The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It

Description

Trust is the most powerful force underlying the success of every business. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on a company's market cap and reputation. How to build and sustain trust requires fresh insight into why customers, employees, community members, and investors decide whether an organization can be trusted. Based on two decades of research and illustrated through vivid storytelling, Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta examine the economic impact of trust and the science behind it, and conclusively prove that trust is built from the inside out. Trust emerges from a company being the "real deal": creating products and services that work, having good intentions, treating people fairly, and taking responsibility for all the impacts an organization creates, whether intended or not. When trust is in the room, great things can happen. Sucher and Gupta's innovative foundation for executing the elements of trust-competence, motives, means, impact-explains how trust can be woven into the day-to-day and the long term. Most importantly, even when lost, trust can be regained, as illustrated through their accounts of companies across the globe that pull themselves out of scandal and corruption by rebuilding the vital elements of trust.

Sandra Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where she has been teaching for the last twenty years. She's an advisor to the Edelman Trust Barometer, and has spoken about trust at Edelman and numerous companies and at Harvard Business School events. She provides expert commentary for Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and Fortune. Prior to teaching at Harvard, Sucher had a two-decade career as a senior level executive and business 'fixer,' specializing in uncovering complex organization problems and creating new ways to address them. She lives in Massachusetts. Shalene Gupta is a research associate at Harvard Business School. She is a former Fortune reporter, who covered diversity in Silicon Valley, big data and smart cities. She lives in Massachusetts.

"Full of fresh insights brought to life by compelling examples, The Power of Trust is a rich and rewarding read. It's also extremely timely. With more and more companies today pledging to balance the interests of all of their stakeholders, and not always put their shareholders first, Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta make clear that the driving question executives should be asking themselves every time they make a major decision is, 'Will this enhance trust among those we claim to serve--or betray it?'"--Rick Wartzman, author of The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America "Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta offer a comprehensive blueprint for companies and leaders who want to build or regain the trust of their stakeholders. Their work provides an insightful trust model that underpins moral leadership--looking at competence, motives, means, and impact. A brilliant resource for anyone who wants to truly understand what trust is, how it works, and what they can do to incorporate it into their leadership practice."--Celia Moore, codirector, Centre for Responsible Leadership Imperial College Business School "The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer found business is the most trusted institution. Business has a new mandate to lead as the world combats ongoing crises and widespread mistrust. Against this backdrop, The Power of Trust is a must-read. Both scholarly and practical, it draws on fields from ancient philosophy to modern management theory to analyze and deeply examine the core elements of business trust while taking a lively journey through real-world cases of trust won and lost (and won again). Professor Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta make a vital contribution to the trust conversation and provide a compelling call to action for CEOs to build trust by embracing a broader societal role."--Richard Edelman, CEO, Edelman "Trust is at the foundation of sustainably successful enterprises in business, government, and any organization, for that matter. The Power of Trust does a great job explaining the how and why of building trust, including fairness, one of my favorite issues."--David M. Cote, former CEO, Honeywell, and author of Winning Now, Winning Later "Unveils a new understanding of the business, economic, and societal importance of trust."--Jeffery Weirens, global financial advisory leader, Deloitte "With vibrant and compelling insights, Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta break important new ground about trust as a key foundation for both human relationships and business. Their illuminating and exciting exploration of what it takes to build trust, combined with vivid storytelling, make this page-turner a critical companion for any business leader."--Hubert Joly, former chairman and CEO, Best Buy, and author of The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism "You can't buy it. You can't sell it. You can't even see it. But if you had more of it, your employees would work harder, and your customers would stay with you longer. Trust is one of the most valuable intangible assets that a company can have and this book will show you how to get more of it. Packed with wonderful stories and practical examples, this book is a great read. TRUST me!" --Erin Meyer, INSEAD, author of The Culture Map and coauthor of No Rules Rules