Most of us have either read or at least heard of Stephen Covey’s ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. Now the author of The Speed of Trust is not the same person, but his son. Who has the same name and apparently for at least 3 generations they have the same name carried forward.
The Speed of Trust by Stephen M R Covey
Like most self-help books, this book has potentially the content for a few pages that have been blown up to make a full-fledged book. There are a few key takeaways from this book. This obviously emphasizes the need to build trusting relationships at all levels of your existence i.e. self, personal relationships, organizations, marketplace, and society in general. It talks extensively about the acts and behaviors that build or break trust between people and entities.
The cost attached to the Trust
The point that the book The Speed of Trust very clearly brings out objectively in the very beginning of the book itself is that fact that there is a cost attached to trust. Whenever you operate in a high-trust environment, things happen fast and at a much lower cost. Vis-à-vis when you operate in a low trust environment, where you have to incur additional costs to ensure trust which adds processes that eventually slow you down at every stage.
Four Components of Trust
I also found interesting the four elements of trust, as the most common connotation of trust is dependability or the faith that I have in the person or entity when I say I trust you. He breaks down the trust into four components. And all or most of which are important when we say we trust someone. These elements are integrity, intent, competence, and results. And to be totally trustworthy you have to display or demonstrate all the four elements. It is possible that you can have less than all of them. But that breaks the trust to the same level. He breaks it up interestingly when he says that I can have faith in your character but maybe not in your capability or vice versa.
13 Behaviours to Help Be Trust Worthy
He talks about 13 behaviors that can help be worthy of trust. And most of these are the elementary things that we were probably taught in primary school. But possibly we may have forgotten the lessons. It’s a quick read, you can probably finish it in a couple of sittings. Most examples are repeated throughout the book and a lot of examples are from the Covey family themselves.
Recommendation: Read if you think you have a problem with either you not trusting people or people not trusting you. Otherwise…. read if you have a lot of time on hand.
Thanks, Ramesh for giving me this book.
Buy this book – The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen M R Covey at Amazon India.
Read more:
- Real Magic: Creating Miracles in Everyday Life by Dr. Wayne Dyer
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- Games People Play The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne
Good strategy to have the same name as father