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HBR's 10 Must Reads on Trust
Trust is the basis for all that we do as leaders and as organizations. Employees who trust their employers are more productive and creative. Businesses who engender trust maintain better relationships with their customers and reap better results. And public breaches of trust are becoming more perilous—and more costly.
If you read nothing else on trust, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you build, maintain, and repair trust as a company and as a leader.
This book will inspire you to:
* Earn trust with all of your stakeholders
* See your company through the eyes of your customers
* Develop trust through competence, legitimacy, and impact
* Move negotiations forward positively
* Understand the neuroscience of trust
* Rebuild relationships after a breach
If you read nothing else on trust, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you build, maintain, and repair trust as a company and as a leader.
This book will inspire you to:
* Earn trust with all of your stakeholders
* See your company through the eyes of your customers
* Develop trust through competence, legitimacy, and impact
* Move negotiations forward positively
* Understand the neuroscience of trust
* Rebuild relationships after a breach
- GenresNonfiction
192 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 14, 2023
17 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 26, 2024
I both love and hate these anthologies of HBR articles. On one hand, if the topic is specific enough, they are a great way to get a summary of all of the content that HBR has published on it. On the other hand, topics like "trust" are so squishy, leading both to laudatory and critical examples that don't age well. (Witness the underperformance of the 11 so-called "great" companies in Jim Collins' Good to Great, for example.)
The articles in this book suffer from a few flaws. The first is that trust is easy to talk about in the academic, as if it is some absolute measure, but much harder to determine in reality, particularly without foreknowledge of what is about to happen. One of the essays shows a table of all the dimensions of trust (employee trust, customer trust, legal obligations, etc.) making it sound like executives should optimize for all these dimensions, when in reality this is not possible. Take Uber, which is one of the examples seized upon by several authors as a company that violated trust: should they have broken New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) laws to start their firm? The knee-jerk reaction is "of course not", except for the fact that TLC's monopoly at the time on livery cab medallions led to a mob-controlled cartel, selling individual medallions for up to $1.3M apiece, thereby driving cab owners into decades of debt. It's very easy to state that laws should of course be followed, except that there have been many laws over the centuries that did not create a system of trust themselves and rightfully should have been ignored or disrupted.
The second major flaw in the essays is that trust is always something that you can litigate in hindsight. It's very easy for armchair MBAs to sit around and pontificate that, for example, Facebook's introduction of the News Feed was a massive violation of trust. And indeed, the blowback from users was so bad that Mark Zuckerberg had to issue an uncharacteristically candid apology saying "we screwed up". Yet almost a decade later, Andrew Bosworth (Facebook's CTO) has stated on Lenny's Podcast that News Feed is now among the most beloved features on Facebook, so arguably the company was merely ahead of its time. It's not so clear, in the long game, that a trust violation occurred. Just because people are made uncomfortable, that doesn't mean it is a trust issue, or one that truly needs to be addressed. (I can't believe I am defending Facebook here, which truly is a company that few people trust, but I think one should be fair in this situation.)
The third flaw, and perhaps the biggest one, is just the lack of fact-checking and sacrificing of accuracy for the sake of a good narrative. On this point, HBR should be ashamed, as a professional publication. It is, for example, a myth that Nordstrom's entire employee handbook is one paragraph. (This was debunked by CBS News over ten years ago. And here is their actual 2024 code of conduct if you don't believe me.) Another essay admonishes Coca-Cola's CEO for not immediately apologizing for the 1999 Belgian "contamination" crisis even though it was later determined that the CEO was right: the cause was mass sociogenic illness, akin to the Satanic panic of the early 1980's, so he never had anything to apologize for -- despite media articles at the time assuming that supply chain contamination was the cause. One wonders what else HBR has gotten wrong.
Overall, I would say that reading this collection of HBR articles on the topic of trust really added nothing to my understanding of the topic. Contrary to what the anthology would have you believe, the concept of trust is amorphous and not absolute, and while it is easy to second-guess what executives should or shouldn't have done in certain situations and trivial to judge them one a crisis has passed and the full picture is known, it is rather quite unfair, given the high stakes and the massive dearth of complete information upon which executives have to make decisions that could impact trust in the heat of the moment.
The articles in this book suffer from a few flaws. The first is that trust is easy to talk about in the academic, as if it is some absolute measure, but much harder to determine in reality, particularly without foreknowledge of what is about to happen. One of the essays shows a table of all the dimensions of trust (employee trust, customer trust, legal obligations, etc.) making it sound like executives should optimize for all these dimensions, when in reality this is not possible. Take Uber, which is one of the examples seized upon by several authors as a company that violated trust: should they have broken New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) laws to start their firm? The knee-jerk reaction is "of course not", except for the fact that TLC's monopoly at the time on livery cab medallions led to a mob-controlled cartel, selling individual medallions for up to $1.3M apiece, thereby driving cab owners into decades of debt. It's very easy to state that laws should of course be followed, except that there have been many laws over the centuries that did not create a system of trust themselves and rightfully should have been ignored or disrupted.
The second major flaw in the essays is that trust is always something that you can litigate in hindsight. It's very easy for armchair MBAs to sit around and pontificate that, for example, Facebook's introduction of the News Feed was a massive violation of trust. And indeed, the blowback from users was so bad that Mark Zuckerberg had to issue an uncharacteristically candid apology saying "we screwed up". Yet almost a decade later, Andrew Bosworth (Facebook's CTO) has stated on Lenny's Podcast that News Feed is now among the most beloved features on Facebook, so arguably the company was merely ahead of its time. It's not so clear, in the long game, that a trust violation occurred. Just because people are made uncomfortable, that doesn't mean it is a trust issue, or one that truly needs to be addressed. (I can't believe I am defending Facebook here, which truly is a company that few people trust, but I think one should be fair in this situation.)
The third flaw, and perhaps the biggest one, is just the lack of fact-checking and sacrificing of accuracy for the sake of a good narrative. On this point, HBR should be ashamed, as a professional publication. It is, for example, a myth that Nordstrom's entire employee handbook is one paragraph. (This was debunked by CBS News over ten years ago. And here is their actual 2024 code of conduct if you don't believe me.) Another essay admonishes Coca-Cola's CEO for not immediately apologizing for the 1999 Belgian "contamination" crisis even though it was later determined that the CEO was right: the cause was mass sociogenic illness, akin to the Satanic panic of the early 1980's, so he never had anything to apologize for -- despite media articles at the time assuming that supply chain contamination was the cause. One wonders what else HBR has gotten wrong.
Overall, I would say that reading this collection of HBR articles on the topic of trust really added nothing to my understanding of the topic. Contrary to what the anthology would have you believe, the concept of trust is amorphous and not absolute, and while it is easy to second-guess what executives should or shouldn't have done in certain situations and trivial to judge them one a crisis has passed and the full picture is known, it is rather quite unfair, given the high stakes and the massive dearth of complete information upon which executives have to make decisions that could impact trust in the heat of the moment.
listened
February 6, 2025"HBR's 10 Must Reads" series is a very good series just like "A Very Short Introduction" published by Oxford University Press. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Trust, listened from Libby with NLB subscription, is a book published on March 14, 2023. Probably those university press publish new stuffs every certain year.
This audiobook is a curated collection of essential articles from the Harvard Business Review that focuses on the critical role trust plays in leadership and organizational success, very suitable for people who are busy and have no time to read a whole book.
The anthology emphasizes that trust is foundational for productivity, creativity, and effective relationships between businesses and their stakeholders. It asserts that trust is vital for both leaders and organizations. Employees who trust their employers tend to be more engaged and productive, while businesses that cultivate customer trust enjoy better relationships and outcomes. Just as what happened in my company, if I give enough guidance and freedom for a team member, most of the time he or she will be able to complete the task with less deviation and supervision.
Building and Repairing Trust, includes strategies for developing trust through competence, legitimacy, and impact. It also addresses how to rebuild relationships after breaches of trust, which are increasingly common in today's business landscape. It matters when someone underperform in certain task, the choice to forgive and let one have another try is hard, but if he or she had understood the root cause, another big effort will be put into making things right.
One article delves into the neuroscience behind trust, understanding the psychological mechanisms that underpin trusting relationships. The notion of optimizing multiple dimensions of trust can be challenging in practice. But discussions around trust really can sometimes oversimplify the nuances involved in real-world scenarios. In my personal experience, listening long enough and encouraging the person you talk to without interrupting, is a magical way to gain trust.
The book offers actionable insights, such as how to negotiate effectively with untrustworthy counterparts and how to view a company through the eyes of its customers. Trust and empathy are very knit together, there is an old saying "stand in another's boot". Some practical approach said in this book makes it relevant for leaders seeking to enhance their organizational culture.
Overall, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Trust serves as a valuable resource for leaders aiming to foster a culture of trust within their organizations while providing a comprehensive overview of contemporary discussions on this critical topic.
This audiobook is a curated collection of essential articles from the Harvard Business Review that focuses on the critical role trust plays in leadership and organizational success, very suitable for people who are busy and have no time to read a whole book.
The anthology emphasizes that trust is foundational for productivity, creativity, and effective relationships between businesses and their stakeholders. It asserts that trust is vital for both leaders and organizations. Employees who trust their employers tend to be more engaged and productive, while businesses that cultivate customer trust enjoy better relationships and outcomes. Just as what happened in my company, if I give enough guidance and freedom for a team member, most of the time he or she will be able to complete the task with less deviation and supervision.
Building and Repairing Trust, includes strategies for developing trust through competence, legitimacy, and impact. It also addresses how to rebuild relationships after breaches of trust, which are increasingly common in today's business landscape. It matters when someone underperform in certain task, the choice to forgive and let one have another try is hard, but if he or she had understood the root cause, another big effort will be put into making things right.
One article delves into the neuroscience behind trust, understanding the psychological mechanisms that underpin trusting relationships. The notion of optimizing multiple dimensions of trust can be challenging in practice. But discussions around trust really can sometimes oversimplify the nuances involved in real-world scenarios. In my personal experience, listening long enough and encouraging the person you talk to without interrupting, is a magical way to gain trust.
The book offers actionable insights, such as how to negotiate effectively with untrustworthy counterparts and how to view a company through the eyes of its customers. Trust and empathy are very knit together, there is an old saying "stand in another's boot". Some practical approach said in this book makes it relevant for leaders seeking to enhance their organizational culture.
Overall, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Trust serves as a valuable resource for leaders aiming to foster a culture of trust within their organizations while providing a comprehensive overview of contemporary discussions on this critical topic.
December 28, 2023
Good read on how trust can be built and managed in companies. Good stories added to the content
December 28, 2024
It was nice to switch things up with a collection of business-related articles and essays. Overall I felt like I learned some things, but certainly some articles were better than others. 4/5
March 27, 2025
Just skimmed through with the most interesting pieces
December 23, 2025
Audiobook
Listened for work research, nothing special but some of the parts were really good advice and things to pay attention to when building trust
Listened for work research, nothing special but some of the parts were really good advice and things to pay attention to when building trust
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews