conversations
What’s in a conversation? It’s the beginning of new ideas. A sharing of personal stories.
A start of meaningful relationships. This Pulse section called Conversations
highlights opinions, ideas, visions and personal anecdotes of CEOs and leaders from across industries.
Join the conversation. Send your questions and suggestions on leaders you’d like Pulse to profile.
B Y M A E M A Ñ AC A P - J O H N S O N
I
nspired by 25 years of interaction with some of the smartest leaders in the
world while leading the strategy for the best-selling book, The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People, by Steven R. Covey, Greg Link—along with coauthor Stephen M.R. Covey—introduced a leadership concept
eponymous to their new book titled Smart Trust.
“Every one of those leaders attributed their success to their ability to extend
trust in their organization,” Link recalls those conversations. Here, he offers
insights on how to use “Smart Trust” to create prosperity, energy and joy in a
low-trust world.
GREG LINK
PULSE: What is “Smart
Trust”?
Link: “Smart Trust” teaches
you how to trust people and
navigate in a low-trust world. “Smart Trust” is NOT “blind
trust.” The art of “Smart Trust” is the ability to gain judgment
and manage the risks of trusting people by balancing all
three—risks, analysis and the propensity to trust people.
What we found out based on our research is that, no matter
what business type, the hardest thing to do within an organization is to trust each other. That said, learning to extend “Smart
Trust” is the most jugular issue in leadership today.
P: In the book, you and your co-author, Stephen M.
R. Covey, state that beyond the social dimension of
trust, there is a financial dimension to it. What is the
economic value of trust?
L: The idea of trust having an economic value is the other
unique insight that we brought into the topic of trust. The
myth is that many managers downplay trust as a social virtue,
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May 2012
but Stephen and I contend that trust is a hard-edge economic
driver. Trust always impacts two things: 1) Speed, and 2)
cost. Think of relationships of high-trust. You can get things
done faster and it costs you less because you don’t have to
[constantly] check up [on your staff] and they are less likely to
commit a mistake. High-trust companies are three times more
profitable than low-trust companies.
P: How can business leaders, in the spa industry in
particular, use the principles of “Smart Trust” to help
increase employee engagement?
L: A good example of a high-trust company within the spa
industry is Ritz-Carlton. The upscale hotel chain empowers its
employees—from bellmen to waiters and everyone else in the
chain—to “spend” up to $2,000 to solve a customer service
issue. What this means is, if a customer during her breakfast
complains to the waiter that she didn’t have a comfortable
sleep because the air-conditioner didn’t work, a Ritz-Carlton
waiter is empowered to make a decision and say, “I will comp
your room so you won’t have to pay for your night’s stay.” In
other words, Ritz-Carlton trusts its employees to make its customers happy.