Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

 

Trust is at the heart of all successful relationships, both personal and professional. While business leaders often view it as a “soft skill” in reality, trust is the key driver of profitability and long-term success. Drawing on the insights of twelve high integrity leaders and thinkers, and in our never-ending quest to elevate trust in business, Trust Across America offers these insights to the most important question for 2017:

 

What do you believe is the most important action a business leader can take to build trust with his/her stakeholders?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey, one of America’s most well known thought leaders on trust urges leaders to…

Lead out in extending trust. @StephenMRCovey In building trust with ALL stakeholders, lead out in extending trust. Click To Tweet

Why?  Because extending trust generates a reciprocity of trust.  When we give it, people receive it—and then they return it.  When we withhold it, they withhold it.  

 

Marshall Goldsmith a top American leadership coach seconds Stephen’s advice…

Lead by example. @CoachGoldsmith In building trust with ALL stakeholders, lead by example. Click To Tweet

What we do speaks far more loudly than what we say.

 

Bob Vanourek of Triple Crown Leadership and a former CEO of five companies, urges leaders to…

Put trust on the agenda. @BobVanourek In building trust with ALL stakeholders, put trust on the agenda. Click To Tweet

By constantly putting trust questions on the agenda, like “Are we building trust with what we are doing here?” everyone will begin to understand and take action on building trust.

 

David Reiling, Sunrise Bank’s CEO suggest that leaders…

Walk the talk. @ReilingDavid In building trust with ALL stakeholders, walk the talk. Click To Tweet

Day-in and day-out, night-in and night-out, weekends and holidays. Being authentic and living with integrity builds trust in business and everywhere else. 

 

 Linda Fisher Thornton who runs Leading in Context and is on a mission to unleash the positive power of ethical leadership urges leaders to…

Show genuine interest. @leadingincontxt In building trust with ALL stakeholders, show genuine interest. Click To Tweet

Initiate conversations and find ways to add value. Think about the impact of every decision on every stakeholder, and act in their best interests as well as your own. 

 

Tim Erblich, CEO of Ethisphere believes the most important action a leader can take to build trust is to…

Measure the culture @TimErblich In building trust with ALL stakeholders, measure the culture. Click To Tweet

of his/her business, and openly share the findings with employees, stakeholders and more.  

 

Dave Ulrich, a professor at the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan) and co-founder of the RBL Group, found it hard to pick one thing so we picked it for him!

Be transparent. @Dave_Ulrich  In building trust with ALL stakeholders, be transparent. Click To Tweet

Avoid leadership hypocrisy…do what you say. Share personal feelings.

 

Evan Harvey who directs Corporate Responsibility at NASDAQ seconded the theme of transparency with his answer…

Act transparently. @EvanHarvey99 In building trust will ALL stakeholders, act transparently. Click To Tweet

Tell your stakeholders what you are trying to accomplish and why; then demonstrate progress towards a goal. That involves others in the process, widens the circle of influence and interaction, and builds lasting trust.

 

Jim Lukaszewski, an author, speaker and crisis management consultant urges leaders to…

Be candid. @JimLukaszewski In building trust with ALL stakeholders, be candid. Click To Tweet

Find the truth, tell that truth, act on it promptly in an environment where values matter at least as much as profits and gain. Candor: truth with an attitude told right now is the basic building block of Trust.

 

Doug Conant, former CEO Campbell Soup who heads Conant Leadership, believes the most important action a business leader can take to build trust is…

Do what you say you are going to do. @DougConant In building trust with ALL stakeholders, do what you say you are going to do. Click To Tweet

And do it well. How can people trust a leader who says one thing but does another? They can’t and won’t.”

 

Jason Lunday Principal Consultant Integrity Factor quotes another one of my favorite trust thought leaders, Frank Navran “Trust is the result of promises fulfilled.”

Keep your promises. @Jason_Lunday In building trust with ALL stakeholders, keep your promises. Click To Tweet

Establish full-cycle mechanisms to ensure that the organizations’ promises will be met, including communicating success.

 

And as the 12^th recommendation Barbara Kimmel (that’s me) offers leaders the following:

The leader sets the tone for the organization. @BarbaraKimmel In building trust with ALL stakeholders, the leader sets the tone for the organization. Click To Tweet

Building stakeholder trust first begins with leadership recognition that trust is critical to long-term organizational success. This means making trust a leading business focus in both the Board & C-Suite, reinforcing the trust imperative, and always leading by example.

 

Thank you to all our contributors.  May 2017 bring increasing stakeholder trust to your organization!

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2,000 U.S. public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara is also the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and a Managing Member at FACTS® Asset Management, a New Jersey registered investment advisor.

Copyright (c)  2016, Next Decade, Inc.

 

Measuring the integrity or trustworthiness of public companies is an ongoing research project at  Trust Across America-Trust Around the World. In fact, we now have over 7 years of increasingly “rich” data.

Take a look at this chart:

 

 

While we are in the business of identifying “best in breed” and not in predicting the next corporate crisis, our FACTS(R) proprietary data is quite capable of doing so. Citigroup, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo… Did the lack of integrity at Wells Fargo contribute to its recent crisis? Could it have been avoided under different leadership? What do you think?

Would you like more insights like this?

Request our White Paper:  The State of Trust in Corporate America 2016

Trust Data: Public companies can review the level of trust within their organization and compare their performance to their peers.

Order our Trust Inc. book series.

2017 Trust Poster: Weekly Do’s and Don’ts to Foster Organizational Trust

Join our Trust Alliance where share our research with high integrity business leaders.

If you lead an organization, serve on a Board or in any management capacity or work with others, and you continue to ignore trust as a hard asset, you are losing out to your competitors and failing to protect your organization against a Wells Fargo crisis.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2,000 U.S. public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara is also the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and a Managing Member at FACTS® Asset Management, a New Jersey registered investment advisor.

 

Copyright (c)  2016, Next Decade, Inc.

 

 

What do low integrity and trust cost an organization and the economy? The research studies cited below should give our readers some insight:

• Gallup reports that employee engagement was more or less stagnant in 2015, (over 17% actively disengaged.) In 2014 less than one-third of US workers were engaged in their jobs, with millenials the least engaged, and this is costing the US economy $450-550 billion a year, which is over 15% of payroll costs. (Gallup, 2015)

• The Association of Certified Fraud Examiner’s survey participants estimated that the typical organization loses 5% of its revenues to fraud each year. Applied to the 2011 Gross World Product, this figure translates to a potential projected annual fraud loss of more than $3.5 trillion. 2012 Global Fraud Study

• According to The Economist Intelligence Unit (2010), 84% of senior leaders say disengaged employees are considered one of the biggest threats facing their business. However, only 12% of them reported doing anything about this problem.

• The cost of Federal Regulations is approaching $2 trillion annually according to a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

• According to a recent report by PwC the U.S. held its position as the top location for innovation, with in-country R&D spending of $145 billion in 2015. However, other countries (i.e., China) increased their R&D spending by greater proportions than the U.S. which caused it to lose some of its relative advantage.

• Volkswagen lost 20% of its stock value after the emissions scandal and Target’s profits fell 34.3% after it’s data breach.

• A study by Murphy, Shrieves and Tibbs called “Determinants of the Stock Price Reaction to Allegations of Corporate Misconduct” finds that allegations of misconduct are accompanied by statistically significant control-firm adjusted declines in reported earnings, increases in stock return variability, and a decline in concordance among analysts’ earnings estimates.”

• In a 2008 study by Karpoff, Lee and Martin called “The Cost to Firm’s of Cooking the Books,” the authors find The penalties imposed on firms through the legal system average only $23.5 million per firm. The penalties imposed by the market, in contrast, are huge.

• The PR firm Edelman finds in their 2016 “Trust Barometer” that nearly one in three employees don’t trust their employer. And more than two thirds feel that CEOs are too focused on short-term performance. As a result, employees are far less likely to say positive things about the company they work for.

The trust gap not only negatively impacts a company’s revenue, market share, brand reputation, employee engagement and turnover, stock price, and bottom line profitability, but every facet of society.

What happens when integrity & trust increase?

Find out in our new white paper: The State of Trust in Corporate America 2016. Request it here.

Copyright (c) 2016 Next Decade, Inc.

 

Executive Summary of White Paper Recently Published

by Trust Across America-Trust Around the World

 

Building a trustworthy company will improve both its profitability and organizational sustainability. Supporting this statement is a growing body of evidence showing an increasing correlation between trustworthiness and superior financial performance. Our 2016 report attempts to provide content and context to place trust in the center of more business conversations, to answer the following questions and dispel the myth that integrity and trust are “soft” skills.

• Why do trust and integrity matter?
• Can they be measured?
• Are they profitable?
• Which sectors are the most trustworthy?
• Is industry destiny?
• What are the costs of low trust and integrity and why do they matter as hard currencies?
• Which companies are some of the most trustworthy and why?
• How can companies become more trustworthy?

Integrity and trust should start at the top and flow down through the organization. They are not CSR, compliance, HR or leadership “programs” but rather an intentional holistic business strategy adopted by leadership and practiced daily. Vanishing are the days of low transparency, “short termism” and maximization of shareholder value at the expense of other stakeholders.

As trust breaches continue to make the headlines across many major institutions and societies around the globe, organizations that choose integrity and trust as intentional strategies will continue to outperform their peers.

Who will find value in reading this paper?

• Business leaders
• Boards of Directors
• Associations
• Investors
• Communications and Investor Relations
• Corporate responsibility officers
• Regulators
• Politicians
• NGOs

Please register here to request access to the full paper.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 1500 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara also runs the world largest global Trust Alliance, is the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and a Managing Member at FACTS® Asset Management, a NJ registered investment advisor.

Copyright © 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

 

trustacrossamerica.com/order.shtml

 

 

It’s Week #31 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Nan Russell offers this week’s advice. Nan is both a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader in Trust and a member of our Trust Alliance.

Treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are. 

Beliefs affect actions. Do you believe most people are talented and resourceful, or most people aren’t? Most are trustworthy or most aren’t? When we act in accordance with our expectations, we enable those expectations. It’s called the Pygmalion Effect. The connection between what we expect and what we get is well documented. Behavioral scientists at the University of Zurich have confirmed experimentally that “if you trust people, you make them more trustworthy.” And, conversely, “sanctions designed to deter people from cheating actually make them cheat.”  Yet many leaders don’t realize that withholding trust reduces the exact behaviors they want and need. When you treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are, you’re likely to get the great results you seek, plus the added dividends of increased trust and engagement.

Will you choose to take this valuable advice to your organization this week? If not, ask yourself “why not?”

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

 

It’s Week #21 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Davia Temin is a Trust Alliance member, a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader and a contributor to our Trust Inc. book series. She offers this week’s idea:

Say what you do, do what you say.

Reliability, dependability, integrity — these are the essential building blocks of trust. Sounds simple, yet they are so difficult to achieve day in, day out. 

Under-promising and over-delivery is the ticket, of course.  

Whether we are tempted to over promise because of enthusiasm, a lack of operational expertise, expediency, or duplicity, the results are the same — distrust is created. And once there is distrust, rebuilding trust becomes almost impossible without a significant shaming, and transformation, of the organization. 

So if you seek to build trust, don’t promise what you can’t deliver, either in your ads, your speeches, your press releases or in your town halls. Stick to what you can deliver. The public is so jaded by hyperbole, they will most likely appreciate and respect your honesty. And even if they do not, you will know you have done the right thing… And that counts for a lot. 

Thank you Davia. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

How many of the following are ongoing issues in your office?

1. High employee turnover and absenteeism
2. Negative water cooler conversations
3. Slow decision making and low innovation
4. A seemingly never ending series of crises
5. Stagnant or diminishing profitability

If you answered “yes” to one or more of the five issues listed above, your office is suffering from low “T” and the prescription for a return to health rests squarely on the shoulders of leadership. So what is low “T?” It’s low trust and the single most common and debilitating impediment to successful organizations.

The good news is low “T” is easily cured. Leaders just need to acknowledge the disease and implement a trust building prescriptive culture. Why not set a goal of starting that process on January 1, 2016? Here are a few ways to head down the path to recovery:

In every interaction with every person, ask yourself: “What can I do in this moment to strengthen the trust between us? Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner

You don’t build trust by getting louder; you build trust by getting closer. Richard Fagerlin

Take a younger employee to lunch and ask them a lot of questions and listen-to-learn. Jon Mertz

Terminate toxic people, even the star performers. Bob Vanourek

Build a foundation of organizational trust to soften the blow from the next breach. Barbara Brooks Kimmel

We have a great tool to help you. For the third year, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World has assembled, with the help of dozens of global experts, an annual TRUST POSTER. The 2016 theme is 52 Ideas That YOU Can Implement to Build Trust.  It not only makes a great inexpensive “gift of trust” for the holidays but provides many of the keys to reversing the cycle of organizational mistrust. These are just a few suggestions on ways to use these posters that are already in place in many organizations for 2016:

• Hang one in your office as a conversation starter with visitors, employees or colleagues.
• Give them as gifts to key influencers in organizations suffering from low “T.”
• Send them to clients along with the suggestion to place on their bulletin boards in the employee lounge as well as share an “idea a week” in their management team meetings.
• Mail them to remote employees.
• Give them to your kid’s teachers, send one to the mayor and police chief, and share them with local business owners.

Everyone can benefit from high “T” in 2016!

Read more about the 2016 poster at this link.

Do your part by joining our movement today!

 

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help responsible organizations build trust. She facilitates the world’s largest membership program for those interested in the subject. Barbara also serves as editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2015, Next Decade, Inc.

 

Imagine visiting a shoe store and failing to provide the salesperson with information on your shoe size, color or the style you are seeking yet expecting to leave with the shoes that meet your needs.

Rarely a day passes without a note or a call asking some variation of the following question:

Do you have a questionnaire or a tool, to detect the level of trust in an organization?

And every time, I respond with “What are you trying to measure or detect?”

Trust is not a “one size fits all” proposition. These are just a few of the variations, and each has it’s own tool and/or assessment mechanism:

• Self-trust
• Internal trust including trust among team members, between teams, and trust between leaders and employees.
• External trust between the organization and its stakeholders including suppliers, vendors and customers.
• Organizational trust or its trust “worthiness” both internally and externally.

In most organizations trust is taken for granted perhaps because of the simple belief that “one size DOES fit all.” I hope you enjoy your shoes and that they meet your needs!

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She facilitates the world’s largest membership program for those interested in the subject. Barbara also servers as Editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2015, Next Decade, Inc.

 

Happy (post) Labor Day, a long weekend traditionally filled with barbecues and burgers.

Having spent many years living in the same community it’s been interesting to observe the polar opposite leadership “styles” of two competing businesses, the local butcher shops.

These are the “rules” established by Shopkeeper #1:

• No we will not skin your chicken
• No we will not cut steaks to order
• No we will not provide extra marinade
• No we will not break up that package of bratwurst

The list of “no’s is never ending and the butchers are usually (except for one) rude, pretending they have never seen you before.

And these are the “rules” established by Shopkeeper #2:

The customer is always greeted by a warm smile and usually by their first name, followed by a sincere interest in the family.  And ordering is a breeze.

• You want the chicken skinned, of course!
• You want the steak sliced thin, no problem!
• Take a jar of marinade on us.
• How many bratwurst do you want?

Is it any surprise that people line up to do business with Shopkeeper #2? What are his secrets? I know a few of them:

• The customer always comes first.
• Employees are paid well.
• Working hard and showing commitment will earn you a piece of his business.

Regardless of the kind of organization, the leader sets the tone. Core values are either established or they aren’t. Which kind of butcher are you? Will you skin the chicken?

In your opinion what is the bigger issue in your organization?

That’s the question we are asking in this month’s Trust Quest. Your response is important and it won’t take more than 30 seconds. Here’s the link:

bit.ly/1NBCp2W

Thank you so much for weighing in.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Executive Director, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World

 

Welcome!

While our monthly roundup is normally a collaborative undertaking of our Trust Alliance, this month we gave our members a well-deserved holiday and instead assembled a handful of Barbara Brooks Kimmel’s most popular articles and interviews of 2015.

Our goal is to provide our readers with  a better appreciation for the importance of embracing trust as an organizational imperative.

Let’s get started!

In this Forbes article some tough organizational trust questions are answered, including:

• “How can individuals and organizations capitalize on trust?”
• “Jack Welch recently said that the only thing an executive today should be focused on is trust. Why do you think Mr. Welch have arrived at that conclusion in 2015?”

Our July Trust Quest asked: Which is the greater problem facing today’s society? Is it an unwillingness to trust others or alternatively, that people just aren’t trustworthy enough? Here’s the results of the poll. Our August poll launches on August 1. We hope you will participate.

The terms compliance, ethics and trust are often used synonymously when they shouldn’t be. What’s the difference and how can leaders ensure that trust stands alone? This Culture University article answers those questions.

Our most popular post year-to-date simply asks “Is it Too Lonely at the Top for Trust?

And finally, the most downloaded article from our website, and perhaps the key that unlocks the trust door is called “Return on Trust.” It’s a reprint from our quarterly magazine called TRUST!

Enjoy!