8 ways leaders can overcome the trust crisis

“Build trust, build trust, build trust. Then you can worry about all the rest.”

When Seth Godin wrote this on his blog back in February 2014, he was thinking about the importance of trust to someone who hasn’t purchased anything from a company before. The idea was that people were more likely to buy from a company they trusted.

A recent post on CUES Skybox blog brings this closer to home, asserting that trust is at the root of every financial transaction. While a credit union trusts that its systems are sorting out members from fraudsters, the author writes, members trust that CUs are protecting their identifying information.

Indeed, the larger implications of trust—or lack thereof—are far reaching, according to the research of David Horsager, CSP, CEO of The Trust Edge and a speaker at CUES’ Directors Conference in December.

“Without trust, leaders lose teams and salespeople lose sales,” Horsager writes in “The Real Crisis Is Trust” in the August issue of CUES’ Credit Union Management™ magazine. “Without trust, credit unions lose productivity, retention of good people, reputation, morale and revenue. The lower the trust, the more time everything takes, the more everything costs and the lower the loyalty of everyone involved. With greater trust comes greater innovation, creativity, impact, freedom and morale—and a bigger bottom line.”

As a professional development organization, CUES strives to apply everything we can from the great ideas we’re delivering in our learning programs. In our all-staff meeting this month, we’ll be introducing Horsager’s findings and starting up a conversation about his eight pillars for strengthening trust (detailed in the CUES magazine article). While our internal and member relationships are already strong, we hope this will have a positive impact on both.

When it comes to trust, what’s already working for your internal team and in your relationships with members? How might Horsager’s eight pillars boost your trust-based results? I’d love to hear about your efforts.