In its earlier days LinkedIn provided a unique opportunity for professional collaboration, allowing Trust Across America to build an amazing network of likeminded individuals interested in helping organizations build trust. Our Trust Alliance members individually and collectively benefitted by working together on books and contributing to our magazine, engaging in shared learning and development programs (both in person and online), and building a trust framework that has now attracted well over 200,000 global professionals. People can truly achieve extraordinary results when they embrace the power of collaboration, placing it ahead of self interest.
On a personal level, collaboration:
Improves communication
Stimulates critical thinking
Enhances self esteem
Builds confidence
Motivates individuals to take risks
Aids in self-control
Allows for evaluation of personal values and goals
Builds empathy
Promotes better listening
Develops conflict resolution skills
As a group, collaboration:
Increases productivity
Speeds up decision-making
Encourages creativity
Simplifies workflows
Pools skills and resources
Fosters diversity
Brings balance to decision-making
Encourages win/win situations
And most importantly, builds trust.
Fast forward to 2026. The opportunities for collaboration on LinkedIn seem to have all but disappeared. Its algorithms appear to favor a crowded “garage sale” feel of cheap self promotion and self interest, leaving little to no space for building trust through teamwork. As people become more insular and isolated, as AI chatbots replace teamwork and social media sites place the power of personal relationships in the background, is it any wonder that trust continues to lose its relevance? Trust, after all, is always interpersonal.
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.
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.
Over the past 15+ years I have spoken with hundreds if not thousands of business leaders from small startups to Fortune 500 and, if the opportunity presents itself, I ask the following question:
What role does trust play in your daily work?
And the most common responses, in no particular order, are:
I never thought about it
My employees trust me
None, I have too many daily fires to extinguish
None, it’s not my job
Huge, every year we bring in a “big name” motivational speaker
What’s the message here? Whether you are a leader, manager or work as a member of a team, if you do not intentionally choose to incorporate trust into your daily activities, do not expect it to flourish. It does not happen on its own.
If you are interested in learning more, take a look below.
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.
Fifteen plus years have passed since I began studying trust and trustworthiness and building tools to help leaders and teams. My focus remains on companies of all sizes and across industries. Without exception 2024 certainly had its share of organizational trust challenges from data breaches (Ticketmaster, Meta), to product safety violations (Boeing, Kellogg), and toxic workplaces (Nike, Uber) to name just a few.
OUR DATA
Close to 200,000 global participants have accessed our Trust Alliance Principles, the result of the efforts of some of the worlds leading trust scholars and practitioners. They are available at no cost and in multiple languages on our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com.
The behavioral trends in our “TAP INTO TRUST” ongoing survey of interpersonal workplace trust have not wavered since we began tracking them in 2019 with over 700 respondents reporting the following:
42% report weak ACCOUNTABILITY
38% report weak TRANSPARENCY
46% report weak TRACKING of trust
In fact, every behavior (12 in total) in our survey shows at least 20% of respondents reporting weaknesses within their organization.
Our FACTS Framework tracking the trustworthiness of public companies highlights a strong business case for organizations to focus on trust, After 13+ years our Trust 200 Index, maintained by IndexOne continues to outperform the S&P 500.
What will 2025 bring? We gathered some opinions and ideas from some of our trust colleagues in the recently published winter 2025 issue of Trust! Magazine. The link is available on the home page of our website.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award winning 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.
As the year draws to a close, I am pleased to provide the following visual summary of the progress we made at Trust Across America-Trust Around the World in 2023. For more information please visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or reach out directly to me at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
#1 Trust Across America’s Trust 200 Index Continues to Outperform the S&P 500 over time (12 years)
Contrary to what many executives are lead to believe, trust is not a “soft” skill. In fact in today’s challenging business environment it may mean the difference between survival and failure. Trust impacts an organization in multiple ways, from profitability to workplace stress and wellness, stakeholder relationships, regulatory costs and beyond. The following represents some of the more current and less biased research/surveys supporting the business case for trust:
Companies that actively and consistently build trust amongst consumers across their entire spectrum of brands gain greater marketing efficiency. They face fewer headwinds in marketing and selling their products and services, have more effective advertising due to higher believability, and can charge a premium for their products. Ipsos Mori Trust the Truth, September, 2019
Accenture Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Report surveyed 24,877 consumers worldwide about their evolving expectations towards companies. Lack of trust costs global brands $2.5 trillion per year. This compares to $756 billion lost by U.S. companies and 41 percent loss of clients. 2017
Research shows that 30% of a company’s value is at risk where trust is broken with the public and external stakeholders. Those CEOs who have a proactive approach to crisis planning view simulation training and drills as an investment. They also see it as a way to test and build the trust and confidence of their teams. It hones and develops leadership and communication skills, builds coherence and cross-functional support. McKinsey & Company research in Connect: How companies succeed by engaging radically with society 2015 – John Browne, Robin Nuttall, Tommy Stadlen
Employee Engagement:
According to Gallup, when employees don’t trust organizational leadership, their chances of being engaged are one in twelve. But when that trust is established, the chances of engagement skyrocket to better than one in two. A highly engaged workforce means the difference between a company that outperforms its competitors and one that fails to grow. Currently 31% of the working population are engaged. Taking into consideration three Gallup measures of employee engagement this year, the overall percentage of engaged workers during 2020 is 36%. July, 2020
The level of trust in the work environment is also associated with increased adjusted odds of having cardiovascular disease. International Journal of Environmental Research, 2019
Research from 2018 suggests that “trust and perceived support are both significant predictors of mental and physical health, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. However, the support at the team level is a more important predictor, while trust is a stronger predictor at the organizational level. Italian Society of Occupational Medicine, 2018
According to PwC, when we look at employees, 22% have left a company because of trust issues and 19% have chosen to work at one because they trusted it highly. In other words, one out of five of your employees who leave don’t do so primarily for a better salary or position. They leave because they don’t trust your company. PwC Trust in US Business Survey, August 2021
Improved Stakeholder Relationships:
Only 7 percent of Americans believe that major company CEOs have high ethical standards, and only 9 percent have a very favorable opinion of major companies. Only 42 percent Americans trust major companies to behave ethically, down from 47 percent last year. Public Affairs Council, 2018
Regulatory Costs:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute reports that The cost of Federal Regulations is approaching $2 trillion annually. To put that number in perspective, if U.S. regulations were an economy, it would be larger than Canada’s entire GDP and the eighth largest in the world. The regulatory state costs more than the U.S. government collects from income taxes. It’s almost equal to all corporate pretax profits earned in 2016. Investor’s Business Daily April 19, 2021
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.
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