Trust - Stephen Covey 061

title: Trust - Stephen Covey 061
author: Intangibles
contenttype: podcast
publication: Intangibles
published: 2021-10-02T17:36:37
sourceurl: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1134960526-intangibles-trust-stephen-covey-061.mp3

word_count: 8702

Welcome to Intangible's podcast. I'm Steve Berg, your host. Success is driven by how, as much as by what? How we communicate, how we lead, how we relate to our environment, are all vitally important. Intangible is a podcast that explores the underlying traits, qualities, and behaviors that improve the how. This is accomplished by finding the people who have studied and been successful practice in these soft skills and having informed conversations with them to get into what is learnable. Let's begin. Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. The author Stephen Covey said that. When you step back and you think for a moment about all the things that trust allows, enables, simplifies, speeds up, and saves us, it's kind of amazing that trust, while viewed as important, isn't revered as an essential human characteristic. Today, we're going to talk about trust with someone who can make the case as well as anyone that it should be developed, ingrained, and practiced by everyone every day all the time. Stephen M. R. Covey is the co-founder of Covey Link and of the Franklin Covey Global Speed of Trust Practice. He's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and co-author of the number one Amazon bestsellers Smart Trust. He's the son of Dr. Stephen R. Covey who you will probably recognize as the author of the seven habits of highly effective people, one of the most influential business books of the 20th century. In fact, he's the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, the largest leadership development company in the world, which was, of course, built on his father's work. Stephen is a Harvard MBA and currently serves on the board or advisory board of several entities. Welcome to Intangibles podcast, Stephen. Hey, I'm excited to be with you, Steve. It's a great podcast. Thank you, sir. Now, that quote that I started with is that from you or is that from your father? I think that was originally from my father, but I probably said it enough times now that I probably started to come from me as well. But yeah, my father used to always say, Tress is the glue of life. And it's, I think it started with him. Well, I think joint attribution is certainly warranted by now anyway. So, trust has, I wouldn't say so many vectors that defining it upfront might not do justice to it. There's a paradigm in the book that I'd like to set up before I ask you the first question assuming that'd be okay with you. That'd be great. Sure. So, this is a trust paradigm. And trust, it says in the book, The Speed of Trust, is a function of how credible one is to another with regard to the issue at hand. So, for example, if the issue at hand is how to invest my wife's retirement, she trusts me. I'm highly credible when it comes to financial issues. But if the issue at hand is to buy food at the grocery store for the coming week, she does not trust me to go by myself. I tend to try weird stuff and I sometimes forget the stuff that she really likes. This makes me less credible, less trustworthy when it comes to grocery shopping. So, while trust is a function of credibility, credibility is a function of one character and two competence. Therefore, strong character and high competence are essential to trust. Character is in turn made up of integrity and intent. You can see we're going to have a lot to talk about. Competence is derived from credentials and track record. Okay, that's the paradigm. What I'd like to do is start the discussion and work our way up from the bottom of the paradigm. So, let's dig into the character portion of this by talking about what makes up integrity. Wonderful. Yes, so this credibility is the foundation of all trust and the foundation of credibility is integrity. It's your starting point. It's like use a metaphor of the tree. This would be the roots of the tree. It's where you begin and integrity is what you think it is. It is honesty. It is truthfulness. It is authenticity, meaning that we are who we say that we are. We do what we say that we value. We walk the talk. We're authentic. We're real. It's also integrity is also doing the right thing. And that takes humility and courage. And it takes humility to recognize that there are principles that there is a right thing in many situations. It takes courage to do the right thing, especially when there's a cost or a consequence in doing so. So, integrity is kind of all of these things wrapped into one. It's really so foundational. Yes, honesty, truthfulness, but authenticity and the courage to do the right thing, even when there's a cost or a consequence. And I think that's what's important to understand is more than just the honesty. I like to put it this way. Honesty is when our words match reality. Integrity is when our reality matches our words. We are who we say we are. So, the thing about integrity as I've observed it is that it is an internal thing, right? It drives from inside and you have to be kind of intellectually honest with yourself, right? And so, one of the things that I highlighted, which I thought was significant, was your alarm clock story. And maybe you could tell the story and explain why that is significant. Yeah, well, this is something that most people wouldn't think of as an integrity issue, but for me, it was. And it's as simple as I remember. When we merged our company, the coveators at center with Franklin Quest, form Franklin, Covey, New entity coming together and you know this Steve with the work that you do. These deals, you know, these are exhausting and exciting and exhilarating. And for about four months, we were working just around the clock, 20 hours a day. And literally to get this deal done. And I remember just being kind of exhausted and going to bed one evening and saying, you know what, I really need to exercise and have an exercise in a while. I got to get, I got to exercise. So even though I'm going to bed really late, I'm going to get up an hour earlier tomorrow and exercise. And so I set my alarm the night before with the intent to get up to exercise. And I remember when the alarm went off in the morning and I was just saying to myself, oh my goodness. It's so early, you know, and I remember thinking, I think I need the sleep more than I do the exercise. And, you know, turning that alarm off and getting some sleep pits. And I kind of justified it. Well, I need to sleep more than exercise and I did this for a few days where I kept putting it, setting the alarm and then turning it off next night to set the alarm early to get up. And then in the next morning, I'd say the same thing. I need to sleep more than exercise. Then I remember one night saying to myself, why am I doing this? Why am I setting this alarm an hour earlier as if I'm going to get up. I haven't done it at single time over the last, you know, dozens or so times. And I remember just saying to myself, you know, my goodness. This is in a sense of commitment. And I've not even keeping this little commitment to myself. But I'd also noticed that I was, you know, so worn out in this whole process and everything that I found that my own sense of clarity, of fairness in this whole process. I'd been a little on edge all throughout. And I remember saying, you know what, I'm going to make the decision the night before. Do I need the exercise or do I need to sleep? I make the decision the night before while I'm coherent. And if I said it, I'm going to get up or else I'll set it an hour later if I'm not. And it was in that little thing, that little act of making a decision, a commitment to myself, making the decision to do it and then keeping it the next morning when it went off. Not saying needed to sleep, but rather getting it up and exercising. I did that once, twice, three times, a few times. And in that little act of keeping those small commitments to myself, I began to regain a sense of clarity, of integrity, of power in the little things. And those little things lead to the big things. And so it's just a very simple illustration of how making and keeping commitments to yourself. How things is the starting point for personal integrity? I fully agree. I mean, it's much easier for me to say, well, somebody can see. Therefore, I've got to live up to what that person can see. I think the degree, the quality of which the integrity happens is when you can say, no, no one can see. But this is how I operate. I tell myself that I'm doing this and I'm doing this. To me, that makes a lot of difference. There's a component also that you are touching on at least a little bit, but I think deserves a little bit more color. And that is the humility of it, the taking the ego out of the equation when you think about integrity, right? I wonder if you had some thoughts on that. Yes. The humility is foundational. And humility is a truly a strength. Strongest people are humble. And you know, this is Jim Collins, and good to great. The idea of a level five leader. Deep personal humility with this intense professional will. It's a strength. And, you know, humility is all about saying it matters less. Who is right? But more what is right? And so that does take the ego out of it. Exactly right. And that's difficult for all of us, because we all want to be right. But what really matters is what is right? Not who is right. And we could go, you know, and so forth. And so the ego can often get in the way. And humility is saying, let's put principles above ego. And, and, and, and, and, you know, that says easy and does hard. We have to become self-aware of that. It really does hard. And, you know, the reason that I want to, the reason I wanted your thoughts on that is because it feels like today, the degree of cognitive dissidents that we have on an individual level and a societal level is as high as at least I've, at least in my adult life that I can ever remember. Right. And so the, the removal of ego can kind of allow for congruence. Right. And that is, you know, hopefully the side effect is the reduction in cognitive dissonance. I think so. I think that that's a, a reality if we can do this. You know, the ultimate humility is to recognize that there are principles that govern consequences and that if we align our actions, our behaviors to these principles will get the results. But if we're kind of a law into ourselves and act with this overriding ego, then it literally can get in the way we will have that dissonance in so many different areas of our life. And that's again, you know, even the expression cognitive dissidents is kind of acknowledging and there's, there's a kind of this misalignment in some way shape or form. And the whole idea of integrity is integratedness. So we're integrated. You know, the idea that in the sense we have, you know, three lives are, our public life, our private life, our inner life. And when they're all aligned, that's being integrated. You know, we are who we say that we are. It's the, there's a model in the state of North Carolina. My son lives there and their motto is, it's in Latin. I can't remember the Latin, so I'll give it in English. But it's, it's said to be rather than to seem. And so, you know, to be, that's integrity. It rather than to seem. That's where there will be cognitive dissonance. Right. I was thinking of it as you were explaining it of that it shouldn't be, that I need to be right. It should be that I need to seek the truth. And like that, it's, that's a better way of saying it. That's beautiful. We talked about character being made of integrity and intent. We spent a little time on integrity. Let's spend a little time on intent. So intent is motive. Right. That means, what is your reason for your purpose? Right. And in defining that reason or purpose, our direction, our steps should become revealed. Right. So, you know, motives, pure, important that other people know what they are. Right. You can't just be like, oh, that's what I thought I would do. Other people have to be like, oh, I'm expecting Steve to do this. Understood. Hey, look, it's not crazy. It's not confused. It makes sense. It seems like it's the right, you know, to your point earlier, it's the right thing. And then the actions themselves, the behaviors themselves, need to be consistent with now what is understood. That's terrific. I agree. So it's the idea. And I'll add the little flavor to it, which is that, in a sense, intent is both our motives, but also our agenda. And I'm going to really highlight this, that the motive that best builds credibility, and then trust afterwards. You know, credible is the foundation in which trust is built. The motive that best builds credibility is caring, where you care about the people that you're serving, and then know you care about them. If I'm the leader of a team, I care about the members of my team, I know and feel that I care about them. If I'm selling to a customer, the customers feel like we care about them, that we want their interests to work, and we care about their wellbeing, their success. Carrying is the motive. The agenda that best builds credibility and trust is when we seek mutual benefit. It's called win-win. Yes, I want to win, of course I do, but I want your win as much as I do my own. And when people sense that, taste that, experience that, they tend to trust us. And so seeking mutual benefit, seeking the interest of those that we're working with, collaborating with, builds trust. If people don't think we have their best interest at heart, they tend to not trust us. If they don't think we care about them, they tend to not trust us. So at one level, it's that simple, and yet that's very difficult, because it's very easy to think win-lose or just win. I don't really care that you lose, but I just want to make sure I win. And then they're not focused on caring, but if there's a gap, if people don't think you care, or if they think you're self-serving, they tend to withhold the trust. So that's so foundational. But you added one more piece to this, which is that you also want to be open with your motive. You want to be transparent with it. I call it declaring your intent. So it's not just, you know, that you have intent to, you know, to seek mutual benefit or what have you. It's, you're open. I'm saying, here's what we're trying to do. Here's why. Here's my agenda. It's not a hidden agenda. It's an open agenda. I'm transparent. There's nothing to hide. When you have an open agenda, and when you declare your intent to another, what that does is it gives people a lens through which they will view and interpret your subsequent behavior. They'll see you differently. They interpret you differently knowing your intent. When you don't declare your intent, when you don't tell people your agenda or motive, what do you suppose people are going to do anyways? They're going to ascribe intent to you. They're going to, at worst, they'll be projecting their fears or worst case scenarios. At best, they'll just be guessing, but our role is no guessing. Don't have people guessing your agenda. Tell them, be open, be transparent. If that very act of doing that, of opening yourself up, also builds trust in and of itself. But it's also a good test of what your agenda really is, what your intent really is, because we'd all be embarrassed to declare self-serving intent. And if you'd be embarrassed to declare your intent, then, you know, we need to kind of step back and look at our, examine our motives and make sure that we're adding more caring to it, or more mutual benefit to it. If it's too self-serving, you know, such that we would not want to declare it publicly. So it's a good test of what your agenda really is, could you declare it? I would add one point, though, and that point is that we tend to judge ourselves by intent, but we often judge other people's by behavior, what they actually do, right? Absolutely. So you got a good start. You got a good start if your intent is correct. And understood. But, you know, you're not all the way there. You're not across the finish line until the things that you do are, in fact, lockstep with that intent. That's the crowning piece of this, then, is that our behaviors then match what we said we do, what we say we're going to do. And, you know, there's a line, then, our behaviors with our intent. If you have good intent and bad actions, then it will be undermined. But in some ways, maybe even you'll be further behind. You know, if you say you care and then you don't, you're worse off than had you not said that you cared. So you're exactly right. You also have to add that next piece. And we do judge each other on behavior and ourselves by our intent. That's why I like to say declare your intent. So whether there's no your intent, then make sure you back it up with your actions. That's a line. That's an accelerator to build trust. When you declare it publicly and then, and then back it up with your actions, you'll build trust faster. But be aware, you'll also lose trust faster. If you declare it publicly, here's my intent. And then you don't back it up with your actions. You'll, you'll lose trust faster than you would have had. Had you not done that. So there's risk in return, which is your world, Steve. There's can return go together. And, and there's a risk to declare your intent. And there's a greater return if you do it or a greater loss. If you don't follow up with your actions. So let's put a bow on this. We talked about integrity and we talked about intent. So let's say, okay, now with those two interacting, how does that lead to a level of character? I mean, it should be obvious, but I think we need to just summarize it. How does that lead to a level of character that ultimately can be trusted? Yeah. So for all of us, we're looking and we're trying to assess, can I trust this person? Can I, can I, can they trust me? They're asking the same question. And in a foundational element of this is, is their character? And we just divided the character into two components, two halves. The integrity. You know, are they who they say they are? Are they authentic and real? And they're intent, they're gender, they're motive. Are they seeking my interest? Is it win, win, mutual benefit, caring? These types of things. The combination kind of gives me a sense of this person is a person I can trust. I can trust their character. I can trust who they are as a person. And, and it's the kind of person I want to take a risk with and take a chance with because they're a person of character. And I've just, you know, just gone on one level down on what we mean by character. I think most of us intuitively get it. And you say, I trust their character. And I've just said, okay. And there's two halves of that. They're in integrity. They're intent. Because if you could have, you could have high integrity. Be a person of honor. And yet still be self-servant in your intent. And that would undermine your character. And it could be the reverse. Someone could have, you know, good intent they care. But they're just, they're, they're not completely honest or, or, or, you know, authentic. They mean well. But how they get there isn't exactly the way you'd want to get there. Exactly. Exactly. But it's your life, yeah. And they care about you. But boy, they're cutting corners. You're not sure you want to align with them. So you got to have both halves. The combination. That's, that's a person whose character you trust. And that's when we think of trust, most people think of character. And it is the first among equals. But the competence half, the second half, where we're going next, is it sequel? Right. Okay. So let's do that. The other part is competence, which is credentials and track record. And I think we're going to start with the importance of credentials. But I want to, I want to ask a slightly provocative question. And that is, if one has a track record, why do they really need credentials? I mean, you know, implicitly, I guess what I'm asking is what do you view as credentials? But I'm, you know, in my world, when we go to raise money, if we've got a good track record, we're most of the way there to actually getting a commitment to have some money invest. Yeah, you are absolutely. I can see that. And so the idea of credentials is really what I call capabilities. Capabilities. Do we have the right talent skills, expertise and knowledge for the job to be done? And it's a little bit back to your starting point when you started this podcast, Steve, where, hey, look, so, you know, you can be trusted to the manager, wife's money, because you understand money management. But you may not be trusted to do a lot of other things like cutter hair or what have you. Because you don't have those capabilities, even though you got a great track record in managing the money. So, you know, it's not just transferable across the board, but it gives people confidence when there's, when there's a track record or performance, but your capabilities, your credentials need to be tied to the job to be done. You're totally right. My track record is not consistent. It's not consistent when it comes to the food that I bring home. So I, I do not have a, I do not have a viable shopping track record. Yeah, yeah. So, so another, another way of looking at this, like you might trust your family doctor. Then you go to your family doctor and you really trust them. But if you had to have brain surgery, you wouldn't go to your family doctor to do brain surgery. And it's not because they don't have a good track record. They do have a good track record. It's just that they're not a brain surgeon. So they don't have those capabilities, even though they have a great track record as a family doctor. But you might really trust your family doctor to recommend a great brain surgeon. That is, is ready to help you. And, you know, so that's the idea. And, and, and here's the whole, here's a kind of broad step back premise. Of both character and competence. And that is that they're both vital. Character's first among the equals, but competence isn't sequel. Character is a constant that we're always looking for. Constantly, the competence is always tied to the job to be done. Because none of us are competent at everything. But we can be competent at raising money or we can be competent at running a business. We can be competent at grocery shopping or what have you. But it's always tied to the job to be done. And that's where the capabilities, the credentials to do that job is important as well as having a track record of results. So, it's always performing in whatever job we do. That gives people confidence and ultimately trust is confidence. It certainly is. One thing I noted when I was reading the materials was the continuous effort back to your brain surgeon, right? A brain surgeon who hasn't learned anything new in 40 years might have been a great brain surgeon 40 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, might not be a very good brain surgeon now, right? So, it's that continuous desire to achieve, to improve, to fill in the blanks, to have a more thorough set of credentials that is also significant, I think. So, your capabilities, capabilities, credentials is all about keeping fresh and relevant in those capabilities. So, you're always learning, growing and improving, getting better, staying relevant, reinventing yourself, recreating yourself. So, companies have to do it, functions do it, teams do it, leaders do it. Because the world is changing so fast around us and we might have been relevant 30 years ago or even 10 years ago and become irrelevant today in a changing world. So, you've got to constantly recreate, reinvent ourselves and learn, like Carol, a tweak of Stanford and mindset talks about, you know, today we need to become a learn it all more than to know it all because you can't know it all. There's too much knowledge, too much happening, but what matters is that we learn and that we can learn constantly and in the new and the growth mindset idea constantly, recreating, reinventing ourselves to stay relevant. So, I would say this, that the capabilities, this third core credibility, is all about staying relevant, being relevant in a changing world. So, we're constantly improving and growing. That's the purpose of a podcast like this is to really bring insight and knowledge and application into our lives in a way that keeps us relevant in a changing world. It's easy to do something well for a short period of time, but it is not as easy. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it is hard to do something well for a long period of time. So, let's just touch a little bit on the element of time when it comes to track record. You're trying to show that this is a pattern. This is not a kind of a flash in the pan, a one time thing, but there's a sustainability to it. And anyone can get something right once and that's a good thing. But what really gives people confidence is when there's it's sustainable and there's a pattern, both maybe that you've done it multiple times could be one form of a pattern. If you're an entrepreneur, you've been a serial entrepreneur and you've done it time and time and time and again, I guess people have some confidence, there's a pattern, but it also could be in another context that you not just achieve the success quickly and then it went away, but you sustained it. And you really built something that endured and that lasted and that your success, your results, so track record really means results, your results were sustainable. And they weren't a flash in the pan and that element is important because again, the track record is all about conveying that confidence to people and that's both getting the results, but also sustaining the results. I'm not sure if this is an important question or not, but it occurred to me. One thing I noticed about credentials and track record is they're made up of things that get written down on paper, right, grades, diplomas, investment returns company performance or stock price or whatever. So these are part of your permanent record, so to speak, but competence, something that gets understood, felt known, relied upon, it's significantly less tangible. Right, it's less like here are my accomplishments and my achievements. But rather, here is, this is what I'm capable of doing and this is the sense you have when you interact with me that I'm a learning improving growing person that is current, that is relevant, that understands what's going on. Again, if you always like and trust the same, does this convey confidence confidence and so someone could have credit, you know, someone could have all the written things down. But he just said that they're not current, they're not relevant and they're not, they're not, I don't feel this around what we're trying to do in this situation, I think really engaged in everything. That's why in that capabilities piece, I really talk about talents and skills and expertise and knowledge and even attitudes, are they engaged, are they are they drawn to this and are they into this and they passionate about it. It's all all the things that will give you the confidence. So you're right. That's why it's the combination of these things. Anyone lacking could make a person less credible and they're for less trusted, but also the fact that you have one doesn't mean that guarantees it, you know, you could have a track record, but not convey confidence that your current relevant to a person. So they all work together when all four cores of credibility are in place, integrity and intent from your character, capabilities and results from your competence, that gives people a sense of, this is a person I can trust. Right. Right. And so that is why we broke them down the four cores. I think we're actually now ready, finally, that we've got the cores to focus on trust as a platform. So I know you repeat, I know you said it at the top of our discussion, but if you give it to us one more time, the definition that you like to use of trust. Most simple definition is that trust is confidence. Confidence as opposed to suspicion. And the confidence flows from having both this character and competence, it gets manifest in our credibility gets manifest in our behavior. But what's my definition? Trust is confidence that flows from having character and competence. I think that many people think that trust is this ethereal thing that is kind of squishy. It's difficult to quantify. But, you know, I would say the first, maybe it's 50, maybe it's 100 pages of the book, actually talk about the actual value that one can assign to having trust in a thing. Right. Why don't you just give us a little thought about the edges, the non squishy part of what trust actually is, it was worth. Yeah, I call this the economics of trust. And because in your speaking to this Steve that everyone knows trust is important. It's a good thing. I've never had anyone say, hey, I'm against trust. You know, this doesn't matter. Everyone says it matters. But still for many, it's squishy. It's a it's a kumbaya, it's a soft, you know, nice to have social virtue. I like to point out how trust in fact has a hard edge economic driver. Why? Because it affects the speed at which we can move in the cost of everything. Speed and cost are always impacted by trust. And here's a simple formula. When the trust goes down in any relationship, or when the trust goes down on a team, in a company and a culture or with a customer partner, a shareholder stakeholder. When the trust goes down in any relationship, here's what you will always find. The speed will go down with it. Everything is going to take you longer to do. And the cost will go up. Everything will cost you more to do. Why? Because people got a check, verify, validate, put in rules, regulations, et cetera, when they're compensating for the lack of trust. Now, this collectively is what we might call a tax. It's a low trust tax. It's a hidden tax, but it's very real nonetheless. And it takes you longer because you might get anything done. It diminishes delutes, also all your other things you're trying to do. Your ability to collaborate, de-innovate, or all diminished, deluded, taxed. Your ability to build a team, to build a culture, diminished, deluded, taxed. And low trusted attacks in significant, measurable, quantifiable ways. But the good news is the converse is equally true. And when that trust goes up in a relationship, when the trust goes up on a team, in a company, in a culture, with stakeholders, be it customers, partners, markets, investors, when the trust goes up, the speed goes up, the cost goes down. You can do everything faster, less cost. Now, that is a dividend. It's a high trust dividend. And Steve, it's really that simple, that powerful, and that predictable, and it's playing out everywhere. The example is the dividend are so real, there's a speed to trust. I like to put it this way. Speed happens when people trust each other, and nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. Nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. It is a source of extraordinary value for leaders today everywhere. I mean, it's as simple as, I trust you, let's do this, compared to, let me look into it, I'll get back to you. You know what I liked? We're shortening up on time, and there's some important points, but I really liked the Warren Buffett Walmart acquisition story. So just give us that real quick, real quick. You know, Buffett's acquiring McLean from Walmart. He knows great, he knows McLean knows he can trust him, and it's got a great reputation. He goes in, 23 billion dollar company, publicly traded. Here's how the deal happened. They had one single meeting of about two hours. They then shook hands, 29 days later, Walmart had their money. They did no due diligence, because Buffett said we really knew everything would be exactly the way they said it would be, and it was. Here's as mega deal happening, 23 billion dollar company that takes place in one single meeting of two hours, and a handshake deal closed in less than a month with no due diligence. Now, I worked for a short stint in investment banking, and as you know, deals of this size would take just maybe six months to close, maybe longer. And typically it's been millions and due diligence with accountants, attorneys, auditors, et cetera, verifying validate and all the data to make sure everything's right. And that's usually best practice, that's usually a good practice. But in this particular case, because Buffett himself was so credible and trusted, and because he had a belief in trust and confidence in the counterparts, including Grady Rosier, they could do a deal on a handshake, close it less than a month with no due diligence instead of the, you know, millions typically spent in six months time or longer. That's the speed of trust. Nothing is as fast as speed of trust. I love that story. Okay, so look, in the book, you say 13 behaviors that increase one's ability to be trust the bull. And I, we don't have time to go over them all, but let's talk about just a couple of them. And I'm going to pick the ones that I think are the hardest, frankly, and because I think you can be the most illuminating in those particular ones. So any helpful tips about these behaviors, you can comment. So let's start with be honest. And before, before you get going. If anyone thinks Steve, you've got a problem if you can't be honest, like just right up front. I'm talking about being honest with yourself, as well as being honest with others, not obfuscating, not omitting facts. This is the kind of honesty that when they see it, they recognize it as, as rare. So all right, to you, Steve, and what can we do to implement behavior of honesty? Yeah, I call this talk straight. And it is, be honest, talk straight. And it's, it's, it's not just that you tell the truth. But you also tell the truth in a way that people can verify and validate for themselves, because that will build trust even faster. It's also so you get a reputation that, that you'll call things what they are. You use simple language. You're not trying to spin. See, the opposite of being honest is to lie. And everyone knows if you lie, it's not going to work in the long run. You might get away with it for a while, but you can't sustain it. But people can spin all the time. Like you said, they can give a, I call this a counterfeit behavior. And they can technically tell the truth, but leave the wrong impression. You could be technically accurate but misleading as a result, trust will go down. And but I've seen a lot of people in cultures where everyone's spinning and everyone kind of knows it, but it's the name in the game. And then anytime someone's talking, people are not quite sure if they're getting the full story or what else has been left out or what's the sugar coating of this or the under representation of that. And there's not 100% sure about your words. If you can get a reputation of your straight talker and you tell the truth, you call things what you are. If you use simple language, candor is the language of trust and you move fast with it. And so that what's our challenge here is not the opposite, not the line, because that's not going to work. And everyone knows that it's the counterfeit counterfeit behavior, like counterfeit money looks real, but it's not. And the counterfeit behavior to concentrate is the spin, the twisting the manipulate the posture in the position, positioning. That's what's tripping us up the counterfeit behavior. That's a good answer. What about, so we talk about this, but I think there's another, there's, there's another part to it. Be selfless, right? You talk about, in the book, you talk about, this is a form of loyalty and willingness to give credit. I will tell you that I can envision it as even more, frankly, kind of like giving of yourself, whether it's time or money or cloud extending your reputation. You know, in Buffett's story, right, he basically took his crowd cloud or his reputation and he gave it to the chairman of the company was acquiring, right? Yeah, it's a, it's a way of showing loyalty. And by that, you're, you're giving credit to others. And as you're suggesting, Steve, you're lending your reputation, your branch, as part of building this relationship, showing that you care. And that's why you have to be ego less or at least not, not focused on your own ego, but rather around helping, helping other succeed and seeing success by helping see other succeed in this process and giving that credit to others abundantly. It takes an abundance mentality to do this. A mindset of there's enough for everyone and someone else's success does not diminish my own. In fact, I see it as part of enhancing my own by helping them succeed. That's how I define success. And so it's this abundance mindset and helping other succeed, giving credit to others and really being in a sense being loyal to people in that way. So you, I mean, one of the great things about this book is it's almost like a compendium of people's thoughts on trust. And so there's a quote in here that I want to just say it's the measure of your life will not be what you accumulate, but what you give away. That's the quote from Dr. Wayne dire that struck me as caps encapsulating that particular point. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's the idea that life is about contribution, not accumulation. And there's nothing against, you know, 16 this way, but it's giving back, giving away, making a difference, mattering that there's a sense of purpose to what it's about. And that builds trust you get that reputation that you're that type of player. And again, that doesn't mean you don't have all the traditional measures of success, it's just you have a higher purpose behind it. I feel like another succeed to giving your life away in that sense that inspires trust that precede you and you build trust faster. Thank you, right. All right, there's two more than I want to talk about the second to last one is to confront reality. That means not only to face up to the tough stuff directly, but actually to choose to take on hard things, right? It's a form of daily courage. I think actually this one is where the cost of not confronting reality is higher than the value captured by doing so. Sometimes we don't confront the reality because we think, hey, the reality is so brutal. It's because people to lose trust or confidence, if we really take this head on, that's kind of skirt it, skip it, kick the can down the road. And it's tempting to do that. And but the problem with that is that if you know, this is what we often will call the elephant in the room, where there's a reality everyone kind of knows about, but nobody can talk about it. They don't talk about it in the room, but they talk about it outside of the room all the time. But if you can find the appropriate time, place, way means to address it, to confront it with a plan, rather than have people, you know, you know, cringing instead, you'll take the issue head on and you'll make it discussable, you'll make it, you know, tangible, you'll be transparent with it. And suddenly you can now do something about it, whereas before it just induces cynicism, everyone knows there's an elephant in the room and no one's talking about it. This way you're taking a head on and saying we're real, we take on tough issues, we're authentic, we can, you know, ring more bad news, the messenger's not going to get shot. And suddenly we're dealing with real issues. And, and, and, you know, a long story made short, when Alan Malawi got in at Ford, that's part of how he turned Ford around at first, everyone's kind of hiding the real issues, not taking them on, putting up these green slides and everything is great. And then he invited them, hey, we're losing all this money, everything can't be going well, let's get real. Next meeting, one of his lead, Lieutenant's comes out and says, here's puts up a red slide saying we got problems. And, you know, Alan Malawi sees that in a collapse and says, that's great visibility, tell us what's happening, how, how can we help? The whole culture began to change from that simple act of saying, I'm going to confront a reality that there's something bad going on and no one's been willing to talk about it and I am. And they began to build, you know, a new culture around Ford, based upon that type of action. So, confronting reality is a high leverage behavior that builds trust. I think of it, the kind of the crisp, crisply as intellectual honesty. And I do find that it is a shockingly hard commodity to come by. All right, so I agree. Yeah, unfortunately, the last one I want to talk about is actually to be trusting, right? So, yeah, it's one thing to want to be trusted, but the good way to do that is to be trusting. And before we talk about, I want to tell everybody that there's nine other behaviors that are equally good that we could have talked about, right? And I'm going to tell people that they need to go pick up the book to figure out what they are and oh, by the way, all the other compendium of quotes, all the other things about the paradigm to detail. We would have gotten to it if we could, but we can't so go to your homework. All right, you think I'm assuming that people should air on the side of being trusting. Why don't you unpack it just a little bit? Yeah. In order to have trust, yes, we need to be credible. We need to have the character and the competence. We need to be trustworthy, but it's still not enough. Consider this. You could have two trustworthy people working together, both trustworthy, both credible, and yet no trust between them, even though they're both trustworthy, if neither person is willing to extend trust to the other. This is a behavior of leadership is not only do we have to be trustworthy. That's our credibility. That's those four quarters of credibility. It's really the first 12 behaviors, but this 13th behavior, extending trust, being trust in that is what transforms a manager into a leader. It is a game changer to extend trust to another to be trusting, and that builds trust fast because people receive it, and they rise to the occasion, they perform better, and they give it back to you. When you don't trust them, they tend to not trust you back. And that happens with inside an organization. I've seen it all around the world. As I look with, as I've worked many times with low trust organizations, I find the number one reason why employees don't trust their managers. Is because first and foremost, the managers don't trust the employees, and their employees reciprocate that distrust right back at them. I seen the same thing happen even with partners, or even sometimes with customers, you don't trust them, they tend to not trust you. There is a reciprocity of trust, and of distrust, it works in either direction. And the only caveat I'll put on this, Steve, I think this is very important, is I'm not asking you to blindly do it with everyone. I would call that a blind trust. I'm saying be smart about it. It's a smart trust, not a one-size-fits-all. Use good judgment. You assess the situation, assess the risk involved, assess the credibility of the person or the people involved. So I'm using good judgment, but I'm trying to always find as many ways and opportunities to extend more trust to people in a smart way so that it brings out the best in them, and it develops our capabilities. And they become creative, and we see ingenuity and all kinds of things that happen when people feel trusted, and how they feel inspired to be trusted is the most inspiring form of human motivation. So that's the power of being trustee. That is a great answer. It probably is a good answer to end on, but I want to give you at least a little editorial time. So we're going to do kind of a quick flash, three quick ones just to let some people know some stuff. First thing, is there something that we've got to talk about that we just absolutely missed, and we've got to cover it because we can't put out a podcast without talking about it? Only this, that I also think it's possible to restore trust when it's been lost. I don't think it's guaranteed, and it won't happen in every situation. I will acknowledge maybe some losses of trust are too great to agree just where there's no opportunity to restore it. So maybe it can happen every time, but I think in most situations, it is possible to restore it if both parties are willing, and here's the key principle. You can't talk your way out of a problem that you behaved your way into. So if we've lost people's trust or behavior, words won't get it back. The only way to get it back is to behave our way back into trust, just like you behaved your way out of it. So is it possible to restore it? In most situations, yes, if you're willing to behave your way back into trust. That's fantastic. I'm glad that I asked that question because I thought about not. Second, quick one, where can the listeners of this podcast find you to connect with you, to learn more, to be involved with your businesses? What's the best way? Yes, great. I'm on social media at Twitter, at Stephen M. Arkevy, and LinkedIn, Stephen M. Arkevy, and then you follow me there, but also go to our website speeduptrust.com. We've got great videos and tools and different things that you can use, and find to be valuable to you. And so that's a great resource to you. And from there, you can contact us and reach us and connect to do other things we might do together. So speedatrust.com. Perfect. I was going to ask if there are any other materials, but I think you can't have answered that. I mean, if you go to speedatrust.com, you'll find the other stuff. You'll find the other stuff at speedatrust.com. And I appreciate you're bringing up the speed of trust book, because we kind of covered some of these things. But the book is really a way of going in depth on how to build trust on purpose. And it takes the idea of it. Trust is a learnable skill. It is a competency that we can get good at as a leader, as a team, as an organization, and turn it into our greatest strength. It's important for any leader and any entrepreneur to go into create trust and to create a fast in our world today. I agree. All right, Steven. We are done. Thank you. I think, you know, I was trying to lay out for people why, right? And I think you made clear why this is such an important topic and why there's tangible value that you can be captured from being trusting and trustworthy. So I want to thank you for that. Absolutely. I'm delighted to have done this. And the why matters. There's, you know, I said, I trusted a dividend. But the greatest, the economic dividend is the greatest dividend is what it does to your energy, your joy, your well-being as a, as a human being. It is so energizing and uplifting and inspiring to lead with trust. It's a better way to lead. Thanks, sir. Thank you. This has been Intangibles. You can find this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, and many other podcast platforms. You can also find it at its home on the web, which is www.intangiblespodcast.com. I'm Steve Bird. Thank you. Keep an eye out for the next episode.