In a world of bloated CEO salaries that cause many employees to shake their heads in anger and disbelief, wondering how someone who leads a company that is downsizing and/or not producing well can collect such a massive salary and get a bonus to boot, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a breath of fresh air. His company has grown dramatically in the past few years and has seen a 250% increase in shares the past 12 months. In spite of his inspiring leadership, he earns only $2.7million a year, which is extraordinarily modest by Silicon Valley CEO standards. And he gets no bonus at all. Instead, his wealth rises and falls with the company’s stock price. For his pay, he takes $1million in cash and the remainder in stock options, which over the past 7 years he has exercised faithfully every two weeks in 20,000 share increments. What this means is that as the company has prospered, so has he. The opposite is also true. If the company falters, he will falter economically as well. By tying his income to the company’s profitability and growth, he has done what so few CEOs do directly: take full responsibility by placing himself in a position to experience the effects of his actions. While many talk about their sense of responsibility, he acts on it. Other CEOs have done the same, notably, Jim Senegal of Costco, whose work-a-day ethic gives his employees reason to trust him.

What many CEOs don’t seem to get is that trust is at the core of leadership; you can’t create an exceptional culture without it. And taking a raise in salary and a bonus when the company is not growing or prospering sucks the wind out of an employee’s trust in leadership. In contrast, Hastings has created an exceptional culture at Netflix in part because he acts in a trustworthy way with respect (or in regard to) to his own compensation.

Many a cynic will challenge the notion that trust in leadership goes hand in hand with results by pointing to companies that have done well financially and whose leader is an arrogant S.O.B. There are enough companies led by terrible culture leaders that one could say that culture is not directly related to performance. But the research does not bear this out.

All social science research shows patterns. They do not show absolute correlations, so of course, there will be outliers. Notable among them is Oracle, led by the mercurial Larry Ellison whose troubling leadership behavior is legion. Years ago, he trumped up the revenue figures of his firm through clever accounting in order to keep the stock price from falling. I have known many people who have left the company because they did not trust him or his ways of operating. And yet the company prospers. Why? Not because he is a great culture builder. It is for other reasons, mostly having to do with a highly aggressive approach to the market and good products. He makes no apology for his style. And so, of course, you can point to his leadership and the company and say, “You see, there is no direct correlation between effective culture leadership and results.” Thankfully, the Ellison’s of the world who get results in spite of their questionable leadership are few and far between. Although there are outliers, there is still a powerful and resounding correlation between conscious and effective culture leadership and long-term results. Trust is at the core of leading an effective culture. You need go no further than the stock price and results of the 100 best companies to work for, or the book, Built to Last by James Collins and Jerry Porras.

Culture eats strategy almost all the time, and trust is crucial. Hastings of Netflix is showing the way, as is Jim Senegal of Costco, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Carol Bartz of Autodesk, and many more. I tip my hat to them all.