
The Speed of Trust
The One Thing That Changes Everything
Categories
Business, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Biography, History, Memoir, Leadership, Relationships, Audiobook, Management, Personal Development, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, School, Book Club, War, Sierra Leone
Content Type
Book
Binding
Hardcover
Year
0
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Language
English
ASIN
074329730X
ISBN
074329730X
ISBN13
9780743297301
File Download
PDF | EPUB
The Speed of Trust Plot Summary
Introduction
Trust is the hidden variable that dramatically affects every dimension of our personal and professional lives. When trust is high, everything moves faster and costs less; when trust is low, everything takes longer and costs more. This fundamental equation operates in families, organizations, markets, and societies, creating either a tax that diminishes performance or a dividend that multiplies it. Understanding trust as a function of both character and competence transforms it from an abstract virtue into a practical, measurable asset that can be deliberately built. The traditional view of trust as merely a social virtue fails to recognize its profound economic impact. By approaching trust through the lens of credibility—built on the four cores of integrity, intent, capabilities, and results—we gain a framework for making trust actionable in every relationship. This perspective reveals trust not as something that simply happens over time but as something that can be systematically created through specific behaviors and principles, even in situations where it seems irreparably damaged.
Chapter 1: Trust as a Measurable Economic Driver
Trust fundamentally impacts the speed and cost of every transaction and relationship. This economic reality can be expressed through a simple formula: when trust decreases, speed decreases and costs increase; when trust increases, speed increases and costs decrease. Consider what happened after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when trust in air travel plummeted. Security procedures became more robust, requiring passengers to arrive hours before flights and pay additional security taxes. The result was dramatically lower speed and higher costs throughout the entire system. The economics of trust manifests in countless business situations. When Warren Buffett acquired McLane Distribution (a $23 billion company) from Walmart, the deal was completed with a single two-hour meeting and a handshake. Because both parties operated with high trust, they finalized the acquisition in less than a month without costly due diligence processes that typically take months and cost millions. As Buffett noted, "We knew everything would be exactly as Walmart said it would be." Low trust environments impose what amounts to a tax on every interaction. This tax doesn't appear on financial statements as a "cost of low trust," but it manifests in slower decision-making, bureaucratic processes, redundant layers of hierarchy, and political infighting. Organizations pay this tax through decreased speed and increased costs, often without recognizing its source. Research by Warwick Business School found that outsourcing contracts managed based on trust rather than stringent agreements can lead to trust dividends worth up to 40% of the contract's total value. High trust environments, conversely, enjoy substantial dividends. Watson Wyatt research shows that total shareholder return in high-trust organizations is almost three times higher than in low-trust organizations. In educational settings, Stanford research demonstrates that schools with high trust have more than three times higher chance of improving test scores than low-trust schools. These measurable impacts confirm that trust operates as a hard-edged economic driver rather than merely a soft, social virtue. Trust has become the key leadership competency in today's global knowledge economy. As Thomas Friedman observes in "The World Is Flat," our increasingly interconnected economy revolves around partnerships and relationships—which thrive or die based on trust. The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders represents the critical skill for success in the new global marketplace.
Chapter 2: The Four Cores: Building Credibility from the Inside Out
Credibility forms the foundation of trust and consists of four essential cores—two related to character and two related to competence. Understanding these four cores provides a framework for building trust from the inside out, starting with self-trust. When all four cores are strong, people become believable to themselves and others, establishing the foundation for trust in every relationship and interaction. The first core is integrity, which extends beyond mere honesty to include congruence between values and actions. People with integrity demonstrate wholeness and consistency—they are the same person in every situation. They walk their talk and make decisions based on principles rather than expediency. Integrity also encompasses humility (being more concerned with what is right than being right) and courage (doing the right thing even when difficult). Making and keeping commitments to oneself represents one of the fastest ways to increase integrity, as each fulfilled commitment builds self-confidence and enlarges capacity for greater commitments. Intent, the second core, deals with motives, agendas, and resulting behaviors. Trust grows when motives are straightforward and based on mutual benefit—when people genuinely care not only for themselves but also for others involved. When we suspect hidden agendas or doubt that someone is acting in our best interest, suspicion replaces trust. The behavior that best creates credibility is acting in others' best interest, demonstrating both caring and an agenda of seeking mutual benefit. Choosing abundance—believing there is enough success and opportunity for everyone—enables genuine mutual benefit seeking. Capabilities, the third core, encompasses the talents, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and style that enable performance. In today's rapidly changing economy, capabilities must continuously evolve to remain relevant. Someone might have integrity and good intent but still lack credibility if they don't possess the capabilities needed for their role. The challenge lies in matching capabilities to tasks—creating alignment between natural gifts, passions, and opportunities to contribute. Research from Gallup indicates only 20% of employees feel their strengths are in play every day, meaning 80% feel somewhat miscast in their roles. Results, the fourth core, focuses on track record and performance. Without results, the other three cores are insufficient to build credibility. Results matter in three dimensions: past performance (track record), current performance (how you're doing now), and anticipated performance (how people expect you'll perform in the future). Taking responsibility for results—not just activities—accelerates improvement by focusing on outcomes rather than inputs. Expecting to win—maintaining positive self-expectancy—creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that improves results across all dimensions. Character without competence is ineffective, while competence without character is dangerous. Only when all four cores work together does credibility flourish, creating the foundation for trust in every relationship and interaction.
Chapter 3: Thirteen Behaviors That Build Relationship Trust
Trust can be deliberately created through consistent behaviors that demonstrate both character and competence. These thirteen behaviors represent practical applications of the four cores of credibility, providing actionable ways to build trust in any relationship. When practiced consistently, they become powerful tools for establishing, growing, extending, and restoring trust. The first five behaviors flow primarily from character. Talking straight means communicating honestly in ways that can be easily understood, avoiding manipulation or distortion of facts. This behavior requires both courage to say what needs to be said and consideration to communicate in ways others can hear and accept. Demonstrating respect acknowledges the inherent worth and dignity of every person, showing genuine care and concern even when disagreeing with ideas or actions. Creating transparency involves being open and authentic, operating with no hidden agendas or secret information that affects others. Righting wrongs means more than apologizing; it includes making restitution and demonstrating personal humility when mistakes occur. Showing loyalty involves giving credit to others and speaking about people as if they were present. The next five behaviors stem primarily from competence. Delivering results means establishing a track record of achievement that builds confidence in your ability to perform. Getting better involves continuous improvement and learning, staying relevant in a changing world through formal education, self-directed study, or mentoring relationships. Confronting reality means addressing difficult issues directly rather than ignoring or avoiding them, even when doing so creates discomfort. Clarifying expectations prevents misunderstandings by creating shared vision about what is to be done, when, and how. Practicing accountability involves holding yourself and others responsible for results, taking ownership of consequences rather than blaming circumstances. The final three behaviors require an equal blend of character and competence. Listening first means seeking to understand before trying to be understood, genuinely valuing others' perspectives rather than simply waiting for your turn to speak. Keeping commitments builds hope when you make them and trust when you fulfill them, creating a virtuous cycle of increasing credibility. Extending trust means demonstrating a propensity to trust others appropriately based on the situation, risk, and credibility of the people involved—recognizing that while extending trust carries risk, not extending trust often carries greater risk. These behaviors work together to create balance. For example, talking straight must be balanced with demonstrating respect to avoid being insensitive. Similarly, extending trust must be balanced with clarifying expectations to avoid being naive. When practiced with judgment from the four cores, these behaviors create a powerful foundation for building trust in any relationship.
Chapter 4: Organizational Trust: Aligning Systems for Maximum Performance
Organizational trust emerges when structures, systems, and symbols align with trustworthy behavior. When organizations are misaligned, they create environments where low trust flourishes despite individual efforts to build credibility. This misalignment manifests in behaviors like information hoarding, blame-shifting, political maneuvering, and broken commitments that become normalized within the culture. Leaders must recognize that organizations are perfectly aligned to get the level of trust they currently experience. Low-trust organizations typically feature excessive bureaucracy, redundant systems, and controlling policies that signal distrust to employees. These structures often originate from leadership paradigms that fundamentally don't believe people can be trusted. Ironically, these systems then produce the very behaviors that validate the initial distrust, creating a vicious downward cycle. Companies like Nordstrom with its one-rule employee handbook ("Use good judgment in all situations") and Ritz-Carlton, which empowers every employee to resolve customer concerns up to $2,000 without approval, create powerful symbols that reinforce trust throughout the organization. Low-trust organizations pay significant taxes that rarely appear on financial statements but dramatically impact performance. These include redundancy (unnecessary duplication), bureaucracy (excessive controls), politics (energy-draining internal competition), disengagement (employees who have mentally quit), turnover (loss of talent), churn (customer defection), and fraud (dishonesty and deception). These taxes collectively create enormous drags on organizational speed and dramatically increase costs. Attempting to address these issues through traditional approaches often compounds the problem. For instance, implementing more controls to prevent fraud typically triggers other taxes like bureaucracy and disengagement. High-trust organizations, conversely, enjoy substantial dividends including increased value (both shareholder and customer), accelerated growth, enhanced innovation, improved collaboration, stronger partnering, better execution, and heightened loyalty. Research consistently shows that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations in total return to shareholders by significant margins. Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" (where trust constitutes 60% of the criteria) earned over four times the returns of the broader market over a seven-year period. Creating organizational trust requires aligning systems and structures with the principles that build trust. This means examining how information flows, how decisions are made, how people are compensated, and how accountability is structured to ensure they promote rather than inhibit trust. When alignment exists, trust flourishes, creating environments where people collaborate effectively and produce extraordinary results with greater speed and lower costs.
Chapter 5: Market Trust: Leveraging Reputation for Competitive Advantage
Market Trust represents the confidence stakeholders place in your brand or reputation. It manifests as the feeling that makes customers want to buy your products or services, investors willing to provide capital, and talented individuals eager to work for your organization. This trust directly impacts economic outcomes through faster transactions and lower costs associated with marketing, sales, and customer retention. Brand, at its essence, is trust monetized. Companies invest heavily in building brands that inspire confidence because they understand the direct connection between reputation, customer behavior, and financial performance. When customers trust a brand, they require less convincing, pay premium prices, and become loyal advocates who recommend products to others. This trust accelerates purchase decisions and reduces the cost of customer acquisition and retention. FedEx built its reputation on consistently delivering packages overnight, backing its tagline "When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight" with reliable performance. This track record created credibility that translated into trust and business growth. The impact of Market Trust extends beyond corporate entities to all organizations. Schools with strong reputations attract better students and teachers. Cities with positive images draw tourists, businesses, and residents. Even internal departments within organizations benefit from strong reputations that influence resource allocation and collaboration. Reputation affects every transaction and relationship an organization maintains with external stakeholders. Market Trust is built through consistent delivery on promises. When organizations consistently meet or exceed expectations, they establish credibility that transfers to new offerings. This explains why companies with trusted brands can successfully extend into new categories with less marketing investment. Conversely, when organizations violate trust through product failures, ethical lapses, or poor service, their reputation suffers, creating market resistance that increases costs and slows growth. Johnson & Johnson demonstrated the power of trust-based decision making during the 1982 Tylenol tampering crisis. They immediately recalled 31 million bottles worth over $100 million, offered exchanges for previously purchased products, and introduced tamper-resistant packaging. By accepting responsibility and acting decisively based on their credo of mutual benefit, they transformed potential disaster into increased credibility and trust. In today's interconnected world, reputation travels at unprecedented speed. Social media, review sites, and instant global communication mean that trust violations become widely known almost immediately. Organizations can no longer compartmentalize their behavior, treating employees one way while presenting a different face to customers. Internal culture inevitably influences external reputation as employees share their experiences and interact with customers. Building Market Trust requires consistently demonstrating the four cores of credibility across all stakeholder interactions. Organizations must ensure integrity by aligning actions with stated values, demonstrate positive intent through policies that benefit customers, maintain relevant capabilities through innovation and quality, and deliver consistent results that meet or exceed expectations. When these elements align, Market Trust flourishes, creating significant competitive advantage.
Chapter 6: Smart Trust: Finding the Balance Between Risk and Opportunity
Smart Trust represents the sweet spot between blind trust (naïve gullibility) and distrust (suspicious cynicism). It combines a propensity to trust with appropriate analysis of risk. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the greatest risk often lies not in trusting too much but in trusting too little. Leaders who operate from a position of suspicion create environments of micromanagement and control that drive away talent, stifle innovation, and increase costs. Extending Smart Trust requires evaluating three variables: the opportunity (situation or task), the risk involved (potential outcomes and their likelihood), and the credibility of the people involved (their character and competence). This assessment allows you to extend trust appropriately—abundantly to those who have earned it and conditionally to those who are earning it. Even when extending trust abundantly, accountability remains essential. Many trusted managers never become leaders because they don't know how to extend Smart Trust. They may delegate tasks but fail to entrust genuine ownership and accountability. True leadership involves inspiring trust by demonstrating personal credibility, consistently behaving in trust-building ways, and wisely extending trust to others. The ability to extend trust appropriately creates environments where people feel empowered to contribute their best efforts without constant supervision. This approach generates what Warren Bennis calls "leadership as liberation"—freeing people to do what they want to do rather than compelling them to do what you want them to do. When people feel trusted, they typically rise to the occasion, often exceeding expectations. This creates a virtuous cycle where trust generates better performance, which justifies extending more trust. Trust can be both established and restored, often faster than we imagine. Even in situations where trust has been severely damaged, taking responsibility, listening genuinely, and demonstrating changed behavior can rebuild relationships. The experience of former U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson illustrates this possibility—after years of bitter political rivalry that destroyed their friendship, they reconciled through simple outreach and went on to enjoy fourteen years of rich correspondence before both died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. The restoration process begins with increasing personal credibility and behaving in ways that inspire trust. This requires understanding how trust was lost, taking responsibility without excuses, and consistently demonstrating changed behavior over time. When others have broken your trust, three guidelines prove helpful: don't be too quick to judge (avoid assuming a failure of competence is a failure of character), be quick to forgive (release negative emotions without necessarily extending immediate trust), and prioritize restoring trust in important relationships. Trust truly changes everything. Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust, as fulfilling as relationships of trust, as inspiring as offerings of trust, as profitable as the economics of trust, or as influential as a reputation of trust. In today's interconnected global society, the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust has become the key leadership competency of our time.
Summary
Trust fundamentally transforms how we operate in every dimension of life. By understanding trust as a function of both character and competence, we gain a practical framework for building credibility that accelerates results and reduces friction in all our interactions. The four cores—integrity, intent, capabilities, and results—provide a comprehensive foundation that, when coupled with consistent trust-building behaviors, creates a powerful engine for positive change in relationships, organizations, and markets. The economics of trust reveals why this seemingly soft skill delivers such hard results. When trust is low, everything costs more and takes longer as organizations pay taxes of redundancy, bureaucracy, politics, disengagement, turnover, churn, and fraud. When trust is high, organizations enjoy dividends of increased value, accelerated growth, enhanced innovation, improved collaboration, stronger partnering, better execution, and heightened loyalty. These economic realities make trust the key leadership competency for success in today's complex global environment where nothing accelerates success like the conscious practice of building and maintaining trust through credibility.
Best Quote
“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour.” ― Stephen M.R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything
Review Summary
Strengths: The book provides practical advice through the concept of five waves of trust and 13 behaviors that establish trust. It includes a detailed examination of trust's underlying principles and applies the concept of emotional bank accounts. Weaknesses: The book is described as needlessly long, with sections that are general and boring. The reviewer felt the content could have been condensed and was not convinced of the need to be sold on the value of trust. Overall Sentiment: Mixed. While the reviewer acknowledges the book's practical advice and recommends it, they express dissatisfaction with its length and some of its content. Key Takeaway: The book offers valuable insights into trust through structured principles and behaviors, but its length and some repetitive content may detract from its effectiveness.
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The Speed of Trust
By Stephen M.R. Covey