Trust in Balance

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

TRUST IN THE BALANCE


Written by Robert Bruce
Shaw

Book Review By - Anand Kumar

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

Executive summary

This book underscores the importance of trust in today’s business environment. The book is
organized in four parts. The first part tries to describe the business forces that are making trust
even more important and even more elusive. Second part describes the key imperatives needed to
build trust: achieving results, acting with integrity and demonstrating concern. In the third part the
author talks about the key focal points within the organisation for building trust. He also
elaborates on the role of the leadership in building a high trust organisation or team and talks
about the architecture and culture of the organisation that is needed to sustain appropriate levels
of trust that will lead to improved performance. In the last part the author examines specific trust
dilemmas, such as those that arise during downsizing and reengineering efforts. The author also
presents effective approaches for overcoming the challenges and obstacles inherent in situations
of extreme distrust. Lastly he addresses the problem of sustaining trust in the face of uncertainty
and competing demands.
Using examples from Hewlett Packard, AlliedSignal, Motorola, GE, and Continental,
Robert Bruce Shaw explains why trust is a critical business issue for the leaders. He illustrates
how trust is won or lost, and details pragmatic action steps for building and sustaining trust across
the organization.

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

Book review

Success in business primarily requires two things: a winning competitive strategy and superb
organizational execution. Distrust is an enemy to both. The importance of trust becomes clear
when we try to imagine a world without it. In such a world, we would live in a state of chronic
suspicion. At best, people would be indifferent to others. At worst, they would be fearful of each
other. In a world without trust, leaders are seen as self-serving and manipulative. Few people are
willing to follow them. A commitment to a project or goal becomes meaningless since it might, or
might not, be fulfilled. All transactions take place in cash, as people do not trust that they will
receive payment for products delivered or services rendered.
While some of these characteristics are all too familiar, a world completely devoid of
trust can exist only in our imagination. We cannot survive without others. Thus, we trust because
we have no choice but to depend on other people. Business is built on a myriad of subtle
agreements and obligations that transcend any legal stipulations. Every leader bases his or her
actions on information that others within the organization provide. In short we have no choice but
to deal with the dilemmas of trust, for trust is at the core of all business activity, virtually all
economic activity is carried out by groups of people who depend on each other.
The reality of today’s business environment is clear: embrace change or die. Competitive
advantage arises not from a firm’s historical strengths but from its ability to build new strengths
in relation to emerging threats and opportunities. In other words, competitive advantage comes
from an organization’s ability to use its current resources to replace what worked in the past with
new and innovative approaches. Building new strengths requires that firms abandon at least in
part the past practices. This is where trust comes in. trust increases the likelihood that people will
abandon past practices in favour of new approaches.
We are seeing the emergence of new types of organizational structures and teams that
require a higher degree of autonomy and collaboration. Old forms of control are being replaced
buy innovative approaches that give people far greater power than at any time in the past. For
example, the front desk clerks in some five star hotels now have the authority to delete substantial
amount from a guest’s bill if a mistake has been made or poor service provided. The strict
policies and procedures that accompany bureaucracy institutionalize distrust. After all,
bureaucracies are based on the assumption that people will abuse power if we entrust them with
it. Trust is replaced buy formal regulations that force people to behave in ways deemed
appropriate by those in positions of authority.

The boundaries of trust


Many believe that trust implies a complete absence of organizational controls. Some even
find the word control at odds with the idea of trust. While high trust organizations usually have
fewer and less rigid controls, they still have them. The reason is easily stated some people and
groups, although a small number, will act in ways that can harm an organization. We have seen,
for example, firms that had insufficient controls. In the case of Barings bank, a twenty eight year
old employee was allowed to engage in enormous and risky financial trades that ultimately cost
his bank $1.3 billion in losses. These losses consumed the investment bank’s $900 million in
capital and forced the 233 year old institution into bankruptcy and eventual sale to pay off its
debts.

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

Defining trust
The word trust is derived from the German word ‘trost’, which suggests comfort. It
begins with an assessment of another’s capabilities or character. In most cases, we trust those
who demonstrate they are worthy of it. Yet trust is not always rooted in past experience with
others. This is how trust is distinguished from confidence. Confidence arises as a result of
specific knowledge; it is built on reason and fact. In contrast, trust is based, in part, on faith. We
sometimes give our trust in spite of evidence that might suggest we should feel some caution, if
not outright suspicion, about relying on another. Trust, however, is not absolute faith. Pure faith is
beyond reason: those with such faith can justify any event or view, even if it conflicts with their
worldview; this is what we mean by blind faith. Trust then is more simple confidence and less
than blind faith.
We trust those who meet our expectations. Trust thus hinges on our assessment of
another’s capacity to meet our needs. We evaluate people’s trustworthiness in relation to what we
expect from them. Understanding another’s expectations is therefore essential in determining how
best to build a trusting relationship. But the implicit or “background” expectations are the ones
that create the unseen land mines in the process of establishing and maintaining trust. For
instance, in some firms people expect lifetime employment even though no one has actually
provided such a guarantee. In fact, employees may hold this expectation even when leadership ha
told them that success in the market place is the only way to ensure job security. Background
expectations such as these are taken for granted until an event makes them explicit.

Thresholds of trust
People have different trust thresholds based on their experiences; the point at which trust
becomes distrust depends on the individuals involved. For example, some patient will never
return to a physician who misdiagnoses even once. The factors that are important in the
establishment of a threshold are: 1) the situation, 2) the person who is going to trust and 3) the
person who is to be trusted.
Since in order to function in the world, we each must trust others to some degree, the
questions facing all of us as individuals and as members of teams, organizations, and society are:
1) how much do we trust others in general? and 2) whom do we trust in specific situations?

Framework for building trust


To be successful, one has to increase the radius of trust. The key imperatives in building high
trust organizations and teams are achieving results, acting with integrity, and demonstrating
concern, as shown in the following figure:

Key Leverage Points Trust imperatives

LEADERSHIP
PRACTICES

ACHIEVING RESULTS

ORGANIZATIONAL
TRUST
ARCHITECTURE
DEMONS-
TRATING ACTING
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CONCERN INTEGRITY
ORGANIZATIONAL
Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

Achieving results
The first and perhaps the most important imperative in earning trust in a business setting-
- or indeed, in any setting that demands action and results-- involves people’s performance in
fulfilling their obligations and commitments. The results are key: even if people’s motives are
characterized by goodwill, they will not retain our trust if they are incompetent or powerless to
fulfill the expectations we have of them. In such cases, we deem them unworthy of trust not
because they are malicious but because they cannot deliver. For example, when we rely on a
surgeon in the operating room, we are more interested in his skill and competence as a
professional then in his level of personal concern.

Acting with integrity


The second imperative for trust is acting with integrity. By integrity, we mean honesty n
one’s words and consistency in one’s actions. In most cases, we trust those who behave
consistently in their words and actions, who truly live by the motto of “do what you say you will
do.” If, for example, we see inconsistency in another’s words or deeds, we may conclude hat he is
at odds with our interests or unable to fulfill his professional responsibilities. Even the perception
of inconsistency can result in increasing our distrust. Trust requires that our most important
expectations in a given situation be fulfilled. Gaps between what we anticipate and what actually
occurs give rise to distrust. Imagine that you have loaned a large sum of money to a friend who
promises to repay the amount in two months. Time passes and the loan is not repaid. As more
time passes, you are likely to begin to distrust, questioning why the loan is outstanding. There
may be a number of sound reasons for the delay, but in the absence of an explanation, you will
begin to question your friend’s motives and become suspicious. The impact of integrity on trust is
particularly important early in the history of a relationship, as each side assesses the degree to
which it is willing to risk vulnerability.

Demonstrating concern
The third imperative for trust is demonstrating concern for others. At the most basic level,
we trust those who care about us. We those whom we believe understand our concerns and will
act in a way that meets or at least does not conflict with our needs. This element of concern
involves the degree to which we believe others are supporting our own well-being or that of the
whole. We expect those we rust to remain loyal to our interests even if future events provide an
incentive to do otherwise. In other words, the imperative concern requires that those we trust be
responsive to our needs even in the face of potentially conflicting pressures. It does not require
that those we trust subjugate their own needs in all situations, but we do assume that these
individuals will not deliberately hurt us or take advantage of our reliance on them. Concern for
others as an imperative for trust goes beyond caring for us as individuals; it includes a broader
concern for the groups of which w are parts. We expect those we trust to extend their concern to
our family, our work team, or our company. This is particularly important in relation to trusting
those in positions of leadership and authority, as their concern or lack of it can have an impact not
only on individuals but on larger groups as well.

The balancing act


To sustain rust, organizations must achieve results, act with integrity, and demonstrate
concern. The dilemma is that these three imperatives can conflict with each other. A leader, for

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

example, may need to reengineer her firm to remain competitive, but in doing so, he may have to
let thousands of people go. No matter how well done, the act of terminating thousands of people
will result in the perception that the leader does not care about the workforce. In this case, the
need to achieve results is, at least in terms of perception, at odds with the need to demonstrate
concern.
Trust is also based on perceptions of consistency in our actions and words. In most cases,
trust declines when we act inconsistently and fail to follow through on our commitments. Yet the
nature of today’s business environment makes commitment increasingly short lived as conditions
call for rapid changes in a firm’s strategy and policy. This may mean that an organization’s
directions will he in constant flux. As a result, employee may come to believe that the
organization and its leaders are failing to follow through on their stated intentions.

Monitoring trust
We manage the risks that come with depending on others by assessing—and constantly
reassessing—their trustworthiness. In this way, we are able to balance the need to simplify a
complex world and build supportive relationships through trust with the need to reduce our
vulnerability through distrust and other mechanisms that help protect us from undesirable
outcomes. This is particularly important for those in leadership positions who need both to trust
others and to ensure that such trust is warranted. Most of us attempt to qualify our trust based on a
sound assessment of others’ willingness and ability to meet the expectations we have of them.
The key imperatives—achieving results, acting with integrity, and demonstrating concern for
others—help explain our assessments of another’s trustworthiness. In addition, these imperatives
may determine why some organizations develop appropriate levels of trust while others find
themselves being too restricted (from trusting too little) or too vulnerable (from trusting too
much).

Building trust through leadership


The three imperatives of achieving results, acting with integrity, and demonstrating
concern simplify a complex set of factors that contribute to trust and distrust. Of course, building
an organization or team capable of realizing these imperatives is difficult even under the best of
circumstances. Achieving results in today’s increasingly competitive business environment
demands more skill and discipline than at any time in the past. And mastering the tradeoffs
among results, integrity, and concern places enormous demands on even the most successful
organizations and their leaders.
To better understand trust, we can start by examining the personal attributes and
behaviour of an organization’s current and past leaders. Highly credible leaders can, through the
shear impact of their individual influence, overcome distrust and create a trust-based
environment. In contrast, incompetent or unethical leaders can quickly erode whatever trust exists
within an organization or team.
The critical role of leadership is clear when examining a founder’s impact, positive or
negative, on the level of trust within a firm. In some cases, the founder’s legacy with regard to
trust can last for decades. As a positive example, we have seen that bill Hewlett’s and David
Packard’s actions created a set of practices and values that have fostered a high trust level within
HP over the past so many years.
Leadership’s role in building high trust organizations involves three related tasks:
1) Personally modeling trustworthy behavior
2) Building trustworthy leadership teams
3) Developing trust sustaining organizational practices
Balancing the demands presented by these tasks is no small challenge. Leaders must personally
exhibit trustworthy and trusting behavior. At the same time, they must direct their attention to the

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

architecture (the structures and procedures that formally influence how a group operates) and the
culture (the informal values, rules, and operating principles) of organizational life.

Leadership: achieving results


The first requirement of leadership is to ensure that the organizations competitively
viable. In a business setting, trust begins by demonstrating the competence required for an
organization or team to prosper and grow. This does not simply equate to technical skill, raw
intelligence, or industry knowledge. It involves a constellation of attributes that fit the needs of a
particular point in its history. For example, many rapidly growing organizations are led by
entrepreneurs with enormous drive to achieve challenging performance milestones. Yet when the
challenges shift to those of managing the organization’s ever increasing size, this style of
leadership can become less effective. The results will vary depending on the challenges facing an
organization.

Leadership: acting with integrity


In addition to achieving results, leadership must act with integrity in order to be trusted.
At its core, this involves complete honesty in relation to others within the organization.

Leadership: demonstrating concern


People within the organization need to feel that they are more than a means to an end.
Without demonstrated concern on the part of leadership, people may believe that leadership cares
only about profit and will do whatever is required to make its quarterly targets. Establishing a
shared vision is not an analytic exercise; rather, it shows people that leadership understands and
cares about their well being beyond their economic contribution. This is not to suggest a return to
old forms of paternalism; instead, leaders must be aware of their influence in motivation people to
strive toward a common objective. Leaders need to recognize and integrate the views and
concerns of others into how they run their business, demonstrating that these concerns have an
influence on their actions.

Developing trust sustaining mechanisms


Building trust is a paradoxical process. Trust results from doing many fundamental things
right rather than from direct attempts to raise the level of trust within an organization or team.
The evolution of Hewlett Packard as a high trust culture helps illustrate how a firm establishes
and then sustains trust over a period of decades. Whether a leader is trying to build a team or a
high performance organization, the goal is not simply to increase trust. The goal is to increase the
likelihood of success buy cultivation the appropriate level of trust in a given situation. Trust is a
means of enhancing business performance over time.

Developing the architecture of trust


Building organizations that sustain trust requires an understanding of the firm level
dynamics that shape relationships among people. All told, building trust requires attention to the
design and management to organizational structures and processes. Every organization and team
face a unique set of challenges that determines the details of how trust is built or destroyed. A
firm’s history is particularly important in shaping people’s expectations and their general
inclination to trust or distrust others. Similarly, the business environment in which each
organization or team operates results in a specific set of pressures and dilemmas that have an
impact on trust levels within the organization.
Formal approaches to building trust involve an organization’s objectives, structures, and
management processes. There are a number of important actions to take:
• Promote aggressive business targets
• Develop aligned performance accountabilities

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

• Build high ownership organizational structures


• Ensure superior talent at every level
• Maintain systems to share information
• Institute a few rigorous strategic controls

Developing the culture of trust


Designing and implementing the formal structures and processes needed to sustain trust is
a challenging task. But many business leaders believe that the hardest part of building
competitive organizations and teams is managing the culture, or what is often considered the soft
side of organizational life. They understand that values, operating principles, and norms are
difficult to manage yet demand attention, for these are often key in determining how well an
organization or team operates.
Culture refers to those informal aspects of organizational life that have an impact of the
performance of a group. As T. Ohno, the leader of Toyota, has observed, succ3ess comes not
from an organization’s formal systems but from the spirit that supports those systems. The most
critical actions for developing the appropriate culture for a high trust organization or team are
• Develop a common vision and shared view of competitive realities: Trust is more
likely when the goals or objectives for the organization are clearly articulated and
accepted. One effective way of doing this is to find and emphasize a larger cause
capable of uniting individuals in spite of the myriad differences that separate them.
For this, leaders often look to the higher order mission of the organization. Just as
people typically need a common objective in order to overcome their individual
differences and trust one another, many also need an external competitor on whom to
focus. For example, most American firms in the automotive industry use Toyota,
which is significantly smaller than GM, as the target for their efforts to improve the
quality and cost of their vehicles.
• Living by genuinely felt values and operating principles: trust is more likely when
people share a common set of general principles and norms. In any professions,
norms of various types guide the behaviour of members. Trust is enhanced because
we assume that these members have internalized an established set of norms and thus
can be relied on to behave in a manner consistent with our expectations.
Relationships in business are far too complex to be completely covered by written
agreement or in depth contingency plans. Consequently, trust requires a set of overall
values and norms that can guide the behaviour of individuals and teams. People at all
levels need to behave in a way that is consistent with the espoused values of the
organization, but this is especially true at the leadership level. A leader who acts as if
people are simply a means to and end will undermine the values of a firm that
believes in respect for the individual. The senior leader therefore must take great
pains to ensure that the top leadership cadre lives within the parameters of the firm’s
accepted values and operating principles.
• Building familiarity across levels and groups: it is hard to trust those who you do not
know. In most cases, distrust increases in proportion to our lack of familiarity with
those on whom we depend. At the simplest level, trust require some real or perceived
access to others, which allows us to determine if we have a common agenda or
shared values and norms.

Encouraging a culture of risk taking and experimentation


The importance of a bias in favour of action is evident when we consider the extreme
opposite a highly rigid and inflexible structure where actions are taken only as a last resort. In
these settings, people can come to believe that the organization or team as a whole is ill prepared

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to deal with a rapidly changing business environment and unwilling to trust people to meet
competitive pressures. In a business setting, the ability to make decisions quickly and move
forward with initiatives is key in sustaining trust.
A bias for action, for encouraging people to act decisively, inevitably results in a
significant number of mistakes. Firms that set high performance objectives, move fast, and take
risks understand that failures will occur. The key, in relation to trust, is to develop approaches
that ensure both that these experiences and thus decrease the likelihood of making the same
mistakes again.
Once the mechanisms are in place to contain the downside of taking risks, a culture that
allows people to deal ore effectively with failure is necessary. There should be trust that those
who fail will be given an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and become better at their jobs
as a result.
Consider, for example, the success of 3M in forecasting innovation over its history. The
firm has met a well-known objective of bringing in 25%of its total revenue from products
introduced within the last five-year period. It is also recognized for providing its researchers with
up to 15% of their time to work on projects that they personally deem important, without formal
authorization from supervisions.

Making visible a few powerful symbols of trust


Most companies that have developed high trust cultures have a rich assortment of stories
or artifacts that reflect the need for trust. Hewlett Packard, for example, is replete with stress
about the firm’s founders that speak to this need.
Beyond open access to tools and parts, Hewlett Packard has developed a myriad of other
trust symbols. One is the practice of engineers leaving everything they are working on out on
their desk so that others can understand their work and more important, make suggestions for
improvement.

Shaping the culture of trust


The key point is that leaders should spend sufficient time understanding and influencing
the direction of their firm’s informal culture. It is also important to note that culture is usually
impacted indirectly 5hrough finding creative ways to address such fundamental business issues as
the firm’s competitive standing or the need to surpass an adversary in the marketplace.

Managing the dilemmas of trust


In today’s highly competitive world, mistakes are inevitable. They occur as business seek
new competitive advantage and, in doing so, take risks that were unnecessary even ten or twenty
ears ago. Mistakes are also likely to be more visible, since the business press has grown and
become more aggressive in it’s reporting. Big mistakes can erode confidence in an organization
and call into question the belief that the organization and its members will remain competitive.
They can also undermine the credibility of those leading the organization.
Highly visible mistakes cause people to question whether the organization and its leaders
can achieve results—one of the imperatives for trust. In this case, the dilemma is achieving
predicable results in a world where mistakes are inevitable and are part of the price of doing
business. In situations in which strategic errors have eroded confidence in an organization’s
ability to prosper the following steps are helpful.

1. Taking responsibility for the problem


Suspicion increases when those responsible for mistakes are seen putting a positive “spin” on the
situation (in an attempt to portray failure as something closer to success). Suspicion is also likely
when people distance themselves from the negative outcomes of their actions (in an attempt to

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show that they are not responsible for the mistakes that were made). Building trust requires that
those responsible for the errors ambit them and as necessary, explain the factors that produced the
failure. This does not need to be a protracted process, but it must be visible enough so that people
recognize that those involved have taken responsibility for their actions. Goizueta, CEO of Coca
Cola, took complete responsibility for the failed introduction of New Coke and acted quickly to
correct it.
2. Extracting learning from failures
In additions to taking responsibility for the problem, Goizueta took the next step and found the
lesson in failure. He has observed that New Coke’s failed introduction was a turning point for
him in recognizing the importance of the Coke brand in the minds of the customers. Trust
requires that failures be openly discussed, fully understood, and as appropriate, communicated to
people throughout the organization. Both formal mechanisms and informal norms are needed to
ensure that this occurs.

3. Enforcing accountability across all levels


Suspicion is to be expected when a double standard exists within an organization. In some firms,
employees believe that senior leadership is rarely held accountable for its mistakes. Similarly,
certain organizational groups can become “ sacred cows” and be immune from the consequences
of their failures. In many organizations for example corporate staff groups are held to a lower
performance standard than that applied to field operations. Trust requires that people at all levels
and in all groups be held accountable for their mistakes. This does not necessarily mean that they
should be punished or fired. The consequences for failure will vary depending on the severity of
the mistake and the culture of the company.

4. Demonstrating progress
Ultimately, trust is recovered after strategic mistakes by taking decisive actions that move an
organization or team forward. In many cases, this involves bringing in a new cadre of senior
leaders who represent a new approach. The goal for leadership is to restore confidence through
actions that indicate the organization is willing to do what is required to move forward.

Basic violations

As with strategic mistakes, ethical violations can erode trust within an organization. This is
particularly true in relation to those in leadership position.
Leaders acting in a deceptive or immoral way will erode their own credibility and, over
time, the confidence that people have in the organization as a whole.
Trust requires that violators of group standards be dealt with swiftly. Trust has a tough
side that demands fair but harsh treatment of those who are dishonest, who steal from the firm
of its clients or in other ways act unethically. Violations of this type are more than an
individual affair; they impact the reputation and culture within an organization and must be
addressed with speed and conviction
Rarely are individuals’ actions completely independent of a larger set of cultural norms
and practices. Thus, violations of ethical standards may indicate that and organization’s
culture is motivating people to act unethically. In the most benign cases, a lack of discussion
about ethical standards can produce a culture of tolerance that is inappropriate in a few key
areas. It is critical to look at the larger organization and assess to what degree its culture and
management practices have influenced the actions of the individuals or groups caught
violating standards.

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Brute force management


Many large organizations have a history of delivering results. But in some of these firms,
there is little concern for employees. When the drive to achieve results overwhelms any
perceived needs to demonstrate concern, employees come to believe that they are simply a
means to an end and that they have little or no value to the firm beyond what can be extracted
from them. In these organizations, no one feels safe. Mistakes are viewed as unacceptable.
Those who offend the most powerful fear the loss of their jobs. One sign that this type of
culture exists is a way of executive departures. High turnover is common in cultures where
this quarter’s results are the only thing that matters.
A number of steps can be taken to deal with the distrust evident when a brute force
mentality has permeated an organization. Some of them are—
• Acting on values and principles—a drive for results must be balances with a more general
set of principles and values around how people should operate within a firm or team. This
does not mean that every contingency must be spelled out. Core principles on the human
side of the business, however, are important. These include standards of integrity and
honesty, teamwork, and mutual support.
• Developing a culture where people matter—those firms whishing to move beyond a brute
force mentality should establish a number of formal an informal practices that underscore
the importance of organizational members. These practices should be consistently linked
to the business challenges facing the firm.
• Stress development and growth—perhaps the most important place where the needs of
individuals and the needs of the firm converge is in the area of professional development.
Emphasizing the importance of development can go a long way to assuring people that
their firm is concerned about them. Of course, this should not be accomplished inn a
paternalistic way, in which the firm takes charge of and assumes responsibility for the
employees’ development. Instead, each member of the organization should become
primarily responsible for identifying and acting on developmental opportunities. The
firm, in turn is responsible for providing the opportunities and supporting the employee’s
initiative in this area.

TAILPIECE

This book offers pragmatic advice to those who seek to build trust-based organizations and
teams. The author talks about the challenges faced by senior leaders of large corporations, as
well as those leading divisions large business groups. He answers a few basic questions that
are especially important to those in the leadership positions:
• What is trust? What does a high trust organization or group look like? How can we assess
the level of trust in an organization or group?
• Why is trust important in high performance organizations and groups? How is trust
related to bottomline success?
• What are the key factors that promote trust in an organization or group? What produces
distrust?
• Why is trust so hard to win and so easy to lose? Can an organization or group regain trust
once it has been lost?
• What can a leader do to build a high trust organization or group?

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Review of the title-- Trust in the Balance (author: Robert Bruce Shaw)

Although this book is written for those seeking to build high trust organization and groups, it
is not a “ how to” manual that offers easy answers. Building trust requires that each leader
and his organization struggle with the dilemmas inherent in establishing and maintaining
trust. The goal of the author has been to outline these dilemmas and suggest possible actions
based on a set of guiding principles. These suggested actions have been amply illustrated with
examples.

The end

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