Introduction

If so many business leaders, experts, and researches all agree on the importance of trust to the bottom line and quality of life in the workplace, why does distrust continue to grow? In 2006, Steven M.R. Covey wrote a best-selling book called The Speed of Trust, The One Thing That Changes Everything. I couldn’t agree more with the premise that fostering trust in the workplace would have a positive global impact on our economy and our lives. Business leaders around the globe have acknowledged trust is a key ingredient to success. Yet, despite the agreed-upon beneficial financial and social impact, more than a decade later trust in the workplace continues to rapidly diminish (Claveria 2019). Why does the business community continue to ignore the benefits of trust and connectedness in the workplace?

My answer is business owners are not experts in creating or changing the culture of the company, and culture is where trust resides. When trust becomes part of the corporate culture, everything changes for the better because all businesses have one thing in common—people. The term “employee” denotes some faceless cog in a machine. Businesses, your business, are made up of people who happen to work for you. These people, your staff, can no more separate out their personal issues and baggage from their work than you can separate out your soul from your body.

Henry Ford once asked, “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” By all accounts Henry believed he was smarter and better than all of the people working for him. While Henry was probably smarter than each individual worker, he was not smarter or more creative than they were collectively. He also knew his workers would be easier to manage if they checked their brains at the factory entrance. What he didn’t realize at the time, however, was he was asking his people to leave their passion, desire, and creativity behind. In today’s world that type of thinking is no longer relevant or sustainable.

Why is this important to you? First, the business world is changing rapidly and businesses using the old corporate capitalism models are now being outpaced by the social capitalistic companies. The concepts of social capitalism have been written about for decades and have become integrated into businesses for the past two decades. For my purposes, the best definition of social capitalism I have found so far is:

Think of Starbucks, Whole Foods, Gore, and Hewlett-Packard (before Carly Fiorina) as businesses that have embraced this model. According to research over a 10-year period, the social capitalistic companies outperformed corporate capitalistic companies 1,026 percent to 331 percent a 3 to 1 ratio; (Sisodia, Sheth and Wolfe 2014, p. 15).

Second, I believe there will continue to be an ever-increasing demand for great talent. Companies who want to compete for the best and the brightest will have to be places that will attract upcoming generations of workers. World War II veterans are gone; us baby-boomers are phasing out of the workforce by the thousands every year. These older generations of workers are being replaced by Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha. Each new generation is becoming less tolerant of the more old school office environment. They want a sense of connectedness, collaboration, and appreciation. All of that depends on a foundation of trust. You want the best and the brightest working for you, create a place where they will come and stay. Otherwise, you may find yourself choosing from those that are left. Not an enviable position.

This book is designed to be a practical guide, resource, and workbook for CEOs, executives, managers, and employees to create a foundation of trust on which to build your corporate culture. I believe trust continues to decline in the workplace because there is no clear-cut way to create and sustain it. Instead, trust is assumed to exist as a matter of employment. This assumption leads to all manner of miscommunications, unrealized expectations, lost efficiencies, bad feelings, resentments, betrayals, and just about any other negative feeling you can imagine that obstructs the ability of your people to work together.

As one of my coaching colleagues recently pointed out, “our ability to connect with each other has withered to the point where many people prefer to text information or tweet their thoughts to avoid the pressure of a conversation.” The 2019 Edelman Trust Report indicated only 37 percent of employees trusted the credibility of their CEO (Claveria 2019). How hard do you believe it will be to grow your business if almost two-thirds of the people doubt the leadership and they are afraid to talk to each other? Trust is the key to change all that.

Trust has been defined in countless ways over the years, as confidence, belief in someone or something, or integrity to name a few. However, I believe most definitions miss the mark and for the purposes of this book I define trust as: the degree to which I am willing to be vulnerable: physically, emotionally, or financially vulnerable to another person(s). One big challenge in defining trust is that it is not logical; your emotions drive your desire to trust or distrust someone, not your intellect! None of us feel things the same way, so we lack the common reference points normally used to define a word. I’ll use this example: try defining the color red to a person who has been blind since birth. There are no reference points this person could understand. That being said, one of the biggest mistakes we all make is assuming others intuitively understand what trust means to us.

Trust, however, is so much more than just a word; it goes to the core of your human existence. Your sense of trust is based on a tangled mix of beliefs and complex feelings. Those feelings are forged by personal experiences and memories of past successes and heartaches. Your definitions of trust are as personal to you as your own fingerprints and greatly impact your ability to lead your company.

Trust and vulnerability are symbiotic and directly proportional. Without vulnerability, trust cannot form; without trust, vulnerability will not increase and the bonds between people will remain weak and fragile. It is in the very act of exposing yourself to others, being vulnerable, that gives birth to a sense of trust. Trust goes hand in hand with feeling vulnerability and safe at the same time.

Now, why on earth would you want to be vulnerable in the workplace? Why would you want to risk embarrassment, judgment, or ridicule by being vulnerable to others? If you are a hired CEO, you could lose your position. If you own the business, you certainly don’t want to appear weak as a leader. It is much safer to put on the “armor—the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors you use to protect yourself” (Brown 2018, 12). If you are not vulnerable, then you can’t be hurt or your fear will not show. Unfortunately the very act of putting on armor limits your success. Here’s why.

When the armor is on, emotions don’t get in and your emotions don’t get out. As people, we connect with each other on an emotional level first and then intellectually. When the armor is on, it is very difficult if not impossible for others to connect with you. The first real danger for a leader is that it is human nature to distrust that which we cannot connect with or understand. It is too risky for me to trust you when I don’t know what is going on behind your armor. The second real danger is if I as an employee cannot emotionally connect with you, my desire to follow you will dry up relatively quickly, my passion for your company will be replaced with a sense of dutiful obligation, and if the right opportunity comes along I am out of the door.

The huge benefits of being coached as a business owner led me to becoming an executive coach so I could help others. Twenty years of coaching and 10 years of researching the subject of trust has taught me one thing: people still don’t understand it. Colleges and MBA courses almost always cover ethics, what you are morally and legally obligated to do even when no one is watching. Understanding ethics does not provide insight into the connectedness trust creates between people that drive business!

Technology is helping businesses innovate and change at an unprecedented rate. Newer generations of people want a friendlier, connected work environment where they feel safe and appreciated. Trust can make all that happen. You have to decide if you want to be ahead of that curve or be left behind it.

In the first part of this book, I will go into the basic fundamentals of trust because you can’t create or change something you don’t understand. I’ll cover:

In the second part of this book, I will talk about the interaction between your people and trust in the workplace:

In the last part of the book, I will go over a step-by-step process for creating a trusting environment where your people can thrive. You will have to make important decisions regarding:

Creating a culture of trust must start with you first, and from the top to the bottom of the organization. It will not work by telling employees to trust each other or expect it to happen organically. One of the basic tenants of trust is integrity. You must walk your talk by taking ownership of your thoughts, words, and deeds. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Your actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” Without this commitment on your part, any attempt at creating trust in the workplace will end very poorly.

One last piece about this book before you start, this work is not about theory or an academic exercise for me. It is very real, personal, and something I am passionate about. My work on this started from the almost knockout punches of my ex-wife leaving me for a younger man after 18 years of marriage, the betrayal of my wife and I by a close family member and the near financial ruin when a trusted business partner took my share of my business without paying for it.

People I trusted deeply turned out not to be trustworthy. I was hurt and embarrassed and vowed never to be hurt like that again. I armored up with the best defenses I could find. But my life and business didn’t improve, because without some level of trust I had no connections with others. People didn’t want to do business with me because they couldn’t connect with me and they certainly didn’t want to be around an unhappy person. I was no longer an effective leader. Fortunately, I was blessed to meet an incredible woman who has since become my wife. She helped me explore and understand the concepts I mentioned above. Through that journey came this book and doing the work that I love by connecting with others. I want to do the same for you.

Helping you understand trust is not enough because we are seeing distrust grow on a daily basis in commerce and industry. CEOs and top executives like you must be the standard bearers of trust, not just talk about it. This book is designed to help teach you how to be that example, and in doing so show employees how they too can help create trust where they work. It’s up to you to do the work, the choice is yours.