320. Trust: The Key to High-Performing Teams, with Stephen M.R. Covey (refreshed episode)

Welcome to episode 320 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about the speed of trust with Stephen Mr. Covey. Ready?

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You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's episode, I'm so excited to introduce you to Stephen Mr. Covey. Now, I know that Covey is likely a name you've heard before and Stephen Covey at that. And we're going to talk about that Covey name and Stephen's family history within the conversation, which originally aired back in April of 2021. In this episode, we're talking about his fantastic book, the Speed of Trust. We also talk about the economics of trust and how when there's trust in an organization, everything just works better. There are tips for building trust and why it matters to companies all throughout the episode. I really love this one and I'm sure you will too. I chose to refresh this episode today because of how it ties in with this upcoming Friday's conversation with Kate Gigax about finding your second act act in life and business. She has a background in organizational psychology and helps people to transition from doing everything and feeling like they have to take on absolutely all the things to realizing what they really want and making that important shift both in mindset and in action. In the conversation, we specifically talked about trust within an organization, being willing to take that leap and have the conversation with your boss or whomever else. So it felt like a great time to refresh this episode with Steven. As you listen, consider how much trust you have around you with your peers, your boss, your employees, vendors, clients, family members, whatever. Where do you already have a lot of trust and where's there not enough? How might things get better if you were to help foster more trust? Where can you let go a little? Where should they and when should you take that first step? Don't forget that there are links for everything, including past episodes, books and articles, all waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 320. All right, let's talk about the speed of trust. Stephen Mr. Covey, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Hey, thanks so much Melina. I'm thrilled to be here with you today.

Absolutely. So, so excited. And I know that, you know, we touched on this a little bit in the introduction, bringing it in, but I'm sure that one of the top questions that you get when you get, you know, pitched out for something or someone's talking is people know the name, but there's some legacy there. Tell a little bit about you and your legacy from your father and, you know, kind of how that all comes together. Tell us who you are.

Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm, I'm very proud of this. I'm, I'm a Stephen M r. Covey, and my father is, who passed away about eight years ago. His name is Stephen R. Covey, Dr. Stephen Covey, and he is the author of the, the acclaimed book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that has sold over 40 million copies all around the world. And so he's quite well known and his work continues. But I'm very proudly his son and very grateful for his legacy and his contribution to the world. And I've kind of built my work on top of what he's done. One of the things he tees up in the 7 Habits is the importance of, of an emotional bank account, which I term a trust account, the level of the amount of trust in the relationship. And so I've taken that idea of trust and really kind of drilled down deeply with it. We have different middle names. I'm Stephen. Mr. He's Stephen R. I'm actually the fourth generation. He's the third, so we don't carry the moniker third and fourth. And Melina, you'll be interested to know I couldn't end the tradition. I passed it on to my son, and he's Stephen H. And he passed it on to his son. So I have a grandson named Stephen Beth Covey. That's the sixth generation Stephen Covey.

Oh, fantastic.

Fantastic. Yeah, we're proud of that and feel like it's part of our heritage and really a sense of, for me, it gives me a sense of stewardship and responsibility to try to continue my father's legacy, the great work that he's done to help people. And I've kind of felt to continue in that, but kind of with my distinctiveness to it, which is a focus on trust. So, you know, and then, so I wrote the book the Speed of Trust, and I wanted, I was actually worried about people wondering, who is this Stephen M. Arcovy? So I had my father write the foreword to it, Right. Just so that he could be right on the same Cover with me so that at least someone might that look at this might say, wait, are these, are they two different people or did he write his own forward? That way it would communicate that this is not the 7 Habits author, this is the son of. And it all would have been easier if I were just a junior. Then you could just say junior, but it didn't work that way. But I'm very proud of my heritage.

That's awesome. I think just even getting into the trust factor, there has to be some of this, you know, social proof, authority bias that is building in of when people see the name like you said, because when you ask people to name, you know, what do you think are some of the most popular or well received books in the world? Pretty sure, you know, seven habits is top of, you know, at least top 10 for a lot of people that they that comes to mind. And most of those people know the author or have maybe heard the name before. And so for you having some automatic trust that's built in already based on that legacy of the name, I would guess that, you know, you need to back it up with the skills and the research and everything which is definitely shown in this book and throughout your work. I am positive. But you know, did you find the, you know, some of the benefits of trust that you have had then that has maybe made things to where you could see trust and its value differently than maybe some other people would have had, that didn't have that sort of legacy to start from?

Yes, I think that's a good point. I think it was actually a good illustration of my premise, the speed of trust. And that is there was, in a sense, there was almost a little bit, in many cases a transference of trust from the trust people had in my father somewhat transferred to me, but not completely. I had to kind of demonstrate it and earn it as well. But I think I maybe was in a better place because of it. There's always a few critics out there that just are already from the beginning thinking, you know, what has he done? He's not his dad.

Right.

And I just didn't, I didn't worry about the critics. I just tried to write to people in a way that I was trying to add value. And again, I see that as part of a stewardship that I have to make sure that I pay the price to be worthy and to add value to what my father had already done. But I think there's no question it was beneficial to me and has been.

Yeah, well, I really like there is a story very early on in the book. So I've talked a lot about when I talk about change management. I teach a class on it and we're looking at communication and selling and things. I talk about giving the gift of transparency. So using reciprocity and transparency together. I know we talked about that just a tiny bit before we started recording. And you have, you know, a section, one of your 13 behaviors is talking about that transparency piece. But just even like kicking off the book, you give this really great example about how having some openness to a large group of naysayers that helped build some trust. Can you tell a little bit about that experience and how it helped maybe shape some of your work?

Yeah, it really was a crucible type experience for me because we had just merged our companies and the Covey Leadership center, which I was running, and Franklin Quest, we merged to become Franklin Covey. And we had been arch competitors, saw the world through different lenses and been competitive. And suddenly we're merged. And I was running this combined group and half the people didn't trust me. And it wasn't that I'd done bad things to them, it's just that I hadn't done anything to gain it yet. And they'd come from a vantage point of we were competitors. And so this went on for some time and we were hardly making any progress at really coming together as a true team. And it was so much a kind of a we, they spirit initially. And I remember going to a conference and we were with a lot of our consultants who were the key part of our business because they interface with the clients. And I remember just kind of saying, look, they asked me to talk about the strategy, but I realized no one really wanted to talk about the strategy. They wanted to talk about all the challenges of the merger and all the decisions that we had to make and who would be making those decisions and how would we be making those decisions. And the unspoken was who's going to win out, which side, kind of type of thing. And so I went into that meeting and rather than just talking strategically and ignoring what was really on people's minds, I said, I'm going to get real. I'm going to be open, I'm going to be very transparent, I'm going to talk straight. And yes, there's a risk to do it, but there's a greater risk not to do it. Because people are kind of thinking that we're, you know, we're skirting the issues that are on people's minds. Why not be real with them? So I went in There. And I said, look, I'm prepared to talk about the strategy if you'd like, but if you'd rather, we can open this up and talk about anything that you want to about the merger, what's going on, who's in charge, who's making what decisions, why that person, why that team? Is this a Covey thing? Is the Franklin thing? Let's just open it up. But the act of doing that invites a reciprocity back. And people saw that I was not trying to put on airs or a front. That was being open. I was being authentic. I was being transparent. I was declaring my intent and even myself of who I am and how I wanted to work. And rather than being seen as weakness, I think it was seen as strength. And people tended to respond back in kind. Maybe not initially. I mean, I was going to take one hour. I took the entire day. We backed in the whole agenda. We spent the entire day just talking. But I was trying to listen and understand I was being open. And I think it was reciprocated back. I am confident it was. People tell me, and from that experience, I got on the plane flying back and someone said, steven, we built more trust in one day than we have in the prior one year. Yeah.

When I look at this sort of piece with change management and you get people that are stressed, they're thinking these things, it's like clouding their whole brain. Whether you talk about it or not, when your mergers are just one of the biggest points where there's just so much fear and stress going on for people as their status quo is upended and they're having to deal with all this. And so using an analogy from Jonathan Haidt, which is talking about the elephant in the right and how the brain works, you know, I talk about this as, like, sometimes you have to calm the elephant first. You know, we put in some time, get through whatever it's got going on, and once it's had its time to, you know, air any of those grievances, then, you know, your conscious, logical writer can come in and actually do something. Once we've addressed those elephant concerns and get them moving, even if they seem unrelated. I use an example of one of my employees who at the time was, you know, she was showing up late for work and was stressed and not focused in meetings and missing deadlines. And, you know, it could have just been, well, you have to be part of the team. But she was stressed because she was planning her wedding and she had a lot going on, and we were having her, you know, monthly session where, you know, say, like, what's the most important thing we should be talking about today? And she said, oh, I wish we could talk about my wedding. I said, okay, right, it's your hour. That's fine. And so she just was able to talk about bridesmaid dress colors and the invitation stress she was having. And, you know, we spent 30, 40 minutes talking about that. And then she felt so much better and got more work done and was able to be moving forward. And so, you know, taking that time can make a really big difference for people. To then be able to focus on the matter at hand. And, you know, even giving up some of my time for her, I think, is something that builds some trust as well, of being open and giving that away.

I think it's a beautiful illustration, very simple idea, but it's profound in its impact. And I like to put it this way. The key to influence is to first be influenced. And so when you seek first understand, as my father says in 7 Habits, Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Because when a person feels understood by you, it's like giving them air, psychological air, right? And you know, what oxygen is, is the body. Understanding is to the heart and to the soul, and it gives. It gives air. And then suddenly when people feel understood, it's like they can breathe and now they're ready to move on and, you know, take on other issues because they feel understood. It's a gift, that empathy. And the key insight here, I think, is that that understanding is not necessarily agreement, right? You might not agree. You might see it differently. You might. You're not evaluating, you're not interpreting, you're not advising. You're just trying to understand, get into their shoes. And just if someone feels understood, they become so much more open to your influence. Just like the example you gave. You paid a price. You listened, you understood. And when she felt that, then she moved forward. And I kind of tried to do that with this team. I recognized they were all frustrated with the merger. It wasn't working at the time, and people didn't feel hurt. And it really was a. A key learning for me, because from that point, we changed the trajectory. We built a lot of trust, and with that, we could do everything better. And it was also from that experience that I came to realize how important trust is, not just as a social virtue, but as an economic driver, affects everything, and how trust is also learnable as a skill, as a competency. And from that, I said, you know what? I think I want to write about this and so that crucible experience became kind of the springboard where I became clear that this is. This could be of value to people and all. Everything you just talked about, you know, I'm trying to seek understanding so that I would have more influence with people.

Yeah, well, perfect segue, because being that it's a show about behavioral economics, I feel like I would be doing a disservice if I didn't talk about the equations or whatnot that you have at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure you can appreciate. I was very excited to see something like that and that they're very simple equations that you can really understand easily, but just, you know, quantifying the value of trust in organizations and getting at that speed factor. Can you talk a little bit about those equations? Which makes it sound much more intimidating than it is, but, you know, they're simple ones. Yeah, yeah.

These are very simple ideas. And I think there's both research that will validate this, but also our own experience. I think people intuitively will say, of course, of course. Here's the idea is that trust always affects two measurable outcomes, always speed and cost. And the formula is very simple. When the trust goes down in any relationship, or when the trust goes down on a team, in a company, in a culture, with a customer, in a marketplace, in any relationship, in any environment, when the trust goes down, you will always find that the speed goes down with it. Everything will take you longer to do, and the cost goes up. Everything will cost you more to do. Why? Because you got to take all these steps to compensate for that lack of trust, whether it be checking or verifying or validating or dealing with the redundancy, the bureaucracy, the rules, the levels of layers that tend to get put in place in low trust environments. Now this I call a tax, a low trust tax. And it's usually a wasted tax. And it's very real in any situation. Here's the good news. The converse is equally real. And when the trust goes up, the speed goes up. With it, you can do everything faster. The cost comes down, it costs you less. And that is a dividend, a high trust dividend. And really, Melina, it's that simple and yet that powerful and that predictable. And it plays out everywhere. And I would just invite our listeners to just think about it. Think about a high trust relationship that you have with someone that you need to work with and you really trust each other. What's it like to work with that person and to communicate with them. How fast can you move and now think about a low trust relationship. You got to work with someone that there's distrust or really low trust. What's it like to work with that person? How long does it take to get anything done? You know, is it any fun? No. So, you know, this is kind of the whole idea of there's economics to trust, speed and cost and it's common sense, but it's also borne out with all kinds of data and research. That's the idea.

Well, I loved anything. I love when I'm reading something or listening to someone and you have the, I see the like, smack my head emoji, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Simplest thing ever. I remember when I had Nira Al on the show and we're talking about his book Indistractable, and he's got one where it says the opposite of distraction is traction. I was like, that's like you say, I can't believe I didn't see this. He's like, well, it took me five years, you know, so. But it seems so obvious when you see it. And so I know those seemingly simple things take a lot of time and research to boil down to something that just clicks and you get it. And it's. So you have those, of course, moments. But. So I'm sure everyone has an example, like you said, as you were prompting them to be thinking through. But do you have some favorite examples kind of from both sides? I know there are some in the book. So either from there or from something.

That didn't make it into the book.

And you don't get to talk about very often or that's happened since the book came out open to any of those that really kind of showcase how the economics of trust can come in together.

Yeah. Well, let me give you one from the book and then I'll give you another concept that didn't make it into the book. Ah, yay. It's similar, but. And that hopefully will be value added for our listeners. So here's a good illustration of the speed of trust. Well, I'll give you two examples. One is the whole, just the whole idea of, you know, referral business. So let's say you have a client and you've got a great relationship with a client. They love you and you want to. They become a referenceable client for you. And so you now you're trying to get a prospect and you're going after a prospect to become a new client. You can go in and try to persuade that prospect they should work with you and, you know, be influential and try to Tell them all the reasons why. But it's even more powerful if your client, your existing client, goes to your prospect and says, hey, you should work with Melina, you should work with Steven. They're fantastic to work with. The best experience we've had, we do it again in a heartbeat with them. Here's why, here's what we've experienced. There's a transference of trust and your prospect becomes a new client faster and at less cost. That's why word of mouth is so much more the most important part of advertising, because it's people doing it on their own. And there's a transference of trust and it's faster, less cost than just hardcore advertising of trying to persuade people. Without a transference of trust per se, you have to do it again and again and again. Takes you longer, costs you more. So just the basic idea of acquiring a new customer is speed and cost in action around trust and earning and gaining that trust. I give the example in the book of Warren Buffett, who's highly trusted. You know, he's got a reputation over decades of integrity and he's credible, he's trusted, great track record of results. So he's acquiring, this is a few years ago, he's acquiring a company at the time from Walmart called McLean Distribution, Food Services Company. They were big. They were 23 billion in revenue at the time. Grady Rugier was the CEO of McLean. He had a great reputation that he will always do what he says he's going to do. Here's how the deal happened. Buffett wrote about it in his annual report. He said, to make the McLean deal, we had one single meeting of about two hours. We then shook hands. 29 days later, they had their money. We did no due diligence. We knew everything would be exactly the way they said it would be, and it was. So here's this megadeal happening between these publicly traded companies that takes place on a simple handshake that closes in less than a month with no money spent in due diligence. Now, I used to work for a short stint in investment banking, and I can tell you that a deal of this size would typically take you six months, maybe even a year to close. And typically, you'd spend millions of dollars in due diligence with accountants, attorneys, auditors, bankers, etc. Verifying and validating the data. And all of that is considered good practice. And you know what? Generally it is good practice, right? But in this particular case, because there was such high trust, that was there because Buffett himself was so credible and trusted. And because he had, and because Grady Vergier from McLean had a similar reputation of credibility and trust that he'll do what he says he's going to do. With that trust, you can go in, do a deal on a handshake. With that trust, you can close it in less than a month instead of the six to 12 months it might typically take. And with that, you can spend no money in traditional due diligence instead of the millions you typically spend now. That is what I mean by the speed of trust. You can't do a deal like that without trust, or it'd be foolish to try. But you see, with trust, it becomes a possibility. So I like to put it this way. Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust and nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. That's that formula in action. Yeah, and the converse is just. Honestly, I would just ask our listener, take any relationship or any team where there's low trust and try to get anything done, try to collaborate.

Seems like we have many more examples of that not working right. So it's good to highlight the handshakes of the world and be able to show a couple of those to, to see what the opposite could look like.

Exactly, exactly. You know, and, and, and we see it when we lose trust that we take steps to compensate for it. That take us longer costs you more. I mean, I'll go way back after, after 9, 11, our trust in airplane travel went down in this country and around the world, so we took steps to compensate for it. Relative. You know, younger folks aren't even aware of some of these huge changes. But we created tsa, we added all kinds of new security, and it takes a lot longer to go through airports, navigate that today than it did before. Takes longer, costs more before it was much easier, faster, less cost, same thing. After we had those big corporate scandals around the turn of the millennium around Enron, WorldCom, Trust in Public companies went down, Trust in public markets went down. We can't have that. So in the United States, here we passed Sabanes Oxley. It was different law in different countries, different name. And it helped. It propped up the markets. That helped. That was important. But it came at a price. Takes a lot longer, costs a lot more to navigate these compliance rules that we have today. But you can't lose trust. And so the cost of distrust is very real. Speed goes down, cost goes up. And the economics and the dividends of high trust is equally real. Greater speed, lower cost. And you can put an economic value on that. You can monetize it. Ultimately.

I know that in the kind of pre conversation you mentioned about the Prisoner's Dilemma, which I talked about in the episode on game theory. And I think it's important here to talk about just a little bit about because there are the shyster con artists of the world that Ponzi schemes and taking advantage of people who are trusting. And then we have what ends up being availability bias. All we see in the news are these terrible things that happen of people being taken advantage of and we feel it's more likely to happen to us. So we're trying to protect against if we. I tend to be a very trusting person myself. I've been burned a few times of putting too much trust in people because I assume that they kind of are coming at it from the same ethical point where I happen to be. So what sort of advice would you have around the when you're opening yourself up and being trusting to not kind of get taken advantage of?

Yeah, Melina, I think this is critical that you're asking this because I know a lot of our listeners are worried about it. I worry about it just like you. And it is possible to be too trusting and it's possible to get burned and get taken advantage of. So that is very real. And so we have to be aware of that and recognize it. Let me add something else. It's also possible to be too suspicious, too distrusting, and have enormous costs and consequences of that. We tend to be a lot better in our society at measuring the cost of trusting too much and being burned than we are at measuring the cost of not trusting enough and not seeing the possibilities or the potential of the creativity, the innovation that could emerge. But we're a lot better at looking at the cost of one and the cost of the other. And so it's a balancing act. And in the speed of trust, I call this smart trust as opposed to a blind trust. You know, a blind trust is just kind of indiscriminate, where you trust anyone and everyone regardless, or, you know, you're just too trusting. And maybe, you know, you're not assessing the situation, the risk, the credibility of the people, or you're doing it without expectations or accountability and you're just kind of blindly trusting people with the idea that it's good to trust. Well, that could get you burned. That might not be smart in all situations. So smart trust is saying, look, have I talk about the heart and the mind, the propensity to trust, and your analysis, if you start with the Heart, that's your propensity to. To trust. By that I mean a willingness, a bias, a desire to be trusting. Because my argument is that that's a better way to live. It's a better way to lead in most situations, but not all. But by opening yourself up to the possibilities, by starting with that as a starting point, you'll see possibilities you would never see otherwise. So start with the heart, with the propensity to trust, the bias, the inclination, the desire. But then balance that with your head. And on the head, you do the analysis where you're assessing the situation. What am I going to consider extending trust on? Is it that someone, this person to take over this project, or this person to work from home, work from anywhere, you know, what am I extending trust on? That's the first thing we're assessing. The second thing is what's the risk involved? You know, what could go wrong? How likely is that? What's the cost and consequence of that? And third, what's the credibility of the person or the people involved? And so it's not a blind trust. No, it's a smart trust with good judgment, where I'm looking at what I'm going to extend trust on, what the risk is, what the credibility of the people is. And if there's high risk and low credibility of the person or an unknown and it's high risk, it wouldn't be smart to extend too much trust there.

Right.

And if someone's burned me time and time again, they're not trustworthy. It's not smart to trust someone that's not trustworthy.

Right.

So it wouldn't be smart trust. And so I'm just saying kind of do this, you know, judgment. It's judgment, and I'm just trying to give a construct to it. If you start with the heart and balance it with the head, in other words, start with the propensity to trust, the willingness, the desire, and then balance that with the analysis where you assess the situation, risk and credibility. By doing that, you will see possibilities you would never have seen otherwise, and you will find ways that you can extend more trust than maybe you thought. And you will also still not be too trusting and find yourself getting burned time and time again. But by seeing these possibilities, you'll also get great outcomes and results because the vast majority of people respond well to being trusted and they rise to the occasion and they perform better and they develop capabilities and they reciprocate and give the trust back to you. Now, a few will abuse it and take advantage, but I like to say, don't let the 5% who you can't trust define for you the 95% who you can. It's far better to start off with the 95% in mind that I can trust, and then build a team and a culture and crowd out, weed out, starve out the offenders, the violators of people that you can't. It's a better way to lead. A better way to live is a happier way to approach it. And occasionally you might get burned. But if you use some judgment up front, hopefully the getting burned is not something that's going to sink the firm, you know, or a ruined life. If it is, then maybe don't trust so much because it's too risky. But it just opens up all kinds of possibilities. And so my basic premise is smart trust versus blind trust, and that's good judgment, and that's balancing heart with head, propensity to trust with analysis. I was with. I'll give you one illustration of this. I was with Navy Admirals for the United States Navy. It was the all flag officer conference, and almost every admiral in the world from the US Navy was there. And I talked about the speed of trust, and people really resonated with it. And at the same time, there was some questions on these very points you're bringing up. And someone said, well, look, someone got up and asked a question, said, I'm a commander of a nuclear submarine and we have protocols to do anything on our. On our ship, on our boat, and, you know, to do anything to go to the bathroom, anything. There's protocols, rituals, and processes that we follow. Are you saying that we need to trust our people more and get rid of those? And my response was, no, absolutely not.

Please don't.

You're on a nuclear submarine. The risk is so enormous that it's actually more respectful to have these protocols that might come across as not trusting. But the risk is just so great. It's just not a one size fits all. You use good judgment. But my basic premise, Melina, is that most leaders could be far more trusting than they are being, or even that they think that they could be. And our bigger challenge is not that we trust too much and are getting burned. Our bigger challenge is that we're not trusting enough. That's my basic premise. But I'm not asking you to throw everything out. I'm just saying suspended the analysis until you start with the opening up to the possibilities. Just suspended.

Roger Dooley has a great example from his book Friction, where he's talking about how it was costing like 50, 60 thousand dollars a year or something to lock up tools in a shed and have this whole process for employees to have to check them out and do all this stuff. And it's like, you know, to prevent having one $300 item that might get stolen. This is ridiculous and not something worth doing. And if you, when the employees were trusted, it all just worked out a lot better. So definitely, I think a great example for how that can work.

Yes, the economics of trust. And here's the behavioral side of it. Not only do you get better economics, but I think you actually get more of the very thing that you're seeking. I think there's actually more control in a high trust culture than there is in a rules based culture.

Sure.

Because you can't come up with enough rules for people who you can't don't trust. But when there's a high trust culture, the culture itself becomes the reinforcer because no one wants to lose this kind of trust. And so people hold each other accountable. It's peer to peer accountability. And it's colleagues saying, hey, that's not how we do it around here. Because they like the trust that they're given. And the culture itself becomes more accountable to each other without it having to be hierarchical or rules based. And there's actually more control in a high trust culture than in a rules based culture.

Yeah.

And yet most organizations still to this day are designed for the 5% of the people that they can't trust, not for the 95% that they can, or maybe sometimes even 1 in 99 or, you know, depending on different cultures and contexts. But we designed for the few, not for the many. And we penalized the many because of the few, when in fact a better approach could be designed for the many. Build a culture, let the culture weed out, crowd out, starve out the few of the offenders, the violators. Yeah, that type of thing.

Well, the social proof is very valuable for a herding species, so definitely see that. So we have talked about, I know for sure, one of the 13 behaviors that you have within the book when we talked about transparency. With the time we have left, if you were to pick one more that you wanted to elaborate on, whether it's one that's maybe counterintuitive or just super important. Go ahead and talk a little bit about that before we wrap up.

Okay. Yes. So create transparency. You mentioned, and that's an important one, the openness and the vulnerability. And also I think two great practices are declare your intent and assume positive intent as a starting point they really build trust faster. Another one we've been mentioning a lot has been extend trust to be trusting as well as trustworthy. And this is the Last of the 13 behaviors, extend trust because it's different in kind than the other 12. And so we've been talking about that, extending trust. And so I'm going to add one more to this and that is the idea of practicing accountability. And it's interesting because a lot of times people say, hey, are you going to hold me accountable or do you trust me? As if they were two opposites. And you know, it's kind of one or the other. And in fact, when you extend that trust to people, what really makes it smart is not only your assessment up front of the situation, the risk of the credibility, but you're building kind of an agreement with the person around our expectations of what I'm extending trust on and an agreed upon process of accountability so that they effectively can take responsibility and evaluate themselves against the expectations and report back to you on how they're doing. They know better than you do as their supervisor, probably how they're doing because they have real discernment and judgment. They're in the midst of this and when they have a sense of responsibility that they're being trusted. And you built an agreement together around here's the expectations and what we're trying to do here and here's how to be accountable to it. You report back to me on how you're doing against the expectations we built together. That really shows someone, I trust you and I trust you and I'm even putting the accountability process in your hands to report back. You judge yourself, you evaluate yourself against the agreed upon standards we created together and the agreed upon timeline of how to report back and when. And that way it's not me as a leader having to hover over and micromanage and ask how is it going? Instead it's the person coming back and saying, let me report on how I'm doing against my stewardship, against the trust you've given me against these expectations. Let me report on it. And so it actually can help you build trust enormously. Well and fast to up front have a process for accountability. So the behavior is phrased as practice accountability and it goes along with clarify expectations and done well. That can be an extraordinary builder of trust.

Yeah, I'm going to link to the episode on the IKEA effect in the show notes for everyone, which is when people are part of building an experience or you know, that IKEA shelf or whatever it is you value it more. And I think that's a lot of what you're talking about here. When they're part of it, they are wanting to live up to it and they have more value there, for sure.

Yeah. And when there's no involvement, there's no commitment. When there is involvement, there's far greater commitment. And you're just involving people in the trust process, in the accountability process. They'll actually be more accountable when you trust them and extend that to them versus you hovering over and holding them accountable that way. Yes. Hey, here's one last thing. I know where it close on time. I promise you I'd give you something new that's not in the book.

Oh, yes.

And so the formula I give in the book is the economics of trust, speed and cost. That simple idea. We've talked about it. Let me give you the qualitative economics of trust. That is as simple as speed and cost on, on the quantitative side. But this is on the qualitative side, the leadership side of what it does to people and to relationships and to cultures. And the two key dimensions here on the qualitative side are energy and joy. Just like on the quantitative side, it's speed and cost, qualitative is energy and joy. And here's the formula on this one. When a trust goes up in a relationship, when the trust goes up on a team, in a company, in a culture, with partners, in a family, in a community, when the trust goes up, you will find the energy in all its forms goes up with it, as does the joy in all its forms. And by that, what I mean by energy? Well, engagement, collaboration, innovation, commitment, passion, inspiration, energy in all its forms will go up, as will the joy in all its forms. And what do we mean by joy, happiness, satisfaction, fun. It is energizing fun to be part of a high trust team, a high trust culture. The converse is equally true. When that trust goes down in relationships, teams, cultures, in any environment, any relationship, when the trust goes down, the energy in all its forms goes down with it. Less creativity, less innovation, less engagement, less commitment, less passion, less inspiration. As does the joy in all its forms. Less happiness, less satisfaction, less fun. It is no fun to be part of a low trust team, low trust culture. It is exhausting and draining and no fun at all. Whereas high trust teams are engaging, energizing, fun, exhilarating, exciting energy and joy on the qualitative side, to go along with speed and cost on the quantitative side and the neuroscience on this is overwhelming. You know, this and others. And here's Let me just cite one study. Paul Zak, the neuroscientist, in an article he wrote for Harvard Business Review called the Neuroscience of Trust. Just in summary, it shows this, that high trust cultures. In high trust cultures, people are 106% more energized, 76% more engaged than they are in low trust cultures with 72% less stress and 40% less burnout. It's really energy and joy writ large. And in high trust culture, you feel that. And I'll tell you what, all I have to do is with someone is saying, you don't need a study to tell me this. What's it like to work in a low stress relationship? Low trust team, low trust culture. And they will say, it is exhausting, it is no fun.

Right.

And the converse is equally real. So that's the new formula, the added formula.

Yeah, I love it.

The qualitative, the leadership side, energy and joy and trust elevates them, multiplies them, and distress diminishes, dilutes, taxes them.

Well, that's awesome. And I love that you mentioned Paul Zak. Funny. So I cited some of his work in my book, which is coming out in about six weeks or actually less by the time this comes out. So coming out in May and just three weeks before your episode comes out, I have someone else that's on the show talking about the importance of storytelling and how much that is. And she talked about Paul Zack too. So it's like, hey, we gotta. I'll have to reach out to him and see if he wants to come on and talk about some of his own research instead of just having everybody talk about Marty's. Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you so much for that and for sharing. And I think when you were talking about energy, at first I was expecting it was going to be that it's like energy kind of draining. When you're passionate about something, it doesn't feel like work. You know, there's some of that kind of side too. So.

Absolutely. The energy, it's energizing, Right. Fun, creative. It's the flow. The whole idea of flow. Right.

Oh, love it. Yeah.

Flow. That's energy. So I'm using energy and joy as two broad categories that so many things fall under. But I think that those are the right categories to describe it. Energy in all its forms, including flow, passion, commitment, inspiration. So I think inspiration is the new engagement. Yeah, I think it's the next frontier of engagement. Because inspired employees are even far more productive than engaged employees.

Yeah.

Who are far more productive than just Satisfied employees and, you know, who are far more productive than, you know, disengaged employees. So there's just a continuum, but there's another level beyond engagement and that's to be inspired.

Yeah.

And again, nothing is as inspiring as an offering of trust. I like to put it this way. To be trusted is the most inspiring form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in all of us.

Love it, Love it. Well, what a wonderful point to end on, of course, and could talk to you all day, but we'll wrap it up for the sake of, you know, for your time and schedule. We will of course be linking to your book the Spirit Speed of Trust in the show notes. What are some other ways for people that want to learn more about you? Social media that you prefer? Any way to find you?

Sure. Great. Yeah. I'm on Twitter StevenMrCovey. I'm on LinkedIn. Stephen MrCovey and just go to our website speedoftrust.com speedoftrust.com There's a lot of videos you can look at and use and tools and ideas and ways of implementing, applying these ideas of how you as a person, as a leader, as a team, as an organization can build trust on purpose. It's both kind of the why it matters and that's the business case, speed and cost, the leadership case energy and joy and then the how, how you build it through your credibility and through your behavior. We've mentioned some of the behaviors. There's 13 of them. It's practical, it's tangible and their website will help you see it. So Speeduptrust.com awesome.

Well, thank you again so much, Stephen, Mr. Covey, for joining me on the show today. It has been delightful to speak with you.

Thank you, Melina, Wonderful to be with you. Admire you and this work and the brainy business podcast because you're really bringing value to our listeners of being intentional and deliberate for the right reasons. You know it understand that the connections of the behavior behavioral sciences to everything that we're trying to do and you're a real, real value added contributor in this field. So thank you for that.

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about the speed of trust today? For me, I absolutely love when people can take something that feels abstract and make it totally quantifiable. An equation for the economics of trust. Yes, please. And I also love when that equation is simple and something that really resonates with anyone. It's so easy to see that when trust goes down speed also goes down and costs go up. We see that in business all the.

Time and in family.

On the flip, as you have more trust, you can do things faster and for less. It's easy. There's so much value in increasing trust and I also love that Steven talked about how you want and need to give trust freely without getting walked all over. I'm linking to the episode on Vulnerability Loops in the Show Notes, an episode that wasn't yet out when this one first aired because it helps to showcase how you can build trust by being vulnerable and what that can do for relationships. The story Steven shared about how he opened up to the teams and answered every single question they had with full transparency was a moment where he opened up the vulnerability loop. He jumped first and the bridge of trust manifested for him in a way that made the organization better for years to come. His experience wasn't a one off one either. You can have this too. Even those situations where it feels like things are too far gone, you might be surprised if you were to get a little vulnerable again. That episode on Vulnerability Loops is linked for you in the Show Notes. It's my top recommended next episode for you on this one, as well as links to lots of other related past episodes, books like the Speed of Trust articles and a timestamp summary of our conversation. It's all waiting for you within the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 320 and just like that, episode 320 on the Speed of Trust with Stephen Mr. Covey is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Kate Gigax. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.