The Trust Tree: Fostering Capabilities and Competence in Leadership

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In the last cast, we talked about the character ethic from the trust tree, from The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey, who is the son of the more famous father, Stephen R. Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now, in the Speed of Trust, he talks about the value that trust has in an organization and how it speeds up every decisional making process along the way. That's why it's so valuable in organizations.

So in the last cast, the character ethic, we talked about integrity, which is essentially, if you think about a tree, integrity is essentially below the surface. It's the root system out of which everything else grows. And we talked about the accelerators of integrity and what integrity really means to a relationship and an organization. And then we talked about intent. Intent is moving up the root system closer to the surface. Still.

Invisible, but it's that which emerges from beneath the surface. Intent, one of the most important factors of all in building trust. Well, today we're going to talk about the other two core values of the trust tree, and those are the competence ethic, capabilities, and results. All right, So why are capabilities important? Well, capable people and organizations inspire confidence, quite frankly. Capabilities are capacity to produce and accomplish five things, according to the author.

And he has this acronym called TASKS, T-A-S-K-S. It stands for talent. What are my unique native strengths? I talked about in the last cast that one of my own personal core values is creativity. I love being creative. I love new ideas. I love innovation. I love things that make my brain think in a different way. That's one of my talents. I love creativity, the creative process, if you will. So that's the T. The A stands for attitudes.

Do I approach work with energy? Do I approach work with the determination that I'm going to make a valuable contribution? That's really important. Has a lot to do with capabilities, right? Just your attitude, your mindset, if you will. Fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. The S in tasks, the first S stands for skills. And here, Covey talks a lot about, are you constantly upgrading your skills? Are you making yourself better each and every day? The K is for knowledge.

What am I doing to stay current? What am I doing to keep learning, you know, to kind of foster this idea that the Japanese made very famous in the 90s called Kaizen, continuous improvement, right? And then the final S in tasks stands for style. This is kind of the EQ of capabilities. It's the how of how you do things, right? Very important. Does my style of doing things get in the way, or does it actually ease the path of collaboration?

So those are the things that Covey talks about for the first piece of the competence ethic, that is capabilities. Some ways to kind of accelerate capability growth, he talks about three things here. run with your strengths. So the idea here is not new. We know that we should be working on our strengths, feeding our strengths. We need to know what they are. We need to know what we do best and how we best make a contribution.

He talks about starving your weaknesses by teaming with others who are strong where you're weak. Technology savviness is not my cup of tea. I'm okay. I get by. But if I really need something, I just surround myself with people who can do that kind of thing. This podcast is an actual manifestation of that. I was having a lot of trouble getting started because I couldn't figure out the technology. But once I found a partner to do the technology for me, I can spit these out very quickly.

And we're very smoothly getting to our two every week kind of goal. Okay, that's the first thing. Number two, keep yourself relevant. Matching your strengths to opportunities within the organization. Where can you make your very unique high value contribution? Really, really important. And then finally, know where you're going. This is kind of habit two. Begin with the end in mind kind of idea where we know what we want to do.

We know what contribution we want to make. And so we keep that vision in front of us as we navigate the day. Okay.

So that's capabilities. The last core value is results. Results really matter. They matter enormously to your credibility. People evaluate your results and performance really on three key indicators, not rocket science here, but your past, your current, and your anticipated future performance. Your reputation and track record for delivering results really inform your past performance?

Have you gotten results in the past? Not just a lot of busy work, not just a lot of activity, but actual results. That's your past. Currently, are you producing results right now? Not resting on your laurels, right? Not resting on your past performance. And then finally, how people project you will perform in the future based on your current and past performance will really kind of feed the anticipated future performance. So those are the three.

What are the accelerators here? First of all, just take responsibility for results. Adopt a results mindset rather than an activity mindset. It's easy to just be busy all day, but are we really working on things that really matter, that are really going to move the needle in our organizations? Will what I'm doing now lead to the results I want, or am I just staying busy? That's a really key question to ask yourself. Number two, expect to win. So this is optimism coming through here.

Openly express confidence in yourself and others around you, others on your team. Clearly define what winning consists of and then create an emotional climate of high expectations. And then finally, finish strong. Drop out of the culture of quitting, it says, and the victim mentality, right? Stay strong at the end when everything's on the line, stay strong, be resilient, persevere to the end, and get the results.

And that's it. That's the four core values of the tree of trust. There's integrity and intent, which is underneath the surface, the root system. And then there's the visible capabilities and results that really foster this idea of trust and rapport that's so vital to the relationships that we have in our organizations. Hope you enjoyed a stroll through the trust tree. Fantastic tool by Stephen M. R. Covey. And until next time we meet in the manager lab, do good work. Music.