themadpeacock

In the Truman Show Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank lives in a world where everything he does is watched by millions. The good, the bad and the embarrassing.

As a company leader this probably sounds familiar.

As individuals you can still defend some privacy (for now), some of you don’t have blogs, facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles or tweet.

But as company leaders there is no escaping transparency. Everything you do is visible to the world. Every mistake is global gossip archived by Google; every victory is an unread press release.

I was listening to a recent interview with Jeffrey Kindler, CEO of the Pfizer corporation. In it he pointed out that trust was at an all time low; we don’t trust politicians, priests, baseball players, doctors, lawyers, bankers or corporations. He believes that building trust in this new transparent world is the key to good leadership and commercial success.

So as a leader how do you build employee, customer and investor trust?

There is no easy answer but I think the hard answer is passion in a shared vision.

Its easy to work hard at things you are passionate about, effortless to talk about them and simple for people to understand what drives you. People know if your values and passions align with theirs.

If they don’t that’s cool; there are six billion other people in the world. The ones that do share your passion and values will become your employees, investors and customers, and they will trust you.