Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

It’s Week #22 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

Today’s trust idea is offered by Linda Fisher Thornton. Linda is a Trust Alliance member and a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader.

Make trust building a business priority.

According to Thornton, if you want to build an organization that lasts, make it a business priority to invest in trust building.

When leaders trust others and are trustworthy themselves, they bring out the best in their organizations. Some of the many ways that trust building plays a critical role in the success of organizations include:

• Freeing up people’s energy and attention to focus on the real work of the organization
• Reducing fears that people will be subjected to negative interpersonal behavior
• Releasing creative energy that can be used to solve problems, and
• Improving productivity, job satisfaction, customer retention, and other important aspects of business success.

Trusting and being trustworthy are important elements in ethical leadership because of their powerful positive ripple effects.  The process of intentionally leading in ways that build trust creates a positive setting where great things can happen. In a highly competitive global marketplace, that can result in a thriving workforce and a competitive edge.

Thank you Linda. 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 #21 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

Davia Temin is a Trust Alliance member, a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader and a contributor to our Trust Inc. book series. She offers this week’s idea:

Say what you do, do what you say.

Reliability, dependability, integrity — these are the essential building blocks of trust. Sounds simple, yet they are so difficult to achieve day in, day out. 

Under-promising and over-delivery is the ticket, of course.  

Whether we are tempted to over promise because of enthusiasm, a lack of operational expertise, expediency, or duplicity, the results are the same — distrust is created. And once there is distrust, rebuilding trust becomes almost impossible without a significant shaming, and transformation, of the organization. 

So if you seek to build trust, don’t promise what you can’t deliver, either in your ads, your speeches, your press releases or in your town halls. Stick to what you can deliver. The public is so jaded by hyperbole, they will most likely appreciate and respect your honesty. And even if they do not, you will know you have done the right thing… And that counts for a lot. 

Thank you Davia. 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 #20 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

Bob Whipple is a Trust Alliance member and a Trust Across America Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. He offers this week’s idea:

The absence of fear is the incubator of trust. The leadership behavior that reduces fear the most is reinforcing candor.

Fear at work is often a very rational emotion based on experience and the observed behaviors of the managers. That kind of toxic environment eliminates the possibility of growing real trust. Faced with enduring hypocrisy many will flee to greener pastures. But those employees who continually seek a better environment may find themselves moving to a different job only to find the conditions there are even worse than what they left.

I believe trust can kindle spontaneously in an environment where fear is low.

If your organization runs on a steady diet of fear because people are afraid of the consequences of speaking their truth, you are likely to have a toxic, low trust culture. That is a signal that there is an amazing level of productivity increase available if the leaders can change their behaviors to reduce the fear. Using candor may just be the fastest means to that end. I recall # 8 of Deming’s famous 14 points was “drive out fear.” I believe the famous quality guru was right. 

Thank you Bob. 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 #19 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

Ben Boyd is the President of Global Practices & Sectors and C.E.O. Canada & Latin America at Edelman (he is also a Trust Alliance member) and offers this week’s suggestion:

“Trust must have an active steward within the enterprise who is respected and empowered to challenge assumptions and timelines.”

The value of Trust is clear, with 68% of people saying they chose to buy from trusted companies and 59% willing to recommend companies they trust to friends and colleagues (2016 Edelman Trust Barometer). Building and maintaining trust, however, is becoming increasingly complicated as stakeholder expectations increase and all aspects of company behavior and societal impact are scrutinized and discussed. Edelman sees five fundamental trust-building attributes that must be managed in order to meet those expectations.  These attributes span a broad array of functions within an enterprise; they are: engagement, integrity, purpose, products and operations.

Operationalizing a trust-building effort across these attributes requires an active steward championing the cause and in many trusted organizations, the Chief Communications Officer plays that role.  Convening and collaborating with the executive leadership team to ensure trust is central in every business decision, the CCO supports organizational integrity.  Of course, actively managing the attributes to protect and build trust is everyone’s responsibility with ultimate accountability landing with the CEO. 

Thank you Ben. 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 #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.

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 #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.