As you were doing the exercise to discover what’s important to you, did being trustworthy come up? We all appreciate being around people we can trust. In order to grow a relationship with someone you trust, we must be trustworthy ourselves.
So…how do we work on our trustworthiness? In this post we’ll look at ideas from Stephen M.R. Covey’s book, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything. The author is the son of Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you’ve read 7 Habits, you’re familiar with Stephen M.R. Covey as he is the son who was given the task of keeping the lawn “green and clean”.
In Speed of Trust Covey talks about 5 waves of trust: Self Trust, Relationship Trust, Organizational Trust, Market Trust, and Societal Trust. We’re going to focus on the first wave, Self Trust, which has to do with credibility. We want to work in this area in order to be able to say we trust ourselves, and that we are someone that others can trust.
The components of credibility are character and competence. Covey introduces the “4 Cores of Credibility”: integrity, intent, capabilities, and results. The first two cores deal with character and the latter two with competence. Let’s look into these a bit more.
Integrity
What do you think of when you think of integrity? Honesty? Covey states that honesty is part of integrity but there’s more to it. According to the author, integrity is about congruence, humility and courage.
Congruence in this context means that your actions align with your values and beliefs. This is an extension of having principles as your center. People notice when your words don’t match your action, that is, when you’re not “walking the talk”. And when this misalignment occurs, trust suffers. Align your beliefs, values, and actions, and trust increases.
Humility is explained this way:
A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having good ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution, than being recognized for making it.
Stephen M.R. Covey, Speed of Trust
Humbleness is not the same as weakness. Rather, according to the author, it’s about putting principle ahead of self.
I can tell you that it’s not always easy to be humble (just look at that list!) but it’s worth it in the end. And, humility does help to build credibility and trust. Which brings us to the next component of integrity – courage.
Courage in this context refers to doing the right thing even when it’s difficult, even when everyone else is doing the wrong thing. Being thorough when others are cutting corners, admitting mistakes when others blame someone else, and reporting project hours honestly when others are taking liberties, are all examples that may require courage. But this courage leads to an increase in integrity, and therefore will make you more trustworthy.
Intent
Covey states that there are three components of intent: motive, agenda and behavior.
Motive is why we do something. Covey states, “The motive that inspires the greatest trust is genuine caring”.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
John Maxwell
Would you trust someone more if you know they genuinely care for you or if you know they don’t?
Agenda is what you intend to do because of your motive. “The agenda that generally inspires the greatest trust is seeking mutual benefit”. If you’re looking out for the solution that benefits everyone involved, trust increases.
Behavior is the result of motive and agenda. “The behavior that best creates credibility and inspires trust is acting in the best interest of others.” The behavior is a demonstration of your motive and agenda.
Capabilities
Capabilities are a component of competence. Covey defines capabilities as the “talents, skills, knowledge, capacities, and abilities we have that enable us to perform with excellence.”
When we are capable, we inspire trust. Consider the case where you’ve learned a skill – maybe around design, implementation, or troubleshooting – that is currently needed where you work. People will trust you to carry out the task, because you are capable. Similarly, we can trust ourselves to be able to complete the task well. In this way being capable also builds our self-confidence.
Have the capability to learn new things is vital to employers, especially in engineering. We always need to be learning new technology, new processes, and new skills in order to stay relevant.
Covey presents an acronym we can use to consider the various aspects of capabilities: TASKS.
- Talents
- Attitudes
- Skills
- Knowledge
- Style
Talents are our natural gifts and strengths. Attitudes represent our paradigms – our ways of seeing, as well as our ways of being. Skills are our proficiencies, the things we can do well. Knowledge represents our learning, insight, understanding, and awareness. Style represents our unique approach and personality.
Stephen M.R. Covey – Speed of Trust
Consider each of these individually and determine if there are any gaps to fill.
Results
Producing results is a component of building credibility and trust, and is an aspect of competence. Have you ever been part of a group of volunteers? Some of the volunteers step up and take on tasks, and actually accomplish the tasks. In other words, they get results. Others will say they want to take on tasks but don’t actually finish the work. If you’ve been in this situation you know that the volunteers who produce results are trusted more than the ones that don’t.
tl;dr
To improve our own trustworthiness, we need to examine our integrity, intent, capabilities, and results, and work to fill in any gaps between where we are and where we want to be.
engineer your life
To work on integrity: keep commitments to yourself. This can be getting up when your alarm goes off, or following-through on improving some aspect of your behavior or attitude, or actually starting that podcast or business.
To work on intent: In order to keep the best interest of everyone involved in mind, be open to the idea that there is enough for everyone. This is often referred to as an “abundance mindset”. The opposite, the “scarcity mindset” says you’d better look out for yourself, because if you don’t, there won’t be enough to go around.
To work on capabilities: Always be learning. Keep yourself relevant. Have an idea of where you are going.
To work on results: take responsibilities for results, not activities. I heard this piece of advice recently and I think it fits in well here. When you set aside time to work on something, don’t go into it saying, “I’m going to work on this.” Rather, go into it saying, “I’m going to produce x.” The former is saying you’ll work on activities, but the latter is taking responsibility for a result.