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3 Minutes to Create a Great Impression

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It was five months ago, but I remember it like yesterday.

I had given a speech for an important Fortune 500 client. The event had about 300 attendees, and I was one of several speakers.

The person preceding me overran his time, cutting 15 minutes into mine. That is rude to other speakers, and to the audience, who have the right to view an agenda as a promise. I never do that to others, and don’t like it when someone does it to me.

I let it throw me off a bit; I didn’t give my worst speech, but it wasn’t my best either. This bothered me for the next two days.

A Turnaround Impression

Until, that is, I received a card in the mail. It was from my client’s senior-most person in attendance, the host of the meeting I’d attended.  The card was hand-written, and clearly written by him (at least, that’s what I think).

It was personalized, gracious, and thoughtful.  If it was scripted, my compliments to the staff writer, because it felt very genuine to me. I was floored.

3 Minutes to Impact

It can’t have taken my client more than 2 minutes to write the card, perhaps less—though clearly he’d given it more than a moment’s thought.  Let’s say he gave it a minute.  That’s a lot of thought; and yet only a grand total of 3 minutes.

And remember, this was a client, sending me, the speaker/consultant a thank you note—I should be the one sending it to him!

Again—I was floored. And very touched.

Can You Find 3 Minutes Per Week?

How often do you encounter opportunities to send someone a note?  Let’s be conservative and say once a week.  At once a week, that feels like a pretty special event—there are only 50 or so per year.

That’s about one-tenth of one percent of your weekly time. What other three minute weekly activity could generate that kind of personal impact, make somebody’s day, reach out and touch someone so powerfully?

You Can’t Write an Insincere Note

And don’t tell me it’s insincere.  I defy you to sit down and write a thoughtful thank you note to a business connection and tell me you did it with a greedy scowl.  I don’t believe you’re that cynical (and I don’t even know you!).  And if you’re sincere, then the odds are very good indeed that your sincerity will come through.

I used to get occasional handwritten notes from the folks at Continental Airlines’ One Pass organization. Were those notes part of an organized plan? You bet. But insincere? No way—someone sat down and hand-wrote a note to me; that is an act of respect, and I felt it.  Are you listening, United?

Try it. Plan on writing a 3-minute note to someone next week.  Who will be the lucky recipient?  And how will you feel about it?

Write and tell me—I’d like to hear about it.

Magic Johnson, Peter Guber and Business Stories

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We all know the power of stories in business. We know too that it’s the heroes who give stories power. The hero may be a person, a brand, a company, or it may be the listener.  When the story and the hero are strong, it resonates with the audience.

Peter Guber and Magic Johnson

In his book “Tell to Win” Peter Guber tells the story of a hero stepping up.  It was Earvin Johnson’s first season with the Lakers.  They had made it to the NBA finals when the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sprained his ankle and was out for the final 2 games.

Nineteen-year old Johnson stepped up and told the despondent team: “Kareem isn’t here.  I’ll be Kareem.”  He sat in Kareem’s seat on the team plane, played Kareem’s position during practice, and went on to play “the greatest game ever played by a rookie in the NBA.”  In the process, he became Magic Johnson.

The hero of this story is Johnson, of course; but it’s also the listener, anyone who imagines him or herself stepping forward with conviction and assurance.  This story lets everyone in the audience think of how: “I’ll be Kareem.”

My Business Story

The story I used most as a manager I borrowed from Anne Lamott’s priceless book, “Bird by Bird.”

Her brother has procrastinated on a huge school project, a paper on, as I recall, birds of North America.  The night before the due date, he found himself at the dining room table in tears, surrounded by reference materials, not knowing where to start.  Their father sat down with him and said: “Take it bird by bird, son, bird by bird.”

This story got my teams – many positions, many companies, different industries — through tough deadlines, the stress of layoffs and other corporate upheavals, and all kinds of not knowing where to start.

What I love particularly about this little story is that–just like Guber’s story about Magic Johnson–it makes the listener–the team–the hero.  Everyone can start somewhere, taking it bird by bird.

Your Business Story

There are lots of great resources around for improving your story, whether it’s your interview story, your consultant story, or the story of your company or brand.  Here are a few I like:

Who is the hero of the story you tell to prospects and clients? I would love to hear it, in a paragraph or two.

 

Think Before Sending

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What would you do?

That’s what my daughter’s 8th grade class was asked last year. The subject: texting secrets.

One girl had texted to a friend another friend’s embarrassing secret. But she didn’t just send it to one BFF— the text went out to everyone in the class—including, of course, the hapless girl whose secret was no longer.

Sound familiar? I recently received a message sent from one educator to a couple of colleagues regarding a student.  It also went to the institution’s entire mailing list.  This happens a lot in business too.  “Reply all” inadvertently pressed sends messages to the wrong person or people, or to entire lists.  Sometimes those slipped messages lead to a career and/or personal life hurt or destroyed.

The cause: carelessness, haste, anger? Doesn’t really matter. Who would think a simple button on a screen marked “send” could cause so much havoc?

Not Just Another Reply-All Horror Story

We could talk about how to recover from the gaffe via an apology. We could talk about how to use email properly.

Or–we could discuss how these types of issues affect trust.  And they do.  Think of this from the perspective of the Trust Equation.  Sending to the wrong person or group of people reduces Credibility and Reliability.  What gets inadvertently shared decreases Intimacy–after all sharing a secret shows a lack of discretion, even if done by mistake.

Here’s what my daughter learned as a result of this exercise with her class:

  • Double check everything before sending any electronic message (email, text, Facebook, IM)
  • Consider the medium–should the message be sent electronically, or is it better delivered in person or by phone
  • Should it be sent at all, by any medium (is it gossip or otherwise inappropriate to share)
  • Be prepared to do the right thing in the event things don’t work out.

The Big Lesson—Less Is More

As I thought about it, I think the third point—“should it be sent at all”—is by far the more powerful lesson my daughter learned that day.  Think it through.  Take a deep breath.  Count to ten. What’s your role in the situation?  What will the consequences be? Will saying anything really matter in a positive way?

These are profound lessons for all of us.  Adults suffer all the time from not having learned these lessons earlier in life.  How often do we act out and regret later?  How often do we say hurtful things even when we don’t mean to and suffer remorse?  How often do we hurt those we love?

Some time ago I learned from a lawyer colleague I respect and trust, that when it comes to the written and spoken word, less is more.  Shouldn’t we at least think about this before we hit Send?

I think my daughter learned a few rules of email etiquette that day—and one massive lesson about living life as a human being.

I’m pleased it was a topic for an 8th grade class, and it’s not the first time her school addressed real world issues.  I just hope we don’t have to wait for this generation to grow up before these valuable lessons are commonly used in the business community.

Zooming In on 9 New Trust Tips

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We’re lighting up the twittersphere with a series of daily Trust Tips, counting down the work days until our upcoming book, “The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust” is released–October 31, by Wylie Books.

The Trust Tips are concise, practical, and free. They’re published every Monday through Friday, providing easy-to-implement ways to increase your trustworthiness and build better relationships.

Find snippets of insight on Twitter by using the hashtag, a.k.a. pound sign, followed by TrustTip, like this: #TrustTip.  Or go straight to the source by finding us on Twitter at @AndreaPHowe and @CharlesHGreen. We’ve had some good discussions on Twitter and would love to hear from you. We also keep a running tab of all the Trust Tips right here on our site.

See our prior Trust Tips recaps:

Trust Tips Recap: #89-81

#TrustTip 89: Extend yourself—e.g. invite your client to meet you outside of work, share a meal.

#TrustTip 88: Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

#TrustTip 87: Find out how your project team defines success & how you can help them achieve it.

#TrustTip 86: Don’t jump to problem-solving–slow yourself down by counting, taking notes, vocalizing expectations.

#TrustTip 85: Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. Be humble.

#TrustTip 84: Being right is vastly over-rated; we don’t care if you’re right unless you’ve first heard us.

#TrustTip 83: Be self-deprecating, it is a form of graciousness.

#TrustTip 82: Confront issues as they arise—being preoccupied w/ them keeps your attention on your own preoccupation.

#TrustTip 81: Answer direct questions with direct answers.

Closeup on Three Favorites

#TrustTip 89: Extend yourself—e.g. invite your client to meet you outside of work, share a meal. A lot of people confuse intimacy in business relationships with being social, when they’re not the same thing. This tip is less about the meal and more about expanding the scope of your relationship beyond typical professional boundaries. It’s easier for someone to trust you when they can relate to you. Let others in. Talk about something other than what’s on the work agenda. Be a person, not just a pro.

Jim Peterson (@rebalancejim) had an interesting take on this Trust Tip. His suggestion: “Do better–invite your adversary.” There’s a boundary-breaking idea!

#TrustTip 88: Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. I borrowed this from a heading in Charlie’s second book, Trust-Based Selling. It’s one of my very favorite lines. Often we mistake being trustworthy with being perfect, or with doing and getting things right most of the time. While it’s certainly important to be competent for people to trust you, it’s equally if not more important to be trustworthy by being authentic. I know I’m more likely to trust someone who’s genuinely flawed—with the confidence and humility to admit it—than someone who comes across as faultless, or who tries too hard.

Consider the business value of integrity—being who you claim to be at all times to all people.

#TrustTip 84: Being right is vastly over-rated; we don’t care if you’re right unless you’ve first heard us. Trust and influence go hand-in-hand. The more someone trusts you, the more likely he is to be influenced by you. In the business of advice-giving, it is not enough to be right—you have to earn the right to be right. The key to getting your advice taken has little to do with the content of the advice you give and everything to do with the context of how you listen to others. Fundamentally, you earn the right to be right by listening first. The act of listening itself creates relationship and trust.

That’s my take, anyway. What’s yours?

Share the wealth; tell others about #TrustTip—new tips posted every weekday at 8:30AM, every week until book publication.

Creating a Culture of Trust: Virtues and Values

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This post comes from our upcoming book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust, from the chapter on Implementing a Culture of Trust. Tools for trust initiatives include principles, or values, at the organizational level, and personal attributes, or virtues, at the individual level. The chapter explores five tools for implementing trust change initiatives: leading by example, stories, vocabulary, and managing with wisdom. This post explores two diagnostic tools: the Trust Temperament™ and the Trust Roadmap™.

We will be sharing selected portions of the book with our readers leading up to the publication date. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook will be available from Wiley Books on October 31, 2011, or you can pre-order The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

What Is a High-trust Organization?

Our definition: an organization of people who are trustworthy, and appropriately trusting, working together in an environment that actively encourages those behaviors in employees as well as stakeholders.

Creating a culture of trust requires a different emphasis than do most change initiatives. What works to reduce accident rates, increase customer-centricity, or become ISO-9000 compliant isn’t the same as what’s needed to create a high-trust organization.

Trust is about interpersonal relations. For people to trust and be trusted by others, they must take personal risks and face personal fears in ways that cannot, by their nature, be fully planned and structured in ways that typical change initiatives can rely on.

That suggests a different emphasis: an initiative built around personal change.

Two Keys to Trust Culture Change: Virtues and Values

Creating a high-trust culture boils down to two main thrusts: virtues and values. “Virtues” are the personal qualities that high-trust people embody, and “values” are what guide the organizations they work in. In trust-based organizations, virtues and values are consistent and mutually reinforcing.

We use these words very intentionally, because they’re commonly understood–and common language matters. Each deserves its own word and understanding, and both are required for trust culture change. In our experience, some companies rightly focus on organizational values, but few focus enough on personal virtues.

 

The virtues of trust are personal, and involve your level of trustworthiness and your ability to trust. The virtues of trust are contained in the trust equation: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation.

It is virtuous for someone to tell the truth, to behave dependably, to keep confidences, and to be mindful of the needs of others. Unless people take personal responsibility for their own behavior around trust, the organization will never be a trust-based organization.

 

The values of trust are institutional, and drive the organization’s external relationships, leadership, structure, rewards, and key processes. The values of a trust-based organization are reflected in the four trust principles: other-focus, collaboration, medium- to long-term perspective, and transparency. An organization that espouses these values treats others with respect, has an inclination to partner, has a bias toward a longer timeframe, and shares information.

Trust-based organizations take values very seriously. If your organization has never fired someone for a values violation, then either you’ve been astoundingly successful in your hiring and development efforts, or you’re not a strongly values-driven organization.

Diagnosing Trust

To improve virtues and values, it’s helpful to know where you’re starting from—to have some kind of diagnostic. For virtues, there is the trust quotient: for values, there is the Trust Roadmap™.

Virtues.

The trust quotient is a self-diagnostic taken at the individual level, based on the four values of the trust equation.   With individual data aggregated anonymously at the group level, you can profile the organization in terms of Trust Temperaments (the pair of highest-scoring values in the trust equation for an individual), as follows:

Trust Temperament™ Highest Ranked Attributes Motto
The Expert C, R “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”– Anonymous
The Doer R, I “As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
The Catalyst C, I “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Professor C, S “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”– Albert Einstein
The Steward R, S “My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.” – Steve Wozniak
The Connector I, S “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”– Anonymous

 

Values.

The Trust Roadmap is a diagnostic tool that surveys the Trust Values across components of organizations, as below:

Collaboration Medium- to Long-Term Perspective Transparency Other Focus
External Relationships
Leadership
Structure
Rewards
Processes

 

Generic and organization-specific questions are developed for each of the 20 cells, and the survey administered to groups of stakeholders: customers, employees, managers, for example.   For example, the question for Leadership and Medium-to-Long Term Perspective might be “Your leaders are willing to sacrifice short-term gains for the long-term benefit of the organization.”

The survey results allow a management team to assess, in a structured manner, where the organizational values that drive trust are being implemented, and where they’re not; how those patterns vary across constituencies; and what they feel the priority should be in addressing the issues.  In short, a Trust Roadmap.

The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust will be published by Wiley Books on October 31, 2011.  Pre-order your copy of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

Trust, Innovation and Minimalist Management: Ross Smith Redux

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Ross Smith of Microsoft is a pioneer in applying trust to real-world management issues—particularly creativity, innovation and employee engagement.  I first interviewed him in the inaugural issue of Trust Quotes, Trust and Innovation.

Ross first ran Windows Security team for Microsoft and wrote The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention. He recognized the critical need for innovation, and discovered trust as an enabler for getting there—and in turn, the value of games in creating trust.

Since then he’s moved on to Microsoft’s Office Communicator product line, and is working his team magic again.  I saw him in Newark Airport a few months ago, off on one of several global speaking engagements. He’s been cited by Gary Hamel, and just a few days ago agreed to do an ongoing blog for the good folks at SHRM.

To start things off, SHRM interviewed Ross, and included not only great dialogue but a bunch of cool links. Here are the opening lines:

SHRM: What keeps you up at night?

Smith: Nothing. If your work keeps you awake at night, you might have the wrong job.

Enjoy SHRM’s  interview with Ross Smith on innovation, games and minimalist management.

How I Quit Smoking

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I smoked cigarettes until I was in my mid-forties. I smoked pretty heavily–more than two packs a day–and had done so pretty much forever (despite running the Montreal Marathon back in 1982, when I quit for several days).

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how stupid smoking was. I could feel it myself. But as David Maister wrote in Strategy and the Fat Smoker, the problem is not knowledge; the problem is implementation.

Here’s what happened to me. I can’t say it’ll help you; but it does say something about how people change.

Why I Smoked

I don’t know why I smoked. But I know one reason I kept smoking. Because everyone kept telling me to quit.

I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. Quitting itself isn’t all that hard (as Mark Twain said, I’d done it many times). But my life has been in many ways a struggle to get over being stubborn. I just Don’t. Like. Being. Told. What. To. Do.

I had recently remarried. My wife was a reformed smoker herself, and never made an issue of it with me, for which I was grateful.

One day the subject came up; I think I raised it. Here’s what she said:

Dear, I want you to know that smoking is 100% your decision. I don’t want you to die early–but much, much more than that, I want you to be you. I love you for who you are, and only you decide who that is.

You can smoke in the kitchen; you can smoke in the living room; you can smoke in the bedroom—it’s all OK. I will never nag you or hound you about smoking.

I will re-route plane trips to accommodate your need to get out for a smoke. I will put ashtrays wherever you want. Smoking will never be an issue for you and me.

Because I love you, and you are who you choose to be.

Two weeks later, I quit for good.

Why I Quit Smoking

In retrospect, it’s clear why I quit. It’s because I’m an idiot, a fool who somehow needed someone else’s permission to smoke–just to have at least one person on my side to counter-balance all those who told me not to. And when I finally got that one person, I could declare victory and retreat.

Had I been a better person, I would have figured out on my own, years earlier, that I didn’t need anyone’s permission—not to smoke, not to quit, not to do, or not do, anything. As my wife put it, “you’re a free humanoid on the planet.”

But the me who smoked couldn’t have had that thought. The me who smoked could only quit the way I did.

The Bigger Gift I Got from Quitting Smoking

The gift my wife gave me was extraordinary. Quitting smoking was the least of it. All that did was protect my health. What she gave me was much bigger.

She taught me, first of all, what it means to accept another human being. (To be fair, she gave me an object example; I’m still working on learning it).

She also taught me what was within my power, and what wasn’t. I had always under-estimated the power I had–and over-estimated the power other people had over me. No matter what happens, I have the power to control my reactions to other people. And no matter what happens, if I’m upset by something, there’s something wrong with me.

Those are huge lessons. How funny that the “price” I paid to learn them was to give up something that was bad for me in the first place.

Trust Tips: A Deeper Look

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The countdown continues until “The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust,” (from Wiley Books) hits shelves everywhere. As we eagerly await publication, my co-author, Andrea Howe, and I are posting a series of daily Trust Tips.

These brief yet insightful tips can be found on Twitter by using the hashtag #TrustTip. Or,if you prefer, you can go straight to the source by finding us on Twitter at @AndreaPHowe and @CharlesHGreen.

Not keen to leave those of you out who haven’t jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon, we keep a running tally of all the Trust Tips right here on our site.

We do recommend you take a second, or third, look at Twitter though. We’ve been having some great discussions over there about the tips and more. We’d love for you to chime in.

The Tips

The tips are published every workday as a means to give you a quick method to heighten your trustworthiness and build stronger work relationships.

If you need to catch up, see our recaps of Tips #144-135; #134-115; and #114-105.

Trust Tips #104-90

#104: “Trust but verify.” = blowing smoke. If you have to verify, it’s not trust.

#103: Acknowledge uncomfortable situations: try “I’m probably the only one wondering this, but…” You won’t be.

#102: Name and Claim the Elephant in the Room. Candor drives trust; it’s controlled risk taking.

#101: Don’t gossip or promote relationship “triangles.”

#100: Think it through: how will your client react to what you’re thinking of saying?

#99: Don’t think “I can’t trust yet, it’s too risky;” risk is what creates trust. Take the first risk.

#98: Possibly the best sales/client/relationship question is: Tell me more–please.

#97: Be the same person to all people at all times. That’s a good definition of integrity.

#96: Practice asking difficult questions or making difficult statements before you deliver them

#95: By being willing to have a Point of View, you help everyone else crystallize theirs

#94: Hold others accountable; letting others off the hook lets them live down to your expectations

#93: Write your next proposal with your client; sitting next to them; on the same side of the table

#92: Talk more with your eyes, ears & body, and less with your mouth

#91: Be empathetic: the benefit-to-cost ratio of empathy is nearly infinite.

#90: Next time something great happens, pin the credit on someone.

A Couple of My Favorites:

#93: The normal routine for writing proposals just reinforces the separation between ourselves and our clients (or customers, or partners). We say, “good meeting, I’ll get back to you with a . PDF document by Friday, and ship you hard copy as well.”

Instead, try saying, “Let’s book the conference room again this Friday, and write this proposal together, sitting on the same side of the table. We’ll each bring all our questions and data and we’ll make sure we come up between us with the best possible approached. Of course it’s still a proposal, I know we may not win–but it will be the best possible proposal the two of us can possibly produce.”
#90: We’re pretty good at pinning the blame on others. And we’re often quick to take credit. Taking responsibility is a good antidote to blaming, and ‘pinning the credit’ is the cure for hogging it all to ourselves.

Next time something good happens and you start maneuvering to look like it was your doing, stop–and pin the credit on someone else. They’ll appreciate it, and it’s a good way to practice lowering your self-orientation.

I’m Sorry IF I Upset You

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Don’t you hate the “IF” in that phrase? It’s like the canned, fake apologies we receive from call center employees reading from a script. Yet we hear “I’m sorry if I upset you” or something just like it over and over again from business colleagues and yes, even friends.

What is an apology?

What is an apology and when should we provide one? A few years ago, I ran across an expert, Lee Taft, a Dallas lawyer also educated in ethics and religion at Harvard Divinity School, and who was recently highlighted in the Dallas Morning News. He takes a holistic approach to dispute resolution, and an apology is at the center. He believes that “if someone is at fault in causing harm, the party causing the injury should offer a fault-admitting apology, an explanation of what happened and reparation.” His five step process, explained on his website, includes: Remorse (experience of sorrow/regret), Explanation, Apology (expression of remorse), Accommodation (reparations) and Lessons Learned.

When I acted as a mediator, I was amazed at how fast an apology led to a settlement. Of course, the lawyers feared that an apology was an admission of responsibility (and it was), but in reality it was more than that. To the person receiving the apology it meant that the person giving it actually felt sincere remorse, and wasn’t going to do “it” again to someone else. That assumes, of course, that it was a sincere apology, pretty much following Lee’s formula, rather than just going through the motions.

More apology on the web

Getting to know Lee got me thinking more deeply about the topic, and I looked into what’s available on the web on apology. Here are some great sites with valuable contributions on the subject:

PerfectApology.com. It’s got everything you wanted to know about apologies. A section called “Apology Central” even has pages on “how to apologize” (complete with ads somehow related to apologizing); “Apology Ideas” for sharing ways to apologize; and an “Apology Board” where people can post their apologies for others to learn from.

Those who created this site say they are “a few friends and colleagues who have always been on the lookout for the perfect apology.” They created the site because “we’re human, we tend to screw up on occasion, and we inevitably need to deal with the problem.” They’ve even created an Apology Blog. One of the things I like most about this site is that both the developers and the contributors seem to be into acknowledging the offense that needs an apology, rather than simply making excuses. And they give advice on how to say you’re sorry in a variety of situations. So, next time you mess up, take a look at the How to Say I’m Sorry page.

Mediate.com. This site devotes a full page to articles about apology in the context of disputes in a variety of legal settings. It was there that I discovered Vivian Scott, who wrote the best titled blog I’ve seen on this topic: “I’m Sorry You’re Such a Crybaby Isn’t Really An Apology”. In fact, I liked the title so much that I called Vivian to learn more. Turns out she authored “Conflict Resolution at Work for Dummies” and has other writing to her credit. In “Crybaby” Vivian says that when she “hears an apology laden with sarcastic tones or Ill-chosen words [she tries] to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt and assume the reason he’s delivering such a lousy apology is because he’s uninformed about the must-have attributes of a real one.” Her blog is a must read for the four elements of a real apology.

WriteExpress.com. If you ever wanted to know how to write just about anything, take a look at this site. I’ve hyperlinked the apology page, and there’s so much more here.

It’s Personal

I’d like to share an additional perspective on apology. Inspired by numerous encounters with those plastic call center apologies, I’ve suggested to my coaching clients a distinction between the need for an apology (which includes acknowledging what happened and taking responsibility) and the need for simply the acknowledgment and taking responsibility without feeling and expressing remorse. Lee Taft’s apology approach includes: “the party causing the injury” should offer the apology. To me, an “injury” occurs when there is personal harm. I define “personal” pretty broadly – something like when the action we do or words we say have a negative impact on others – their jobs , their finances (like affecting a bonus), their lives, their health, and even their egos. In business, there are things we do that merit apologies, and other things that merit only the acknowledgment and taking responsibility portion of apologies. When there is a need for an apology, follow the advice of the experts and give a complete and sincere one. If not, acknowledge what you did, take responsibility and move on.

If you have anything to add, or other suggestions of where to find great advice for apologies or blogs on the topic, please post!

The June Trust Matters Review

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Trust Equation

This month at the Trust Review we’re going to intersperse the more recent articles and posts with some goodies, but oldies, including one article from the 90s because, really, trust, trust never changes.

Yves Smith tries to answer the question, how long can trust created by public institutions last? Well, here’s a hint, you can tell where the Hapsburg Empire once ruled by levels of trust in public institutions? Whoa.

Doug Bartholomew of Industry Week discusses the issue of trust between manufacturing suppliers and their customers, including hard data from 90s on how top suppliers operate. I wonder if it’s still true that trust pays for suppliers.

Knowledge@Wharton, back in 2005, had Peter Cappelli lead a discussion on a question which is eternal, at least since the creation of Human Resources. Does HR exist to be a bureaucratic pain in the neck, or is it actually useful, and, dare I ask, worth trusting to find top talent (what used to be known as good workers?)

The Trust Diva blog wonders if a contract can actually save you from the bad intentions of someone you’re doing business with. Or, to put it another way, should you do business with someone you don’t trust, trusting the contract to keep them on the straight and narrow?

Daniel H. Pink writes about a Columbian bank’s efforts to use incentives to convince its loan officers to not leave their work till the end of the month. Did it work? And more broadly, do incentives work?

Brad VanAuken makes a point about brands, a brand is nothing without trust. Or, to put it another way, like McDonalds food, or hate it, you know what you’re getting when you order a Big Mac. A brand is a promise. At the same blog, Mark Ritson meditates on Sri Lankan beer and trust.

The McLaren blog has a 12 part series on trust building behavior, and they’re up to number 11. A good reminder of the basic points. Start with number 1 – straight talking.

Anthony Iannarino writes about delegation—the art of giving tasks to their rightful owners, which means trusting them.

Dave Brock writes about the commoditization of referrals, the invitations to join “referral networks” with people you don’t even know and receive prizes in exchange for referrals.

Discover magazine on how the perception of choice makes us lose our compassion for people. Even if those people were completely the victim of circumstances.

Denny Coates: trust and they will trust back, give and they will give back. Do you believe this is true?

The Trust Matters Review highlights the best articles and posts on trust our research has turned up in the last month.

If you’d like to share a great article about trust, let us know, in the comments here.

For more links to outstanding articles on trust, see: