Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options. David Suzuki

Question: What role does trust play as a business imperative when senior executives are unable to remove their blinders?

Answer: No role.

On two separate occasions, I posed the following questions to two senior executives at Fortune 500 companies:

Question #1:  How is trust in your organization?

1. Answer from Executive #1: We have no trust issues

2. Answer from Executive #2: We have no trust issues

Question #2: How do you know?

1. Answer from Executive #1: Our revenues are exploding and we are expanding globally.

Note: I call this the “shareholder value” answer.

2. Answer from Executive #2: Weren’t you listening during my speech? Our CSR and philanthropy program is one of the best.

Note: I call this the “corporate window dressing” answer.

Ask almost any C-Suite executive these questions and most likely you will get one of these answers.

Now let’s take a deeper dive

Executive #1 works for one of the largest health insurers in the world. Over 500 employees posted the following comments on Glassdoor.com. Overall, the employees rate the company a 3 out of 5.

• Horrible health benefits (the company is a health insurer)
• Huge cronyism issues
• Tons of corporate politics and red tape
• Poor appraisal process
• High stress
• It paid the bills
• Management by fear
• High turnover rates

Executive #2 works for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Let’s see what over 200 employees have to say about their work experience. Overall, the employees rate the company a 3 out of 5.

• We played cards to reduce our workday from 8 to 6 hours
• Employees not allowed to talk to each other
• Too many company meetings and policies
• No decent leadership
• No morale
• Leaders are inept
• Bureaucracy and never ending process

Do these sound like “high trust” companies to you?

The Costs of Low Trust

• Gallup’s research (2013) places 13% percent of workers as engaged (87% disengaged.)

• The disengaged workforce (Gallup, August, 2013) is costing the US economy $450-550 billion a year, which is over 15% of payroll costs.

• 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.

• According to Edelman globally, 50% of consumers trust businesses, but just 18% trust business leadership.

• And finally, in the United States, the statistics are similar, but the story is a bit worse for leadership. While 50% of U.S. consumers trust businesses, just 15% trust business leadership.

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 place building trust among ALL stakeholders (not just shareholders) high on their priority list.

According to Fortune’s  “100 Best Companies to Work For”, based on Great Place to Work Employee Surveys, best companies experience as much as 50% less turnover and Great Workplaces perform more than 2X better than the general market (Source: Russell Investment Group)

Forbes and GMI Ratings have produced the “Most Trustworthy Companies” list for the past six years. They examine over 8,000 firms traded on U.S. stock exchanges using forensic accounting measures, a more limited definition of trustworthy companies than Trust Across America’s FACTS Framework but still somewhat revealing. The conclusions they draw are:

• “… the cost of capital of the most trustworthy companies is lower …”
• “… outperform their peers over the long run …”
• “… their risk of negative events is minimized …”

From Deutsche Bank:

• 85% concurrence on Greater Performance on Accounting –Based Standards (“… studies reveal these types of company’s consistently outperform their rivals on accounting-based criteria.”)

From Global Alliance for Banking on Values, which compared values-based and sustainable banks to their big-bank rivals and found:

• 7% higher Return on Equity for values-based banks (7.1% ROE compared to 6.6% for big banks).
•  51% higher Return On Assets for sustainable banks (.50% average ROA for sustainable banks compared to big bank earning 0.33%)

These studies are bolstered by analyses from dozens of other respected sources including the American Association of Individual Investors, the Dutch University of Maastricht, Erasmus University, and Harvard Business Review.

Do you think the two companies cited about have trust issues? How can we help them remove their blinders? How can we help them move beyond quarterly numbers and corporate window dressing?

As my friend Bob Vanourek likes to say. “Leaders must place trust on their daily docket.”

Business leaders may choose to ignore the business case for trust but the evidence is mounting, not only for the business case but also the financial one.  Trust works.

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.

“The rotten apple spoils his companion.” Benjamin Franklin

Yesterday John Baldoni published a thought provoking article in Forbes  Trust Matters Even to the NFL, and he was kind enough to include some of my thoughts.

At Trust Across America-Trust Around the World we believe that often the most well-deserving, shiniest apples are not those that get the most press coverage. The Manning family, and Eli in particular, have been vocal about the issue of domestic violence and its negative impact on the NFL’s image. Eli is not alone. There are many players in the NFL with high integrity and character. We should not forget this.

Regardless of the organization, when a crisis occurs, it become the problem of every stakeholder, whether they are innocent or guilty. It is important to remember that trust is built in incremental steps. In the course of doing so, the organization, and its leadership, bank trust. When a crisis strikes, they are better prepared and the blow is softened.

Let’s not blame the Eli Manning’s or the NFL “team” for the bad apples, or the resulting fallout from the latest scandal.

This story is really no different than General Motors. Rotten cultures produce rotten apples.

The NFL did not take the proactive steps required to bank trust in their organization, nor to build a trustworthy culture.

Quite simply, that’s a leadership issue. If trust is embraced as a business imperative, the next crisis just might be avoided.

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.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. Golda Meir, Former Israeli Prime Minister

Tonight at sundown marks the start of the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement.) The days in between are a period of reflection and repentance.

Occasionally I receive a note or a call from a religious leader acknowledging the importance of trust in our everyday lives.  But a Rabbi’s recent message struck a chord. This rabbi presides over a large congregation of business leaders. He said he regularly visits our website and had read our first book. It had inspired him to write a sermon about the subject of trust for the High Holidays. He joked about his audience being a captive one. “They have to listen.” The Rabbi acknowledged that “In most relationships, trust is taken for granted. It’s never discussed. But when the same occurs in business, the implications of low trust are much broader.”

A holiday is around the corner for most of us- Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. These are times for family gatherings. They are an opportunity to discuss trust and its role in our everyday lives.

• If you have a young family, talk about family values and what they mean. Perhaps you can even make a written list and regularly refer to it at the dinner table. Update it and modify it over time.
• If your children are older, the discussion might focus on a recent trust breach from the news- the NFL or Home Depot.
• If you are spending time with adult friends, talk about the role of trust in your professional lives and how it might be improved.

Have the “trust talk.” It’s a great time of the year to do it.  But most important, never take trust for granted.

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.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” 
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Today’s blog topic jumped right out of the headlines from the past 24 hours:

Football Must Regain the Public’s Trust

Trust Vital Between Officers & The Community

State Audit of Fayette Schools Shows Need to Restore Public Trust

Restore Public Trust

These headlines rarely change. Everyday we hear about the need to restore trust in education, communities, sports, business and government. The story is the same, only the names of the violators change. I can’t think of a single headline that ever read something like this ” We are Embracing Trust as a Business Imperative and Building it Into Our Foundation.”

There is enormous societal confusion swirling around the term “trust” that stems from this “restoration” approach. It is based on the assumption that trust was present before the crisis. In almost every case it wasn’t. Building a foundation of trust is a proactive decision made by the leaders of an organization, and it is built in incremental steps. In every one of the headlines above, I will venture to guess that trust was never a component of the leadership agenda, nor its Board of Directors.

Unfortunately, trust is taken for granted. It is assumed that it just “exists” when, in reality, it rarely does. Some leaders might argue, “Why bother? Maybe we’ll get lucky and never face a crisis.” I would respond that it’s much less expensive to build a foundation of trust, than it is to “manage” a crisis and attempt to build trust after the crisis. Building a foundation of trust also brings tangible and intangible benefits. These are just a few:

• Improved collaboration driving decision-making speed, efficiency and innovation
• Greater personal effectiveness for all involved, improving team projects and the odds of their coming to fruition
• Increased employee responsibility and competence
• Improved morale
• Faster/more efficient new business development
• Win/win opportunities both internally and externally

These are some pretty good reasons for building a foundation of trust. Don’t you agree? And remember, you CANNOT regain or restore something that never existed.

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.

Are you a trustworthy captain steering a trustworthy ship?

That’s the question we have been asking for the past few months via an online survey that we are calling the Leader’s Project. It’s purpose is to bring focus and context to what is meant by trustworthy leadership and the resulting organizational trust.

These are some tough questions, but we guarantee that just reading them will provide plenty of food for thought and perhaps a new path forward for all leaders who understand the importance of placing trust at the top of the agenda.

If you are brave enough to tell your story, we want to hear it. In fact, one CEO who has taken the test will be featured in the first edition of TRUST! The Magazine scheduled for publication in October.

Visit the link for the full questionnaire. This is a sampling of the questions it contains.

• SUCCESS: What role does trust play in ensuring the success of your organization?
• COSTS: What are the costs/implications of not having a high level of trust in your organization? (200 words max)
• COLLABORATION: How do you transform a siloed, reactive, heroic leadership culture to one that is trust-based, team-focused, and collaborative? (200 words max)
• CULTURE: What values, principles or beliefs does your organization follow that are essential to building a foundation of trust? (200 words max)
• LEADERSHIP: Which do you consider your “Best Practice” in trustworthy business behavior– the strategy that separates you from your competitors? (200 words max)

At a minimum, spend just a few minutes thinking about the questions above, or complete our full survey and share your best practices so others can learn from them.

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.

Recently, a friend relayed a story about a colleague who is ALWAYS 10 minutes late for meetings. She said she “trusts” this person to always show up late. We laughed about the (mis)use of the word “trust” and moved on.

But what my friend is actually doing is forgiving her colleague for her lack of accountability by ignoring her tardiness. I’ll bet nobody has ever spoken to this person about arriving on time.

Accountability is a large component of trust, but one of the least discussed.

So how do you build accountability into your organization?

Be the Role Model: Leaders can’t demand accountability without first modeling it. Deliver on your expectations and do what you say you will do. Then, set up the following action plan to instill its importance in your team:

• Role identification: Team members need to understand their roles.
• Expectations & Goals: Identify them in a way that the team understands and accepts.
• Don’t Be a Dictator: Work the accountability plan together. Get the early “buy-in.”
• Discuss it: Place the plan on the agenda for discussion, and make modifications, with the team, when needed.
• No Excuses: Once the accountability plan is in place, enforce it as the leader and encourage it between team members.  No excuses for:

1. Missing deadlines
2. Tardiness
3. Too many mistakes
4. Low quality output
5. Showing up late to the meeting.

The outcome of an accountability plan is trust. It’s a win/win!

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.

The other day I read an interesting article called “Gaining Their Trust” in Human Resource Executive Online.

According to this article,  HR leaders must earn the trust and respect of their C-Suite colleagues and board members.

Something about this doesn’t sound quite right.

Isn’t it the Board and C-Suite’s responsibility to lead with trust and then to extend that trust to not only HR leaders but all leaders?

We wrote about this extensively in our second book, TRUST INC., a Guide for Boards & C-Suites. In fact, 60 experts weighed in with 100 strategies for Boards & C-Suites to lead with trust with internal stakeholders.

Stephen M.R. Covey speaks frequently about the 5 Waves (Incremental Steps) of Trust in an Organization:

READ WAVE #2 and #3 CAREFULLY!!!

WAVE 1: Self Trust (personal credibility)

WAVE 2: Relationship Trust (behavior with others)

WAVE 3: Stakeholder Trust (alignment with internal stakeholders)

WAVE 4: Market Trust (external reputation)

WAVE 5: Societal Trust ( global citizenship- social consciousness, corporate citizenship, and corporate social responsibility.)

The responsibility of gaining trust lies squarely with the Board and C-Suite, whose first priority should be in building relationships and ensuring alignment with their internal stakeholders, not the other way around.

Trust-focused organizations must:

• Have a well-defined mission, corporate credo and strong values
• Hire the “right” people who are aligned with those values
• Lead with trust.

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.

The Rutger’s University President has issued an apology to the Penn State President for offensive actions of Rutger’s fans at a recent football game.

Did he do the right thing? Was he extending trust?  Was this an act of integrity and ethics?

I’m on the fence on this one.

But this I know. Build trust and avoid crises and scandals (or at least minimize their impact).

Fail to proactively build trust, and the fallout from a scandal will continue for years.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

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.

“One can’t assume that trust accrues automatically through the mere passage of time. It grows through incremental steps and deliberate actions.” Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates

This quote will appear on the cover of the third book in our award-winning TRUST INC. series. The book, TRUST INC., 52 Weeks of Activities and Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust will be published in November 2014 as an inspirational holiday gift.

Stephen M.R. Covey speaks frequently about the 5 Waves (Incremental Steps) of Trust:

WAVE 1: Self Trust (personal credibility)

WAVE 2: Relationship Trust (behavior with others)

WAVE 3: Stakeholder Trust (alignment with internal stakeholders)

WAVE 4: Market Trust (external reputation)

WAVE 5: Societal Trust ( global citizenship- social consciousness, corporate citizenship, and corporate social responsibility.)

Organizations cannot effectively build Wave 5 until the first 4 are constructed. Imagine waking up in the morning and putting your shoes on first. Yet that’s exactly what many organizations have done.

Said another way, building organizational trust cannot be accomplished via an a-la- carte menu. Choosing to start building trust at Wave 4 or 5, with the intent of using it as a short-term promotional or communications tool, rather than a long-term, ground up, incremental trust strategy is a bad choice. Planning and executing a corporate citizenship or corporate social responsibility program without first mastering self trust, relationship trust, stakeholder trust and market trust eventually backfires. And when the crisis strikes, the weak trust foundation crumbles. We see evidence of this almost daily. Some of the biggest names in CSR also happen to be some of the greatest trust & ethics violators. Just pick up the newspaper on any given day. In this age of increasing transparency, these organizations are fooling no one but themselves.

So my advice today to all organizations, but particularly corporate America, get dressed before you put on your shoes.

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.

What do we mean when we say “Trust is a Lifestyle?”

• Trust is not a mathematical equation or formula
• It is not a memo to be circulated at a meeting
• It is not negotiated via a contract or a regulation
• It cannot be delegated
• It is not something to be “built” in the wake of a crisis
• It is not “the buzzword of the day.”

When we hear the word “trust” we should envision a way of being, a lifestyle that includes:

• Acting with integrity at all times, no exceptions
• Respecting others
• Making ethical decisions
• Shaking the hand of a partner in business or in your personal life, looking them in the eye, and telling them that you are extending trust.

Build a lifestyle of trust, beginning with self-trust, and extend trust to those around you. It will be reciprocated.  You will experience a higher quality of life, as will those who learned from your example.

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.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.