Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World  published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. The book, TRUST INC. Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts and is divided into six chapters:

1. Why Trust Matters- read our blog of July 18 to find out Why Trust Matters
2. Trust in Practice- read our blog of July 18 for Trust in Practice from Apple to Africa
3. Trustworthy Leadership read our blog of July 19 for Secrets of Trustworthy Leadership
4. Building Trustworthy Teams (today’s blog post)
5. Restoring Trust
6. The Future of Trust

Over a six day period, our blog will extract highlights from these chapters. Each strategy stands alone as an excellent resource in helping leaders understand why trust matters, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust building programs in their organization. Today we take a closer look at 5 strategies for Building Trustworthy Teams.

William Benner explains how to “Practice Trustworthy Behaviors”

There are many internal and external factors that can affect the ability of individuals and team members to trust one another and accomplish personal goals and team objectives. (These are just a few taken from a longer list.)

• Highly competitive, rapidly changing and uncertain business environment
• Inability and/or unwillingness to address performance issues as a team
• Poor communication skills and inability to listen for understanding
• Lack of clarity about the team’s shared mission and direction
• Lack of confidence in the team leader and/or team members

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Mary Gentile describes how to “Build the Trust Muscle: In Our Companies, In our Teams, In Ourselves”

No one publicly debates the necessity for trust in business transactions, to allow for efficient arms-length business transactions and to reduce the cost of regulatory compliance, monitoring and penalties. However, actual behaviors are often slow to change. Too often, when scandals hit or when bubbles burst, we rush to the bully pulpit, proclaiming the necessity to clean up our acts; to place transparency and integrity at the heart of our business dealings; to treat employees and consumers with the respect that comes from honest communication and practices that are consistent with the business mission and values statements. 

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Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner remind us that “You Can’t Take Trust for Granted”

Every single relationship is built on trust. It’s foundational. It’s fundamental. And foundations and fundamentals need constant attention. Building trust is a process that begins when someone is willing to risk being the first to open up, being the first to show vulnerability, and being the first to let go of control––and then reciprocating these actions.  And in the leader-constituent relationship, leaders go first. If you want the high levels of performance that come with trust and collaboration, you have to be the first to demonstrate your trust in others before asking them to trust you.

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Hear what Brian Moriarty has to say in “Creating Thriving Organizations- The Bedrock of Trust and Reputation”

Purpose-driven organizations have an important advantage because they are able to tap into the intrinsic motivation of their people. Intrinsic motivation refers to activities or work that people find rewarding in and of itself: for example, a pharmaceutical researcher who is driven by a desire to alleviate suffering caused by a particular disease. When work is intrinsically motivating, performance and creativity thrive. When employees have a voice in the mission of the organization, purpose becomes part of a living conversation with people asking, “What is the unique value that this organization provides for the world?” Companies need employees to be asking this question repeatedly.

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And finally, Robert Whipple reminds us that “Reinforcing Candor Builds Trust and Transparency”

A simple three-part model of how leader behaviors can help build higher trust includes three categories of behaviors.

1. Table Stakes

These are the basic building blocks of ethics and integrity that must be present for any level of trust to kindle. The term Table Stakes comes from the phenomenon in poker where individuals must ante up even to play in the game. Traits like honesty, openness, communication, consistency, and ethics simply must be present, or the leader may as well take off his suit and hit the showers. 

2. Enabling Actions

These are the components that further help build trust once the Table Stakes are present. There are thousands of items we could name in this category. Here are some examples: following up, advocacy, fairness, admitting mistakes, and many others. The more these elements are present, the greater the ability for the leader to withstand trust withdrawals.

3. The Heart of Trust – Reinforcing Candor  

Reinforcing candor is the ability to make people glad they brought up an observation of a leader’s inconsistency. In most organizations, people are punished in some way for bringing forward a leadership problem. Where the highest levels of trust and transparency are present, the leader has the ability to set aside his ego and reinforce those who challenge an action.

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I hope you have enjoyed this sneak peak into the trust treasures contained in our book. Did I mention that the book has won both a Nautilus Business Book and Eric Hoffer Grand Business Prize Award? Tomorrow I’ll pull some similar gems from Restoring Trust. Check back with us soon.

If this brief look behind the door has been helpful, follow this link to order the book 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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If you would like to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World  published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. The book, TRUST INC. Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts and is divided into six chapters:

1. Why Trust Matters- read our blog of July 18 to find out Why Trust Matters
2. Trust in Practice
3. Trustworthy Leadership
4. Building Trustworthy Teams
5. Restoring Trust
6. The Future of Trust

Over a six day period, our blog will extract highlights from each chapter. Each one can serve as an excellent resource in helping leaders understand why trust matters, and provide tools for those who choose to implement trust building programs in their organization. In these five stories covering trust building from Apple, Inc. all the way to Africa, you will read how organizations have successfully built trust.

“In Apple We Trust” Cynthia Figge explores trust building under Apple’s new leadership.

In terms of company supremacy, Apple must surely rank near the top. They have maintained one of the largest market values for a public company and Fast Company named Apple as “The World’s Most Innovative Company” in 2012. What could be better? At the end of 2012 in a December 6^th Business Week article. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said he would continue the company’s focus on creating great products to enrich people’s lives (“higher cause for the product”) under his leadership. He also noted that Apple would become more transparent to both make a difference and have others follow its leadership. For a company where secrecy has been sacred, was this a signal that transparency is being adopted as a business driver – perhaps ultimately an issue of customer loyalty and trust? Or was the external mounting pressure from Apple stakeholders great enough to change the company’s course? Or both? 

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In “Four Lock Box” John Gerzema describes the creation of a savings club in Kenya and how trust played a key role in its success.

The long-term payoff for Kenya could be seen in the rising health and education levels of the farm children who will soon be young adults. With its urban population growing at nearly five percent per year, Kenya will need more jobs in commerce and industry, and these positions require workers with sufficient schooling. However, many of today’s adults in Kenya also need immediate access to work and incomes, and cannot devote years to study. For this segment of the population, one of the world’s oldest aid groups—Catholic Relief Services—promotes a saving and lending scheme that serves people who are so poor that they cannot qualify even for the kind of microfinance loans popular in many parts of the world.

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In “Brand Trust is the Foundation to Brand Loyalty” James Gregory discusses trust and brand loyalty using stories from Apple, AIG and BP.

Marketing professionals generally think of brand building as nothing more than a combination of product/service packaging, public relations and advertising. In reality, the effort needed to build a trusted brand touches every aspect of a business. You can’t just claim to be trustworthy; you must act and behave accordingly. Building brand loyalty through trustworthy behavior motivates audiences to continually select your brand over competitors, improving financial performance. Brand loyalty can also bolster your company’s performance through economic shifts, public relations gaffes and even significant management changes. 

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In “Trust the Great Economic Game Changer” Robert Porter Lynch provides an eye opening essay on the auto industry. A great read for Mary Barra and GM’s Board of Directors.

One industry that’s dear to everyone is the auto industry – the world’s most visible and best-studied business sector. In 2009, General Motors and Chrysler both filed for bankruptcy and Ford came darned close. Being “too big to fail,” every taxpayer in the United States, through the action of the President, became an investor in GM and Chrysler through a bailout program (as taxpayers also did with the banks that failed).

What is not well known is that in the five year period leading up to the auto crisis, the “Big Three” U.S. automakers collectively had lost over $100 billion in the prior five years running up to the 2008 financial meltdown. The financial cataclysm did not cause their failure; it just put them over the precipice.

How could such large companies, staffed by highly educated management professionals, make such horrific mistakes? What really happened? What can we learn from this debacle?

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And finally Deb Mills-Scofield shows how Menasha Packaging Corp proved “You Can’t Take 164 Years of Trust for Granted”.

Menasha Packaging Corp (MPC), a 164 year old, 6^th generation family business, has grown from making wooden pails in 1849 to a design-oriented packaging company that today delights customers, employees and their communities with over $1 billion in revenue.  How? By leveraging their culture of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and autonomy based on trust and faith in each other. 

In Menasha’s history, there have been times of great trust and times of wavering trust.  The early 1990s were a time of tension between many corporations and their unions.  During that time, MPC, a strong believer in collaboration, started a formal team-based manufacturing program in their plants between management and plant workers, including union representatives. The output was increased innovation from the employees on the floor that improved productivity and the outcome was increased collaboration and trust.  While this may be common sense to many of us today, it was not the “norm” 20+ years ago.

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I hope you have enjoyed this sneak peak into the trust treasures contained in our book. Did I mention that the book has won both a Nautilus Business Book and Eric Hoffer Grand Business Prize Award? Tomorrow I’ll pull some similar gems from Trustworthy Leadership. Check back with us soon.

If you have enjoyed this brief look behind the door, follow this link to order the book 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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If you would like to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Late last year Trust Across America-Trust Around the World  published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. The book, TRUST INC. Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts and is divided into six chapters:

1. Why Trust Matters
2. Trust in Practice
3. Trustworthy Leadership
4. Building Trustworthy Teams
5. Restoring Trust
6. The Future of Trust

For the next six days, our blog will extract highlights from each chapter. Each one can serve as an excellent resource in helping leaders understand why trust matters, and provide tools for those who choose to implement trust building programs in their organization. We know our readers love lists. Today’s blog contains five.

Charles H. Green & Barbara Brooks Kimmel discuss “Trustworthiness in Action” and offer a “Top Ten List” of how companies can increase trustworthiness.

#1 Trustworthy leadership – Very simply, a culture of trust cannot exist with an untrustworthy leader. 

#2 Transformation – Productivity and execution begin when the CEO creates a set of values and goals that are shared, accepted and adopted by all stakeholders. 

#3Tools – There are many trust tools CEOs can use to build trust with their internal and external stakeholders. These run the gamut from metrics and assessments to online surveys. 

#4 Treatment– The Golden Rule says to “treat others the way you want to be treated.” This certainly holds true for trust. 

#5 Teamwork – Teamwork leads to better decisions and better outcomes. Teams create trust, and trust creates teams.

#6 Talk – Your stakeholders need to know what steps you are taking to build a trustworthy organization. Quarterly numbers are no longer the be all and end all. 

#7 Truth – Truth-telling is at the core of trust. Any CEO who wants to build a trustworthy organization must have an extremely comfortable relationship with the truth. 

#8 Time – Building a culture of trustworthy business does not happen overnight. It takes time, maybe even years – but not decades. 

#9 Transparency – Merriam Webster defines “transparent” as visibility or accessibility of information, especially with business practices. Any CEO who thinks he or she can still hide behind a veil of secrecy need only spend a few minutes on social media reading what their stakeholders are saying. 

#10 Thoughtful – Not all stakeholders need to know the company’s trade secrets, or what the CEO had for dinner. But if your company is serious about increasing trustworthiness, consider engaging all your stakeholders in rich, thoughtful conversations. 

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In “What Does a Trustworthy Company Look Like” Peter Firestein addresses how you know a trustworthy company when you see one.

By far the best assessment of whether a company is worthy of trust lies in an answer to the question: “Who trusts it?”

• A trusted company’s shares trade at a premium to its competitors’ based on investors’ expectations of strong performance in the future. This expectation, itself, is a matter of belief in customers’ trust in its products, lenders’ trust in its judgment, and regulators’ trust in its practices.

• When unwanted events occur, a trusted company receives the benefit of the doubt until the facts can be established. It is not assumed to be in the wrong.

• A trusted company attracts the best available employees, helping to ensure that it will continue to hold the trust of stakeholders into the next generation.

• A trusted company’s practices and strategies are adopted by other companies wishing to emulate its success. Those strategies enter the curricula of business schools to be studied and adapted.

• Concentration on the continued worthiness of a trusted company is spread evenly across all levels of the company’s hierarchy. Maintaining and strengthening trust in the company is a career-long preoccupation of virtually everyone who works there.

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In “Making Your Values Real to Enable Trust” Jeffrey Thomson discusses two ways to make trust tangible:

How do you make your organizational values real and foundational to building trust, organizational health, and creating great business outcomes? Two very simple suggestions:

1. The CEO, not a committee or consultant, must set the core values.  Why? Tone at the top.  Genuine, authentic and sustained exemplary behaviors are required and should be expected from the leader and the leadership team. 
2. Make the effort to inculcate the core values into on-going performance reviews and appraisal processes to drive regular, often tough, conversations about the behaviors (the “how”) that lead to the accomplishments (the “what”).  

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In “Choosing Candor the Language of Trust” Laura Rittenhouse discusses three levels of CEO Candor.

Just Talk:  AMD 2011 Shareholder Letter Introduction

AMD enters 2012 firmly focused on becoming a solid execution engine, while positioning ourselves to take advantage of growth opportunities driven by a fundamental shift in the computing ecosystem. 

Real Talk:  Lockheed Martin 2011 Shareholder Letter Introduction

This is a milestone year for Lockheed Martin: our 100th anniversary. Our company’s success over the past century is due to the exceptional character and ingenuity of the hundreds of thousands of people who have walked through the doors of our heritage companies. As this remarkable enterprise begins its second century, we and our customers face unprecedented global security challenges and an uncertain economic environment.

Transforming Talk:  Eaton Corporation 2011 Shareholder Letter Introduction

In 1911, young entrepreneur Joseph Oriel Eaton staked his future on a transformational axle for the fledgling U.S. trucking industry. He bet upon a megatrend — that the transportation industry would become a hallmark of American industry and our economy. And he was right.

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And finally Robert & Gregg Vanourek address how “Stewards Build Trust” and  provide a partial list of trust busters.

Trust is complex. Many behaviors can undermine trust. Below is a partial list of “trust busters”:

1. Abusive behavior
2. Accountability lacking
3. Appreciation lacking
4. Arbitrary use of power
5. Blaming
6. Commitments not met
7. Communication poor or secretive
8. Compensation plans encourage inappropriate behavior
9. Controls/processes lacking or excessive
10. Corner cutting to get results

I hope you have enjoyed this sneak peak into the trust treasures contained in our book. Did I mention that it has won both a Nautilus Business Book and Eric Hoffer Grand Business Prize Award? Tomorrow I’ll pull some similar gems from Trust in Practice. Check back with us soon.

If you have enjoyed this brief look behind the door, follow this link to order the book 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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If you would like to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

What do pickles, kindness and employee engagement have in common? Read on.

This morning my younger son was packing up to head to Vermont for a few days with a friend and his family. He had just returned from the bagel shop with a Baker’s Dozen and a container of cream cheese to share during the trip. On his way out the door I remembered that last evening I had brewed up our first batch of summer refrigerator pickles from our bounty of organic garden cucumbers. (For those of you who think pickles must be made in a crock and “cooked” for months, there’s a shortcut that actually tastes better and only takes 3 or 4 days. Think “crunchy” and Google “garlic dill refrigerator pickles.)”

I suggested to my son that he take a jar to his host family. His response surprised me. He said he believed one kind gesture (the bag of bagels) was sufficient. I reminded him that you can never do too many nice things for others.

Same applies to leaders in any organization. Who in the C-Suite is tasked with doing the “right” thing and keeping everyone happy, the equivalent of a Chief Kindness Officer? It all starts with the CEO.  How often do you hear about companies doing nice things just because they want to, as opposed to well crafted PR campaigns or corporate window dressing? Some do. Howard Schultz at Starbucks just announced a program to pay college tuition.

According to Gallup, only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. Do you think building kindness into the corporate culture might raise that engagement? Acts of kindness build trust. They make for good business.

I have compiled a short list of the various ways leaders can build trust through deliberate acts of kindness.

• Set long-term goals and establish a benchmark
• Put trust high on the agenda every day
• Create an intentional culture
• Hire the right people who are aligned with that culture (don’t forget to let HR know)
• Communicate openly
• Support advancement
• Catch someone doing something right every day, announce it and reward it
• Tell the truth
• Park your ego at the door and do more listening than talking
• Come down out of your ivory tower and on to the shop floor
• Keep your word
• Offer to buy lunch, bring a jar of pickles, and sit down at the table.

Start today. Set some long-term employee engagement goals and put trust high on the daily agenda. Let me know the outcome.

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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Drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

We’ve all heard them, those annoying robot recordings and canned phrases that companies and their customer service “professionals”  have adopted because it’s what “policy” dictates. I would love a seat at those policy meeting tables to remind management that without customers, business ceases to exist.

Here’s a short list of my favorite first hand trust-busters and the way my brain translates them:

CSR: “I understand how you feel”

ME: No you don’t. You think that by saying “I understand how you feel” that I feel better, but actually you haven’t resolved the problem so I feel worse.

CSR: Sorry, but this is our policy.

ME: You’re not sorry at all. You’re giving me a stock answer because that’s all your company permits you to say.

CSR: “I’m doing the best I can.”

ME: Well then I feel sorry for YOU because you’ve set your own bar very low.

CSR: Hobbily gobbily gobeldy gook. (The CSR is not a native English speaker and I can’t understand a thing they are saying.)

ME: This company doesn’t care enough about it’s customers to ensure that their reps speak English well enough to be understood.

CSR: “We can’t give you a time when we will be there.”

ME: You don’t value my time so customer service is clearly not a priority.

CSR: Our computers are very slow today.

ME: Funny, every time I call you, you tell me the same story. Please suggest to management that the computers be fixed.

And the best one:

CSR: You’re not the first one to call and complain about this.

ME: Then let me calculate the gross time wasted by all the callers instead of just my call. And now that I have finished my calculations, I  feel better knowing that you are letting all your customers down and wasting all their time, not just mine.

And I can’t help but recall of all those times I’ve dialed, listened to the recording, entered  the info and account numbers, sat on hold and then the CSR finally picks up… and the call is disconnected.

Certain kinds of companies are famous for poor customer service. Health insurers, utility and cable companies and airlines come to mind first. Also, all the local businesses that deliver appliances and the like. The remainder of companies, get it “right” more often than wrong, but it’s probably because we never need to call them.  And in some cases like utilities, we have no choice but to do business with these companies, and they know it. We are a captive audience.

What this tells me is that the “right” leaders are absent at the policy meetings (probably because they are too busy putting out fires.) The company is not customer focused and therefore not trustworthy. Management is more concerned with lining their own pocketbooks than in meeting the needs of all their stakeholders, including their customers. Their focus is short-term and they are fooling no one but themselves, and the lack of customer focus is usually indicative of more serious underlying and systemic problems, starting with untrustworthy leaders. As a consumer, I avoid these companies whenever I can. We all have choices (most of the time). Whenever possible, choose to give your business to those who don’t train their CSR’s to give stock answers to real concerns, and who apparently have no respect for the people who ultimately pay their salaries, their customers.

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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Drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Yesterday I wrote about Ten Trust-Building Questions Leaders Should Be Asking and today I am following up with some easy suggestions and resources for accessing the trust-building answers.

Ten Trust-Building Resources for Leaders

1. Read a book on building trust
2. Watch a video on building trust
3. Receive cutting edge advice by joining our Alliance
4. Read a report on building trust
5. Contact an expert
6. Join a Circle of Trust
7. Hold a workshop
8. Plan a trust event. Make it fun!
9. Listen to the world’s leading trust experts via 4 years of Trust Across America Radio Archives
10. Send a note to Trust Across America-Trust Around the World. If it’s trust you are seeking, we have the resources to help. Contact: barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

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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Drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Business leaders are constrained by the number of hours in the day, and how they prioritize their time. Many spend a large percentage of it reacting to crises and extinguishing fires rather than proactively building business. If more leaders embraced the benefits of trust, they might have their time freed up for more worthwhile pursuits. So, if you are a leader, here are ten questions to ask yourself.

Ten Questions For Leaders Seeking to Build Trustworthy Organizations

1. Am I trustworthy? Does trust matter to me as an individual or in my professional life?
2. Is trust mentioned in our mission statement or corporate credo?
3. Do all stakeholders view me as trustworthy? Have I asked?
4. Do I talk about the importance of trust on a regular basis?
5. Do I engage my employees in discussions about trust?
6. Am I transparent?
7. Do I celebrate achievements? Do I allow mistakes?
8. Am I more concerned with profits or values?
9. Would I compromise my integrity?
10. Do I acknowledge the business case for trust?

What other questions should leaders be asking themselves in pursuit of building trustworthy organizations?  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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Drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Sometimes our days don’t turn out as originally planned.

Yesterday was one of those days!

My intentions were good. I had a big project to tackle so I woke up extra early, walked the dogs, made coffee, sat down to check incoming emails, and suddenly the day derailed.

For those who can still remember back as far as childhood, some of us were blessed with a level of intelligence to the “right of center” on the bell curve. This attribute became a curse on days when tests or exams were administered, as there was often the classmate to the left or right, or sometimes behind us with, what was then known as “wandering eyes.” Their level of audacity was only limited by the teacher’s ability (and choice) to hear and see. When the tests were graded and returned, the cheater acted as if they had earned the grade themselves. They never bothered to thank the kid sitting next to them, and certainly never apologized.

Cheating still runs rampant in schools. In fact, it’s now at epidemic levels as all those cheating kids are now adults, raising a new generation of cheaters. Just ask Don McCabe at Rutgers University who was a guest on the TAA radio show back in 2010.

So as I read through my Google alerts yesterday morning, a new article on “trust” popped up. I read it, read it again, and then read it for the third time, assuming I was missing the most important component, the credit to the original author. Someone who is, ironically, on the faculty of the same university cited above, and who until yesterday I had no reason to believe was untrustworthy or had “wandering eyes” decided that plagiarism and copyright rules only apply to other people. I think I remember that  same “guy” sitting next to me in high school english class!

For those who know me, I have never said “No” to anyone who asks to republish or repurpose anything I have written, as I am a believer in the power of collaboration, especially when tackling a complex subject such as “trust.”  But this particular person forgot to ask permission, or perhaps thought he wouldn’t get caught. Instead, he threw me a bone with a brief mention of TAA (no link), and then proceeded to lift almost his entire article from this blog post with no attribution.

If you’ve never  looked up the definition of  “plagiarism,” according to Merriam-Webster.com it is:

“The act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person : the act of plagiarizing something”

And for those who don’t know the definition of “copyright”, also from Merriam-Webster.com:

“The exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work)”

It’s Friday so this is a bit of a light hearted post, sharing a peek behind the curtain and into my life.

I have two sons who, without a doubt, are my proudest accomplishments. My younger son is a senior in high school and heading off to college in a year. This summer, he and has friends have been using my kitchen as a laboratory of sorts. Their goal is to master a recipe for the perfect glass of lemonade. This experiment has been ongoing for almost a month and each batch is getting better. I’ve been appointed “Chief Taste Tester,” a new title to add to my resume! (I’m also the one who mops the floor when they are done.)

Yesterday I was working from my home office, right above the kitchen and heard some quiet conversation below. I went downstairs and found four boys busy perfecting their craft. Each one had a job (washing, juicing, mixing, pouring) and the ongoing conversation had little to do with the task at hand, but instead was focused on the upcoming soccer game on TV. I could not identify a leader or boss.  The scene reminded me of a well-rehearsed Broadway show. All the actors came together naturally with no missteps and nobody shouting orders.

These boys have known each other since kindergarten and have grown up together as friends. What do they have in common?

• To start with, lots of history, similar demographics, and years to build trust
• Strong family values
• There’s not a single female among their siblings
• None are the first-born.

Perhaps these similar attributes don’t have a thing to do with their ability to work together in such a natural way, but my guess is some, or maybe all of them play a role.

Now let’s redirect this post to the time and money organizations spend on team building exercises, employee engagement programs, leadership training and culture change.

Maybe instead, they should simply make lemonade.

The next time you want to engage your team, buy a few bags of lemons, some sugar, and step back.  You have set up a powerful learning experiment in trust building and teamwork. The observations and conclusions may prove to be far more valuable than the ingredients purchased.  Compare the results to my experience. How are they similar? How do they differ? What’s working fine? What’s not? Let me know how it goes, and don’t forget to send me your recipe.

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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Feel free to leave a comment or drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

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Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Yesterday I wrote about a commonly repeated expression “Trust Takes Years to Build But Can Be Lost In a Second” and why I believe that it doesn’t always hold true.  Then late in the afternoon I saw another interesting and somewhat popular statement “Character, Either You Have it Or You Don’t.”

The actual quote is credited to Anthony Bourdain.

“Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.”

― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Sorry, but again I have to disagree. Character is a learned trait. It is a skill that can be honed throughout life.  It’s built from our earliest experiences, our family values and the influence of our childhood friends. In other words, it’s mostly “nurture” not “nature.”

Michael Josephson (Josephson Institute) created a popular youth-centered program called Character Counts. His framework contains basic values called the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. The program has been working effectively for decades. I like that the first pillar is trustworthiness.

So it seems that character is really a lifelong learning opportunity for those with an open mind and a motivation to elevate it. With the right mentor, the right leader, the right boss, the right spouse, the right friends, character can be learned and perfected throughout life. There is no deadline for developing character.

Imagine if C-Suite compensation was partially based on an annual character test! Would we see a sudden and positive shift in the way businesses are run? What do you think?

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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