Openness is vital to integrity. It takes both humility and courage—humility to acknowledge that there are principles out there you may not currently be aware of, and courage to follow them once you discover them. Throughout history, most paradigm shifts in science have been shifts from traditional thinking—shifts that took this kind of humility and courage.
A good way to increase integrity, then, is to work on being open. Consider Anwar Sadat, who served as the third president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. Raised in a culture and leading the government of one nation among many that were strongly anti-Israeli, Sadat nevertheless demonstrated openness when the voice of conscience urged him to pursue peace. Despite the outrage of his Arab neighbors, he drew upon a lesson he had learned earlier in life as he sat in a cell in the Cairo Central Prison: “[H]e who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.” He traveled to Israel, met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and spoke to the Knesset. He subsequently traveled to the United States and met with Begin and then U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Their discussions led to the Camp David Accords, for which both Begin and Sadat received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Several years ago, both my father and I had the privilege of having lunch with Sadat’s widow, Jehan, and then hearing her speak. What I remember best about her description of her husband’s experience was his willingness to be open and to relearn what he thought he had already known.
People like Anwar Sadat or South Africa’s Nelson Mandela or Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union play out on the main stage of human drama the same theme we see repeated in our own interactions with coworkers, family members, and friends. To be open inspires credibility and trust; to be closed fosters suspicion and mistrust.
As you evaluate your own openness, you might ask yourself:
• Do I believe that the way I see the world is totally accurate and complete—or am I honestly willing to listen to and consider new viewpoints and ideas?
• Do I seriously consider differing points of view (from a boss, direct report, team member, spouse, or child), and am I willing to be influenced by them?
• Do I believe there may be principles that I have not yet discovered? Am I determined to live in harmony with them, even if it means developing new thinking patterns and habits?
• Do I value—and am I involved in—continual learning?
To the degree to which you remain open to new ideas, possibilities, and growth, you create a trust dividend; to the degree you do not, you create a trust tax that impacts both your current and future performance.
THE IMPACT ON SPEED AND COST
Greed destroys wealth. Trust and integrity, by contrast, foster prosperity.
—PATRICIA ABURDENE, AUTHOR OF CONSCIOUS MONEY
These three “accelerators”—make and keep commitments to yourself, stand for something, and be open—will help you increase your integrity. They will also increase the speed and decrease the cost with which you do the important things in your life—every time!
The greater your integrity—the more honest, congruent, humble, and courageous you are—the more credibility you will have and the more trust you will inspire. The more you will be able to transform trust taxes into trust dividends in every dimension of your life.
CORE 2—INTENT
WHAT’S YOUR AGENDA?
In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of another. In ethics, he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.
—IMMANUEL KANT
I hope my parents will forgive me for sharing a rather funny story about them, but it really does help me make the point. One day several years ago, my dad and mom (whom I’ll refer to by name—Stephen and Sandra) were returning from their cabin in Montana. They were extremely tired, as they had spent the morning snowmobiling with young family members. Stephen felt he was too tired to drive, so Sandra took the wheel while he lay down in the backseat of the car and instantly fell asleep.
After a couple of hours, Sandra could barely keep her eyes open, so she pulled to the side of the freeway and woke Stephen, saying she couldn’t wait to crawl into the backseat and have her turn to sleep. They opened the car doors and got out to make the switch. Stephen slipped into the driver’s seat, and as Sandra was about to shut his door and go to the back, she suddenly remembered that their new car had a special feature that allowed people to raise or lower the chassis for convenience. Because of her bad knee, she said to Stephen, “Please lower the car so I can get in easier,” and she slammed the doors so he could do it.
Almost immediately, Sandra was surprised to see the car begin to quickly move forward. Thinking Stephen was pretending to leave her (which was a logical conclusion, given his sense of humor), she started chasing after the car. Suddenly, the car sped up, and she was left standing on the side of the freeway all alone.
As it was winter and she didn’t have a coat on and was in her stocking feet, Sandra thought this was not the right time for a joke, and Stephen was really going to get it when he came back! But after ten minutes of standing alone on the freeway freezing, she finally came to the conclusion that Stephen must have thought she had gotten into the car and was asleep in the backseat!
Apparently, Stephen never heard Sandra ask for the car to be lowered, and when he heard the back door slam, he assumed she was in. Knowing how exhausted she was, he thought that she had instantly fallen asleep among the cozy blankets and pillows. Since Sandra liked to make a lot of stops for restroom breaks and snacks, Stephen thought if he remained really quiet, she might just sleep the whole way and he could make good time getting home.
As luck would have it, a man in another car had seen Stephen drive off and leave Sandra, and he saw her chase the car down the freeway. Doing what he thought was his civic duty, he called the highway patrol and reported that he had just seen a man abandon a woman on the side of the road.
Soon, a patrol car pulled up to Sandra, and the patrolman asked Sandra what had happened.
“My husband left me here, but I don’t think he knows,” she said.
Suspecting potential domestic abuse, he asked, “Did you have a fight, ma’am? Why would he leave you and drive off?”
“I’m sure he thinks I’m in the backseat asleep.”
“He thinks you’re in the backseat of his car? Don’t you think it’s strange that he wouldn’t notice you weren’t there?”
“No, I’m sure he thinks I’m sound asleep.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sandra Covey.”
There was a long pause. “Are you any relation to Stephen Covey, the author? I had a class from him once!”
“He’s the one who left me!”
As Sandra and the patrolman continued to talk, Sandra remembered Stephen had a cell phone with him, so they called him.
“Mr. Covey, this is the highway patrol. You need to pull over immediately, and I need to know your exact location.”
Confused as to how the highway patrol had his cell phone number, and wondering if he was speeding, he said, “All right, officer. I think I’m somewhere by Idaho Falls, but I don’t know exactly because I’ve been asleep. My wife has been driving up until about 10 or 15 minutes ago. I’ll ask her where we are.”
Then he yelled toward the backseat, “Sandra! Sandra! Wake up! There’s a highway patrolman on the phone and he wants to know our exact location.”
“Mr. Covey! Mr. Covey!” the patrolman said loudly into the phone. “Your wife isn’t there.”
“She’s just asleep in the backseat,” Stephen replied impatiently. “Wait! I’ll pull over and wake her up.” So Stephen pulled over and looked in the backseat. Then he began frantically searching through the blankets and pillows. Sandra wasn’t there!
“My wife is missing!” he exclaimed.
“She’s in the car with me!” the patrolman replied.
“With you? Well, how did she get there?”
/> “You left her on the side of the road a while ago.”
“What?” he said incredulously. “You mean she didn’t get in? Oh, I can’t believe it! I wondered why she was so quiet!”
Well, the patrol car finally found Stephen and they all had a good laugh as they pieced together what happened. Stephen said, “My kids just won’t believe this one.”
The patrolman said, “That’s nothing! Wait until I tell the guys down at the department. It’s a classic!”
THE IMPORTANCE OF INTENT
Now here’s a question for you: If you’d seen all this going on, what would you have thought was Stephen’s intent?
At first, Sandra assumed his intent was to play a joke by pretending to leave her. Why? Because he had quite a sense of humor and he’d done many things like that before. Once she realized what had happened, however, she assumed Stephen had not known she was not in the car, and that his intent in not trying to interact with her was to let her sleep. Why? Because she knew his character. She knew he cared about her, would want her to rest, and would never consciously leave her in that situation.
The man who phoned the highway patrol, on the other hand, didn’t know Stephen’s character, and he evidently assumed Stephen’s intent was to abandon Sandra. Why? Who knows? Maybe he’d had experience with abandonment in his own life. Or maybe he had been sensitized to the possibility (as most of us have) by our social culture of increasing abandonment and abuse.
The highway patrolman also didn’t know Stephen’s character, and at first, he assumed there was some kind of bad intent involved. Why? Likely because he had seen a lot of domestic abuse in his profession, and his experience created the lens through which he initially viewed the events.
What was Stephen’s real intent? Obviously, there was no intent to leave Sandra freezing at the side of the road. I’d like to say that his whole intent in not trying to talk to her was to give her the chance to get a good rest. But, as he himself admitted, he also really wanted to get home as quickly as possible, and he knew she would want to stop along the way if she were awake.
This whole experience brings up some of the important issues we’re dealing with when we talk about intent:
• Intent matters.
• It grows out of character.
• While we tend to judge ourselves by our intent, we tend to judge others by their behavior.
• We also tend to judge others’ intent based on our own paradigms and experience.
• Our perception of intent has a huge impact on trust.
• People often distrust us because of the conclusions they draw about what we do.
• It is important for us to actively influence the conclusions others draw by “declaring our intent.”
THE IMPACT OF INTENT ON TRUST
The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual worldwide study comparing the amount of trust people have in four critical institutions: government, business, the media, and NGOs. While the outcomes will often vary from year-to-year and country-by-country, can you guess which institution comes out on top in most years and in most countries since the survey began? It’s the NGOs—those private national and international not-for-profit “Non-Governmental Organizations” involved in addressing societal issues such as health, human rights, poverty, and the environment.
In Gallup and other surveys comparing trust levels in various professions, can you guess who consistently comes out dead last? It’s the politicians.
So what’s the difference? Why is our trust in NGOs so high and our trust in politicians so low? Think about the 4 Cores of Credibility. For the most part, both NGOs and politicians have strong capabilities. Both have established track records of results. To some extent, integrity may be more of an issue for politicians (or political opponents or the media may try to ascribe problems to integrity issues).
I contend that, by far, the primary differentiator between our perceptions of NGOs and politicians is a matter of intent—either the real intent or the assumed or ascribed intent of those involved. What is their motive or agenda? Do they really care about what’s best for everyone involved? Or are they primarily interested in political power, party politics, their own ego, or in what they can get out of it for themselves?
With NGOs, the motives are generally honorable and clear; the agenda is to add value to a specific, beneficial purpose or mission. With politicians, however, intent is often seen as doing what is best for the politician or for the party, but not necessarily for the whole.
The impact of intent issues on trust is dramatic. Some time ago, a translator for CNN mistranslated one word in a speech given by then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Instead of developing “nuclear technology,” President Ahmadinejad was reported to have talked about developing “nuclear weapons.” In the already highly charged political environment surrounding Iran’s nuclear interests, CNN was immediately thrown out of Iran. Hossein Shariatmadari, chief editor of the Kayhan newspaper, said, “The distortion was deliberate with the aim of preventing the impact of the president’s comments on the public opinion.”
Notice the immediate focus on and ascription of motive or intent . . . and the result. Following a public apology, CNN was allowed back into Iran. But in this instance—and in dozens of interactions each day, if we have eyes to see—the dramatic impact of intent issues becomes blazingly apparent.
Going back to our “expert witness” metaphor, one of the focal efforts of the opposition would be to discredit a witness based on intent: Why would this person be giving this testimony? What is she going to get out of it? Is there a conflict of interest? Is she getting paid by the company she’s testifying for? If the opposition can give any cause to suspect intent, the witness’s testimony will be tainted.
The intent focus becomes an even more important issue—in fact, a pivotal issue—for the person who is on trial. “What motive might this person have for committing this crime?” In most trials, intent, or motive, is a major determining factor.
As illustrated in the tree metaphor, intent is represented by the trunk—partly unseen underground, partly visible above. While our motives and agendas are deep inside in our own hearts and minds, they become visible to others through our behaviors and as we share them with others.
Like each of the other cores, intent is vital to trust. A person with integrity, capability, and results—but poor intent—would be someone who is honest and has capabilities and results, but whose motive is suspect. Maybe he/she wants to win, even at the expense of others. And others can sense that, and thus feel that they can’t fully extend trust. On the other hand, a person of good intent without the other three cores (integrity, capability, and results) would be a caring person who is dishonest or cowardly with no developed talents or skills and no track record. Again, all 4 Cores are vital.
As we prepare to explore the issue of intent, you may want to ask yourself questions such as the following:
• How often do I discount (or “tax”) what someone says because I am suspicious about that person’s intent?
• What kind of tax is my organization paying because employees don’t trust management’s intent? What is the impact on speed and cost?
• What kind of tax are we paying as a team because we are suspicious of one another’s motives?
• What kind of tax am I paying because people question my own intent?
• What can I do to improve and better communicate my intent?
Questions such as these will help you prepare your mind and heart as we look at what constitutes intent and how we can improve it.
WHAT IS “INTENT”?
In the dictionary, intent is defined as “plan” or “purpose.” I am convinced that no discussion of intent would be complete without talking about three things: motive, agenda, and behavior.
• • •
Motive. Motive is your reason for doing something. It’s the “why” that motivates the “what.”
The motive that inspires the greatest
trust is genuine caring—caring about people, caring about purposes, caring about the quality of what you do, caring about society as a whole. Think about it: Are you going to trust someone who could really care less about you . . . or about work . . . or about principles, or values, or anyone or anything else?
How do you develop trust? It’s simple: you show your genuine sense of concern for their well-being. Then trust will come.
—THE DALAI LAMA
The trust we have in people and in organizations comes, in part, from believing that they do care. I remember as a child when my parents had to discipline me for one infraction or another, they always did it with love. I didn’t like the discipline. Often I resented it. But there was never a question in my mind or heart that my parents were doing it because they cared. I always knew that I could trust their love for me.
Companies worldwide recognize the importance of caring. How many advertisements do you see that communicate—either in words or through visual image association—messages such as these: “We care about you.” “We care about quality.” “We care about the environment.” “We care about our communities and making a positive difference.” Companies hope that by communicating this image of caring, you will have trust in and buy their services and products.
Much has been written recently about how caring actually leads to better performance. Works such as The Art of Caring Leadership, Give and Take, and Leaders Eat Last clearly validate the strong connection between concern for others and performance. Former Yahoo executive executive Tim Sanders writes about the impact of caring in very practical terms in Love Is the Killer App, in which he shows how caring and compassion for others can be translated into specific behaviors that constitute a better way of doing business for all. I maintain that this undeniable connection between caring and performance exists because caring and concern engender trust.
The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything Page 11