Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

Our TRUSTGiving 2014 weeklong trust awareness campaign is coming to a close. Members of our  Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts have written guest blog posts this past week to help our readers navigate the complexities of trust and discuss what giving trust means to them.

This post will be the last of the series.

Imagine if people didn’t use drugs. The “Say no to drugs” campaign would become obsolete. If nobody smoked, there would be no need for scare tactic TV commercials on the dangers of cigarettes. Similarly, if everyone could be trusted, trust would not be considered the issue of the decade, as many believe.

We can end the trust crisis in short order by collectively choosing to shut down the people who are fueling it. 

Imagine if we refused to support:

• Those who cheat and lie
• Those who don’t keep their word
• Those whose talk is never backed up by action
• Those who show no loyalty
• Those who hang with the “wrong” crowd
• Those who ALWAYS put their own needs first
• Those who make side door deals behind others backs
• Those whose intentions aren’t quite what they claim
• Those who say one thing but do something different
• Those who confuse collaboration with self promotion

When your heart or your gut tells you that someone is doing the wrong thing, listen carefully and just say “No.”

As I wrote at the beginning of #TRUSTGiving2014, let’s get back to basics. Don’t “settle” for relationships that fall short in trust.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Holly Latty- Mann has some further advice for building trust during meetings.

You may have caught an earlier post regarding opportunities to build trust at the onset of your weekly management or departmental meeting. Because people tend to remember the first and final activities of meetings, let’s now take a look at tangible ways you can end your team meetings that can promote a more meaningful trust level between and among your team members. Again the activities take on the nature of willful sharing, and as such can serve as a crude measure of your company culture within the context of interpersonal comfort and social trust. 

The end-of-meeting activity is purposefully shorter and lighter than the onset checking-in activity so that even the most reserved team members feel they have a viable place to engage.  With time these more reticent respondents may ultimately share at a deeper level such as the challenges of having a special needs child at home. This is when team members begin experiencing one another as real live human beings with a heartbeat. Team members invariably begin reaching out to one another in a show of support, even sharing similar experiences within their own life.

Consider the following brief activities to end your meeting. The content can either convey familial caring or offer a welcomed sense of levity. Either way, you can begin forging meaningful human connections with one another through these small, caring gestures:

►End with a quote, as most quotes impart a wisdom regarding how to enhance life and living,

►Offer meaningful information or tips such as the 4-7-8 breathing exercise to help manage stress,

► Share a brief human interest story (maybe your own), news item, or even a joke or recipe, and

►Invite other team members to share their favorite quote, tips, restaurants, and such. 

The degree of team sharing carries its commensurate level of team trust.  When we break momentarily from “work as usual,” we’re acknowledging the human side of one another where humor, sensitivity, and a certain sacred spirituality reside.  We are acknowledging the poet, the parent, the philosopher, and adventurer in one another among many other possibilities when we share from a diversity of resources. When we engage one another on a human level that forgets titles and job roles, we are providing the kind of psychological milieu that allows the spillover of good will and trust to permeate all interpersonal relationship dynamics throughout the organization and beyond.

Holly Latty-Mann, PhD, president and owner of The Leadership Trust®, uses her two doctorates in psychology to heighten and crystallize self-awareness and emotional intelligence at root-cause level. Her holistic, integrative model extends to the team and organizational levels to embolden trust-based collaborative efforts, thereby expediting both the creation and delivery of her clients’ innovative products and services. Contact Holly and learn more through leadershiptrust.org/info@leadershiptrust.org.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Deb Mills-Scofield provides some insight on the intersection of trust and risk taking.

Taking risk requires trust – to discover, try, re-try, be okay with uncertainty, imperfection and even fail.  That’s why learning how to inexpensively and quickly Experiment-Learn-Apply-Iterate is critical to building trust.

Experiment: Identify a market, customer segment or business model that needs shaking up.  Start with the market/customer needs first, not the solution, the product or service.  I call this “Rushing to Discover, Not to Solve.” Create a cross-functional team with air cover so they are free to try things.  Create some prototypes of potential solutions after you’ve discovered!

Learn:  Watch how your customers respond to your prototype.  Remember, this is still an experiment and you’re still testing hypotheses. Watch them use it, touch it, interact with it. Watch how they respond to what it does/doesn’t do, where their eyes go first, where they seem stumped or frustrated, where they seem excited.  Ask questions to clarify and understand, not to advise or judge.

Apply:  Take this learning and change your potential solutions, prototypes, accordingly.  You will be wrong about a lot! Go back to your customers with the changed prototypes and test again.  The purpose is to test your hypotheses so you can create a solution that really meets your customers needs, not your needs.

Iterate:  Repeat Experiment-Learn-Apply until you create a meaningful, valuable solution for your customers or determine you can’t. 

The ELAI model is pretty straightforward.  Don’t overcomplicate it.  Get out and do it! You’ll be surprised at the level of trust and know-how you create!

Deborah Mills-Scofield has her own consultancy on innovation and strategy & is a partner in a Venture Capital firm.  Deb writes for Harvard Business Review, Switch and Shift & other venues, including her blog, & has contributed to several books. Her Bell Labs patent was one of AT&T & Lucent’s highest-revenue generating patents.  She can be reached at @dscofield or dms@mills-scofield.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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Trust is the core issue impacting organizational, team and leadership effectiveness. Noreen Kelly, Noreen Kelly Communication (from Trust Across America’s Weekly Reflections on Trust 2014)

Organizational Trust this Week is a new feature beginning with the “Good”, moving through the “Debatable” and occasionally ending with the “Ugly.” Each story contains a trust component and at least one lesson for organizations seeking to make trust a business imperative.

THE GOOD

Do you lead with trust? This is your opportunity to be heard and seen!

Our #TRUSTGiving2014 campaign is coming to a close and our Alliance members covered the importance of trust from A-Z with guest blog posts this week.

Got good customer service? Only if trust is a component.

THE DEBATABLE

What is the role of trust in cyber security? This article makes the case.

THE UGLY

When the trust certifiers can’t be trusted, we have a real issue!

Are you an Uber user? Their CEO thumbs his nose at trust.

Trust gets messy when employees don’t feel respected. Can you blame them?

OUR MOST POPULAR POST THIS WEEK

And finally, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s most popular post on LinkedIn Pulse this week. Sometimes it’s the simple stuff that matters. In this one, we get back to basics and a simpler time. Send us your stories for consideration in future editions of Organizational Trust this Week: barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL! The holidays are a great time to have a conversation about trust.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Nominations are now being accepted for Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s 5th annual Global Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business.

Our brand new magazine TRUST! makes the case that in Financial Services, Industry is NOT Destiny

We will be publishing our third book at the end of November.

                                                                                               Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright 2014 Next Decade, Inc.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

The headlines speak for themselves…

• Trust in business is down
• Washington can’t be trusted
• The NFL has trust issues.

….or do they? 

Have you ever paused to consider that businesses, Washington and the NFL are all run by people?  Institutions are only as trustworthy as those who lead them. In reality, we don’t have a crisis of trust. We have too many “low trust” leaders.

Trust is built on three pillars: Character, competence & consistency. If the first of these pillars comes naturally, the second two are easy to construct. How do you measure character? Michael Josephson has built his “Character Counts” program on 6 pillars. Notice the first is trustworthiness.

If you lead an organization and the headlines are continuously working against you, take a few minutes to consider the following:

• Do you cheat or deceive others?
• Are you reliable? (consistency)
• Do you keep your word?
• Do you have courage to do the right thing?
• Do you have a good reputation? (competence)
• Are you loyal?
• Do you stand by your family, friends and country?

You may have noticed that competence and consistency are attributes of good character. If organizations were run by people who could answer “Yes” to all these questions, or even took the time to consider them, the headlines would read differently.

Being trustworthy is not rocket science. It’s simply a choice. Make it yours.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Andy Rosenbloom shares a human story about trust and business success.

The Business of Being Human 

Why do so many businesses struggle with the concept of trust as a business strategy?

Trust is a human emotion – not a business activity.  Too many companies are content to work towards their goals of increasing revenue, stock value, and market share without taking into consideration the people they affect and how those people’s opinions shape the company’s profitability.   

When human emotions like empathy, generosity or trust make their way into business, the outcome can be surprising.

I expect to be given good pizza when I visit my favorite corner pizzeria.  I give the restaurant $2.50 and they give me a slice.  That’s not trust, it’s merely a transaction.

Trust in a pizzeria is earned when the owner of the business steps out of the “zone” of the business transaction to demonstrate his or her own sense of humanity.  Greeting the customer by name, offering a free taste of a specialty slice, or remembering a frequent order go a long way towards building trust.  

And how does this trust make it’s way back towards the business goals described above?  In the same way that we humans get excited to introduce our trusted and beloved friends and family to others, the businesses that we trust are the one’s we love to talk about.  

I make frequent recommendations to my friends to visit the restaurant which offered to serve me a free meal when I told them that I lost a $300 gift certificate.  On the restaurant’s part, it was a terrible business decision.  But the owner of the eatery knew better than to make that call from the standpoint of business alone.  She put her trust in me that my story of the lost gift card was true and we shared a moment of humanity that I will never stop talking about.   

Andy Rosenbloom is a food marketing specialist who consults with K-12 foodservice programs across the country.  He is dedicated to honesty, trust and transparency and rewards trustworthy businesses with his loyalty and referrals. Follow him on Twitter @andyrosenbloom

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Giving your trust to others is a gift according to Susan Mazza.

Giving the Gift of Your Trust

Trust is a precious gift not to be granted lightly.  To give someone the gift of your trust you must be willing to take a stand that they matter enough for you to invest something with them that matters to you.  

It is a way to honor your belief in another and lift them up.  If you want to get in touch with just how honoring this can be, think about a time when someone gave you the gift of their trust.

To maximize the opportunity however, it is critical to be clear about what you are entrusting them with and why it matters to you.  Only then can the gift truly be received based on a mutual commitment.  There is no room for judgement based on expectations. Clear, open, honest and complete communication are prerequisites.

Like any gift, giving someone the gift of your trust is best given with no strings attached and without expectations.  It may be risky, but giving someone the gift of your trust is one of the surest ways to forge a relationship that can be the source of something extraordinary. 

Susan Mazza works with leaders and their organizations to transform their performance from solid to exceptional as a business consultant, leadership coach and motivational speaker. CEO of Clarus-WORKS, Founder/Author of Random Acts of Leadership™, and Co-Author of The Character-Based Leader, Susan was named one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business by Trust Across America in 2013.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Charles H. Green believes that listening is an important component in building trust.

Listening for Leaders

(an excerpt from our third book Trust Inc., 52 Weeks of Activities & Inspirations for Building Workplace Trust out at the end of November)

“Listening” is a core skill in nearly every corporate training department’s toolkit. Trainers, consultants, coaches, sales managers and personal development gurus all sing the praises of doing a better job of listening. And, it makes good common sense as well.

However, the “listening” that is almost always taught is not the listening that is critical to leaders.

The usual meaning of “listening” in business is about improving the efficiency and effectiveness with which the listener extracts information from the client or speaker. Again, this makes good sense. If we want to serve our customers, make the sale, or solve others’ problems, then it’s certainly necessary that we understand all that we can about how they see the problem, the issues. It’s a cognitive aim. The purpose of this kind of listening is served once the problem has been identified and solved.

Indeed, listening-to-extract-information is a necessary tool for helping serve others.

But it is far from sufficient; and it is especially insufficient when it comes to leadership. For that, we need a different form of listening – call it listening for empathy, or listening for validation. The purpose of this kind of listening is not cognitive information extraction: it is about making the speaker, the client, feel understood.

All human beings desire to be understood by others; if we don’t get it, we feel incomplete, un-heard, occasionally resentful and usually less-than-fully cooperative. But if we do get that feeling from the listener, things change. We are validated. We want to cooperate. We desire to reciprocate, and listen to what the listener has to say.

Leaders, above all, need to have their “followers” listen to what they have to say. The best way to get that job done is to listen first – not for problem extraction, but for validation. To be listened to as a leader, first learn to listen.

Charles H. Green is an author, speaker and world expert on trust-based relationships and sales in complex businesses. Founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates, he is co-author of the classic The Trusted Advisor and its practical follow-up, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, and author of Trust-based Selling.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

Welcome to TRUSTGiving 2014, our first annual weeklong trust awareness campaign.  Join the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts as our members help our readers navigate the complexities of trust. We will be blogging (several times a day) and posting on Twitter #TrustGiving2014.

Read what Randy Conley has to say about trust and betrayal.

How Can You Give Trust When You Have Been Betrayed?

Suffering a betrayal of trust can be one of the most difficult and challenging times in your life. Depending on the severity of the offense, some people choose not to pursue recovery of the relationship. For those that do, the process of restoration can take days, weeks, months, or even years. If you choose to invest the time and energy to rebuild a relationship with someone who has broken your trust, you have to begin with forgiveness. 

As you consider forgiving someone who has betrayed your trust, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Forgiveness is a choice – It’s not a feeling or an attitude. Forgiving someone is a mental decision, a choice that you have complete control over. You don’t have to wait until you “feel” like forgiving someone.
• Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting – You don’t have to forget the betrayal in order to forgive. You may never forget what happened, and those memories will creep in occasionally, but you can choose to forgive and move on.
• Forgiveness doesn’t eliminate consequences – Some people are reticent to give forgiveness because somehow they think it lets the other person off-the-hook from what they did wrong. Not true. Consequences should still be enforced even if you grant forgiveness.
• Forgiving doesn’t make you a weakling or a doormat – Forgiveness shows maturity and depth of character. If you allow repeated violations of your trust then you’re a doormat. But forgiving others while adhering to healthy boundaries is a sign of strength, not weakness.
• Don’t forgive just to avoid pain – It can be easy to quickly grant forgiveness in order to avoid conflict and pain in the relationship. This usually is an attempt at conflict avoidance rather than true forgiveness. Take the appropriate amount of time to think through the situation and what will be involved in repairing the relationship before you grant forgiveness.
• Don’t use forgiveness as a weapon – If you truly forgive someone, you won’t use their past behavior as a tool to harm them whenever you feel the need to get a little revenge.
• Forgiveness isn’t dependent on the other person showing remorse – Whether or not the person who violated your trust apologizes or shows remorse for their behavior, the decision to forgive rests solely with you. Withholding forgiveness doesn’t hurt the other person, it only hurts you, and it’s not going to change anything that happened in the past. Forgiveness is up to you.
• Forgiveness is freedom – Holding on to pain and bitterness drains your energy and negatively colors your outlook on life. Granting forgiveness allows you to let go of the negative emotions that hold you back and gives you the ability to move forward with freedom and optimism.

Forgiveness is the first step in rebuilding a relationship with someone who has betrayed your trust.  As we head into the holiday season, TRUSTGiving2014 is an ideal time to take action to repair those low-trust relationships you’ve been tolerating. The choice is yours. Will you choose to forgive?

Randy Conley is the Vice President of Client Services & Trust Practice Leader for The Ken Blanchard Companies. He works with clients around the globe helping them design & deliver training and consulting solutions that build trust in the workplace and oversees Blanchard’s client delivery operations. He has been named a Top 100 Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business Behavior by Trust Across America. Randy holds a Masters Degree in Executive Leadership from the University of San Diego. You can follow Randy on Twitter @RandyConley where he shares thoughts on leadership and trust.

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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

I am grateful when companies “do the right thing.” How about you? Isn’t it time we began acknowledging them instead of always focusing on the negative?

Here are 2 quick stories that deserve recognition.

The Cookie Caper

Have you ever heard of DiCamillo Bakery in upstate NY? I hadn’t until a few weeks ago when I came across their name in a catalog and decided to send a Thanksgiving basket to a relative. Here’s a quick company history from their website.

“In 1920, with the help of their eleven children, Tomaso and Addolorata Di Camillo opened their first bakery in Niagara Falls, New York. From basement ovens in this store, the Di Camillo family began baking bread and delivering it to their neighbors in horse-drawn wagons. Today second, third, and fourth generation members of the Di Camillo family continue this uninterrupted tradition of making wholesome hearth-baked bread and classic Italian cookies and confections for our friends and neighbors. Although our menu of breads and biscotti has greatly expanded, and our neighbors can be found all over the world, our standards, our traditions, and the pride in the products that we make remain the same.”

A few days later I received a call from the gift recipient, thanking me for the wonderful cookies and macaroons. The problem was, I hadn’t sent cookies and macaroons. A quick call to Di Camillo and the problem was solved. They admitted their mistake and shipped the correct order, at no cost. My first hat goes off to Di Camillo who apparently “does things right.” By the way, their prices are reasonable and their baked goods are delicious.

Leaky Faucets

I recently called Kohler to inquire about replacing a broken head on my kitchen faucet. The call wait time was very short, an English-speaking customer service rep picked up the phone, some basic information was collected (name, address, etc.) and the matter was resolved in under 5 minutes. The outcome: The part is being replaced at no charge. There was little discussion of warranties. The closest was the question as to when the item was purchased. I told the CSR I had no idea, as I could not remember when we had our kitchen remodeled.

So hat’s off to Kohler for standing behind their product and “doing what is right” instead of only “what is legal.” And the way they do business is clearly not by accident. Founded in 1873, Kohler is a family-owned business, and a privately held company. You can read their mission statement here. Their employees seem happy and they have won many awards. Herbert Kohler, Jr. is the CEO and the founder’s grandson. And I’ll bet you didn’t know that the company owns several golf courses and an arts center in Wisconsin!

Do you think culture and values are high on the priority list of these two companies? Are you surprised they have been in business for so long? I’m not. It seems they try to “do right” by all their stakeholders. I doubt either company is perfect, but they certainly set high standards.

Thank you Di Camillo’s Bakery and Kohler. You are truly role models for trustworthy business.

Let’s celebrate the “good guys.” Send me your “do the right thing” stories and I’ll be happy to feature them in upcoming blog posts. Email 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 and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2014, Next Decade, Inc.