Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

It’s Week #31 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

Nan Russell offers this week’s advice. Nan is both a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader in Trust and a member of our Trust Alliance.

Treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are. 

Beliefs affect actions. Do you believe most people are talented and resourceful, or most people aren’t? Most are trustworthy or most aren’t? When we act in accordance with our expectations, we enable those expectations. It’s called the Pygmalion Effect. The connection between what we expect and what we get is well documented. Behavioral scientists at the University of Zurich have confirmed experimentally that “if you trust people, you make them more trustworthy.” And, conversely, “sanctions designed to deter people from cheating actually make them cheat.”  Yet many leaders don’t realize that withholding trust reduces the exact behaviors they want and need. When you treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are, you’re likely to get the great results you seek, plus the added dividends of increased trust and engagement.

Will you choose to take this valuable advice to 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 #7 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 offices of hundreds of organizations around the world that have placed trust on their business agenda.

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Nan Russell a Trust Alliance Member and one of our 2016 Top Thought Leaders in Trust, offers this:

Be very good at what you do. Competence is a litmus test for believability.

Look around any organization and you’ll see trust. There is some division, department, work unit, or team where people shine, ideas flourish, and exceptional work is achieved. We can all learn from these trust-pockets, and the formal and informal leaders who ignite that trust. Their trust-enhancing behaviors go beyond the basics starting with their competence. They’re very good at what they do. Content may be king on the internet, but competence is king at work. People trust people who consistently deliver.

Competence is a litmus test for believability. No believability – no credibility. No credibility – no trust. Competence builds performance trust. Performance trust is the fulfillment of a claim, promise, or request. Some call it integrity, some walk-the-talk; others openness and honesty or accountability. In many ways, performance trust is a result of all of these, but competence is its starting point. People want to follow, and give their trust, to those who do what they say they can do, do it well, and enable and engage others’ strengths along the way.

How many readers took took the earlier advice offered in 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

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust and integrity. 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.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. Rollo May

Nan Russell, a member of our Trust Alliance and author of Trust, Inc.: How to Create a Business Culture That Will Ignite Passion, Engagement, and Innovation, shares 12 Communication Practices That Elevate Communication and Build Trust in today’s blog post:

The communication practices below lift understanding, create aligned purpose, improve relationships, and enable healthy and productive differences, and while doing so, increase trust-building:

1. Know what matters to the people you lead
2. Have dialogues without personal agendas or assumed answers
3. Express heartfelt, specific gratitude
4. Be forthcoming about your objective, purpose, or goal
5. Align your actions with your words
6. Operate with thoughtful transparency
7. Paint word-pictures to make something seeable, doable, and purposeful
8. Be about the right action, not the action that’s right for you
9. Be open to all methods of communication
10. Offer feedback as opinion, not fact
11. Listen to learn
12. Be the message, not the messenger, for respect, integrity, and compassion

Communication that builds trust is elevated because it brings honesty, integrity, authenticity, and caring into the conversation.

Thank you Nan for sharing this guest blog post with us. For more information about Nan, visit her website.

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. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Nominations are now being accepted for Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s 5th annual Global Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business.

                                                                                               Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.