Covey’s Speed of Trust 17: Behavior 13 & Smart Trust

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. Read and apply it.

Covey describes the 13th behavior, Extend Trust, “While the other behaviors help you become a more trusted person or manager, this behavior will help you become a more trusting leader. Not only does it build trust, it leverages trust. It creates reciprocity; when you trust people, other people tend to trust you in return.” We will also review Covey’s invitation to extend “Smart Trust”.

Behavior 13: Extend Trust

Covey writes “Extend trust—is different in kind from the rest of the behaviors. It’s about shifting from ‘trust’ as a noun to ‘trust’ as a verb. While the other behaviors help you become a more trusted person or manager, this behavior will help you become a more trusting leader.”

• “Extend trust is based on the principles of empowerment, reciprocity, and a fundamental belief that most people are capable of being trusted, want to be trusted and will run with trust when it is extended to them.”
• “The opposite is to withhold trust, which creates an enormous cost everywhere, especially in organizations.”
• “The counterfeit of Extend Trust takes two forms
  • “The first is extending ‘false trust.’ It’s giving people the responsibility, but not the authority or resources, to get a task done”
  • “The second is extending ‘fake trust’ –acting like you trust someone when you really don’t.”

Smart Trust

Covey warns “Extending trust can bring great dividends. It also creates the possibility of significant risk. So how do you hit the ‘sweet spot’? How do you extend ‘Smart Trust’ in a way that maximizes the dividends and minimizes the risk?”

Study the above graphic:

• “Zone 1 (High Propensity to Trust: Low Analysis) is the ‘Blind Trust’ zone of gullibility”
• “Zone 2 (High Propensity to Trust; High Analysis) is the ‘Smart Trust’ zone of judgment”
• Zone 3 (Low Propensity to Trust; Low analysis) is the ‘No Trust’ zone of indecision”
• Zone 4 (Low Propensity to Trust; High Analysis) is the ‘Distrust’ zone of suspicion”

Friday we discuss Covey’s third wave of trust: Organizational Trust and Alignment

Covey’s Speed of Trust 16: Behaviors 11 & 12 for Wave 2

This continues our series on Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I highly recommend the book to all my readers.

An old adage applies to Listen First. “There was an old owl who sat on an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Why can’t we be like this wise old bird?” Covey calls Keep Commitments “the big kahuna” of all behaviors. Roger Merrill said “When you make  a commitment, you build hope. When you keep a commitment, you build trust.”

Behavior 11: Listen First

Covey says “To Listen First means not only really listen (to genuinely seek to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings, experience and point of view), but to do it first (before you try to diagnose, influence, or prescribe).”

• “The principles behind Listen First include understanding, respect, and mutual benefit”
• “The opposite is to speak first and listen last—or not to listen at all”
• “The counterfeit is pretend listening. It’s spending ‘listening’ time thinking about your reply and just waiting for your turn to speak”
• Additional tips include
  • “Don’t assume you know what matters most”
  • “Don’t presume you know everything”

Behavior 12: Keep Commitments

Covey writes ““It’s the quickest way to build trust in any relationship—be it with an employee, a boss, a team member, a customer, a supplier, a spouse, a child, or the public in general.”

• "Keep commitments is based on the principles of integrity, performance, courage, and humility”
• ”The opposite—to break commitments or violate promises—is, without question, the quickest way to destroy trust”
• “The counterfeit of this behavior is to make commitments that are so vague or elusive that nobody can pin you down, or, even worse, to be so afraid of breaking commitments that you don’t even make any in the first place”
• Additional tips include:
  • “Make keeping commitments the symbol of your honor”
  • “Make commitments carefully and keep them”
  • “Don’t break confidence”
  • “Don’t attempt to “PR” your way out of a commitment you’ve broken”

Wednesday we conclude the 13 Behaviors and summarize how to rebuild lost trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 15: Behavior 9 & 10 for Wave 2

We continue our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. Buy it! Study it!

Behaviors 9 and 10 complement each other. You build trust when you clarify expectations so that others cannot misunderstand them. Covey shares a story of a teenage daughter thinking she had cleaned her room. Her mother did not think so. The mother had not clarified her expectations about clean to her daughter. The author continues“You can practice accountability far better when you’ve clarified expectations first. It’s hard to hold someone accountable if they’re not clear on what the expectations are.”

Behavior 9: Clarify Expectations

Covey writes “Behavior #9—Clarify Expectations—is to create shared vision and agreement about what is to be done up front. This is one of those behaviors that people rarely pay enough attention to”

• “Clarify Expectations is based on the principles of clarity, responsibility, and accountability”
• “The opposite  is to leave expectations undefined—to assume they’re already  known or to fail to disclose them so there is no shared vision of the desired outcomes”
• “The counterfeit is to create ’smoke and mirrors’ –to give lip service to clarifying expectations, but fail to pin down the specifics that facilitate  meaningful accountability”
• Make clarify expectations work
  • “Quantify everything: What results? By whom? By when? At what cost? How will you measure it?”
  • “Look at three variables—quality, speed, and cost—and realize that you can usually pick any two, but not all three”
  • “It is much better to do it up front than to disappoint them later”

Behavior 10: Practice Accountability

Covey describes “There are two key dimensions to the Practice Accountability. The fist is to hold yourself accountable; the second is to hold others accountable. Leaders who generate trust do both.”

• “This behavior is  built on the principles of accountability, responsibility, stewardship, and ownership.”
• “The opposite of this behavior is to not take responsibility, to not own up, but to rather say, ‘It’s not my fault’”
• “Its counterfeit is to point fingers and blame others, to say, ‘It’s their fault”

Friday we analyze the 11th Behavior Listen First and the 12th Behavior Keep Commitments

Covey’s Speed of Trust 14: 7th & 8th Behaviors of Wave 2

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. Please get the book and study it.

Today we discuss two behaviors for building relationship trust: Get Better and Confront Reality. Covey highlights that the older we get, the more our cautious nature wants to prevent mistakes. We get better if we learn from our mistakes. Confronting reality also builds trust in relationships, especially when we demonstrate trust. “Solutions come much faster and better, and are implemented with the understanding, buy-in, and often the excitement of others involved in the problem-solving process.”

Behavior 7: Get Better

“Get better is based on the principles of continuous improvement, learning and change. It is what the Japanese call kaizen, and it builds enormous trust.”

• “When people see you as a learning, growing, renewing person—or your organization as a learning, growing, renewing organization—they develop confidence in your ability to succeed in a rapidly changing environment, enabling you to build high-trust relationships and move with incredible speed”
• “The opposite is entropy, deterioration, resting on your laurels or becoming irrelevant”
• The counterfeits are
  • “The “eternal student” always learning but never producing”
  • “It’s trying to force-fit everything into whatever you’re good at doing”

The author recommends two ways to get better: seek feedback—and listen to it—and learn from mistakes

Behavior 8: Confront Reality

Covey continues ”When you Confront Reality, it affects speed and cost in at least two important ways. First, it builds the kind of relationships that facilitate open interaction and fast achievement. Second, instead of having to wrestle with all the hard issues on your own while trying to paint a rosy picture for everyone else, you actually engage the creativity, capability, and synergy of others in solving those issues.”

• “Confront Reality is based on the principles of courage, responsibility, awareness and respect”
• “The opposite is to ignore it, to act as though it doesn’t exist”
• “The counterfeit is to act as though you’re confronting reality when you’re actually evading it. It’s focusing on busywork while skirting the real issue.”

Saturday we review behaviors 9 Clarify Expectations & 10 Practice Accountability

Covey’s Speed of Trust 13: 5th & 6th Behaviors

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. Buy the book Discover it for yourself.

People frequently violate Behavior 5, Show Loyalty, when they talk about people behind their back. You witness such disloyalty in informal settings at lunch or social activities after work. When someone leaves the group and others begin to criticize or gossip about them. People who do not show loyalty fail to recognize they pay trust tax. Trust also drops when you fail to Deliver Results or deliver them poorly. Deliver Results is the 6th Behavior to Relationship Trust (The 2nd Wave of Trust)

The 5th Behavior of Relationship Trust: Show Loyalty

Covey focuses on two dimensions to Show Loyalty: giving credit to others and speaking of people as though they were present.

• “Give Credit to Others…You not only affirm the value of an individual’s contributions, you also create an environment in which people feel encouraged to be innovative and collaborative and to freely share ideas, kicking in the geometric trust multiplier.”
  • The opposite is to take credit yourself for the work of others.
  • The counterfeit is to give credit to someone when they’re with you, but then downplay their contribution and take all the credit when they are not there.”
•  Talk About People as if They Were Present…The key is to talk in a way that shows respect. Defend them as if they were present. Don’t disclose private conversations. Go directly to the person with whom you have a concern
  • The opposite: criticize or not represent them fairly when they are not present.
  • The counterfeit: sweet-talk people to their faces and bad-mouth them behind their backs.

The 6th Behavior of Relationship Trust: Deliver Results

Covey writes “Results give you instant credibility and instant trust. They give you clout.”

• Results provide a powerful tool for building trust in your relationship with others. You must clarify “good”, “mediocre”, and “great” results.
• The opposite is performing poorly or failing to deliver
• The counterfeit is delivering activities instead of results

Wednesday we examine Covey’s 7th & 8th behaviors: Get Better & Confront Reality

Covey's Speed of Trust 12: 3rd & 4th Behaviors

We continue reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I recommend you buy it. He teaches so many things to improve.

Here is a great example about Right Wrongs. A leader of a global nonprofit organization worried he had offended people in the past. He personally visited each person, apologized, and asked their forgiveness. His actions significantly increased trust in his leadership.

Behavior 3: Create Transparency

Covey states “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”
• “The opposite of Create Transparency is to hide, cover, obscure, or make dark. It includes hoarding, withholding, having secrets, and failing to disclose”
• “The counterfeit of transparency is illusion. It’s pretending, “seeming”, rather than “being,” making things appear different than they really are”

Here’s an ironic example of a trust tax paid for obscurity. A leader in a global organization asked his staff to read The Speed of Trust. Unbeknownst to him, executives were splitting the organization in two: giving international operations to one department, and domestic operations to another. The announcement, especially coinciding with the reading, decimated trust.

Behavior 4: Right Wrongs

Covey continues “Behavior 4—Right Wrongs—is more than simply apologizing; it’s also making restitution.”

• “It’s making up and making whole. It’s taking action. It’s doing what you can to correct the mistake…and then a little more.”
• “Right Wrongs is based on the principles of humility, integrity, and restitution. It’s opposite is to deny or justify wrongs, to rationalize wrongful behavior, or to fail to admit mistakes until you’re forced to do so.”
• “The counterfeit of Right Wrongs is to cover up. It’s trying to hide a mistake, as opposed to repairing it.”

“Even when you’re on the other end—when someone else has wronged you—there are important things you can do to help Right Wrongs and build trust.  By being forgiving, for example, you enable others to more easily apologize and make restitution to you.

Monday we explore behaviors 5 Create Transparency, 6 Right Wrongs

Covey’s Speed of Trust 11: 1st & 2nd Behaviors

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s Speed of Trust. I still encourage you to buy the book and study it repeatedly

Covey cautions against behaving in extremes on any of the 13 behaviors. He uses a bell chart to emphasize the point. Divide the bell curve into four parts, call each a quartile.  The ends represent extremes. You behave too little in the first quartile and too much in the fourth quartile (two tales or ends) of the curve. We behave in the “sweet spot” in the second and third quartiles (the bulge of the curve). This applies equally to all 13 Behaviors.

Behavior 1: Talk Straight

• “Be honest. Tell the truth. Let people know where you stand. Use simple language. Call things what they are. Demonstrate integrity.”
• “The opposite of Talk Straight is to lie or to deceive
• “Counterfeit behaviors include 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.”

Let me share an example. I worked for an organization that bred counterfeit behaviors. They appointed a new director. He talked straight. He never used hidden agendas or spun things. Previous administrations jaded us so badly that it took two years to recognize he talked straight. Trust built exponentially once we recognized this trait.

Behavior 2: Demonstrate Respect

• “There are two critical dimensions to this behavior—first, to behave in ways that show fundamental respect for people; and second, to behave in ways that demonstrate caring and concern.” Show respect in the little things.
• “The opposite  of Demonstrate Respect is to not respect other people.”
• “The counterfeit of Demonstrate Respect is to fake respect or concern, or, most insidious of all, to show respect and concern for some (those who can do something for you), but not for all (those who can’t).”

You can Talk Straight with less offense when you Demonstrate adequate Respect .

Friday we review the 3rd and 4th behaviors create transparency and right wrongs