In Stephen Covey’s book The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything, he focuses on the role of trust in the context of leadership and business or professional situations. One of his most fascinating points is the notion of treating trust as a competency—something that we can do something about. Covey makes a strong connection between trust and confidence (as opposed to suspicion, for example).
His reference to “speed” in the title is about how he relates trust to speed and cost. Specifically, he notes that as trust goes down, cost goes up and speed goes down. When trust is low or absent, things take longer because more time is spent gaining sufficient confidence to make decisions and move forward; hence costs go up accordingly. This is what Covey refers to as a “trust dividend”.
Continuing with my common theme about the value of breaking things down into very small parts, I want to point out how Covey breaks trust down into 13 behaviors that can help to build trust. These include:
- Talk straight. Be honest and tell the truth. The opposite of spin for example
- Create transparency. Operate on the premise of "what you see is what you get."
- Demonstrate respect. Treat everyone with respect, especially those who cannot do anything for you.
- Show loyalty. Acknowledge others' contributions. Speak about others as if they were present.
- Deliver results. Accomplish what you are hired to do on time and within budget.
- Practice accountability. Don't blame others when things go wrong.
- Keep commitments. When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep it, you build trust.
In his onstage interview, Stephen picked out the first two of these behaviors (Talk Straight and Create Transparency), and when we talked later he added two others:
- Get better. Seek feedback. Staying current.
- Listen first. We usually listen with the intention to reply, not to listen to understand.
There is nothing new or revolutionary about any of these behaviors and in spite of the more questionable actions we see around us, most of us were brought up learning about these constructive behaviors from parents and others, yet their application seems all too rare. I'm reminded of one of the great book titles of all time, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.
However, one of the major benefits of breaking trust into all its constituent pieces is that you can deal with each one individually or in smaller groups. Treating trust as a competency enables you to identify those components that can be learned or are “trainable” and use these to actually build and improve upon the trust in a relationship or within an organization or group.
What I particularly like about Stephen’s perspective on trust is how he challenges the age-old characterization of trust as some vague social virtue. I found it particularly positive and empowering to remove trust from the constraints we often attach to it—as being something people have a fixed amount of or they are born with and thus is something you can’t do much about. This view renders us helpless to do anything more than look for as much of it as possible. Instead, by treating trust as a competency, trust can be a solid economic driver as well as a learnable and measurable skill. While the focus in the book is largely on the professional application almost all of this can be applied at the personal level and produces deeply advantageous and sustainable success in all dimensions of life.
This is all very much worth reflecting upon. Read through Covey’s list of trust behaviors above and consider the rating for:
- Yourself personally in your dealings with family and friends
- Yourself professionally at work and with your business colleagues and dealings
- Your team or department
- Your overall organization or company
And most importantly, what can you do to improve these? Given that almost all of our interactions with others—our communications and our leadership abilities—hinge upon trust, don't we want to have this as one of our greatest competencies?
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