution. Stephen M.R. Covey

Trust & Commerce: Trustworthiness is a vital component of every corporate interaction. It is the lubrication of commerce. Without trust in the organization, the company will ultimately cease functioning effectively or efficiently. Dr. James Gregory

The Trust Landscape: Couple decreasing trust with what we know about what we do when we distrust others and we have the makings of a slow-moving disaster. Unless we start turning this ship around we will see diminishing cooperation with increasing polarization, more balkanization in politics and society, less willingness to talk things out as people pull back from those they distrust. Charles Feltman

The Business Case for Trust: Contrary to what many executives are lead to believe, trust is not a “soft” skill. In fact in today’s challenging business environment it may mean the difference between survival and failure. Barbara Brooks Kimmel

The Margin of Trust: America’s corporate governance systems also make it difficult for boards to set the tone of a trust-based corporate culture. In the name of “accountability,” the system has veered from principles and tailored approaches towards mandatory rules and standardized practices for all. Lawrence A. Cunningham

Risk & Trust: Things go wrong when institutional trust is based on rules intended to rein in personal freedom and autonomy, implying that forced compliance creates more institutional trust than the personal trust it displaces. This way of thinking usually doesn’t end well. Charles H. Green

Trust & Governance: The smooth functioning of an organization therefore relies on an assumption of regularity. That, in turn, relies on two “trust” factors. First, that the people involved can trust each other and, second, that the corporate governance system itself is trustworthy. Jon Lukomnik & Rick Funston 

Ethical Leadership & Trust: Most core values are a set of ideas thought up on a management golf outing, brought in on the back of a clubhouse napkin, then printed and posted without another word being spoken. The values and ideals of a business are what employees and others bring to work every day. James Lukaszewski

Sustainability Reporting & Trust: If trust is the purpose, then what you intend to do is as relevant as what you have done. Publicly committing to multi-year targets is a must for credible sustainability reporting. Elaine Cohen

Trust in Healthcare: Lack of trust creates a situation that creates the propensity to misinformation. At the same time, misinformation can create a negative trust reset. Jan Berger

Technology & Trust: As of November 2022, we have over 8 billion people sharing our precious planet earth. It makes sense to continue debating and researching trust between humans both individually and organizationally. At the same time, we urgently need to focus on the trustworthiness of technology. Our very survival as a species may depend on it. Helen Gould

Trust in Media: Ultimately what’s needed is changing the culture of how news is produced and what journalists are expected to do on a regular basis. We are talking about updating a system that, when you look at the format and expectations, hasn’t evolved since it started. Lynn Walsh

Trusting Artificial Intelligence: While Chat GPT may have the potential to revolutionize industries, the response to my original question reads like a primer on trust research with little to no information on trust in practice. Barbara Brooks Kimmel

Business leaders are constrained by the number of hours in the day, competing demands, and how they choose to prioritize their time. Sadly many spend a large percentage of their day reacting to crises and extinguishing fires. This is lost time that could be better allocated to proactively building their brand.

From our research over 15+ years we know that trustworthy organizations make for good business and are less risky, yet the majority of leaders do not embrace the long-term benefits of trust. If they did, some of their time would be freed up for more worthwhile pursuits.  If you are a leader and this sounds remotely interesting to you, start by asking yourself these ten questions.

Ten Questions For Leaders Seeking to Build Trustworthy Organizations

1. Have I acknowledged or ignored the business case for trust?
2. Am I personally trustworthy? Does trust matter to me as an individual or in my professional life?
3. Is trust mentioned in our mission/vision statement or corporate credo? If not, why not?
4. Do all stakeholders view me as trustworthy? Have I asked?
5. Do I speak about the importance of trust on a regular basis?
6. Do I engage my employees in discussions about trust?
7. Do I own and model trust building behaviors? Am I transparent, accountable, respectful?
8. Do I celebrate achievements? Do I allow mistakes?
9. Do I have a trust tracking mechanism in place?
10. Have I budgeted for trust building programs?

What other questions should leaders be asking themselves in pursuit of building trustworthy organizations?  Leave a comment.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an author, speaker, product developer and global subject matter expert on trust and trustworthiness. Founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World she is author of the award-winning Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust and Trust Inc., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. She majored in International Affairs (Lafayette College), and has an MBA (Baruch- City University of NY). Her expertise on trust has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.

. 

By Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Founder Trust Across America-Trust Around the World

Early in 2020 several members of our Trust Alliance convened around the topic:

Trust Lessons from Working Remotely

At the time many of us had only been working remotely for several weeks, while for others, this had been their norm for years. Dozens of excellent insights were offered during the session and they are divided into three categories. 

The Good

• Trust is foundational regardless of whether people are working face to face or remotely.

• Trust is the ultimate collaboration tool.

• Leaders who invested in learning the language and creating a foundation of trust have a competitive advantage in our current environment. Kudos to them for addressing trust before a crisis.

• Some employees may be more efficient working on their own schedule instead of on a time- clock, and with less micromanagement. Some interesting work-from-home data is contained in this article. www.fundera.com/resources/working-from-home-statistics

• The current pandemic environment represents a rare and unique opportunity for managers to work on trust building behaviors like accountability, openness and respect. It’s also a great time to be relying less on email and more on verbal communication.

• In all levels of society we are learning that facing challenges and solving problems are simplified when trust is amplified.

The Bad

• Adding more technology options does not build trust, nor is it a substitute for trust. Trust is interpersonal. It develops over time and builds in incremental steps through principled behavior.

• If trust was lacking in the office before the pandemic, this deficiency will be amplified with employees working remotely.

• If people are more productive working remotely, managers MUST ask themselves why.

• Employees who were disengaged pre-crisis (the majority according to Gallup) will most likely be even more disengaged now.

• Some people are finding that the 5 day work week has become a 7 day week and don’t know when to end their workday. In other words, work/life balance can suffer in some cases.

The Ugly

• Nothing busts employee trust faster than a layoff (some countries have laws prohibiting layoffs.) With so many alternatives, leaders who were the earliest to press the downsize button may be last to fill vacancies with qualified employees when they need them again. These companies will be viewed by good talent as too risky and certainly not employee centric. In fact, decline in profitability, employee performance and even bankruptcies are all too common when layoffs are the solution of choice.

• Many view fear as the opposite of trust and when leaders do nothing to allay the fears of their employees and other stakeholders during a time of crisis, they are setting themselves up for further damage in the future.

• Fluffy marketing garbage is not working. The public has become way too skeptical to believe most of the “purpose” filled trust messages that brands are attempting to deliver. When a bank tells me they are “here for me during this time of crisis” while simultaneously cutting savings account interest rates but not credit card interest, I would rather not receive their marketing message. In fact they may just lose my business.

• And speaking of banks, any organization in any industry whose leaders haven’t learned how to bank trust by building a strong foundation, can now expect their own bank balance to continue to decline as distrust increases.

A few suggestions were offered to elevate trust:

• Assign a permanent Remote Workforce Manager.

• If you didn’t already have one, a crisis continuity plan should be created.

• Have more frequent “touch points” with your team, not only about work related matters but also about personal needs. Also, don’t forget the mental health of your employees during these difficult times.

• Set up a buddy system for new employees.

• Get your workforce up to speed with technology, but don’t over invest in it, or view it as a quick and easy trust “fix.”  Set aside some of that budget to learn how to build trust. It may be a little more work, but will produce much great rewards over the long-term.

Finally, Stephen M.R. Covey reminded the group that COVID is redefining our work environments. Once this crisis passes, leaders will need to reevaluate the following:

1. How work is done: The “new” hybrid combining in-person and remote work will require more trust, not less.
2. How we learn: Learning may require a different process that also requires more trust.
3. How we lead: Leading with trust will continue to be a better way.

Now that almost three years have passed, have we made any progress? Not from my perspective. In fact, everything we knew about the benefits of high trust in the past is now further amplified. Often, it takes a crisis to remind us what happens when trust is ignored or taken for granted. Which leaders are emerging the strongest from COVID 19? Could it be those who chose to place trust in the center of their business strategy long before March 2020? Leaders and their organizations who banked trust before COVID 19 are being handsomely rewarded, and should continue to be long into the future.

Trust Alliance members including Lea Brovedani, Stephen M.R. Covey, Natalie Doyle Oldfield,  Charles Feltman, Sean Flaherty, Darshan Kulkarni, Olivia Mathijsen, and Bob Whipple joined me in this very lively discussion. 

With apologies to David Letterman’s signature skit series of a decade+ ago, Charlie Green and I wrote an article with this original title for the FCPA Blog back in January 2019. After recently speaking with Charlie, the title is being borrowed again to highlight (and update) a few of the many misunderstandings about the nature of trust in business. (This updated article could also be called Trust 101: Back to Basics Again.)

Here’s our list of Five Stupid Ideas About Trust in Business, followed by some comments about the flaws.

Do these flawed views of trust merit actually being called “stupid”? You be the judge.

1. Trust is synonymous with “check-the-box” ESG, DE&I, sustainability, “greening” your organization, etc.

2. Blockchain is a road to trust.

3. Loading up corporate communications with trust words du jour elevates brand or organizational trust.

4. Elevating data security is a pathway to trust.

5. Trust can be chemically induced.

While all these ideas represent flawed views of trust, they are not all “wrong” in the same way. Exploring how they are flawed tells us a lot about what real trust concepts, tools and metrics look like.

In each case that follows, we’ll explore the flaw in the concept; then we’ll give a proactive definition of trust and some valid metrics for evaluating it.

Trust-as-ESG, DEI, sustainability, etc. If your business is promoting equality and sustainable practices, good for you. You may also be creating some positive vibes for your brand, and even — dare we say — being rewarded in the real for-profit world for doing so. But don’t confuse these actions with trust. The most powerful form of trust is personal, not institutional. Policies — whether for equality, sustainability or money-laundering for that matter — are about as impersonal as you can get.

Second, if you are indeed making money by, for example, being sustainable, congratulations — but you’re also raising questions about your motives. If you’re “doing good” in order to be “doing well,” then your motives are suspect, and are actually reasons for most people not to trust you.  

Blockchain. First, count us among those who see the virtues of blockchain quite apart from its dubious connections to digital currencies — certainly Bitcoin. Blockchain is a legitimate and powerful tool, with valid applications that are only beginning to be scoped out. Emerging technology always comes with unanticipated risk. That said, blockchain doesn’t enable “trust” — it brings clarity and efficiency to the anti-fraud capabilities of commercial networks (e.g. documenting supply chains, or eliminating the need for title searches in real estate). You are no more likely to “trust” a realtor or seller with blockchain or without: you are simply more sure of the precise level of impersonal systemic risk of fraud inherent in the business.

Again, the most powerful form of trust is personal. Those who trusted Bernie Madoff were betrayed by Mr. Madoff, not by the system in which he operated. You can reduce systemic risk by regulation — or by blockchain — but the decision to trust an advisor, or anyone for that matter, is ultimately a personal one. You can’t regulate or technologize your way to personal trustworthiness.

Trust words du jour. It is true that consciously altering an organization’s shared vocabulary can have an unconscious effect by nudging people’s perceptions and behaviors — including for trustworthiness. But words alone don’t do the job. In fact, if words are the only effort taken, they can backfire — words are also the favored tool of the best propagandists in history. Context, intent and behaviors also matter.

Words divorced from action — including merely perceived action — actively fuel cynicism. In a world where, broadly speaking, trust is on the decline, cynicism is rising. In the face of cynicism, words without action are predestined to produce the opposite of what was intended. CEO “activism” can also create a “backfire effect” when the words are directed at a third party while the CEO’s headquarters are burning.

Data Security. In most of the Western world (China is a partial outlier on this one), data security is increasingly important. At the simplest level, this is about fear of having our identities stolen and misused with economic consequences. But it also extends to concerns over privacy. It’s tempting to think greater data security adds to trust. But this is the same issue we saw with blockchain, above: a reduction in quantifiable risk is not essentially about trust.

Worse, getting closer to risk-free doesn’t mean we’re increasing trust — it just means lower levels of risk in our trust decisions. Since trusting is essentially a positive inclination to take a risk, higher levels of data security merely remove roadblocks: they don’t say anything about positive levels of trustworthiness. (And by the way, business leaders who have bought in to employee surveillance software are killing any opportunity to build interpersonal trust.)

Chemical Trust. We’re talking about the popularly cited papers on Oxytocin, sometimes called “the trust molecule.” It’s oh so tempting to believe that trust can be reduced to a neuro chemical phenomenon. But there are two powerful reasons to resist that temptation. One is that the early research appears to be just plain wrong. See here, and here, and here. Sorry, folks, it just ain’t true.

And even if it were true — that we could isolate a particular set of chemicals (or synapses, or even genes) which “explain” trust — we likely wouldn’t trust the resulting “trust.” Merely describing something in reductionist physical terms doesn’t account for the full human meaning of trust.   

The only practical application of chemical trust would be through chemical induction. But consider: would you trust someone’s declaration of lifelong friendship if they said it under the influence of five martinis? Would you trust your child with the babysitter if said sitter showed up high as a kite on weed?

Defining Trust

So far, we have only nitpicked at “stupid” definitions of trust. It’s time for us to be more proactive, and to put our own stake in the ground.

• Trust is a relationship. It takes two. It doesn’t happen unilaterally; it’s not real until a trusting party meets a trustworthy party. 
• At the organizational level, trust must be built one stakeholder at a time, starting internally with employees not customers.
• Organizations don’t build trust — they can only facilitate, or hinder, interpersonal trust. It’s up to the people who work for them, and that begins with leadership.

This means a lot of popular statements are fatally imprecise. If, for example, you see a statement (usually after a survey has been published) like “trust in business is up,” should you infer?

That business is more trustworthy?
That people should trust businesses more?
Or some composite measure of both?

Nonetheless, it is possible to speak more clearly about trust.

• The General Social Survey has for years measured the personal propensity to trust.
• Trusted Advisor Associates has developed the TQ Trust Quotient Self Assessment, which measures personal trustworthiness; and the Four Trust Principles, which are organizational guides to personal behavior in trust-relevant situations.
• Trust Across America’s Trust Alliance has developed Tap Into Trust (now accessed by almost 175,000 people) and its simple AIM (Acknowledge, Identify, Mend) Assessment Tool to identify the behaviors that are building and weakening trust inside and between teams so that they can be directly addressed.
• Doug Conant, the former CEO of Campbell Soup, has created the Conant Flywheel, with “inspiring trust” as the outcome of six drivers. It is noteworthy because it emphasizes the personal nature of trust, and the critical personal role of leaders in creating it.
• Trust Across America’s FACTS® Framework has been measuring the “trustworthiness” of public companies for over ten years, making a business case for trustworthiness as an intentional business strategy.

Other great trust models exist for measuring trust at the individual, team and organizational level.

Organizational trust

 If, as we have argued all along, personal trust is stronger than institutional trust, then what sense does it make to talk about trust at the corporate level?

That is a very good question, and one that most trust researchers fail to address — it may be the “stupidest” trust trick of all. Merely focusing on corporate reputation, sustainability, “rules” or other corporate attributes does not address the core personal level of trust — the most powerful form, and the one that tends to take a back seat, probably because it requires the most work.

Our definition of organizational trust addresses the issue head on.

A trust-based organization is one in which people behave in trusting and trustworthy manners toward each other, and toward all stakeholders.

The right way to think about trust is that it is all driven and experienced at the personal level: the role of the organization is to help those personal experiences become trust-positive.

Trust Glossary

And finally, we would like to leave you with a glossary that defines the various relational components of trust. While some may believe this adds unnecessary complexity, the definitions can be an important reference when we talk about trust. 

Trust:  (the noun) is a relationship between trustor and trustee, in the case of individuals. “The level of trust is down.” In its simplest form, some, like Trust Across America,  describe it as the outcome of principled behavior.

Trust: (the verb): To trust, or not to trust, the decision to trust, the risks of trusting.  “I trust him (or her) (or them).”  The field of psychology focuses on this definition.

Trustor: (noun): The one taking the risk, the one choosing to trust — or not to trust. “He trusts them; me, I’m usually more hesitant about it.”

Trustee: (noun) One to whom something is entrusted or the acceptor of the trust. “She’s the one in the group to trust.”

Trustworthy: (adjective) Deserving of confidence based on ethics, competence, dependability and reliability. “He’s highly trustworthy.” “That company is trustworthy.”

Trusting: (gerund) the trust action taken by the trustor. “I’m nervous about trusting them.”

Propensity to trust: An inclination to trust people or institutions. “I leave my car unlocked in the driveway.” “I trust my doctor with my life.” The fields of sociology and group psychology focus on this definition.

____

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an author, speaker, product developer and global subject matter expert on trust and trustworthiness. Founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World she is author of the award-winning Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust and Trust Inc., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. She majored in International Affairs (Lafayette College), and has an MBA (Baruch- City University of NY). Her expertise on trust has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.

Charles H. Green is an author, speaker and world expert on trust-based relationships and sales in complex businesses. Founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates, he is author of Trust-based Selling, and co-author of The Trusted Advisor and the Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. He majored in philosophy (Columbia), and has an MBA (Harvard). He has authored articles in Harvard Business Review, Directorship Magazine, Management Consulting News, CPA Journal, American Lawyer, Investments and Wealth Monitor, and Commercial Lending Review.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: January 30, 2023

CONTACT:

Barbara Kimmel, Founder and CEO

Trust Across America – Trust Around the World

barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World Announces 2023 Top Thought Leaders

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW), global leaders in organizational trust honors its 2023 Top Thought Leaders in Trust. The awards program, now in its 12th year, celebrates professionals who are transforming the way organizations do business.

While a growing number of global “top” lists and awards are published, no others address organizational trust. Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, TAA-TAW has been working with a growing team of global cross-functional professionals to research the “practice” of trust and build tools to support leaders, teams and organizations who choose to build, elevate or repair trust.

According to Barbara Kimmel, CEO, ”As in the past, the release of our 2023 honors brings the focus to global champions of trust. This year we again recognize those whose professional endeavors include leadership, culture, compliance and ethics, innovation, reputation and risk management, governance, communications, employee engagement, sales and customer service. Our honorees represent the largest global and functionally diverse group to date.” They inspire organizations to look more closely at their higher purpose…to create greater value for, and trust from all of their stakeholders, and understand trust is a “hard currency” with real returns.

The honorees can be accessed via the Winter 2023 issue of TRUST! Magazine, available at no cost at this link, including complete details on our methodology, award winners, and additional trust resources.

Nominate now for our 2024 Top Thought Leaders at this link.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™ is a program of Next Decade, Inc., an award-winning communications firm that has been unraveling and simplifying complex subjects for over 20 years. TAA-TAW helps organizations build trust through an abundance of resources and ever-expanding tools. It also provides several frameworks for organizations to improve trustworthy practices, and showcases individuals and organizations exhibiting high levels of trust and trustworthiness.

by Barbara Brooks Kimmel

Now that the year has drawn to a close and a new one has begun, I am reminded of the similarities between the 2008 financial crisis and the market instability of 2022. In fact as Reuters recently reported, Wall Street ended the year with the biggest annual drop since 2008, as the global stock and bond markets shed more than $30 trillion dollars. And sadly as we head into 2023, the prevailing mood among both investors and the general public is fear, and fear is the opposite of trust. The chart below shows the outcome when trust replaces fear.

What lessons, if any, has the investment community learned over the past 14 years?

Consider these:

1. Ten+ years past the 2008 financial crisis, little has changed to increase investor confidence in the ethical decision making practices of business leaders and the titans of Wall Street.
2. It is not valuation, liquidity, or profits that keeps many investors on the sidelines. It is a lack of trust.
3. We continue to see high profile business scandals, accounting coverups, out of touch compensation practices and a leveraged lending fiasco with no end in sight.
4. Many investment professionals and investors are choosing to take their guidance from the wrong teachers who may be placing their own short-term interests first.

How do we learn from these lessons and move forward as we head into 2023? The solution is very simple. The industry must turn its attention to building trust.

Trustworthy companies outperform their peers with less risk

In the wake of the financial crisis I started a program called Trust Across America with the mission of helping organizations build trust. One of our first challenges was to make the “business case for trust” having been told that without proving that trust works, business leaders would ignore us. With the assistance of dozens of cross silo professionals, in 2012 we finalized a model to evaluate the trustworthiness of public companies, incorporating quantifiable metrics and data and named it the FACTS® Framework, an acronym that includes five drivers or indicators of trustworthy business behavior. They are:

• Financial stability
• Accounting conservativeness
• Corporate governance
• Transparency
• Sustainability

When we began this research over ten years ago we were also told that a ten year tracked record would be required before serious consideration could be given to our model. Having recently reached that milestone, in June 2022 we retained Index One, a global index creation firm based in London to evaluate our FACTS® Framework versus major US indexes.” The results:

• The top 50 FACTS® companies outperformed IWD by 47%, 15.46% vs.10.51%
• The top 100 FACTS® companies outperformed IWD by 52.9%, 16.07% vs. 10.51% for IWD          
• Index One also performed the same analysis using the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) ETF. 16.07% (50 companies) and 15.46% (100 companies) respectively vs. 15.27% for SPY.

Further evidence of the outperformance of trustworthy companies is contained in this ten+ year study published in November 2021, and covered in Investor’s Daily in May 2022. It is, by order of magnitude, the most comprehensive and data driven analysis available regarding the trustworthiness of public companies. It speaks to both the public and the financial industry’s understanding of trust, supports trust based investment decision making and enables targeted and simplified trust portfolio construction. 

Vast amounts of money remain parked in low yielding money market accounts and other underperforming investments. By delivering a time tested and “beyond reproach” strategy to investors combining the key drivers of corporate trustworthiness, Trust Based Investing can become the solution that both the industry and the public has been seeking.

Some may be curious as to how our Trust Index performed in 2022. We finished up close to 1% in a year when the S&P 500 declined almost 20%.

Don’t Take Our Word for the Importance of Trust

Building a trustworthy business will improve a company’s profitability and organizational sustainability. A growing body of evidence shows increasing correlation between trustworthiness and superior financial performance. Over the past decade, a series of qualitative and quantitative studies have built a strong case for senior business leaders to make stakeholder trust building a high priority. While none of these studies are perfect, their results are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

• Research shows that 30% of a company’s value is at risk where trust is broken with the public and external stakeholders. Those CEOs who have a proactive approach to crisis planning view simulation training and drills as an investment. They also see it as a way to test and build the trust and confidence of their teams. It hones and develops leadership and communication skills, builds coherence and cross-functional support. *McKinsey & Company research in Connect: How companies succeed by engaging radically with society – 2015 – John Browne, Robin Nuttall, Tommy Stadlen
• According to the proprietary FACTS® Framework research conducted by Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, on average, and over the long-term, the “Top 10″ most trustworthy public companies have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over 10 years, 5 years and 3 years.
• Only 7 percent of Americans believe that major company CEOs have high ethical standards, and only 9 percent have a very favorable opinion of major companies. Only 42 percent Americans trust major companies to behave ethically, down from 47 percent last year. Public Affairs Council, 2018
• Today, only a minority of millennials believe businesses behave ethically (48 percent vs 65 percent in 2017) and that business leaders are committed to helping improve society (47 percent vs 62 percent in 2017). Deloitte Millenial Survey 2018
• In an innovation survey published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the early 2000s, trust was identified as a key characteristic of innovative companies

In conclusion

The business case for both trust and Trust Based Investing is being made. Trust Based Investing provides the following:

• Companies have proven through a rigorous analysis that they are trustworthy and represent lower investment risk.
• Investors can be assured that both business and investment decisions are being made ethically.
• The most trustworthy companies have stable and strong investment returns.
• A virtuous cycle is created. As investment money flows into the hands of these companies, other companies will want to follow suit and become more trustworthy.

In the words of Warren Bennis “Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.”

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an author, speaker, product developer and global subject matter expert on trust and trustworthiness. Founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World she is author of the award-winning Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust and Trust Inc., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. She majored in International Affairs (Lafayette College), and has an MBA (Baruch- City University of NY). Her expertise on trust has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others. 

To obtain more information please visit the contact page on our website or

barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

The business case for trust is indisputable. As the chart below shows, for the past eleven years our Trust 200 Index, a diversified mix of the most trustworthy public companies has handsomely rewarded those who chose trust as a strategic imperative. This includes business leaders and their stakeholders, and also investors. Yet we seem to be stuck in a trust free fall across most societal institutions. Why is that?

It’s certainly not due to lack of interest in the subject of trust nor a shortage of those attempting to monetize trust. In fact, 2022 may have been a banner year for new trust initiatives. Many of the large advisory firms have boarded the trust train, yet their initiatives continue to skirt the two key challenges of trust building. What are they? Find out by reading my most recent article on Medium.

If you would like more information on the fixes described in the article, or would like to help build solutions please contact me.

.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an author, speaker, product developer and global subject matter expert on trust and trustworthiness. Founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World she is author of the award-winning Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust and Trust Inc., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. She majored in International Affairs (Lafayette College), and has an MBA (Baruch- City University of NY). Her expertise on trust has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.

Announcing New Programs Designed to Move Trust from Talk to Action

 

2023 Top Thought Leaders in Trust  Nominations are now open and we look forward to bringing this program back after a one year pandemic hiatus.

More information here.

 

 

 

 

Trust Academy: Real Cases Real Solutions in Trust & Ethics You are invited to sharpen your pencils and submit your cases. An urgent need exists for a global case study library to enable leaders and organizations to access solutions to trust and ethics challenges. Trust Academy cases will be published in a master library on our website commencing in January 2023. Contact me at for participation instructions.

And in case you missed it new material on our website including:

 

Results of our 10 year study on trustworthy public companies  Read more here.

 

 

 

 

A brand new infographic on Trust and Leadership

Special thanks to David Grossman at The Grossman Group. View it here.

 

 

 

An updated timeline of TAA-TAW programs going back almost 15 years!

Read more here.

 

 

Did you know that over 170,000 global citizens have now Tapped Into Trust with hundreds taking our 1 minute/1 question quiz.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Founder Trust Across America-Trust Around the World

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World announces its

Most Trustworthy Public Companies 2022

 

 

Published annually for the past 12 years via our Corporate Integrity Monitor, these are a few highlights from our current rankings of the S&P 500.

• We use our proprietary model called the FACTS® Framework to create the rankings.
• Companies do not participate in our research nor do we receive compensation.
• This year over 200 companies in the S&P 500 received a failing grade below 60%.
• The average score of our “Top 10” companies this year is a 73%.
• The 10 companies comprise 6 of 16 business sectors.

For more information contact

Trust Across Across America-Trust Around the World