What role does trust play, within your company, when it comes to your individual and team performance? 

Well, it turns out a lot.

As Joel Peterson  -- Chairman of JetBlue, Consulting Stanford Professor, Author, and Founder of Peterson Partners which is part Private Equity and Venture Capital firm with over $1 billion under management-- puts it: "Trust is the most powerful operating system you can have. A lot of people think of it as this fuzzy feel-good thing; I like somebody, therefore, I trust them. In the book I wrote The Ten Laws of Trust, the fundamental thesis was that you can factor analyze trust, and if a leader will follow these laws, they can actually build a high trust culture. A high trust culture is really a more powerful one because it can deliver on promises. A high trust leader can delegate more easily because the people under him or her are able to predict what they are going to do. People who are low trust, everybody is afraid of them and they’re afraid to make decisions. They’re unable to really empower others."

In the absence of a high trust culture, what's possible for the company gets negatively impacted as trust is the foundation upon which relationships are built. In its most basic form, companies are made up of people working together and the quality of the interactions is correlated to the degree of trust.

Also, Joel not only has pioneered and led some of the most forward-thinking companies but has also financed them. As a 2X author, Joel is uniquely positioned to understand what fundamentally successful companies do and has gracefully shared these operating principles in his latest book: Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others and Running Stuff?

Tune in to the full episode to learn about:

The importance of trust in organizationsHow to restore trustThe correlation between trust and integrity, and how that impacts performanceWhat is an entrepreneurial leaderThe difference between entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leadersThe framework for being an entrepreneurial leaderHow to spearhead your company culture amidst a crisis

Connect with Joel Peterson:

LinkedinTwitterWebsiteBook: The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds that Make a Business GreatBook: Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others and Running Stuff

Joel Peterson's Story:

Joel Peterson is the chairman of JetBlue Airways and the founding partner of Peterson Partners, a Salt Lake City-based investment management firm.

Joel has a long history of successful growth capital investments in a variety of industries. He currently teaches Entrepreneurial Management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, is the Chairman of the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford as well as the Chairman of the Board at JetBlue Airways, and serves as a Director of Franklin Covey. He served formerly as Managing Partner of Trammell Crow Company. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Joel is the author of The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds that Make a Business Great and Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others and Running Stuff.

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Full Transcription:

Joel Peterson: I think a lot of people confuse honesty. They think integrity just means honesty, and they see it as a virtue. I think of it more like structural integrity. There’s no gap between what I say and what I do. People can rely on my promises. They can predict my responses. This is the way to empower your team, to have them know that what you’ll say and do are the same.

Tanya: That’s Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue, consulting professor of Stanford, author and founder of Peterson Partners, which is part private equity and part venture capital firm, with over a billion dollars under management. Joel has not only pioneered and led some of the most forward-thinking c...