Building a High-Trust Culture, #1: It Starts with Integrity

Building a High-Trust Culture, #1: It Starts with Integrity - spint consult 

By Joel Peterson  

Chairman, JetBlue Airways. Stanford Business School

December 23, 2013

Over forty years in business, I've been involved with more than 100 companies, done thousands of deals, and worked alongside countless leaders and team members in multiple industries. In that time, I've come to believe that the most important ingredient in a business’s success is, simply, trust.

Because it’s become fundamental to my view of leadership and running companies, I’m going to publish a series of posts here on LinkedIn about the value of trust: what it is, how to cultivate it, and how to protect it.

In firms where people trust their leaders and colleagues trust one another, there’s more innovation and better business outcomes. Mistrust and politics are expensive, time-consuming and dispiriting. When a company has a reputation for fair dealing, its costs drop: trust cuts the time spent second-guessing, worrying, and lawyering. Trust strengthens every part of any deal: its durability, its potential profitability, and its flexibility. Like most things, business works better when the energy spent on doubt, fear and suspicion are reduced.

Early on in my career I made a deal with a savvy and experienced investor several years my senior. As papers were being drawn up, I received a call from him. “I don't think you meant to set things up the way you did,” he said, referring to a part of the deal that was in his favor. He proceeded to explain to me how the provision could have left my firm in a bind. He was right, and saved me from a bad mistake. From this, we went on to do over a hundred financings together over several decades. Our level of mutual trust became so great that he’d wire money before the papers were complete. Later, I had a chance to sort through some troubled assets for him to ensure that he recovered his investment capital. I didn't need to, but I never forgot how he'd saved me as a young entrepreneur. Building genuine trust is a long-run investment.

Trust is as important for an established enterprise as for a two-person startup. When teams feel encouragement and support, rather than fear of retribution or embarrassment, they tend to take the kinds of risks that can lead to breakthroughs. In an organization where team members have earned the trust of their supervisors, they can have confidence that if they don’t nail something the first time, there will be a second. Empowered workers can sense they are trusted. For most people, the feeling of being trusted leads to an increased desire to be trustworthy. This virtuous cycle can take your team to great interdependent heights.

But in order for leaders to build and develop trust, it’s important for them to reflect on what it is, and how it works. In my view, there are ten key drivers of trust – from the way leaders display it, to the way team members develop it, and how it requires sacrifice, humility, communication, and accountability. Over this next series of posts, I'll explore why the sum of these key elements is fundamental to building a great organization.

Trust Principle #1: It Starts with Integrity

The foundation of any high-trust organization is the integrity of its leaders. Having integrity means, among other things, that the gap between what you say you're going to do, and what you actually do, is small. I call this a “say-do gap.” Leaders in high-trust organizations must serve as living examples of integrity and trustworthiness – and not just at the office and during business hours. Here are a few ways to think about personal integrity as a core building block of trust:

1) A business is only as trustworthy as its leaders. The people who run things must show – by their actions – the way they want business to be done, and the way they want people to be treated. Talking doesn't cut it. Leaders must embody the spirit they want the team to adopt. People pick up on phoniness. They trust authenticity. Just as kids look to parents for an example, team members watch their leaders. So, miss an opportunity to be that example, and you miss a chance to raise the level of trust.

2) Personal integrity matters. No matter a leader’s competence, charisma, or authority, she’s either trustworthy or she’s not – in all parts of her life. Trustworthy people are trustworthy when it comes to family, friends or colleagues. Obligations to show respect, to consider the welfare of others, and to keep your word don’t end when you leave the office. Leaders who fall short with commitments to friends, family, or close associates are unlikely to establish enduring trust with colleagues, suppliers, or customers. You just can't fake character.

3) Integrity is a habit. Leaders who strive to do the right thing under all circumstances know that being trustworthy takes effort, awareness and work. Trustworthy leaders have generally worked long and hard on their own character building. They’re often quite intentional about fixing things about themselves, about receiving feedback and about learning from it and making changes. In the same way a mechanic keeps a car in top running condition, high-trust individuals monitor and tune their behavior, always striving to do better by team members and customers alike.

Anyone wanting to build a high-trust organization must start by looking in the mirror. Personal character is foundational for interpersonal trust. And organizations in which leaders have integrity stand a much better chance of building trust from the top down, and bottom up.

6 Tips for Creating Amazing Content BY KEVIN DAUM

The great thing about marketers is that they love to write about themselves. So you can just imagine how happy they are now that content marketing is the hot trend for success. For those who still don't understand what it's all about, here is a simple explanation.

Instead of advertising, you become your own publisher of powerful writing, pictures and video, all with the purpose of attracting and maintaining a loyal following who will hopefully buy your products or services someday.

It sounds easy, but there is a lot of competition for people's attention, so unless you are creating truly interesting and engaging content for people who actually want or need your offering, you're simply wasting time and effort.

Here are six suggestions on how to create content that will engage loyal fans who will buy.

1. Identify Patterns

People find value in reading content that helps explain what they already see but can't necessarily articulate. They will see you as a sage if you can take seemingly random events and make sense of them. The familiarity of what they see coupled with a new perspective and understanding gives them an AHA! moment that excites them. If you can tie it directly to your product or service, you can move them closer to the sale.

2. Address Their Pain

Empathy is a great way to take first time readers and covert them to loyal followers. In fact it's the first step in any sales process. If you identify the pain people have in your industry, you appear as a knowledgeable expert who can help resolve the situation. If your tone is academic, people will respond as if you are teaching rather than selling. And if you can provide solutions that are not specifically your product or service, you will gain credibility as an information source that is willing to help first and sell later.

3. Entertain

Companies should be concerned about their image, and should take care not to present one that is dull and boring. People have lots of choice when it comes to reading content and they will subscribe to content that makes them laugh, cry and feel engaged. They love stories that take them away. I'm not suggesting you have to sing and dance (although it's been known to help in some cases). But find ways to add charm and let the information unfold with copious amounts of storytelling and humor, even when the subject is serious.

4. Include the Obscure

If your content has the same information as everyone else in your space then why would anyone make the effort to follow you? Find interesting and unusual angles and facts to put in your blogs and white papers so that people get excited while reading your material. You need to give your readers the awesome experience, which meets their need, isentertaining and has the unexpected. Anything less is pure mediocrity and is a waste of time.

5. Leave 'em Wanting More

Don't try and do everything in a single piece of content. Regardless if it's a blog, video or white paper, go for a single message. Pick a single aspect of information you want to communicate and build the content around that one idea. The more information you crowd into the piece, the less your reader or viewer will remember. The idea is to give them one or two really valuable nuggets so that they will come back for more later.

6. Give People Something to Do

The surest way to give someone value is to provide them with an actionable takeaway. It's even better when people can take action on your suggestion immediately and see results in short order. If you get people in the habit of taking your advice on a regular basis to improve their process, whatever it is, then they will be much more receptive to following your instructions when you ask them to check out your offering.

Remember that Content Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. But with consideration, planning and a little creativity, you can gain a following that will grow your business with loyal and avid supporters.

Personal Branding

“Personal Branding” according to Nicolas Bordas is a concept that is easy to mock (if you haven’t yet seen The Onion’s send up of the term, I recommend it). Indeed, for many, including respected colleagues of mine in my industry, the idea of “personal branding” seems mushy at best: where a brand can be applied with consistency and scale to a product or service, it cannot be relevant to a person who is complex and multifaceted. I do not disagree with this rationale. However, I believe that personal branding is important to understand for anybody who lives, works, and socializes in our world today. This makes sense: in an age where we are constantly branding ourselves on social media (including LinkedIn) and where the average worker remains at their job for 4.4 years, creating a personal brand is an essential skill in marketing oneself.

 

I personally do not think there is any alchemy to personal branding. Although a presence on social networks can help, one’s “brand” is simply the output of one’s work and they way they treat other people. Today it is impossible to construct a personal brand that is not in keeping with one’s true personality and output.

The most iconic “branded CEO” was undoubtedly Steve Jobs, who will be remembered in equal measure for the ways he changed personal computing, music, and telecommunications as well as his controversial management style. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him was his understanding of his own intuition. His intuition led him to name a tech company “Apple” instead of something more conventional (“SJSW” would have been appropriate given the two founders); his intuition pushed him to do what he loved. It gave birth to the iPod, the iPhone, and investing in Pixar. As those who read the amazing Water Isaacson biography of Jobs know, a trip to India he made in his youth was life changing. As he said of the trip: “Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”

When people ask me for tips on personal branding, I often tell them to look towards celebrities who have successfully branded themselves. Below, here are three impressive figures in business with strong personal brands who serve as inspirations.

 

Whenever anyone asks me about branding, be it personal or professional, I tell them to look to Richard Branson. Without any formal business school training, Branson was able to intuitively craft one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Despite the myriad markets that Virgin operates in and its diversity of products and services it represents, Virgin still remains a coherent, if enormous mega-brand. As Branson himself said: “We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.”

What’s the take-home message for personal branding? Branson himself has been the best representation of his brand: at once flamboyant and approachable, anything that is stamped with the “Virgin” label gets an automatic endorsement from Branson himself. What he values: risk taking, fun, novelty, and decency, are always present in whatever he does.

In the 1990’s, Martha Stewart was at the top of her game: at the helm of a best-selling lifestyle magazine, hosting a hugely popular TV show, and partnering with major retailers, she leveraged her image of good taste and domestic perfection to staggering success. That is, until she went to jail for insider trading.

 

Although many thought that Stewart’s days as the last word on domestic entertaining were over, she cannily rebuilt her empire but with a new Martha: after serving her time, she let people see more of the cracks on her surface. Changing her show’s format to a manicured, pre-taped show, to a more freewheeling talk show format in front of an audience allowed for more fun. Because her dirty laundry was already aired in public she didn’t hide being in jail: she answered fan letters and she orchestrated her release from prison in a highly public way. Even though Martha Stewart’s business continues to make waves, she’s remained true to herself. As Martha has said before, “My life is my business. My business is my life.”

When the world first met Bill Gates, he was young, gawky, and by all accounts a visionary. At the helm of Microsoft, he led the company through rapid expansion, gaining the reputation of an industry captain and a force to be reckoned with. Although he was roundly criticized when testifying at the 1998 Microsoft anti-trust hearing—Gates was not immune to all criticism. Unlike other tech titans, Gates became aware that his vast wealth could be used for good. After extensive reading on the legacies of Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, he and his wife founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 1994. To date, Gates has already given over a third of his fortune to charity, and he and his wife aim to donate 95% of their wealth within their lifetimes to social causes. What’s more, his model of philanthropy has caught on, notably thanks to his Giving Pledge that he launched with Warren Buffett.

Bill Gates’ legacy will be nuanced. In addition to being an iconic figure in the world of personal computing, and a savvy businessman, he is also a leader in philanthropy in corporate world. Gates’ brand is that of someone immensely intelligent who has succeeded in creating enormous structures: be they aggressive corporations, or well endowed foundations.

Creating a personal brand isn’t so difficult. The main component is of course what you create and how you treat the people you interact with. How you define yourself, how you recover from set backs, and how you find ways to move forward in your career and to allow change to happen can only help you.

Turn those breakers back on

WE CAN DO BETTER!

A couple of days ago a storm came through here that was crazy. I’ve never seen that much rain. It reminded me of when I was living in my old house. Every time there was a bad storm I had to go through some major things to get the lights back on in the house. One time there was a storm so bad that lightning hit the house and all the power went out. I looked across the street and my neighbor had power, so I knew the problem was just in my house.

Stay with me, I’m going somewhere here…

I knew I had to get to the circuit breaker to fix what was going on. Now, in my old house, the breaker box was in the attic, and in order to get to it I had to climb a ladder, go up a flight of stairs and then climb over an air conditioning unit, all the while trying to not step through the ceiling joist or I would go straight through the sheet rock. And imagine trying to do all of this in the dark. But I had to do it if I wanted lights on in my house.

I got to the breaker box and started turning the breakers back on. For those of you who are not up on your DIY (do it yourself, LOL), the circuit breakers protect the house from further damage by turning themselves off if they get too much power or pull too much power to them.

As I was thinking about this yesterday I started thinking about us as people, as souls... me, you and any other human on this planet. What is common about us all is that we all, at one time or another, will go through or have been through a storm, and sometimes the storms are so bad that they turn off circuit breakers in our lives. We can look at others who have gone through the same storm and they are fine, like my neighbor across the street. They had power, but I was in the dark. Same storm, but it affected me differently. Many people can have the same experience and get over it but it affects each of us differently. Never let someone tell you to just get over it because they did. It’s not that simple.

When circuit breakers shut down in our lives they usually turn off to protect us from trauma, but just because they turn off doesn’t mean that they are supposed to stay off. A lot of times we leave them off because we don’t want to do all that is necessary to reach the breaker box to turn them back on. So what happens? We begin to live a life that is not as bright and fulfilling as it was originally designed to be. You just stay in the dark because it’s easier to not go through what you need to go through for healing. Trust me, I’ve been there, lived there for a while until I realized that I wanted all the lights on in my soul. I had to get these breakers back on.

Why am I saying this to you? Well I know that God designed all of us to live the fullest life that we can, to live in the light, love and joy. It is my hope and prayer today that you will start to do the work to turn on some of the breakers that may have been turned off in your life by difficult moments. What do I mean by that? If you have a dream and you stopped dreaming because it got too hard, that’s a breaker that went off. Turn it back on. If you decided that you wouldn’t love anyone else because you’ve been hurt, that’s a breaker that’s been turned off. Turn it back on. If you have decided to give up on life because nothing seems to go right, that’s a breaker that went off. Turn it back on. If you have given up on your kids because they won’t do the right thing, that’s a breaker that went off. Turn it back on.

You see what I mean? Go through your life and look at all the people who have hurt you. Look at all the situations that have left you in the dark. Turn those breakers back on. Live in a full house. One of my favorite scriptures says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.” Light up your soul! Tyler Perry