The story of a man who, despite a difficult family life, developed the determination, drive and skills to create a successful business and a happy life.
There is fear of technology has been around for as long as technology itself, and like technology itself, this fear is always changing in this new disruptive world.
There is strong evidence of “technophobia” the technical name for this affliction in every age and in every part of the world.
This technophobia is making it hard for chief executives to trust their chief information officers.
Blame technophobia or just bad experiences. But now that information technology has become the linchpin for an organization’s success, CEOs are asking, “How do we make this work?”
CEOs of the world’s largest companies are struggling to keep pace with the impact of digital technology and many are being left behind, placing their corporations at risk in the medium to longer term. Their own senior teams also lack basic IT skills and understanding, without which they cannot steer their corporations into the next millennium. Despite this, corporations are failing to address the problem.
Technology continues to move forward at an alarming pace but a large number of CEOs are failing to mobilise their companies to take advantage of these technological leaps and bounds. Why?
It seems that the link between organisational growth and innovative technology is being disregarded by CEOs. They prefer to ignore the importance of this function rather, perhaps, than admit their own ignorance. You could argue that many CEOs simply don’t have the time to learn how IT fits into the organisation in the same way as marketing, HR and finance do. The latter functions often appear to involve more common sense, perhaps. IT is new and uncharted territory, and this could potentially explain why the IT function remains so isolated from the rest of the organisation.
We frequently encounter business leaders who consider their ignorance of basic technology as being perfectly acceptable. As a traditional business leader why trouble yourself with the technology as long as it works?
But today every sphere of business is impacted by technology, and the success of these businesses is often determined by the way technology is integrated and utilised. The unfortunate truth is that if you cannot engage in meaningful dialogue around how technology is used in your business, at best, you are missing an opportunity and at worst, you are simply not doing your job.
Understanding how to get the best return on investment is vital given the current volatile economic climate. CEOs appear to have great instincts about how their business generates a return from investing in a marketing project or new product offering.
They also understand the importance of careful accounting and financial management. But, installing a new customer-facing application or enabling their workforce with a new device?
It does not resonate in the same way. This, despite overwhelming evidence that the right technological solutions can dramatically reduce costs, drive up efficiency and streamline work flows.
Technophobia at board level is often driven by past experiences of financial overruns, late delivery, wide-scale business disruption and low user satisfactions. While some level of apprehension is justifiable and sensible, significant change has taken place over the past few years to make the situation less intimidating. These include:
* Less risk: Over the last ten years, we have moved away from coding to configuration. This means that software packages are much less risky to develop. Even better, software packages can now be hosted by a partner (so called ‘Software as a Service’ or SaaS) meaning that capital and operational costs are vastly reduced and risks made much more manageable.
* Easy deployment: Technology can now be rolled out more easily. The technical innovations of the past were expensive and slow to develop. Today innovation cycles are shortened. The implication is that rather than paying for leading edge research and development, businesses can adopt a safer ‘fast follower’ strategy and remain highly effective.
* Standardisation: Greater adoption of standards have allowed an explosion of devices. These devices are able to communicate with each other because of common standards in telecommunications, hardware and software.
* Ubiquitous data networks: There are few places in the world where a customer or an employee cannot get access to decent broadband or mobile networks. Data speeds are increasing with technologies like 5G and future advancements will further improve what is already a great experience for most users.
Ex-Googler Jessica Nordlander, recently named Sweden’s Most Innovative Leader by Scandinavian management and leadership magazine Chef, believes it comes down to accepting change as a constant, something chief technology officers (CTOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) are always working with and against.
Nordlander, chief operating officer of Canadian company Thoughtexchange, a crowd conversation tool for leaders, says: “How future leaders utilise technology will be integral to whether they succeed or they don’t.
“There is still a feeling in many organisations that at some point digital transformation can and will be complete. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Future CEOs will need to be very comfortable with constant change.
“Current seismic shifts are blowing up longstanding practices and established prejudices. The move towards non-conventional workforces presents a unique opportunity where strategic use of technology can be exponentially valuable for leaders.”
New research from software company VMware suggests this could become a growing trend. It found 69 per cent of UK business leaders believe executive leadership positions should be filled by people with technology career backgrounds in order to be successful. Some 33 per cent of those it questioned also reported their firm had experienced improved business performance as a result of elevating those with such backgrounds into leadership roles.
One reason many see success in this way forward is because the CTO’s role is very strategic, looking at how technology accelerates revenues, lowers costs and improves customer experience, all key things a CEO must be concerned about.
CTOs also understand the importance of technology in business process transformation, how to use it to achieve a fast return on investment (ROI), and they are used to taking projects from a low level of maturity to scale.
It could also be argued that CEOs with a technology background may also be less inclined to make rushed or poor decisions during times of crisis, for example the coronavirus pandemic, when long-planned technology investment could be one of the first casualties of cutbacks in order to shore up the status quo instead.
CEOs must be able to ask the right questions
And with predictions that the next 30 years of business change will be even more rapid and far reaching than the past three decades, CEOs now have to face their incumbency being overtaken by technology-first challengers. That’s why Dr James Berry, MBA director at University College London, believes technological knowledge is vital for the future CEO.
Finally, the speed of change in the commercial world is largely associated with information technology and electronic commerce. Businesses which do not embrace current technology and anticipate the likely scope of future IT will lose out to their rivals. Directors who fail to appreciate the role and nature of technology in their businesses cannot hope to make informed decisions about future investment policy.
It seems bizarre that CEOs would make crucial decisions about the direction of their businesses without understanding the impact of technology.
Of course, many directors justify their aversion to technology by claiming that IT is insecure, it is important the board gatekeepers of access to their deliberations, even the masters of their own secrecy, and previous aversions begin to disappear.
There is a great quote by Bill Gates that states:
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
According to Global social media statistics research summary 2022 almost three quarters of people expect relationship pressures this Christmas, a poll by charity Relate found that 73% of people aged 16 and over in the UK are expecting something to place pressure on their relationships during the festive season.
The average person uses social media for two hours and 27 minutes every day. That’s over five years of your life spent scrolling, posting, and liking. Given that social media has become so ingrained in daily life, it’s really no wonder that it is now a potential source of tension and conflict in relationships.
“You won’t develop a strong sense of trust if the only time you spend together is sharing TikToks.”
It’s not all bad news. Social media may positively impact relationships in a number of ways. It’s not uncommon to see friends and family post adoring photos of their partner with a lovey-dovey caption to boot. While there are some days when this is the last thing you want to see on your feed, small messages like this projected to a whole network of friends may put a smile on your loved one’s face.
It all comes down to being acknowledged, according to Shore Research. “They need to be noticed, they need to know that they matter, and social media can be a wonderful way of doing that in terms of posting small messages, little videos, something that tells that person that they are on your mind and they are on your mind in a very fond way.” Still, Shore Research notes that face-to-face communication can’t be beaten, concluding, “The reality is this: You can’t touch someone over a cell phone.”
Real connection is more than just talking to others or sharing interests. After all, we can talk for over an hour with someone about sports or politics, even if we secretly can’t stand them.
More profound than mere conversation, true connection can happen without words and with someone we don’t even know. On the other hand, constant contact, such as working with someone every day, is no guarantee of actual connection. Connecting with others is a sense of being open and available to another person, even as you feel they are open and available to you. Other ingredients of human connection are empathy and compassion – we feel goodwill to the person we are connecting with.
Trust is the foundation for love. It’s natural over time for feelings of love and connection to fluctuate. Every relationship has emotional dry spells, but trust is consistent and is the foundation that a solid relationship is built on.
Revealing your true self to someone, whether it’s your deepest fears or your weird snacking habits, means putting yourself out there. It’s not an easy ask of you or your partner, but having a foundation of trust in a relationship does make being vulnerable a little easier as “we get to be our authentic selves, our partner gets to be their authentic selves, and as a result, we get to connect authentically,”
When we start to look at relationships, no matter how much time has elapsed or how many relationships you’ve had since, it’s hard to truly forget your first love. Your first love is always going to be special to you, no matter how old you are or how many people you date. It was your first experience with love and the memories of that’ll stay with you all your life.
Falling in love with someone for the first time is a life-changing experience. When it’s the first time you’ve ever felt so strongly about another person, it can be truly devastating to have all of that end. If you’re wondering how to get over your first love, even years later.
If you spend enough time reading advice columns, you notice a pattern. In the stream of sorrows and quandaries and relationship angst, one word bubbles up again and again. First. My first love.
My first time. My first ever. And unlike all the relationships that came after, with this one, the past can’t seem to stay in the past.
Love is always special, but your first love moves you in a way that is inherently unique. It introduces you to feelings you have never had before, for better or for worse, and is accompanied by a sense of wonder, intrigue, and excitement. Even though your first love may not have lasted, it will be a part of who you are for the rest of your life.
When we think about our first love, there is a mixture of emotions we all feel which can be hard to explain. But why, even though our first love may have happened 5, 10, 15, or even 50 or more years ago, do a lot of us still think about it today?
But why? Why should this one lodge in our brains any differently than the others, even when the others were longer, better, more right? They just weren’t quite as intense as the first.
The scientific research on this topic is thin, but the collective wisdom among psychologists says it’s a lot like skydiving. Meaning, you’ll remember the first time you jumped out of an airplane much more clearly than the 10th time you took the leap.
“Your first experience of something is going to be well remembered, more than later experiences,” explains Art Aron, a psychology professor at State University of New York at Stony Brook who specializes in close relationships. “Presumably there’d be more arousal and excitement, especially if it’s somewhat scary. And falling in love is somewhat scary — you’re afraid you’ll be rejected, you’re afraid you won’t live up to their expectations, afraid they won’t live up to yours. Anxiety is a big part of falling in love, especially the first time.”
The trust deficit is fueling the human experience gap. For all of us who share a zeal to help the world run better and improve people’s lives, we can’t rest until we bridge that gap.
We all have experiences to share, some of you may have read my first book, ‘Freedom after the Sharks’. This book was published in 2014 and took me three years to write.
One of my favourite quotes by Tamie Dearen, from her book ‘The Best Match’:
“Love is such a small word for what I feel. For the first time in my life, I have a reason to breathe. I’m enchanted with every part of you I know, and I only know a small part so far. I plan to spend the rest of my life searching out every hidden enchantment in your body and soul. And I’m going to cherish and protect you with every fiber of my being. So, do I love you? No… I love love love you.”
This week marked a proud milestone with the launch of my 6th and final book: ‘The Trust Paradigm’. We launched the book in conjunction with the “IBEM Executive Thought Leadership Forum” in London at Freeths LLP.
We would like to thank our sponsors at Freeths LLP and all the support Stewart Elliston and his team provided in making this event possible.
Keynote speakers and thought leadership was delivered by Mark Herbert – my co-author on the book; Douglas Lines; my co-Director in IBEM, Karen Jones, CEO of Denison Consulting; Luke Dixon, Partner of Freeths LLP on Data Security; Dan Ilett, CEO of Tollejo in his expert capacity as event moderator.
The Executive Thought Leadership Forum has been in our sights for some time: businesses, particularly in leadership, need to navigate a different course and see the global
economy through a different lens – change is speeding up – change is not a phase, change is constant.
Trust directly influences the actions and outcomes of business every day. By embedding trust in a company’s business, leaders generate value for their stakeholders and society more broadly now and in the future. Trust between employer and employee and among employees enhances human capital investment.
This event launched my new book, together with Mark Herbert: The Trust Paradigm.
At the event, trust was discussed as the foundation of healthy relationships. At its core, trust is the willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another. It is an expectation that two parties will act in a way that is mutually beneficial. For these reasons, trust is a key element of effective communication, teamwork, employee commitment and productivity. It leads to stronger working relationships and a healthier organizational culture.
We know that trust is the glue that holds teams together and creates positive, productive workplaces. But how much trust do you have in your professional and personal relationships? And how do you build more trust if it’s lacking?
Trust is the currency of leadership. When you have established trust with the people around you, you are a more effective and efficient leader.
You will be more effective because you will encounter less resistance to your ideas and will be able to achieve results faster. You will also be more efficient because you will be able to produce these results using less of your time and energy.
Every interaction we have with another person is either placing a deposit or making a withdrawal in their emotional bank account. When you make regular deposits, it creates a positive balance, and there is trust. When we make too many withdrawals, we become overdrawn, which results in distrust.
When you follow the rules within for this strategy and take action using the universal deposits, you will build a solid foundation of credibility and trust as a mindful leader.
Because of the inherent vulnerability involved in trusting relationships, it is widely understood that trust must be earned. This is true whether it is between two colleagues, a manager and employee, or even between an employee and the organization at large. In some instances, it can be hard to build and sustain because individuals may not be aware of the unintentional ways that they have broken trust with their colleagues.
Trust helps to make challenging conversations easier, teams more integrated and employees more engaged. Exploring ways in which trust can be built can help individuals and companies create stronger relationships and healthier cultures.
Trust within organisations boosts productivity and employee engagement, helps leaders and teams to focus on what is important and reduces friction. Furthermore, while an issue of cross-generational relevance, organisational trust is particularly important to the younger members of the workforce: millennials and members of Gen Z. Transparency, enablement and a culture of trust boost their loyalty and commitment, while a lack thereof can be a primary reason to leave an employer.
Therefore, building trust within organisations is not only key to withstanding current challenges, but will pay off in the future. To inspire decision-makers to lead with the next generation in mind, leaders have more work to do to leverage the power of trust in their organisations, and this presents the opportunity for new paradigms.
A few key thoughts:
• Trust is fundamental to a healthy organizational culture. Each organization must choose whether to earn a trust dividend or pay a trust-tax.
• Every organization has a culture. The best organizations invest in shaping and nurturing their culture.
• People follow leaders. Compliance-based organizations that do not invest in trust are losing trillions annually.
• Leadership and trust are earned, not an entitlement.
• One toxic manager can poison an organization and your culture is determined by the behaviors your reward and tolerate. Choose carefully.
Trust has been called the glue of healthy societies and the accelerator of economic productivity.
American writer on business management practices Tom Peters once described leadership as a sacred trust. He stated that the decision to lead is the decision to be responsible for the growth and development of your fellow human beings. He also was quoted by saying TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.
The decline of trust must be addressed on multiple levels: by building “trust equity” in governments, in our economic system, and in each other. Building that trust equity requires making our institutions and ourselves worthy of trust.
As a starting point, we must recognize that to establish trust and trusted partnerships we must act with both high integrity and high competence in our personal and work lives.
Corporate leaders today are measured by a new yardstick. The supreme test of a CEO and board of directors is now the value they create not just for shareholders, but for all stakeholders.
To prosper in the age of stakeholder capitalism, companies must actively cultivate the trust of employees, investors, customers, regulators and corporate partners: developing strategies to understand these stakeholders more intimately, implementing deliberate trust-building actions, tracking their efforts over time, and communicating openly and effectively with key stakeholder groups.
Almost everywhere we turn, trust is on the decline. Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions, and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago. Research from Datapad when my company International Business and Executive management commissioned the trust report found that only 69% of employees did not trust senior management or their CEO. Consider the loss of trust and confidence in the financial markets today. Indeed, “trust makes the world go-’round,” and right now we’re experiencing a crisis of trust.
In any normality trust is paramount, but with world events never has there been a need for increased trust. My latest book, The Trust Paradigm, discusses why true transformation starts with building credibility at the personal level. The foundation of trust is your own credibility, and it can be a real differentiator for any leader.
A person’s reputation is a direct reflection of their credibility and it precedes them in any interactions or negotiations they might have. When a leader’s credibility and reputation are high, it enables them to establish trust quickly. Speed goes up, the cost goes down.
Moral and ethical leadership is the key to a successful business, yet it’s clear from the news that the leaders of some of our most influential governments and corporations are making morally questionable decisions.
These decisions will lose the trust of society, customers and employees. Trust is the foundation of high-functioning relationships and can only be achieved by meaningful dialogue. It is clear that this is not happening. Instead, we’re using electronic communication, where it should never be used.
Today I have the distinct pleasure of introducing a fellow author, retired Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch – he is a speaker and the author of the 2021 release, “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be.” Based on 40+ years of leadership experience (23 years as a combat arms officer in the United States Army), Oak highlights principles that will benefit today’s leaders and inspire the leaders of tomorrow.
Trust
If you want to be a leader, you must establish trust between you and the people you are to lead. Without trust that leader-led, relationship cannot exist. This is true whether you are leading a multi-million dollar company or a startup, a university, a hospital, sports team or anything else – it is universal.
“A team is not a group of people who play together, a team is a group of people who trust each other.”
Vince Lombardi – American Football Coach
When I talk to leaders, I talk about several ways to build that trust between themselves and the people in their organization that they have the privilege to lead.
The three main areas I emphasize to leaders are:
1) getting to know your people;
2) take ownership for everything in your organization;
3) improve communications within the organization.
Getting to Know Your People
Getting to know the people who you lead is vital to building trust between you and them. You must maintain the leader-lead relationship, but that does not mean you have to be standoffish or aloof from the people you are trying to lead. You can get to know the people in your organization and still maintain that proper relationship at the same time.
Getting to know the people you lead, really getting to know them, lets them understand that they are valued members of the team. It lets them see that you actually care about them, and not just as an employee but also as a person.
A good way to get out and see the people you are leading is to lead by walking around, not from behind your desk. In this way, you get out to where the people you are leading are actually working. You get to see what is going on in their area and get to interact with the people in their workspace – NOT IN YOUR OFFICE.
I make it a point when I am leading an organization, to find out one new thing about one of the people I lead every day. I make sure it is not something about the office or work, but something personal. Learn their spouse’s name, their children’s name, sports their children play, their hobbies, etc. While you are engaging with this person, be completely engaged with them. Make your conversation with them the most important thing going on at that point – do not allow yourself to become distracted.
Another good way to get out of your office and engage with the people you lead comes from something a mentor of mine, a retired Lieutenant General, once told me.
He said, “Oak, never turn down a chance to get your own cup of coffee. You, as a leader, do two things when you go get your own cup of coffee. First, you show people you do not feel above them. You are just like everyone else who wants a cup of coffee and can get it yourself – you do not need someone to wait on you. Second, it gets you out from behind your desk in your office and out among the people you are leading. Take advantage of your walk from your office to the coffee pot and back to stop and talk to people along the way. If you are lucky, you will have two or three different ways to get from your office to the coffee pot so you can talk to different people each time.”
Take Ownership for Everything in Your Organization
If you, as a leader, want the people in your organization to trust you, then you MUST take ownership of everything in your organization – GOOD and BAD. As the leader, you must give credit where credit is due for success and you must take responsibility for anything that goes wrong.
The advice I give leaders is this. When your organization accomplishes what they are supposed to then give all the credit to the people in the organization – and do that in public! If there were specific people who did a great job, then make sure to mention them by name. If your organization does not accomplish its assigned task, also in public, you take the blame – YOU, not anyone else.
Even if what went wrong was a direct result of something you did or a decision you personally made, you are still responsible. You are responsible for everything that does or does not happen in your organization – YOUR NAME, AND YOUR NAME ALONE, IS ON THE BLAME LINE!
I have always lived by, and hold the people I lead to that same standard; it does not matter if you made a mistake. What I care about is what you did when you made the mistake. Did you blame someone else, did you try to cover it up or did you come to me and say “boss I messed up, and here is how we are going to fix it.” I will tell you then let’s go fix it.
I had a boss, who eventually retired as a four-star general, who told me one day, “Oak, if you did not make a mistake today, then you probably did not do anything.” No one is perfect; we are all going to make mistakes. What you do after you make the mistake is what matters.
If you own everything as a leader and hold people (including yourself) accountable for actions and decisions in your organization then you start to build trust with the people you are leading. They realize that even if they make a mistake, as long as they own up to the mistake, then things will be fine. This is how you build trust with your people.
Communication Must Be a Two Way Street
The third way to help build trust between yourself, the leader, and the people you lead is through strong communication. That communication must be purposeful and two-way communication.
You as the leader need to make sure that all your communications, inside and outside the organization, begin with “We” not “I”. All messages from you, the leader, must emphasize that we are a team and everyone on that team is important. There is no “I” in “Team”!
People in your organization must feel comfortable communicating with you, the leader, about things good and bad. They must feel comfortable telling you the truth, about themselves, the organization, and YOU!
If you ever once “shoot” the messenger when they deliver bad news then you have guaranteed no one will ever deliver bad news to you again. You must encourage people in your organization to communicate anything & everything to you.
If you are a leader and you believe communication is your telling people things, but not listening to what your people have to say then you are not a leader. In that case, you are a boss at best and I promise no one in your organization will trust you.
Thank you Oak, this was very enlightening, and I know you are passionate about the subject of leadership!
I would like to add that it has always been my belief as a leader that to promote integrity and consequently increase trust, leaders should enhance transparency within the organization. This is primarily achieved by effectively communicating clear goals and a vision.
Transparency is valued by team members, as it gives them clarity on topics that matter to them and it clearly states a promise to deliver on them (this includes company purpose and vision). Leadership is not about control, based on trust starts from the assumption that your team members are competent and well-intentioned.
Building trust within organizations is not only key to withstanding current challenges but will pay off in the future. To inspire decision-makers to lead with the next generation in mind, leaders have more work to do to leverage the power of trust in their organizations, and the disruptions open up the opportunity for new paradigms.
To support decision-makers in deliberately strengthening relationships of trust within organizations, and to lead with the next generation in mind, our company IBEM has synthesised a comprehensive trust model. It provides a holistic view of trust-building measures along three guiding principles:
– First, transparency is key. Trust increases if the organization’s goals are aligned with a coherent overall strategy and leaders communicate authentically in an honest, realistic, and targeted manner.
– Second, enablement of the organization with the least surveillance and control mechanisms creates ownership and fosters positive behaviors.
Trust is the glue
We advise employing simple, well-reasoned principles instead of complex and rigid rules to encourage an output-oriented mindset and to consider individuals’ specific situations and needs.
– Third, leaders should promote a culture of trust. Reciprocal trust flourishes when leaders embrace their own vulnerability, trust their team members by default and orchestrate informal relations of trust.
The main priority is not control, but how to enable your team members to take decisions independently and use their competence and motivation in the best possible way.
In addition to the measures that can be taken to promote integrity and leverage competence, trust is a key component of organizational culture.
Mutual care among team members, emotional bonds, and benevolence thrive in a culture of mutual trust. For leaders, this boils down to embracing vulnerability to promote openness, giving people an advance in terms of trust, and supporting trusting relationships that exist beyond reporting lines.
When achieving this state of mutual trust in the organizations, open and constructive challenges for the benefit of each individual and the organization will become the norm.
Embrace your own vulnerability as a leader and encourage openness. Leaders are perceived as role models. This doesn’t mean that they need to be perfect.
To the contrary: Showing one’s own vulnerability as a leader by admitting doubt and mistakes, promotes an open work environment. Mistakes and concerns are not covered up, with potentially harmful consequences for the organization – but voiced and discussed early on.
Trust is reciprocal, and how much you trust someone influences how much they trust you. Considering the capabilities, experience, and knowledge present in an organization, you are well advised to give your team members the benefit of the doubt. This creates a win-win situation: Teams feel empowered, and the organization saves resources on monitoring and control.
Try to thoroughly assess someone’s trustworthiness and alignment with the organization’s values right at the beginning of their affiliation with the organization.
Many world events and their consequences for organizations around the world have re-emphasised the imperative of nurturing trust within organizations. Leaders ought to seize the window of opportunity to double down on building and maintaining trust.
Most importantly, organizations that get trust right will gain a competitive edge in the ongoing war for talent.
Final thought, no heroic leader can resolve the complex challenges we face today. To address the important issues of our time we need a fundamental change of perspective. We need to start questioning many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about our business and social environments.
Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioral boundaries set within an organization. The appropriate and desired behavior is enhanced through the culture and socialization process of the newcomers.
Employees learn about values from watching leaders in action.
The more the leader “walks the talk”, by translating internalized values into action, the higher level of trust and respect he generates from followers.
To help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organizations need to work with each other and with wider society to identify practicable, actionable steps that businesses can take to shape a new relationship with wider society: a new ‘settlement’ based on mutual understanding and a shared recognition of the positive role that business plays in people’s lives.
To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected, and interdependent ecosystem – one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens, and more. Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival. That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.
As Stephen M.R. Covey once said:
“Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create.”
This article is the expressed opinions and collaboration between two senior-level industry board professionals on their views and perceptions on the subject matter:
Oakland McCulloch was born in Loudon, Tennessee, and raised in Kirkland, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he attend the United States Military Academy at West Point for two years. He then graduated from Northern Illinois University and received his commission as an Infantry Officer through the Reserve Officer Training Course in 1986.
In his 23-year career in the Army Oak McCulloch held numerous leadership positions in the Infantry and Armor branches. He assisted in disaster relief operations for Hurricane HUGO in Charleston, South Carolina, and Hurricane ANDREW in south Florida. His operational deployments include Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a General’s Aide-de-Camp, the Congressional Liaison Officer in support of operations in Bosnia, and the Operations Officer during a Peace Keeping deployment to Kosovo. He held instructor positions at the US Army Ordnance School, the US Army Command and General Staff College, the Australian Command and Staff College, the University of South Alabama, and Stetson University. His last position in the Army was a three-year tour as the Professor of Military Science at the University of South Alabama where he led the training and commissioning of Lieutenants and tripled the size of the program in his three-year tour.
LTC McCulloch retired from the Army in September 2009 with over 23 years of active service and joined the staff at the Bay Area Food Bank as the Associate Director. He was also the Vice Chair for Military Affairs at the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Mobile Rotary International Club. LTC McCulloch left the food bank in December 2010 to become the Senior Military Science Instructor and recruiter for the Army ROTC program at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. In his 9 years at Stetson, the program grew from 15 Cadets to over 100 Cadets. In October 2013, he became the Recruiting Operations Officer for the Eagle Battalion Army ROTC program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where he has more than doubled the size of the program in 6 years. Cadet Command selected LTC McCulloch as the top recruiting officer, out of 274 recruiters, for 2019. LTC Oak McCulloch published his first book in February 2021 – “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be”.
LTC McCulloch earned a Bachelor of Science degree in History from Northern Illinois University in 1987 and a Master of Military Arts and Science in History from the United States Army Command and General Staff College in 2002. He received thirty-one military service awards including the Bronze Star, eight Meritorious Service Medals, and the Humanitarian Service Medal.
LTC Oak McCulloch is married to the former Kelly Smyth of Wauconda, Illinois. They were married at Fort Sheridan, Illinois in 1987 and they have two children, Oakland Vincent McCulloch and Caileigh Nicholson. They also have a granddaughter, Ryleigh Jade Nicholson, and two grandsons Christopher Bryce Nicholson and Oakland Maverick McCulloch.
Geoff Hudson-Searle is an independent non-executive director across regulation, technology and internet security, a C-Suite executive on private and listed companies, and a serial business advisor for growth-phase tech companies.
With more than 30 years of experience in international business and management. He is the author of six books and lectures at business forums, conferences, and universities. He has been the focus of TEDx and RT Europe’s business documentaries across various thought leadership topics and his authorisms.
Geoff is a member and fellow of the Institute of Directors; an associate of The International Business Institute of Management; a co-founder and board member of the Neustar International Security Council (NISC); and a distinguished member of the Advisory Council for The Global Cyber Academy.
He holds a master’s degree in business administration. Rated by Agilence as a Top 250 Harvard Business School thought leader authority covering blogs and writing across; ‘Strategic Management’ and ‘Management Consulting’, Geoff has worked on strategic growth, strategy, operations, finance, international development, growth, and scale-up advisory programmes for the British Government, Citibank, Kaspersky, BT and Barclays among others.
As leaders, our ability to deal with global disruption whether it impacts our organization’s supply chain, sales and distribution capability or cash flow is regularly being tested.
Whether we’re talking about disease outbreaks or financial crises, events beyond any individual or organization’s control can force us to sharpen our ability to lead in unpredictable times.
As global disruption ebbs and flows, what role should leaders play, and what strategies can you deploy to get ahead of this unpredictable curve?
Earlier this year, Odgers Berndtson released its Leadership Confidence Index 2022. It found confidence in leadership had almost doubled in the past two years, jumping from 24% in 2020 to 42% in 2022.
It is a striking statistic, and from it, one thing can be deducted with certainty; around the world, more leaders than expected are performing better than they were before the pandemic. Yet the statistic tells another tale. More than half of leaders did not perform well and lost the confidence of their teams and organizations. These juxtaposing circumstances reveal much about the global state of leadership performance and leadership acquisition today.
How we arrived at these circumstances is clear. COVID-19 resulted in a crisis where business as usual no longer existed.
In the newly created environment, many leaders rose to the challenge, adapted to the new state of play, and realigned their organizations with skill and purpose.
Ultimately, the pandemic provided an environment in which the best leaders could show ‘what they were made of’ and their capabilities shone through. If there was a single sentence summing up these types of individuals, it would be: “leaders who people will follow, not because they have to but because they want to.”
Yet 58% of leaders did not fall into this category. Unable or unwilling to adapt they stuck rigidly to the playbook of the past, applying outdated skills to a novel situation. Often, these were leaders more at home talking to their boards about share price and public opinion than having an honest conversation with those they led. Their capabilities centred around achieving market share and growth as opposed to managing disruption, or more importantly, inspiring teams to deliver results during disruption.
Many didn’t know what hit them, and were unable to swim in the current of the new world, and have or are currently being replaced. It has resulted in a new cohort of leaders worldwide.
This new breed of leader is organizationally facing. They understand that the board and their people are of equal importance. Their decision-making is often inclusive, they place trust in their senior executives and genuinely care about those they lead – not because it’s in vogue but because they genuinely value them.
These leaders often have a different thought process from their predecessors.
Their skills lie in reading market signals and adapting to them swiftly. They are strategists and change agents who can ‘see around corners’. They can extrapolate from major trends and take advantage of the findings, turning change into opportunity, and importantly inspiring others to deliver on that change. Behaviourally, they are more akin to an entrepreneur than a traditional manager; innovative, brave, humble, and naturally inquisitive with a desire to learn. Above all else, they embrace and even thrive on disruption.
Such a dramatic change to the leadership paradigm has dramatic consequences. Globally, the number of leadership searches has increased exponentially. Across APAC the search industry has seen 43% growth, while the reshuffle of executives in South America has resulted in double the normal number of searches we would make for general managers in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. In the UK, and across the U.S., the story is the same – explosive demand for new leadership talent.
Much of this demand can be laid at the feet of the pandemic. 58% of leaders were not up to the challenge and therefore need replacing. But another, more significant factor is also at play here; the expectation of the disruption to come. Our own Index reveals the majority of executives (79%) believe the level of future disruption will either increase or maintain at the same pace.
And we know that the majority of boards feel the same way and want to future-proof their organizations against this disruption with the sort of leader who can manage and take advantage of it.
But the supply is scarce, and on top of this, regional conditions have upended the leadership acquisition market. Across counties in APAC, zero-tolerance lockdowns and stringent work permits have resulted in an exodus of strong talent. Combined with a limited local supply and deglobalization shifting the traditional leadership footprint to other countries in the region, the pool of high-performing leaders is now almost completely different.
In South America, tourism has been in freefall, the cost of many raw materials has exploded, and crop yields are expected to be lower while the price of fertilizer has shot up. Political instability and a withdrawal of significant investment have added to the disruption. Even countries like Chile that have become accustomed to relative stability now face uncertainty. For leaders, the economic environment has been rewritten. Many are retiring and more are being replaced.
In the U.S. and the UK, technology transformation much like it is elsewhere in the world is no longer just a sector but a function of every industry. It’s challenging everything from business models and back-office operations to the very products and services a company sells. For years, the notion that leaders should be tech-savvy has been gaining momentum. Now it’s an absolute necessity, with a core skill being the ability to know which technologies to invest in, and which ones not to.
And across every industry and country, supply chain chaos, rising inflation, and the ESG and diversity agendas are near-universal challenges that are a leader’s responsibility to resolve.
The current climate has become a catalyst for exponential demand and short supply. What makes a high-performing leader is very different from what it was before the pandemic. At the same time, the business environment has altered who those leaders are, where they come from, and the types of skillsets they have. On the one side boards expect more of their leaders and on the other, there is a shortage of leaders who can genuinely deliver on these new expectations.
Yet they are out there. To find them, it will often require an organization to ‘go outside their lane’ and look for leaders in adjacent or even completely different industries.
It will mean genuinely leaning into diversity and inclusion and searching for leaders who are nothing like what has come before.
And it will mean enabling individuals from the second layer of senior management and helping them to step up. Above all, it means disregarding the traditional blueprint of what a leader should be and embracing the new leadership paradigm.
As a comparison, The Harvard Business Review recently released a study that examined how 1,890 senior executives around the world view their organization’s ability to manage disruption. The results were quite staggering: Only 15% of respondents expressed a reasonably high level of confidence that their leadership team is “fit to lead through future disruption,” while 61% reported being “tentative” and 24% are outright “worried.” The two top reasons given by executives who worry the most were lack of vision/buy-in and resistance to change inside their organizations.
The Conference Board, a global business membership and research association, noted similar findings in its C-Suite Challenge 2020 report: “CEOs’ internal concerns include talent and skills shortages, disruptive technologies, and building an innovative culture.”
Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago.
In any normality trust is paramount, but given current world events, never has there been more need for increased trust, a shared understanding and language to talk about the specific behaviours that affect trust can result in more productive conversations about team performance. Those conversations can even create stronger bonds between leaders and employees.
But leadership trust isn’t a one-off initiative. It requires continued effort from all team members. And it takes leaders who are willing to show integrity, change behaviour, and take on the hard work of collaborating across boundaries and dealing with differences.
Research shows that trust represents a core human need we all have: to trust others, to be trusted in return, and to trust in ourselves. When trust is present, people align around the purpose of their team, embrace goals and objectives, willingly collaborate, and are empowered to do their best work.
When trust is absent, or made vulnerably, work becomes more difficult and takes longer to execute. With the pace of change in today’s organizations, leaders need trust more than ever before.
Trust means ‘uncompromised by doubt’. In the workplace, people can’t do their best work if they doubt others’ intentions or capabilities, the direction or viability of the organization, or, most importantly, if they doubt their own ability to keep up with the demands placed on them. This is especially true in today’s environment of complex change and ambiguity when employees are being asked to do more with less.
Leadership trust is reciprocal and created incrementally. To inspire trust from others, leaders need to also show trust in them. Over time these relationships build and maintain the trust that teams and organizations need to take action in a fast-paced world.
Our research underscores the need for trust in organizations. In high-trust environments, people show up and to do their best work. They gain productive energy, creativity, speed, and better results. They align around a common purpose, take risks, support each other, and communicate openly and honestly.
Effective leadership requires knowing how to build and keep trust, whether it’s with individuals, on teams, or across the organization.
Finally, there’s no question that disruption will continue to define the course of business and organizations. The challenge for you as a leader is to develop the mindset and organizational culture that will turn the forces of disruption into a catalyst for strategic thinking and creative execution. The term ‘trust’ has been overused forever and, during the last decade, considerably devalued. In The Trust Paradigm book, the authors aim to take the concept back to its essentials and to re-evaluate how real, meaningful trust can be incorporated into management and leadership.
A great quote by American Academic – Clayton M. Christensen:
“We have found that companies need to speak a common language because some of the suggested ways to harness disruptive innovation are seemingly counterintuitive. If companies don’t have that common language, it is hard for them to come to consensus on a counterintuitive course of action.”
There is much debate and discussion about leadership styles, in particular, the styles recognized as the most important factor in determining workforce productivity and in establishing an organizational environment.
At IBEM we believe if people understand the bounds of their position they have full authority to make decisions within those guidelines. The wider those guidelines, the more accountability an employee has earned to make decisions and take action in the company’s best interests.
We believe in the power of leadership to make things happen. That power should be in the hands of everyone, not the few.
Leadership is a competency and a skill set rather than an inherited set of traits that high-performing organisations recognise and prepare their organisation accordingly. Organisations that have high levels of employee engagement enjoy high performance on every key performance indicator from employee turnover to return on investment and shareholder return. Creating an engaged environment is a culture, not a program and must be approached systemically not tactically.
In organisations that means building a common language of leadership at all levels to have an immediate and lasting impact on business results, not just knowledge, wisdom or behaviours.
Researchers have observed a significant shift in the approach organizational leaders need to take to communicate with their teams.
The would-be analyst of leadership usually studies popularity, power, showmanship or wisdom in long-range planning. But none of these qualities is the essence of leadership. Leadership is the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants a human and social achievement that stems from the leader’s understanding of his or her fellow workers and the relationship of their individual goals to the group’s aim.
To be successful, leaders must learn two basic lessons: People are complex, and people are different. Human beings respond not only to the traditional carrot and stick but also to ambition, patriotism, love of the good and the beautiful, boredom, self-doubt, and many other desires and emotions. One person may find satisfaction in solving intellectual problems but may never be given the opportunity to explore how that satisfaction can be applied to business. Another may need a friendly, admiring relationship and may be constantly frustrated by the failure of his superior to recognize and take advantage of that need.
Exercising power and being a leader is not about winning a popularity contest. A lot of leaders are generally and not necessarily nice people.
For decades, many businesses adhered to a rigid leadership style, one that was hierarchical, where managers gave orders, enforced inflexible policies, and didn’t welcome input from employees.
This type of command and control leadership took hold in the 1950s and ’60s, started by people who returned from World War II and stepped into business leadership.
“Command-and-control” is the phrase informally used to describe the status quo style of leadership that exists within modern organisations: organisations generally characterise command-and-control by the following:
• Centralised decision making
• Have a pyramid-like organisational structure, but they may also be flat (command-and-control is more a culture than a structure)
• Increasingly privatise information the higher you go
• Allow more autonomy the higher you go
• Take a top-down approach to virtually everything, especially strategic thinking
• Create a strong distinction between (senior) management and workers
• Increase salary, perks, and flexibility with seniority
• Have specialised internal departments such as Human Resources
• Standardise and coordinate the monitoring, measuring and motivating of employees
• Do not let anyone other than senior management set the rules
• See employees working to please their boss as a priority
• Do not have a culture that allows room for failure
• Police its employees’ movements
Leadership is not about control
However, this style of leadership is a relic of a bygone era of business and is no longer even used to the same extent by the military. Employees no longer want to work at organizations where they simply must do as they’re told, have no input on their role or the direction of the company, and must follow orders because they came from a superior.
Do you believe that being in charge means you are in control?
If you find yourself frustrated about losing power in situations, it’s because leadership is not about taking control; it’s about influence.
The best leaders know that their role is not to dictate, but to inspire and motivate others to act. When you surrender control, you invite people to discover their potential. You create a culture where your team looks to go above and beyond, not just do the minimum to meet your demand. You will draw out a culture of communication that fosters and encourages innovation.
However, if you fear that creativity and collaboration are a recipe for chaos, then you need to revisit why you chose to become a leader in the first place. Real leaders don’t take on leadership roles to be in control of people or command them; the best leaders know that leadership is a privilege. The most influential leaders in history didn’t achieve greatness with whips and force. The masses followed them because of their enormous influence.
Command and control may have worked in the past, but it’s on its way out and companies that don’t adjust quickly may find it very hard to recruit and retain talent. Not only does it damage employee morale, it also leads to inferior results. Here’s why:
Employee mobility.
Command and control leadership was often used extensively in companies where employees expected to spend their entire careers and be rewarded with a pension. Before the internet, employees didn’t have as many options to change jobs, and leaving a company in search of greener pastures was less common, as employees valued stability and tenure over flexibility.
This is not true anymore – workers are more comfortable exiting jobs, and more than half of employees are actively looking for a new job. Many workers are happy to join the gig economy and be their own boss. In response, innovative leaders have succeeded by changing their strategies to keep employees happy and willing to stay.
Today’s workers don’t need to tolerate command and control leadership. Employees who feel micromanaged or strictly scrutinized by their managers feel comfortable jumping ship and finding a new job where they have more autonomy, respect, and a sense of purpose and ownership.
Businesses must be integrated and innovative.
With the exception of very large industries such as aerospace and government contracting, it’s very hard to maintain a competitive advantage these days without being able to constantly adapt.
Command and control don’t just make employees unhappy- it also can hurt your team’s decision-making. The best leaders solicit multiple perspectives and know that differing opinions can improve a team’s ideas over time. Leaders who suppress dissenting voices often keep valuable ideas from surfacing.
Most leadership experts agree that allowing dissent and productive conflict is vital to decision-making. Legendary CEO and leadership expert Ray Dalio said, “The greatest tragedy of mankind comes from the inability of people to have thoughtful disagreement to find out what’s true.”
Command and control leadership’s greatest failure comes from exactly what Dalio critiques. Leaders who insist their teams follow their decisions without question are shutting off constructive feedback that could reshape an idea, pre-empt a poor decision, or even change an entire company for the better.
Employees should be empowered to make decisions.
Command and control leadership is by design inflexible. While that ensures all members of a team are dedicated to the same goal, it also limits employee autonomy. If employees have to get permission for every decision they make, decision-making will grind to a halt.
The fast pace of the modern business world requires employees to adjust course constantly to meet changing demands. The best businesses empower their employees to trust their own judgment, guided by their core values to make decisions independently based on the best information they have at the time.
Even the military, the foundation of modern command and control leadership, has recognized this – in an interview, American general Stanley McChrystal said he told his troops, “If and when we get on the ground the order we gave you is wrong, execute the order we should’ve given you.”
McChrystal, a decorated general, certainly was not encouraging insubordination or disrespect of superiors. But he recognized that it’s impossible for leaders to be correct in every case, and the best organizations empower employees to make judgment calls when it seems their instructions don’t fit the situation.
Command and control leadership doesn’t allow this flexibility – it requires adherence to rigid orders, and that can lead to massive mistakes.
We’re way past the time when leaders succeed by commanding their teams to follow their instructions and never deviate. Employees want to be respected at work, have the autonomy to make their own decisions, and work in an environment of psychological safety, where they can be candid with their managers. The companies where leaders foster that type of environment are winning the talent war.
A more flexible style of leadership is better for everyone in the long run. Engaged and dedicated employees are critical to exponential growth, and command and control leadership will only push away top talent. It’s time to adapt.
Toxic workplace cultures are everywhere in America. With one in five Americans having left a job in the past five years due to unhealthy work culture, and with 49% of employees having thought about leaving their current organization, it all adds up to a poisonous churn, according to a new report from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) examining workplace culture and how it impacted the cost of doing business.
Toxic workplace culture costs businesses billions in employee turnover: $223 billion over the last five years. Some of those turnover costs can be broken down into employee overtime to fill in the gaps, costs for temporary employees, recruiting costs, hiring manager time, recruiter time, and advertising costs.
What does a toxic workplace culture look like? There are overt signs like discrimination by sex and by age, but the most common sign is a breakdown in communication.
Manager nightmare
Trust in leadership is at an all-time low, according to research by multiple sources. Yet, employees attribute them with a high amount of power. The vast majority – 76% – say that their leaders set the culture of their workplace.
Still, over a third (36%) of workers say their CEO and line manager doesn’t know how to lead a team
Leaders are the reason 60% of employees want to leave their organization.
Four in 10 workers say their management do not frequently engage them in honest conversations about work matters.
This divide to a lack of proper training and the inability of some leaders to bridge the gap between their previous role as an individual contributor and their current role as manager.
More importantly, many managers haven’t been trained to work with people.
About two-thirds of working Americans say they have worked in a toxic workplace, with 26% reporting they have worked in more than one. It’s an environment that seemingly drags a significant portion of a workplace’s workers down:
– A quarter dread going to work
– A quarter don’t feel safe or secure voicing their opinions on work-related matters
– A quarter don’t feel respected or valued on the job
This environment bleeds into their home life: nearly a third of Americans say their toxic workplace makes them feel stressed and irritable at home.
In fact, they’re so stressed about their work-life that many would rather play hooky: one in five calls in sick when they just can’t face work that day.
Of course, unhappy workers feigning sick costs money: at companies in the U.S., the cost of productivity loss due to unplanned absences costs approximately $431 billion per year. And up to $86 billion of this lost productivity can be attributed to employees calling in sick when they don’t feel like going to work.
How to build a strong workplace culture?
Organizations must define their purpose. As well as figure out what’s acceptable and unacceptable within their organization. I think organizations can have much clearer conversations about what they believe in. What is their purpose? And what are the behaviours and the principles that they hold absolutely dear as fundamental to the organization? And also create examples of, ‘here’s what we don’t value in the workplace and won’t accept’.
The organization’s leadership is responsible for building good workplace culture.
Culture is the environment that surrounds us all the time. A workplace culture is the shared values, belief systems, attitudes and the set of assumptions that people in a workplace share. This is shaped by individual upbringing, social and cultural context.
In a workplace, however, the leadership and the strategic organizational directions and management influence the workplace culture to a huge extent. A positive workplace culture improves teamwork, raises the morale, increases productivity and efficiency, and enhances retention of the workforce. Job satisfaction, collaboration, and work performance are all enhanced. And, most importantly, a positive workplace environment reduces stress in employees.
Research by Deloitte has shown that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct corporate culture is important to a business’ success. Deloitte’s survey also found that 76% of these employees believed that a “clearly defined business strategy” helped create a positive culture.
A positive culture in the workplace is essential for fostering a sense of pride and ownership amongst the employees. When people take pride, they invest their future in the organization and work hard to create opportunities that will benefit the organization.
By identifying and rewarding those who are actively striving towards creating a positive work culture, and supporting others around them, companies can encourage others to do the same. Positive attitudes and behaviour in the workplace are the direct results of effective leadership and a positive management style.
Trust is at the foundation of healthy relationships. At its core, trust is the willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another. It is an expectation that two parties will act in a way that is mutually beneficial. For these reasons, trust is a key element of effective communication, teamwork, employee commitment and productivity. It leads to stronger working relationships and a healthier organizational culture.
Because of the inherent vulnerability involved in trusting relationships, it is widely understood that trust must be earned. This is true whether it is between two colleagues, a manager and employee, or even between an employee and the organization at large. In some instances, it can be hard to build and sustain because individuals may not be aware of the unintentional ways that they have broken trust with their colleagues.
Trust helps to make challenging conversations easier – this has been written in my new book “The Trust Paradigm”, teams more integrated and employees more engaged. Exploring ways in which trust can be built can help individuals and companies create stronger relationships and healthier cultures.
Final thought, placing people at the centre of your corporate culture effort will enable positive shift and unlock long-term value for the organization. Culture work typically follows a major company event commonly a shift in strategy, a new CEO, a merger or acquisition, digital or functional transformation, regulatory changes, increasing calls for inclusivity, or unethical behaviour events.
On the flip sid,e companies sometimes are forced to deal with narcissistic leaders whose behaviour can be relentless and ruthless. So is their legacy: it creates lasting organizational damage.
People embrace low integrity and individualism when both leaders and the company culture support those behaviours. Aligning culture across every level of the organization so that it enables your strategy is essential to moving with agility in a time of unprecedented change. As external pressure mounts, leaders should take action to create a blueprint for purpose and culture that delivers short- and long-term value for employees, customers and investors. Culture isn’t the soft stuff, it’s the real, human stuff. And it’s time we got that right for each other.
William Courtney Hamilton Prentice was formerly the president of Bryant and Stratton Business Institutes in Buffalo, New York, the president of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and the dean of Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, who once said:
“Effective leaders take a personal interest in the long-term development of their employees, and they use tact and other social skills to encourage employees to achieve their best. It isn’t about being “nice” or “understanding” — it’s about tapping into individual motivations in the interest of furthering an organization wide goal.”
The world is facing significant disruption and increasingly urgent global challenges affecting individuals, families, organizations, governments, and society.
This VUCA-driven (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) age of disruption brings new complexities, opportunities, as well as risks for businesses. The potential for crises has intensified, driven by rapid technological change due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) and amplified by societal expectations linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) phenomena.
Throughout the COVID-19 response, we’ve seen an acceleration of these trends. We have seen how some businesses have been successful in looking beyond the pandemic and into recovery, while others have failed and many perished, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
As the world becomes more complex and connected, the threat of a corporate crisis grows.
Disruptive events, including crises such as pandemics, have no borders or boundaries. They can happen anytime, anywhere, and to any organization. The interconnectedness of the global economy and its political realities can magnify the ripple effect of any single crisis, making it a common feature of corporate life.
The new business reality is that there will be several challenges concerning the new world of work that organizations are expected to face as we enter the ‘new normal’ or ‘next normal’ era of the endemic phase of COVID-19. Just as organizations across the globe went fully remote at the start of the pandemic, many organizations now need to build a successful hybrid work model—or risk losing their employees.
A functioning society is built on trust. Whether we’re drinking water from a faucet, riding an elevator or sending an e-mail, we’re trusting that somebody, somewhere, has taken the necessary steps to make sure that activity is safe.
Yet today, our shared foundation of trust is under strain as never before. Rapid social and economic change, deepening political divisions, and the disruptive impact of new technologies are stretching the limits of traditional systems of trust-building. Governments, businesses and civil society are struggling to keep up.
Our changing digital age has made it harder and harder to know just whom to trust. Is the person or company you’re dealing with real or just an online facade? Is the video you’re looking at genuine or a deepfake? Where exactly does your data go when you share it? There’s no way to fact-check everything, creating anxiety. If people can only trust what they’ve seen and touched, or people they’ve met personally, society can’t function. The system is under strain and we can no longer take trust and trust-building for granted.
Trust is both a glue and a lubricant, holding society together and allowing its many parts to move smoothly. If trust can’t be made suitable for the digital age, the digital age won’t function.
Such mindset shifts will not happen just once – they will evolve with society’s needs. That is at the heart of the trust and governance project: constantly finding new ways to maximize the reach and power of trust across different stakeholders.
It’s an effort that has to be horizontal and cross-sectoral. In a new age, there is no single guarantor of trust. It’s a responsibility all stakeholders must share and prioritize.
There are wonderful opportunities to learn from other cultures how to manage our emotional turmoil and stop the self-blame and the wild goose chase. When we look at other cultures through a wide lens, it empowers us with new insights and strategies that have enabled others to remain resilient and satisfied.
Native Americans, for example, have lived in synchrony with the human and natural world. Their experiences help teach how to find strength, peace and emotional wellness.
They have encountered vast and devastating experiential upheavals in the confrontation with Western values and practices. Yet, many have sustainable belief systems and cultural traditions that have been passed down through generations and serve as models that we can consider in order to improve our own well-being.
The overarching descriptive word for the American Indian worldview is holistic. They view the natural world, the spirit world and human beings as an integrated whole and they cherish balance and harmony in the collective universe.
Some of the richest stories we are not taught in our educational system are those of Native Americans. I recently read a great book by DJ Vanas called ‘The Warrior Within’ – the book discusses your own your power to serve, fight, protect and heal, providing a compass to live an extraordinary life (I have always said we are extraordinary, the question is how we use extraordinary in our everyday lives).
In native American culture, a warrior may surrender, but he never gives up.
June 25, 1876: General Custer during the Battle of Little Big Horn between the US Army and the Sioux Indians, commanded by Chief Crazy Horse. Custer had underestimated the size of the camp and his entire column was killed.
During a raging blizzard in early January 1877 along the Tong River in Montana, General Miles and his troops opened fire on Crazy Horse and his camp. He was able to return fire, but they eventually held off the soldiers firing ammunition with bows and arrows. Although he succeeded in retreating 1,100 Indians to Fort Robinson, he never gave up or lacked effort – but eventually surrendered because his tribe was cold and hungry – and it was the best option to avoid all being pursued .
Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief and warrior said: “When you get up in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of life.
If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies with you.” In this moral, Tecumseh speaks to our ability to see the prize first.
The Ottawa tribe used birch bark for dwellings and canoes which made them successful in trade and warfare. The Lakota used every part of the buffalo to make everything from clothing to bowstrings and chairs. Oftentimes, when we have limitations, it forces us to be resourceful. When we get past our fear, resistance, and confusion, we realize that we are all surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.
In Native American culture, the medicine bag is filled with sacred, meaningful objects, such as herbs, tobacco and cedar, beads, bones, arrowheads, stones, and animal claws or teeth—that hold the power of protection, strength, luck, or healing for the person who wears it. People often wore them around their necks and they became significant during ceremonies, battles or illnesses.
It helps you visualize how the Indians carry their own medicine bag of things and experiences that make you unique and strong in your own way.
In the early 1800s, Sequoyah of the Cherokee Nation had a vision of his people reading and writing — or what he would call “talking leaves.” They didn’t have a system back then and people thought he was crazy to invest all this time to develop it. So much so that his wife threw his project into the fire. He was undeterred, and by the 1830s he had developed a writing system that helped his tribe become one of the most literate groups in the Americas.
The plains tribes had a tradition of fighting that was more honorable than killing an enemy on the battlefield. It was called a “census coup”. Instead of striking their enemy with an arrow, they would simply touch him with a coup staff, a decorated staff resembling a horse, while in the heat of battle. That act of courage to stand face to face with the enemy and essentially say, “I’m not afraid of you.” is the ultimate act of bravery.
One of the best lessons from the book was the one about keeping fire in Native American culture, which was clearly a sacred duty. A good fire was the heart of a village. It provides an opportunity to cook food, shine a light in the dark, warm the village and provide a place for people to gather. Most importantly, it was a crucial component of the ceremonies. Just like the keeper of the fire – we must maintain our own physical and mental well-being so that our fire does not burn to embers or even burn out.
Most people who do not speak up in public meetings have perfectly functioning voices, and training them on better enunciation will not help matters much. Many technology projects have been hampered by inadequate theorizing, by political economy and social movement analysis, and by the lack of reference to historical evidence. And while clear and imaginative thinking is universally valuable, by necessity this analysis needs to be contextual. In particular, we need to be particularly cautious about transferring the successful use of technology from one place and time to another.
Napoleon Hill once said “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”
However, transparent communication can open new doors for us to access a more extensive level of information in our lives. When we let go of our individual focus, we are able to experience the dynamics of life to a much greater extent. This allows us to move beyond the interpretation (understanding) of humans as objects in the physical world and thus experience humans from within.
If we recognise that rather than meeting people, we encounter realities in which these people emerge, based on what they believe and defend, we develop a deeper compassion and understanding. We are aware that in this world we all wear a false smile.
Once we begin to comprehend the inner experiences of others, and to create through our being, we make a quantum leap in our communication. We lift communication up to the next level of evolution. This helps us to acknowledge the true cause of many conflicts, looking beyond the symptoms to the root of the problem.
Have we created a separated culture in society, where we disguise the truth and transparency for what people would prefer to hear across technology?
Cultures also differ in how much they encourage individuality and uniqueness vs. conformity and interdependence. Individualistic cultures stress self-reliance, decision-making based on individual needs, and the right to a private life.
Having a defined place within a family, a community and a culture enhances a sense of purpose, stability and resilience over time. In AI culture, roles are clearly defined and egalitarian.
Men and women exist in a cooperative partnership, elders are respected for their wisdom, children are raised to honour adults and to be part of the community as well as the family.
I was discussing with friends recently the morals around an Indian tipi. For more than 400 years, knowledgeable people have agreed that the Indian tipi is absolutely the finest of all moveable shelters. To the Native peoples whose concept of life and religion was deeper and infinitely more unified than his conqueror, the tipi was much more. Both home and church the tipi was a Sacred Being and sharing with family, nature and Creator. The tipi allowed the Plains Indians to move entire villages to suit the seasons and to be nearer to a good supply of food, wood & fresh supply for their horses.
The Cree people use 15 poles to make the structure of the tipi. For every pole in that tipi, there is a teaching. So there are 15 teachings that hold up the tipi. The poles also teach us that no matter what version of the Great Spirit we believe in, we still go to the same Creator from those many directions and belief systems; we just have different journeys to get there.
And where the poles come out together at the top, it’s like they’re creating a nest. And they also resemble a bird with its wings up when it comes to land, and that’s another teaching: the spirit coming to land, holding its wings up.
A full set of Tipi poles, represent: obedience, respect, humility, happiness, love, faith, kinship, cleanliness, thankfulness, sharing, strength, good child rearing, hope, ultimate protection, control flaps.
The tipi teaches us that we are all connected by relationship and that we depend on each other. Having respect for and understanding this connection creates and controls harmony and balance in the circle of life. For every time that a pole is added, a rope goes around to bind that pole into place. You have to be there and see it to appreciate that teaching. That rope is a sacred bond, binding all the teachings together until they are all connected.
So do we have much to learn from the Native American Indians about trust, integrity, humility, and human 2 human communication?
In summary, transparent communication is a way of life in which different levels of consciousness, as well as different levels of development and intelligence, are included. It requires of us that we engage in an experientially oriented exploration of life.
Only then will we truly learn to comprehend the world as a form of exchange in which we share a common space of interaction and learn to recognise the cosmic addresses of conscious content.
A great quote by Stephen R Covey sums up this article when he stated:
“If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust towards me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me ‘an offender for a word’. When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”
The first interview for ‘The Trust Paradigm Book’, Geoff Hudson-Searle and Mark Herbert discuss some incredibly important questions about trust and the launch of their new book.
The authors discuss trust and the importance of trust in relationships. Trust is the foundation upon which the legitimacy of government, public institutions and family, the very cornerstone in which relationships are built and is crucial for maintaining social cohesion.
Covid-19 is a crucible within which resilient leadership has been refined since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. Acting without perfect information and no playbook, and often with only a few hours or days to spare, CEOs have had to guide their organizations through the myriad of decisions and challenges that have had significant implications for their company’s whole system: employees, customers, clients, financial partners, suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders, as well as for society as a whole.
At the same time, almost everywhere we turn, trust is on the decline.
Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago. Research commissioned in 2020 by International Business and Executive Management found that 69 percent of employees trust their CEO a little or not at all. Consider the loss of trust and confidence in the financial markets today. Indeed, trust makes the world go round – and right now we’re experiencing a crisis of trust.
In the words of Tom Peters – American writer on business practices – “TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.”
In any normality trust is paramount, but given current world events, never has there been more need for increased trust. This simple formula emphasizes the key elements of trust for individuals and for organizations:
Trust = Transparency + Relationship + Experience
The dynamics of trust are delicate in important relationships, and the loss of trust can be costly — not only psychologically, but also financially and in terms of work and livelihood. What’s helpful to remember is that trust is an ongoing exchange between people and is not static.
Trust can be earned. It can be lost. And it can be regained. ‘The Trust Paradigm’ draws on the hard-won truths of two authors and draws on their deep personal lessons from life and business practice, and their efforts to distill those lessons into principles that lead toward a more purposeful life.
The book is intended to be both a holistic overview of what generates and builds trust and a hands-on guide to how that can be done. A wide range of tips, models, and techniques that will help to build strong and effective trust solutions in today’s business world is combined with a range of insights into the topical subjects of the day.
The term ‘trust’ has been overused forever and, during the last decade, considerably devalued. In this book, the authors aim to take the concept back to its essentials and to re-evaluate how real, meaningful trust can be incorporated into management and leadership.
Although all the chapters in the book are strongly interrelated, for ease of reference it is divided into three key sections: Communications; Strategy, and Business Development and Growth. You can start with your particular area of interest, or you can read the book from the first page to the end; there really is a topic for everyone.
The business professionals and individuals dealing with the great challenges of today’s disruptive and disrupted business world now have renewed responsibility for what business does best: they must innovate, invest and grow their organizations.
Change and transformation can be radical and painful, yet many wait until circumstances force their hand, even when they know that change must, and should, come. Whether change has been forced upon you, or whether you are openly seeking and embracing transformation, this book will arm you with tips, advice and techniques to spark fresh thinking about the status quo and inspire the innovation your circumstances demand for the creation of a better business environment.
‘The Trust Paradigm’s’ lessons are also relevant far beyond the business world. They can support a clearer understanding of institutional behaviour for all kinds of people: students, budding entrepreneurs, volunteers, social enterprise organizers – quite simply, anyone who aspires to do better.
Can a company be successful and competitive in the market and at the same time trusted?
Eric Greitens, a former Navy Seal and Naval Officer once said about resilience: “We all have battles to fight. And it’s often in those battles that we are most alive: it’s on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work.”
There are two ways to look at the world we are living in in the present moment.
At one level, we are facing unprecedented opportunities. An interconnected world with tremendous, possibly unlimited, potential. Our ability to communicate instantly through multiple mediums is phenomenal. Online educational capabilities can elevate entire nations. An internet connection and a phone can give anyone access to the greatest literature, music, and art ever created. The speed with which electric cars have been adopted, internet-based video as a communication method has been embraced by an aging population, and the ability to start a business in one’s home and grow it online is astounding.
At another level, we are facing unprecedented risk – a war with no end in sight, raging inflation, fractured supply chains leading to food insecurity, millions of migrating people seeking safety, opportunity, or both, and climate change resulting in stronger hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other catastrophes, not to mention deep political divisions in many countries, as well as a seemingly never-ending pandemic risk.
The challenge for people and businesses today is how to navigate through these two views, both of which are very real. We clearly cannot predict the future, given that in early 2019 no business had been expected to be shuttered for months at a time in 2020 and 2021 due to a pandemic. Perhaps only a few military and political experts were expecting a Russia – Ukraine war but the unified free world response to Russian aggression, was not expected, nor were the resultant rising fuel costs.
What this means is we live, work, build our careers, and operate our businesses in a time that is highly unpredictable. So, how do we thrive despite this uncertainty?
This is the question that we pondered over coffee recently. As two authors, one of whom specializes in leadership and teamwork learnings from famous Polar explorers and other events in history such as the building of the Panama Canal and the great railways, and the other one, highly experienced in the management of modern global businesses, we concluded that there were two key skills needed. These are resiliency and trust.
Resiliency – three strategies
Resiliency is in great demand at the individual, team, manager, executive, and organizational levels. It is the ability to bounce back from any setback or contingency encountered. Resiliency is a skill that can be learned, and the more one exercises their resiliency fibers, the more adaptable a person or entity becomes in a world brimming with opportunity, yet subject to grave risk.
Here are three strategies to build resilience gleaned from our experiences.
First, stop striving to make the perfect decision. Instead, focus on having the skills to recover quickly from bad decisions. When there is an unpredictable future, like in present times, there may only be a 50-50 chance of a decision-generating a positive result in the first instance. A three-step ability, to assess, refine and try again, forged in the knowledge that you and your team have the wherewithal to “have another go,” is what successfully saved many polar expeditions as well as polar explorers’ lives.
Second, being able to inspire is key, and that inspiration has to be spoken communication, not email or text. Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s, Winston Churchill in the 1940s, and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s were the great orators of their generations. They didn’t have email or text in those days, but they certainly could write telegrams and letters. Yet their inspiring words were spoken.
That ability to inspire resilience through words is becoming a lost art. Theodore Roosevelt talked about individuals being able to “dare mighty things” in pursuit of “glorious triumphs”, and stated it’s not the critic who counts, it is the person “in the arena” who is to be admired, even if they fail in their pursuit. It only takes one dynamic leader with the right words to inspire a generation to overcome setbacks.
Third, plan that every endeavor of any merit will inevitably hit obstacles. Resiliency comes not from never encountering adversity, but from repeatedly overcoming it in pursuit of a noble goal. Individuals, teams, and organizations build resiliency by pursuing goals they believe in, and while doing their best to avoid challenges, being firm in their belief that the goal is what matters, and discomfort, in whatever form, whether it is financial risk or physical discomfort (in the case of the Antarctic explorers), these were just part of the day-to-day pursuit of the goal, and to be taken in stride.
The other side of the equation is trust.
Trust – three strategies
Trust matters. There are just a few elemental forces that hold our world together. The one that is the glue of society is called trust. Its presence cements relationships by allowing people, organizations and nations to live, work and collaborate together. Trust enables a feeling of safety and standards and enables belonging to a group.
Trust allows organisations and communities to flourish, while the absence of trust can cause fragmentation, conflict and even war. Our focus is organizations. Based on our experiences in looking at C-level leaders, organizations, stakeholders, managers and teams, co-workers, suppliers, customers, industry bodies, regulators and other groupings, it becomes clear that for trust to flourish, it needs to be multi-directional. Trust needs to flow among and between all these sectors.
Here are three strategies to invest in, rebuild, and renew trust.
First, recognize that trust is personal, In the words of British writer George Eliot, “Those who trust us, educate us.” Truly building trust with our stakeholders—understanding their concerns and their priorities—involves a willingness to listen, learn, and hear. Building trust requires business leaders to make conscious daily choices, and especially to act on those choices.
And it needs to be mutual. When leaders trust their stakeholders, they enter an exchange that engenders opportunity: Leaders can prove their trustworthiness, and stakeholders in return can empower their strategic choices and innovations. In essence, mutual trust creates a followership that allows organizations to break new ground, traverse the seismic changes taking place, and emerge thriving on the other side of crisis.
Second, trust becomes established through vulnerability and honesty. Business leaders willing to acknowledge what they don’t know are more likely to create trust with their stakeholders than those leaders who mistakenly believe their greatest source of influence is knowledge—or at least acting as though they know.
A similar paradox exists for organizations responding to a one-time breach of trust. Stakeholders are likely to regain—and even strengthen—trust in the organization when leaders admit the mistake, are apologetic, and are transparent in how they move forward.
Third, authenticity is essential, and this matters most to your stakeholders. Intent connects the leader to their humanity and the importance of acting with transparency. But at the end of the day, intent is just a promise; leaders must be able to act on that promise, and do so competently, reliably, and capably. And they must be able to do so in the areas—whether physical, emotional, digital, or financial—that matter most to their stakeholders at that given time.
Resiliency and Trust – an unbeatable combination
A discussion and running theme that seems to be on every executive’s mind is, “What is required to be an effective leader in today’s totally disruptive business world?”
Businesses of all shapes and sizes in all regions of the world are responding to a vision and set of common values across resiliency and trust. Companies have reported that the combination of embedding resiliency and regaining trust is the new guiding star for a world in constant change, and for dealing effectively with the interconnected environment in which all businesses operate.
Organisations can gain resiliency and trust through having sound leadership at all levels and strong cultures founded on purpose, responsibility, and accountability. Long-term agility and growth come from that.
If this is implemented in conjunction with clear, concise direction from top management, and in such a way that the middle and lower layers within the company are fully engaged, then the results can be meaningful. However, it is not a one-and-done endeavor. Even after the company is fully aligned behind a compelling strategy, leaders must continue to reinforce resiliency and trust from the top. You can’t just adopt it. It must be driven, operationally and in-depth, by the CEO and the top leadership team.
After all, the goal is not to simply navigate today’s needed changes but also to create an organization poised for more change. A resilient and trusted team ready for the next battle – whenever that may be.
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Geoff Hudson-Searle
Geoff Hudson-Searle is a senior independent digital non-executive director across regulation, technology, and internet security, C-Suite executive on private and listed companies, and serial business advisor for growth-phase tech companies.
With more than 30 years of experience in international business and management. He is the author of six books and lectures at business forums, conferences, and universities. He has been the focus of TEDx and RT Europe’s business documentary across various thought leadership topics and his authorisms.
Geoff is a member and fellow of the Institute of Directors; an associate of The International Business Institute of Management; a co-founder and board member of the Neustar International Security Council (NISC); and a distinguished member of the Advisory Council for The Global Cyber Academy.
He holds a master’s degree in business administration. Rated by Agilience as a Top 250 Harvard Business School thought leader authority covering blogs and writing across; ‘Strategic Management’ and ‘Management Consulting’, Geoff has worked on strategic growth, strategy, operations, finance, international development, growth and scale-up advisory programs for the British Government, Citibank, Kaspersky, BT and Barclays among others.
Brad Borkan is the co-author of two award-winning books. His books provide business and decision insights from the endeavors of extraordinary people: “When Your Life Depends on It: Extreme decision making lessons from the Antarctic”, and “Audacious Goals, Remarkable Results: How an explorer, an engineer and a statesman shaped our modern world”.
A former senior director at leading high tech companies, Brad is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Vice-Chair of the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute, and a member of the Society of Authors.
Brad has presented at business and Antarctic conferences and appeared on numerous historical and business-focused podcasts. Brad’s expertise is in the themes of leadership, teamwork, and the modern lessons we can learn from people who dared greatly and succeeded against all odds.
A very proud and privileged moment to have just finished the final manuscript of my sixth book, “The Trust Paradigm”.
The Trust Paradigm draws on the hard-won truths of two authors: Geoff Hudson-Searle and Mark Herbert, in addition to wisdom, deep personal lessons from one’s life and business practice and disciplines towards a more purposeful life.
Matador Publishing has confirmed that this will be the 4th book from Geoff Hudson-Searle that they will now publish in a series of writings aimed to provide individuals with a better lens to understand the opportunities and challenges ahead, to chart your course for change and fulfillment of dreams, desires and aspirations; through wisdom, knowledge and learnings from the book.
Jeremy Thompson, Managing Director, and Hannah Dakin, Customer Services Manager at Matador are truly excited to be working with Mark and me on book number six through their publishing house, I must say working with Matador has really been a seamless process, a truly great and committed team.
Hannah recently quoted ‘Geoff is back with a brand new book, The Trust Paradigm. The book has been written in the hope to help governments, businesses and individuals have a better understanding on a range of subjects across trust — whether that be those who are a part of a government or agency, company/organisation, to students, and any aspiring individuals. It’s always a pleasure to work with Geoff and at Matador Publishing we very much look forward to working with him again on The Trust Paradigm!’
Hannah Daikin, Customer Services Manager Matador Publishing
The Trust Paradigm provides a holistic overview of the essential leading methods in these areas and can be viewed as a hands-on guide. Readers will gain insights into topical subjects, including a wide range of tips, models and techniques that will help to build strong and effective trust solutions in today’s business world.
“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
American educator and author, Steven R. Covey.
The term Trust has been overused forever and during the last decade devalued. In this book, we aim to simplify these terms and to re-value management and leadership by addressing topics and subjects in each chapter.
Each component can be located by the titles at the top of the pages. The sections within the three components relate strongly to each other and are interrelated to all the other sections. You can start with your area of interest, or you can read the book from the first page to the end; there really is a topic for everyone.
Government, Business professionals and individuals dealing with the great challenges of today’s disruptive business world have renewed responsibility for what business does best: innovate, invest, and grow.
The business professionals and individuals dealing with the great challenges of today’s disruptive and disrupted business world now have renewed responsibility for what business does best: they must innovate, invest, and grow their organizations. Change and transformation can be radical and painful, yet many wait until circumstances force their hand even when they know that change must, and should, come.
Whether the change has been forced upon you, or whether you are openly seeking and embracing transformation, this book will arm you with tips, advice, and techniques to spark fresh thinking about the status quo and inspire the innovation your circumstances demand the creation of a better business environment.
The Trust Paradigm’s lessons are also relevant far beyond the business world. They can support a clearer understanding of institutional behaviour for all kinds of people: students, budding entrepreneurs, volunteers, social enterprise organizers – quite simply, anyone who aspires to do better.
The Trust Paradigm will be a 2022 publication!
In February 2014, I set out as an author with my first book, “Freedom after the Sharks”, to write a weekly blog across a variety of subjects and foremost about people in business, opinions, research and tips, advise on some revelations, past and present.
Each person, no matter their age, occupation or place in the world has a tremendous story to share. A vast tapestry of experiences, truths & pearls of wisdom lies in the vault of the mind, waiting to be unlocked. It takes the slightest intuitive spark to get us talking about our inner lives, the details and dynamics of being human. We are all aware of how important technology is in our lives and keeping our individual worlds connected.
We need to explore new and creative ways of listening, engaging, working together, learning, building community and being in conversation with the other. We are more connected than ever through technology and at the same time the disconnect with ourselves, others and our environment is growing. We need The Trust Paradigm to help us reconnect, going beyond our egos and our fears to build strong relationships, communities, networks and organisations, so that through trusted collaboration we can begin to co-create a more sustainable future.
Readers will gain insights into topical subjects, which include a wide range of tips, models and techniques that will help to build strong and effective solutions in today’s disruptive business world.
The Trust Paradigm will be available in e-book/kindle, paperback, hardback and audiobook formats.
Writing has changed my life. I have always believed that it is your right to speak truthfully in all matters that concern you and to speak from the heart.
It has been an overwhelming experience to receive emails and phone calls from people across all walks of life wanting to share their experiences, their story. Governments, entrepreneurs, business people, students, children, and universities and charitable causes have approached me for keynote sessions, general advice, and inspirational leadership.
I have been overwhelmed with inquiries but will continue to expand and express the journey that each and every one of us deserves.
Every audience has a different dynamic, a different rhythm, and a different reaction. The audience wants, needs, and expects pertinent, real-life information to enhance and support their lives and importantly what they’re facing. I believe it was my destiny in life to push things to the limit. You only get one chance to make an impression. I gave blogging and writing books every opportunity I had of the events that took place for what I believed to be right and true.
In life you survive. You move on but with a purpose and now ‘The Trust Paradigm’
Finally, in times of growing uncertainty, trust is built further when you demonstrate an ability to address unanticipated situations effectively and demonstrate a steady commitment to address the needs of all stakeholders in the best way possible.
The best business leaders begin by framing trust in economic terms for their companies. When an organization has low trust, the economic consequences can be huge. Everything will take longer and everything will cost more because the organization has to compensate for the lack of trust it commands. These costs can be quantified and when they are, leaders suddenly recognize that low trust is not merely a social issue, but it becomes an economic matter. The dividends of high trust can also be calculated and this can help leaders make a compelling business case for trust.
The best leaders focus on making the creation of trust an explicit objective. Like any other goal, it must be measured and improved. It must be made clear to everyone that trust matters to management and leadership. The unambiguous message must be that this is the right thing to do and it is the right economic thing to do. One of the best ways to do this is to make an initial baseline measurement of organizational trust and then to track improvements over time.
It’s clear from the news today that the leaders of some of our most influential governments and corporations are making morally questionable decisions. These decisions will lose the trust of society, customers and employees. No amount of electronic communication – staff intranet, corporate social media, marketing emails – will fix this, yet many organizations assume this can replace meaningful dialogue, which is the only real means of building trust and high-functioning relationships.
Finally, any true transformation starts with building credibility at the personal level. The foundation of trust is your own credibility, and it can be a real differentiator for any leader. A person’s reputation is a direct reflection of their credibility and it precedes them in any interactions or negotiations they might have. When a leader’s credibility and reputation are high, it enables them to establish trust quickly. Speed goes up, the cost goes down
A strong culture is one where there’s trust, connection and belonging, among more. Without trust, you don’t connect with colleagues and without connection, it’s only a matter of time before any sense of belonging to that employer dissipates and you start looking for a job elsewhere — likely with a competitor.
One of the best ways to gauge whether there’s connection or not is to look at your meetings. Do the right conversations take place during those meetings, or, do people wait for the meeting after the meeting so they can get “real work” done? If it’s the latter, then you might want to consider strategies for building trust.
Our intent in this book is to explore from our perspective some of the reasons we find ourselves in this environment and some of the things we need to at least consider changing unless we want to continue the path we are on. This is the rationale why Mark Herbert an I have written The Trust Paradigm.
In the words of Stephen R. Covey:
“If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust towards me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me ‘an offender for a word’. When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”
I will be making periodic updates on the progress of our new book, and invite you all to read the new tome on its release.
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