Press Release

Contact: Mark Fortier
Goldberg McDuffie Communications
212/446-5103; mfortier@goldbergmcduffie.com

THE TRUSTED LEADER
by Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau

Until now, trust was viewed largely as a character trait. But after a year of major corporate scandals, business leaders are beginning to recognize trust as a discipline that must be managed in the workplace along with strategy and operations. If employees suspect that leaders are saying one thing but doing another, how can they achieve a common goal? If trust is one of the most valuable and vulnerable assets of any organization, how can managers protect it to ensure long-term survival and sustained success?

Soon to be adapted for the February 2003 issue of The Harvard Business Review, THE TRUSTED LEADER: Bringing Out the Best in Your People and Your Company (The Free Press; January 9, 2003; $25.00) introduces the tools for building and sustaining trust among members of any organization--between employees, between senior managers, and across levels and departments. For over a decade, Robert Galford, coauthor of the bestseller The Trusted Advisor and Managing Partner of the Center for Executive Development, has trained Fortune 500 business leaders on managing trust. Coauthor Anne Seibold Drapeau, Chief People Officer of Digitas, has directly tackled conflicts of trust in the workplace as a manager at JP Morgan, PepsiCo, FTD, and now Digitas. Together, the authors offer a scientific approach to managing trust based on highly specific research and scores of real human interactions at companies ranging from small startups to Forrester Research, AT&T, and General Mills.

Three Kinds of Trust

The authors identify and distinguish three types of trust to which organizations and their leaders must give constant attention to achieve optimum performance:

Strategic Trust is trust in the company's mission, and in how you and your organization execute that mission, both externally and internally.

Organizational Trust is your employees' trust that the organization you lead is truly what it purports to be, and will make good on its promises in everything from even-handed treatment of departments and divisions to promotion and compensation policies.

Personal Trust is your employees' trust that you, as an individual and as their leader, will treat them fairly, and that you will extend a level of care for their well-being.

Assessing Your Own Trusted Leader Status

THE TRUSTED LEADER's personal trust self-assessment exercises will show executives where they currently stand as trusted leaders and where they could stand. Once managers have honestly assessed their personal trust level, they can then embark on building trust in the organization around them, and protecting trust from constant threats and sources of resistance. Downturns, mergers, and restructurings are just a few of the crises that can break down organizational trust across teams, or among bosses, colleagues, and subordinates. The tools to manage these fragile relationships and to identify where trust may be missing can be mastered with THE TRUSTED LEADER's "Organizational Trust Equation." Here, leaders can judge their company's own level of organizational trust by evaluating its ability to overcome resistance to trust. To battle resistance, companies must: have goals that inspire them (aspirations), believe they can do great things (abilities), accomplish great things right (actions), move in a consistent direction (alignment), and communicate all of the above to everyone (articulation).

The Elements of Personal and Organizational Trust

The authors' SEEKER model guides readers on how to codify and prioritize the elements of personal and organizational trust in their company. The SEEKER acronym provides six "buckets" into which readers can sort and store all the elements of building personal and organizational trust:

S - Show that you understand the needs of the person and group.
E - Establish the guiding principles of how you'll operate.
E - Explain the resources you'll be using.
K - Keep to the principles you've elaborated.
E - Engage in constant, honest, two-way communication.
R - Reinforce your words through consistent behaviors.

Overcoming Resistance to Trust

Resistance to trust can take many forms, which stem from four sources: skepticism that your statements or actions are sincere or realistic; fear of negative consequences; frustration from being micro- or macro-managed, underutilized, undervalued, or under-leveraged; and an embedded "we-they" mindset. All four can be conquered - but only if a trusted leader is willing to stick his or her own neck out in the process.

Countering resistance borne of skepticism requires consistent trustworthy behavior. Fear can be minimized by asking people to become part of the trust-building process. Frustration can be reduced by carefully calibrating how tightly or loosely employees are being managed. Facing down a "we-they" mindset means providing incentives to employees to behave like owners. But there are no subtle ways to overcome resistance. A trusted leader has to meet the force of resistance with equal or greater strength. He or she also has to be willing to commit to a long-term effort - to be willing and able to over-deliver, over time.


Rebuilding Broken Trust

Perhaps most timely are the book's succinct recommendations for rebuilding trust that has been broken or betrayed. Their valuable warnings include acknowledging a breach of trust FAST to avoid suspicion of a cover-up. Finally, the authors offer advice on building the legacy of trust that most senior managers hope to leave behind when they retire or move on.

"We have come to believe," write the authors, "that creating organizations that are bound by strong, deep connections between peers, across levels, and across functions may be the only recipe for sustainable success." At a time when trust is in short supply and scandals dominate the headlines, THE TRUSTED LEADER is a valuable guide for winning the confidence of customers and investors on the outside by first building trust with employees on the inside. A practical guide for becoming a trusted leader as well as a comprehensive study of the dynamics of trust-building inside organizations,
THE TRUSTED LEADER will help managers build a community of trusted leaders who will infuse trust through all levels of an organization.

About the Authors:

Robert Galford is a coauthor of The Trusted Advisor, which has been on business bestseller lists since its original publication in 2000. He is currently Managing Partner of the Center for Executive Development in Boston and has taught on executive education programs at Columbia, Kellogg, and most recently Harvard. He has written for the Harvard Business Review and the Boston Globe. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

Anne Seibold Drapeau is Chief People Officer at Digitas, a relationship marketing services firm that helps Fortune 100 clients build profitable, long-term relationships with their customers. She has also held management positions at Pepsi, J.P. Morgan, and FTD. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

About the Book:

THE TRUSTED LEADER: Bringing Out the Best in Your People and Your Company
By Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau
The Free Press
Publication date: January 9, 2003; $25.00 hardcover; 272 pages; ISBN: 0-7432-3539-8
For more information, log on to www.thetrustedleader.com