The Most Trustworthy Business and Professional Leaders – the Rosters Are Out Today From Trust Across America / Trust Around the World

Trust! For many of us, when a critical incident or crisis occurs, one of the first words that come to mind is “trust,” as in “they really broke the trust with us” or “the organization can’t be trusted” (as in the statements made) or “the leaders can’t be trusted.”

Apply this to now-familiar settings: Wells Fargo bankers and the security of your personal bank accounts. BP and deepwater ocean drilling or Alaska drilling. Equifax and your personal financial information. Valeant pharma and drug pricing – and alleged gouging.

In a world of those little swirling computer screen circles, and IT dominating our business & persona lives…threats can now be everywhere — internet hacking and phishing abounds – and we think: who can we trust with your information? That becomes a conscious and subconscious thought process on both a business and personal basis for many of us.

In business and professional life, trust is a valuable and precious commodity. Warren Buffett has observed, “…it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it…if you think about that, you will do things differently…”

“Trustworthy” is a very valuable characteristic, we would say!

And so does an organization that has been identifying the “Top Thought Leaders in Trust” think that way: the Trust Across America / Trust Around the World (TAA/TAW, owned by Next Decade, Inc.)

The founder and guiding spirit is CEO Barbara Brooks Kimmel, who 10 years ago created the program and its proprietary FACTS® Framework (used to measure the trustworthiness of more than 1,500 U.S. public companies). FACTS incorporates five indicators of trust and integrity – Financial stability, Accounting conservativeness, Corporate governance, Transparency and Sustainability.

Barbara is also the editor of the Trust INC. book series and runs the global Trust Alliance.

Every year since 2008, TAA/TAW assembles judges and conducts a survey and analysis to select a small universe of the Top Thought Leaders in Trust. After five continuous years on the annual list, a small number of awardees receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. This year’s lifetime roster additions include:

John Baldoni – President, the Baldoni Consulting organization.
Donna Boehme – Principal of Compliance Strategists LLC.
Doug Conant – former CEO of Campbell Soup and founder, Conant Leadership.
Robert Easton – Chairman and Senior Manager of Accenture Australia and New Zealand.
Mark S. Fernandes – CEO of Capitalism 2.0, Inc.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel – CEO of Trust Across America.
Holly Latty-Mann – Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Cofounder, and President of The Leadership Trust.
David Reiling – CEO of Sunrise Banks and social entrepreneur.

TAA / TAW is the leading global program devoted to researching and building tools to elevate organizational trust. A Google search will return over 1300 entries.

In 2015, the organization added the “Lifetime Honorees” designation to 12 professionals. I was honored to be one of the original twelve, after five years of being the awardee for the annual award. In 2016 and in 2017 seven more professionals were added to the roster (each year), and now in 2018, there are eight professionals added.

Ninety-one individuals were named to the 2017 individual award, including for the second year in a row, G&A Institute Cofounder and Executive Vice President Louis D. Coppola.

You can see the full list in the latest TRUST! Magazine here: http://trustacrossamerica.com/magazine.shtml

Of course, Lou and I are humbled and proud to receive such honors.

TAA / TAW points to the organization’s core values and principles, which are excellent “north stars” for professionals’ and their organizations’ guidance:

Integrity – Quality – Community – Objectivity – Credibility – Success.

You can learn more about these and the organization at: http://www.trustacrossamerica.com/about-words.shtml

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Do you have a nominee for the Top Thought Leaders 2019 award? The nominations are now open – there’s information at: http://www.trustacrossamerica.com/cgi-bin/nominations.cgi

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Adding my thoughts….

Trust – this apparently comes down to us for common understanding and use from ancient languages. There are derivations from the Old Norse – the language of the wandering Vikings (“traust” and “trow”). From the Old Dutch (“troosten”). And the German or Teutonic tongue (“trosten”). And more from the Gothic English-the Anglo Saxon roots of spoken English today (“trausti”).

These ancient and current tongues convey to us: Truth. Comfort. Trustworthy. An agreement or covenant – to be true to one’s words and deeds. To be believed.

And therefore – to be trusted and trustworthy. Worth striving for, we would say in these often chaotic days of the 21st Century!

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There’s information on the 2017 awards in the news from TAA: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/announcing-2018-top-thought-leaders-in-trust-300589490.html