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...
Trust, but verify. —RONALD REAGAN
The success of big business and the well-being of the world have never been more closely linked. Global issues cannot be removed from the business world because business has only one world in which to...
We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.
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. And it is congruence—not compliance—that wil...
One thing to be careful of with regard to skills is what author Jim Collins calls the curse of competence. It’s the idea that sometimes we become good at doing something we’re not really talented in o...
A leader doesn’t need any credit…. He’s getting more credit than he deserves anyway. —ROBERT TOWNSEND, FORMER CEO, AVIS
Keeping your commitment becomes hard, you have two choices: You can change your behavior to match your commitment, or you can lower your values to match your behavior. One choice will strengthen your...
If we can't trust ourselves, we'll have a hard time trusting others.
S × E)T = R ([Strategy times Execution] multiplied by Trust equals Results)
We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior. This is why, as we’ll discuss later, one of the fastest ways to restore trust is to make and keep commitments—even very small commitm...
There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business—or life. There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The...
The principle is simply this: We tend to get what we expect—both from ourselves and from others. When we expect more, we tend to get more; when we expect less, we tend to get less.
Coat! the manager repeated. Then you won’t have to pay the tax. But I have to sign a form, my father exclaimed. I have to declare the things I’ve bought and am bringing into the country. Don’t declare...
What happens when we do this time after time? What’s the net result of repeated failure to make and keep commitments to ourselves? It hacks away at our self-confidence. Not only do we lose trust in ou...
The trust we have in people and in organizations comes, in part, from believing that they do care.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing, and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, even precise, and they’ll still misinterpret y...
FIRST WAVE: SELF TRUST The first wave, Self Trust, deals with the confidence we have in ourselves—in our ability to set and achieve goals, to keep commitments, to walk our talk—and also with our abili...
A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about buildi...