Covey on Congruence

Covey, pp. 62-63, gives us another component of integrity, congruence.

A person has integrity when there is no gap between intent and behavior...when he or she is whole, seamless, the same--inside and out. I call this congruence.See The Speed of Trust. The One Thing that Changes Everything. (New York: Free Press, 2006). p. 62.

There's more on p. 62:

People who are congruent act in harmony with their deepest values and beliefs. They walk their talk. When the feel they ought to do something, they do it. They're not driven by extrinsic forces, including the opinions of others or the expediency of the moment.

He's onto something. When you see someone saying one thing and doing another, you don't trust them. At least I don't.

The point of all of this is to create more skilled entrepreneurs. Is it working?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy. For my ideas on connection strategy, go to my new blog www.Connecting.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate, my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my writing. Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.

Covey on Integrity

Covey gives four components of Integrity: honesty, congruence, humility, and courage. See The Speed of Trust. The One Thing that Changes Everything. (New York: Free Press, 2006). pp. 62-66

Honesty includes not only the truth, leaving the right impression. It's possible to tell the truth, but leave the wrong impression. And that's not being honest.

He then goes on to quote Einstein, the E=MC squared guy:

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Whether or not you out and out don't trust him or get kind of suspicious that he might not be trustworthy, his point is taken.

I know when I see a little thing wrong in a book or article, I start to doubt all of it. After all, if there was a mistake in what I do know about, what is wrong with what I don't know about? I know others operate in the same way.

If I had a colleague whom I knew had not been honest in some things ask me to trust him on a big thing, I would have a sit down with that person, sort of a "why should I trust you?" kind of a discussion.

More on Covey next time.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy. For my ideas on connection strategy, go to my new blog www.Connecting.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my writing. Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.

Covey's Four Cores of Credibility

Covey's first wave of trust, self-trust, is based on credibility. The reference is, The Speed of Trust. The One Thing that Changes Everything. (New York: Free Press, 2006). pp. 34-35: self-trust, relationship trust, organizational trust, market trust, and societal trust.

Credibility is believability:

This is where we ask ourselves, Am I credible? Am I believable. Am I someone on whom people, (including myself), can trust has embedded in it, two concepts: character and credibility.

On p. 43, there are four questions to ask yourself: Do I have a reputation for being truthful? Do I have good intent? Are my credentials excellent? Do I have a good track record?

On pp. 54-55 he labels them cores: Integrity, Intent, Capability, and Results. He gives you exercises to help you rate yourself.

The thing here is not, "is you is or is you ain't?" The question is where are those areas where you need to improve. If you can identify where you need to improve, you can determine how you can improve. You can then change the way you look, talk, and behave to become trustworthy in those areas where you were less so before.

If you make these adjustments your thinking will realign itself and you will begin to inspire trust in others. If not, well no great idea will ever get you that business you wanted.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy. For my ideas on connection strategy, go to my new blog www.Connecting.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my writing. Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.

Covey's First Wave of Trust

Remember Covey's five waves of trust from July 27, 2009, in The Speed of Trust. The One Thing that Changes Everything. (New York: Free Press, 2006). pp. 34-35: self-trust, relationship trust, organizational trust, market trust, and societal trust.

The first wave is self-trust, the ability to trust yourself. This is, for covey the place where we have to start. We have to learn to trust ourselves. "To build trust with others we must first start with ourselves.

Or to be successful as entrepreneurs, we have to trust ourselves. We have to believe in ourselves. We have to have confidence that we are worthy of other people's trust.

This is not to say that bad things won't happen to us. Or that we will mess up or fall down on the job.

Covey says, on p 42:

The First Wave--Self-Trust--is where we learn the foundational principle that enables us to establish and sustain trust at all levels. That principle is credibility, or believability. This is where we ask ourselves, Am I credible? Am I believable? Am I someone people (including myself) can trust?

If you ask yourself this question, and you don't say yes, you have work to do.

Even if you do say yes, you should check it out with your friends or family who will give you a reliable answer. If course if the answer you give is yes, and the answeer others give is yes, but you don't trust them enough to believe them, you have a problem.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy. For my ideas on connection strategy, go to my new blog www.Connecting.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my writing. Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.

Dimensions of Trust: Seeing, Speaking, Behaving

Most normal people are trustworthy and want people to trust them. Yet fewer will trust us unless we communicate that trustworthiness. This is one of the basic messages of Covey's book, The Speed of Trust. The One Thing that Changes Everything. (New York: Free Press, 2006).

Covey says on p. 38:

This book will give you a pair of 'trust glasses' so that you'll be able to see trust in an entirely different and exciting way--a way that will open your eyes to the possibilities and enable you to increase trust and the dividends of trust on every level.

You also will give an understanding of the language of trust and a way toward developing the behaviors that establish and grow trust.

I think it also makes more aware of what we need to do to inspire trust, that is to communicate profoundly and completely that we are trustworthy. We can't just shout to the wind, "Trust me. I am trustworthy."

Covey makes a couple more points on trust: the three dimensions of trust are interdependent: "whenever you effect a change in one dimension, you effect a change in all three." (p. 39)

Finally, on p. 40, he says: "Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust."

We have to understand how we are perceived and what we have to do to be perceived as trustworthy. That has to be communicated every day by the way we appear, whom we hang with, how we talk, and the ways in which we behave.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy. For my ideas on connection strategy, go to my new blog www.Connecting.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my writing. Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.