Covey’s Speed of Trust 10: 2nd Wave—Relationship Trust

We continue our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I encourage you to buy the book and study it multiple times.

Once you establish or reestablish self-trust (trusting yourself and others trusting you), you move to the second wave of trust: relationship trust. Covey writes “The Second Wave—Relationship Trust—is all about behavior…consistent behavior. It’s about learning how to interact with others in ways that increase trust and avoid interacting in ways that destroy it.”

Relationship Trust

Covey continues “More specifically, it’s about the 13 Behaviors that are common to high-trust leaders and people throughout the world. These behaviors are powerful because:

• They are based on principles that govern trusting relationships…
• They grow out of the 4 cores…
• They are actionable…
• They are universal…”

The author highlights the need to “If you’re not a caring person now—but you desire to be a caring person—then go out and behave in caring ways. If you’re not an honest person—but you desire to be honest—then go out and behave in honest ways. Just do what caring and honest people do. It may take time, but as you do these things, you can behave yourself into the kind of person you want to be.

Build Trust Accounts

Once again I quote Covey “As you work on behaving in ways that build trust, one helpful way to visualize and quantify your efforts is by thinking in terms of “Trust Accounts.”…By behaving in ways that build trust, you make deposits. By behaving in ways that destroy trust, you make withdrawals. The “balance” in the account reflects the amount of trust in the relationship at any given time.

The 13 Behaviors

He says '”I can promise you that these 13 Behaviors will significantly enhance your ability to establish trust in all relationships—both personal and professional:

1. Talk Straight
2. Demonstrate Respect
3. Create Transparency
4. Right Wrongs
5. Show Loyalty
6. Deliver Results
7. Get Better
8. Confront Reality
9. Clarify Expectations
10. Practice Accountability
11. Listen First
12. Keep Commitments
13. Extend Trust

We’ll review the behaviors in the next few posts.

Wednesday focuses on 2 behaviors of relationship trust—talk straight & demonstrate respect

Covey’s Speed of Trust 9: 4th Core of Credibility—Results

This continues our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I highly recommend you buy the book, study it, and implement what you read.

Stephen M. R. Covey shares “Results matter! They matter to your credibility. They matter to your ability to establish and maintain trust with others. In the words of Jack Welch, having results is like having ‘performance chits’ on the table. They give you clout. They classify you as a performer. Without the results, you simply don’t have that same kind of clout.”

“Bottom line, without results, you don’t have credibility.”

Results—Past, Present, and Future

Covey continues “I have worked briefly on Wall Street and been an executive in a public company, and it’s clear to me that there are three key indicators by which people evaluate results.

• Past performance—your track record, your reputation, the things you’ve done, and the results you’ve already achieved.
• Current performance—how you are performing today
• Anticipated performance—how people think you will perform in the future

Ask What and How

He outlines “In considering results, you always need to ask two critical questions:

• What results am I getting?
• How am I getting those results?

“Most people only ask the what. They have no idea that the answer to the how may be doing them in…This is why I define leadership as getting results in a way that inspires trust.  I am convinced that with regards to results, the how matters every bit as much as the what.”

Improve Your Results

How can you improve results? I believe the three accelerators below are most effective:

• Take responsibility for results: “A results focus is a way of thinking. It’s a different mentality than an activities focus”
• Expect to win: “We tend to get what we expect—both from ourselves and from others. When we expect more, we tend to get more; when we expect less, we tend to get less”
• Finish strong: Results are about finishing. You’re probably aware of the old adage, Beginners are many; finishers are few.

Monday we will begin studying the 2nd wave of trust—relationship trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 8: 3rd Core of Credibility—Capability

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I still suggest that you get it and read it repeatedly.

Self-trust (trust you place in yourself and the trust others place in you) is the first wave of trust. Credibility remains the foundation of self-trust. The four cores of credibility are integrity, intent, capability, and results. Integrity and intent enhance your character. Capabilities and results increase your competence. 

TASKS Describes Technical Abilities

Covey writes “One way to think about the various dimensions of capabilities is to use the acronym ‘TASKS’.”

• T=talents: “’Talents’ are those things that come to us naturally…As we think about our talents, we need to realize that we may have talents within us that we cannot currently know we have.”
• A=attitudes: “Consider the difference attitudes might make in your personal enjoyment of life and your ability to perform.” He warns you to beware of an attitude of entitlement. Entitlement depletes credibility fast.
• S=skills: “Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant. And when you’re irrelevant, you’re no longer credible.”
• K=knowledge: “Increasing knowledge is vital in today’s global economy, where the world’s fund of information now doubles every two to two and half years.
• S=style: “Clearly there is a wide variety of effective styles. The challenge is to match the style to the highest effectiveness for the task. The problem comes when you have a ‘style’ that gets in the way and creates distrust.”

The author continues “The end in mind here is to develop our TASKS and to match them to the tasks at hand—to create the best possible alignment between our natural gifts, our passions, our skills, knowledge, style and the opportunity to earn, to contribute, to make a difference.”

How to Increase Your Capabilities

You can increase credibility by increasing capabilities:

• Run with your strengths (and your purposes) and then focus on engaging, developing, and leveraging what is distinctly yours
• Keep yourself relevant through life-long learning
• Know where you’re going demonstrates competence

Friday we will review the results, last core of credibility, in the 1st wave of self-trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 7: 2nd Core of Credibility—Intent

This continues our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey book The Speed of Trust

The first wave of trust establishes trust in yourself. Stephen M. R. Covey describes four cores of credibility to establish self-trust. The first and second of the cores, integrity and intent, affirm your character. The third and fourth core, capabilities and results, affirm your competence. Trust drops when people either misunderstand or doubt your intent. So, let’s discuss how to clarify your intent to others.

What is Intent?

Covey writes “In the dictionary, intent is defined as ‘plan’ or ‘purpose.’ I am convinced that no discussion of intent would be complete without talking about three things: motive, agenda, and behavior.”

• “Motive is your reason for doing something…the ‘why’ that motivates the ‘what’. 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”
• “Agenda grows out of motive. Its what you intend to do or promote because of your motive. The agenda that generally inspires the greatest trust is seeking mutual benefit."
• ”Behavior is the manifestation of motive and agenda. The behavior that best creates credibility and inspires trust is acting in the best interest of others.”

Misunderstandings about intent frequently reduce credibility. For example, you may ask a question during a meeting or webinar. Perhaps others in the meeting question your motive or assume you possess a hidden agenda.

How to Improve Intent

Covey continues “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. The challenge then, is to improve intent. So here are the top three accelerators I recommend to help you do it.”

• Examine and Refine Your Motives to verify why you do what you do
• Declare Your Intent in words everyone can understand
• Choose Abundance, not of scarcity, as a foundational element of improving intent

Wednesday we will review Stephen M. R. Covey’s 3rd core of credibility—capabilities

Covey’s Speed of Trust 6: 1st Core of Credibility--Integrity

This continues our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I encourage you to buy the book.

The first wave of trust is self-trust. Self-trust grows based on the 4 Cores of Credibility integrity, intent, capability, and results. The first two contribute to character. The second two enhance competence. This post examines the first core: integrity.

Honesty Plus Three

Covey writes that integrity must include three qualities more than honesty:

• Congruence means that there is no gap between intent and behavior. The person is whole, seamless, the same—inside and out.”
• Humility refers to Jim Collins research that Level 5 Leaders exhibit strong humility rather than ego
• Courage: Integrity must include the courage to do the right thing—even when its hard. This kind of courage encourages others to have courage.

How to Increase Integrity

Covey suggests “three high-leveraged ‘accelerators’ that make a powerful difference in increasing integrity:”

• “Make and Keep Commitments to Yourself. He shares a few tips
  • Don’t make more commitments than you can keep
  • Treat a commitment  you make to yourself with as much respect as you do the commitments you make to others
  • Don’t make commitments impulsively
  • Understand that when keeping your commitment becomes hard, you have two choices
    • You can change your behavior to match your commitments
    • Or, you can lower your values to match your behavior”
• “Stand for Something" Core values give you something to stand for. He shares a story from the life of Jon Huntsman, Sr.who lost $200 million dollars because he gave his word to sell a part of his business for $54 million. Six months later when the buyer finished the papers, the company was worth $250 million. Huntsman abided by the original agreement.  Huntsman stood for the word he gave to the sale
• “Be open” Covey writes “Openness is vital to integrity. It take both humility and courage—humility to acknowledge that there are principles out there you may not currently to aware of, and courage to follow them once you discover them.”

Monday we examine intent the second core of credibility in the first wave of trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 5: See, Speak, & Behave

This continues our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed f Trust

Covey writes “The purpose of this book to enable you to see, speak and behave in ways that establish trust, and all three dimensions are vital. You’ll be able to see a trust in an entirely different way…It will also give you a language to speak about trust…Finally, this book will help you develop the behaviors that establish and grow trust.”

How This Book Will Help

The Speed of Trust will give you:

• “Trust glasses” so that you see trust differently and open your eyes to a new world of trust
• A new language to speak about trust, to describe your underlying issues involved, and it will give you the language to describe those issues
• Behaviors that establish and grow trust—especially the 13 behaviors of high-trust leaders. Learning these behaviors helps you recognize the impact when people practice—or don’t practice them

Shift Your Paradigms

Covey highlights how we can shift how see, what we speak, and how we behave. For example, when we serve someone we begin to see them differently than we did before. Because we see them differently, we behave differently around that person and towards others. Our behavior shift ultimately leads to a shift in how see the world.

Changing the language we use can also shift how we behave or see the world. Dean Curtis taught this principle with a formula Event + Language = Motivation. He showed how changing the language people used to describe events in their life changed their motivation.

Interdependence of See, Speak, & Behave

Covey continues “Clearly, these three dimensions are interdependent, and whenever you effect a change in one dimension, you effect a change in all three. For this reason, this book will focus on see, speak, and behave so that you will have not only the paradigms, but also the language and the behaviors need to establish trust and grow.”

Buy and Study The Speed of Trust

Friday we will review in more depth the first wave of self-trust & the 4 Cores of Credibility

Covey’s Speed of Trust 4: Five Waves of Trust

This continues our series on Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust

Covey describes people who don’t trust themselves, friends, management, financial markets, or society in general. He criticizes those who state they can do nothing about the lack of trust in the company, market, or society. He encourages each of us to build trust in five waves as pictured in the graphic. We will outline all 5 waves today and delve deeper into each wave in future posts.

First Wave: Self Trust

We must first “trust our ability to set and achieve goals, fulfill commitments, and to walk our talk—and also with our ability to inspire trust in others. Credibility forms the basis of this trust. Covey outlines the “4 Cores of Credibility to increase our personal credibility in order to firmly establish trust with ourselves and with others.”

Second Wave: Relationships Trust

“Relationship trust is about how to establish  and increase the ‘trust accounts’ we have with others. The key principle underlying this wave is consistent behavior.” He outlines 13 key behaviors common to high-trust leaders. These 13 key behaviors can be learned and applied to develop trust at any level.”

Third Wave: Organizational Trust

“Organizational trust deals with how leaders can generate trust in all kinds of organizations, including business, non-profits organizations, government entities, educational institutions, and families, teams, or groups. The key principle underlying organizational trust is alignment.”

Fourth Wave: Market Trust

“Market trust is the level at which almost everyone  clearly understands the impact of trust. The underlying principle of this wave is reputation. It’s about your company brand (as well as your personal brand) which reflects the trust of customers, investors, and others in the marketplace have in you.”

Fifth Wave: Societal Trust

“ Societal trust is about creating value for others and for society at large. The principle underlying this wave is contributions. By contributing or “giving back,” we counteract the suspicion, cynicism, and low-trust inheritance taxes within our society.”

Buy The Speed of Trust! Study it—repeatedly!

Wednesday we begin our examination of each of the five waves with Self Trust