Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

What role does ACCOUNTABILITY play in building trust in your workplace?

A BIG one.

Accountability is the second of *12 behaviors in our Tap Into Trust (TAP) framework having now been accessed over 150,000 times in 16 languages. 

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World created The “Art” of Trust visual “cues” to start a discussion about behaviors in the workplace that build and weaken trust. Together these cues form a “Wall” of Trust, telling a story to enhance learning and retention.

In the context of a team, we define Accountability as follows:

We hold one another accountable –

we each take responsibility without regard to level or role.

Over 600 survey respondents identified accountability as the top behavior weakening trust in their workplace (over 43%). If accountability is lacking on your team how do you begin to address it? These are two discussion questions our Trust Alliance members suggest to improve trust.

1. Do we hold people accountable in a principle-centered rather than punitive way?  If not, how do we change this?
2. Do our accountability discussions demonstrate that we are on the same team?  If not, how can we help team members take collective responsibility?

The “Art” of Trust  is one of many resources designed for this year’s Trust Action Project to help leaders, teams and organizations move from trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond.

Would you like to build a Wall of Trust for your team? Take the first step.

What behaviors weaken trust in your workplace? Our 1 minute/1 question AIM Workplace Diagnostic compares your response to more than 600 others.

Join our global Trust Alliance and participate in our programs.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

*TAP INTO TRUST is an acronym. The 12 behaviors are equally weighted. The weakest behaviors break the trust chain.

Copyright 2021, Next Decade, Inc.

Copyright 2021 Next Decade, Inc.

What role does TRUTH play in the core values and culture of your workplace?

Truth is the first of *12 behaviors in our Tap Into Trust (TAP) framework having now been accessed over 150,000 times in 16 languages. 

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World created these visual “cues” to start a discussion about behaviors in the workplace that build and weaken trust. Together these cues form a “Wall” of Trust, telling a story to enhance learning and retention.

In the context of a team, we define Truth as follows:

 We are honest & humble. We put the truth ahead of personal or professional gain.

If truth is lacking on your team how do you begin to address it? These are two questions our Trust Alliance members suggest to foster a discussion and improve trust.

1. Does our organization tolerate or even encourage “white lies” to avoid conflict and produce results? If so, how can we safely bring that out in the open and change it?
2. Do we put down people who willingly share their truth? If so, how do we create a forum that invites appropriate candor?

The “Art” of Trust  is one of many resources designed during our Trust Action Project 2021 to help leaders, teams and organizations move from trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond. Build a “Wall” of Trust for your team as the first step down the road to trust.

What behaviors do you think impact trust the MOST in teams and organizations? Our 1 minute/1 question AIM Workplace Diagnostic compares your response to more than 600 others.

Join our global Trust Alliance and participate in our programs.

Would you like more information about how to purchase The “Art” of Trust? Let us know.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

*TAP INTO TRUST is an acronym. The 12 behaviors are equally weighted. The weakest behaviors break the trust chain.

Copyright 2021, Next Decade, Inc.

The Trust Action Project 2021 (#tap2021) Weekly Action is one of many Trust Alliance resources designed to help leaders, teams and organizations move from trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond.

What behaviors do you think impact trust the most in teams and organizations? Our 1 minute/1 question AIM Workplace Diagnostic compares your response to more than 600 others.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

Join our global Trust Alliance and participate in our programs.

What trust building ACTION would you suggest? Let us know.

The Trust Action Project 2021 (#tap2021) Weekly Action is one of many Trust Alliance resources designed to help leaders, teams and organizations move from trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond.

What behaviors do you think impact trust the most in teams and organizations? Our 1 minute/1 question AIM Workplace Diagnostic compares your response to more than 600 others.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

Join our global Trust Alliance and participate in our programs.

What trust building ACTION would you suggest? Let us know.

The Trust Action Project 2021 (#tap2021) Weekly Action is one of many Trust Alliance resources designed to help leaders, teams and organizations move beyond trust talk to ACTION in 2021.

What behaviors do you think impact trust the most in teams and organizations? Our 1 minute/1 question AIM Workplace Diagnostic compares your response to 600 others.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

Join our global Trust Alliance and participate in our programs.

How would you like to get involved? Let us know.

Copyright 2021, Next Decade, Inc.

A few years ago John Baldoni, one of our long-time Trust Alliance members gave me the following advice. He said “Barbara stop trying to change the world. Focus on one person and one organization at a time.”

With that advice in mind, today we celebrate a milestone. In less than three years, over 150,000 global citizens have Tapped Into Trust to access our Trust Alliance Principles (TAP), available at no cost in 16 languages. This would never have been possible without the support of our global Trust Alliance members who continue to work collaboratively to develop and promote these universal principles that can be applied to any organization or team of any size.

From these principles grew a simple one question/one minute ongoing master Workplace Trust survey that has now been taken almost 600 times, followed by our AIM diagnostics and the online and in person workshops designed to start a trust discussion, and directly address the weaknesses that are keeping trust from flourishing.

Trust is always the outcome of principled leadership. If you are an ethical leader who is unwilling to commit to learning more about the impact trust has on your organization’s culture and ultimate success, you are contributing to long-term enterprise risk. (And hiring a motivational speaker to “talk trust” with your employees is not the solution.)

Thank you to all who made this milestone possible. Your ongoing commitment to building trust is getting it done, one person and one organization at a time. Thanks John!

Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Founder, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World.

The Trust Action Project 2021 (#tap2021) Weekly Action is one of many Trust Alliance resources designed to help leaders, teams and organizations move beyond trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond.

Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.

How would you like to get involved? Let us know.

Copyright 2021, Next Decade, Inc.

“Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” —Warren Bennis

Having counseled leaders across many industries on how to elevate stakeholder trust, I can almost assure you that you won’t come close to passing our 10-question test. Fortunately, the failing grade is usually not due to character or competence flaws, but a lack of understanding of the role of trust as a core value of leadership. Are you willing to take the following test AND the actions required to elevate your results?

*** Warning your degree of honesty and vulnerability may affect your score***

 Give yourself ten points for every “yes” answer.

1. Do I understand that trust is not a soft skill and that it has tangible value?
2. Have I thought about what it means to be trustworthy in both my personal and professional life?
3. Is trust mentioned in my company’s core values and do I practice and reinforce those values daily?
4. Do I understand that trust is the outcome of principled behavior and have I identified the behavioral weaknesses?
5. Do I understand that trust cannot be delegated and that low trust is a real risk?
6. Have I asked my employees and other stakeholders if they think I am trustworthy?
7. Do I understand that trust is a learned competence, and have I budgeted for trust training for both my leadership team and my staff?
8. Do I directly engage my employees and my customers in conversations about trust?
9. Do I catch employees doing something right and reward ethical behavior?
10. Does trust play a role in my hiring practices?

What was your final  score?

Business leaders are constrained by the number of hours in a day, and how they choose to prioritize their time. Many spend it reacting to crises and extinguishing fires caused by low trust. If more leaders not only understood the benefits of high trust, but actually took the steps required to elevate it, their time would be freed up to build a more profitable business much more quickly. Low trust plays a large role in elevating enterprise risk, yet is is widely ignored. Take the questions above and tackle them one at a time. Each 10% improvement will get you closer to high trust.

PS- Don’t fall for expensive trust workarounds that may be offered to you. While they may get you a communications “talking point,” they won’t get you across the enterprise trust finish line. In fact, they won’t even get you close.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the founder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its 12th year, the program has developed two proprietary trust-evaluation tools, the latest is AIM Towards Trust. She also runs the world largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series. Kimmel is a former consultant to McKinsey who has worked across multiple industries and with senior leadership. She holds a bachelor’s in international affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or contact us.

Purchase our books at this link

Copyright © 2020 Next Decade, Inc.

Why should business leaders care about trust? This is why:

Performance of Trust Across America’s

Most Trustworthy Public Companies vs. the S&P 500 (2014-2019)

The chart above is the cumulative “Return on Trust” of America’s annual “Top 10” Most Trustworthy Public Companies over the past six years. Through its FACTS® Framework, Trust Across America has been analyzing, assembling and publicly reporting on this data for ten years.

If you are the CEO of a public company, or any company for that matter, who claims there is no Business Case for Trust, now may be the time to reconsider. Why DO business leaders require proof or ignore trust as their most valuable strategic advantage?

Leaders take trust for granted

Trust doesn’t just “happen.” It is not bestowed upon leaders by virtue of their title.  Trust is a learned competence and an intentional business strategy that must be crafted, practiced, modeled, and reinforced daily.

Leaders focus on the wrong metrics

Growing quarterly earnings, over reliance on sales quotas, focus on “old school” risk and/or “new school” ESG metrics will not satisfy the trust imperative that stakeholders are increasingly demanding. Neither will talking rather than acting on trust.

Leaders treat trust as a “soft skill”

Organizational trustworthiness is a hard currency. The proof is in the chart above.

Leaders are “trust reactive” 

Rarely do we hear proactive leadership discussions about building stakeholder trust. Instead, trust becomes a communications talking point only after a breach. This is both a missed and lost opportunity for leadership.

Leaders delegate trust

Trust is not a function of legal, compliance, HR, communications, or any other department. Boards of Directors and executive leadership teams must spearhead trust, making it central to the organization’s core values, so that all stakeholders can benefit.

Note: In 2010 Trust Across America introduced the FACTS® Framework, an EXTERNAL quantitative measurement of the corporate trustworthiness of America’s largest 2000+ US public companies. The Framework identifies companies whose leadership is going beyond doing just what is legal and compliant to choosing the right core values that satisfy all stakeholder needs. The FACTS® Framework is the most comprehensive and data driven ongoing study on the trustworthiness of public companies. We analyze companies quarterly and rank order showing trends by company, sector and market capitalization. Read more about the Framework at this link.

In 2018 Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s Trust Alliance, a group of global trust scholars and practitioners, introduced its Trust Alliance Principles (TAP), and in 2019 our AIM Survey tool was created to guide leaders and teams in building trust INTERNALLY. It is based on universal behaviors that strengthen and weaken trust. To date, almost 150,000 global professionals have tapped into trust, and dozens of teams and organizations have used our simple survey tool to start a trust discussion.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or contact us.

Purchase our books at this link

Copyright © 2020 Next Decade, Inc.

Do you work on a team where both leaders and colleagues hide their true intentions?

The outcome of hidden agendas is distrust and inertia, as goals become guesswork and the fear of making a mistake increases.

Last week, as part of our Zoom Lunch & Learn members of our Trust Alliance convened to discuss the topic of team trust, transparency & hidden agendas. We addressed four questions during the hour:

1. How do you define the role of transparency in the context of a team? (We define it as follows: We reject hidden agendas. We are transparent wherever and whenever possible.)
2. What causes hidden agendas?
3. How can transparency be elevated within a team?
4. Why is transparency frequently cited as the main cause of low trust, even though it is not?

What did our Trust Alliance members have to say about Question #3? How can transparency be elevated within a team?

The following were some of the key take aways:

1. Both leadership and team transparency “rules” must be clear with no ambiguity.
2. Lack of rules around transparency creates a lack of respect, often leading to either acquiescence or a challenge to decision making.
3. Heightened transparency keeps team members more honest, efficient, innovative and collaborative.
4. Have a policy of openness (not to be confused with transparency.) Always share as much as you can.
5. Avoid lumping other trust busting behaviors into the transparency category. Know how to identify them and address them separately.
6. Uncomfortable conversations are okay. People are resilient and able to absorb negative news.
7. Elevating interpersonal skills like listening enhances transparency.
8. Complaints and their resolutions should be shared with employees.
9. Cowardice in some industries allows leaders to hide behind regulations as an excuse for lack of transparency.
10. Addressing transparency issues in family businesses requires a different skill set.

A final comment:

While courageous and empowered cultures have fewer transparency challenges, transparency alone won’t get a team to the trust “finish line.” In fact, transparency is only 1 of 12 behaviors that elevate trust in teams and organizations. And in the many organizations we have surveyed, transparency is not the #1 cause of low trust. To find out what is, spend 1 minute answering this question and see the results from over 500 respondents.