Extreme Trust: Gaining Customer Trust
By Noreen Kelly | May 2, 2012
Fast Company talked to Don Peppers, who coauthored the book, Extreme Trust: Honesty as Competitive Advantage, with Martha Rogers, about trust-based relationships between consumers and customers.
Don Peppers talks about Zuckerberg’s Law, which is that we interact with others about a thousand times as much today as we did 20 years ago. “It only stands to reason that the role trust plays in our existence has also gone up incredibly, and we can see this all around us. Consumers are already beginning to demand a higher level of trustworthiness: what we call trustability, proactive trustworthiness, or extreme trust.”
View the full article: The Competitive Advantage of Gaining Customers’ Trust Early (4/26/12).
Topics: Business, Customers, Trust | No Comments »
Trust Matters in Leadership – Trust is the Core
By Noreen Kelly | April 5, 2012
A 4/3/12 Forbes article by Charles Green, Why Trust is the New Core of Leadership, talks about the growing importance of trust in business.
Charles Green compares the old and new worlds of leadership and business:
Old Leadership: Old Business
– The essence of business was competition.
– Shareholder value was the main goal, as well as the main measure.
– Scale economies dictated being number one or two in your markets.
– Leaders were scarce and special; followers were many and common.
– Leadership was a vertical function, related to power.
– Horizontal relationships related to markets and contracts, and were the purview of strategy, not leadership.
New Business: New Leadership
Leaders can no longer trust in power; instead, they rely on the power of trust.
New Leaders:
– Skilled at trusting, because trusting and trustworthiness enhance each other.
– Good at collaboration and the tools of influence.
– Operate from a clear set of values and principles, because opportunistic or selfish motives are clearly seen and rejected.
– More intrinsically than extrinsically motivated, and more likely to use intrinsic motivations with others.
– Not dependent on direct authority or political power.
Green states that the teaching of trust needs to be defined and talks about three points in particular:
– Trusting and Trustworthiness
– Virtues and Values
– Risk
Topics: Business, Leadership, Trust | No Comments »
A Quote on Trust and Letting Go
By Noreen Kelly | February 14, 2012
“Trust is letting go of needing to know all the details before you open your heart.” ~ Author unknown
Topics: Quotes, Trust | No Comments »
The Decision to Trust
By Noreen Kelly | February 12, 2012
The Decision to Trust: how leaders create high-trust organizations, by Robert F. Hurley, is an excellent, highly researched book on trust.
Charlie Green, Trusted Advisor Associates, www.trustedadvisor.com, who interviewed Robert Hurley, called it “one of the best books written in recent years on trust.”
Topics: Business, Leadership, Trust | No Comments »
Five ways for employees to speak up and share their ideas
By Noreen Kelly | January 27, 2012
A recent issue of Better Business Bureau TrustBrief (1/23/12) reported a story from CBS MoneyWatch (1/23/12) on why employees aren’t sharing their ideas:
1. Does there always have to be a person at fault?
2. Have you already made up your mind?
3. Does the boss speak first?
4. Is failure punished?
5. Are you defensive or accusatory?
If leaders want their people to speak up, “they need to create an environment where things that are new and different aren’t immediately rejected and mistakes are not the end of the world.”
The author of the article, Suzanne Lucas, spent 10 years in corporate Human Resources. She founded the Carnival of HR, a bi-weekly gathering of HR blogs, and her writings have been used in HR certification and management training courses across the country.
Topics: Business, Employee engagement, Trust | No Comments »
Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer – Trust in business, government down — Trust in media rising
By Noreen Kelly | January 26, 2012
This year’s global trust survey, conducted by Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm, showed that government is the least trusted institution (trust in goverment suffered its steepest decline in Edelman history), followed by trust in business, while trust in social media is up. For the fifth year in a row, NGOs are the most trusted institution.
Edelman’s annual trust and credibility survey, now in its 12th year, tracks attitudes about the state of trust in business, government, NGOs, and media, surveying more than 30,000 respondents across 25 countries.
Trust in business fell globally from 56% to 53%. The survey showed the biggest decline in Barometer history for trust in CEO’s (CEO credibility declined 38%; 12 point decline is its biggest drop in nine years). “It’s the Occupy Wall Street theme of the haves and have notes. CEOs are perceived as making too much money, relative to the average working person,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman.
Trust in peers (employees and “a person like yourself”) increased dramatically (+16 and +22, respectively). The increased trust in messages from our peers is the greatest increase since 2004.
Media, the one institution to see an increase, saw its global trust level rise above 50%. Trust in social media rose 75%, while trust in traditional news rose 10% from 2011. However, traditional media, TV, newspapers, and magazines are still more trusted than social media overall.
Banks and financial services remain the least trusted. Technology remained the most trusted sector globally.
Listening to customer needs, treating employees well, placing customers ahead of profits, and having ethical business practices are all considered more important than delivering consistent financial returns. The survey showed:
- 67% believe that listening to customers is important (only 6% believe businesses are doing it).
- 64% believe that treating employees well is important (only 27% believe businesses are doing it).
- 62% believe it’s important to put customers ahead of profits (only 26% believe businesses are doing it).
- 62% believe it’s important to take responsible actions (only 28% believe businesses are doing it).
Edelman reported that the factors responsible for shaping current business trust levels are largely tied to business competence and that factors involving engagement behavior and societal imperatives will build trust in the future.
“Business is now better placed than government to lead the way out of the trust crisis,” said Richard Edelman in a news release. “But the balance must change so that business is seen both as a force for good and an engine for profit.”
Topics: Business, Customers, Employee engagement, Ethics, Leadership, Reputation, Social Networks, Trust, Workplace | 3 Comments »
100 most influential people in business ethics
By Noreen Kelly | January 20, 2012
Ethisphere announced the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics on January 19, 2012.
The list of 100 individuals represents those that had significant impact in the realm of business ethics over the course of the last year — from law changing hunger strikes to using recycled materials to create $10,000, energy efficient homes — the individuals have impacted the world of business ethics in ways that will continue to resonate for many years.
Topics: Business, Ethics | No Comments »
Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior – 2012
By Noreen Kelly | January 13, 2012
Trust Across Amercia recently named the top 100 thought leaders in trustworthy business behavior.
Topics: Business, Leadership, Trust | No Comments »
Top companies doing the right thing
By Noreen Kelly | January 4, 2012
Here’s a list of annual publications that rank top companies who are trying to do the right thing:
- America’s Most Trustworthy Companies
www.trustacrossamerica.com
- World’s Most Admired Companies – Fortune
www.fortune.com
(This ranking includes a list of the best & worst in social responsibility)
- Green Rankings (environmental performance) – Newsweek
www.newsweek.com
- Global RepTrak 100: The World’s Most Reputable Companies – Reputation Institute
www.reputationinstitute.com
- World’s Most Ethical Companies – Ethisphere
www.ethisphere.com
- 100 Best Corporate Citizens and Business Ethics Award – Business Ethics: The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility
www.business-ethics.com
Topics: Business, Corporate social responsibility, Ethics, Integrity, Leadership, Reputation, Trust | No Comments »
Trust Across America – Most Trustworthy Public Companies, 2011
By Noreen Kelly | December 20, 2011
Trust Across America™, a think tank dedicated to unraveling the complexities of trustworthy business behavior, announced the results of its second annual study of almost 2500 public companies on December 19, 2011, naming Smithfield Foods as the Most Trustworthy Public Company for 2011.
The Trust Across America study independently analyzes over 200 data points with respect to five key corporate indicators of trustworthy business behavior:
FACTS™:
1) Financial stability and strength
2) Accounting conservativeness
3) Corporate integrity
4) Transparency
5) Sustainability
Companies do not participate in the analysis. The framework, initially conceived and developed in 2008 with a group of academics, corporate leaders and consultants, is “the most holistic and comprehensive trust ‘health’ checkup for public companies,” according to its founders.
For the complete ranked list of the Top 10 Most Trustworthy Companies in America 2011:
Topics: Business, Integrity, Leadership, Trust, Workplace | No Comments »
« Previous Entries