Bankers Vow to Build Trust with Increased Lending

A fascinating headline in the AP tonight. The top bankers in the U.S. are now concentrating on rebuilding the public trust.

We are certainly going to be watching. In our opinion, there is nothing more important in this crisis than the public trust – and it has been violated with impunity.

The leaders of our financial institutions would be well-served to learn a valuable lesson. Stakeholder trust that you earn by leading with integrity, making sound business decisions, and exuding compassion and respect to valued stakeholders is far more important than short-term profits.

Lead. Thrive. Trust and be Trusted!

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Trust is a Competency

This article is brought to you by one of our heroes: Mr. Stephen M. R. Covey.

As we develop Synergy’s Return on Trust model, we highlight examples of increased trust driving business performance, customer loyalty, and employee passion – even in our most difficult economic times. Enjoy. Thrive. Trust and Be Trusted.

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
– Marcel Proust, French novelist

One of the most significant things today’s leaders and organizations can do to achieve and sustain superior performance is to look at “trust” through new eyes.

Typically, trust is assumed, taken for granted, misunderstood and severely underestimated. As the French proverb says, “Fish discover water last.” In other words, fish are so immersed in the presence of water that they are unaware of its existence – until the water gets too low or becomes polluted. In the same way, people discover trust last. We become so immersed in the presence of trust that we take its existence for granted – until the trust gets dangerously low or polluted. Then we become painfully aware of the effects of its poor quality or absence.

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Organizational Trust, Trust in the Chief Executive, and Work Satisfaction.

A great piece on organizational trust from our friends at Entrepreneur.com

by Perry, Ronald W., Mankin, Lawrence D.
Public Personnel Management • Summer 2007 •

Especially in the past decade, employees have begun to change their view of the organizations in which they work, with traditional employee-organization bonds becoming weaker. (1) The private sector has seen the collapse of several large corporations, sometimes with managers realizing huge personal profit while employees lost their pensions. Public organizations lack comparable scandals, although the Orange County, California financial collapse is memorable. Downsizing, privatizing and contracting out practices generated by economic pressures have eroded what is usually seen as a strong identification of employees with the governments for whom they work. (2) Interestingly, governments have continued to outsource, and a recent report by Segal, Moore and Blair (3) argues that outsourcing is an important trend and advocates the outsourcing of human resources functions. At the same time, Nyhan (4) argues that the future of public organizations rests in the creation of trust in management and the organization as a means of positively influencing not only quality of work life but efficiency and effectiveness of performance. Aon Consulting (5) studied the U.S. workforce and, like Nyhan, found that “building commitment must be a strategic goal emanating from senior leadership.” Their premise was that employees who trust their managers and organizations are freer to innovate, energize and produce.

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