As the Founder of Trust Across America – Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) I am frequently asked for more information on who I am and what our program does. I have been studying trust and trustworthiness for the best part of 18 years. I have sought out and learned from some of the world’s leading authorities. Those I have come to know include Charlie Green, Stephen M.R. Covey, Bart Alexander and Charles Feltman. I have also read thousands of articles, blog posts and books. My background includes building an award winning marketing and communications firm, spending several years at McKinsey and working with some of the world’s leading global companies including financial institutions, consumer products, banking, and healthcare. I hold Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Business.
Our work at TAA-TAW has led to the development of dozens of programs, some retired, but always with trust as the central theme. Following is a list of ongoing activities:
Facilitate a global Trust Alliance whose mission is “To enhance the skills required to assist leaders, teams and organizations in building trust.” (Testimonials available here)
While the most trustworthy public companies outperform their peers over the long term (see chart above) most large organizations have failed to build the requisite trust bank account required to earn this designation.
Our work at Trust Across America has taught us that the oversight begins with one or all of the following:
Trust is taken for granted, not acknowledged or misunderstood
The role trust plays in long term business strategy and sustainability has been ignored
Funds have not been allocated to a trust budget or training because nobody owns it.
Facing a low or nonexistent bank balance, usually post crisis, some companies and their leaders scramble to find a quick and easy deposit into their account, usually through a statement attesting to the importance of rebuilding trust. That is not how trust is built. These empty promises do nothing but add to increasing stakeholder skepticism.
Are you part of the problem?
Digressing for a moment… several years ago I approached a colleague who had recently published a new book, a relatively well known reputation consultant to senior leaders and boards. In it he highlighted one of his clients as a role model for others in their industry. Our FACTS Framework data told another story, one of an almost certain trust breach. I approached him and suggested he present this data to his client. He thought I was kidding. “Why would I bring this “bad” news to my client? It might be the end of my consulting contract. I’ve got college bills to pay.” That was over 15 years ago, and not much has changed since that conversation.
Expensive Trust “Cures” that Will Kill Any Hope of Trust
How many of the following trust bank account withdrawals are present in your organization?
Lack of leadership willingness to acknowledge or take ownership of trust, instead delegating the word “trust” to corporate communications or the PR department, or maybe compliance or audit.
Naming a Chief Trust Officer or Trust Broker (formerly known as a Risk Manager.)
Paying for “awards” and recognition to fill the trophy cabinet and provide PR with talking points.
Hiring an expensive motivational “trust” speaker instead of allocating those funds to a trust budget.
Using employee satisfaction surveys in unsavory ways. (Employees should never be coached on which boxes to check and their responses should always be anonymous.)
Excluding freedom of expression and opinions from the “Diversity & Inclusion” program.
Talking about the importance of data privacy while installing the latest surveillance software upgrades on subordinates computers (and referring to them as subordinates.)
Placing customers before employees.
Filling the next Board seat with someone other than the most competent candidate.
Taking a “stand” not because of a belief in the cause but because PR thinks it’s a good idea.
Kick Those Trust Account Withdrawals to the Curb
So what should business leaders do to build a trust bank account?
Start by refusing to make the trust busting business decisions shown above, and challenge/fire the advisors who are recommending them.
Assign an internal team to review the trust violations occurring in your organization and fix them.
Make each “fix” your next BIG PR announcement. It will be meaningful and your stakeholders will applaud and reward you.
Do not allow anyone to tell you that these violations can be ignored.
Do not shrug off this list because your peer group is choosing to do so. The longer you do, the less trust you will have. You may have lots of “friends at the top” but your trust bank account will remain low and the next crisis may just be your last.
Interested in learning more about how to build organization trust? Stop by our website and Tap Into Trust while you are there.
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, The Financial Times, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
Are you a board member or serve in an advisory capacity to boards?
If board members both individually and collectively are talking about making trust a strategic imperative but not modeling it themselves, how could they expect the organization to be viewed as trustworthy?
Titles alone do not confer trust. Trust is an intentional strategic imperative that must be practiced and reinforced daily. Using our Tap Into Trust Principles having now been accessed over 200,000 times, the following are our guidelines for Boards of Directors. At a minimum they should be included in every board packet at every board meeting.
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, The Financial Times, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
At the end of 2025 we concluded our master survey on Building Workplace Trust and these are the results, showing the weakest behaviors.
What conclusions if any would you draw from this?
If the survey were administered in your workplace would the results look the same?
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.
Building a trust based organization begins with tracking trust in teams and addressing trust weaknesses. Doing so results in the following:
Elevating employee engagement & retention
Reducing workplace stress
Enhancing decision making
Increasing innovation
Improving communication
Reducing costs and increasing profits
How many readers work on teams and in organizations with these attributes?
The growing interest in our Tap Into Trust campaign has brought over 200,000 individuals to our list of universal principles, available in 16 languages. We are now running the largest global (one minute/one question) anonymous survey on workplace trust, with the goal of determining which of our 12 principles of trust are the WEAKEST in teams and organizations. The anonymous survey can be taken here and the results viewed upon completion.
Building a trust based team or organization first requires leadership ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that trust is a tangible asset, not to be taken for granted, and acknowledgement remains the greatest obstacle, requiring vulnerability. If that hurdle can be overcome, the rest is easy: IDENTIFY and MEND. We call this AIM Towards Trust, and the framework is being adopted by enlightened leaders of teams and in organizations of all sizes and across industries, providing a path forward to high trust.
Elevating trust in teams and organizations requires both personal and interpersonal principles.
The weakest principles break the progress.
Trust does not stop at “talk”. It requires action.
Dress down Fridays, ice cream socials and “purpose” statements will not get a team or organization across the trust goal line.
For more information contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Founder, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World
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 The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
When I was recently asked how trust has changed in the past decade my response was “Not much.” While the people, groups and institutions we should trust keep rearranging themselves in our collective minds, some gain in trust while others fade. Yet according to most major public opinion poll headlines trust has been declining.
But if you think about it, how we experience trust now is the same as it ever was. So is the value of trust – what it does for us – in business, politics, society, and life. Trust is very simply, the outcome of principled behavior. It always has been and always will be. As Stephen Covey has written, “Trust is the foundation for everything we do….” It is part of every relationship we have and undergirds everything we want or need to do together. So it is not that trust has been declining, it is trusting that has declined, and distrusting that has increased.
The Unchanging Experience of Trust
Our bodily experience of trust (and distrust), the sensations we feel, and the underlying neurophysiology that produce them have been with us for millennia. We are hard-wired to trust and to distrust, and we need both. Trusting others allows us to work together to accomplish what none of us can do alone. Distrust is built into our biology to help us stay alive and safe. What we are predisposed to do when we trust or distrust someone, or a group of someones, is also pretty much the same now as when humans were living in small clans and painting on cave walls.
Humans are wired to be drawn towards trust. When we trust others we feel safe enough to be open and at ease with them. At work this translates to collaborating effectively and having fun doing it. We happily share our ideas, good, bad and everything between, with people we trust. When we trust an information source we form opinions and act based on what we hear from them. When we trust a company, we tend to buy from them and invest in them. Distrust, on the other hand, insists we act to protect ourselves. Like a plague, we avoid people, groups, companies, and institutions we don’t trust.
In Whom We Trust (or not)
When you think “I trust this person/group/company/organization” an assessment is being made that their future behavior won’t harm and in fact will support you. That assessment leads to the embodied experience of trust described above, together with feeling certain emotions that travel with trusting, e.g., generosity, curiosity, hope, happiness, care. The same is so with the assessment “I don’t trust” except the sensations and emotions are distinctly different.
Which brings me to what has changed in the past decade and continues to change: specifically who we are trusting, and to what extent we are trusting them to do what they say they will do. According to several recent polls on perception of trust, we are trusting less. For example, over the past decade the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual global opinion poll of trust levels in business, government, NGOs, and media, has found an annual shift in which of these institutions we are trusting more or less. Similarly public opinion surveys conducted by PwC, Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation have looked at the trust employees and customers have in companies vs. what company leaders believe, and our trust in science and media, respectively. Again, they find changes in who we are trusting/distrusting.
Couple rotating/decreasing trust in societal institutions with what we know about the outcome of distrusting 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, media and society, and less willingness to talk things out as people pull back from those they distrust.
Trust-Building as Necessary Work
I believe now more than ever it’s time for those of us who work in the field of trust-building, who have the tools and expertise, to focus on helping the people we work with become trust-builders in their chosen fields. We understand that this is a competency that can be learned, developed and practiced. We have frameworks and tools to support people as they try to build their own trust-building capability and capacity. It is incumbent on leaders everywhere to step up and put learning and practicing trust-building at the forefront of their work.
Trusting people at work (where we spend most of our time) and in our communities, and between us and the institutions that hold together the fabric of those communities, is going to be essential for us as a species to make it through the big storms looming on the near horizon: political and social upheaval, and the potential threats posed by AI, to name just a few.
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, Financial Times, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
When taken seriously, tracking and addressing the behaviors that build or weaken trust in teams and organizations will have the following benefits:
Elevating employee engagement & retention
Reducing workplace stress
Enhancing decision making
Increasing innovation
Improving communication
Reducing costs and increasing profitability
Is progress being made?
The growing interest in our Tap Into Trust campaign has brought over 212,000 people to our universal principles, available in 16 languages. We are also running the largest global (one minute/one question) anonymous survey on workplace trust, with the goal of determining which of our 12 principles of trust are the WEAKEST in teams and organizations and whether they change over time. The anonymous survey can be taken here and the results of hundreds of respondents viewed upon completion.
Building a trust based team or organization is not one size fits all. It happens in 3 stages. We use AIM as an acronym for our process.
ACKNOWLEDGING that trust (the outcome of principled behavior) is a tangible asset
IDENTIFYING the behaviors that are weakening and strengthening trust
MENDING the behaviors and tracking them over time
We call this AIM Towards Trust, and the framework is being adopted by enlightened leaders in organizations of all sizes and across industries, providing a path forward to high trust.
Elevating trust in teams and organizations requires specific personal and interpersonal principles and skills.
There is no “one size fits all” or check the box fix.
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, The Financial Times, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
One of our Trust Alliance members was assisting a leadership team in assessing why a certain division was underperforming. We worked with them to run our simple one minute AIM Trust Audit for both the leadership team and the division employees. Take a look at the results. The first chart is leadership (38 respondents) and the second is the division employees. (108 respondents).
A relatively wide gap existed between the leadership team’s perception of the behaviors undermining trust compared to the employee’s perception. These results are quite common in our assessments.
How do you think the leadership team responded when provided with this data?
What would you advise them to do next?
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.
The returns of the Trust 200 Index over 13+ years according to IndexOne
More than 15 years ago The Economist published a briefing paper sponsored by Cisco, called “The Role of Trust in Business Collaboration,” concluding that tens of millions of dollars had been spent evaluating corporate governance but a *definition of corporate trust continued to elude us. The 2008 financial crisis essentially destroyed investor confidence in the stock market and the ethical decision making practices of business leaders and their public companies. And so it should come as no surprise that trust in the financial markets has stagnated and even deteriorated since that time. After all, what actions, if any, have organizations taken to build investor confidence and trust? Plenty of money is spent on PR “talk” followed by little constructive action.
What if instead of using the elusive word “trust” as the barometer, companies could instead be evaluated based on their trustworthiness? In other words, the ethical business principles and leadership practices that support trust building within the organization and can then be applied to all stakeholders. This was the question we began to address over fifteen years ago. With the assistance of academic, financial, corporate and consulting professionals, Trust Across America began to construct what became the FACTS Framework.
*Trust Across America describes trust at the individual/interpersonal level as the “outcome of principled behavior” and organizational trustworthiness as the “collective outcome of principled behavior.”
Our ten+ year study published in November 2021 continues to be, 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. We analyze companies quarterly and rank order by company, sector and market capitalization.
As our chart and study link above highlight, trustworthy public companies are rewarded over the long-term. They not only avoid expensive crises but also have the benefit of broader internal and external stakeholder support.
Low trust keeps investors out of the stock market and on the sidelines
It has not been valuation, liquidity, or profits that keeps many investors on the sidelines. It is a lack of trust in both the financial industry and in the ethical actions and decision making practices of public company leadership. Even after a time of dramatic returns over the past several years, 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 serve as a viable solution that both the industry and the public has been seeking.
In conclusion
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 ethical business and investment decisions are being made.
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.
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.
Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) whose mission is to help enhance trustworthy behavior in organizations, announces its 2024 Top Thought Leaders in Trust. The awards program, now in its 13th 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 specifically address trust. Celebrating its 16th 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, ”The release of our 2024 honors brings the focus to global champions of trust. Beginning this year we will be recognizing ten professionals who 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.All of our honorees have made a significant contribution to the field of trust over the past 12 months. Their expertise ranges from journalism to financial services.”
The honorees can be accessed via the Winter 2024 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 2025 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.
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