Trust Is Really the Heart of It All!

By Mary Verstraete

Angela Ahrendts was head of Apple’s online retail and physical stores from 2014 until April 2019 and redefined the shopping experience for hundreds of millions of customers around the world. From 2006 to 2014 Angela Ahrendts served as CEO of Burberry, a venerable British brand founded in 1856 known for its trench coats, cashmere scarves, and iconic check. Ahrendts mitigated the brand’s decline and was pivotal in Burberry’s return to popularity.

One of keys to revitalizing Burberry was that she set her level of excellence high by creating the stage for connectivity, trust, and innovation. She states:

Trust is truly at the heart of it all. If trust is your core value, you hire accordingly. I interviewed a lot senior management people, and at this level, competence and experience are a given; trust is the difference maker. When I look them in the eye I’m asking myself: Do I trust them? Do I get the feeling they trust me? Do they get vision? This is the starting point for everything we do.

How was this level of excellence practically implemented? Ahrendts made a decision to create a conversational forum that included everyone in the company and encouraged people to communicate directly with her and others on the senior team, moving employees from the protect mode into a share and collaborate mode. She created a culture where everyone could talk what was on their minds. Angela says this about the Burberry culture:

You should feel a culture, and a brand. A culture is a living brand. We will build a brand by building the culture. What’s right for the brand? It became a higher purpose.

How could our employees help us create not only a great brand but also a great company?

When people trust people, you can share your insecurities and use them to build bridges. This openness and transparency connects us to each other in a totally new way. When you openly acknowledge you can’t do it without the other person, ego gets replaced by the knowledge that we’re all in this together.

What makes trust the heart of it all? Trust is the factor that generates a willingness to feel open enough to be inclusive, interactive, and intentional. Human beings have a need to belong and neuroscientists consider this to be even more powerful than the need for physical safety and security.

A fearful state of mind “alters” the way we see and experience reality, the way we interact with others, and how much we are willing to engage, innovate, and speak our minds.

When trust is absent we perceive reality through a threatened lens:

  • Experience the environment as threatening
  • Retreat to protect ourselves
  • Become sensitive to being wrong or embarrassed
  • Behave differently

The implications of perceiving through a threatened lens: 

  • Reveal less than what we know or what is helpful to move forward
  • Expect more than what is possible
  • Assume the worst of others
  • Look at situations with caution
  • Interpret communications with fear
  • Tell secrets we promise not to tell
  • Become yes people to avoid confronting truth

When trust is prominent we: 

  • Reveal more
  • Expect less and over deliver
  • Assume the best of others
  • Look at a situation with an open heart
  • Interpret communications through truth and facts
  • Tell the truth
  • Become yes people to confront truth

Bottom Line:

Trust is the glue that holds an organization together.

Trust is the core of effective conversation.

Everything begins with a foundation of trust.