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Trust 101

Like "integrity," "trust" is a commonly appreciated yet rarely defined with the rigor to make it an operational asset. To grow trust, or to be responsible to it, requires strategic dialogue and insight.

Research Highlights
On a staggering scale, eight out of ten research participants believe strongly that trust is in decline throughout society.

Trust Factors
Trust is grown or lost in relationship, and the slow bleeding has occurred on the intimate human scale often neglected in the focus on big issues such as globalization, competitiveness and the new economy.

Operational Costs of Wasted Trust
Not at all a "soft asset," trust is an equity with real value to the bottom-line of organizations. It has a profound impact on reputation, efficiency and innovation. And it provides real leverage for taking risks, recovering from mistakes, or attracting the right talent or strategic partners.

Trust Implications
That leaders do not do what they say is not new. Beyond broken promises, people feel that leaders in all spheres are too removed from the human and social impacts of their policies and decisions.

Trust Inhibitors & Contributors
Trust is essential yet invisible, a value that is moral as well as relational, discerned by both reason and emotion, operating on the large scale of history within the movements of human society, and on the small scale of our most important and intimate relationships of love and friendship. Trust is an economic variable affecting investment and bottom-line performance, and a personal variable defining character and reputation.

Read full article | April 11, 2005

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