Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

Leaders should never take trust seriously.

After all, trust is just one of those “soft skills” that needs no particular attention, especially from leadership. For your next corporate event, instruct your communications department to hire a stand up comic to cover that “stuff” and provide the script in advance. Make sure it’s “compliance approved” and that your Board members attend.

1. Never trust a tree. They are always shady.
2. My trust issues started when my Mom said “come here, I’m not gonna hit you!”
3. Raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues.
4. Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
5. I got trust issues because people got lying issues.
6. It’s funny how trust disappears when you are looking for the TV remote. Me: “Do you have the remote?” Him: “No.” Me: “Stand up.”
7. People say I have trust issues. I don’t believe them.
8. Watch who you trust. Even your teeth bite your tongue now and then.
9. I don’t trust these stairs. They are always up to something.
10. I am pretty sure the definition of trust is giving your friend your phone without clearing the history.

I take no credit for any of these one-liners. I’m way too serious about trust! Our new diagnostic AIM Towards Trust doesn’t deliver any jokes. Instead, it provides a baseline measurement from which to improve trust in any team or organization. It’s designed for trustworthy leaders who embrace trust as an intentional business strategy, not a joke.

Contact us for more information: barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

What gets measured gets managed – Peter Drucker

In preparation for the first anniversary of Tap Into Trust, we have been running an anonymous one question/one minute survey to identify the primary causes of low trust in organizations. The results may surprise you and provide insight into what needs fixing.

Which of these 12 trust principles do you consider the weakest in your organization?

Transparency? Integrity? Respect? None of those would be correct.

• Truth
• Accountability
• Purpose
• Integrity
• Notice
• Talent
• Openness
• Transparency
• Respect
• Understanding
• Safety
• Tracking

Take the survey and find out.

Remember, You can’t manage what you haven’t measured.

Trust is always internal and must be built from the inside out. Everything else is simply “perception of trust.”

Learn how you can bring this trust diagnostic into your team or organization.

For more information contact:

Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder Trust Across America-Trust Around the World barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

Trust Across America has been writing about Wells Fargo and making public suggestions to leadership on how to fix the Bank’s low trust since 2016, apparently to no avail.

The recent “trust building” communications “horse and pony” show was predictably a huge and expensive fail.  Anyone with even a basic understanding of organizational trust knows that trust is internal and must be built from the inside out, not through a PR campaign. So now the sudden resignation of the current CEO comes as no surprise to us, nor does the appointment of the “interim” CEO who “by chance” happens to be a lawyer.

Over the weekend we asked members of our cross functional Trust Council to weigh in on the actions required to right what appears to be a sinking ship. We appreciate the thoughts of our Council members who took the time to weigh in.

Acknowledge trust as a hard asset: Do not assume that trust is a “soft skill” and do not attempt a fix via exclusive input from legal and compliance. Form a cross-silo team to attack low trust with the support of the “right” Board members, possibly necessitating some “reshuffling” at the highest level. In other words, clean house.

Make trust building the first priority: A foundation of trust must be built before culture can be fixed. 

Be accountable: Embrace responsibility and accountability and avoid the deadly Watergate sin of tip-toeing up to the line but not crossing it, perpetuating the sense of cover-up. You’ve got to own it—and then some.

Measure what matters: Assess the current level of stakeholder trust and use this baseline to begin attacking the weaknesses. What can be measured can be managed.

Practice and reinforce values: Saying or printing them is mere cant. You’ve got to propagandize them, talk about them in application to specific instances, hold leaders accountable for a quota of such applications.

Model humility: Place truth-telling ahead of personal or professional gain.

Be transparent: Reject hidden agendas and be transparent wherever and whenever possible.

Hire and fire: Nothing builds trust faster than firing and hiring people. Hire/fire/promote on visible demonstrations of the bank’s values. Cull out the middle managers who still think they can get away with hiding unethical behaviors. 

Erase fear: Drive out fear and ensure every voice is heard and every trust breach is fully investigated. “The absence of fear is the incubator of trust.” Reward moral character and reinforce candor.

Track performance:  Define and scorecard performance against both values and value.

Perhaps the most difficult question came yesterday when someone asked me “Who would want the job of CEO?” That’s a tough one. Hiring another banker may not even be the best solution as finance is not generally considered an industry to exhibit high trust behavior. Regardless, the hope is that whoever the brave soul is who steps in to take the position begins their tenure by first acknowledging that trust is internal and must be elevated from the inside out. Only then can the required culture work begin.

PS- CNN just (attempted to) weigh in on how the bank can end the crisis. They may want to go back to the drawing board and craft a followup article.

For more information and tools to elevate trust, head over to our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright 2019 Next Decade, Inc.

In a recent GreenBiz article the author asks  Is This the End of Corporate Social Responsibility? Apparently CSR doesn’t “cut it anymore” and companies are now turning to the creation of social purposes or missions as “the reason for the company’s existence.” Sounds promising except for that one “big elephant in the room.”  Can you name it?

Study after study show that low stakeholder trust continues to drag down most companies, even ten years “post financial crisis.”

• Only 7 percent of Americans believe that major company CEOs have high ethical standards. Public Affairs Council
• Only a minority of millennials believe businesses behave ethically. Deloitte
• 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Gallup
• Just 46% of employees placed “a great deal of trust” in their employer, and only 49% placed “a great deal of trust” in their manager or colleagues. Ernst & Young
• For the first time in the six years the gauge has been reported, the US has dropped out of the “Top 10” countries for innovation. Bloomberg

Developing social purpose and mission is NOT going to fix what is wrong inside organizations.  We call these “perception of trust” fixes as opposed to authentic trustworthiness. The first is built from the outside in, while the latter is a more difficult inside out endeavor.  Focusing on social purpose before trust is like putting a clean shirt on a dirty body. And other than an “easy fix” that gives marketing and PR something to talk about, it makes little sense.

When business leaders treat trust as a tangible asset and a business imperative, the following results are achieved:

• Employees are more engaged and retention increases
• Innovation is higher and occurs more quickly
• Teams are more cohesive and decisions are made faster
• Transparency and communication improve
• Costs decrease and profitability increases

And the opposite occurs when they don’t, which is where most organizations find themselves today. A social purpose and mission will not fix low trust. It’s up to leadership to decide when (and if) they are ready to address the “elephant in the room.” Delaying it doesn’t fix it.

PS- Elevating trust is the best kept secret of many enlightened business leaders and it is giving them not only a head start, but a clear competitive advantage. For more information on how to build trust in your organization, please send a note to me at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com. We are running our trust diagnostic (AIM Towards Trust) for many teams and organizations and, depending on the results, providing further insights on how to fix the weaknesses.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. She holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. 

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

Are financial institutions inherently untrustworthy or is this a simple misconception? 

To answer this question we first must consider how “finance” and “trust” are being defined. Without universally accepted definitions, all financial institutions are painted with one broad brushstroke and consumers among other stakeholders, are left in an ever escalating state of mistrust and confusion. And when the “news” and the latest “study” report that trust in finance is up (or down) this only fuels the fire.

Trust? What are we trusting financial institutions to do, or not do? Safeguard our money, be transparent with fees, earn a good return for shareholders, protect our personal data, treat employees well, provide good customer service, or all of the aforementioned?

Finance? Can global investment banks, regional banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, financial planners, REITS, and/or a local savings and loans be lumped together when discussing trust in finance? Should they be?

For nine years Trust Across America has been researching and reporting on the trustworthiness of America’s largest 2000 public companies via our proprietary FACTS® Framework. We perform this analysis through a quantitative and objective lens (with no input from the companies themselves)

This is, by order of magnitude, the largest ongoing study ever conducted on trustworthiness at the individual corporate level. Our 2018 data (Russell 1000 only displayed below) concluded that the finance sector remains the lowest in trust, with an average score of 57 on a 1-100 scale. (Down from 58 in 2017). This dataset was finalized in April 2018. It is updated every April.

Copyright 2019 Next Decade, Inc.

But what do these numbers really mean?

Our data also tells a more detailed story, and one that places us in a unique position to discuss trust AND the financial industry. Industry is NOT destiny and those more trustworthy financial institutions suffer at the hands of their less trustworthy colleagues. Take a look at this. Suddenly certain financial industry players look quite a bit better, while some look worse.

Copyright 2019 Next Decade, Inc.

And dissecting the data even further reveals the following:

                                                 Name            Symbol    Sector                        Industry                 FACTS Score

Copyright 2019 Next Decade, Inc.

Some of the major regional banks have high trust scores, while others do not. Again, industry is not destiny.

Trust in financial institutions isn’t necessarily “up” or “down.” That’s simply a news headline. At its core, trust is internal. It is a function of how much leadership cares about its corporate culture, and chooses to embrace the value of trust in meeting the needs of every stakeholder group. For those leaders who are interested in learning more about how to elevate trust internally, please Tap into Trust and take our sample one minute (customizable for any organization or team) quiz.

For all others, keep debating whether trust is “up or down.”

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. She holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. 

Purchase our books at this link

For more information on Trust & Integrity in Corporate America purchase our 2018 report. To be among the first to review our research and more fully engage in elevating organizational trust, please consider membership in our vetted Trust Alliance.

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln…. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The same applies to trust. These commonly taken shortcuts to trust may fool some of your stakeholders, but won’t fool them all, and over time they may come back to haunt you.

• Narrowly defining trust in a way that suits the trustee. Brand loyalty, check the box sustainability, philanthropy, “feel good” CSR, blockchain solutions and data security are not trust. Neither are reputation, loyalty or transparency.
• Delegating trust to a motivational speaker instead of a subject matter expert.
• Paying for a “great workplace” award.
• Beefing up the legal and compliance staff.
• Making trust a PR campaign based on “talk” rather than action.

Do we really need more proof that shortcuts to elevating workplace trust do not work?

Take a look at the following data:

Trust within an organization is essential to its success. But “Global Generations 3.0” research, released by Ernst & Young, showed trust isn’t a given. The survey of nearly 10,000 workers ages 19 to 68 in eight countries revealed that just 46% of employees placed “a great deal of trust” in their employer, and only 49% placed “a great deal of trust” in their manager or colleagues. June 2016

According to a new global study by BBMG and GlobeScan, “Brand Purpose in Divided Times,” net trust in global companies to act in the best interest of society is negative (-2). And for the first time since 2009, more consumers say they have punished companies for their behavior (28%) rather than rewarded them (26%), and the number of those who are punishing brands is up by 9 percentage points since 2013.

According to 2018 polling by the Public Affairs Council, only 7 percent of Americans believe that major company CEOs have high ethical standards, and only 9 percent have a very favorable opinion of major companies. Only 42 percent of Americans trust major companies to behave ethically, down from 47 percent last year.

Gallup’s 2017 reports: A highly engaged workforce means the difference between a company that outperforms its competitors and one that fails to grow. And according to their recent State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. The economic consequences of this global “norm” are approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity. Eighteen percent are actively disengaged (up from 2015) in their work and workplace, while 67% are “not engaged.

Building a “principled culture” of high trust and ethics is not difficult. It simply requires leadership buy-in, and a bit of vulnerability. High priced quick fixes might fool some of the people in the short-term, but in the long-term sustainable businesses are built on trust from the inside out, not the outside in.

In our recently launched one minute (free and totally anonymous) diagnostic survey called “Building Trust One Principle at a Time,” we ask which of twelve universal trust principles (TAP) are weakest in your organization. At the end, respondents will see how their workplace compares to all others. Bringing this tool “in house” will provide enlightened leaders, teams and organizations with a baseline trust “temperature” from which to build long-term business health. Just tap on the Take our Quiz button or go direct to the Survey.

If trust is the “new currency,” as some have recently claimed, the challenge will be to “get it right” by avoiding the shortcuts and embracing the solutions.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Barbara has consulted with many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, and also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance . She is  the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine.  Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA.

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

For the past three weeks Trust Across America-Trust Around the World has been running an anonymous one minute/one question diagnostic survey/quiz to identify the weakest links in trust among teams and in organizations. The survey is based on 12 crowd-sourced universal principles called TAP. The Principles have been accessed over 40,000 times in the past 10 months. When effectively implemented, they will elevate trust in any organization of any size.

As of today, Accountability has been identified as the weakest of the 12 Principles with 40% of respondents flagging this statement as “weak”: We hold one another accountable – we each take responsibility without regard to level or role.

If you are not accountable, why would you expect your team members to trust you?

If you are a member of a team or lead one, accountability is an essential trait. Lack of accountability leads to distrust which, in turn, leads to disengagement. When you find yourself falling back on an excuse, stop and think about the impact it has on your team and consider using an alternative response instead.

This is a list of the most commonly heard trust BUSTING excuses and an alternative trust BUILDING response.

Trust Busting Excuse #1:  It slipped my mind.

Trust Building Response #1: I won’t forget.

Trust Busting Excuse #2: Sorry, I’m going on vacation.

Trust Building Response #2: This will be done before I go on vacation.

Trust Busting Excuse #3: I’ll do it later.

Trust Building Response #3: I will do it right now.

Trust Busting Excuse #4: Keep reminding me.

Trust Building Response #4: You will not need to remind me.

Trust Busting Excuse #5: It’s not on my “to do” list.

Trust Building Response #5: I’m putting it on the top of my “to do” list.

Trust Busting Excuse #6: It isn’t a high priority.

Trust Building Response #6: I’m giving it high priority.

Trust Busting Excuse #7: It was just a white lie.

Trust Building Response #7: I admit to being dishonest.

Trust Busting Excuse #8: I’m very busy. Check back later.

Trust Building Response #8: I’m very busy right now but let’s talk in one hour.

Trust Busting Excuse #9: I thought I did it.

Trust Building Response #9: I will take care of it right now.

Trust Busting Excuse #10: I ran out of time.

Trust Building Response #10: It’s more time consuming than I thought, and I will get it done.

Take our anonymous Building Trust One Principle at a Time survey here by clicking on the Quiz button. Upon completion of this one minute/one question quiz you will see how your organization compares to others. This diagnostic survey is also being administered with individual organizations and teams. If you would like to use it, send a note to: barbara@trustacrossamerica.com (This survey can be administered in 16 languages.)

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Barbara has consulted with many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, and also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance . She is  the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine.  Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA.

Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

Copyright(c) 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

When trust is low, fear is high, and fear is very costly.

Numerous studies have shown that:

• High-trust organizations consistently outperform their rivals
• Trust is the foundation of high performing teams
• Trust reduces employee turnover and increases engagement
• Trust increases productivity and innovation
• High trust leads to long-term business success, beyond just short-term “home runs.”

What is your organization doing to cut the losses of low trust?

The “fix” is relatively easy and inexpensive. And it begins by acknowledging that low trust is costing you money. Like a disease, if low trust is ignored, it continues to spread.

Our newest Trust Tool is based on our Trust Alliance Principles (TAP), the result of the collaborative efforts of dozens of the world’s leading trust scholars and practitioners. Since April, these principles have been accessed over 40,000 times in 16 languages. This tool will provide any team (including the Board of Directors,) or organization of any size in any industry, with a simple roadmap to track and elevate trust.

Want to learn more? Contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine.  Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

Copyright(c) 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

The trust “talk” is increasing in frequency and volume, and that’s a good thing. Or is it?

At least leaders are thinking about it. Yet when it comes to defining trust, those same people are either getting stuck (at best) or using the word “trust” as a placeholder (at worst.) When trust is misdefined or misidentified, it not only gets diluted, but stakeholder cynicism quickly builds.  If you choose to talk it, keep in mind that trust takes many forms, each with it own distinct definition. Make sure you are using the right one!

Trust:  (the noun)

Trust: (the verb)

Trustor: (noun)

Trustee: (noun)

Trustworthy: (adjective)

Trusting: (gerund)

Propensity to trust

For those who want (or need) a refresher course, Charlie Green and I wrote this article, complete with definitions (and much more,) almost 3 years ago. And if you want to see how you are doing in the “trust department,” we offer this brand new one-minute quiz. How are you defining trust and how does your organization compare to others?

Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.