Behaviors That Build Trust With Others

M.L. Covey, in The Speed of Trust (2006), given 13 behaviors that build trust with others.

Here they are, from pp. 127ff:

1. Talk Straight.
2. Demonstrate Respect.
3. Create Transparency.
4. Right Wrongs.
5. Show Loyalty.
6. Deliver Results.
7. Get Better.
8. Confront Reality.
9. Clarify Expectations.
10. Practice Accountability.
11. Listen First.
12. Keep Commitments.
13. Extend Trust.

I'll be exploring each of these in blogs to come.

What do you do to build or maintain trust with others?

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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 Building Trust Accounts

M.L. Covey, in The Speed of Trust (2006), on whom I've been drawing extensively lists six points about building trust accounts. They come from pp. 130-132:

1. "Each Trust Account is Unique. There is a great deal of difference in the account I have with my three-year-old daughter and the one I have with my nineteen-year-old son."

2. "All deposits and withdrawals are not created equal. Often the little things can be disproportionately large."

3. "What constitutes a 'deposit' to one person may not to another."

4. "Withdrawals are typically larger than deposits. As Warren Buffett has said, 'It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."

5. "Sometimes the fastest way to build trust is to stop making withdrawals."

6. "Recognize that each relationship has two trust accounts. The way you perceive the amount of trust in a relationship and the way the other person perceives it may be different."

I would add here that a trust account is like a gas tank, in that if you don't continually fill up your tank, i.e. make deposits, your trust will become depleted.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.

Deposits and Withdrawals are Perceptual

Not only is the magnitude of the amount in your trust account, or in your trust "tank", in the mind of the observer, the magnitude of the amounts deposited and withdrawn are also relative to the observer.

What you do may be trustworthy to some but not to others. One person may view an affair as a big withdrawal because their value system tells them that extra-marital business is a big no-no. Another person may have different values, i.e. "Hey everybody falls off the wagon sometimes." Others may think an affair shows something cool about the person.

You have to find out what is in your heart, act simply, authentically, and in a straightforward manner. You do that and you will be trusted. Those that disagree with what you do may not agree with it, but they'll respect you for it. The others, well...

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.

Trust Accounts are in the Mind of the Beholder

Covey (2006) talks about trust accounts. He compares it to a checking or savings account. You make deposits or withdrawals depending on your behavior, how you make them, how they are communicated, and how they are perceived.

For example, the University of Wisconsin Men's Basketball Team recently beat Duke University Men's Basketball Team on national television thereby benefiting from a major deposit into its trust account.

A couple of days later, UW lost to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, a little known university in, where else, Green Bay, Wisconsin. The game was televised only in the Green Bay area, so the team incurred only a very small withdrawal, because no one even saw the game except for those in Green Bay.

But here's another important difference between a trust account and a savings account. If a savings account has $5 in it, it has $5 in it. The UW Men's BB team has "money" in its account only for those who like college basketball. And for someone who's not a UW student, alum, faculty, or other person with a connection with the UW, it has no account. For those who don't care about the UW or College Basketball, no behavior, good or bad, will have any effect.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.

More on Trust Accounts

Covey (2006) talks about trust accounts. He compares it to a checking or savings account. You make deposits by behaving in a trustworthy manner, withdrawals by blowing it. The balance in the account is a measure of how trustworthy you are.

A trust account is kind of like a savings account. It earns interest and has ripple effects that improve other areas of your life.

But soon the analogy breaks down. Savings accounts can increase without limit. You can only put so much in a trust account.

A trust account is more like the gas tank of a car. You can only put so much in it. You have to put gas in it every so often to keep it running, but you can only fill it up to the top. Top it off, we used to say. If you have a 12-gallon tank, you can't put 13 gallons in it.

Same with trust accounts. You can only have so much in them. Tiger Woods could be seen as perfect, but not more than perfect. You can trust somebody a lot, but not trust them more than a lot.

Also, you have to keep your trust account full by being trustworthy all the time. One little break in it, you've made a withdrawal. And if you use up all your gas and don't put anymore in, your car won't go. A car that won't go is worth nothing as a way of getting around.

Tiger has made a significant withdrawal. But will that trust be restored over time? We'll see what this story brings us. If it turns up, for example, that he's been abusing his kids and that he's been taking performance-enhancing drugs, and he pulls an OJ Simpson, then his trust account will be forever closed out.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.

Trust Accounts

Something MR Covey (2006, p. 130ff) talks about is trust accounts, one of the coolest concepts to come down the pike.

This is actually extrapolated from his father's emotional accounts explained in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. MR says:

By behaving in ways that build trust, you make deposits. By behaving in ways that destroy trust, you make withdrawals. The 'balance' in the account reflects the amount of trust in the relationship at any given time.

We can develop trust accounts the way we develop emotional accounts. We can make trust deposits and withdrawals, and the balance in the account is a measure of the amount of trust in a relationship at any time.

Tiger Woods, for example, spent years building up his trust account. He's made significant withdrawals over the past few weeks, as more and more women come forward alleging all sorts of sexual encounters, with amorous emails from him offered as proof.

Walter Maidoff closed out his trust acount, as did Huckaby by pardoning that guy who allegedly murdered the 4 cops out in Washington State. Arthur Anderson closed its account by hopping into bed with Enron. Kobe Bryant made major withdrawals through his sexual misadventures. O.J. Simpson destroyed his account with the public by his legal entanglements.

Sports referees, or umpires they call them in baseball, generally have pretty robust trust accounts. They are empowered by their various sports leagues to be the determiners of specific situations which can determine who wins and loses a given game and maybe a championship. When a referee does a good job, no one notices, and their accounts continue to be robust. When we have a lot of trust in our account, everyone just trusts us. When the referees make a major mistake, everyone complains about how bad the refs are. When we behave untrustworthily, it's all over the place.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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 Behavior Shifts

Covey (2006, p. 130) talks about behavior shifts: "shifts in doing that actually change the way you do and think."

It used to be thought that before you can bring about behavior change, you had to change the way people think. You know, win the hearts and minds of the people.

It turns out that isn't necessarily true. It's often true, but not always by any means. Because, by changing behavior, you can change the way people think.

You must have found this to be true. You thought a certain thing. Then out of necessity or lack of money, or because you had to, you adopted new behaviors. Then you find yourself thinking differently.

When I had a car, I never took public transportation here in Philadelphia. After considerable thought and analysis of the role of that car in my life and in my finances, I determined it was too expensive, i.e. costing me $300 + per month to park it and insure it + the cost of registration, gas and oil, repair, etc. My real estate practice had changed, so I was only driving it maybe 1 day a week.

So I sold it and put the money in a CD. Now it's earning me a little bit of interest every month instead of costing me >$300 per month. Now I love the mass transportation in Philly.

It's true.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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 Second Wave: Relationship Trust

Steven R. Covey's father said: "You can't talk yourself out of a problem you've behaved yourself into." Steven M. R. Covey (2006, p. 127) adds to this, "No but you can behave yourself out of a problem you've behaved yourself into...and often faster than you think."

This sets the stage for what M.R. Covey is going to say about relationship trust.

The basis for this approach is that the extent to which one can trust other people, groups, communities, societies, etc., flows from one's ability to trust oneself. Covey gave an extended analysis of how to understand, measure, and improve trust of one's self, now he extends it to trust of others.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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 1st Wave: Self Trust. His 2nd Wave: Relationship Trust

Covey's first wave was self-trust. Trust of other people, community, society, and market, depends on self-trust. If you don't trust yourself, you're not likely to trust others. So to build trust, which every entrepreneur needs to do, you need to begin with a look in the mirror. Covey builds an excellent case for self-trust, how to understand it, how to measure it, and how to begin to trust yourself again.

His second wave is what he calls relationship trust. His father said, "You can't talk yourself out of a problem you've behaved yourself into," adding on p. 127, "No, but you can behave yourself out of a problem you've behaved yourself into ... and often faster than you think!"

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think about this? Any comments?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.

Activity vs Productivity

There's activity, and there's productivity. Many people confuse the two. They are not the same.

Activity is doing stuff. Productivity is getting results.

As Red Green said once in a column, unless you've won an award, or somebody had complemented you on what you're doing, you're not good at it, you're just at it.

Guess who (Cover, The Speed of Trust (2006), p. 119) has a neat little chart comparing activity and productivity. Most of it is to the point.

Salespeople often confuse the two. They think that getting referrals, making appointments, and conducting sales presentations are results. They're important activities that lead to sales, but they're not results. The only results that matter ultimately are sales. If you don't sell, it's to no point.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

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.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

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.