Archive
Archive for August, 2014
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This nineteenth essay brings advice from Linda Fisher Thornton, the CEO of Leading in Context LLC. Linda is an authority on the future of ethical leadership, and writes and speaks about how to bring out the best in people and organizations through proactive ethical leadership. She is the author of 7 Lenses: Learning the Principles and Practices of Ethical Leadership, a clear guide to proactive ethical leadership. In addition to consulting and writing, Linda serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Leadership for The University of Richmond School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Her website is LeadinginContext.com. Linda is also a 2014 Top Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business and a member of the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts.
Effective CEOs and Boards Proactively Manage Business Integrity
Just handling problems as they arise isn’t enough. The Conference Board calls being proactive about business integrity and compliance critical for senior management, and even more so for boards of directors. If we manage corporate integrity based on reacting to problems, by the time we react, the problems are usually very difficult to manage. Being proactive about corporate integrity keeps CEOs and Boards focused on prevention and not cleanup. Deloitte Corporate Governance finds that an effective board proactively sets the standards and monitors integrity inside and outside of the boardroom. Deloitte’s recent publication “Integrity in the Boardroom. What Does it Really Mean?” offers an integrity oversight model.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts, Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, Board of Directors, leadership, Linda Fisher Thornton, organizational trust, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This eighteenth essay brings advice from Carol Sanford, The Responsibility Expert. Carol is an Educator and Advisor to Fortune 100 CEOs and New Economy businesses like DuPont, Google and Seventh Generation. She is the CEO of The Responsible Entrepreneur Institute and Author, The Responsible Business and The Responsible Entrepreneur. Carol is also a 2014 Top Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business and a founding member of the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts. You can read more about her here.
Trust and Strategy Thinking
Most strategy is disembodied from people in the organization. It is hard to trust what you cannot relate to or worse, feel at the mercy of.
The rank and file sees strategy most often as something management is responsible for and I just do my job. If it is not owned, then all initiatives are seen as arbitrary and self-interested on the part of management. People feel a pawn in the game.
A trustworthy strategic thinking and execution process evokes caring and contribution. Everyone has to see the same value and be able to personally interpret the direction and decisions that are involved.
How to do that: Make all initiatives and measures come from the customer’s success, not the companies alone. Trust happens when people feel they are in pursuit of a goal together and that is has meaning. Every individual contribution can be connected to the customer or consumer’s life if you take the time. The best way to accomplish this is by measuring what the customer measures and has each functional unit and individual contribution determine what they do for the customer’s achievement of that goal. Consider how they, themselves, will measure success.
Now people can trust because it feels like it is about making a difference, not being manipulated by management. Read stories about Fortune 100 and new economy businesses who are changing how they do strategy as a trust building process.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts, Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, business strategy, Carol Sanford, leadership, organizational trust, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Press ReleaseAugust 17th, 2014
Trust Across America-Trust Around the World is pleased to issue an update of our Trust Bibliography in collaboration with Robert (Bob) Easton, a Partner at Accenture.
This document is meant to serve as a resource for both academics and practitioners interested in learning more about organizational trust. We believe it is the largest database of its kind.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Accenture, Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, organizational trust, Robert Easton, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This seventeenth essay brings advice from Ellen Hunt. Ms. Hunt joined AARP as the Director of Ethics & Compliance to assist the organization with establishing its Ethics & Compliance Program. Her responsibilities include building trust and helping the organization and its employees make ethical decisions. Any opinions expressed by Ms. Hunt are solely her own and are not made on behalf of AARP.
The Culture is the Secret Sauce
In announcing his resignation in the New York Times, Greg Smith said that culture was vital to Goldman Sachs’s success and was “the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years.” The scandal du jour that was once served as an appetizer has now increased the public’s appetite to devour corporate reputations as the main course. This requires the Board and C-suite to be the master chefs of the secret sauce. The key ingredients are integrity and honesty. You must come to the table with these ingredients, use them to guide your decisions, and stand before the organization as a model for ethical behavior. To be successful, you must make the secret sauce seep through the organization. It must bubble down from the boardroom to the mailroom and rise back up again. It must be everywhere.
Anything less, any substitutions, simply will not do.
On how to be the example see Scott Killingsworth, Modeling the Message. Available at SSRN:
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, culture, Ellen Hunt, leadership, organizational trust, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This sixteenth essay marks the midpoint in our series and brings advice from Bob Vanourek, the former CEO of five firms from a start-up to a billion dollar NY stock exchange turnaround. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations. He is one of Trust Across America’s Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior and serves on its Steering Committee. Bob’s website is www.triplecrownleadership.com
CEO Tip: Trust Your Board as Your Ally
Some CEOs and boards have close, trusting partnerships that serve them and their firms extremely well. They are in my experience the minority.
Most CEOs I have met see the board as a group they need to “manage,” a dinner and meeting they need to prepare for, taking preciously valuable time away from running the business, which is the CEO’s real job. To many CEO’s, the board
is tolerated, professionally and courteously of course, but a group relatively uninformed about how hard it is to really run the business.
The time spent preparing for board meetings is huge. Staff reports prepared; rehearsals of PowerPoint presentations; after-meeting meetings to decipher what the board now wants and what to do to get ready for the next session.
What’s the solution? A change in attitude involving trust.
Boards no longer merely monitor the activities of a CEO and a firm. They can and should lead certain functions for the firm from defining the desired culture to involvement in strategy development. They can be a sounding board for the CEO on the lonely, difficult decisions he or she sometimes faces, especially in a time of crisis.
But this mind-flipping attitude change can only be based on the board and CEO viewing each other as trusted allies.
CEO tip: Trust your board as your ally. By trusting them more, they will trust you more, and performance will improve.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, Board of Directors, C-Suite, CEO, leadership, organizational trust, Robert Vanourek, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This fifteenth essay in our series brings advice from Lea Brovedani the President of Sagacity Consulting. Lea’s work focuses on trust through the lens of Emotional and Social Intelligence in business and education. Her book TRUSTED – A Leaders Lesson was published in March 2013. She is a preferred partner with 6 Seconds, a Professional Speaker who travels throughout North America and a master facilitator delivering Train the Trainer programs.
Communication and the Hiring Process
If you want employees to trust the new leader they need to be involved with the hiring. (Article by Dr. Dana Ardi)
Employees should be given as much information as possible on what is happening during the hiring in the C-suite. Yet there are times when every decision can’t be shared, but even that needs to be communicated. Share what you can when you can, and also explain why you can’t.
Listen to what employees have to say. If they have made suggestions that were ignored let them know why. If you don’t, the message that is sent is “I don’t trust or like the quality of your input.” Share why you chose not to follow their advice, whatever the reason.
Communication is an essential skill for trusted leaders and for board members. Communicate that you care by listening and talking to people. Be consistent in the message, committed to communicate not once but until there is understanding and competence in how the message is delivered.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, Board of Directors, C-Suite, Dr. Dana Ardi, lea brovedani, leadership, organizational trust, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset, trustworthy behavior
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This fourteenth essay in our series brings advice from Dr. Roger C. Mayer, a Professor in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. His research is focused on employee decision-making, attitudes and effectiveness. A leading scholar on trust in organizations, his research has been published in many premiere scholarly journals and has been cited thousands of times in the published literature across a wide variety of fields. Dr. Mayer is also a 2014 Top Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business.
Building Trust for Boards and C-Suites
There is very little published scientific evidence showing trust in a company actually being improved. In 1999, Roger C. Mayer & James H. Davis published a longitudinal field study in Journal of Applied Psychology showing that trust in top management was indeed increased. Data was collected by university researchers that established a baseline for trust, and identified reasons that employees may lack trust in the company’s management. In the studied company’s case, a new performance appraisal system was warranted. The company implemented a new appraisal system that met the demands of the situation, and employees who experienced the new system firsthand increased in their levels of trust in management.
Many university trust researchers around the globe have the expertise to collect trust data, provide feedback about how to increase trust, and scientifically track the success of the attempt. Without such tracking, it is easy for managers to claim improvement in the workplace without accountability. Involving university researchers in the process has major advantages. They can (and must) guarantee employees confidentiality, which makes it safe for employees to be completely candid. This allows for tracking each individual’s responses from one survey to the next, which is far more powerful at detecting real changes in trust levels than is the use of anonymous surveys. University researchers are interested in scientific discovery, most are willing to engage companies for minimal costs provided they can publish their findings—also in a way that protects the identities of the employees and the companies themselves.
I hope you have enjoyed this next sneak peak into our second book. If this brief look behind the door has been helpful, follow this link to order both of our books online.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, leadership, organizational trust, Roger C. Mayer, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This thirteenth essay in our series brings advice from Joe Anderson, a retired Marine Officer. Joe has held executive operations roles in Fortune 500 companies, been a business owner and is currently a Partner at Anderson Performance Partners LLC, working with organizations to improve business operations, processes and leadership. Joe works with organizations to uncover opportunities, and resolve challenges that organizations are sometimes too close to see. He has a successful track record in developing effective business leadership and business processes throughout organizations.
As a leader, you can’t ask an employee to do something you wouldn’t be willing to do.
When I was a U. S. Marine, both as an enlisted Marine and an Officer, a fundamental element of leadership was that leaders lead from the front, not from behind. If you’re going to ask a young PFC to lead on point, then you should be right there with him. If not there, he should know that you have been there. Showing that you care for your people and are willing to share their hardship builds trust and camaraderie between the leader and those they lead.
As a business leader, I found that far too many “leaders” led from their desk and had no idea about what their folks were doing or how they did it. A practice I implemented in the companies I’ve led was leading by wandering around, taking the time to sit with folks in their work area, learn what they did, how they did it and why. It seemed odd to new teams at first, wondering why I spent so much time away from my desk. My response was simple, my job is to lead and you lead from the front. If I ask you to do something, I should be willing to be a partner in understanding what you are doing, how you are doing it and what you face.
The practice served me well. I have never had filters between my employees and me, which has allowed me to be very connected to them, their work and their challenges.
I hope you have enjoyed this next sneak peak into our second book. If this brief look behind the door has been helpful, follow this link to order both of our books online.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, Joe Anderson, leadership, organizational trust, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset
Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts. Six months later we released our second book, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In this book, sixty experts have joined forces to offer 100 strategies.
Throughout the month of August, we will be featuring 31 essays from our second book. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
This twelfth essay in our series brings advice from Linda Locke, a corporate reputation management expert and Senior Vice President at Standing Partnership. Locke previously served as the group head and senior vice president for Reputation and Issues Management for MasterCard Worldwide. Linda is a 2014 Top Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business and a member of the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts.
Three Ways to Build Trust
Trust-building is not a one-way road. I wish I had a dollar bill – okay a $50 bill – for every organization that asked me to improve perceptions by changing its name, buying advertising, or writing checks to charities.
Trust is the currency of organizational success. Strong trust enables organizations to achieve their goals; lack of trust can make it impossible. Trust can be built or destroyed several ways.
Direct experiences: Examine the experiences people have with your organization. Is customer service satisfying? Do you embrace every touch point as an opportunity to build trust through engagement? Or, are customer service calls an irritant? At the end of each engagement would the customer agree that his or her perspective was important?
What others say: In a connected world we are influenced by strangers. We actively seek input from people we think share our perspective or needs – including from legacy media, on networks and forums, and in conversations with our friends. A company that wants to build trust should listen to the public dialogue about itself and its industry, identify what drives perceptions, and share information throughout the organization to influence decision-making.
What the organization says about itself: The company’s leaders and spokespeople should articulate (authentically) the positive impact their work has on society. In times of crisis they should express empathy and commitment to resolving the situation.
People expect organizations to be savvy about the conversation going on around it. Organizations that are blind to the dialogue, and only communicate outward are unlikely to build and maintain the trust required to be a respected and trusted business in the modern world.
I hope you have enjoyed this next sneak peak into our second book. If this brief look behind the door has been helpful, follow this link to order both of our books online.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, corporate reputation, culture, leadership, Linda Locke, organizational trust, reputation, trust, trust across america, trust in business, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset, trustworthy behavior
It’s that time of summer again when my garden runneth over with every vegetable imaginable…. except zucchini. It’s not that I don’t attempt to grow it each year, the plants just NEVER produce any fruit. Truthfully, I don’t like zucchini unless it’s deep fried (which I won’t do) or made into bread (which is too much work.)
My neighbor likes zucchini. This is what he delivered from his garden to my kitchen.
So what does all this have to do with trust?
Organizations take trust for granted. Leaders assume trust just happens. But for organizations to be trustworthy and for stakeholders to trust them, trust must be cultivated. If it’s ignored or overlooked, if it’s not appreciated, if the weeds aren’t pulled, trust will not flourish. In the short term, the organization, like the zucchini may produce some nice leaves and yellow flowers but ultimately, it will wither on the vine before achieving it’s objective.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
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Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, barbara kimmel, leadership, trust, trust across america, Trust Inc. A Guide for Boards & C-Suites, Trust Inc. Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Valuable Asset, trustworthy behavior
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