Are you concerned that by going green at your annual meeting you open yourself up for criticism about your industry over the long run?

Thoughts on that and more in today’s Lunchtime Links:

The value of green meetings: Thinking of moving toward sustainable events? Worry about the implications of this for your group? EVenues has some thoughts on the matter — which it discussed with Jaime Nack of environmental consulting firm Three Squares. “For a lot of [our] clients,” she explains, “It’s just something that’s part of their internal fiber or their corporate culture and so they want to make sure that they’re walking the talk and they’re doing it right. But it might not be something that they want to promote externally for fear that if they promote that they’re doing X someone might try to dig deeper and say ‘Well, what about Y and Z?'” Nack notes, however, the success her company has had with encouraging green practices.

Fermenting a protest: Ever change something about your association’s structure, only to find yourself facing a revolt from your members? That’s what Anheuser-Busch InBev, the multicontinent beer conglomerate, is facing from some consumers amid concern that it has started to produce some of its international beers domestically and has been trimming costs by cutting corners. The company, however, is showing strong financial success despite the backlash. If you were the beer giant, how would you ease concerns of your customers?

Breaking down trust: What sort of trust do you have with your employees and business colleagues? Blanchard LeaderChat’s Randy Conley breaks down three types of trust you can have between yourself and the people in your life. The deepest (and hardest-to-attain) level, according to Conley, is identity-based trust. “Imagine less gossiping, backbiting, or dirty politics being played because we knew each other’s hopes and dreams and worked to encourage their development rather than always having a me-first attitude,” he explains. Have you fostered a culture of close relationships at your company?

Who have you built a strong degree of trust with in your business life? And what did you do to attain it? Let us know in the comments.

(TMG archive photo)