The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

by Stephen M.R. Covey

He said, “Now you need to know that when you take this job, I don’t do it anymore. It’s your job. It’s called a stewardship. Stewardship means ‘a job with a trust.’ I trust you to do the job, to get it done.” He set up a system for accountability.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

trust is one of the most powerful forms of motivation and inspiration. People want to be trusted. They respond to trust. They thrive on trust. Whatever our situation, we need to get good at establishing, extending, and restoring trust—not as a manipulative technique, but as the most effective way of relating to and working with others, and the most effective way of getting results.

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive, your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, your results, your track record. And both are vital.

Character is a constant; it’s necessary for trust in any circumstance. Competence is situational; it depends on what the circumstance requires.

Trust is equal parts character and competence. Both are absolutely necessary. From the family room to the boardroom, you can look at any leadership failure, and it’s always a failure of one or the other.

The key is in understanding and learning how to navigate in what I’ve come to call the “5 Waves of Trust.” This model derives from the “ripple effect” metaphor that graphically illustrates the interdependent nature of trust and how it flows from the inside out.

The first wave, Self Trust, deals with the confidence we have in ourselves—in our ability to set and achieve goals, to keep commitments, to walk our talk—and also with our ability to inspire trust in others.

The key principle underlying this wave is credibility, which comes from the Latin root credere, meaning “to believe.” In this first wave, we will explore the “4 Cores of Credibility,” where we will discuss ways to increase our credibility in order to firmly establish trust with ourselves and with others. The end result of high character and high competence is credibility, judgment, and influence.

The purpose of this book is to enable you to see, speak, and behave in ways that establish trust, and all three dimensions are vital.

keep in mind that whatever your role at work or at home, you are an influencer. You are a leader, even if only of yourself.

basically boils down to these four issues: your integrity, your intent, your capabilities, and your results.

Your credibility—as an expert witness, as a person, as a leader, as a family, as an organization—depends on these four factors.

Can you see why employees don’t trust their managers? Most of the time, it’s not the huge, visible withdrawals like Enron and WorldCom ethics violations that wipe out organizational trust. It’s the little things—a day at a time, a weak or dishonest act at a time—that gradually weaken and corrode credibility. Little things count. Like when someone calls in to talk to a manager and his assistant says he is in a meeting when he is not. It’s the little things that your employees notice. —FRANK VANDER SLOOT, PRESIDENT AND CEOOF MELALEUCA

One way to visualize the importance of all 4 Cores of Credibility is through the metaphor of a tree. Integrity is essentially below the surface. It is the root system out of which everything else grows. Intent becomes somewhat more visible. It is the trunk that emerges from beneath the surface out into the open. Capabilities are the branches. They are the capacities that enable us to produce. Results are the fruits—the visible, tangible, measurable outcomes that are most easily seen and evaluated by others.

“the Roddick Choice”—demonstrating integrity even when it is costly. It illustrates the clear connection between integrity, credibility, and trust—both with others and with ourselves.

Albert Camus said, “Integrity has no need of rules.”

People who are congruent act in harmony with their deepest values and beliefs. They walk their talk. When they feel they ought to do something, they do it. They’re not driven by extrinsic forces, including the opinions of others or the expediency of the moment. The voice they listen and respond to is the quiet voice of conscience.

A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.

Every time we make and keep a commitment to ourselves—large or small—we increase our self-confidence. We build our reserves. We enlarge our capacity to make and keep greater commitments, both to ourselves and to others.

First, don’t make too many commitments. If you do, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Differentiate between a goal, a direction, a focus, and an actual commitment. When you make a commitment to yourself, do so with the clear understanding that you’re pledging your integrity.

The motive that inspires the greatest trust is genuine caring—caring about people, caring about purposes, caring about the quality of what you do, caring about society as a whole. Think about it: Are you going to trust someone who could really care less about you…or about work…or about principles, or values, or anyone or anything else?

The opposite of a mutual benefit agenda is a self-serving agenda: “I want to win—period.” If that’s your agenda, you might get results. But you need to ask yourself: Are these the best possible results I could be getting? And: Are these results sustainable over time? The answer to both of these questions is “no.”

When we believe people truly are acting in our best interest, we tend to trust them. When we believe that they are not acting in our best interest, we do not trust them. It’s that simple.

As I have had occasion to speak to groups in my church, for example, I have come to realize the value of constantly asking myself this question: Am I seeking to bless, or to impress? This helps me keep my purpose in mind and to speak with greater openness and integrity.

Think about the difference between a child who has learned to play a musical instrument or excel in sports or drama or some area of academics, compared to one who has essentially wasted his time. Think about the difference in the confidence and discipline he has—not only that he can do what he has learned to do well, but also in his ability to learn and do other things in life. As he reaches his teenage years and applies for a job, think of the confidence potential employers will have in him. Even if the job doesn’t require his currently developed talents or skills, employers will recognize his desire and ability to develop skills as demonstrated by his past. As he moves on into higher education, family, career, and contribution, his capabilities—and the desire and ability to develop his capabilities—will be a huge trust builder and will have a dramatic, positive impact throughout his life.

An example of someone who has the other three cores—but not capabilities—would be someone who is honest and caring and produces the results necessary to be promoted to a new level of responsibility that he doesn’t have the competence to handle. This is the Peter Principle in action—of promoting people to the level of their incompetence. If he simply relies on the skills that got him to where he is—if he isn’t involved in constantly learning, growing, and developing new skills—he won’t have what’s necessary to succeed in his new situation.

Again, all four cores are vital. And capabilities are particularly essential in today’s changing economy, where technology and globalization are outdating skill-sets faster than ever before. The half-life of our current knowledge and skills is much shorter than it has ever been, and suddenly someone who was very competent and even had a great track record in yesterday’s world may no longer be competent in today’s world.

The main message here for both individuals and organizations is that to remain credible in today’s world, we need to constantly improve our capabilities. I have one colleague who maintains that it’s vital to “reinvent yourself” every three years to significantly upgrade your skill-set and knowledge so that you can remain relevant and able to make new contributions in a world of constant change. This three-year reinvention may be important for organizations, as well. As the American Express Next Chapter book asserts, “Reinvention is the key to longevity.” This is probably never more vital than in today’s changing global economy, where new competitors often emerge from a standing start and technology can make a once-successful strategy obsolete overnight.

Talentsare our natural gifts and strengths. Attitudes represent our paradigms—our ways of seeing, as well as our ways of being. Skills are our proficiencies, the things we can do well. Knowledge represents our learning, insight, understanding, and awareness. Style represents our unique approach and personality. These are all parts of what we call our capabilities. They are our means to produce results.

Always surround yourself with people who are even more talented and competent than you. It takes tremendous self trust to do this—a confidence born of high integrity, positive intent, and an attitude of continuous improvement—but the results are incomparable.

Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant. And when you’re irrelevant, you’re no longer credible. And without credibility, you won’t sustain trust—which will dramatically impact both speed and cost.

One thing to be careful of with regard to skills is what author Jim Collins calls “the curse of competence.” It’s the idea that sometimes we become good at doing something we’re not really talented in or passionate about. As my father often says, “Your current skill-set may or may not correspond with your natural talents.” We need to make certain that the skills we develop don’t limit or define us. At the end of the day, talent provides a deeper well than skills.

One way to accelerate the rate of learning, both individually and organizationally, is to learn with the intent to teach others what you learn. As Peter Drucker has observed, “Knowledge workers and services workers learn most when they teach.”

Lord Chesterton answers: “There are no uninteresting things; there are only uninterested people.”

On the individual level, the problem is that many people aren’t into the idea of continuous improvement. So they’re working in a company—maybe they’ve been there for ten or fifteen years—but instead of having fifteen years of experience, they really have only one year of experience repeated fifteen times! They’re not adapting to the changes required by the new global economy. As a result, they don’t develop the credibility that would inspire greater trust and opportunity. Often they become obsolete. Their company and/or the external markets outgrow them.

competence, coupled with character, creates a credible leader whom others will follow—not because they’re forced, but because they’re inspired to do so.

This is basically what this book is all about—your ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust. I would go so far as to say that your technical capabilities are taxed dramatically—sometimes even becoming irrelevant—in direct relation to your trust abilities.

What do you do with someone who gets the results, but in ways that violate company values? The GE approach, which illustrates the dynamic between “getting results” and “living the values,” recognizes four possibilities. They say it’s fairly easy to know what to do with the first category of people, who both deliver results and live the values. They should be retained and promoted. It’s also fairly easy to know what to do with the second category, who neither deliver results nor live the values. They should be let go. The other two categories, however, are tougher to deal with. Those who live the values but achieve low results can often be trained, coached, or moved to another role. If they don’t improve, they may need to be let go. The hardest of all to deal with are those who have high results but are poor in living the values. They achieve the end that everybody wants, but they do it a way that blatantly defies organizational values. According to GE, people in this category need to learn to operate within the company’s values—or be let go, despite their results. To keep them on as they are is not only unsustainable, it is damaging to the organization and destroys credibility and trust.

In our businesses, relationships, families, and personal lives, there is wisdom in recognizing the capacity of people to learn from their mistakes and to change. There is also wisdom in creating a culture that makes it safe for that to happen. A transparent culture of learning and growing will generally create credibility and trust, even when the immediate results are not the best. The more important desired result is growth, and growth cannot happen without risk. To always make decisions and give opportunity based on past observable performance is to severely limit our ability to achieve great results in the future.

Finally, we need to be aware and appreciate the value of playing a supporting role in achieving results that may be primarily attributed to others. The reality is that no results ever come exclusively from the work of one individual or organization; they represent the efforts of many. You can see it in the world of science, where most new “discoveries” clearly come out of the work, and even sometimes the mistakes, of those of the past. You see it recognized in sports such as basketball, where statisticians measure not only points but also assists, and baseball, where they measure sacrifices as well as runs. Understanding and appreciating the importance of a supportive role in getting results helps us all to more appropriately value our own contributions, as well as the contributions of others.

The truth is that in every relationship—personal and professional—what you do has far greater impact than anything you say.

When your purpose is to accomplish results in a way that builds trust, suddenly the behaviors that build trust are no longer just nice “to do’s”; they become powerful tools that enable you to enjoy rich, satisfying relationships, greater collaboration and shared accomplishment, and more just plain fun.

“Talk Straight” is honesty in action. It’s based on the principles of integrity, honesty, and straightforwardness. As I said earlier, it means two things: to tell the truth and to leave the right impression. And both are vital to building trust. It’s possible to tell the truth and to leave the wrong impression. Leaving the right impression means communicating so clearly that you cannot be misunderstood. What we say is true and forthcoming—not just technically correct. —DELL INC.’S CODE OF CONDUCT

Most people don’t flat-out lie—at least not blatantly. Instead, they engage in the counterfeit behaviors of Talk Straight. These counterfeits include behaviors such as beating around the bush, withholding information, double-talk (speaking with a “forked tongue”), flattery, positioning, posturing, and the granddaddy of them all: “spinning” communication in order to manipulate the thoughts, feelings, or actions of others. Another dangerous counterfeit is “technically” telling the truth but leaving a false impression. This is mincing words and legally splitting hairs. All these behaviors invariably diminish trust.

While straight talk is vital to establishing trust, in most situations, it needs to be tempered by skill, tact, and good judgment.

Behavior #3—Create Transparency—is about being open. It’s about being real and genuine and telling the truth in a way people can verify. It’s based on the principles of honesty, openness, integrity, and authenticity. I also like to include the principle of light, because when something is transparent, light will flow through it. In the words of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” It cleanses. It dissipates the shadows. It casts out the darkness. It enables people to see. It gives them a sense of comfort and confidence because they know there’s nothing being hidden.