Creating Trust The Franklin Covey Way
Many of the readers of this leadership newsletter know tht I have served as a licensed facilitator for The Covey Leadership Center, then for Franklin Covey, for 25 years. During that time, I have been privileged to teach the course, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” to hundreds of Georgetown University employees.
Franklin Covey has grown into an admired global training company that has provided learning to many Fortune 500 companies, all branches of the U.S. armed forces and all levels of education from pre-schools through graduate schools.
In the course, “Building Trust: The Key to High Performance,” Franklin Covey identified these key areas and activities designed to foster high trust.
How many of these actions do you follow in your office?
Building High Trust in Peer Relationships
- Establish clear expectations with win-win agreements
- Hold true to commitments – Don’t overpromise and underdeliver
- Reinforce, praise and reward good performance continually
- Meet regularly to share contributions and added value with each other
Teamwork
- Celebrate teamwork as a way of life – Spread leadership to maximize individual growth
- Encourage risk taking and solution experimentation. Encourage new ideas and problem resolution
- Create and adhere to your code of conduct and feel it
- Hold informal get-togethers and retreats to build your team
Communication
- Examine communication and correspondence over the past few months – What enhances trust and what doesn’t?
- Establish “focus” meetings and hold them frequently – In-depth discussion about trust issues is the starting point for positive change
- Monitor data and systems that provide indicators of the costs of low trust and the rewards of high trust
- Embrace dialogue – Listen first to understand and then seek to be understood
Feedback
- Understand which policies and procedures tend to build trust, and which tend to diminish it – Work toward making trust-enhancing changes
- Provide ways to discuss the “undiscussables” with honesty and security – a key element of building high trust
- Encourage cross-group, cross-level feedback sessions
Building a high-trust culture will not guarantee that your office succeeds in implementing more successful products or services.
It will, however, maximize your opportunity to engage team members, heighten morale, recruit the best talent and retain your high-talent colleagues.
Once built, this kind of culture cannot be taken for granted. It must be nurtured like a garden, given care and attention on a regular basis. The rewards will be great, for both you and your teammates