Stephen M.R. Covey's Comments
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 4:04pm EST
Thank you all for participating in this conversation. I am excited that you're interested in this topic and believe that it is vital for us in our times.

Keep making waves of trust!

All the best,

Stephen
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 4:02pm EST
Yvette,

Your comments regarding listening are insightful regarding trust. With respect to relationships where there are clear differences, the two behaviors that tend to build trust the fastest are to Listen First and to Demonstrate Respect. When you listen first, you understand what behaviors will build trust with others and which will not, from their perspective, not yours. And then when you demonstrate respect for your differences, that also engenders trust.

The opposite of listening first is to speak first and listen last, or not to listen at all. The common counterfeit behavior is to pretend to listen or to listen without understanding. When people don't feel understood, they're not nearly as open to your influence and they tend not to trust as much. So the key is to not only listen first, but to listen to understand. As my father says, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 3:52pm EST
Lloyd,

Thank you for your generous comments. I really appreciate them. I'll kindly share them with my father as well.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 3:50pm EST
Regarding Shava's comment about being privileged to work in an environment that values trust . . .

So it is with the truly great places to work. The Great Place to Work Institute contends that the primary, defining characteristic of what makes a company a great place to work is a high level of mutual trust. The "100 Best Companies to Work For" put out by Fortune Magazine each year in conjunction with The Great Place to Work Institute, echoes this finding. That trust is the primary, defining characteristic of a great working environment. It brings out the best in people. Yes, there are a few who abuse it, but the vast majority do not, and, instead, rise to the occasion and prove the trust justified. They also build a culture that begins to not tolerate the distrust from the few, and that culture becomes far stronger than any "rules" they might put in place.

Research shows that these "100 Best Companies" outperform the market by four times, so trust pays! Similarly, Watson Wyatt showed that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by 286%. I call this the "Trust Dividend." This is opposite of the "Trust Tax" that low-trust companies are exacted -- in everything that they do.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 3:38pm EST
Cynthia, Ainsley, and all who want to be part of the renaissance of trust,

Yes! You are right; you are all invited to join me and many others and be part of this renaissance of trust. It ultimately is foundational to our ability to succeed as a society. As Stephen Carter, the great Yale Law professor and historian said, "Civility has two parts: generosity when it is costly, and trust even when there is risk." So, while there is some risk to trusting, having trust is nonetheless foundational to a civilized society. Similarly, Thomas Freidman in his book, "The World is Flat," points out that terrorists are trying to attack the very thing that keeps societies open, innovating, and "flat," and that thing is Trust. Trust is a vital condition to an open society, and, without trust, we will tend to errect walls and dig motes instead. None of that is useful to the challenges we face in our world today.

The French proverb says, "Fish discover water last." They're so immersed in its presence that they're unaware of its existence. They only become aware when the water becomes polluted or gets too low. So it is with people and trust. People discover trust last, but we become more and more aware of it as trust becomes polluted or gets too low -- which is what has happened. So now, we have an opportunity to rediscover trust. As T. S. Elliot said, "We shall never cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time."
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 3:26pm EST
Yvette,

Thanks for your question. You point out that when people behave in ways that are what I call "counterfeit" behaviors, trust is diminished. Let me illustrate. One of the 13 Behaviors is to "Talk Straight." That includes telling the truth and the whole story. The opposite of "Talk Straight" is to talk "crooked," or to lie. Most people have learned that lying destroys trust (although some obviously have not). But the more common "counterfeit" behavior to "Talking Straight" is not necessarily lying, but rather, "spinning," manipulating, twisting, distorting, or technically telling the truth but leaving the wrong impression. This is a counterfeit behavior such as what happened with the person who "left out" information with you. It's natural that you tend not to trust a person that does this as much. So, this gets factored in to your "smart trust analysis" that I referred to earlier.

Ultimately, as my father says, "A person can't talk themself out of a problem they behaved themself into." But I add to that, "But they often can behave themself out of a problem they behaved themself into." So, in this case, having a straight talk dialogue with this person may be helpful to both of you so that he/she knows they are being "taxed" when they don't talk straight to you and that there are consequences to that.

By the way, counterfeit behavior is the prevailing culture in most organizations today. That's why learning these behaviors -- and behaving them from our core of who we really are -- is so critical to establishing trust.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 3:10pm EST
Praveen and Shava,

Your questions are of a similar vein. I think we need to actually frame trust in economic terms, not merely social or moral terms, so that people can see that trust is not only the right thing to do, but that it's also the eonomic thing to do. When they see the real cost of distrust and how that gets played out, they may see that distrust, in fact, is very expensive. For example, Enron ultimately failed because of violations of trust and the costs of this failure was extremely expensive to everyone involved. That's a dramatic example, but even at a smaller scale level, we can quantify real costs of low trust. In a relationship, for example, when trust is low, the costs are seen in terms of time taken, energy spent, pain, exhaustion, and unhappiness. Lives can be ruined. Not everybody is getting away with it, as it may seem. Sometimes people may appear to get away with it, but it is not sustainable over time and there are costs along the way. People who are not trusted are getting taxed, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, it's happening.

I think we need to demonstrate positive role models and good scripts to counteract the distrustful scripts people see. Jon Huntsman, in his recent book, "Winners Never Cheat," describes a different world than the distrustful world and shows how winners in the long haul, in fact, demonstrate integrity and "don't cheat." So while we can all point to many examples of people getting ahead while cheating, we can also point to many examples of people failing (and failing significantly) because of cheating as well as point to other examples of sustainable winners who are winning because they don't cheat.

Ultimately, I believe that real leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. In other words, how we go about doing it is as in imporant as what we're doing.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:52pm EST
Christin,

I try to read as much as I can as part of "getting better" and increasing my own capabilities. I have many favorite books and would be hard-pressed to only list five. But, some of those that I particularly have gained from include: Thomas Freidman's "The World is Flat," Fred Reicheld's, "The Loyalty Effect," William Shakespeare's complete works, "Crucial Conversations" and "Crucial Confrontations" by Grenny, Patterson, McMillan, and Switzler. Of course I also love my father's books, especially "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." I also love reading the scriptures, reading biographies of great men and women throughout history, and reading current events in various formats.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:42pm EST
By the way, Arielle, thank you for your kind review. I really appreciate it!
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:40pm EST
Shava,

Your concern is a real one. One of the challenges of an increasingly distrustful society is that it tends to perpetuate itself. We can get caught in a vicious downward cycle of distrust and suspicion, wondering what else is out there and when the other shoe is going to drop. This can be true for our children as they grow up as well as for all of us as adults. So, there's real merit to your concern. Most children grow up initially with a propensity to trust, but for many of them, over time, that propensity to trust is replaced with a propensity not to trust because of the violations of trust that often take place, followed by the disillusionment that sometimes sets in and the being "burned" by having extended trust perhaps unwisely. So, it's understandable why cynicism creeps in. My response to this is that, yes, it's a reality, but that we need to counteract that reality by creating trust in place of distrust, by modeling credibility in place of manipulation, and by making contributions in place of destroying value. In other words, we need leadership -- trusted leadership -- to counteract the consequences of a distrustful enviornment. I know this is not easy, but exercising such trusted leadership is part of how we'll counteract this. So, while there clearly is a crisis of trust in most of our societies, there is simultaneously a "renaissance" of trust that is also beginning to take root because of trusted leaders stepping up and demonstrating real leadership. Patricia Abrudene's book, Megatrends 2010, speaks to this renaissance of trust. Six of her seven megatrends that she sees affecting our society are trends I would classify as part of the renaissance of trust.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:30pm EST
Arielle,

I became intrigued by this topic of trust for two main reasons. The first was my own experience with this, where I've been on both sides of the equation and have seen the real practical difference in high-trust relationships and low-trust relationships at work. The difference is profound! And, it's palpable. In fact, I believe you can quantify it. And this quantification is the second reason. I felt that trust was a commonly misunderstood and underestimated factor, not only in business, but in all of life. We assume it, and take it for granted. And, yet, we really have not focused on establishing and growing trust as a discipline, a competency. To many, it is merely a nice-to-have, "social" virtue. But I see it as much bigger than that. It is also a hard-edged economic driver, because it always affects speed and cost. So, I wanted to reframe trust in economic terms and be able to show it's relevance and practicality in terms of the impact it has on our lives and companies. And, I also wanted to show that we can do something about this. That is, we can get good at engendering trust with others.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:23pm EST
Yvette,

Very good question. In fact, I like to say, "To trust or not to trust; that is the question." Clearly, we don't want to be in the position where we are gullible and just blindly trust everybody and anybody. That is what I call "blind trust," and will result in people frequently getting burned or let down. Conversely, we don't want to be distrustful and suspicious with everyone we come in contact with because of the fact that we've been burned before. The third alternative to this, is to exercise this "smart trust," which means that, yes, we have a propensity to trust other people, but that we balance that propensity to trust with good analysis. The analysis includes considering three variables -- first, assess the situation or opportunity; second, assess the risk involved; and third, assess the credibility of the people involved. Then we use good judgement in making decisions on when and how much to trust. In some cases, we may choose not to trust, because that is what good judgement may dictate. But the important starting place, is to have a propensity to trust instead of a propensity not to trust. And then to add "good analysis" to that propensity to trust. It's an on-going process of learning how to do this smartly. Give trust conditionally to those who are earning your trust. (But still seek to give some.) And give trust abundantly to those who have earned your trust.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:16pm EST
Praveen,

I admire David Maister but am not familiar enough with what he's written to be able to compare my approach with his. But I do like his concept of being a "trusted advisor." And believe that that idea is similar to what I'm espousing, particularly in terms of a person increasing their personal credibility.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:13pm EST
Shava,

That's an interesting question. With respect to trust, a person may be able to fake or manipulate trust for a period of time, but they won't be able to sustain it over the long haul. They will ultimately have their comeuppance. It may not be immediate, but it will be ultimate. They may be able to get away with it with some people for a period of time, but they won't be able to sustain with everyone over time. As the expression goes, "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." So it is with trust. That's why the behaviors common to high-trust people flow naturally out of who they really are and who they're trying to be -- their character and competence. Anything different than this may be artificial and simulated and is not sustainable over time.
Nov 21, 2006 | comments: 39
Stephen M.R. Covey Nov 21, 2006, 2:01pm EST
Hello Gatherers,
It's great to be with you and I'm excited for our conversation.
 
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