Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

It’s Week #15 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

Charles H. Green a Trust Alliance member and a Trust Across America Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree offers a very simple suggestion:

“Be a role model”

A lot of things in business can be achieved through business cases, behavioral goals, and incentives. 

Trust is not one of those things.

When it comes to trust, we put outsized importance on integrity. A policy violation may be looked at askance, yet be quickly forgiven. A violation of trust, however, is not forgotten.  

In matters of trust, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.  In no other realm is role-modeling more important. When someone acts in both trustworthy and trusting manners, we trust them.  But when someone says, “trust me,” we automatically become suspicious.  And when a leader doesn’t walk the trust talk, we don’t hesitate to call them hypocrites.

Be the trust you claim to want to see in your organization. Be a role model.

Thank you Charlie. 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.

Have you ever seen Trusted Advisor Associates Trust Equation? I’ve pulled it directly from their website with permission from Charles H. Green, a Trust Alliance member and one of our Lifetime Achievement Award Winners.

The Trust Equation uses four objective variables to measure trustworthiness. These four variables are best described as: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-Orientation.

We combine these variables into the following equation:

TQ stands for Trust Quotient. The Trust Quotient is a number — like your IQ or EQ — that benchmarks your trustworthiness against the four variables.

In my opinion, and maybe Charlie’s too, nothing busts trust faster than a high denominator. All the credibility, reliability and intimacy in the world can’t fix that all too frequent “out of control” self-orientation.

Whether your work is in consulting, sales or any other profession requiring people skills, consider the possibility that the other individuals sitting at the table are familiar with Charlie’s Trust Equation. They are seeking signs of high self-orientation and it may just be the personality trait that kills the deal. Here’s ten signs to look for:

1. Focus on the “I” instead of the “We”
2. Failure to ask (or ask for) questions
3. Interrupting
4. Talking more than listening
5. Lack of transparency
6. Need for recognition
7. Taking all the credit
8. Having a win/lose perspective as opposed to a win/win
9. Bending the truth
10. Making excuses

It’s never too late to lower your self-orientation if it’s impeding your ability to succeed. What do you think?

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help responsible organizations build trust. She facilitates the world’s largest membership program for those interested in the subject. Barbara also serves as 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 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

According to newly released data from the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer the world has witnessed “an alarming evaporation of trust across all institutions, reaching the lows of the Great Recession in 2009. Trust in government, business, media and NGOs in the general population is below 50 percent in two-thirds of countries, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan. Informed public respondents are nearly as distrustful, registering trust levels below 50 percent in half of the countries surveyed.”

“There has been a startling decrease in trust across all institutions driven by the unpredictable and unimaginable events of 2014,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO, Edelman

Many global experts claim that “trust” is the issue of the decade and they may be right. Our society continues to be plagued by breaches of trust in business, government, academia, medicine, sports and the media, to name just a few.  But behind every trust violation is an individual or a team that has allowed it to occur. There is no doubt that low trust comes with hard costs to society and its citizens.

Is There a Silver Lining? Yes indeed. Many thought leaders are placing trust on their daily docket and teaching others through their actions and words.  On January 26 via TRUST! Magazine winter issue, Trust Across America – Trust Around the World will be releasing its 5^th annual Top Thought Leaders in Trust, recognizing approximately 100 global trust researchers, consultants, writers and/or business leaders. Today we announce 15 honorees that have been continuously recognized by our program for their thought leadership over the past five years, and are receiving our Lifetime Achievement Award.

Please join us in congratulating the following outstanding individuals:

Patricia Aburdene

Hank Boerner

Stephen M.R. Covey

Jed Emerson

Leslie Gaines Ross

Robert Galford

Mary Gentile

Bill George

Charles H. Green

Jim Kouzes

Linda Locke

Edward Marshall

Jeffrey Seglin

Frank Sonnenberg

Robert Whipple

Well done ladies and gentlemen!

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.

Our 2015 Poster, 52 Weeks of Activities to Increase Organizational Trust is available to those who would like to support our work by making a small donation.

Copyright 2015, Next Decade, Inc.