Discourse on Trust

It’s my opinion that Trust is one of our most most valuable assets. As social creatures, we are dependent on it, yet we live in a world filled with trust issues. What can we do about it as leaders, groups, companies, communities… and as humans? 

Research indicates that the vast majority of highly successful organizations are High Trust Companies that have high-trust relationships with their stakeholders. After all, how can a leader, a company or an institution be effective without being trusted?

At the risk of stating the obvious, Trust matters. If a tribe’s values, interests, competencies, goals and respect for our unalienable rights and Needs are not shared or complementary, it’s more than likely they will find themselves in some form of conflict.

In this essay, I introduce a simple, math-based tool focusing on Character, Connections and Competency to help me assess the health of all of my relationships. It makes it almost easy to better evaluate the levels of trust within our relationships and talk about about what’s working and what’s not.

In this piece, we explore the complexity of culture as it relates to trust, and how every culture is made up of different, evolving “ingredients”. For leaders, getting the recipe right makes all the difference, especially when one considers how culture is built.

High-Trust Companies are built upon a small collection of well-developed Core Values and are influenced by a short list of norms, beliefs and principles that should stand the test of time. This essay explores their qualities, value and importance.

The strength of a company’s Connections-based Trust is built upon a foundation of hierarchies that are oftentimes poorly understood, let alone thought out. This is the first of a series of essays on hierarchies, including some of the most important hierarchies that exist within every organization.

The strength of a company’s Connections-based Trust is built upon a foundation of hierarchies that are oftentimes poorly understood, let alone thought out. This is the second of a series of essays on hierarchies, including some of the most important hierarchies that exist within every organization.