Posts Tagged ‘Nadine Hack’
The Trust Action Project 2021 (#tap2021) Weekly Action is one of many Trust Alliance resources designed to help leaders, teams and organizations move beyond trust talk to ACTION in 2021 and beyond.
Learn more about the Trust Action Project 2021 at this link.
How would you like to get involved? Let us know.
Copyright 2021, Next Decade, Inc.
Brand Trust has become a “big deal” for marketers in 2019.
While some define brand trust as building trust with your customers and consumers, not everyone agrees.
A recent article in Adweek called Consumer’s Trust in Brands Has Fallen to a New Low highlights the confusion that often arises when “talking trust” from a brand standpoint, or any point for that matter. This particular article ran the “building trust gamut” from:
I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a pretty tall and confusing trust order.
So I asked the members of our Trust Council to read the article and share their professional observations about what brand trust is and what it isn’t. Here’s what five members had to say:
Bart Alexander, a seasoned CSR professional opined that most consumers, including young adults, are still choosing products and services based on functional attributes more than responsibility performance of the parent company. Similarly, most investors still seek to maximize total return rather than focus on long-term sustainability performance. But we may well be on the cusp of a tipping point where the approaches referenced in the article become mainstream. At the same time, we must acknowledge that most of the economy is continuing to operate on far more traditional views about value.
Nadine Hack, a leadership consultant and educator, concurs. All of this activity makes me wonder (hopefully, yet cautiously) if we may have finally reached a tipping point where corporate social responsibility is something businesses must act on, not just talk about.
Randy Conley at Ken Blanchard adds that in the digital world, organizations are having to constantly make deposits in the “trust bank” of their customers, because sooner or later, there will be an instance where trust is broken. It’s not a question of if they’ll break trust, but when. The vast majority of consumers are starting to realize that we only live under the illusion of privacy and data security. At the end of the day, each of us as consumers has to decide our own comfort level of risk in sharing our information with others and trusting those individuals/organizations to keep it safe.
Linda Fisher Thornton, an ethics educator and consultant had this to say… Reputation and brand used to be considered separate things. You built your brand (what you wanted people to believe about your company) and you sought to protect the image of your brand that you had built. That approach is outdated. With social media transparency, reputation and brand have converged to the point that reputation defines and shapes the brand. People believe what they see a company doing rather than any pretty picture it has created to represent itself.The way to build trust is not to pretend to be a trustworthy brand, but to actually live it.
“The Trust Ambassador” Bob Whipple concluded with these thoughts…The thing I was reminded of is that we all need to be cognizant of the reputation of our own brands and the jeopardy we could put people in unwittingly. The real test is how diligent the company is on the front end to design a robust system and how the company reacts if and when something goes wrong. That is the test of their leadership.
Which brings us back to the question in the title of the article. What does Brand Trust mean?
I suppose it depends on one’s personal and professional perspective. If you are a marketer in 2019, apparently it’s a big deal, not unlike “purpose,” another big deal. Sadly, many of these are merely PR “campaigns” designed by those who have no subject matter expertise. The result is not only less trust, but more cynicism and confusion for both customers and consumers.
Marketers who choose to talk about brand trust, should consider shifting their focus to helping build trustworthy and enduring brands. That’s not accomplished through data security or meeting the needs of a certain generation, and it’s certainly not the sole responsibility of the marketing department. The way trustworthy brands are built is similar to the way people build trust between themselves. It always boils down to principles and values, and either leaders, teams and organizations have them or they don’t. If brands want to be trustworthy and trusted, it’s leadership’s responsibility, along with their Board, to first clean up their own house from the inside out. Building a foundation of trust via principled leadership and trustworthy employees is the only solution to elevating brand trust. And then the marketing team can step in and craft an authentic message, not just a PR campaign.
As Bob Whipple said earlier, the real test is how diligent the company is on the front end.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. For more information on how to build authentic brand trust, contact her at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.
It’s Week #28 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
Nadine Hack offers this week’s advice. Nadine is both a Top Thought Leader in Trust and a member of our Trust Alliance.
Be transparent about what’s working and what’s not.
Whether you’re internal or external stakeholders, everyone appreciates and responds better to honesty. The impulse to “cover up” things that are not working so well is strong.
Leaders fear that if their initial decision is not panning out well, they will lose the confidence of their stakeholders. If you try to “sweep problems under the rug” or “fudge” on your reporting, this will be true.
If instead, you openly, candidly admit an error of judgment or acknowledge unanticipated events that make no longer valid what was a correct determination under different circumstances, your stakeholders will respect and trust you even more.
They will know they can count on the accuracy of your information when you share positive updates and they will be more likely to support your efforts regardless of outcomes at any specific moment.
Will you choose to implement this valuable advice in your organization this week? If not, ask yourself “why not?”
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 #17 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
Nadine Hack a member of our Trust Alliance and 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner offers a simple suggestion:
Be inclusive in your decision making
In our ever-more connected world, growing exponentially more so because of social media, people expect to be engaged rather than dictated to. This always has been true: it’s just more obvious now.
So, be open to the possibility you can learn as much from those you lead as they might learn from you. Involve them as early as possible in analyzing information to make truly informed decisions.
Territorial ego-based leadership is the opposite: keep strategies and activities secret, maintain control by keeping everyone else “in their place” and share as little as possible.
Yet, leaders who recognize that even the new intern can have a breakthrough “genius insight” are genuinely secure and do not have to dominate. They also get the best out of their teams.
Thank you Nadine. 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.
A spate of corporate crises in 2015 have only served to fuel the long-term fire of low organizational trust. Under the theory that trust starts at the top and trickles down, we asked our Alliance Members and Top Thought Leaders how Boards of Directors can be the catalyst to drive organizational trust in the right direction in 2016.
Our readers will find twelve suggestions below:
Boards must replace fear with trust:
A trust-based culture increases morale, productivity, innovation, speed, agility, pride in the workplace, value to the customer and sustained high performance.
Edward Marshall, The Marshall Group
Boards must widen the scope of their membership:
Diverse boards bring different and new types of expertise and perspectives, increasing the range of topics discussed, and most important, encouraging open, candid and provocative discussions.
Nadine Hack, beCause Global Consulting
Boards and CEOs must be proactive:
Boards can and should lead certain functions for the firm from defining the desired culture to involvement in strategy development. They should not be passive monitors.
Bob Vanourek, Triple Crown Leadership
Board members must have authentic conversations:
They must be provided with sufficient information; a safe space that protects privacy and rejects behaviors to intimidate, ridicule or insult; and enough time to explore systemic issues without jumping to conclusions.
Alain Bolea, Business Advisors Network
Boards must avoid entrenching polarized attitudes:
Boards must have synergy. Look for warning signs in communications including “we versus they” or “if only we can get them to do this.”
Bob Whipple, Leadergrow
Board members must ask the tough (ethical) questions…and act on the answers:
Tie compensation and bonuses to ethical leadership metrics as well as financial performance.
Donna C. Boehme, Compliance Strategists
Boards must demand management accountability:
Mission, purpose, values, culture, strategy, business model and brand must be thoughtfully defined, activated and aligned to create a coherent whole.
Roger Bolton, Arthur Page Society
Boards must align their business agenda with societal expectations:
Board members must have an unmistakable sensitivity to the societal issues of the day. Capabilities must be aligned to build a better world AND a better company.
Doug Conant, Conant Leadership
Boards must speak with candor:
The canned, compliance-approved double-talk and corporate window dressing must be replaced. It is, at best, a short-term unsustainable business strategy, and hiding behind philanthropic efforts simply doesn’t work. Boards must build cultures of authentic long-term trust, practice it holistically, and regularly communicate it to all stakeholders.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Trust Across America
Boards must kill the evening before dinner:
Instead take a small group of front-line or mid-level employees to dinner in an informal setting without the presence of other corporate executives.
Robert Galford, Center for Leading Organizations
Board must understand their organization’s relationship with their stakeholders:
Take surveys, monitor social and legacy media, and share information across the organization; track the emotions of issues, events and topics, follow changes in the environment; engage and address concerns.
Linda Locke, Standing Partnership
Boards must develop their own crisis plan:
Enumerate what kinds of actions will be taken for different issues, their crisis strategy and who will be designated to play “first string.”
Davia Temin, Temin and Company
What would you add to these recommendations? Drop me a note at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Dozens more suggestions like this can be found in Trust, Inc: A Guide for Boards and C-Suites and in our brand new 2016 annual poster Weekly Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust
News Release
For Immediate Release
For Additional Information contact:
Barbara Kimmel
Executive Director
Trust Across America
908-879-6625
Trust in Business Essential for 2013:
Global Experts Join Forces to Combat Trust Crisis
Chester, N.J. January 3, 2013—After a well-documented 10+ years of declining trust in government, business and the media, Trust Across America (TAA) (www.trustacrossamerica.com) and its ambassadors are launching the Campaign for Trust™, a two-year initiative to reverse this cycle. “As the leaders in information, standards, data and the Who’s Who of trustworthy business, this is the next step in our initiative that began in 2009,” said Barbara Brooks Kimmel, a Co-founder and the Executive Director.
In the fourth quarter of 2012 TAA created The Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts (ATBE) to collaborate in advancing the cause of trustworthy business through the creation of trust tools and communications outreach. Over 100 global thought leaders from Fortune 500 companies; leading academic institutions; global media and consulting have joined since the mid-October launch.
Much of the work of the alliance will be via strategic partnerships with our Founding Members listed alphabetically: Patricia Aburdene (Co-author of Megatrends 2000); William Benner (WW Consulting); Randy Conley (The Ken Blanchard Companies); Stephen M.R. Covey (Franklin Covey-Speed of Trust); Linda Fisher Thornton (Leading in Context); Bahar Gidwani (CSRHub); Charles Green (Trusted Advisor Associates); Nadine Hack (beCause Global Consulting); Michael Hopkins (MHC International); Gary Judd (Franklin Covey-Speed of Trust); Barbara Kimmel (Trust Across America); Jim Kouzes (The Leadership Challenge); Deb Krizmanich (Powernoodle); Mike Krzus (Co-author of One Report); Greg Link (Franklin Covey-Speed of Trust); Linda Locke (Reputare Consulting); Edward Marshall (Author Building Trust at the Speed of Change); Jon Mertz (Thin Difference); Deb Mills-Scofield (Innovanomics™); Robert Vanourek (Triple Crown Leadership); and Bob Whipple (Leadergrow Inc.).
According to Kimmel, “We will be assembling a Trust Toolbox™ in 2013 to assist businesses in building trust with their stakeholders. Collaborative projects in development include the publication of a book- Trust Inc.: Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset, a collection of short essays from our global thought leaders; the Trust Directory™ designed for companies who seek advice and counsel; the creation of trust assessments; the development of a Trust Index™; educational Trust Talks™; a monthly publication called the Trust Sheet ™, announcing trust alliance member news from around the world; and the opening of our online Trust Store™, a virtual one-stop shop for trust products.”
Kicking off the campaign will be the January 14 announcement of Trust Across America’s 3rd annual Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business. Our 2013 recognition list will honor the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey, whose professional accomplishments in the field of trust were instrumental to the founding of the Trust Across America initiative four years ago.
According to Amy Lyman co-founder of Great Place to Work Institute and author of The Trustworthy Leader, “The evidence is irrefutable. Cultures of trust, created by leaders who are credible, respectful and fair bring with them significant economic, social, community and environmental benefits. It is what every employee wants and what every business leader should strive for.” Trust Across America, through its new trust alliance, hopes to develop the requisite tools to enhance cultures of trust, and encourages those interested in furthering the cause of trustworthy business to join the alliance. trustacrossamerica.com/cgi-bin/alliance.cgi
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