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THE VOICE AND SPEED OF TRUST

George Macdonald put it wisely, It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.

When we seek to expand our influence and Inspire Others to Find Their Voice (remember inspire means to breathe life into another), we move into the world of relationships. Building strong relationships not only requires a character foundation of inner security, abundance and personal moral authority, as embodied in the first part of this book, but it also involves stretching ourselves in developing vital new interpersonal SKILLS that will make us equal to the challenges we will face with others. The next two chapters on modeling are focused on developing these skills.

Almost all the work of the world is done through relationships with people and in organizations. But what is communication like when there is no trust? It’s impossible. It’s like walking through a minefield. What if your communication is clear and precise, yet there is no trust? You’ll always be looking for hidden meanings and the hidden agenda. A lack of trust is the very definition of a bad relationship. In the words of my son, Stephen, “Low trust is the great hidden tax.” In fact, this hidden tax is greater than all taxes and interest combined—hidden and unhidden!

THE SPEED OF TRUST

Now, what is communication like when there is high trust? It’s easy, it’s effortless, it’s instantaneous. What about when there’s high trust and you make mistakes? They hardly matter. People know you. “Don’t worry about it, I understand.” “Forget it. I know what you mean. I know you.” No technology ever devised can do that. Perhaps, in a sense, this is why the heart is more important than the brain. Someone may be brain dead, but if their heart is still pumping, they live on; when your heart is dead, you’re dead.

As my son, Stephen, says, “There is nothing as fast as the speed of trust.” It’s faster than anything you can think about. It’s faster than the internet, for when trust is present, mistakes are forgiven and forgotten. Trust is the glue of life. It is the glue that holds organizations, cultures and relationships together. Ironically it comes from the speed of going slow. With people, fast is slow and slow is fast.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I was visiting with a friend who had recently completed a major business project. I was well acquainted with his work and congratulated him on the tremendous positive impact it was having on the lives of thousands. I asked him what he had learned. He said, “You know, Stephen, I’m sure I will look back on this two-year project as one of the most important contributions of my life.” Then, pausing, he slightly smiled, and with deep feeling, continued, “But my real learning was that without a unified, close relationship with my wife, it means nothing.” “Really,” I replied. Sensing my interest, he then opened up and shared the following experience:

When I was first asked to take leadership of this project, I was thrilled with the opportunity. My wife and children were supportive, so I threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I felt a great weight of responsibility and was driven and energized by a sense of purpose. In the second year of the project, I worked literally day and night. The importance of the work consumed me. I felt I was doing well in staying involved in the kids’ lives, including ball games and dance recitals. I usually had dinner each evening with the family. I thought I was managing pretty well. The last six months were the most intense, and it was during this time that I noticed how often my wife was becoming frustrated with me—usually over the smallest things (at least they seemed so to me). I became increasingly irritated at her lack of understanding and support of the work I was doing—especially at such a critical time. Communication became more strained—even over minor issues. When the project was finally completed, she didn’t even want to go to the celebration dinner. She went, but obviously didn’t enjoy herself. I knew we had to talk, really talk. So we did. And the floodgates opened.

She started to share what it was like to be “alone” all this time. Even when I was home, she felt I was somewhere else. Because our tradition of having weekly dates became much less frequent and because I usually stayed up long after she retired each night, we didn’t talk and share like we used to, and she felt more and more isolated, unappreciated, and disconnected. I wasn’t communicating much of anything. My nearly single-minded focus on my work and other commitments became a constant reminder of where my thoughts and feelings were not focused. She reminded me that I had even forgotten her birthday until the day was half over. And it wasn’t the forgetting that was so bad, as it was a symbol of what the whole year had seemed like.

When I asked her why she hadn’t opened up and shared her concerns earlier, she said she didn’t want to upset me and distract me from the project. I looked in her eyes and saw deep pain and loneliness. I felt horrible. I was amazed and embarrassed that I had been so clueless. Her openness about her loneliness helped me realize how empty I had been for so long. We had both become less effective—both personally and together. I apologized and reassured her that there was no person or thing on earth more important to me than her. But my words didn’t seem to get through. I realized that too many other things had communicated something different for too long. My apology and commitment to reprioritize my life helped, but it didn’t make things all better overnight. It took days and weeks and months of consistent effort—talking, sharing, being there, making and keeping promises, putting aside work at the end of the day for the family, and apologizing and regrouping when I got a little off track—before the full feeling of trust and emotional connection was restored and exceeded what it had been before.

Since I visited with my friend, he has completed two more multiyear projects just as demanding and significant as the first. Yet his relationship with his wife has grown stronger through each one. His painful first experience and his increased understanding of and commitment to his wife has brought lasting change. Looking back on the contrast in his experiences, he recently shared these additional insights with me: My real learning was that you could be deeply committed to a marriage, love your spouse, live in fidelity and loyalty toward one another, be committed to raising your children, and still have your relationship and trust deteriorate. You don’t have to speak harsh, unkind words or be disrespectful to hurt someone. With one who is very close to you, all it takes is neglecting the heart, mind and spirit. Relationships and trust do not remain constant. They are maintained and deepened only as you actively nurture and build them with regular acts of kindness, consideration, appreciation and service. I learned that both the quality of our marriage and my own happiness had very little to do with what she was doing for me, and everything to do with what I was trying to do every day to foster her happiness, share her burdens, and partner with her in the things we care most about. I’ve learned that unity in my relationship with my wife is one of the greatest, enabling sources of power of my life—not only in our most significant work in the family and community together, but in every area of my life, including professionally. It creates a well of strength, peace, joy, belonging and energy that fuels my best work, creativity and drive to contribute.

Finally, I’m learning that strong relationships require real effort and sacrifice. They require putting someone else’s well-being, growth and happiness before your own. And oh, how it’s worth it! For such effort is the door to our own happiness. What would we do without the pull of such relationships that help us get outside ourselves and become equal to our potential?

MORAL AUTHORITY AND THE SPEED OF TRUST

My friend’s experience is a tremendous illustration of the reality that relationships are governed by natural laws. Enduring trust in a relationship cannot be faked, and it is rarely produced by a dramatic, onetime effort. It is the fruit of regular actions inspired by the conscience and heart. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I introduced a metaphor for trust called the Emotional Bank Account. It is like a financial bank account into which you make deposits and take out withdrawals—only in this case, you make emotional deposits and withdrawals in your relationships that either build or destroy them. Like any metaphor, if you push it far enough, it has its limitations. But generally it is a powerful and simple way of communicating the quality of a relationship.

The diagram below lists ten key deposits and withdrawals we can make with others that, in my experience, have a profound impact on the level of trust in our relationships. It also lists the sacrifices required and principles embodied in each deposit.

It’s important to recognize that the reason the ten deposits build trust is that they embody principles central to human relationships. When you study each of those ten deposits, what would you say are the common elements? I suggest that one common denominator of the deposits is initiative, which is made up of willpower and determination. You’ll notice that every one of them lies within your own power to do. Every one of them lies within your own ability to influence. Because they are based on principles, they produce moral authority or trust. You can see how there is no way you can make those deposits, exercise that courage, that initiative, that determination, without the ability to do the “twenty emotional personal push-ups” at the personal level.

What is the second common characteristic of the deposits? I suggest it’s the absence of selfishness and the presence of humility. It’s the willingness to subordinate oneself to another person, to a principle, or to a higher cause. It’s realizing that life is not just about me and mine; using the words of the philosopher Martin Buber, it’s about “I and Thou”—feeling profound reverence for the worth and potential of every person.

Moral authority, trust and bonding can evaporate over time in the absence of making continual deposits, particularly with people we work and live around all of the time. This is so because their expectations are so much higher. With people we haven’t seen for years, we can often pick up where we left off. The trust and bonding and love are restored immediately because there are simply no expectations of continual depositing.

Moral Authority: The principled exercise of free choice, which almost always involves some form of sacrifice.

A third common characteristic is that, like most worthwhile things in life, they require a sacrifice. (Remember, a good definition of sacrifice is giving up something—even something good—for something better.) If you are already familiar with the Emotional Bank Account, I encourage you to see it here with new eyes and open yourself to new, added insights that will enable you to find your voice and inspire others to find theirs. You’ll notice that each deposit represents a choice to use your birth-gifts in an effort to sacrifice an ineffective personal habit and replace it with an action that builds moral authority in relationships with others.

No system can long command the loyalties of men and women which does not expect of them certain measures of discipline, and particularly self-discipline. The cost in comfort may be great. The sacrifice may be real. But this very demanding reality is the substance of which comes character and strength and nobility. Permissiveness never produced greatness. Integrity, loyalty, and strength are virtues whose sinews are developed through the struggles that go on within as we practice self-discipline under the demands of divinely spoken truth.1 GORDON B. HINCKLEY

SEEKING FIRST TO UNDERSTAND

Why would Seek First to Understand be the first deposit? One simple reason. You do not know what a deposit is to another person until you understand them from their frame of reference. What may be a high-level deposit to you may be a low-level deposit to another, or even a withdrawal. What may be an important promise to you may be unimportant to another. How you express your honesty, openness, kindness and courtesy may be perceived completely differently when seen by others through their unique cultural or personal filters. While the underlying principles of each deposit hold true in every situation, it requires an understanding of others within their frame of reference to know how to specifically implement the practice.

After learning of the idea of making deposits into the Emotional Bank Account, one woman decided she was going to try it out. This is what she shared with me about her experience:

I decided I would do something special for my husband to improve our relationship. I figured that having the kids in clean clothes when he got home and getting the laundry done quicker would really make him happier.

After about two weeks of being Miss Superwasherwoman with no feedback from him—I mean nothing, I don’t even think he had a clue—I started getting a little ticked. “This stuff ain’t worth nothin’,” I thought. Then, suddenly, one night when he’d gone thoughtlessly to sleep between clean sheets, I saw the light-bulb click on above my head.

“Oh my gosh. He doesn’t give a hoot about Zac’s clean face or his clean jeans. That’s what makes me happy. He’d rather have me scratch his back or organize a date for Friday night.” I could have kicked myself. Here I was killing myself over laundry and making all these deposits that didn’t mean a thing to him.

I learned a simple truth in a very laborious way: A deposit must mean something to the other person.

I’ve had countless experiences of my own with the enabling power of seeking to understand another. I will never forget being invited by a very prestigious, high-level executive to give my analysis and recommendations regarding the selection of a new university president. It was one of the most profound communication experiences I’ve ever had. He left his office to come into the outer office, where I was awaiting my appointment. After greeting me, he graciously ushered me into his office and had me sit right next to him, in front of his desk, where we could talk eye-to-eye without any physical structure between us. He basically said, “Stephen, thank you so much for coming in. I’m anxious to understand whatever you want me to understand.” I had prepared for this visit for a considerable period of time and had developed an outline of my presentation. I gave him a copy of the outline and covered it slowly, point by point. Except for a few clarifying questions, he never interrupted. He listened so intently and completely that when my thirty-minute presentation was over, I felt completely understood. He made absolutely no comment—neither agreeing, disagreeing, or committing. But at the end he simply stood up, looked me in the eye, and, as he shook my hand, expressed how much he appreciated and admired me. That was it. I was profoundly moved by his openness, humility, graciousness and deep listening, and overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and loyalty. Because I felt so completely understood and knew that my input had been genuinely listened to and respected, I was fully prepared to support whatever decision was made.

Even though I had been with this gentleman many times before, that face-to-face, one-on-one genuine communication experience conferred upon him such moral authority in my eyes that I never needed another visit or experience with him to renew it or to restore it. It is amazing to me even at this writing to feel the impact of such a precious conversation.

MAKING AND KEEPING PROMISES

Nothing destroys trust faster than making and breaking a promise. Conversely, nothing builds and strengthens trust more than keeping a promise you make.

It’s easy to make a promise. It usually satisfies another quickly—particularly when they’re stressed or anxious about something they need you to fix. When they’re happy with the promise, they like you. And we like to be liked.

That which we desire most earnestly we believe most easily. All kinds of people are suckered into deals and agreements because they want something so badly they’ll believe most any explanation, story or promise of getting it. They turn a blind eye to negative information and go on in their believing.

But promise keeping is hard. It usually involves a painful sacrificial process—especially when the pleasant promise-making mood passes or when hard realities descend or circumstances change.

I’ve trained myself to never (“never say never”) use the word promise unless I’m totally prepared to pay whatever the price is to keep it, especially with my children. They’ve often begged me to say “promise.” Then they would feel at peace knowing I would come through—almost as if they had whatever they wanted now. But many times I was sorely tempted to say “I promise” just to quickly satisfy them and keep the peace at the moment. “I’ll try” or “it’s my goal” or “I hope to” wouldn’t satisfy. Only “I promise.” Occasionally when circumstances outside my control changed, I would ask my children to understand and relieve me of the promise. In most cases they understood and relieved me. But my younger children usually didn’t understand. Even though they said they did and freed me of the promise intellectually, they really didn’t emotionally. So I kept the promise unless it was very unwise to do so. In such cases I would have to temporarily live with the diminished trust and try to rebuild it slowly in other ways.

HONESTY AND INTEGRITY

Basketball coach legend Rick Pitino captured the principle of honesty simply and profoundly: “Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.”2

I remember working once with a building contractor who was unbelievably upfront and open about the challenges he was facing, even the mistakes he had made on our project. He took responsibility for the mistakes. He gave such consistent, complete financial accounting, along with all the options we could take at various stages of construction, that I absolutely and instinctively trusted the man and relied on his word from then on. I knew that if anything, he would put our interests ahead of his own. His willingness to put his integrity and our relationship above his pride and natural desire to both hide his mistakes and avoid embarrassment formed an unusual bond of trust between us. That trust earned him a great deal of business. I’ve also had the opposite experience several times with the same kinds of construction challenges.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.3

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Another time when I was working at a university, I had the privilege of hosting a prominent psychologist who was the former president of a national psychological association. This man was considered the father of “integrity therapy,” a method of psychological treatment based on the idea that peace of mind, true happiness and balance are a function of living a life of integrity to conscience. He believed that conscience tapped into the universal sense of right and wrong common to all enduring cultures, religions and societies throughout time.

One afternoon between lectures, I drove him into the mountains to see the breathtaking views. I took the opportunity to ask him how he’d come to believe in integrity therapy.

He said, “It was very personal. I was a manic-depressive, and most of my whole life had been a series of highs and lows. Over time, as I counseled people, I would begin to feel stressed and very vulnerable. I would start slipping into depression—almost to the point where I wanted to take my life. I had enough awareness of what was happening, because of my professional education and work, to know that I was dangerous. At this point, I would institutionalize myself to preclude taking my life. After a month or two, I would come out and go back into my work. Then, after a year or so, I would slip back into it, hospitalize myself, and gradually come back to go on with my research and writing.” He continued, “At one point when I was president of the association, I became so ill, so depressed, that I was unable to go to the meetings and take up the gavel of my office. At that point, I asked myself, ‘Is it possible I’m working out of the wrong framework in my life and profession?’ I knew deep inside that I had been living a lie for many years. There was a dark part of my life that I had not owned up to.” As we were driving along and he began to share these things, I became very sobered and humbled. I was also a little scared of what he might say. He continued, “I decided to make a major break. I gave up my mistress. I came clean with my wife. And for the first time in many years, I had peace—a kind of peace that was different from what I had experienced when I came out of my depressions and went back into productive work. It was an inner peace of mind, a kind of self-honesty, a kind of self-unity, an integrity.

“That’s when I began to explore the theory that perhaps many of the problems I had were the result of the natural conscience being ignored, denied, violated, creating a loss of personal integrity. So I began to work with this idea. I researched it. I involved other clinicians, who began working from this paradigm with their patients. I became convinced from the data that this was the case. And that’s what got me into integrity therapy.” This man’s openness and the depth of his conviction powerfully impressed me, as it did hundreds of students the following day in a university forum where, to my surprise, he related the same story. Modeling and openness were central to his therapeutic approach. I am also impressed with how clear it became to him that personal integrity is central not only to all our relationships but also to our psychological health and our power to be effective in our chosen life pursuits.

KINDNESSES AND COURTESIES

With people, little things are the big things. I once had a student come to me at the end of the semester and essentially say after praising the class, “Dr. Covey, you are an expert in human relations, but you don’t even know my name.” He was right. I was chagrined, embarrassed and properly chastened. I have to deal with my tendency to submerge myself in intellectual conceptualization, task orientation and efficiency all the time. You see, until relationships are strong and purposes are shared, that efficiency is ineffective, particularly with insecure, “high-maintenance” people. Not so with things. Things have no feelings. People do, even so-called big people, VIPs. Small courtesies and kindnesses given consistently yield huge dividends. This is the realm of EQ.

On the other hand, people see through superficial, “kind” techniques and know when they are being manipulated. Genuine kindness, courtesy and respect come from a deep character reservoir of SQ and even obviate the necessity for a lot of social niceties and ceremonial-type courtesies.

Often when I speak to children at home or school, I tell them that if they will learn and use four expressions (totaling only ten words) sincerely and consistently, they can get what they want in most cases.

One word—“please.”

Two words—“thank you.”

Three words—“I love you.”

Four words—“How may I help?”

Adults are big children.

THINKING WIN-WIN OR NO DEAL

Win-lose thinking is the underlying assumption of almost all negotiations and problem solving. It comes from society’s scarcity mind-set, which says the more the other guy wins or gets, the less there is for me. The goal is to get what you want—which usually means figuring out how to manipulate or gain the advantage over the other guy to get him to concede as much as possible. Many try to work out differences with others, even family members, in the same way. Both parties battle it out until one concedes or they settle on a compromise.

I remember making a presentation in which I taught the idea that the key to breaking out of this win-lose mind-set is to become emotionally and mentally settled on championing the other party’s “win” as much as your own. It requires courage, abundant thinking, and great creativity to not settle on anything that is a compromise for either party. I taught that a further key was to begin with a No Deal option. In fact, until No Deal is a viable option in your own mind, that is, until you are totally prepared to go for No Deal, to walk away, to agree to disagree agreeably unless both parties actually feel it is a win for them, you’ll find yourself manipulating and often pressuring or intimidating others to go along with your win. But when No Deal is truly a viable option, you can honestly say to the other, “Unless this is a true win for you and you deeply and sincerely feel it, and unless it’s a true win for me and I deeply and sincerely feel it, let’s agree right now to go for No Deal.” That process is so liberating, so freeing, and it requires such a combination of humility and kindness with strength and courage that once it is truly hammered out, both parties are transformed; such intense bonding takes place that afterwards they will always be loyal to each other in each other’s absence.

After the presentation, a man who had been sitting on the front row came up to me to thank me for this very timely idea. He represented Disney-Epcot and said he intended to practice it the very next day in a situation regarding the showcasing of a particular country at the Epcot Center. He explained that the people who were willing to supply much of the financing wanted a country exhibit that Disney felt would not hold enough general interest. They were feeling pressure to compromise in order to get the funding and development moving on time. But now he saw a new option.

He later reported to me that he respectfully said to the funding source, “We really want to go for a win-win agreement and relationship with you. We certainly need the financing you’re offering. But given our fundamental differences, we’ve concluded that if our agreement and joint project isn’t genuinely going to be a big win for both of us, it would be better to go for a ‘no deal.’ ” As soon as the funding source sensed his sincerity, openness and honesty of expression, they themselves stopped manipulating and pressuring. They backed up, regrouped, and then began genuine communication until a truly synergistic win-win arrangement was made.

You’ll notice that the power of this Think Win-Win or No Deal deposit lies in the initial willingness to sacrifice—to suspend your own interests long enough to understand what the other person wants most, and why, so that you can then go to work together on a new, creative solution that encompasses both of your interests.

CLARIFYING EXPECTATIONS

Clarifying expectations is really a combination of all the other deposits mentioned because of the amount of mutual understanding and respect required to drive such communication, particularly when it is about clarifying expectations about roles and goals. If you study the underlying roots of almost all communication breakdowns, or broken, sick cultures, you’ll find they come from either ambiguous or broken expectations around roles and goals: in other words, who is to do what role and what are the high-priority goals of those roles.

Once I remember doing some team building with the top executives of a large restaurant association. It became so obvious that there were conflicting priorities and goals that could no longer be ignored or tolerated without terrible consequences for the entire organization. I simply took two flipcharts and at the top of each put, “How you see MY roles and goals,” and “How you see YOUR roles and goals.” No judgments, no agreements or disagreements were expressed until both charts were filled out to the satisfaction of those filling them out. Just as soon as everyone could see with their own eyes that these seemingly irreconcilable differences were totally a function of differing expectations about roles and goals, humility and respect were restored. They were able to begin sincere communication in clarifying expectations.

BEING LOYAL TO THOSE NOT PRESENT

Being loyal to those not present is one of the most difficult of all the deposits. It is one of the highest tests of both character and the depth of bonding that has taken place in a relationship. This is particularly the case when everyone seems to be joining in on bad-mouthing and piling on someone who is not present. You can, in an unself-righteous way, just speak up and say, “I see it differently,” or “My experience is different,” or “You may have a point; let’s go talk to him or her about it.” By doing so, you instantly communicate that integrity is loyalty—not just to those absent but also to those who are present. Whether they acknowledge it or not, all the people present will inwardly admire and respect you. They will know that their name is precious with you when they’re not there. On the other hand, when loyalty is a higher value than integrity in that you give in, go along, and join in the bad-mouthing, so, too, will everyone present know that under pressure and stress, you would do the same regarding them.

I remember heading up a meeting in a large organization where the formal leaders were discussing various personnel issues. They seemed to be in complete agreement regarding the weaknesses of a particular individual. They even began to tell jokes and funny stories about this individual in ways they would never do to the person’s face. Later the same day one of the executives came to me and said that for the first time he could now trust my expressions of appreciation and affection for him. “Why so?” I asked. He replied, “Because when we were cutting that person in our earlier meeting, you went against the current and showed genuine concern, care and regard for them.” I asked why that had impacted him. He said, “Because I have similar weaknesses, only they’re worse. No one knows about them, not even you. So every time you’ve expressed your appreciation and regard for me, inwardly I’ve said, ‘But you don’t understand.’ Today I feel you would. I feel you would be true and loyal to me even in my absence and that I can trust you and believe your kind expressions.” You see the key to the many is often the one; it is how you regard and talk about the one in that one’s absence or presence that communicates to the many how you would regard and talk about them in their presence or absence.