Trust & Inspire: Winning The Talent War Begins With This Culture Shift

Trust & Inspire: Stephen M. R. Covey’s Key To Unleashing Greatness In Others

With all the incredible books competing for your attention, it would be easy to overlook one of the best books on leadership published this month by the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center and current co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink and the FranklinCovey Trust Practice, Stephen M. R. Covey. In fact, Covey himself hesitated to write his latest book, Trust & Inspire , because he felt that the concepts of Trust & Inspire were both straight forward and obvious. What leader wouldn’t want to trust their team and inspire them to unleash their greatness?

And yet, as Covey rightly points out early in his book, “For all our progress in management thinking, however, little has changed for most people, teams, organizations and families. As Goethe said, 'to know and not to do is not to know.' While we understand much of this intellectually, putting it into consistent, deliberate practice is not the norm.” Well said.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Stephen M. R. Covey about his latest book and you can watch the full interview here:

How to “Win In the Workplace”

I’m sure you’re already well versed with both the need to attract and retain talent as well as the growing challenges associated with doing so. While talent acquisition has continued to grow as a strategic imperative in organizations, the global pandemic has exponentially increased these challenges. People are taking a good hard look at the companies they choose to work for and how their individual purpose, principles and values either align or do not align with their current and prospective employers.

The concept of “winning in the workplace” is about attracting, retaining, engaging and inspiring the very best people. And yet, Covey points out that the vast majority of companies today still operate from either a “Command & Control” or an “Enlightened Command & Control” paradigm. Both are far from the desired Trust & Inspire paradigm. This book was written to highlight the sizable gap between the culture that people want to work in and the reality of what most corporate cultures are actually like on a day-to-day basis.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Is An Example of a Trust & Inspire Leader

In 2014, Satya Nadella succeeded Steve Balmer to become Microsoft’s CEO. Harry McCracken from Fast Company put it bluntly when he said, “The Microsoft that Nadella inherited was regarded by both Wall Street and Silicon Valley as fading toward irrelevance.” In his book, Covey shares Nadella’s journey from taking the reins to present day. Changing Microsoft’s culture was Nadella’s number one goal. Why was that?

Covey shares that, “to succeed, you must win in the workplace by attracting, retaining, engaging and inspiring the best people. Nadella came in quietly and thoughtfully, with little to no swagger or hubris, and right away modeled a Trust & Inspire leadership style that ultimately transformed the company culture. He began by modeling the behavior he was seeking – humility, empathy, authenticity, personal growth, creativity, collaboration. His leadership paradigm was one of trusting and inspiring others.”

Covey goes on to share Microsoft’s employee survey with Nadella’s 92% approval rating as CEO as well as Microsoft itself being perceived as a “relevant and exciting place to work.” Simply put, Nadella changed the culture of Microsoft and took it from a $300 billion dollar market value to over $2 trillion. In Nadella’s own words, “Being a leader is a privilege you have. Your job is about being able to help people realize their best potential. That’s what, in fact, is expected of you.”

And Nadella is far from being an outlier here. Covey shares multiple examples of leaders who take it upon themselves to change their company’s culture from its current “Command & Control” to “Trust & Inspire” with continued success. My personal favorite is one about an impactful conversation Covey has with a woman I deeply admire.

Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, Wrote 400 Letters to Parents of Her Senior Executives

In his book, Covey shares a personal story of a conversation he had with Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo. When Nooyi visited her family in India, she was struck by all of the compliments people would give her mother about how well her mom had raised her. That got Nooyi thinking about the impact she could make by doing the same for the parents of her senior executives. As Covey shares, “The experience with her mother inspired Indra to write as many as four hundred personal letters annually to the parents of her senior executives. In the letters, she thanked the parents for their magnificent work in raising such good and capable sons and daughters.”

Take a moment to let that sink in. Could you imagine what that did for each executive? Could you imagine what that would do for your relationship if any one of your bosses took that action to share with your parents what great work they did in raising you? Covey shared, “One of her executives exclaimed, “My God, this is the best thing that’s happened to my parents. And it’s the best thing that’s happened to me.”

How powerful! Think about what kind of trust was built with that action. Consider how inspired each executive felt from that point forward. We know that we are so much more than who we show up as at work. By acknowledging the incredible job the parents did in raising their son or daughter, Nooyi was honoring the complete person and the family that raised them – not just the role that person plays at work.

The Parable of the Flea

I could continue going on and on about just how awesome Covey’s book is and why this book should make it to top of your reading list. Story after story and example after example of what it means to truly step into being a Trust & Inspire leader – it’s such a compelling culture shift that we all are capable of making in our workplace. I’ll end it with the parable of the flea that Covey shares that really stuck with me (and I’ve already been using it).

“When fleas are initially placed in a jar, they jump right out of it. But if a lid is put on the jar, the fleas hit the lid when they try to jump out of the jar. Over time, the fleas will jump only high enough to avoid hitting the lid. When the lid is then taken off, the fleas are fully capable of jumping right out of the jar – but their previous conditioning stops them from doing so. In many ways, Command & Control is the human equivalent of this type of conditioning. The limiting of potential is perhaps an unintended consequence of being managed like a thing.”

That really is the bottom line for me of this book. Command & Control puts a cap on who we are and how we express ourselves at work. We learn the rules and work within them in order to comply with a severely outdated “carrot-and-stick” approach to management. We are conditioned to do just enough to avoid getting hit with the proverbial stick and reach the proverbial carrot rewards and incentives.

Trust & Inspire leaders, in contrast, unleash greatness in their team by building trust and inspiring them to show up fully expressed. When your team can align their own personal purpose, meaning and contributions with the purpose, meaning and contributions of your company, they will surprise you and surpass anything that could ever be accomplished in the current Command & Control paradigm.

I urge you to explore where you may be showing up as a Command & Control leader and thereby limiting the growth of your team – however unintended and unintentional. Then make sure you read Stephen M. R. Covey’s, Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness In Others . It’s your roadmap to becoming a Trust & Inspire leader and becoming the culture you choose to have in your organization.

As Covey points out in his book and in our interview, anyone can be a Trust & Inspire leader. It begins with your own awareness of what it means to be one and then to have the courage and vulnerability to take the actions necessary to trust your team and inspire them to their greatness. I, for one, am incredibly inspired by Stephen M. R. Covey and am confident you will be to when you read his book (and watch our interview). Enjoy!

Bill Carmody is the bestselling author of the Three Rules of Marriage , and is the Chief Coaching Officer of Positive Intelligence . Watch more of his interviews on his YouTube Channel or follow him on LinkedIn .