Stephen R Covey Trust Quotes & Sayings

Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. — Stephen R. Covey

Trust is a competency. It's something you can get good at. It's a strength you personally, and your team and your company can master. Being good at it will elevate every other strength you have. — Stephen Covey

Trust is the one thing that affects everything else you're doing. It's a performance multiplier which takes your trajectory upwards, for every activity you engage in, from strategy to execution. — Stephen Covey

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. — Stephen Covey

Effective communication is built on the cement of trust. And trust is based on trustworthiness, not politics. — Stephen Covey

Executives need to understand the economic benefits of trust dividend, especially when the behavior is real, not artificially or superficially created as PR to manipulate trust. — Stephen Covey

Strategy is important, but trust is the hidden variable. On paper you can have clarity around your objectives, but in a low-trust environment, your strategy won't be executed. — Stephen Covey

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Both are vital. — Stephen Covey

The first job of a leader - at work or at home - is to inspire trust. It's to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility. — Stephen M.R. Covey

In many situations involving service recovery - the problem itself became the catalyst for the creation of even greater trust as the companies took the issues head-on and worked through the difficult problem in a way that restored confidence. — Stephen Covey

I think that [respect for people] is of profound importance because it means you are caring and you trust them to do the right thing. — Stephen Covey

One thing about trust is that everyone's for it. — Stephen Covey

When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life ... In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. — Stephen Covey

It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. — Stephen R. Covey

Trust is clearly a key competency. A competency or skill that can be learned, taught, and improved and one that talent can be screened for. — Stephen Covey

Trust is the glue that holds everything together. It creates the environment in which all of the other elements win-win stewardship agreements, self-directing individuals and teams, aligned structures and systems, and accountability can flourish. — Stephen Covey

Would you not agree that relationships are built on trust? Would you not also agree that most individuals think more in terms of "me-my wants, my needs, my rights? What would wisdom dictate - would it not direct us to focus on trust-building principles and sacrificing 'me' for 'we'?" — Stephen Covey

Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships. — Stephen Covey

When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective. — Stephen R. Covey

Quality relationships are built on principles, especially the principle of trust. — Stephen Covey

Trust is the glue in relationships and organizations — Stephen Covey

When the trust is high, you get the trust dividend. Investors invest in brands people trust. Consumers buy more from companies they trust, they spend more with companies they trust, they recommend companies they trust, and they give companies they trust the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. — Stephen Covey

Trust is a powerful accelerator to performance and when trust goes up, speed also goes up while cost comes down - producing what we call a trust dividend. — Stephen Covey

Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don't; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create. — Stephen Covey

Some people say they have 20 years experience, when in reality, they have 1 year's experience repeated 20 times. (Stephen M R Covey to Richie Norton when Norton asked if he was too young to train older executives for Covey.) — Richie Norton

True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect. — Stephen Covey

What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. There are people we trust because we know their character. Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have human-relations techniques or not, we trust them and work with them. — Stephen Covey

Trust is the glue of life. — Stephen Covey

Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. — Stephen Covey

Every time I see high-trust cultures, I see a lessening of adversarialism. — Stephen Covey

Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one. — Stephen Covey

Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. Nothing is as fulfilling as a relationship of trust. Nothing is as inspiring as an offering of trust. Nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. Nothing has more influence than a reputation of trust. — Stephen Covey

I know it is possible not only to restore trust but to actually enhance it. The difficult things that we got through with the important people in our lives can become fertile ground for the growth of enduring trust - trust that is actually stronger because it's been tested and proved through challenge. — Stephen Covey

I have seen the consequences of attempting to shortcut this natural process of growth often in the business world, where executives attempt to "buy" a new culture of improved productivity, quality, morale, and customer service with strong speeches, smile training, and external interventions, or through mergers, acquisitions, and friendly or unfriendly takeovers. But they ignore the low-trust climate produced by such manipulations. When these methods don't work, they look for other Personality Ethic techniques that will - all the time ignoring and violating the natural principles and processes on which a high-trust culture is based. — Stephen R. Covey

Without trust, the best we can do is compromise. — Stephen Covey

If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other - while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity - then, in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do - even using so-called good human relations techniques - will be perceived as manipulative. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique. — Stephen R. Covey

One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present. — Stephen Covey

Unfortunately, too many executives believe the myths about trust. Myths like how trust is soft and is merely a social virtue. The reality is that trust is hard-edged and is an economic driver. — Stephen Covey

Compliance does not foster innovation, trust does. You can't sustain long-term innovation, for example, in a climate of distrust. — Stephen Covey

Trust is a function of both character and competence. Of course you can't trust someone who lacks integrity, but if someone is honest but they can't perform, you're not going to trust them either. You won't trust them to get the job done. — Stephen Covey

The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time. — Stephen Covey

We must seek to understand the intent of communication without prejudging or rejecting the content ... Communication, after all, is not so much a matter of intellect as it is of trust and acceptance of others, of their ideas and feelings, acceptance of the fact that they're different, and that from their point of view, they are right. — Stephen Covey

The process of building trust is an interesting one, but it begins with yourself, with what I call self trust, and with your own credibility, your own trustworthiness. If you think about it, it's hard to establish trust with others if you can't trust yourself. — Stephen Covey

Trust is central to an economy that works. — Stephen Covey