The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

by Stephen M. R. Covey

  Certainly integrity includes honesty—telling the truth and leaving the right impression. But there are at least three additional qualities that are equally vital.

  • • •

  Congruence. “Integrity” comes from the same Latin root as the words “integrated” and “integer.” A person has integrity when there is no gap between intent and behavior . . . when he or she is whole, seamless, the same—inside and out. This kind of authenticity is what I call “congruence.” And it is congruence—not compliance—that will ultimately create credibility and trust.

  People who are congruent act in harmony with their deepest values and beliefs. They walk their talk. When they feel they ought to do something, they do it. They’re not driven by extrinsic forces, including the opinions of others or the expediency of the moment. The voice they listen and respond to is the quiet voice of conscience.

  A great example of congruence is Mahatma Gandhi. At one point in his life, he was invited to speak before the House of Commons in England. Using no notes, he spoke for two hours and brought an essentially hostile audience to a rousing standing ovation. Following his speech, some reporters approached his secretary, Mahadev Desai, incredulous that Gandhi could mesmerize his audience for such a long time with no notes. Desai responded:

  What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same. He does not need notes . . . . You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track.

  Gandhi was not only congruent within himself, he was also congruent with the principles he stood for. Not only did he have roots, he had a taproot that plunged deep into the reservoir of timeless principles that govern in life.

  My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another . . . . My life is my message.

  —MAHATMA GANDHI

  By drawing on the power of such principles and living in a way that was totally congruent to them, Gandhi was able to produce amazing positive results in India and throughout the world—despite the fact that he never held public office or any formal leadership position.

  When you consistently demonstrate inner congruence to your belief system and to principles, you inspire trust in both professional and personal relationships. People feel you are strong, solid, and dependable, and that you are committed to live in ways that are certain to bring positive results and validate their confidence in you.

  • • •

  Humility. Integrity also includes humility. In doing the research for Good to Great, renowned business expert Jim Collins examined good companies that were transformed into great companies to discover the reason for their extraordinary success. Two things he found surprised him.

  The first was that, despite his desire to “ignore the executives” in his research, the data strongly demonstrated that leadership mattered a great deal. As Collins observed, “All the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leadership at the time of transition.”

  The second was what characterized this “Level 5” leadership. Collins said:

  We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar [emphasis added].

  So how does humility manifest itself in leadership and in life? A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.

  Being humble does not mean being weak, reticent, or self-effacing. It means recognizing principle and putting it ahead of self. It means standing firmly for principle, even in the face of opposition. Humble people can negotiate intensely. They can drive hard bargains. They can express themselves firmly and clearly in intense situations in close personal relationships. But they do not get caught up in arrogance, bravado, manipulation, or win-lose power plays. They recognize that there are timeless principles that govern in organizations and relationships, and they try to act in alignment with those principles. They do not seek to become a law unto themselves.

  Humble people also realize clearly that they do not stand alone, but rather on the shoulders of those who have gone before, and that they move upward only with the help of others. As Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery programs are quick to point out, the foundation of dealing with some of our most difficult life challenges is the wisdom and humility to accept the fact that there are some things we simply cannot do without help beyond ourselves.

  The opposite of humility is arrogance and pride. It’s putting ego first—above principles, above others.

  • • •

  Courage. Integrity also includes the courage to do the right thing—even when it’s hard. This is the kind of courage demonstrated by people like Andy Roddick at the Italia Masters, or by Sherron Watkins, Cynthia Cooper, and Coleen Rowley, three courageous whistle-blowers who were honored as Time magazine’s Persons of the Year for their brave actions in uncovering corporate corruption.

  To see this kind of courage in the lives of those around us inspires us all to be more courageous. I recently came across a story of courage related by the wife of a man who was in medical school some years ago. She said:

  Getting into medical school is pretty competitive, and the desire to do well and be successful puts a great deal of pressure on the new incoming freshmen. My husband had worked hard on his studies and went to attend his first examination. The honor system was expected behavior at the medical school. The professor passed out the examination and left the room. Within a short time, students started to pull little cheat papers out from under their papers or from their pockets. My husband recalled his heart beginning to pound as he realized it is pretty hard to compete against cheaters. About that time a tall, lanky student stood up in the back of the room and stated: “I left my hometown and put my wife and three little babies in an upstairs apartment and worked very hard to get into medical school. And I’ll turn in the first one of you who cheats, and you better believe it!” They believed it. There were many sheepish expressions, and those cheat papers started to disappear as fast as they had appeared. He set a standard for the class which eventually graduated the largest group in the school’s history.

  The man who stood up in the classroom that day later became a respected physician. Certainly what he did was neither comfortable nor easy. But it demonstrated the kind of courage required by integrity—the kind of courage that affirmed timeless principles, lifted others, and made life better for all of us who depend on a physician’s knowledge and skill when our health and our lives are at stake.

  Courage is the first of the human qualities because it is a quality which guarantees all the others.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL

  As you consider people you believe have integrity, can you see these qualities playing out in their lives? Undoubtedly, they are honest. But are they also congruent, humble, and courageous? What effect do you think their integrity has on the way they feel about themselves? What effect does this have on the way you feel about them? Are they credible in your eyes? Do you trust them?

  To one degree or another, we can probably all improve in each of these areas. By doing so, we can also improve our own credibility and ultimately increase the speed and lower the cost of everything we do.

  HOW TO INCREASE YOUR INTEGRITY

  So how do we go about increasing our integrity?

  First, we need to consider what degree of integrity we currently have. At this point, you might find it helpful to review the following questions based on the self-assessment questionna
ire.

  • Do I genuinely try to be honest in all my interactions with others?

  • Do I typically “walk my talk”?

  • Am I clear on my values? Do I feel comfortable in standing up for them?

  • Am I open to the possibility of learning new truths that may cause me to rethink issues or even redefine my values?

  • Am I able to consistently make and keep commitments to myself?

  I urge you to really think about these questions and answer them candidly. You may also want to do what we do in our Speed of Trust workshops—get feedback from your boss, peers, direct reports, customers, friends, or family members concerning their perception of you in each of these areas. Because we all have “blind spots,” we sometimes tend to overestimate or underestimate our own level of strength.

  In addition, I’d like to suggest three high-leveraged “accelerators” that make a powerful difference in increasing integrity.

  1. Make and Keep Commitments to Yourself

  There is absolutely nothing you can do that will increase integrity faster than learning how to make and keep commitments to yourself. In the Second Wave—Relationship Trust, we’ll talk about the power of making and keeping commitments to others. But there’s no way you will be able to do that effectively if you haven’t first learned to make and keep commitments to yourself.

  Part of my family heritage is the story of how my great-grandfather Stephen Mack Covey started the Little America hotel chain. While working as a sheepherder in the 1890s, he got caught in a blizzard one winter night in the middle of Wyoming. As the storm raged, the effects of the 50-mile-per-hour winds and below-zero temperatures became so intense that he genuinely thought he wasn’t going to survive. As he hunkered down, he made a commitment to himself and to God that if he made it through the night, he would build a shelter for others right there in that obscure, unpopulated location as a symbol of his gratitude.

  Well, he did make it through the night, and although it took some time, he eventually built that “shelter” out there in the middle of nowhere. Today, there’s only a gas station and the sprawling Little America Motel. But the town of Little America, Wyoming, now has its own place on the map, and it has become a popular tourist stop. It also became the foundation of an extraordinary business career. Before he died, my great-grandfather had established several strong regional businesses, including hotels, apartments, petroleum interests, and financial services.

  Now, I’m sure it would have been easy for someone in my great-grandfather’s situation to say, “It would be ridiculous to build a motel out here in the middle of nowhere!” Nobody knew about that commitment except my great-grandfather and God. But Stephen Mack Covey had made a serious commitment to himself, and he kept it. And the power of his keeping that commitment has had a profound impact on all of his descendants, including me.

  The more experience I’ve had, both personally and professionally, the more convinced I have become of the importance of making and keeping commitments to ourselves. These can be big commitments, like my great-grandfather’s, or they can be small commitments, even very small commitments, such as getting up when the alarm clock goes off, not overeating, or speaking respectfully to others, even when provoked to do otherwise. Every time we make and keep a commitment to ourselves—large or small—we increase our self-confidence. We build our reserves. We enlarge our capacity to make and keep greater commitments, both to ourselves and to others.

  As you consider how you might step up your ability to make and keep commitments to yourself, let me suggest a few important things to keep in mind:

  First, don’t make too many commitments. If you do, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Differentiate between a goal, a direction, a focus, and an actual commitment. When you make a commitment to yourself, do so with the clear understanding that you’re pledging your integrity.

  Second, treat a commitment you make to yourself with as much respect as you do the commitments you make to others. Whether it’s a commitment of time (an appointment with yourself to exercise or read or sleep) or a commitment to prioritize your energy and focus, treat it—and yourself—with respect.

  Third, don’t make commitments impulsively. I learned this lesson the hard way one time when we were having a family discussion about health. It was around New Year’s, and as we were talking, we decided that we all needed to drink more water instead of soda pop. I started to really get caught up in the spirit of improvement, and—filled with bravado (but no humility)—I said, “I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I am going to make a commitment to myself to drink nothing but water for this entire year! No soda, no juices—nothing but water!” Well, that was foolish and I lived to regret it. I kept the commitment, but it was hard. Out of the experience, I learned to be careful about making commitments and to make sure they were made out of humility, and not pride.

  Finally, understand that when keeping your commitment becomes hard, you have two choices: You can change your behavior to match your commitment, or you can lower your values to match your behavior. One choice will strengthen your integrity; the other will diminish it and erode your confidence in your ability to make and keep commitments in the future. In addition, that shift in direction with regard to values—even if it’s slight—will create a change in trajectory that will create a far more significant difference in destination down the road.

  So I encourage you to learn to make and keep commitments to yourself with wisdom. There is no faster way to build self trust.

  2. Stand for Something

  The longtime former chairman and CEO of American Express, Ken Chenault, created a book for all employees called Next Chapter (A Guide to the New American Express). This book provides an outline of where the company is going in the future and how it plans to get there. One of the key tenets reads as follows:

  Stand for Something. Some value(s) can’t be quantified. Success at any cost isn’t the point. It’s winning the right way that matters . . . . We also must consistently prove through our actions that we stand for the right things—customer commitment, quality, integrity, teamwork, respect for people, good citizenship, a will to win, personal accountability and so much more.

  If you’re going to have integrity—or integratedness—you have to have a core, something to which you must be true. You can’t work from the inside out if you don’t even know what’s inside. So you need to have a center. You need to have identified values. You need to know what you stand for and you need to stand for it, so that others know, too.

  Who you are, what your values are, what you stand for . . . They are your anchor, your north star. You won’t find them in a book. You’ll find them in your soul.

  —ANNE MULCAHY, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, XEROX

  A great example of integrity, both in keeping a commitment and in standing for something, is Jon Huntsman Sr., founder of Huntsman Chemical. As he relates in his book, Winners Never Cheat, following lengthy negotiations, Huntsman agreed to sell 40 percent of a division of his company to Great Lakes Chemical. A simple handshake with Emerson Kampen, chairman and CEO of Great Lakes, sealed the $54 million deal.

  However, Great Lakes dragged their feet in preparing the written agreement. In the six and a half months it took them to get the deal down on paper, the price of raw materials had decreased substantially, Huntsman profits had tripled, and Huntsman margins had reached an all-time high. Forty percent of the division had increased in value from $54 million to $250 million.

  With the deal not yet signed, Kampen called Huntsman and said that while he didn’t feel he should pay the full difference in value, he thought it was only fair that he should pay half. So he offered to split the difference. But Huntsman said no; they had shaken hands and agreed on $54 million and he would stick to that price.

  Kampen said, “But that’s not fair to you!”

  Huntsman’s response was, “You negotiate for your company, Emerson, and let me negotiate for mine.”

  Kampen was so i
mpressed with this display of integrity that, even though he and Huntsman were never personally close, he prearranged for Huntsman to be one of two people to speak at his funeral.

  Obviously, Jon Huntsman stood for something. As he said in writing about this experience, “Even though I could have forced Great Lakes to pay an extra $200 million for that 40 percent ownership stake in my company, I never had to wrestle with my conscience or to look over my shoulder. My word was my bond.”

  Jon Huntsman knew what was important to him. His values were clear. He didn’t have to struggle when circumstances challenged those values. And clearly, standing for his values inspired trust.

  It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.

  —ROY DISNEY, FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN, WALT DISNEY COMPANY

  An excellent way to identify the values you want to stand for is to go through some kind of purpose- or values-clarification process. I have found nothing more valuable than the creation of a mission statement or credo, whether it be personal, family, or organizational. Creating an expression of what you stand for—and living by it—will pay great dividends in helping you become credible and trusted.

  3. Be Open

  You’ve probably been around people you consider close-minded or arrogant—people who don’t really listen to you because they think there’s nothing you could say they don’t already know; people who refuse to consider new ways of looking at things because they are convinced that theirs is the only accurate way of thinking; people who will stare truth in the face and reject it because they’re not willing to accept the possibility that there is some reality, some principle out there, they weren’t even aware of. How does that ego-invested attitude affect your ability to relate to these people? How does it affect your perception of their credibility? How does it affect your willingness to extend trust?