The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

by Stephen M. R. Covey

  THE IMPACT ON SPEED AND COST

  Some people say that to Listen First is inefficient, that it takes too much time. I couldn’t disagree more. I am firmly convinced that this behavior is highly pragmatic—that it has an almost unparalleled positive impact in establishing trust, and on speed and cost.

  In an article published and then reprinted in Harvard Business Review, management authority Peter Drucker lists eight practices of effective executives. At the end, he concludes:

  We just reviewed eight practices of effective executives. I’m going to throw in one final bonus practice. This one is so important that I will elevate it to a rule: Listen first, speak last [emphasis added].

  Why would he elevate it to a rule? Because when you Listen First, you get insight and understanding you wouldn’t have had. You make better decisions. Also you show respect. You give people psychological air. And the impact on trust is amazing.

  Smart organizations recognize the power of Listen First, particularly as it pertains to customers and other external stakeholders. If companies don’t do market research to determine the needs and preferences of consumers before they produce products, they don’t make money. Sometimes they have to invest tremendous time and money in order to redesign and relaunch the product. Sometimes they end up out of business.

  Smart leaders recognize the power of Listen First, particularly as it relates to coworkers and internal customers. If they don’t, they cheat themselves and the company out of the information, feedback, innovation, collaboration, and partnering inherent in a high-trust environment and vital to success in today’s age of disruption.

  Leadership has less to do with walking in front and leading the way than it does with listening to the needs of the people of the company and meeting them.

  —CHARLES M. CAWLEY, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, MBNA AMERICA

  When Mike Garrett became president of Georgia Power, I asked him what his plans were in his new role. He said, “I’m going to go in and basically just listen for the first couple of months. I’m going to see what’s happening. If I were to go in and start to lay out a vision and a plan without listening, I wouldn’t have near the effectiveness, near the trust to do what I want to do. I always go in listening first.”

  The wisdom of this approach was enormously helpful to me when I came in as CEO of the Covey Leadership Center. At the time, we had eight legal disputes on the docket. These disputes had dragged on for months—in one case, even years. They were consuming enormous time and energy, and I was frustrated because I felt we should be focusing our efforts elsewhere. In addition, I was disappointed that we had those kinds of disagreements in the first place. So I determined that we would have them resolved within two months.

  My basic approach was to listen to the other parties first. In seven out of the eight cases, listening created the openness, trust, and understanding needed to come up with solutions (which were often synergistic) that worked for everyone. In the last case, the person involved did not have mutual benefit intent and simply tried to manipulate the situation, so we ended up with a compromise. I think the end result would have been the same had we not listened and simply gone down the legal path, but I still feel better about having attempted to listen first. And, except for the final case, which took a few months longer, we did meet our two-month goal.

  I have found that the two best qualities a CEO can have are the ability to listen and to assume the best motives in others.

  —JACK M. GREENBERG, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, MCDONALD’S

  In another situation at the Leadership Center, we felt we needed to sever our relationship with an affiliate who had not been performing. I knew he felt like there were a number of variables involved in his lack of performance, so when I met with him, I said, “I want to just listen. Let me hear your perspective.” After I spent about two hours listening, he sat back and said, “I feel so understood, I don’t even care what you decide anymore. Now I feel like you understand all the things I thought you might not be aware of or appreciate, and I believe you will take those things into consideration in making your decision.” We ended up terminating this relationship, but this man left in a good place. If he hadn’t felt understood, the whole situation might well have ended up in another legal dispute, costing us far more and taking a lot longer than the time I spent listening.

  MAKING DEPOSITS

  One of the huge benefits of Listen First is that it helps you learn how to build trust. It helps you understand which behaviors make deposits in a particular Trust Account and which do not. Acting on this understanding results in greater speed because you’re speaking—and behaving—in the same language as the person with whom you’re trying to build the account.

  In Gary Chapman’s book on relationships, The Five Love Languages, he makes the interesting argument that while there are infinite expressions of love, there are only five emotional love languages. He says: “Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English . . . . We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.” While Chapman applies this language of love to personal relationships, the same concept also applies in our professional relationships. By learning and speaking the same native tongue as our customers, investors, suppliers, distributors, and coworkers, we are able to understand and communicate with them better. As Heinrich Pierer, former CEO of Siemens AG, has said, “Leadership ultimately means understanding people.”

  In relationships it’s important to keep in mind that sometimes words communicate only a little of what a person really thinks, feels, or means. In fact, sometimes words do not communicate at all. Research shows that face-to-face communication regarding attitudes and feelings is 7 percent what people say, 38 percent how they say it, and 55 percent body language. So Listen First means to listen with more than your ears; it means to also listen with your eyes and your heart. My father had a beautiful expression for this: “Listen with your eyes for feeling.” This becomes more of a challenge in today’s world where there are so many virtual teams and where so much communication is done remotely and with people whom you’ve never met face-to-face. This actually puts more—not less—of a premium on listening. Barnes & Noble Executive Chairman Leonard Riggio says, “I try to hear things through the ears of others, and see things through their eyes.”

  Listen First means to listen for as well as to listen to. When you listen to customers, you’re listening for what matters most to them. When you listen to investors, you’re listening for what’s most important on their agenda. When you listen to coworkers, you’re listening for what would engage their interest and creativity. An observer listening to conversations at the watercooler would listen for discussions about how people behave—which would tell him more about the company’s culture than their mission or values statement.

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Listen First means to listen to yourself, to your gut feelings, your own inner voice, before you decide, before you act. I remember one time I had to make a tough business decision about downsizing that would have huge implications for the company and for many people whose lives would be impacted by my decision. I listened to many who gave me advice on this matter—people I really trusted and saw as credible, ranging from board members to outside consultants to other coworkers and my direct reports. Everyone’s advice was so contradictory. It was like a scattergram—all over the board. I was confused and overwhelmed, and I felt the weight of so many lives hanging on my decision.

  Perplexed, I came to the conclusion that I was listening too much to other people. I needed to just listen to myself instead—to my instincts, my gut—and that would lead me to the best decision. As I did this, I became clear on what to do, and the decision was implemented with success. Through it all, I learned that when you have a foundation of Self Trust, sometimes the best voice to listen to is your own inner voice.

  TRUST TIPS

  Obviously, the “
sweet spot” on the bell curve is to Listen First with Integrity, Intent, Capabilities, and Results. If you’re on the left—either not listening or not listening first—you may need to focus on humility (Integrity), a mutual benefit agenda (Intent), empathic listening skills (Capabilities), or ensuring that the other person feels understood (Results). Here are two keys that may be helpful to you in working on Results:

  1. Generally, as long as a person is communicating with high emotion, he or she does not yet feel understood.

  2. A person will usually not ask for your advice until he or she feels understood. To offer advice too early will usually only stir up more emotion—or cause someone to simply ignore what you say.

  If you’re on the right side of the curve—spending all your time listening and never bringing the conversation to the point of decisionmaking, counseling, or influencing—you may want to focus on courage (Integrity), acting in the person’s best interest (Intent), developing decision-making and collaboration skills (Capabilities), or simply getting things done (Results).

  As you work to Listen First, you may find the following ideas helpful to increase trust.

  • Think back over your interactions with others during the past week, both at work and at home. Think of a time when you did or didn’t Listen First. What were the results? What would have been the results if you had behaved differently?

  • The next time you’re in a conversation, stop and ask yourself, Have I really listened to this other person? Do I really understand how he or she feels? If not, simply stop and do it. Set your own agenda aside and really focus on understanding the other person’s point of view before you share your own.

  • In your company, take proactive steps to understand your stakeholders—both internal and external. Don’t get caught up in the illusion that you know everything or have all the right answers. Consider what you can do to ensure others that you are listening to them and making an effort to meet their concerns and needs.

  SUMMARY: BEHAVIOR #11—LISTEN FIRST

  Listen before you speak. Understand. Diagnose. Listen with your ears—and your eyes and heart. Find out what the most important behaviors are to the people you’re working with. Don’t assume you know what matters most to others. Don’t presume you have all the answers—or all the questions.

  BEHAVIOR #12: KEEP COMMITMENTS

  You are your word. When you say you will do it, do it. Don’t give your word unless you intend to keep it. A leader whose promise means something is trusted. Trust counts for everything in leadership.

  —COACH JOHN WOODEN, UCLA

  Richard Liu Qiangdong is the founder and CEO of JD.com, China’s largest online retailer. Established in 1998 with just one electronics store, the company is now trusted by hundreds of millions of customers both in China and internationally (as JoyBuy.com) because of its reputation for honesty and authentic products.

  Liu’s most influential teachers in his life were his parents, from whom he learned integrity, quality, and the importance of keeping commitments. He built JD.com on those same principles. He says, “For me, practicing what you preach and acting the same, both in public and private life, are my basic principles of living.”

  Several years ago, JD was seeking additional funding to expand its growth. Liu was approached by an American investment firm, Tiger Global Fund. While away from the office visiting his hometown of Suiqian, he agreed in a phone conversation to accept Tiger’s offer for funding. They asked if he could sign the term sheet when he was back in the office, to which he replied, “Yes, no problem.”

  As soon as Liu hung up the phone, however, three other potential investors appeared at his door. They had travelled all the way to Suqian and had brought their contracts with them, offering double the amount Liu had agreed to in his conversation with Tiger—which would have provided JD with $32 million more in funding, and on better terms. Because he hadn’t yet signed anything with Tiger, some of his advisers recommended that he should consider the other offers. Liu recounts, “In my mind, I had made a promise on the phone. Although I hadn’t signed a contract, I should keep my word.”

  And he did. The result has been a huge infusion of money—and trust. “Because of this,” Liu says, “we have established a sound reputation among investors. As a result, more and more investors support us, and they have provided us with a steady flow of funds required for the development of our business.”

  Liu’s biggest aspiration, he says, is “to make JD the world’s most trusted and respected company.” Keeping commitments has provided a strong foundation for achieving that vision.

  THE FASTEST WAY TO BUILD TRUST

  Behavior #12—Keep Commitments—is the “Big Kahuna” of all behaviors. It’s the quickest way to build trust in any relationship—be it with an employee, a boss, a team member, a customer, a supplier, a spouse, a child, or the public in general. Its opposite—to break commitments or violate promises—is, without question, the quickest way to destroy trust.

  Obviously, this behavior involves making commitments as well as keeping them. To paraphrase my friend Roger Merrill, when you make a commitment, you build hope; when you keep it, you build trust. Given the impact of violating commitments, it’s vital to be careful with the commitments you make.

  However, the counterfeit of this behavior is to make commitments that are so vague or elusive that nobody can pin you down, or, even worse, to be so afraid of breaking commitments that you don’t even make any in the first place. That’s following Napoleon Bonaparte’s line of reasoning: “The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.” But this kind of approach clearly lacks courage and promise, and it certainly won’t work in today’s global economy, where companies sometimes need to make and follow through on remarkable promises to even get noticed in the clutter of so many companies offering the same products and solutions.

  In addition, this approach didn’t really work for Napoleon, and I can guarantee, it won’t build trust for you, either.

  A few years ago, I did an interview in which I shared how making and keeping commitments was the number one behavior to either build or destroy trust. When I finished, the interviewer excitedly said, “Do you want further validation?” He told me how he’d recently purchased a multimillion-dollar company. This was the third time the company had been sold in the last four years, and the managers and employees were very skeptical because they had seen other buyers make a lot of promises that were never kept. However, this new leader brought everyone together and just listened as people expressed their frustrations and concerns. After asking for and listening to their suggestions, this man made 14 commitments to the employees concerning improvements he would make and attached deadlines to each. Everyone was extremely skeptical. But within a week, this leader delivered on every commitment he had made. He came back to his people and said, “I told you I would do this, and I’ve done it. Now, what else needs to be done?” His credibility instantly skyrocketed. Almost overnight, he created an environment of trust, transforming the long-standing tax into a dividend. And results quickly followed. After several years of stagnant or negative growth, revenues doubled in the first year, and profits increased even faster.

  As the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market . . . I know that in virtually everything that I say and do, our Team Members are always studying me, trying to determine whether they can trust me and the mission of the company. I’m always on stage. So walking the talk is very important.

  —JOHN MACKEY

  Keep Commitments is based on the principles of integrity, performance, courage, and humility. It’s closely tied to other behaviors, including Talk Straight and Deliver Results. It’s the perfect balance of character and competence. Particularly, it involves integrity (character) and your ability to do what you say you’re going to do (competence).

  THE IMPACT ON TRUST

  In almost any discussion of trust, keeping commitments comes up as the number one influencing behavior. In a study on business ethics, “keep
ing promises” was ranked as the number one behavior in creating an ethical culture. On the other hand, a survey on leaders for the World Economic Forum identified “not doing what they say” as the number one trust breaker.

  Although Keep Commitments is one of those behaviors that seem obvious and is just plain common sense, as the expression goes, “Common sense is not always common practice.” And the impact on trust is devastating.

  I worked with one leader who was bright, talented, and extremely capable, but he couldn’t keep things confidential. Because people assumed a commitment of confidentiality, it created huge withdrawals and literally changed the nature of their discussions with him because they felt they couldn’t trust him. As a result, he did not get the information that could really have been of help to him in leading and decision making.

  In another circumstance, I read of a leader who, after taking his company public, told his senior team to not sell their stock in order to help stabilize the stock price. But then he turned around and sold some of his own stock. He justified it by saying that as a percentage of the total amount of stock he owned, it was minuscule. But in the eyes of the senior team members, his instructions to them to not sell their stock had included an implicit commitment from him to not sell his, and he paid a massive trust tax as a result.

  In a third situation, a company had built up a database and the company leadership had explicitly promised they wouldn’t sell or rent their list. But a few years later, a new decision maker came in and decided to rent the list. Within a short time, one customer recognized that the direct mail solicitations he had begun to receive from new companies had the same, unique, and distinguishing errors on the address label he had seen on labels from the company that had promised not to rent their list. He thought this was beyond coincidence and called the company on it. The company acknowledged their behavior and apologized, but the customer said he could no longer trust a company that would make an explicit commitment and then break it, so he quit doing business with them.