Reading Covey's book THE SPEED OF TRUST, catchy title.
That someone like Covey could take the time and trouble to define the word "trust" -- only Covey would do that. And I love his definition:
It seems that people look for two characteristics, when they feel like trusting. (I love cubbyhole-holing)They look for
INTEGRITY (that one is easy to guess). And they look for, get this,
COMPETENCE, most amazing. But it makes perfect sense.
Let's say, you think about your father, or your ex-wife or ex-husband, or a boss you had, etc.
Fist you ask yourself if you trusted that person, and you know the answer immediately.
Then you ask yourself if they had integrity: my father had some integrity in some things, in my view. OK we'll go on to competence...yes competence in his career, even competence in his taste re some things...but totally incompetent in his relationship with my mother. Bottom line, there were many things about which I could not trust him and shied away from him.
Yikes, do I want to be like that? It is time for me to look at my own actions, my own behaviour and maybe clear some things up with my relationships, or especially relationships I've simply dropped: perhaps that is part of my incompetence...i can see that these were people I befriended, in integrity, but i slipped when I simply disappeared. Now they may be hurt, and what does that say about whether they can trust me?
I'm not sure if I'm making sense-here I am, just turned 70 - I could just be addle-pated.#
Do we trust integrity or do we trust competence?
ReplyDeleteI believe we trust what we need to trust at the moment and revisit later.
Ultimately we might trust only ourself...
Nearly a year ago now, heavens...if we're only going on intuition, I believe Mr. Covey is merely attempting on some levels to define intuition, as far as intuition is involved in trust. Intuition may be the word heleft out. Hi, Sylvie.
ReplyDelete