Book Review: Smart Trust

Smart Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It is probably not fair to compare this book to the one that preceded it, but I just cannot give this one four stars when The Speed of Trust was such a life-changing revelation.  I wanted the same lift, the same sense of epiphany, and am somewhat disappointed.  Still, I was glad for an opportunity to spend more time thinking about the all-important subject of building and maintaining trusting relationships, and in fairness there was some solid new stuff in here.  I have even used some of the new material to help a client group I have been working with.  But what might have been an excellent journal article was stretched out to 258 pages and that makes for some dull reading.  My two-page summary will be all that is needed by most and I really don't say that very often.

I can appreciate the challenge Rebecca Merrill (the actual writer) had, crafting a book out of very little material.  In fact, I think the book gains from her regular repetition of the phrase "prosperity, energy, and joy" because it is an ever-present reminder of why we should work so hard to earn and extend trust.  She does well with that.  It's all the examples and stories that don't really contribute much that I struggled to slog through.

One important take away for me comes in the form of another Covey matrix with four quadrants.  It is helpful to understand how lower or higher levels of a propensity to trust combine with more or less analysis of a specific person or situation to produce no trust, blind trust, distrust, or Smart Trust.  We learned in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (by Stephen M. R. Covey's father) that a whole lot of the sweet life is found in Quadrant 2 and so it is with Smart Trust as well.  I want to think about every situation and I want to extend trust where and when I can. I want to take the five action steps that build trust.  If I am successful with that then prosperity, energy, and joy are sure to follow.



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Book Review (Take 2): The Speed of Trust

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca Merrill (Free Press 2006)

It amazes me how often the issue of trust comes up in my work with organizations.  Not only is it critically important that my clients trust me to keep confidential information, perform my job well even when they don't exactly understand what I do, and accomplish the responsibilities I take on, but often the substance of our work together involves the broken down trust that has happened between members of the client work team.  Managers don't trust staff and vice versa.  Leaders of partnering organizations don't trust each other. Customers or donors don't trust the product or services.  Yikes.

This is a five-star, life-changing book and my copy of it is worn, dog earred, marked up.  I use it as a refresher for myself and I share it - in whole or in part - with clients, colleagues and friends.  In workshops and planning sessions, I regularly hand out my two-page summary of the book along with a four page description of what Covey Jr. calls "The Four Cores of Credibility" and "The 13 Behaviors of Trust." I've also made much use of two self-assessments in the book, also related to the Four Cores and the 13 Behaviors.  Building trust begins with the self, and finding out how others perceive our trustworthiness is the critical starting point.


When someone says "I don't trust her" what is it that he or she truly means? In the book we learn that we might hold a belief that the other person holds ill-will and intends harm, or at least intends to do their own thing.  Or it might mean that we hold the person to be of low integrity - their words and actions are inconsistent with each other.  On the other hand, we might still distrust someone even if we accept that they have good intentions and desire to do what they say.  In these cases we distrust someone's competence, or their capability to perform as needed.  Or we distrust them based on their results.  They may be able to perform, but if the track record of success isn't there, then neither is the trust.

It seems like such a simple thing, and yet it is so complicated.  It is tremendously beneficial to understand more clearly what is going on, and to have some insight into the things we do that cause others to distrust us.

In addition to the Four Cores (Intent, Integrity, Capability and Results) we also learn about 13 trust-enhancing behaviors, including talk straight, show loyalty, and keep commitments. Failing at these can destroy confidence and ruin relationships.  What can be more important to success than studying these, assessing our current situation, and taking steps to inspire trust? 

In the foreword, the author asserts: "...the ability to establish, grow, extend and restore trust is not only vital to our personal and interpersonal well-being; it is the key leadership competency of the new global economy." The speed of trust refers to how quickly business moves, agreements are reached, employees accept change, and customers buy.  Without trust, it all takes more time. 


Next week I will review the sequel, called Smart Trust, in which we learn some action steps for restoring trust once it has broken down. Thank you Mr. Covey - for taking your Dad's work to a whole new level and for creating a manual that is so useful and so critically important. 

Book Review: Speed of Trust

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Powerful, powerful, powerful!  Before reading this book, I did not know anything about trust except that it is awfully difficult to rebuild once it has been violated.  I never thought about the nature of trust, when and how we come to trust and distrust others, or when and how others come to trust or distrust us.  But it turns out that this is very rich subject to explore.  Covey's breakdown of the component parts of trust is clear and memorable, the very essence of excellent teaching.  The action steps he lays out for building and rebuilding trust puts each of us in the driver's seat. 

The author's father published a book in 1989 that included the following passage I had turned into a poster for my office wall: "If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other - while my character is flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity - then, in the long run, I cannot be successful.  My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do - even using so-called good human relations techniques - will be perceived as manipulative. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique."  Those sentences have haunted me since I read them... and deep down inside I know this is the root cause of any unhappy relationship (personal or professional) in my life.  I can embrace the Seven Habits and work on my character every day, and I do, but I never understood how I was affecting others until Covey, Jr. spelled it out in Speed of Trust.  Reading this was a life changing moment for me as I am sure it will be for anyone who seeks to understand themselves and their interactions with others.

A word of caution to fellow professionals who work with groups and organizations: I've twice tried to use the exercises in this book to help clients move through planning when trust has broken down among a group of colleagues. Twice it has backfired, once quite disastrously.  When people are feeling betrayed and angry with each other, they are looking for the outside consultant to come in and proclaim the others wrong.  Powerful as self-assessment was for me, it is clear that unless people are ready to receive the message they will reject the messenger.  I will continue to recommend the book and share the exercises in leadership development and training programs, or when asked about rebuilding trust, but otherwise keep what I have learned to myself.  That is where it is most powerful, anyway.

You can download a two-page summary, written by me, when you click here.

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