Vessy Tasheva: Leading the Pursuit toward a Business World Built on Trust 

• Curiosity: Trust Strategy and Culture Implementations  are multi-dimensional and in a state of constant evolution. By being curious, people can explore, discover, experiment, and iterate—the learning never ends. 

• Autonomy: This factor is essential in developing and sustaining a growth mindset. Moreover, it helps businesses connect with and hire talent from across the globe—instilling a sense of being on your own without being alone.

• Courage: By being courageous, people can have uncomfortable conversations and be vulnerable and authentic. Asking themselves a question: How would we explore cultural differences and norms without being comfortable with being our authentic selves?

Established in 2018, Vessy.com received recognition for five years in a row for its invaluable contribution to the Trust and Culture space. The renowned clients who expressed positive feedback include Hubject, Soundcloud, Typeform, Automatic, Aiven, Wooga, Reward Gateway, and more.

As a global organizational consultancy, Vessy.com works with tech companies during hypergrowth, restructuring, the before-after period of IPOs, and mergers and acquisitions. Some of the many applications where Vessy.com’s expertise in Trust Strategy is applied are areas such as Sales Enablement, Trust & Safety, pre-IPO readiness, Investor Trust, Employee Trust in leaders and People team.  

With its effective solutions, Vessy works with individual leaders through coaching and masterclasses. With teams and departments through workshops. To positively impact the entire organization, Vessy offers an array of diagnostics, strategies, support with implementation, and annual audits.

The consensus at numerous European companies was that a company needs to have the size and maturity of Google to invest in Trust and Culture. That notion started changing in 2019, and one year later, the market witnessed a tremendous transformation. 

After years of closely researching the market changes, Vessy Tasheva realized that, the conversation is not only about  Culture anymore, says Vessy:

It always fascinated Vessy how the leaders build and repair trust internally and externally, especially under the pressure of hypergrowth, pre-IPO readiness, M&As plus layoffs, restructuring, and crisis.

A year back, Vessy Tasheva delivered a master’s dissertation on Trust at Trinity College Dublin as part of an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at Trinity School of Medicine—examining how the earliest experiences of Trust shape who we become as adults. 

The 2024 report is a progression of her work at Trinity with the ambitious goal of linking organizational and inter-organizational trust to self-trust and interpersonal trust in a practical and actionable way for leaders and organizations.

The company graphs have changed significantly since 2018, as Vessy Tasheva gradually expanded from a client base of companies with a headcount of 300-1,000 to a portfolio that now includes companies of 2,000-3,000 employees and even larger of 20,000 employees and more. To take the company even further, Vessy identifies the blockers its clients face and its urgency to solve their problems with its tailored solutions.

For better insights and inspiration, Vessy Tasheva looks beyond Trust and Culture—noting that intersectionality is much richer when interdisciplinary and inter-organizational.

The company studies how and why humans trust when they experience it for the first time and then start their conception. Vessy’s dissertation researched how the early experiences of trust shape the sense of self, self-trust, and trusting others for adults. These early experiences encompassed three primary stages: during pregnancy, during birth, and during the first six months of life.

1. Trust as a Performance Optimizer

• High-trust organizations see:
• 106% more employee energy
• 50% better productivity
• 76% higher engagement
• Psychological safety leads to an additional 26% performance boost (Gartner)

High-trust companies have employees with:

• 74% less stress
• 13% fewer sick days
• 29% more life satisfaction
• 40% less burnout (Harvard Business Review)

2. Trust as a way to manage pressures & demands

Trust is becoming increasingly important due to rising anxieties from wars, misinformation, and constant change. Effective leaders manage these anxieties by:

• Practicing self-care to control their own worries.
• Using empathy, hope, and stability to support their team.
• Building self-trust and tolerance for uncertainty.

Leaders face internal pressures like self-doubt, stress, and negative self-talk. External pressures include:

• Changing business needs.
• Stagnant or hyper-growth markets.
• Upcoming milestones (IPO, mergers, etc.).

• Shift in Values for Funded Companies: Since 2018, there’s been a major change in what values are important to innovative companies that get funded. In 2024, values like transparency, accountability, integrity, belonging, and trust are key, whereas in 2018 these were rarely mentioned.
• Focus on Trust: The passage highlights the importance of trust and explores different levels of trust that can be built:
  • Individual (self-trust)
  • Between people (interpersonal trust)
  • Within teams (team trust)
  • Within organizations (organizational trust)
  • Between organizations (inter-organizational trust)
  • In society as a whole (trust in society)