Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

With the right plan, any leader can build trust!

Trust Across America – Trust Around the World offers this 2014 gift to all leaders – twelve months of trust-building activities. Help us elevate trust by incorporating these strategies into your own organization.

January: Trustworthy leadership – A culture of trust cannot exist with an untrustworthy leader. Trustworthy behavior must start at the top and flow down through every manager in any organization.

February: Transformation – Productivity and execution begin when the leader creates a set of values and goals that are shared, accepted and adopted by all stakeholders. Leaders should regularly address all stakeholders about the steps being taken to build trustworthy behavior within the organization. Trust should not be confused with compliance.

March: Tools – There are many trust “tools” leaders can use to build trust with their internal and external stakeholders. These run the gamut from metrics and assessments to online surveys and training.

April: Treatment – The Golden Rule says to “treat others the way you want to be treated.” This certainly holds true for trust. The leader that extends trust to his or her stakeholders is more likely to have it returned.

May: Teamwork – Teamwork leads to better decisions and better outcomes. Teams create trust, and trust creates teams, especially when silos are broken down.

June: 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.” In fact, evidence is mounting that a trustworthy culture and profitability go hand in hand.

July: Truth – Truth-telling is at the core of trust. Any leader who wants to build a trustworthy organization must have an extremely comfortable relationship with the truth. No company is perfect and it’s not necessary to air all the dirty laundry – just don’t lie about it or intentionally mislead. In times of crisis, a habit of truth telling yields particularly good returns.

August: Transparency – Merriam Webster defines “transparent” as visibility or accessibility of information, especially with business practices. A leader 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.

September: 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. View them as vital contributors to a better organization.

October: Tolerance – A trusted leader is open to new ideas that may not align with his own. Tolerance empowers stakeholders with ownership and leads to higher engagement at all levels.

November: Time – Building a culture of trustworthy business does not happen overnight. It takes time, maybe even years – but not decades. The leader who invests the time to educate himself or herself about how to build trust with teams and stakeholders — then develops a plan, communicates and implements it – will be rewarded with greater stakeholder trust. When a slip-up occurs, those who “banked” trust will recover faster.

December: Trust – Don’t forget that trustworthy business is not about quarterly earnings and international expansion, but rather about building long-term trust.

Yours in trust! Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Executive Director

Trust Across America – Trust Around the World

Barbara has edited a new book called Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, bringing together over 30 experts who offer advice and suggestions on elevating trust in any organization.

Copyright © 2013 Next Decade, Inc.

How often does your phone ring with a “mystery set of letters”  showing up on caller ID?

Logic would dictate that a non-profit that relies on voluntary donations would “get” the value of leading with trust. But apparently “trust” has become such a “yesterday” word, that even charities are choosing a different path.

Let me explain what has led me to this conclusion.

Almost every day, without fail, our home phone rings with the following caller ID “LFA Pickup Service.” Who is LFA? The Lupus Foundation.  No matter how many times I ignore them, they just keep calling.

This morning a new caller rang in. This one simply read “MOD.”  I answered the phone, and the caller, after mispronouncing my name, identified herself as a solicitor for the March of Dimes. When I asked to be removed from this duplicitous calling list, I was told “no go” unless I verified certain information.

I would like to meet the marketing “team” at these organizations who decided on this approach as a strategy. I would like to know how trust fell out of favor at these charities.  I would like to know whether this deceptive and unethical practice is leading to a higher level of donations. But most of all, I would like these untrustworthy organizations and others who use the same tactics to stop the intrusion.

Shame on the Lupus Foundation and the March of Dimes, and all other non-profits who don’t lead with trust. When did your culture implode? Have your leaders lost their way?

Does anyone know the CEO’s of these two organizations? Send me their name and address.  I’ll be glad to provide them with an autographed copy of our new book, Trust Inc. (and a request to be taken off their calling list until they choose to lead with trust.)

Trust Inc.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America – Trust Around the World whose mission is to help build organizational trust.

For anyone still hesitating to embrace the business notion that trust is an asset – an asset that can leverage real business gains –look at the ongoing data from Trust Across America – Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) comparing companies with strong trust profiles to all other companies.

Our portfolio is based on our FACTS model that combines quantifiable indicators of organizational trust including strong Financials, conservative Accounting, good Corporate governance, Transparent business practices and business Sustainability.

Source: Trust Across America November 2013

The market clearly values trustworthy business behavior, so why does the crisis of distrust continue, and why are companies not more focused on trustworthiness? It boils down to a system that makes other assets priorities over trust – specifically, antiquated notions of shareholder value and settling for regulatory compliance as the marker of ethical behavior, among other distractions.

The value of a company is derived from the relationships it maintains will all its stakeholders, not just shareholders. When we look at corporate performance we can no longer look at the short-term and we cannot merely look at investors.

Trust leadership requires a more progressive stance on building authentic relationships with stakeholders – a relationship that pays trust dividends.  It also requires a long-term focus. And for those pioneers in valuing trust and investing in trust, the upside is clear –and the short-term takes care of it self.

Barbara Kimmel, Executive Director of Trust Across America (TAA), a US based think tank and communications program (www.trustacrossamerica.com) whose mission is to help build organizational trust. Through it’s Alliance formed in early 2013, global experts are joining forces to collaboratively advance the cause of trustworthy business.

 http://trustacrossamerica.com/cgi-bin/alliance.cgi

Our new book, Trust Inc., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset  has just been released.

Trust Inc.

While most authors and publishers hope for bestseller status for their new titles, we hope so too, but not for the same reasons that most do. If we don’t earn it, we’d rather not have it! This is how we would like to see it happen. Will you help?

Our Prayer for Becoming a Bestseller

1. May every CEO who puts profit before good business read this book.
2. May every CEO take away the understanding that trust IS a hard currency.
3. May every Board member read this book before their next meeting.
4. May business schools use the essays as case studies on how to do it “right.”
5. May someone deliver copies to every member of Congress and the guy in the White House. The lessons to be learned apply to all organizations, not just businesses.
6. May everyone who buys a book, buy a second one for someone who will benefit from reading it.
7. May the financial news anchors read this book and start talking about a new “trust” model for business.
8. May Warren Buffett, who is mentioned several times, take a bow for trustworthy business practices.
9. Same goes for Howard Schultz of Starbucks.
10. May every essay contributor feel a tremendous sense of pride in collaborating on this much-needed resource, and help us spread the word to foster trust around the world. Our mission has just begun.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE BOOK FOR SOMEONE WHO SHOULD READ IT