Trust, Truth and Transparency

Why? for prosperity, fulfillment and wellbeing

in business today
By
Deborah Lange

www.deblange.com

Table of Contents
Trust, Truth and Transparency

1| Challenges

2| Harnessing the Power of Social Capital

Fans Contribute to Brands

3| Trust, Truth and Transparency Creates Reciprocity

a catch 22

11

4| Leadership and Followship

15

Biography

17

1| Challenge

There is ambiguity about trust today. On the one

hand Edelman research on trust, informs us, Trust
is in decline. At the same time, companies like,
Dominoes Pizza, GoldCorp, Gravity Payments,
Facebook, Google, are transforming who, how,
where and when work is done, whilst increasing trust
both within the company culture and with tribes
across our cyber world. These global leaders are redefining how we create trust in organisations and
across society, as the boundaries between society
and a corporation are increasingly fuzzy.
What are the challenges that we face in
decentralised organisations?

Challenge 1: Trust across multiple platforms and

audiences
How do we create trust across multiple platforms
with multiple audiences? Our audiences can be faceto-face, in virtual teams, freelancers, consumers,
customers and others who connect with the
intentions of our work. New platforms to connect and
work virtually are emerging all the time. How do we
create trust with people from different cultures,
different perspectives and different time zones?

2015-edelman-trust-barometer-2
The_Starfish_and_the_Spider
Inclusive leadership from six countries_0.pdf

Challenge 2: Risk
How do we determine what information to share to
create engagement and brand loyalty, if we feel
threatened by sharing what would have once been
sensitive information, withheld within corporate
boardrooms? How do we develop the courage to act
on our convictions and principles even when it
requires risk taking?
Challenge 3: Power
In todays world there is a power shift to the
employee, the expert thought leader and flat,
networked organisations. How can we maintain our
own credibility and self-worth by sharing power,
when what we have known is gaining credibility
through positional status and hierarchy?
We have expected trust and loyalty to arise with
positional status. How do we learn to exchange
leadership for specific projects, being able to have
the humility to step up and step down to lead and to
follow, depending on the context, purpose and
expertise needed for a specific project? How do we
develop the traits of being both good leaders and
good followers?

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2| Harnessing the Power

Social
Capital
of of
Social
Capital

As the silos within organisations and boundaries

across society are being dissolved glob-al leaders
are learning to harness the collective intelligence of
social capital. Social capital is generated by people,
who through their own volition, contribute to projects
that benefit society and organisations. Tribes of
people who connect around something compelling
are contributing to organisations as marketers, as
influencers, as consumers, as creators of new
intelligence for the design of new services, products
and ways to create more livable societies and more
humane organisations.

Fans Contribute to Brands

Dominoes Pizza in Australia, used to spend $5
million on research to develop and test a new recipe
for its market. The CEO, scanning intelligence
outside the organisation realised that fans on
Facebook wanted to share ideas for recipes. He said
he would test a recipe that a fan had created. The
first recipe created by a consumer, not an employee,
went to 8th best pizza as soon as it was launched. He
paid a fan, $20,000k for the recipe. He now has
hundreds of fans creating new recipes for the
company. They are not employees. They are fans who
love Dominos Pizzas. They love being able to create
new recipes but they do not want to work as
employees for Dominoes.

This is only one example of a new trend where the

boundaries of the work that needs to be done for a
company and how, who and where that work gets
done are being opened up into new forms of
cooperative, reciprocal work arrangements. These
new arrangements and the growing trend of the
freelancer, entrepreneur and virtual worker are
challenging existing employee arrangements.
The organisation, individuals and tribes in society,
join together around a simple project scoped out to
develop specific deliverables. It is entirely different
from signing up as a long term employee. A brief is
scoped out as a short term project. Information is
provided and shared responsibility is created via the
shared ownership that people sense when
contributing to something in which they enjoy,
believe and are fulfilled.
That shared ownership and shared responsibility
around a simple focus creates social capital.
Businesses have until recently been predominantly
focused on financial capital, and in more recent times
people and knowledge capital, there is now a need to
sense new trends associated with creating social
capital to advance an organisations success. Creating
social capital, is proving to be a great asset for
organisations today.

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https://www.pizzamogul.com.au/#!/home

The social capital resides within the culture of the organisation and is the energy and
commitment employees willingly contribute when respected and able to be creative. In
addition the social capital extends outside the organisation into society as the way people
identify with and connect with a company as contributors. Nurturing Social Capital is a new role
for OD, HR, and Professionals within a company who can become the companys Thought
Leaders in their industry and share stories of success, lessons learnt and invitations to
contribute.
On the other side of this positive trend for organisations, is the ability for social capital to
expose unethical behaviour and lack of integrity of business practices associated with creating
and delivering goods and services. This is a positive for society, as more
organisations who are unethical are exposed. In Australia, alone, the CEO of 7-eleven , has
recently been exposed for exploiting migrants in the 7-eleven workplace. This is a powerful
way that the community is holding people and organisations to account for the integrity of their
actions.

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The essence of Social Capital is reciprocity.

3| Trust, Truth and

Transparency Creates
Reciprocity
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..its all about letting go and trusting the community."

In a Catalyst report on inclusive cultures, a story was shared of an American Consult-ant, Julie, working in Mumbai
with a group of Indian Managers. The Head of the business unit in Mumbai intentionally set out to create empathy
and trust with Julie and ordered her a western style meal thinking this would show her respect. This simple act of
kindness had the opposite effect. Julie felt different from the group who were all sharing Indian food. This simple act
generated feelings of difference rather than feelings of belonging and eroded her performance adversely over the
day.

P 111, "the StarFish and The Spider" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starfish_and_the_Spider

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The Head of the Unit was unaware of the unintended impact on Julie and
her performance. Julie, did not have the capacity to be transparent and
share the effect this simple act of kindness had on her performance.
Everyone was in the dark about what was perceived to be lack in skill
throughout the day.
Julie was frozen, as the day increased, her self-confidence in her abilities
eroded. Her Manager was frozen as well. They were both frozen in an
inability to share what was actually happening, in the unseen but felt
experience of both them and the team. Similar situations to this are
prevalent in organisations globally.

A critical skill for today is the ability to respond, rather than

react.
frozen

responsive

exform

The ability to exform, to share our doubts and our feelings in safe and
respectful ways unfreezes the tension created between people when an
element of doubt has been unintentionally created. Exform is the opposite
of inform. We are constantly informing our-selves. Exforming is releasing
what is necessary as it is getting in the way of us trusting ourselves or
others.
We can learn to exform, so that we are free to respond with an inquiry,
curiosity and openness and create respect and safety.

Safety is the basis of all relationships.

fear

respect

safety

There is an old view of how to create trust. We earn trust by either

proving ourselves trustworthy, or, we accept a person either in a position

There is an old view of how to create trust. We earn trust by either

proving ourselves trustworthy, or, we accept a person either in a
position of authority, or with credentials can be trusted.
The roots of this view are often based in fear, not trust. Trust that
exists when fear is present, is an oxymoron, and creates co-dependent
relationships that constrain one another.
Managers who believe in having power over others due to their
position, often have views that employees are beneath them, and,
often unconsciously fear those who have different perspectives.
These beliefs result in actions such as withholding information and
controlling what and how people do work until they prove trustworthy.
This limits creativity and fullness of expression.

a catch 22
If we are not trusted, how do we prove trust? If we are unable to prove
trust, those in positions of power limit what we do, as they withhold
power or accountability, even though they ask more from us.
Where there is fear, there is usually submission, compliance and
limitations on the sense of safety needed to feel free to share our
ideas.
Where there is fear, people usually react to ideas, are defensive and
controlling of others. Managers control their employees. Employees
control their managers.
We may know fear is not conducive to building trust", but we need
to be aware of our fears, which freezes our capacity to trust others.
We need to learn how to create a sense of inner safety, suspend our
assumptions, be open, curious and inquiring.
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Each time we take a risk to share our fears and concerns we are learning
how to be vulnerable, transparent and humble. In sharing our fears and
doubt, we release tension and anxiety and allow others to do so as well.
We do not need to let go of everything in the past. We need to discern
what is no longer relevant and what new theories, principles and
practices will bind us together as people working for our individual and
collective good as we create new ways to trust each other.

We do not need to know all the answers

Freedom risktaker belonging

As our sense of safety is increased we increase our capacity to take risks

and share out of the box ideas. We will not feel the fear of being
blamed, judged, intimidated or made wrong if we are in a safe situation.
This freedom to share our feelings, thoughts and beliefs increases our
sense of belonging and being included in our teams.
We do not need to know all the answers. We may ask such questions to
ourselves and others such as:
What do I need to feel safe to contribute?
What will give me a sense of being included?
What will assist me feel like I belong?
These are examples of questions that can be asked in an iterative basis,
to increase levels of respect. At first people may not know what they
need, but the more they are asked, the more they will know.

Hand over trust.

trust shared responsibility relationship

In handing over trust to others, they pick it up and trust compounds in the
shared responsibility that is created through our more respectful
relationship.
In Julies situation if either her or her Manager had shared the reality of
what was occurring they could have shared the responsibility in
transforming this situation. Taking the first step to inquire into new
territory encourages others to do so.

The Leader of today and tomorrow needs to be transparent.

Transparency Resilience Vulnerability

This is not about creating rules that x works in y situation, as all of our
situations are completely different and peoples responses will be
different. In India alone, numerous languages and cultures within Indian
culture mean that we cannot look for one size fits all prescriptive
solutions. What we can learn from Indian culture is how diverse
languages and cultures exist side by side. We need to increase our
acceptance and inclusiveness of diversity.
In conversation with one another we can learn the art of reciprocity.
Reciprocity begins with the valuing of difference, respecting one another,
trusting one another, being vulnerable, listening more and sharing more
of ourselves. We need to share more than abstract language and
technical information about our work; we need to connect and engage
through the sharing of our humanity, our interests, our fears, our dreams
and our history.
In effect the more we know one another as humans, the more trust and
loyalty is generated and the more tolerance for mistakes.
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To live our truth, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

truth reciprocity humility

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In essence, the answers to create organisations where there is increased loyalty, trust and social capital
are more about us learning the art of speaking our truth, reciprocity and humility.

Truth: If Julie could have spoken a simple truth. "I love Indian food," it would have prevented the
cascading loss of belonging and self-confidence. If her Manager could have spoken a simple truth of not
knowing how to create a sense of inclusiveness with Julie. He could have asked her what she needed, and
they could have both shared and built trust, respect, transparency and belonging.

Reciprocity: sharing more levels of information; technical, emotional and human process creates trust
and connection. This enables us to feel safe to share, to be transparent and to be humble.

Humility: Perhaps one of the greatest attributes today, is our ability to be humble. This requires us to
admit mistakes, to not know all the answers and to not blame others. With humility and grace we can seek
out new answers in reciprocal relationships as to what resulted in unintended consequences and how we
have been as we have created inclusive cultures of trust.

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4| Leadership and Followship

When we learn to speak our truth in reciprocal

relationships, we are changing the energy dynamic
between us. Power shifts to both of us. A new energetic
state is created where there is more of an exchange rather
than a sense of top down instruction or bottom-up
reaction.
In organisations, which aspire to increase the trust within
their culture the need is not only for leadership
development. There is a need for the development of
followship capabilities just as much as leadership.
Leadership is an exchange. Leadership can arise from
anyone in the organisation or the community, not only
those with positional status.
However, we cannot have organisations full of leaders and
no followers. We know that organisations with large
numbers of followers and few leaders at the top, like
outdated military and manufacturing models do not work
today.
When people develop the capacity to step up and lead
depending on the context, purpose and expertise they are
learning leadership skills. A project may be led for a
specific duration of time and on completion the leader steps
down and joins another project team as a good follower.
Whilst we may have defined roles within a hierarchy, at the
same time creating possibilities for more people to step up
and lead based on their expertise and step down on project
completion, creates a culture of shared responsibility.

This will not only give people different opportunities for

fulfilment and creativity when there is no succession
opportunity, but it will also alleviate stress from long
periods of sustained high-level responsibility. Shared
responsibility becomes a norm. The opportunity to breathe
and let go of the stress of high levels of responsibility that
we have be-come accustomed to will give people the
opportunity to rejuvenate themselves. In turn they will then
be more creative in their responses as team members.
This is the development of a new kind of culture that has
both high levels of responsibility and accountability, high
levels of creativity and high levels of well-being. An
invigorating and sustaining culture.
Contact Deborah about
Leadership and Followship Workshops"
HoT - High on Trust Workshops
ToP- Trust on Purpose Mentoring
LiT UP Leadership Coaching
Co-creating cultures of reciprocity, creativity, wellbeing
and productivity.

Biography

Deborah Lange is an expert on personal leadership and

organisational culture. An educator by training who started
as a teacher, who educated teachers and after further
studies in HRD and OD gained a Masters of Applied
Science in Social Ecology, the understanding and influence of
human systems in organisations, made the transition to the
Corporate world.
Deborah went on to work with both international and
national organisations in both the private and public sector
on organisational change initiatives, leadership and culture.
She has embraced the trend of blurred boundaries of life
and work, which are continuing to disrupt what we thought
were standard employment paths and has worked in both
the public sphere of personal development as well as
leadership and culture development in the Corporate world.
Deborah has won awards for her work over her career
including an Award for Mentoring and an Award for a State
Community/Government/Business connection called Linc
Up. She has been successfully published in 4 books. Her
latest is in Success Uncovered
http://mithrapublishing.com/product/successuncovered/
Deborah has been described as heartfelt, wise, energetic
and practical, a true thought leader.
Her sessions will disrupt your life and workplace for the
better!

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 Deb Lange. All rights reserved.

Published by Lange Development Pty Ltd.
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