Book review: SPEED OF TRUST
The One Thing That Changes Everything
Genres:
- Self-Help
- Leadership
- Motivational
Review posted on:
07.04.2016
The number of pages:
354 pages
Book rating:
3/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2008
Who should read this book:
- Start-up founders, Entrepreneurs, and people in Leadership roles.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
I found The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey in the library when searching for books about leadership. After reading the covers of the book, the table of contents, and a couple of reviews online I decided to give it a go. Trust is a fickle thing that can disappear quickly but can take a lifetime to build. Also when it’s gone it’s hard or almost next to impossible to get it back. We all know who we trust and who we don’t, but do we know why? Are you absolutely sure you know why you trust some and don’t trust others?
I think I do, but I’m also open to new views and to learning more about such an important topic that influences my life at each step. The only thing I’m worried about when picking up The Speed of Trust is that in the end, it will be one of those books that is a collage of blogposts, guesses, and common sense that could easily be just that, a series of blogposts or at best a half shorter book than it actually is. On the other hand, I expect to read about some research done on the topic of trust or at least emotions that influence and are connected with building or losing trust.
My thoughts about the book:
One of the main takeaways that I got from The Speed of Trust is that with trust you can either pay “Trust Taxes” or earn “Trust dividends”, it all depends on the level of trust in your organization or you as a person have earned. Trust taxes are what you pay for having a lack of trust and trust dividends are how much more you earn, or how much faster you can make a deal because of your earned trust. In the book, the author describes trust as a function of two things, Character and Competence. Character includes your integrity, motive, and intent with people. While competence includes your capabilities, skills, results, and your track record. Both character and competence determine in other people’s minds how much credibility you have.
If you ask me if I would recommend this book to anyone I would have to honestly think hard about it. It would mostly depend on why would you like to read it. Are you looking for a light read or do you want to read a well-researched book about leadership? If you’re looking for a light read with some interesting perspectives then you should definitely pick up this book, but if you are looking for a well-researched book about leadership then you should probably pick some other book. The reason for me saying this is that the first two chapters were great, the part about credibility and the 13 behaviors, but then the author just started repeating himself, or at least I got that feeling that I had already read about what he was saying a couple of pages back. So if you are going to pick up this book be ready to read about the same point from at least 3 different perspectives, which can be great if you like that, or it can be annoying as you already got the point and you don’t want to read over 300 pages of a book that makes its point on the first 120 pages, and then it only spins words, ads anecdotal stories which some are good, and ads quotes from successful people and justify the page count. I guess repetition is the key to learning and remembering, but it was a little bit too much for me. Even though the author gave different chapter names and each chapter was about building trust on different levels (individual, company, society), he basically repeated that trust is the result of your behavior and capabilities. There is no scientific research mentioned, no case studies nothing like that. The book is mostly about the authors’ conclusions and common sense about this topic that he tries to justify by sharing a couple of stories of successful people.
If you picked up this book please let me know what you think about it in the comment section.
My notes from the book:
- We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.
- Trust always affects two outcomes – speed and cost. When trust goes, down, speed will also go down and costs will go up. But when trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down.
- The economy revolves around partnering and relationships. Partnering and relationships thrive or die based on trust.
- People want to be trusted, they respond to trust, and they thrive on trust.
- When keeping your commitment becomes hard, you have two choices: You can change your behavior to match your commitment, or you can lower your values to match your behavior.
- You need to know what you stand for and you need to stand for it so that others know too.
- Keep in mind that every interaction with every person is a “moment of trust”. The way you behave in that moment will either build or diminish trust.
- Tell the truth and leave the right impression. Which means communicating so clearly that you can not be misunderstood.
- Avoid the common tendency to put more energy into new relationships and assume that people in existing relationships know you care.
- In situations where there is a conflict of interest, the best way to prevent it from turning into a concern is to simply be up-front about it and address it in the spirit of complete disclosure.
- The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn’t whether you will make them, it’s what you will do about them.
- The way we talk – or don’t talk about others when they’re not there can build or destroy trust… fast with people who are there.
- Unclarified expectations are one of the primary reasons for broken trust. It’s hard to hold someone accountable if they’re not clear on what the expectations are. Always make it clear what you expect of people. Accountability builds extraordinary trust in the culture when people feel secure in the knowledge that everyone will be held to certain standards.
- As long as a person is communicating with high emotion, he or she does not yet feel understood. A person will usually not ask or listen to your advice until he or she feels understood.
- Keep in mind that when you talk about restoring trust, you’re talking about changing someone else’s feelings about you and confidence in you.
- Trust brings out the best in people and literally changes the dynamics of interactions. They want to live up to it. They want to give back.
