How Can Trust Make You A More Effective Leader Starting Today?

How can trust change the way you do business?

How can trust change the way you do business?

How do you build a more innovative organization? How to you foster a culture of collaboration as your business continues growing to the next level.  Stephen M.R. Covey feels the critical element in building a more fast moving, agile organization is creating a culture is trust. 

I’m speaking at an online conference with Stephen in March and thought it might be helpful to share several of his key ideas to see if you should consider attending the program. The event organizers have put together a great team of professionals to help you create a stronger organization. I will be sharing other presenters of the coming weeks.

Stephen is best known for his bestselling book, The Speed of Trust. I was introduced to Stephen M. R. Covey by my mentor, Jay Abraham.  He introduced Stephen’s thinking on the most important books for business leaders to read about how business is changing and what we can do about it.  Not a bad recommendation from a man who is considered one of the world’s leading minds on business growth and strategy.

I’m going to share several ideas that I’ve learned from Stephen over the years.  What makes Stephen’s work so important is that he shares a process for a leader to complete to become more trusted. When you work your way through this process, you become more aware of how important trust is in every part of our lives.  He provides a great way for you to see how trust impacts all aspects of your life.  When you read any surveys today you discover that trust is missing in many of our leaders.  The problem is without trust the rest of leadership is almost impossible.

The first surprise I got when I was introduced to Stephen’s work was that he shared a concept call Trust Myths and Trust Realities.  He shared that it’s a myth that trust is a soft, nice to have virtue.  He then shocked many of the people in the room by saying trust is a hard-edge “economic driver.” You could hear the murmurs around the room on this one.  He then shared another common trust myth, trust is slow.  He then shared why he didn’t believe it and what you can do to get trust faster.  He went as far as saying that nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

In Stephen’s presentations in the past he shared several organizations that use trust as a strategic capability including Berkshire Hathaway.  He shares a story that all of us who’ve worked with Berkshire Hathaway on mergers and acquisitions are familiar with, a multibillion dollar deal closed in 30 days.  Much of Warren Buffet’s success is based on his reputation for trust and his ability to trust others to run his organizations.

Stephen believes that for breakthrough trust to happen, both parties must be honest and trustable.  He shares his skepticism, but then his optimism. As a serving leader you might say, “We get this, Tripp. We know how important trust is and we know how easy it is to lose it. But how do I build trust across my entire community?” I don’t want to ruin it here but I think you will find his explanation practical and implementable in any size organization.

He provides a simple, two part formula that can help you understand trust. It includes character and competence.  How he puts it together can change the way you interact with yourself and others.  What makes it different today is how we can begin implementing it. There’s seldom a day that goes by where we don’t hear a story of someone who violated our trust.  For serving leaders to thrive and flourish, we must continue developing trust.

Here’s where it got interesting for me. I hope you find it interesting, as well. He has created a framework, process, and tools to help you become more trusted and more trusting.  I have found that many of the most innovative businesses in the world have high levels of trust.  There are exceptions to every rule, but I think you must have high levels of trust if you hope to build an extraordinary team.

As you begin to understand the impact trust has on you and your organization, the better you are at creating trust within your organization.  It’s a simple concept, but could be hard to execute.  He provides you with a proven process to help you incorporate it into your life.  There’s an added bonus available here. You can use this with your family and your community and begin to see results very quickly.

Now I’ve really only scratched the surface on the things I’ve learned from Stephen MR Covey.  Over the next several months, I will share with you other ideas on concepts he speaks and writes about.

Want to know where to sign up to hear Stephen MR Covey and a great team of experts share their ideas on Innovation and Collaboration for your organization?  Go to Delivering High Performance Collaboration to find out about how you can get a ticket to their online webinar series coming up in March.

This week on Thursday, we begin sharing the first tool in your mentoring toolkit, the one that can help you change another person’s life. It’s called the truth and it may not be what you expect.  See you Thursday.

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