The Trustworthy Leader: Leveraging the Power of Trust to Transform Your Organization - Hardcover

by Amy Lyman (Author), Hal Adler (Author)

How leaders from the best workplaces build trust in their organizations

The Trustworthy Leader reveals the benefits organizations enjoy when trustworthy behavior is practiced consistently by their leaders. Drawing from examples from the Best Companies to Work For, Lyman, cofounder of Great Place to Work Institute, explains that being trustworthy means that leaders' behaviors are rooted in their commitment to the value of trust and not simply in an imitation of the practices of others. She identifies six elements that reflect a leader's trustworthiness: honor, inclusion, engaging followers, sharing information, developing others, and moving through uncertainty to pursue opportunities.

• Features leaders from great companies such as REI, Wegman's, R.W. Baird, TDIndustries, and more
• Based on more than 20 years of rigorous research into the value of trust in companies large and small and its link to financial and organizational performance
• Published to coincide with the release of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For 2012 list

This book offers a key to developing high levels of trust, a critical endeavor in an age when seemingly every day a story of a leader's lapse in ethical behavior makes headlines.

Front Jacket

Trust is an increasingly scarcecommodity in the business world, and now more than ever, leaders who develop high-trust relationships within their organizations outshine the competition. Companies whose employees praise the high levels of trust in their workplace are, in fact, among the highest performers, beating the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three. How does a leader's trustworthiness propel an organization to excellence?

Since cofounding the Great Place to Work Institute in 1991, Amy Lyman has devoted her career to that very question. In the hundreds of thousands of survey responses Great Place to Work analyzes each year, employees who love where they work point to trust as the key factor driving their commitment to contribute to their organization's success. Employees in great companies not only trust their leaders, they also value the trust their leaders bestow on them. In The Trustworthy Leader, Lyman draws on these twenty years of research and on extensive interviews to show how leaders actually build and maintain this foundation of trust in their workplaces.

Trustworthy leaders, she explains, typically follow a path she calls the Virtuous Circle, which has six distinct elements: honor, inclusion, engaging followers, sharing information, developing others, and moving through uncertainty. The stories of leaders from Best Companies--General Mills, REI, Mayo Clinic, Wegmans, and more--following this Virtuous Circle form the heart of the book.

The Trustworthy Leader is a key resource for all leaders who want to develop a high level of trust in their organizations.

Back Jacket

TRUST is an increasingly scarce commodity in the business world, and now more than ever, leaders who develop high-trust relationships within their organizations outshine the competition. Companies whose employees praise the high levels of trust in their workplace are, in fact, among the highest performers, beating the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three. How does a leader's trustworthiness propel an organization to excellence?

Since cofounding the Great Place to Work^(R) Institute in 1991, Amy Lyman has devoted her career to that very question. In the hundreds of thousands of survey responses Great Place to Work analyzes each year, employees who love where they work point to trust as the key factor driving their commitment to contribute to their organization's success. Employees in great companies not only trust their leaders, they also value the trust their leaders bestow on them. In The Trustworthy Leader, Lyman draws on these twenty years of research and on extensive interviews to show how leaders actually build and maintain this foundation of trust in their workplaces.

Trustworthy leaders, she explains, typically follow a path she calls the Virtuous Circle, which has six distinct elements: honor, inclusion, engaging followers, sharing information, developing others, and moving through uncertainty. The stories of leaders from Best Companies--General Mills, REI, Mayo Clinic, Wegmans, and more-- following this Virtuous Circle form the heart of the book.

The Trustworthy Leader is a key resource for all leaders who want to develop a high level of trust in their organizations.

Great Place to Work^(R) Institute is a global research, consulting, and training firm with thirty-eight affiliates operating in forty-five countries. Great Place to Work produces the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For^(R) Annual List and the Best Small & Medium Companies to Work For in America lists, in addition to several dozen best companies lists internationally.

Author Biography

Amy Lyman is cofounder of Great Place to Work^(R) Institute. She conducts research on Best Companies, linking the quality of workplace conduct with financial and non-financial benefits. She is a popular speaker and the author of many articles.