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FranklinCovey Blog | March, 2009
From the Desk of Stephen R. Covey: The High Cost of Low Trust
Most organizations have no clue of the enormous cost of low trust, and because most executives have no means of measuring its bottom-line impact, they have little motivation to seriously address it. To compound the problem, many employees feel like helpless victims of the problems in their organizations and see no clear way to influence their leaders. Learn specific, powerful things you can do that will profoundly impact the level of trust in your relationships, your team, your family, and your organization.
Q: Is trust really necessary in business today? Can you do business without it?
A: You absolutely cannot do business without trust. It is not only important, it is absolutely vital. For instance, even transacting with somebody when you are buying gasoline, you trust that you are getting quality fuel; you trust that the prices are within the market; and you trust that your money will be accepted by that person. There are just so many elements to the simplest transaction that require trust. But we are like fish that discover water last and are sometimes unaware of those implicit elements. Trust is the lifeblood of all relationships, of all transactions, and is so foundational and fundamental to everything in life.
Q: What are evidences of a low-trust environment?
A: Low-trust environments are filled with hidden agendas, a lot of political games, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, and people bad-mouthing each other behind their backs while sweet-talking them to their faces. With low trust, you get a lot of rules and regulations that take the place of human judgment and creativity; you also see profound disempowerment. People will not be on the same page about what’s important. Ultimately, the culture will become driven by urgency rather than importance because everyone is in it for themselves and for their own agenda.
Q: What is low trust costing us?
A: Low trust has a huge tax associated with it. It creates a culture of toxicity, just like you have toxins in your body. Imagine what it costs a body to be full of poison. And that is what a low-trust culture is-it is full of poison. You see people embracing and promulgating what I call the six metastasizing emotional cancers. Metastasize means they send their cancer cells through the body, mind, heart, and spirit of a person. They can also spread through relationships.
The six metastasizing cancers are criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, contending, and cynicism. By competing, I don’t mean the healthy competition you find in the marketplace or in the basketball arena, but the kind of competition where you are competing for your own internal sense of worth.These emotional cancers are the forces that literally undermine and eventually destroy relationships. However, trust makes all things possible.
See other blogs by Stephen R. Covey at www.stephencovey.com
Executive Mama
I’ve worked since I was 15 years old. Some years I worked because I wanted the challenge, the recognition, the opportunity to contribute-and some years I worked because I wanted to eat! I’ve waited tables, stocked grocery shelves, sold Prom dresses, taught speech communication at a Big 10 university, re-designed processes for a manufacturer, created a gazillion communication and change management plans . . .for IT systems, mergers, reorganizations. I’m married, with two daughters. I read, I lead a Girl Scout Troop, I workout (not enough to make up for the Girl Scout cookies), and I’m a Vice President at FranklinCovey.
That’s what this blog category is about: Being an Executive Mama. Choosing to be an executive mama.
Women have more choices as to how to mix career and family than any previous generation. And yet, some don’t aspire to leadership roles, particularly executive roles, because of the perception that the only acceptable executive style is paternalistic command and control. Others want executive status and a rich family life, possibly including children, but don’t see a path to doing both AND living to tell about it. This blog will encourage realistic optimists to make conscious choices about their leadership style, strive for executive influence in influential organizations including business and government, and to provide a map as to the decisions to be made in order to earn the right to be called both “executive” and “mama” in the same lifetime.
Next week: No whining.
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Vice President of Sales and Delivery Effectiveness at FranklinCovey
Sneak Peak of Conversation on Trust
Hi! I’m Annie Oswald and I’m the Director of Alternate Distribution Channels at FranklinCovey Co. Alternate Distribution Channels is just a fancy name for getting FranklinCovey audio, book, and video products into the hands of people all over the world.
Today I’m excited to announce a great new audio from FranklinCovey that we are creating. This is like an Advance Reader’s review but for audio. The audio is Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M. R. Covey Present A Conversation.
This audio program features two generations, a unique combination of father and son bestselling authors, discussing and sharing some humorous and always profound professional and personal experiences.
I think that as a listener you will be transported. You may even feel like a fly on the wall listening in to this personal meeting between two great business leaders, authors, speakers, and intellectual minds, I know I did. I listened as they made the case that there is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world.
From their insights I learned more about the importance of trust in creating building and maintaining effective relationships in all aspects of life: our homes, our families, each other, our companies and ourselves. › Continue reading
The Upside to the Downturn
“It’s 1929 all over again. We’re headed for disaster. It’s the end of the world as we know it. . . . ”
The headlines are a bit depressing, aren’t they?
At FranklinCovey we think the opposite. The headlines are fascinating.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey says, “We’ve never had such opportunity as we do today.” In Maurna Desmond’s interview with Dr. Covey (Fortune, Dec. 19), he observes that this is the chance, the opening, the break people have been looking for.
When companies close their doors, competitors can jump in and go crazy. When you’re let go, you’re free to change everything in your life. › Continue reading
Share With Us How The 7 Habits Has Changed Your Life
In 1989 I noticed a new book in a New Jersey airport bookstore. It was called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was a “road warrior,” a traveling consultant from Utah, and was mildly interested to find a book written by a fellow Utah native, Stephen R. Covey. But I didn’t buy it.
That was exactly 20 years ago.
Since then Dr. Covey’s book has been called “the most influential business book of the century” (by the Wall Street Journal). It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 5 years. A “must-read” now translated into 38 languages, The 7 Habits is now in 20 million copies (and is arguably the most pirated business book in the world). Google “7 Habits” and you’ll get 14 million hits. › Continue reading