On Thursday, March 2, 2017, Boyum & Barenscheer partners, along with over 200 guests, attended an event on “Building Trust” with keynote speaker David Horsager – business strategist and author of the national bestseller The Trust Edge.  During this interactive and enjoyable working session, David discussed why trust is the foundation of effective and authentic leaders and how leaders who earn employee trust can provide transparency around goals, plans and expectations.

Key takeaways from the presentation included:

• Pillars of Trust:  There are eight key areas that serve as a foundation of success – consistency, clarity, compassion, character, contribution, competency, connection and commitment.
• Lack of Trust is Your Biggest Expense:  According to a large study conducted by Watson Wyatt, the lack of trust for many companies can be their biggest expense or alternatively, building trust and keeping it can be a company’s largest advantage both financially and from influence and growth standpoint.

David also led the audience through an interesting exercise using a “90 Day Quick Plan Card” which gives leaders and their teams an actionable framework that provides clarity and leads to tangible results.  After focusing on one thing that we wanted to change in our life or business, we then went through the following 4 questions:

• Where am I right now?
• Where do I want to be in 90 days?
• Why do I want to go there?
• How am I going to get there?

In reviewing these questions, his point was that in order to make changes we need to ask “how” over and over again until we can pinpoint something specific that we could do differently. Nothing great happens if we don’t start or get overwhelmed with too many things.

In addition, Doug Loon, President of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce presented an economic update on state-wide issues. Doug always has interesting statistics and the Minnesota Chamber is a significant advocate for Minnesota Business. One statistic that stood out was that Minnesota is 4th in the country in patents per capita, which is a strong measurement of innovation that takes place here.

At Boyum & Barenscheer, we believe there is nothing more important than trust and like David, we are advocates for building trust within our own organization, and helping our clients achieve success in theirs.  For more information on the topic of trust, including free resources on the Trust Edge, please visit www.trustedge.com or www.davidhorsager.com.  Additional information on Allied Executives can be found at www.alliedexecutives.com.