Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

It’s Week #18 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

David Reiling is the CEO of Sunrise Banks and a multi-year Top Thought Leader in Trust who offers the following suggestion:

“Set intentional promises and expectations on what you will deliver to all stakeholders.” 

When you’re setting goals sometimes those goals are attainable and other times you miss them. To keep yourself always ‘in the game’ it is important to set goals and make yourself accountable. I challenge you to take it one step further and make yourself accountable for delivering results to others (stakeholders). This commitment to others will keep your drive and mindset in the right place. It doesn’t feel good when you break a promise to others. So be strong, be transparent and be intentional with others and let your goals and promises be seen and heard. Doing this will keep you on the track to deliver amazing results.

Thank you David. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

I am happy to share our 2016 Trust Bibliography update curated by Bob Easton, an Accenture partner and long time friend of Trust Across America. Now at 84 pages, it is perhaps the largest living bibliography of its kind, and a tremendous asset to those who acknowledge trust as an intentional business strategy and competitive advantage.

Thank you Bob for your commitment.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #17 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Nadine Hack a member of our Trust Alliance  and 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner offers a simple suggestion:

Be inclusive in your decision making

In our ever-more connected world, growing exponentially more so because of social media, people expect to be engaged rather than dictated to. This always has been true: it’s just more obvious now.

So, be open to the possibility you can learn as much from those you lead as they might learn from you. Involve them as early as possible in analyzing information to make truly informed decisions.

Territorial ego-based leadership is the opposite: keep strategies and activities secret, maintain control by keeping everyone else “in their place” and share as little as possible.

Yet, leaders who recognize that even the new intern can have a breakthrough “genius insight” are genuinely secure and do not have to dominate. They also get the best out of their teams.

Thank you Nadine. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #16 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Jordan Kimmel, Co-founder of Trust Across America and a member of our Trust Alliance offers a simple suggestion:

Spend the time to build trust, and do it in incremental steps

Today’s reality is that it’s simply a low trust environment. Respect that.

Earning other people’s trust means being proactive and making sure my promises are delivered, while putting other’s interests first.

To build trust, one needs to first extend trust. Take small steps, and then take larger ones.

Giving some rope, allows the other party to earn more slack. Some relationships will take the rope and hang themselves, and often the warning signs present in the early stages of “trust-building.”

When promises are met, and mutual respect is shown, deep trust develops over time. Do what you say, say what you mean, take the incremental steps and reap the long-term rewards.

Thank you Jordan. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #15 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Charles H. Green a Trust Alliance member and a Trust Across America Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree offers a very simple suggestion:

“Be a role model”

A lot of things in business can be achieved through business cases, behavioral goals, and incentives. 

Trust is not one of those things.

When it comes to trust, we put outsized importance on integrity. A policy violation may be looked at askance, yet be quickly forgiven. A violation of trust, however, is not forgotten.  

In matters of trust, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.  In no other realm is role-modeling more important. When someone acts in both trustworthy and trusting manners, we trust them.  But when someone says, “trust me,” we automatically become suspicious.  And when a leader doesn’t walk the trust talk, we don’t hesitate to call them hypocrites.

Be the trust you claim to want to see in your organization. Be a role model.

Thank you Charlie. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #13 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

David Penglase, a Trust Alliance member from Australia offers the following:

“In earning the trust of others, being clear on what you want for others, is more important than what you want from them.”

Your intentions matter! Not just what you intend to do (the action), and not just why you intend to do it (the motivation behind the action), but also having a clear and mindful understanding of how what you intend to do will impact others (the impact).

These three elements of intention, the action (what), the motivation (why), and the impact (how), are a direct reflection of your character (who). 

You now have the who, what, why and how of intention, all that remains is for you to decide on when you will start to build even more trust in your life (self-trust, trust in others and earning the trust of others) by harnessing the power of intention.

Thank you David. We hope our readers heed this week’s advice.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #11 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Corey DuBrowa the Senior VP of Global Communications at Starbucks offers this:

The most potent contribution to trust is the commitment to taking meaningful action. 

“Well done is better than well said.”  Benjamin Franklin

We know him better as one of the Founding Fathers; an author, printer, politician, scientist, inventor, diplomat.  He even bootstrapped a fire department (Philadelphia) and a university (Franklin & Marshall College).

But more than this diverse list of descriptors and attributes, Benjamin Franklin was, first and foremost, a man of action.

And as it happens, a leader whose principles mirror our own at Starbucks. Great companies, enduring brands, build an emotional relationship with their customers based upon trust.  So if the currency of leadership is transparency, than the basis for trust is the reservoir of good faith you build with your people and your customers, based upon your actions, everyday.

It’s easy for company leadership to “talk” trust. The hard part is walking it. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and his Senior VP of Communications are pretty good at doing both.  Thank you Corey. We hope our readers heed your advice.

It’s not too late to catch up on our weekly series…..

Week #1 Kouzes & Posner 

Week #2 Bob Vanourek

Week #3 Barbara Kimmel

Week #4 Mark Fernandes

Week #5 Doug Conant

Week #6 Roger Steare

Week #7 Nan Russell

Week #8 Stephen M.R. Covey

Week #9 Bill George

Week #10 Carol Sanford

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #10 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Carol Sanford, one of our 2016 Top Thought Leaders in Trust, a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and a member of the Trust Alliance offers this:

“Trust comes from fostering personal agency in others, that is the drive to contribute, not always be the one who leads the way.” 

A natural human propensity to contribute exists in all of us. Research reaffirms it now. It is often called Personal Agency. i.e. Taking up action to change something, especially on a significant level. People don’t always act on this inclination. Sometimes it is as a result of a low confidence in their ability to control unexpected challenges and low certainty they can produce outcomes. To have personal agency we have to activate our own Will to act and manage ourselves to figure our way through challenges. In other words, we first have to trust ourselves to be able to act and achieve.

Those in our lives who encourage and build this capability in us come to be the ones we trust. They are not “in it” only for themselves, but mentoring and developing others into managing their own path to significant contribution. It is how trust bonds are built, with everyone from children, to students and employees, to customers. The magic sauce is building others agency to make that difference and doing it again and again to build a “trust muscle, so to speak.”

Thank you Carol. We hope our readers heed your advice.

It’s not too late to catch up on our weekly series…..

Week #1 Kouzes & Posner 

Week #2 Bob Vanourek

Week #3 Barbara Kimmel

Week #4 Mark Fernandes

Week #5 Doug Conant

Week #6 Roger Steare

Week #7 Nan Russell

Week #8 Stephen M.R. Covey

Week #9 Bill George

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

Is Gender Diversity Profitable? That’s the title of a recent study published by The Peterson Institute. In its introductory abstract the study states: Analysis of a global survey of 21,980 firms from 91 countries suggests that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions may improve firm performance.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World is encouraged by this research and employed it as a steppingstone for a study to test the following hypothesis:

Does the percentage of women on boards positively impact the trustworthiness of public companies, and therefore, their performance?

Our methodology:

Our *FACTS® Framework data served as the basis to analyze the 5-year average FACTS® score for the Top 50 and Bottom 50 companies in the S&P 500.

We then matched the 100 companies (50 top and 50 bottom) to publicly available board composition data from the 2020 Women on Boards Gender Diversity Directory. For those unfamiliar with this program, the goal of 2020 Women on Boards is to increase the percentage of women on US company boards to 20% or greater by the year 2020. Women currently hold 18.8% of Board seats up from 14.6% in 2011.

Initial observations:

50 Most Trustworthy Public Companies

• An average of 23% women on boards
• Thirty companies above 20% women on boards, twenty below 20%
• In this 100-company universe Dr. Pepper Snapple Group had the highest percentage (44%) of women on boards.

50 Least Trustworthy Public Companies

• An average of 16.3% of women on boards or 43% lower than the Top 50 companies
• Twenty companies above 20% women on boards, thirty below 20%
• Four companies in the Bottom 50 had no women on their boards.

A few notable early findings:

Eight of the most trustworthy companies in our survey are in the financial services sector, often cited as one of the least trustworthy sectors. Of the eight, only JP Morgan Chase & Co. had less than 20% of women on their Board.

Nine of the least trustworthy companies are also in the financial services sector. Only one of the nine has a female board composition of over 20%.

This is why we like to say “Industry is not destiny.”

*Our FACTS® Framework

• Measures the trust “worthiness” of over 2000 public companies
• Across 16 sectors
• Over a period of 6+ years (since 2010)
• Including five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior
• An audited portfolio performance track record vs. the S&P 500 is available for the period February 2013 to February 2016.
• Portfolio returns as follows: FACTS® returned 80% above S&P 500; FACTS® annualized 16.7% vs. S&P 500 9%

While our initial study supports The Peterson Institute’s findings, the hypothesis can only be proven, or disproven, with a more detailed analysis covering years of historical data and information. Further findings will be reported in the spring research issue of TRUST! Magazine scheduled for publication in late April and distributed at no cost to our Trust Alliance members.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Contact: Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #9 of 2016. This is our latest article in a series of  ideas to elevate trust in your organization, drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Bill George one of our 2016 Top Thought Leaders in Trust, and a Lifetime Achievement Award winner offers this:

“Encourage risk-taking and celebrate “good failures” as opportunities to learn and move forward.”

Think of the most challenging moment in your life. Perhaps it was a time when a loved one passed away, or you had a personal health crisis. Whatever it was, it was a period of crisis for you — but also a moment that caused you to reflect deeply on who you are and what is truly important in your life.

Risk-taking helps us bump into these moments. Often, people avoid risks because they fear failure. But, failing doesn’t mean “you’re a failure” unless you allow it to. The best leaders reflect on their mistakes and learn from them. What separates people who learn from their mistakes from people who don’t? It’s all about their mindset.

In my HBS class “Authentic Leadership Development,” one of the survivors of the famous 1972 plane crash speaks about the importance of reframing failure. He shares the metaphor of the oyster pearl. When sand grates against the oyster, its natural reaction is to cover up the irritant to protect itself with a substance called nacre (mother-of-pearl), which eventually forms the pearl itself.

Celebrating “good failures” helps us turn difficult moments into pearls and builds trust. At IBM in the 1960s, an employee made a mistake that cost the company $10 million. When the employee spoke to the CEO, Tom Watson Sr., he expected to be fired. Watson replied, “Are you serious? We just spent $10 million educating you!” Acts like these help your team learn from their mistakes. Even more important, they make others feel comfortable taking risks.

With all of life’s uncertainties, we need to accept what life brings us and to use each experience as an opportunity for personal growth. If we do, we’ll encourage positive risk-taking. As Sven-Goran Eriksson put it, “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.”

Thank you Bill. We hope our readers heed your advice.

It’s not too late to catch up on our weekly series…..

Week #1 Kouzes & Posner 

Week #2 Bob Vanourek

Week #3 Barbara Kimmel

Week #4 Mark Fernandes

Week #5 Doug Conant

Week #6 Roger Steare

Week #7 Nan Russell

Week #8 Stephen M.R. Covey

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.