While there are no shortcuts to trust, there are many work arounds. Barbara Brooks Kimmel
In the words of Abraham Lincoln…. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
The same applies to trust. Perhaps now, more than ever, leaders have a responsibility to their stakeholders to stop treating trust like an outcast soft skill, and start approaching low trust as a high risk. Trust is an essential organizational competency with tangible value, just like any other.
How many of these shortcuts to trust have you participated in or taken?
- Misdefining trust in a way that suits organizational leadership and its advisors. A few examples: brand trust, check the box sustainability/ESG, philanthropy, “feel good” CSR, and blockchain solutions are not trust. Neither is”purpose.”
- Engaging a “feel good” speaker, rather than holding a trust competency workshop with a trust subject matter expert.
- Paying to be designated as a “great workplace.”
- Hiring additional legal and compliance professionals.
- Creating a marketing campaign based on trust “talk” rather than action.
Unfortunately, not a single one of these costly “perception of trust” shortcuts will elevate trust.
Building a high trust organization is not difficult if trust is acknowledged as the outcome of principled behavior. It simply requires leadership buy-in, a solid trust-building framework, and a destination. High priced trust shortcuts might fool some of the people in the short-term, but in the long-term principled leaders build trust-based organizations from the inside out, not the outside in.
Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, along with members of its Trust Alliance, offers both online and in-person workshops to help leaders, teams and organizations build their trust competency. These are some samples of recent engagements.
Refer to the list of above and decide which you would rather do, build trust or work around it.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Barbara has consulted with many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, and also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance . She is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA.
Copyright 2020, Next Decade, Inc.
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