Hi and welcome to the leaders room brought to you by the Ecliff Leadership and Governance Center. My name is Michael Costler and I'll be your host for this edition of the leaders room. Today we're on Koala Lumpur for Ecliff 6 Leadership Energy Summit Asia. Earlier I had an opportunity to chat with one of our guest speakers, Stephen M. R. Covey, a global authority on trust, leadership and organization culture. Stephen is also the author of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal best-selling book The Speed of Trust. Here's what Stephen had to say about how trust is the thing that changes everything. So Stephen I got to ask you have read all your dad's books and I've read your book. In fact if the bookstore has the latest revision to it I'm going to get it and I'm going to crack you down. I don't know how good I'm going to get you to sign it because your original copy is on my desk back in the United States. There's an addition that I just came out. I saw that. So tell me one story about your dad. What's one thing your dad told you? You know, piece of advice and anecdote that to today you still use to guide yourself. Yeah. Well the anecdote is when he earned his doctorate I remember telling him hey I was 14 years old and I said dad congratulations you earned a doctorate and he said well thanks son that's nice and this is important and then he said but you know here's something you ought to think about. This doctorates in achievement it's a good thing and that I did it it's important. What would be more important is to earn an honorary doctorate or to be given an honorary doctorate because that is given to people who have made a contribution and while an achievement is important making a contribution is far more important. Always remember that life is about contribution not about accumulation and I might even say life is about contribution not just achievement. Now again another wrong with achievement right right that could be part of a contribution but always have the focus be to serve to give back to make a difference to matter. He talked about you know going from survival, disability, to success, to significance, to learn, to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy. That's what Eekliffe is about too. Well he must have been an incredible human being. He was. So let's make the transition to you and let's start at the end. What's the contribution you're making? I feel like my mission is to help increase trust in the world and we are living in a world of declining trust in societies in organizations in institutions and relationships and you know I like to say that distressed is contagious. It tends to perpetuate itself and in a low-trust world we all become a little bit more more careful more cautious more guarded because then of us want to get burned. The problem with that is that people respond back more careful more cautious more guarded and what we find ourselves Michael is perpetuating a vicious downward cycle of distressed and suspicion creating more distressed and suspicion and everybody feeling justified in the process. But what if instead we can counteract that and create trust and confidence when there was only suspicion before and have that spread to become a virtuous upwards spiral where trust and confidence create more trust and confidence and when people see a leader that they can trust because of their credibility, their character, their competence and when that leader models the behaviors that build the trust and they say there's a better way to lead. You can get results and you can do it in a way that inspires trust then people they get they gain hope they say well this leader is doing it you know Warren Buffett's doing it Tony Shea's doing it as apples and these other people are doing it they're getting results and they're doing it in a way that builds the trust inspires trust and suddenly there's more hope, more optimism that you can still perform and compete at the highest level and doing the way that builds trust and we need more of that in the world and so to be able to say there's a methodology of how you can get good at building trust on purpose that's what I'm about. I think I know what you're going to say to my next question but I want to focus on the subtitle to your book. Yeah the book is the speed of trust the one thing that changes everything interpret that from it. Yeah what's the essence of trust? The one thing that changes everything. I'll tell you a little story about it when I was submitting that as my subtitle my publisher said you can't say this that's that's too bold that's the one thing that changes everything you can't say that and I said here's what I am saying it it does if high trust is like a rising tide it lifts every boat. Yeah if you get going at trust as a leader suddenly your ability to do everything else you need to do as a leader has just gone up it's multiplied it's a multiplier for everything your ability to collaborate to partner to team to engage to attract retain inspire people to execute strategy to innovate everything goes up with trust and distrust by contrast works the other direction everything goes down with distrust it taxes everything and so and you can take anything you're looking at you can do better if you start with trust and so that's why I said it's the one thing that changes everything I affirm that and I reaffirm that as I as I published the up in an edition that this remains the one thing that changes everything and so that's not a nice platitude you know that sounds like a great marketing tagline it is a reality and every dimension of leadership goes up with trust. Okay so earlier when we were talking a few moments ago you said results yeah and there's a there's a line in your book that says that trust is a hidden variable of the organization success model yeah what is that model and how does trust fit into it yeah well you can look at most kind of organizational success formulas people kind of say well look you got you got to have a good strategy yeah you got to execute the strategy that equals results you know strategy times execution equals results right and I fundamentally buy that but too often there's firms that on paper have a really good strategy and on paper they have the ability to execute and yet they're not performing at all so there's something else happening okay and I call it a hidden variable and the hidden variable is trust when there's low trust it will take a good strategy and diminish it to loot it taxate your ability to execute it goes down dramatically it's slow at a minimum it slows down but it will also you'll be limited in what you can do it dilutes it it taxes it and so strategy times execution multiplied or diminished by trust the hidden variable is trust it makes good things better and it takes and when the trust is high and it diminishes elutes taxes all your strengths when the trust is low and so most people never think of it this way the thing is just a nice soft social virtue right and I'm saying now this is an economic driver and it multiplies or diminishes it everything else that we're trying to do and that's the hidden variable the interest