Without integrity you have no foundation on which to place trust. Finally, the book provides helpful rules to prioritize your trust investments.
Furthermore, the book articulates how to build trust with more than a dozen concrete actions. Measuring where trust falls short with any of these components provides a road map for how to repair, build, or extend trust. The first two define character the latter two define competence. The author does a masterful job of clearly dividing trust into four core components: integrity, intent, capability, and result. He is the son and business partner of Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” which was named the most influential business books of the twentieth century. Covey has spent his life and career studying the principles in this book. As Seth Godin notes, today Yelp is drives companies to make better products based on customer reviews. For instance, Ebay was built entirely on community trust through its rating systems. I expect discussion of trust – it’s meaning, development and measurement – will rise as social networking begins to dictate who consumers are influenced by. That is, relationships with employees, new hires, business partners, investors, and customers. So, through some “simple” concepts, Covey weaves a book that can help you assess both yourself and your organization, and offers some concrete how-to’s on becoming the trusted person or organization you want to be.The speed at which you can assess and extend trust determines how fast your business can grow because it affects every relationship. He cites examples of people who demonstrate these behaviors as well as giving examples of what a bad behavior might look like.Īround these behaviors are what Covey describes as “waves of trust”-meaning the effect of what you do can ripple from a personal to a societal level. Such behaviors as “Talk Straight,” “Right Wrongs,” and “Practice Accountability” ring true. The actions that impact trust are covered in the section “Thirteen Behaviors.” These seem pretty basic but, once again, Covey covers them comprehensively and in context.
While there are many books on each of these subjects, this book puts them together. It is easy to understand these and Covey takes a long time to develop them. He likens these to a tree with four core characteristics: the roots, which you can’t see, represent integrity more visible is the trunk-intent-that emerges from the roots the branches are capability, which you develop over time and the leaves are results. Covey talks to two main characteristics about people-character and competence. I found myself reflecting on my own as I read through. While a lot of this book is about business, it also covers personal relationships.
This is not a “feel good” book or a manuscript on morals (although that is covered), but mainly an exploration of the things that make us who we are in others’ eyes, which ultimately helps us look into our own beings. The good element of the book lies with Covey’s optimism that you can recover trust. If you don’t have this as a foundation, you have nothing, as many of our “leading” companies and governments have discovered. Ordinarily I am not a fan of the offspring of famous people writing a book, but Covey has forged his own way in the business world and has written a book that covers the most important thing anyone or any organization can possess- trust.