Trust Truth Transparency 3w-2-2

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
1| Challenges 3
2| Harnessing the Power of Social Capital 5
Fans Contribute to Brands 6
3| Trust, Truth and Transparency Creates Reciprocity 9
a catch 22 11
4| Leadership and Followship 15
Biography 17

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, Gold-Corp, 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 re-defining 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
face-to-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?
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 today’s 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?
page 4 | © www.deblange.com

2| Harnessing the Power
of Social Capitalof 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 organisation’s success.
Creating “social capital,” is proving to be a great
asset for organisations today.
https://www.pizzamogul.com.au/#!/home page 6 | © www.deblange.com

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 company’s
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.

“The essence of Social Capital” is reciprocity.”

3| Trust, Truth and
Transparency Creates
Reciprocity

“…..it’s 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.

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 of authority, or with credentials can be trusted.
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.

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 Julie’s 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 people’s 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.

“To live our truth, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
truth reciprocity humility

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.

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 leaders at the top need to ripple
out trust across the organization. Every person has the
capacity to be a leader in their field no matter what their
title.
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
Lead in Trust “LiT UP” Leadership Coaching
Co-creating cultures of reciprocity, creativity, wellbeing
and productivity.

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/success-
uncovered/
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!
Biography

 Deb Lange. All rights reserved.
Published by Lange Development Pty Ltd.
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Readers and participants release Deborah Lange and Lange
Development Pty Ltd from any liability.

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