Tweet

Trust Comes First

Guest post by: Mark. C. Thompson

Article Overview: I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to meet with Stephen R. Covey and his two talented sons, Stephen M.R. and Sean Covey. I asked all three of them to talk to me about how trust is built--how do they build trust as a Covey organization?

Trust Comes First

I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to meet with Stephen R. Covey, author of the bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Peopleand co-founder and vice chairman of FranklinCoveyand his two talented sons, Stephen M.R. and Sean Covey.

I asked all three of them to talk to me about how trust is built--how do they build trust as a Covey organization?

“First you have to be a trustworthy person, which is a combination of character and competence,” Stephen told me. “For a period of time during our merger, there wasn’t that level of trust. We would just announce, ‘we’re doing this.’ But, little by little we learned the principleof what we teach! You have to be absolutely trustworthy to merit the trust of your constituencies.”

In addition to writing the bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens, Sean works with educational organizations and schools, and he said the key to effective change is in creating a culture of trust.

“All schools want to lower discipline problems and raise test scores. The way to do that is to change the culture," he explains. "The culture of the school must be strong so the teachers trust each other—then it’s speedy—when you trust each other, it’s amazing how fast you can communicate.”

Stephen M.R. is author of the book The Speed of Trust, so trust is a topic he knows a lot about.

“Trust is the one thing that changes everything,” he insists. “It’s like a performance multiplier—you have trust and everything gets better. If there’s low trust, it’s like you pay a tax on everything and which has negative consequences. Trust changes everything no matter which way it goes. But building it is how you build the foundation to effective leadership.”

All good things happen when self-esteem and trust are established!

Related Articles
  A Tryst with Trust
  Trust and Respect
  5 pillars of instant Trust
  The Power of Trust
  Do you make your clients feel safe?
  My PersonalTrust Initiative
  Trust, Abundance and Success
  Trust me, everything will be all right.
  Trust Insights
  How Do I Build Trust?
  9 Questions To Ask To Determine If You Are Demolishing Trust In Your Business
  A Matter of Trust
  The Power of Employees
  “Are You Building or Demolishing Trust In Your Business?”
  Trust and Profit
  What a Leader needs to understand on Trust
  Building Trust
  Three Tricky Questions On Trust
  TRUST
  Trust in a New Age

Article Tags: business, business building, difficult economy, employees, Mark Thompson, success



Related Forum Posts
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vigilance Trust An ability to DELEGATE
Re: Bad credit guaranteed home loan? - Lending money to people with bad credit was one of the biggest things that put our economy under and many lenders out of business. I'd say if you have this opportunity take it now before it goes away. Trust me, if there are any of these programs left (and don't expect a low interest rate if your credit is bad) they won't be around for ever. At ANY interest rate.
Re: How do you earn trust with an online business? - Add VALUE to your target market. How? Well depends. If your business can start by Educating the target market about how your product or Service can add value to their lives. This can be done via Video (hot right now), basic text, audio etc. I've had a lot of success with Video and am using it primarily as a lead generation tool. If done right your Content can add Value and add to your bottom line at the same time while building Trust.
Re: Do Your Prospects / Customers Trust You? - This is so true. In the software business, if you don't earn their trust in the first few days they start implementing it, they tend to just give up on using it at all.....even if they may have lost a lot of money. With software, silly glitches can have a huge bearing on your newer clients. Especially if they are brand new to software in general. The more established users understand that when you are constantly building and developing the software, there are going to be glitches along the way. Trust is a must!
Women's buying patterns - I'd like to know more about women's buying psychology - what makes them tick? - are they looking for an "experience"? If so, are there important parts of the experience that must exist? - how do you break past Trust barrier? - If you are selling a service what kind of support are women looking for? - do women buy a sampling first to "check out the waters" before they commit to a larger purchase? or do they jump in with both feet?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Executives and Elevators Perfecting That Pitch

Starting A Set of Books

Purchasing Real Estate using the SBA 504 Loan

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.