This episode features an interview with Stephen M.R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust and Co-founder of FranklinCovey’s Global Trust Practice. He is a sought-after international speaker, who has taught trust and leadership to business, government, military, education, healthcare, and NGO entities. As the former President and CEO of the Covey Leadership Center, Stephen increased shareholder value by 67 times and grew the company to become the largest leadership development firm in the world. In this episode, Shawn sits down with Stephen to discuss the foundational concepts of trust and leadership, practical strategies for enabling authenticity, and the importance of having a growth mindset. Hear more from Stephen when he participates in the World Business Forum this October!
This episode features an interview with Stephen M.R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust and Co-founder of FranklinCovey’s Global Trust Practice. He is a sought-after international speaker, who has taught trust and leadership to business, government, military, education, healthcare, and NGO entities. As the former President and CEO of the Covey Leadership Center, Stephen increased shareholder value by 67 times and grew the company to become the largest leadership development firm in the world.
In this episode, Shawn sits down with Stephen to discuss the foundational concepts of trust and leadership, practical strategies for enabling authenticity, and the importance of having a growth mindset.
Hear more from Stephen when he participates in the World Business Forum this October!
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“The style of leadership that maybe has taken us to where we are today in a different world, is not going to be where we need to go tomorrow in a new world of remote work and hybrid work and intentionally flexible work with younger generations. Gen Z have a completely different expectation of how they want to be engaged and led. With work becoming far more collaborative and interdependent and with technology changing, disrupting everything with AI, with all these things happening, we need a new way to lead in a new world of work. Maybe command and control got us to where we are today, but trust and inspire is what's going to take us to where we need to go tomorrow.” – Stephen M.R. Covey
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Episode Timestamps:
*(03:32): Getting to know Stephen
*(13:14): The reciprocity of trust
*(26:37): Building stewardship agreements
*(31:22): Trust and inspire vs. command and control
*(41:49): Authenticity and vulnerability in leadership
*(54:06): The need for a growth mindset
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Links:
Learn more about FranklinCovey’s Global Trust Practice
Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Cohesion Podcast. Now today I'm joined by Stephen M. R. Covey. Now he's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and Trust and Inspire.
Shawn Pfunder: And also serves as the Global Practice Leader of Speed and Trust at FranklinCovey. Stephen is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which became the largest leadership development company in the world under his direction. Let's get started. He's also the son of Dr. Stephen R. Covey, renowned author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Shawn Pfunder: Stephen, welcome to the show.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Hey, Shawn, so great to be with you. Excited for this.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, me too. A little nervous. I don't get super nervous, but growing up, Like, at first they said, Hey, you're going to interview Stephen Covey. I was like, no, no, not the Stephen Covey. But then just, I love your work.
Shawn Pfunder: And candidly, I hadn't gotten to a lot of it until after they let me know we were going to speak, but so thoughtful, so meaningful. And this isn't just me sort of blowing smoke, like your work on trust and sort of like where we're headed, future of work, leadership, relationships. So I'm a little. What do they call it?
Shawn Pfunder: Halo effect? Or I'm like, I hope he's nice.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Hey, I'm excited to be with you, Shawn and Cohesion Podcast. I went through several of your episodes and I'm equally excited to be with you. Have a chance to have this dialogue.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, this is perfect. See, you are a nice guy.
Shawn Pfunder: It's going to be a lot of fun.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, let's kick off some things. These are the things to get to know you. Listen, it's not perfect for creating authenticity. You talked about that as part of trust, but we get to know a little bit more about you. So the first question is, what are the top five most opened apps on your phone?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Okay. Well, gosh, I'm going, I'm going to my phone right now, but Spotify.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I love music. Yeah. And then the podcast. App, because I love to go to podcasts, uh, Audible. I read my books through listening first, usually. And then if I really like the book, I'll buy it. The physical copy. Yeah. But I like to listen and I have so many different opportunities to listen and it enables me to consume a lot more that way.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So I also spend a lot of time on politics. So I've got a news feed. App that gives you a bunch of stuff. And I love sports too. I mean, ESPN, it's a lot of fun. And so those, those are ones I use a lot. I probably spend too much time, you know, look at my phone. My wife thinks I do. You know it, but I try to get away from it too.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Have fast, have breaks. To get away from technology, get off the grid.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And which is fun to do, but you realize how addicted you can become.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, for sure. . Yeah, absolutely. Well, you've got a good setup. Most of your apps, you li like, you listen, you don't even have to look at the app.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Music, podcasts, audible, any. Top artist on Spotify that you listen to a lot or type of music?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Well, I, this is where I like some of the kind of classic rock and alternative rock. I like Coldplay. I've got a 21 year old daughter, so I'm deep into Taylor Swift too. I started taking my daughter to Taylor Swift concerts when she was eight years old.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And you know, and I'd go with her. I haven't been to the ERA's concert yet. She's gone without me, but I am going to make it before it's over. I either got to get to Europe this summer or some, there's a few more in the fall, but yeah, I love some of the classic rock stuff or alternative rock, I guess is what you would call a cold play, but I still love Billy Joel. And so, some of the older stuff is really what I love.
Shawn Pfunder: I got you. Well, everybody, you probably didn't hear it here first, but you heard it here. Stephen Covey, Swifty. Stephen, Swifty, Covey, which is fantastic. All right. So the question's more about your I guess your, your style, the things you study, your life, what's an insult that you've received that you're proud of?
Stephen M.R. Covey: An insult? Maybe when someone calls me a motivational speaker,
Stephen M.R. Covey: because, you know, that just sounds like I'm just some guy that's just going to, you know, Go in and try to pump people up with rah, rah, psyched up stuff, you know, no, no insight, no depth, no application, just this, you know, like, like Matt Foley, motivational speaker on Saturday Night Live, you know, the Chris Farley character, I'm a motivational speaker, you know, and that type of thing, so they don't mean to insult me, they just don't know what to call it.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I don't mind if someone says an inspirational speaker, I just The word motivational speaker kind of is, uh, is something I say, Oh, I try not to be that. Hopefully I'm trying to make sure I add depth and substance. I, again, I'm not against the concept. People don't know how to refer to it, but I've always tried to shy away from being called a motivational speaker.
Shawn Pfunder: Hey, listen, if you need a dancer in the background, somebody to shoot t shirts out of a cannon, I can do that. You come out. Move your hands up and down. What? Yeah. Let's get going. I've got you. Well, then moving on to, to trust a little bit, and then of course, I'm going to ask you about your dad, but starting with trust, you've been, I mean, you've been studying this and looking at this for a while now, and all of your books focus on this and focus on trust, what do you think the greatest, Or the biggest misconception is with trust and trust in, I mean, trust in general, it doesn't even need to be in the workplace, but just with humans in general, what's the biggest misconception do you think?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah, maybe this, maybe kind of that trust is something that you either have or you don't. It's either there. Or it's not. And I'm making the case that, look, yeah, we may inherit a situation where there's so much trust or not, or there may be a starting place with trust, but trust is a learnable skill. Trust is a competency.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Trust is actually something that we can intentionally create and build on purpose. And so trust is a, you know, a learnable skill instead of it's something you either have or you don't.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And I acknowledge that there is a starting point, but in the same way that you can diminish stress through your behavior and lose it, you can also consciously, deliberately create it, grow it, expand it through your behavior.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You can behave your way into trust, just like you can behave your way out of it. And the idea that this is learnable as a competency, as a skill, we can build a high trust team, a high trust culture, even if we don't start that way. That's kind of a myth that I'm shifting the idea that it's not learnable, that it's either there or not.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And no, I'm, and I'm saying this is learnable.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, I love that. I appreciate that. I'm wondering, so when you say that, do you, in my brain, I might be thinking about it differently, or I don't want to say wrong, but because it's both sides, like you've got the person that's creating the trust or working to create the trust, and then the person that's like granting it.
Shawn Pfunder: And are you saying that that's something that's learnable on both sides? Like you can learn how to trust, and you can also learn how to build trust?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Absolutely. And I love how you framed this, Shawn. Because it is, there's two halves of this, and it's both the half of, there's two parties involved. Anytime you're dealing with trust, there's two parties.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Now you can have self trust as well with yourself. But there's, you know, two parties involved, trust between people, but there's two halves. And the first is you, You need to be trustworthy. Yes, trust is earned and you're trustworthy. You're credible. You build it through your behavior, through your character, through your competence.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You earn trust, but it's not enough to merely be trustworthy because you could have two trustworthy people working together, both trustworthy and yet no trust between them. That's possible. It happens all the time. Trustworthy people working together, but no trust between them. So in addition to being trustworthy, you also need to be.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Trusting. Yeah. Be willing to give the trust. That's the idea that trust is given. Trust is both earned and given. Both. And so you can get good at both halves of that. To learn how to build the trust through your credibility, through becoming trustworthy, but also learning how to become more trusting.
Stephen M.R. Covey: As a leader, granting the trust, giving the trust. And that's vital to build trust on any team, any organization, both halves of the equation. And sometimes we have to work on either half each of us individually or collectively. And I find, as I work with organizations around the world, especially with senior teams.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That the bigger gap in creating high trust teams at the senior levels is less that people aren't. Trustworthy, because they probably wouldn't be in the roles that they're in if they weren't trustworthy.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It's more that they're not trusting enough. That's often the bigger gap, becoming more trusting, be willing to give that trust.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And it's because, you know, we're operating in a low trust world. So people are a little bit careful, cautious about just trusting people because you can get burned. And so I'm not advocating a blind trust where it's indiscriminate. Rather, a smart trust, but we've got to be more trusting in order to create more trust.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so both halves of the equation are vital, but I find that maybe the bigger half that's lacking today is that we're not trusting enough.
Shawn Pfunder: That's really fascinating because I think, I could be wrong, but I think a lot of people when we say trust, like even when you just first said like, it's teachable.
Shawn Pfunder: My mind, even in that situation, doesn't go to the, I need to learn how to trust more. It goes to the, I need to learn how to build trust or become trustworthy. So I love that you mentioned that you could have two people, both trustworthy on a team. It's like you have fantastic guitar, Coldplay, fantastic piano player, fantastic guitar player.
Shawn Pfunder: They're at the top of their game, but they might not be able to be in a band together. Because they can't play together and the way that they perform. So that's really interesting to me that it's, you see that potential gap is more on the, I have to trust, like I have to learn how to trust.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah, now again, sometimes the issue is that we need to focus on the trustworthiness.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Earning that trust, demonstrating the character, demonstrating the competence, behaving our way into greater trust. That's also vital. Sure. I like to say it's necessary. But insufficient.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So, you know, you'll never have trust without trustworthiness, but you could have trustworthiness and not have trust if we're not also trusting.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so I'm just highlighting that piece cause that's often overlooked.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And I'm not saying let's not focus on the trustworthiness side. We have to, we got to stay focused on that. Let's just add to it.
Stephen M.R. Covey: The trusting side, become better at that, learning how to appropriately extend trust in smart ways, becoming more trusting.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It's not irresponsible or a blind trust, but a smart trust so that we can create more trust because there's a reciprocity of trust. Meaning, you know, when you give it to people, they not only receive it, they tend to return it. You trust people, they tend to trust you back when you don't trust people. That is it tend to not trust you either, as I've worked, as I've worked with organizations around the world in low trust companies, low trust cultures, where, you know, there's very low trust and employees don't trust their management.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I find the biggest factor why employees don't trust their management and low trust companies is because management. doesn't trust the employees and the employees reciprocate that distrust right back at them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Same thing can happen in a relationship, in a partnership, you know, in a marriage, in a family, in a community, with friends, neighbors, you don't trust people that tend to not trust you.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So leading with trust, starting with trust is vital. Now, at the same time, I also know not everyone can be trusted. So you can't just, you can't just blindly stand trust to anyone and everyone because that's being gullible, not smart. And so you got to use good judgment
and
Stephen M.R. Covey: kind of assess the situation, assess the risk, you know, assess the credibility of the people involved.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Having said all of all of that, I still say we've got to find more ways to extend. Trusted to people.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah, because that's, I find that as the bigger gap. Can I get to share a brief experience on this one? Yeah, please do. Yeah, so about a year ago I was in Metin, Germany and I met with the the CEO of Hugo Boss.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You know, Hugo Boss, the big global fashion retailer. By the way, that's always an intimidating thing to, to go into a fashion retailer, you know, and I'm not known as a fashion icon. My wife said, you're going where? You know, the Hugo Boss, she goes, honey, I don't mean to, I don't know if you're aware, but you're not exactly a fashion icon.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And I said, I know that, but they're not asking me to model. And so. They want to talk about trust. And so I went there and spent time with their CEO and with their leadership team. And so the CEO is Daniel Greeter. And he'd come in a couple of years earlier. He came in from the outside and he shared his whole experience with me.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And he said, when I came in the first week on the job, I got together with my top 100 leaders. And I said, Hey team, we have a choice. You're new to me. I'm new to you. You don't know me. I don't know you. Here's our choice. We can spend the next year getting to know each other, deciding whether or not we can trust each other, whether you can trust me, whether I can trust you, we can do that.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And we can spend the next year doing that. And if we do so, we're going to waste a year. Or we can start from day one, And start by trusting each other. So that's our choice. Let me tell you where I come down on this. He said, I want everyone here to know something. I trust you. I trust you. And I'm asking you, trust me back.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Together we can create a whole new way of working together, a whole new kind of trust from the beginning.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But see, he went first. Look, this was, this is Germany. This is not the natural starting point necessarily culturally.
Stephen M.R. Covey: To start with trust. Most people would start with suspicion until kind of proven otherwise.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But he came in and said, I trust you. Trust me back. We'll build something together. So this was disarming. It was refreshing, but also a little bit, people were kind of wondering, is this real? It was real. And he demonstrated, he went first, he modeled it. And people like being trusted. They wanted to live up to it.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It actually brought out the best in them and they did reciprocate and return the trust right back to him. So they created a, What they call their claim five strategy, which was a five year strategic plan. They had all the metrics you'd expect in such a plan of market share and growth and revenue and profits and cashflow and the like.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Well, at the time, so this is a year ago when I met with them, they were two years into their five year plan. And they were achieving the metrics at year four of the plan. There were two years ahead of schedule. Daniel told me, Stephen, we are moving at the speed of trust.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And they were, but see he initiated this.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He went first very intentionally. It was almost, uh, you know, the idea of extreme trust. It was saying, I trust you, trust me back.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And it was remarkable what they created. Fast. In a culture that had not started with trust as a starting point.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He shifted it. Someone went first, the leader went first and was both trustworthy and also trusting intentionally.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And they created trust a lot faster. So it's really a remarkable thing. And for him, here's why he was smart. He said, look, we hire winners.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So my starting point is, I trust you because you've been hired, you're part of our team. I trust you as a starting point until, until you prove otherwise that I should not.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. I like that you mentioned the rise to, so when he starts first, I mean, that came to mind when you were talking that if you, extending trust to somebody, even if you don't know quite yet, like until they prove otherwise they're winners. That totally makes sense. But extending it. I know I've had that happen to me.
Shawn Pfunder: I've, I sort of rise to the, like, I want to be trustworthy because you've extended the trust to me. I want to rise to that occasion. That totally makes sense to me and reminds me of another story in your book about your dad. Now listen, you were seven years old when he gave you the responsibility of taking care of the lawn.
Shawn Pfunder: And by the way, I'm not picturing. a small picket fence kind of lawn. I mean, your dad was Stephen Covey. Like you're in charge of a decent sized lawn to keep green and mowed.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It was a decent sized lawn. It was three different sections of it. And this was back in the days, this does age me. This is back in the days before automatic sprinklers.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You had to manually do all of this.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. So he, he sits you down when you're seven. And puts you in charge, like he extends that trust, puts you in charge of the law. Now, how did this, I guess, how did this happen? What's it like to be seven years old and sort of, sort of get this? And did you keep that responsibility for a long time?
Shawn Pfunder: Tell us more about that story. It's wonderful for the people that haven't read the book.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It's a fun story. My dad first told it in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, his book, and then in Trust and Inspire, I kind of give my side of the story. Yeah, I was just a young boy. He was trying to teach us kids, you know, responsibility.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so he asked, who wants to take care of the yard? And there's a seven year old saying, I'll take it. You know, I raised my hand, I'm voluntary. He goes, okay. And so he trained me over two weeks. He trained me into taking care of the yard. He wanted the yard to be green. And clean, green and clean. And so he trained me what green looked like and, you know, and he trained me what clean looked like.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And again, I'm seven. So it took a bit of time and it was up to me how I wanted to do it. Cause you know, he said, I want to focus on results, not methods. So how you go about doing this is up to you. He goes, If you want, you could use hoses or buckets, or you could spit all day long. All I care about is the yard is green and clean.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He goes, if I were you though, I'd want to turn on the sprinklers because it'd probably be faster. But he was trying to teach me. You gotta get the results. But then he said, now you're going to judge yourself. You're going to be accountable yourself, and you're going to report to me how you're doing. So let's do this.
Stephen M.R. Covey: We agreed that every week we would walk around and I would tell him how I'm doing against the standard of green and clean. Yeah. And so we built accountability as well as expectations around. Kind of an agreement and no, he didn't call it an agreement, but it was building an agreement with a seven year old that I want the yard to be green and clean.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Those are results, clear expectations around results. And every week you tell me how you're doing against the standard of green and clean. That's accountability. And so, you know, so after two weeks of training, he turned it over to me. Well, I am a little embarrassed to say, I did not, I did nothing for the first five days.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I did nothing on, you know, it was a Saturday, turned it over, did nothing Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And this is in the middle of the summer and it was scorching hot and the yard was turning yellow. By the hour at this point on the fifth day, and we'd had a big neighborhood barbecue over the weekend and there was garbage strewn all throughout the yard.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It was anything but green and clean. And my dad knew this. He could see that I'd done nothing. And he was tempted to kind of just, Take the job right back thinking, you know, he's too young. He's seven. He's not ready for this yet, but he didn't. He stayed with it. And we went back to the agreement that we'd walk the yard and see how it was going.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So we began to walk the yard and I knew full well, as we were walking that this yard is not green, it's yellow. I'd done nothing and it was not clean. It was dirty. It was messy, garbage everywhere. And I began to break down and cry. And I said, dad, this is just so hard. And he kind of said, well, son, what's hard?
Stephen M.R. Covey: You haven't done one single thing yet. And, you know, but what was hard was me kind of owning this, taking responsibility for it, feeling like this is my job. And he said, do you remember? I said, dad, will you help me? He said, well, do you remember our agreement? And I said, yeah, you told me that you would help me if you have time.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That's right. Do you have time, dad? I've got time, he said.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So I ran into the house and I came out with a couple of garbage sacks and I took one of him and then I gave one to my dad. I said, dad, would you go over there where the barbecue was? And would you pick up all that garbage? He said, I'll do whatever you want.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I'm your helper. And so I began to direct my dad as a seven year old and telling him what to do to pick up the garbage. And it was at that moment I realized, This is my job. I own this. My dad is doing what I'm asking him to do. I'm directing him. And, and, and that's when suddenly it dawned on me, I own this.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I'm responsible. I'm capable. And I began to take care of that yard from that moment forward. And I took care of it, not only for, you know, that summer, but for many, many summers to come. And the yard was green and it was clean. My dad never had to ask about it. With me again. And I owned it. Occasionally we'd say, let's walk the yard and we'd walk the yard, but it was green and it was clean.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Cause I, I felt responsibility. See what he did is he, he didn't give up on me and quickly kind of write me off saying he's too young or just go back to a command and control style where he just starts to tell me what to do and how to do it. Instead, he trusted me. He built the relationship. He extended that trust.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He empowered me with an agreement, with expectations, with accountability. And he treated me according to my potential, not my behavior. Cause at first I did nothing, but he, but he treated me as if I had potential. And I ultimately, lived up to that potential and began to see myself differently. And I came out of that whole experience feeling I'm capable, I'm responsible, I can do this.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And I did do this. It was a big success for me and I felt trusted and I felt inspired. And I came from that saying, I can do this as a seven year old. And it became really a foundational imprint experience in my life of the power of trust and being trusted, how it can change how you see yourself and the confidence you have in yourself and when someone has confidence in you.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it sounds like you described in the, in your book, you talk about, I think it's called stewardship agreements.
Shawn Pfunder: It sounds like that's exactly what you just described, that your dad started with you as a stewardship agreement instead of it was a command and control.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah, just dictating it, telling them what to do, how to do it, you know, Hey, go clean up that.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Now take care of that. Turn on those sprinklers. No, it was instead. I want the yard to be green and clean. How you do it's up to you. And let's walk the yard every week. You tell me how you're doing. Not I'll come and judge you. You judge yourself. But against a high standard of green and clean, you report back on yourself.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so that's kind of building a stewardship agreement. There's always two halves of the agreement. The first half is to have clear expectations that include the desired results that we're after, the guidelines, which included in this case, you can't paint the yard. So in other words, I can't achieve green and clean by just painting it.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You know, that's not real. That's artificial. So there's always guidelines to work within, you know, parameters. And then there's resources. And the resources in this case was, he said, I'm your helper. If I have time, if I ever have time, you can ask me and I'll help you. Yeah. And, you know, so I had resources, but I was very clear what the results were.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I had the expectations were built together. And the best thing, you know, when you build a stewardship agreement with someone, and again, this is an example with a seven year old.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And the point is, if it can work with a seven year old. I'll bet it can work with a 27 year old or a 47 year old or a 67 year old.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It can work with anyone really, but it's always the two halves, clarifying expectations and then practicing accountability to those expectations. And in this case, it was, let's walk the yard every week. Tell me how you're doing. And so when you're doing this with another person, you clarify expectations together around the desired results, the guidelines, the resources, and then agree to a process of accountability.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so that, you know, how do you know how you're doing against the results and how you were, will you report back? You can empower someone. And that way you as a leader can build an agreement, trust someone, they feel empowered, they feel trusted, and yet you've still not lost control. And that's often the concern for people of what if I trust them, they don't, and they don't deliver, they don't come through.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And what if I lose control? Well, shift the control from you having to hover over and micromanage to them reporting back on how they're doing against the agreement that you built together. And I've learned this, if you build the agreement together, then that's a far different, thing. Then if you dictate the agreement, you know, if you just tell them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Here's what to do. And I'll judge you. They're less involved in that. They're less committed. They'll comply. Maybe. Maybe if they're a seven year old or they'll get fired. You want their give their creativity, their commitment, their passion. You build it together. That's when they rise to the occasion. They feel trusted, you know, to your point, Shawn, they rise to the occasion.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Brings out the very best. Best in them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They become creative, innovative. They come up with all kinds of ways of performing better because they feel like they own it. They feel like you trust them. They feel inspired by you, but you haven't lost control because they're still accountable to you against the expectations and they report on you and they know better maybe than you do on how they're really doing.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so it's a really powerful way of both getting the job done. Maybe even better than they would do if you were micromanaging them and, but also growing the person so that they develop capabilities. And then they're, therefore their ability to get results in the future has just gone up. They're more capable.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They've grown.
Shawn Pfunder: It is inspiring. You extend this trust, you build something together, you provide them the resources, the safety net kind of thing of like, you can reach out, you can help. That totally makes sense as a way to illustrate, build trust with somebody. As a leader, your dad or you or whoever's a leader and has people that are working for them doing this stewardship agreement, it, it seems like there is a particular way they need to see the world or like certain values that they need to see where they're not looking at people as, like you mentioned, you start with suspicion, cog in the machine, like, I don't really trust you, just do what I say that you'll do.
Shawn Pfunder: Right. You see them as resources to be used. Tell me a little more about it. I know you talk about this in the book and I can't remember everything that you sort of point out, but what do I have to value as a leader in order to make something like this work? Cause maybe I like agree. Yeah, stewardship agreements are great, but if I don't have the certain.
Shawn Pfunder: Sort of outlook of the world or the way I think about people, I could, that could fall apart pretty quickly.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, you know, your paradigm, I love the word paradigm, which, you know, we use it a lot today and we kind of maybe overuse it, but. It comes from the Greek paradigma.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That's a mental map or model. The idea of a map is the map is supposed to describe the territory, but you could have an inaccurate map of a territory where the map is not accurate. And you could have an inaccurate map of people, of who they are, whether capable of, or not. You could have an inaccurate map of leadership.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So a more complete Accurate map or paradigm of people and of leadership is vital. And I call it a trust and inspire map versus a command and control map. You know, command and control. I kind of have a fixed mindset towards others. I may have a growth mindset for myself, but with others, I'm suspicious.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I'm not quite sure. I've got to make sure I'm going to manage them. I treat them like things almost, you know, and you I'm managing people and things similarly. With a trust and inspire my mindset. I have a growth mindset, not only for myself. But for others, so I see the greatness, the potential, the talent that's inside of people.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That's my first fundamental belief is that people have greatness inside of them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: So if I buy that belief, then my job as a leader is to unleash their potential, not to try to contain or control them. But it starts by seeing the potential. If I see the potential inside of people, it might be lying dormant.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It might be unseen, but if I can see it as a leader, then I can help them come to see it. And see, my father is a seven year old. He saw potential in me. I had no idea about as a seven year old, but he helped me come to see it in myself. That's what great leaders do. They help others see what's inside of them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I love how Henry David Thoreau put it. He said, it's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see. You see the potential. Two leaders could look at a. Another person and one seeing nothing and another see enormous potential and greatness inside of that same person. So, it starts with theirs, a growth mindset for everyone, seeing the potential.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Then another element is seeing people as a whole person, meaning a body, a heart, a mind, and a spirit. People are whole people. That's a belief about people. So if I buy that belief, my job as a leader is to inspire, not merely motivate. And here's what I mean by that. See, if people were merely economic beans.
Stephen M.R. Covey: In other words, only a body. That's it. Then motivation would be sufficient. Just pay them.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And people do want to be paid. They do have a body. They want to be paid and they want to be paid fairly, but they also have a heart. So they want to care and they want to connect and they want to belong and they want to love and they have a mind.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They want to grow and to develop. They have a spirit. They want to contribute, make a difference, add value, have significance, matter. And so inspiring. can take you to a whole different place than motivation alone will ever achieve. Inspiring includes motivation, which is the external rewards, but it includes the inspiration that you light the fire within.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It's inside of people. And that fire once lit can burn on for months, if not years without the need for more external stimuli. So I view people as whole people and having greatness inside of them. That's a more complete map of people, more accurate map or paradigm.
Stephen M.R. Covey: People. Then I do the same thing around leadership.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I see that there's enough for everyone. An abundance mentality. Yeah. So if I buy that belief, then my job as a leader is to elevate caring above competing. Yes, let's compete in the marketplace, but let's care and collaborate in the workplace. And then I see leadership as stewardship, meaning it's about responsibility.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Not rights, influence, not position. So if I buy that belief, my job as a leader is to put service above self interest. And finally, I see that enduring influence is created from the inside out, not outside in. So if I buy that belief, my job as a leader is to go first. Someone needs to go first. Greeter story I told at Hugo Boss.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He went first by extending that trust. Leaders go first. And so Those are the kind of the, I call these the fundamental beliefs of a trust and inspire leader.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I see the greatness in people as whole people. And I view leadership as stewardship where there's enough for everyone and I model it. I go first.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And that's a better way of leading than, you know, a command and control style of leadership where I manage people like I manage things. And I'm saying trust and inspire is the idea is you manage things, you lead people. Yeah. You know, people don't want to be managed. People want to be led. Yeah. You want to be trusted.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They want to be inspired. But it starts with our paradigm of how we view people, how we view leadership. And this is a more expansive paradigm of people and of leadership. And I think, I believe it's a far more accurate paradigm of people and of leadership. It's a better way to the lead, to see the greatness inside of people.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, yeah, we are seeing post COVID world. You had a lot of people that started working remotely, not coming into the office. And part of that was the opportunity for them to discover themselves, who they are. As people, like what matters to them, what's important to them. You have the actual just threat of annihilation for some of them, you know, with, with the pandemic and what was happening.
Shawn Pfunder: So that when it came time to go back into the office, there's been this interesting sort of push pull, this tug that's been going on. And I think it was Dell, they were one of the first ones to go out and say, okay, you come into the office or you can't be promoted. You'll make less money, like sort of set up these consequences.
Shawn Pfunder: Was it 50 percent of the people that said, fine, I won't be promoted. I'm not going to make less money because it wasn't just The paycheck. It wasn't just the, Hey, like I give you money, do what I tell you to do. There was something that's when you talk about bringing this wholeness of a whole person, creating that
Shawn Pfunder: has such meaning now that you have people, workers who used to be sort of trapped in this, I have to do this or else I'm not going to eat, or I have to do this, or I'm not going to, they're realizing too, like, it's important that I'm a whole person, not just a cog in the machine. So I, I appreciate that. I think that's more relevant now than it ever has been.
Stephen M.R. Covey: More than ever before. And I, and I do agree that for many, COVID kind of brought this out. People could see it more clearly. I was with Dr. Larry Rozia. Who's a president of Saskatchewan Polytechnic, big technical school up in Canada. And he said it was during COVID when he was having these zoom meetings with his team and he started to have, you know, see people in different settings, in their home setting, because I began to see people, not as an employee.
Stephen M.R. Covey: For the first time, I began to see them as a dad or a mom or a friend or a neighbor. Yeah. As a person. Yeah. As a whole person. And I began to see them differently. And then when I saw them differently, I started to treat them differently. And I recognized it's not just doing the work, although that mattered.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It was that they could do the work better. When I recognized who they were and they, they had a desire to belong and to be part of something, to be part of a team and to care and that they were really what they wanted purpose and they wanted meaning and contribution, not just a paycheck.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yes, they wanted the paycheck, but much more, and he said, I saw him as a whole person and it changed everything.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And we, they built such a bigger, stronger team. And so, you know, having that kind of shift in our thinking is I think significant because then we want to move towards inspiration, not just motivation.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Takes us to a whole new place. And then we can actually bring out the best that's in people.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And perhaps we'll attract and retain talent better this way, when people are seen as whole people and that we're after their growth and their development, as well as, you know, getting the job done.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You know, that's why, you know, that's, we always want both. We got to perform and I'm not ratcheting that need to perform down one bit.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I'm just elevating the growth of people. To the same importance as delivering results. Yeah. I'm just elevating the latter. Yeah. We've got to also grow people and see them as whole people that want to grow, want to develop, and they'll actually do both better when you see them this way.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. It's, it seems so obvious or, or simple.
Shawn Pfunder: This connection with others. I, I took a team of executives at GoDaddy. We did a storytelling workshops. So we just talked about how to tell stories and a couple of the rules, right? It could only be five minutes or less, and it could have nothing to do with work. And then we rented out comedy clubs and we would have the executives come.
Shawn Pfunder: They would stand on stage. We invited all the employees that wanted to come. They could come and watch these executives tell stories about themselves, about their life. And there was one thing Executive, specifically, that was a definitely a command and control, like, just do what I want you to just, and they didn't have a lot of love throughout the organization, especially outside their team, not a lot of love.
Shawn Pfunder: And he got up, he told a story, and it was, you know, doing something with his brother biking across Africa. And it was touching. It was moving to see that aspect of him. And somebody came up to me afterwards and said, Oh, great. I can't hate this guy anymore. Like as soon as, so it was even that other direction, not just you finding out about your team and, and their moms and dads and runners and writers, you know, they like to watch anime, like whatever that is.
Shawn Pfunder: And it's also on that leader side being like, is that
Stephen M.R. Covey: humility or is that just being normal? It's that authenticity. It's a combination of both authenticity, but also vulnerability. Got it. which makes you relatable. So it's, I can relate to this. I, and I, and when someone's relatable, they can connect to it more.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They can see themselves in that versus someone that's just trying to put on airs or put a front and come across as like, I'm this perfect person, leader in almost like a machine.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And especially in a day of AI, you know, we've got all these other things, they have that human. Connectability, relatability, the caring, the connection.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so I think the, the key thing here, it really is this authenticity. Which means real, but also vulnerability, which means I let people see into what's real.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I love that for vulnerability. I love the term intimacy, but spell it this way into me.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Oh, you know, I let people see into me a little bit. I was with Dr. Leslie John.
Stephen M.R. Covey: She's a professor at Harvard business school. She does a lot of work at research on, on vulnerability. And how vulnerability builds trust. And she says that the leader always has this question, do I conceal or do I reveal? And, you know, the instincts are that as a leader, you kind of conceal so that you don't, you know, you don't want to get too vulnerable and open it up.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But If you appropriately reveal, you know, again, you can go too far and you can just, you know, you don't want people to lose confidence in you, but if you appropriately reveal, you know, you open yourself up a little bit. I'm human too. And that what the leader that chooses to reveal, builds trust so much faster than the leader that conceals.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Because why? They're relatable. They're not only authentic, they're vulnerable. They're open.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And I can see myself in them. So I say to people to not only declare your intent, declare, yourself, who you are, what you're about, how you like to work. My friend, Doug Conant, he's the former CEO of Campbell's Soup Company, and he turned around Campbell.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They went from, they were in the bottom 10 percent in engagement, according to Gallup, and they went to the top 10%. They went from worst to first, and they also did it on the financial side, you know, from the bottom quartile to the top quartile.
Shawn Pfunder: Amazing how that works.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And he said the number one practice that helped do this was him modeling, declaring myself to my team, because he says, I'm trying to take the mystery out of the relationship and just say, you know, I'm a human being working with another human being.
Stephen M.R. Covey: There's a connection here. People can relate to that. They're more committed to that. We work better together and there's no mystery behind this. And so. I've always focused on declaring your intent, you know, give the why behind the what, but also declare yourself, who you are, you know, be authentic, be vulnerable, builds trust, you work better together, you grow people and you get better results.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. I interviewed, uh, it was only, you know, a smattering at Wish, last place I was at, and it's probably 150 people about trust specifically. And just asked, I assumed it would be, I hadn't read your book yet. But I assumed it would be, they do what they say they'll do. I thought that that would be the core.
Shawn Pfunder: Everything would be that, like, this is how it works. And almost unilaterally, I would say almost every single person I chatted with, it was exactly that. If the leader shows me. That they're a human being that they're not putting on the airs of what I think it's supposed to be like to be a leader, command and control, command and conquer, lead the army, tell you what to do, issue orders.
Shawn Pfunder: And it got me thinking or wondering if there's so much evidence. And how that creates successful, innovative, creative, like they're able to come up with great solutions. And then, you know, shareholders, board members see the results, thumbs up. I don't know what you're doing, but just keep doing it. That's amazing.
Shawn Pfunder: What keeps organizations, leaders, people from sort of breaking out of this command and control model? What keeps organizations from doing this? And I also bring this up because I know there are listeners that That's great. I love all of this. That totally makes sense to me. How do we do that? How do I do that within an organization that might have more command and control sort of built in?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah, yeah. It is a great question, Shawn, because it, like you're saying, at one level, this seems just self evident. I know It does. Especially,
Stephen M.R. Covey: especially today. Yeah. And obvious. And yet our research shows that about nine outta 10. Organizations and leaders today still operate primarily out of a command and control base model of leadership more than a trust and inspire way.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And, you know, and so we might kind of know this, but we're not doing it and to know. And not to do is not to know. So we don't really know it yet because we're not applying it. And I think it's, there are a whole variety of reasons for it. Here's, you know, we're operating still in a command and control world for all of our progress is still a command and control world.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It's like, that's our native tongue. It's what we know. It's what we're good at. It's what we've grown up with. It's what our mentors and models have been. You know, we're coming at, you know, we're still deeply scripted in the industrial age. It's in our language, in our systems. And we talk about high potentials.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Well, talk about a growth mindset. That's just saying there's some people that have, we can have a growth mindset towards, but what about everyone else? We didn't label, just that language.
Shawn Pfunder: Just hearing it. You're like, Oh, they're picking out the hypos. I'm not on the list.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah. What does that communicate to everyone and so forth?
Stephen M.R. Covey: So in our language and our systems and our structure is very much still a command and control world. I was with a group of educators, these were superintendents of schools. They said, one reason why teachers are leaving the profession, yes, we don't pay them enough, but that they, we never have paid them enough.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Why are they leaving? And I said, we don't,
Stephen M.R. Covey: we're not trusting them. I said, look, they, we've given them responsibility for our children. And yet we don't trust them. And I put up an image of the thermostat in the homeroom that had a covered plastic thing and they can't set it themselves. Right. We don't trust them to control the thermostat in their own room.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Ugh. And you know, just, it was so, the command control was so deeply embedded. An entire cultures and that, you know, and that's going on. It's our native tongue and still most organizations today. And so, and then also old paradigms die hard. I use a metaphor on this, take bloodletting, you know, bloodletting started 3000 years ago with the Egyptians and then moved to the Romans and it continued, but it was still practice.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Commonly, in the, you know, 16, 1700s, even later, and yet it was in the 1600s that Samuel Weiss and others discovered that the, you know, the disease is not in the blood, the German theory and the like, so they disproved bloodletting, it doesn't, it's not real, it doesn't work. And yet, it persisted as a common practice for another couple hundred years.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I believe that command and control is modern day bloodletting.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That we're just so, it's so into us in our systems and structures that it's continuing. But then I also think there's personal barriers that get in the way. You know, and I'll, I'll name some of these. I, I, I described these in the Trust Inspired book as, you know, the five common barriers.
Stephen M.R. Covey: to becoming a Trust Inspire leader. And they include things like, well, I like this idea of being Trust Inspire, but this won't work here. Yeah. Not on my team, not with my boss or not in our company, not in our industry, not in my situation, you know, kind of, you know, Good idea, but this won't work here. And, you know, the context does matter.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It does make a difference. You know, we've got to model first and mentor. Maybe your boss is not trust and inspire. Maybe he or she is command and control, but that doesn't mean that you can't become trust and inspire with your people, your team. So this won't work here. Your boss only cares about results.
Shawn Pfunder: So deliver results. Deliver the results and do it in a trust and inspire fashion.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Do it in a trust and inspire fashion. Do it in a way that also grows people.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Do it in a way that inspires trust. Another. Barrier is kind of the fear based barriers. Okay. I'd like to do this, but what if I do this and I, it doesn't work.
Stephen M.R. Covey: What if I've been burned before? What if I lose control? What if I don't get the credit? Sometimes people, you know, if I trust others and they get the results. They also might get the credit. And I might be, have a scarcity mindset, or what if I'm not as confident as you think I am? I go
Stephen M.R. Covey: through a whole bunch of fear based scenarios and give you a way of kind of taking those on.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But yeah, maybe it might not work every time, but. Maybe you reconceive how you look at failure, fail
Stephen M.R. Covey: fast, fail forward, fail off and fail well, and learn faster and get better and innovate and change. And you know, you know, you can literally flip all of these. You can get better results when you trust people, they become more creative, more innovative.
Stephen M.R. Covey: It brings out the best in people. They rise to the occasion as we talked about.
Stephen M.R. Covey: You also might have, you know, what if I don't know how to let go? Yeah. So you teach people how to build a stewardship agreement with
Stephen M.R. Covey: expectations, with accountability, so that they haven't lost control, but they really can empower someone and still keep control.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But the control shifts from hovering over micromanaging to an agreement governing and going back to the agreement. But then also, you know, for some, they would never say this, but What if someone deep down feels like they're the smartest one in the room? No, they won't say it.
Shawn Pfunder: But it definitely happens.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And they often show up to that way to their people. The people might describe them that way. They would never say it of themselves, but I find maybe one that gets in the way a lot is kind of this idea of. This is who I am. You know, this is what's brought me here.
Stephen M.R. Covey: This is what has made me good. This is what I know is what I'm good at.
Stephen M.R. Covey: But I would, to that, I would just paraphrase my friend, Marshall Goldsmith. What got us here, won't get us there. And the style of leadership that maybe has taken us to where we are today. In a different world is not going to be where we need to go tomorrow in a new world of remote work and hybrid work and intentionally flexible work with younger generations and Gen Z have a completely different expectation of how they want to be engaged and led.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And with work becoming far more collaborative and interdependent and with technology changing, disrupting everything with AI, with all these things happening, we need a new way to lead in a new world of work. So maybe command and control got us to where we are today. But Trust Inspire is what's going to take us to where we need to go tomorrow.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so we got to kind of, you know, we are not our style. We can re script. We're not programs, we're programmers. So write a new program,
Stephen M.R. Covey: rescript around a better way to lead. And so these are all kind of just confronting the common barriers that get in the way. of kind of making the shift, making the leap.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Trust and inspire. Well, see, you could grow to be a model for Hugo Boss. You're really interested and had that right mindset. You talk about this in the book and what we've talked about so much of this comes back to that growth mindset, like abundant thinking, but the growth mindset being, you mentioned earlier that they might have a growth mindset for themselves, but not for their team, but it can't be thinking.
Shawn Pfunder: Is that really true, if you don't have one for your team? Because to have the growth mindset for yourself, you have to be ready to grow, to learn how to trust, to not just shrug your shoulders and say, Ah, this is the way that I am.
Stephen M.R. Covey: If you only have it for yourself and not your team, I'm going to say you're still deep into command and control.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And you're not seeing the potential, the greatness, or maybe you're seeing it in a few. That's the high potential idea, but not in everyone. Yeah. Everyone. And that side, I would say that you really don't have a true growth mindset, you know, as Dr. Carol Dweck talks about. I think of Satya Nadella at Microsoft.
Stephen M.R. Covey: I use him as a great illustration of a trust inspired leader. When he came in at Microsoft, You know, they were still big and had the name and the brand and size and everything. But in their own words, they were fading into less and less relevant. They were not innovating anymore. They were losing talent.
Stephen M.R. Covey: They were no longer the cool place to work. Their culture had actually become cutthroat competitive. You know, the scarcity and very competitive, but he comes in. Completely different kind of leader and completely different kind of leadership style. He truly was trust and inspire. He modeled the behavior that he wanted to see with humility, with empathy, with authenticity and vulnerability.
Stephen M.R. Covey: He trusted, he extended that trust. Why? Because he had a growth mindset toward everyone. So they moved from a management model to a coaching model. And he inspired by connecting with people through caring, but also connecting people to purpose.
Stephen M.R. Covey: The meaning, the contribution. So he modeled, he trusted, he inspired, he, different kind of leader.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And the growth mindset illustration is he really got into this, that we need to have, you know, as leaders, we need to have a growth mindset. He'd have some leaders come up to him and say, Hey, half my team has a growth mindset. The other half doesn't. Yeah. Here's what he said to that leader. That's on you.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Help them see that in themselves. So if they don't have it, help them come to see it. That's the leadership issue. You need to help them. In other words, he was saying, these are my words now, see the greatness in everyone. Your job as a leader is to help them come to see it in themselves, to help them have.
Stephen M.R. Covey: That growth mindset, that's not on them. That's on you as a leader to help them see it. Talk about a paradigm shift and, you know, but he was saying, that's your job as a leader is help others see what's inside of them. That's what leadership does. Brings out the potential, the greatness. It's, you know, it's differentiating between our performance and our potential, trying to achieve that potential, bring out the potential.
Stephen M.R. Covey: See it starts by seeing it because if the leader doesn't see it, How's the person going to see it?
Stephen M.R. Covey: And so that's the shift. It's a growth mindset toward everyone, seeing the greatness in everyone. That's powerful. And so when you model, when you trust, when you inspire, that's the kind of leadership that's going to truly unleash the potential inside of people.
Stephen M.R. Covey: We'll get better results. Cause again, we got to perform better and we'll also grow people, which is, they'll be happier, love greater wellbeing, greater energy, greater joy. So it'll be better for the business and better for the people. Isn't that what we want? Isn't that what we need? We've got to close those gaps.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, as expected, Stephen, this was inspiring and comfortable and wonderful. You, you, even in the course of our conversation have been a leader. You know, I mentioned at the top, I thought I was like, Oh, I hope I don't go into a command and control conversation where he's like, I'm going to make sure you're afraid of me and you know, I'm brilliant through the entire conversation.
Shawn Pfunder: You're inspiring, wonderful. I'm glad this is the work that you're doing. I just really appreciate you being here.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Well, thank you, Shawn. Let me say this, this is in you. This is you, you are trust and inspire as a podcaster. Again, I listened to a variety of different ones in preparation for this. This Cohesion podcast is terrific.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And you're great as a host because you, you know, you're bringing on guests. But you're, and your premise is that you see the greatness in your guests, you're trying to bring it out of them. I feel like you have with me, but also I love what you just said that you're not trying to impress. I think if our mantra is that we're trying to put service above self interest, here's my way of doing that, and I'm going to use my phrase for it, but I heard you kind of just say it.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Before I go into any podcast like this one, or give a speech. I remind myself this little personal maxim that helps me always try to put service above self interest. And I say simply this, seek to bless, not to impress. Seek to bless, not to impress. And that just tells my heart and my mind, Hey, what am I trying to do here?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Am I trying to impress anyone with knowledge and all this great erudite insight? Or am I trying to To bless, to add value, to make a difference, to, to connect and to care and to try to help and serve. And it gets my heart right. My mind right. Seek to bless, not to impress. That's you, you know, and, and it's what we're trying to do here is what leadership is about.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Leadership is not about. It's about us. It's about them. It's about trusting people, inspiring people, unleashing people, seeing the greatness inside of people, growing people.
Stephen M.R. Covey: And in the process, we'll also get better results.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Now my dad got the green and clean yard for the next 12 years. Didn't have to worry about it again, but he also grew the child.
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yeah. And brought up what the potential inside of me, and I saw myself differently, and then I can pay that forward and help bring it out in others, and it's just a better way to lead.
Shawn Pfunder: I think a simple way that I remember this is that you're not the hero of the story. You're the fairy godmother. They're Cinderella.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, you'll get them the shoes, the gown, get them the, but they got to go to the ball. You know, you're Yoda. They're Luke Skywalker. You know, you bless. I love that. Well, how else, where can our listeners find you? How can they follow you and what's coming up?
Stephen M.R. Covey: Yes, well go to TrustandInspire. com.
Stephen M.R. Covey: TrustandInspire.com is a website. There's a variety of videos and tools and things you can use to go deeper into these ideas and get the book and the like. But also I'm on, on LinkedIn, Stephen M. R. Covey on X and on Instagram at Stephen M. R. Covey. Love to have you connect with me, follow me. Again, TrustInspired.com is probably the best place to go deeper, learn more, and thank you, Shawn, for this opportunity to be with you, with your listeners, with your viewers.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, thank you.