Trust and Inspire Leadership: With Stephen M. R. Covey & David Kasperson [Podcast]

How would you like to sit down for an intimate conversation with one of the most well-known and respected authorities on the topic of trust and leadership? In this episode, you will get that chance. I’m delighted to share with you nearly an hour of amazing discussion with Stephen M.R. Covey and David Kasperson where we talk about their new book, Trust and Inspire, and explore the intersection between their work and Compassionate Accountability.

What’s In This Episode

• How did you discover the premise of this book?
• What does it mean to curate conditions where people can flourish?
• What are three styles of leadership and how are they different?
• What is different now about people and the world of work?
• What is the most important, foundational belief of a trust and inspire leader?
• Five reasons why vulnerability is so important for trust & inspire leadership.
• David shares a story of Stephen’s vulnerability in leadership.
• David and Nate co-create a new formula for Openness
• Why compassion and accountability are both critical for trust and inspire leadership.
• Why modeling is such a powerful leadership behavior.
• What is the difference between being trustworthy, and trusting someone?
• How do Trust and Inspire leaders approach conflict?
• Stephen and David’s views on The Compassion Mindset and the role of heart, head, and hands.
• How have Stephen and David been most challenged to upgrade their mindset and leadership behaviors?
• Is Trust and Inspire a journey, or destination?
• What are you inspired by these days?
• What would you invite people to do next?

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Listen To The Audio

Read The Transcript

Nate Regier: 

How would you like to sit down for an intimate conversation with one of the most well-known and respected authorities on the topic of trust and leadership? In this episode, you’ll get that chance. I’m delighted to share with you nearly an hour of amazing discussion with Stephen M.R. Covey and David Kasperson, where we talk about their new book, Trust and Inspire, and explore the intersection between their work and Compassionate Accountability®.

 

Hello, I’m Nate Regier, your host of the Compassionate Accountability Podcast. I’m the founder and CEO of Next Element, a global consulting and training firm helping organizations transform their cultures with Compassionate Accountability. I’m the author of four books about compassionate work, including my new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Get Connection and Build Results. Thank you for joining me. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, and review to help us reach more listeners, and also be sure to visit our website at next-element.com, where you can learn all about the work we do, as well as find all of our previous podcast episodes.

 

My guest on this episode of the Compassionate Accountability Podcast is probably familiar to most of my listeners. Stephen M.R. Covey is the New York Times and number one Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust, which has been translated into 26 languages and sold over two million copies worldwide. He is also the author of the newly released bestseller, Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others, which was named as the number one leadership book of 2022 by the Outstanding Works of Literature Awards. A sought-after and compelling keynote speaker, author and advisor on trust, leadership, ethics, culture, and collaboration, Covey speaks to audiences around the world. A Harvard MBA, he is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center that under his stewardship became the largest leadership development company in the world. David Kasperson is a co-author of Trust and Inspire and director of Speed of Trust speaking and business development at FranklinCovey.

 

We are fortunate to have both Stephen and David on the show. I think you will enjoy how their unique perspectives complement each other. This episode is a bit longer than most of mine because the conversation was so good. The first 30 minutes is more of a dialogue on topics in the book and the intersection with Compassionate Accountability. If you stick around for the second half, it’s as if you are in the front row of a Stephen Covey keynote. It’s worth every minute.

 

Stephen, it was such a pleasure to meet you at our book signings in ATD this past spring in New Orleans, and David too. Thank you both for joining me to talk about your evolving understanding of trust outlined in your new book.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:

Well, thank you, Nate. It was great to meet you there at ATD and I’m excited that we had this chance to do this podcast together.

 

Nate Regier:  

Well, I’m going to show you something. Yes, thank you, David. I’m going to show you something that I showed David earlier and I’m going to hold this up. For those of you that are watching this video, look at that. That is what we’re going to try to pack into 30 minutes, so hold on, strap in. We’re going to have a good time today. So the big thrust of Trust and Inspire is that the world of work has changed, but our style of leadership hasn’t. How did you come to this conclusion?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

Just looking around, seeing where people are at, seeing how the old model, we call it command and control, is still prevalent. It’s just what’s happened is we become a little bit more enlightened with it. We brought people elements into it and the like, but we still haven’t shifted the paradigm of how we view people, how we view leadership. So it’s become an enlightened form of command and control, and it tends to still be everywhere.

 

The data we have shows that it’s still about nine out of 10 organizations predominantly operate out of some version of command and control. Now, a lot have moved to the enlightened version, which is a better version, but it’s still kind of… I liken it to bloodletting. Bloodletting persisted for three millennia and forever, and even after it was disproven in the 1600s, it still persisted for another couple hundred years because it was so deep into the culture, into the thinking, into the mindset, and that’s kind of command and control. It’s just so deep into our thinking, our language, our systems, and our structures that we don’t even think about it. We’re like fish that discover water last. So we kind of see it everywhere. The world has changed and we got to catch our leadership up to the changed world.

 

Nate Regier: 

Yes. I want to talk about those three styles of leadership here and compare and contrast them in a little bit. You mentioned that leaders have to curate conditions where people can flourish. It may seem obvious, but it’s pretty radical notion that leaders actually try to create conditions rather than employees being lucky to have a job. What does it mean for leaders to curate conditions where people can flourish?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:    

Go ahead, David.

 

David Kasperson:      

Yeah. Essentially, there’s this old style approach we’re talking about. Oftentimes, it is best summed up as kind of carrot and stick. We’re looking for some kind of a lever either on the more enlightened side, positive thing, lots of carrots. On the authoritarian side, more sticks. The idea of creating conditions is much more looking at leadership like the idea of being a gardener, and that the power, the greatness, the potential, the capacity is in the seed, not in the gardener. So there aren’t levers that you can do from a gardening standpoint. I mean, there’s things that you can do to create conditions, but you can’t leverage on the seed. You can’t motivate the seed. You have to create conditions where it grows and flourishes itself, and that’s our viewpoint.

 

Nate Regier: 

What a great analogy, the lever versus the seed and how you curate those conditions. I love to garden. I love to work in my yard, so I totally get that. Well, let’s talk about these three styles of leadership. As I was reading this, I noticed there were some similarities from some stuff that we do, and I just want to lay this out for people. So the command and control, authoritarian command and control leadership, you describe it as what can I do to you? Lever, right, true lever. Then enlightened command and control ask the question, what can I do for you? You talked about how well it’s a little bit better, but it’s really not there yet.

 

But trust and inspire leadership says, “What can I do with you?” When I read that, I realized this is so in line with the Latin root of the word compassion. Compassion means with suffer. It’s not to, it’s not for, it’s with. Obviously, authoritarian command and control leadership is not compassionate, but enlightened command and control isn’t either because it seems like it undermines agency and self-determination. So only trust and inspire is really about being alongside people through it all, and I think most people don’t truly appreciate that this is what compassion is. I’m curious how you see it.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

Very similar, Nate, to how you just described it, because the authoritarian, what I can do to you, that’s fear based. We’ve seen a lot of that, but it’s not very effective. So I’m the boss. I’m in charge. I can demote you, fire you, et cetera, fear-based. Enlightened, much better. What I can do for you, that sounds pretty good, for you, but it’s also what you can do for me. So it is more of a transaction, a positive transaction. Fairness is a good thing, but still people are things and it is a transactional relationship. It’s motivation.

 

By contrast, trust and inspire, what I can do with you, what we can do together. So it does build upon this idea of compassion, of the calm, the with. It means with. It’s with each other, what we can do together. You’ve taken away the transactional element out of it. It’s gone from you to I to we. Now, it’s we and it’s us and it’s together, and it’s going with someone in their experience, in their suffering and so forth. That’s compassion. That’s trust and inspire, and we’re doing it with each other together. It’s different not just in degree, it’s really different in kind.

 

Nate Regier: 

Yeah, it is qualitatively different. It’s not just incremental from before.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

Right.

 

Nate Regier: 

Yeah. So your research shows that people are 14 times more likely to be engaged when they trust their leader. This is insane. This is astounding. Then you also talk about curating conditions. So what is different about today’s talented, motivated, excited, up-and-coming people that this is so true? What’s going on that’s different than it was 20, 30 years ago?

 

David Kasperson:  

I think part of it is that people have options today and choices than in the past.  We’ve gone from a world of multiple choice to one that today is of infinite choice. You look at the shift in technology and how that’s leveled a lot of playing fields. You have as many as five generations at work today who all have completely different expectations for what trust means, what leadership means, what accountability means, what that looks like, what that feels like and you put that into an environment where the way that work is getting done today. You could have somebody who has 20 years in a particular industry, but if it’s an industry that intersects with technology the way that they all do, you could have somebody who’s coming out of school who has more practical expertise in the application of that technology. Where you have people who now need to be on the same team collaborating to get the best kind of seasoned thinking that might be part of the industry or part of the work with the most current technology and application of doing that.

 

We’re just in an age of collaboration where it is not enough to move the chess pieces around the board again to manage things or put them where they go. It truly has to be collaborative and generative. The challenges that we’re going to answer five years from now, we don’t have the ability to do that on our own. I’ve heard Stephen make the assessment that we’re moving from an age where it used to be possible to be more of a know-it-all in a particular arena. Today it’s got to be being a learn-it-all, and that takes, again, collaboration, partnering, things that require an element of discretionary effort and engagement that again, you can’t leverage out of people. You can’t mandate creativity. It has to be inspired. The requirements are different.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

I’ll just add to that, Nate, that with people having so many choices and options and I can live here, work there, so the premise is that at the end of the day, people don’t want to be managed, but people do want to be led. They want to be trusted. They want to be inspired. When they’re not, they’re going to go find a place where they are because it is what they want today. They have different expectations with choices and options behind that, and that’s why it puts such a premium on creating that kind of culture, that you’re curating the right conditions to bring out the best in people so that we attract the best people, but also bring out the best in people, and not by management, but by real leadership and creating those conditions, curating that environment.

 

Nate Regier:  

People want to be led, not managed.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:  

Absolutely.

 

Nate Regier: 

We’re here with Stephen Covey and David Kasperson talking about the new book, Trust and Inspire. The world of work has changed. Old-school leadership that uses levers and treats people in a transactional way is no longer going to work. People want more. They want to be led. They want to work in a collaborative environment, and the nature of work these days requires it.

 

So in the book, there’s a chapter dedicated to five fundamental beliefs of a trust and inspire leader, and with each one you suggest what is the behavior that goes with that. If this is how I view myself and other people, then what do I do? This really feels like mindset to me. We might not have time to go into all five of these beliefs. So again, a plug for reading the book. But I’m curious, do either of you believe that there is a belief that’s more important or maybe foundational to the others?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:        

I think that the very first belief we highlight is maybe the most important, and that belief is this, that I believe that people have greatness inside of them because that’s how we view people and do we see the potential? Now, look, in some cases that greatness might be lying dormant. To use the seed metaphor, maybe the conditions aren’t there for the greatness to flourish, but we see the greatness inside of people even when they don’t see it in themselves. We see the greatness in others, even when other people don’t see greatness in them. Two people can look at the same third person, one seeing nothing, and the other see enormous potential and greatness.

 

I love how Henry David Thoreau put it. He said, “It’s not what we look at that matters. It’s what we see.” Do we see the potential and the greatness inside of people? Because when we do, then my job as a leader is to try to unleash people’s potential, not to try to contain or control them. When I see them differently, I now want to bring out the best in them because I see it in them, and I want to help them come to see it in themselves. So I see it and then I communicate it to them so that they come to see it, and then I develop it and then I unleash it.  See, communicate, develop, unleash potential, but it always starts with seeing. So I think to me that’s in a sense the foundational belief because it’s what enables everything else to come about. Because if you don’t see it, then suddenly we’re not focusing on unleashing greatness and potential if I don’t even see it to begin with.

 

Nate Regier:   

I’m reminded of another quote, Wayne Dyer, one of our favorites, Wayne Dyer said that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, and it’s such a wonderful example of this. Again, we’re talking about mindset and I want to get back to that later about how important it is, the choices we make about the way we want to see ourselves in each other, because that changes everything from that moment forward. Thank you for identifying one. There’s four other amazing ones in there, so check it out in the book. Another theme that you talk about that I really resonated with was the importance of vulnerability and leadership. We’ve been seeing this trending in more and more research on it. Our research shows that the leaders who are open are way more trusted. They have stronger teams. Even in the military, it’s true. I’m curious what else you might share about the power of vulnerability that you’re seeing these days for trust and leadership?

 

David Kasperson: 

Yeah. We look at a couple of things when we talk about vulnerability specifically, which in and of itself is a really powerful attribute. When we look at the stewardship that we have as leaders to model the openness and vulnerability that we’re looking for, that really inspires, we combine the idea of vulnerability with authenticity. Sometimes people look at those things as very similar, and they do have some natural alignment, but they’re not the same. To give you an example, a bull in a china shop is completely authentic. It’s exactly what you would think a bull in a china shop would do, and a lot of command and control leaders come across that way. The problem is that a bull in a china shop is not very open. It’s not very approachable. So you combine this sense of real authenticity, bringing your best self to who you are, but also making space and room for other people to do the same, And that creates, again, an openness to bring your very best and marry it with somebody else’s very best.

 

If we don’t do that, if we’re just coming across as authentic or strong or courageous without bringing a sense of openness, vulnerability, or humility, we’re just going to get people who are, again, following. You’re setting the stage for having a lot of great programming, but you’re not developing any other programmers. Again, part of the idea of being a learn-it-all and the way that knowledge is changing, if I’ve got five people on my team, if I’m not open and vulnerable to their creative genius, their mistakes, creating what Amy Edmondson would describe as psychological safety, we won’t get the kind of creativity, collaboration, engagement, involvement that otherwise comes. It can be a scary kind of a thing. But the best leaders that I’ve known, some of the ways that I’ve found out they’re the best leaders that I’ve known is that they’ve modeled how to make mistakes or how to overcome a specific challenge of their own, and they ask for help.

 

I’ll give you one just real quick acknowledgement. My second day on the job when I was hired by Stephen almost 19 years ago now, he had done this conference call back in the day on a telephone instead of what we’re doing now where he’d taken questions and things. I had not met him yet. I’d been hired by another team member. In our office that he was in, I was in the same office, but he was in a separate room. He’d come into the office that I was in after doing this call and introduced himself, said, “Nice to meet you. Welcome to our team. Glad to have you here.” His first question to me was, “What do you think I could have done better on that call?” In what we’d just done. I didn’t know how to respond.

 

Again, you saw this authenticity with asking the question, but this openness that it wasn’t a technique. He was serious. He wanted to know from my perspective what he could have done differently or better. We’re different generations, grew up in different environments, different leadership styles, and that created a leveling of that playing field. The management structure still existed, the hierarchy of his role and mine. We were on different levels operating that way, but we were collaborating eye to eye in our very first few minutes together. So that again, just sets the tone.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:    

Yeah. Thank you, David. Can I just add this to that discussion, Nate? What vulnerability does is it makes the person relatable. I can see myself in the leader, and that’s actually more important than a leader that they don’t see themselves in, that is trying to seem rather than to be, and because that is kind of like they’re putting on an air, putting on front. But when I see myself in them that they’re real, they’re authentic, they’re even vulnerable within boundaries, you can go too far.

 

I was with Dr. Leslie John from Harvard Business School, and she says, “The leader’s dilemma is do I reveal, do I conceal?” The leader that more appropriately reveals a little bit about themselves, who they are, and they’re not trying to put on an air and put on a front, pretend there’s something that they’re not, someone that they’re not, that within boundaries, that that leader is far more relatable, far more real, and people not only identify with them more, they trust them more. To your point, what your research shows, they trust them more. You build that trust faster. Can I relate? Because that relatability matters.

 

Nate Regier:  

Yeah, that’s so important. I love how you talk about reveal versus conceal. Our research on self-efficacy, we’re always trying to improve efficacy. One of the things we’ve noticed is that coping role models actually gray self-efficacy more than mastery role models. In other words, coping means you’re experiencing a role model who is learning and growing in the moment, which means they’re being vulnerable. Mastery role models get it perfect every time. When I watched the Jack Nicklaus putt that was curated a thousand takes until they showed us the one that was perfect, I can never be like that. David, I think you might’ve just invented a new formula here. You said that openness equals vulnerability plus authenticity. I don’t know if you intended that, but that might be a new discovery here, and I love that because authenticity is, “Hey, I’m just telling it like it is. I’m being truthful.” But vulnerability means is I’m also appreciating the impact on other people and being relatable and being human, and that’s truly what openness is. Thank you.

 

David Kasperson:  

Nate, I think one thing to bring your world into this as well, what you just described, it is the balance of these two things together. You could see how somebody could be authentically really driven behind accountability, for example. But if without an element of vulnerability that’s required to have a sense of compassion, you can’t have a level of Compassionate Accountability without both of those things being together. Too much accountability, without enough compassion, you know the formula. Too much accountability without compassion doesn’t work and neither does too much compassion without accountability, people don’t grow. So really-

 

Nate Regier:   

So true. So true.

 

David Kasperson:  

… it might be a different word, but I think this is a formula that you’ve been really just nailing for a long time.

 

Nate Regier: 

Well, thanks. Appreciate it.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:      

Yeah. We love how in your Compassionate Accountability, you’re really taking both of those words. They’re both important. Often, the greater need is for this compassion, but you’re not saying, “Let’s get rid of accountability.” No, it’s and. It’s Compassionate Accountability, and that’s what the whole modeling chapter in this book. So it’s authenticity and vulnerability, humility and courage-

 

Nate Regier: 

Well, let’s talk-

 

Stephen M.R. Covey: 

… empathy and performance, combination.

 

Nate Regier: 

Well, I want to talk about modeling. That is so important. In fact, in chapter five, you talk about modeling is one stewardships of trust and inspire leadership, and it’s so important because it seems these days I’m just seeing it more and more. So many people are out there preaching and telling everyone else what to do and less time just being it, doing that thing. Is there anything else you want to add about the power of modeling?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey: 

I would just say this, we’re always modeling, always. The question is what are we modeling? We’re modeling at home. We’re modeling in our neighborhood and our community. We’re modeling at work all the time. What are we modeling? Are we modeling the behavior that we would like to see? We want to see more openness and more transparency. Are we the ones that first model the openness and the transparency? We want to see more respect? Do we model respect? Do we want to see more compassion and feel more compassion? Are we the ones that go first in modeling the compassion to truly go with someone in their experience, in their journey, in their suffering? Do we go first?

 

See, the main point in modeling is that leaders go first. Someone needs to go first. Leaders go first. They model the behavior that they would like to see and to experience. They’re not waiting on anybody else. They’re leading out. They’re going first. By doing that, they make it safe for others to follow. By doing that, they’re also showing the way. They’re not saying, “Hey, do as I say, not as I do.” They’re saying, “I’m going first. I’m modeling what I would like to see.” If you have company values, do you model the values? Do you go first? That’s the idea, leaders go first.

 

Nate Regier:    

So there’s another. I want to shift gears a little bit. There’s a great distinction you make in the book between being trustworthy and trusting. I think that’s a really important distinction. Will you unpack that for us?

 

David Kasperson: 

Yeah. This is a topic that Stephen put out in Speed of Trust in 2006 and been working on it for a while before that. So in this space for 20 years, more than 20 years. As we’ve done work with clients, especially with senior leadership teams, who would really make a deliberate focus on this topic of trust and really bringing this to bear, understanding the economic impact that it has on speed and cost and how you do everything that you do. What we would see is that we are not in an environment where organizations are filled with just untrustworthy people, and that happens in some cases. But our bigger challenge is that today we’re filled with, organizations and teams in particular are filled with trustworthy people who struggle for all sorts of valid and meaningful reasons to give trust to other trustworthy people.

 

This modeling piece really brings to bear your own moral authority and your own credibility, your own trustworthiness in essence. But if we stop there, that just means we’ve got a team full of good, credible people who are still operating in silos, not collaborating, not working well with each other, and it really is just taking it all the way to giving meaningful trust. That’s hard.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

Yeah. In fact, Nate, it’s so interesting. To David’s point, you could have two trustworthy people working together and yet no trust between them even though they’re both trustworthy if neither person is willing to extend trust to the other. So it’s kind of a reformulation of how to look at this, that if trust is the outcome we want, a high trust relationship, high trust team, high-trust culture, yes, we need to be trustworthy. We earn that. That is the modeling. We demonstrate our character and our competence, but it’s not enough to merely be trustworthy in order to have trust. Especially we as leaders also need to be trusting, need to give that trust. Trust is both earned and given. We find the greater gap in that equation of trustworthiness times trusting equals trust, the greater gap, especially with senior teams, is less that people aren’t trustworthy and more that we’re not trusting enough. Again, leaders go first in being trustworthy and trusting, and we need more of that.

 

Nate Regier:  

I’m shocked. Sometimes we will poll a group and say, “Hey, what would it take for you to trust someone?” They start listing all these things and the entire list is what someone else needs to do first. “They got to do this, they got to do this,” and they never mention anything about themselves. What it would take for me to trust someone is for me to trust someone. It’s always what they do. So there’s an interesting double standard of holding people hostage that are probably trustworthy people. So thank you for clarifying that distinction.

 

David Kasperson:  

There’s another element of this that’s kind of a hidden challenge. One of the themes that pops up all throughout the book, and I’m sure we’ll come to this, is the reality of where sometimes our style will get in the way of our intent. Like these fundamental beliefs or trusting, for example, we’ve measured this inside leadership teams and organizations for decades. We’ll ask a question of senior leaders, we’ll ask, “Do you trust those that you lead?” They’ll say, almost without exception, “Of course, we trust the people that we lead.” We’ll ask the people that they lead, “Do senior leaders trust you?” and you’ll see this really large gap. It’s because where my style might get in the way, my intent is as a leader, oftentimes we’re answering a different question.

 

See, if I’m asking leaders, “Do you trust the people that you lead?” a lot of times they’re answering the question of, “Do you have a feeling of confidence? Do you have confidence in those that you lead?” They’ll say, “Well, yeah, I do have a feeling of confidence.” But when you ask the people on the team, they’re answering the question of, “Do your senior leaders actively give you meaningful extensions of trust?” They’re not answering the question, “Do senior leaders feel confident in you?” No, they’re wanting to know whether the rubber meets the road. Do my senior leaders give me opportunities to grow, to learn, to make mistakes, to have challenges? It’s really this stewardship of trusting where the majority of the just magnificent growth takes place, because again, you can’t just structure that for somebody, it has to be given. There’s risk to it, and that’s where it sometimes gets scary.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:    

Yeah.

 

Nate Regier:  

Thank you for clarifying that. That’s so important.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:        

Yeah. Hey, let me add one little story that just happened. So I was in Metzingen, Germany meeting with Daniel Grieder, CEO of Hugo Boss, big global fashion retailer. He was brought in from the outside at Hugo Boss. He told me this story. He’s in the first week on the job, 17,000 employees. He’s brand new. He doesn’t know them. They don’t know him. So he gets together with his top 100 leaders and he says to the top 100, he says, “Team, we have a choice. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. So our choice is this. We could spend the next year getting to know each other, determining whether or not we can trust each other, whether you can trust me, whether me, I can trust you. We could do that. If we did, I think we’d waste a year or we could start from day one and trust each other.”

 

He said, “Team, this is where I come out on this.” He says, “I want you to know something.” He looked around to the 100 and he says, “I trust you. I trust you. I’m asking you trust me back. Together we can create a whole new way of working together, a whole new culture based upon trust, and I’m going first, I trust you. Trust me back.” It was really quite remarkable because he didn’t know them. But here’s his thinking, his starting point was, “We hire great people at Hugo Boss. Look at this. Look at the track record. I’m going to start with trust.” That’s smart to start with trust and until proven otherwise, not to your point, Nate, “I need to see this, this, and this, and then I’ll trust you.” No, I start by trusting you and we’ll go farther faster.

 

So they created a five-year plan with all the metrics you’d expect. They were at the time two years into the plan. Daniel said, “We are achieving at year four of the metrics. We’re two years ahead of schedule because we are moving at the speed of trust.” But he went first. He was trustworthy and he was trusting. By being trusting, he unlocked the potential of the talent a lot faster than if you tried to wait for people to show that they earned it.

 

Nate Regier:    

What a great example of compassion, because compassion says, “We’re going to struggle together,” which means I’m going to take the risk of trusting you and you’re going to take the risk of trusting or being trustworthy. Whereas old school says, “You go first.” So good, so good. We could go on a whole tangent down there, but I want to talk-

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

I know.

 

Nate Regier:

… about chapter eight, you talk about stewardship agreements. This is gold. This chapter is so good because you get down to the nitty-gritty of, “It’s just not theories and models, but let’s talk about actually how accountability is an important part of how trust is operationalized.” Of course, I’m excited about that because we do a lot of work in conflict because we believe that conflict is neither good nor bad. It’s the energy in the gap. The real question is how are we going to be stewards of that energy? So I’m curious, how do trust and inspire leaders approach conflict?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:  

With empathy and with compassion, to your point. They see actually that maybe it’s in the conflict, in the differences that that could be the source of creativity of innovation. So they don’t view differences as necessarily, like you say, bad. But actually, if we can learn to value the differences and it’s in those differences, that could be where there’s possibilities, creativity, innovation. We can come up with something where one plus one equals three in a way that maybe you couldn’t do if everyone saw the world the same, didn’t have any differences. But if people don’t trust each other, those differences can be divisive and can tear people apart, and it results in conflict and it’s an unhealthy conflict, but if you can build that trust and extend the trust, be compassionate.

 

You’re compassionate when you show empathy. You’re compassionate when you extend trust. You’re compassionate when you assume positive intent. You might have a different approach to it, but I believe your intent is good, and I assume positive intent. By leading out with that, you’re basically setting the frame for there to be some trust created. With that trust, you might find that once you understand each other, your different viewpoints, that maybe you can actually, with mutual understanding, create something better than you could have on your own. So in a sense, that conflict could be the source, the very source of innovation, of creativity, of possibilities and opportunities if we can trust each other, have that compassion.

 

Nate Regier:  

Yeah, I believe the purpose of conflict is to create, and so with the right conditions that can become possible instead of all the drama we see everywhere in the world. I said I was going to come back to mindset. It’s popular now. Everyone’s talking about mindset. You mentioned a couple in the book. You referenced growth mindset, abundance mindset. I want to run another mindset by you. The compassion mindset, since this topic has come up, in our Compassionate Accountability model, we talk about a compassion mindset which sees ourselves and other people as valuable, capable, and responsible. What that means is that everyone is inherently valuable, everyone is capable of positive change, and everyone is 100% responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, no more, no less. I would suggest that all three are necessary. I see a theme throughout the book where you’re talking about the heart, you’re talking about the head, and you’re talking about the hands, which I think really aligns with this idea of humans are inherently valuable. We’re capable of solving problems, but we’re also responsible for how we behave. I’m just curious your perspective on that.

 

David Kasperson:  

Nate, I love the way you just framed that. You have the hands, the head and the heart. I recently watched an interview with Brené Brown. I think it was in a PBS interview, and she had quoted Minouche Shafik. I think it’s from the London Business School where Minouche Shafik had said that leadership used to be about muscle. She said, “Today it’s about the brain, and in the future it will be about heart.” For us, we view that as this, it used to be about this authoritarian command and control, or in your world you might say it used to be all about accountability. Then you brought more compassion to it where it became more about the brain, and we see that as enlightened command and control because it is more… The brain allows us to find ways of getting to fairness and meaningful transactional exchange, again, which is a good thing. The heart is a deeper different idea in kind, and it gives you the ability to leverage all three of those assets and resources. It’s the combination of these three areas in a way that’s meant to serve.

 

One of the fundamental beliefs of a trust and inspire leader is that they put service above self-interest. That’s not meant to be altruism. It’s recognizing that my job as a leader in unleashing greatness in other people is that by helping them and the needs that they have as a whole person, mind, body, heart, spirit, that enables, really enables a level of self-interest. That’s a combined mutually creative approach that you can’t get in any other way. So I love the way you’re describing all three of these areas coming into play as compassion because it really is only by recognizing that we are with somebody else in the struggle, that we move beyond competing or some kind of a scarcity mindset where we truly can again get to something new.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:  

Yeah, that’s beautiful, David. That’s beautiful. I would emphasize this within that construct, that this compassion and this compassion mindset, I love your work on that, Nate, and what’s in there that it includes at least a couple of our fundamental beliefs that people have greatness inside of them. You’re seeing them as responsible and capable and valuable, but also that they’re a whole person, the body, heart, mind, spirit. So they bring their whole selves to work, and you want to tap into all aspects of that, not just any one, but also that it’s that compassion that is what also will inspire people.

 

People will be inspired through purpose. We talk about trust and inspire. We’ve hit the trust part. We’ve got to extend that trust, be trustworthy and be trusting, modeling and trusting, but we also want to be inspiring and inspiring other people is actually a learnable skill. That’s a paradigm shift. We’ve often conflated inspiration with charisma thinking you got to be charismatic to inspire. They’re different things. So inspiring others is learnable. The first step in inspiring others is if you show genuine care, concern, compassion, going with someone in their experience, showing up for someone, being there for someone, that inspires them. They’re moved to a different level. It’s more than motivation, it’s inspiration. It lights a fire within them. That fire, once lit, can burn on for months and compassion is how it’s activated. So love, again, this approach, this work that you’re doing,

 

Nate Regier: 

What a hopeful message that it is learnable. How often are we working with leaders of all ages, “Oh, I can’t learn this. Only my mom is compassionate,” or “I can’t do this, or whatever.” What a beautiful thing. You’re seeing every day that people are learning and able to do this and get better at it. We’re seeing it where our outcomes metrics are showing that it’s possible. So we got to land this plane at some point. Since we’re talking about being about learnable, that this stuff is learnable, I’d love to turn, hold the mirror up. I am curious, this whole book is about the evolution of trust in leadership. It invites leaders to upgrade their understanding and practice of leadership, upgrade their mindsets, upgrade their heart. I’m curious, along this journey, where have you each been most challenged to upgrade your mindset in leadership behaviors?

 

David Kasperson: 

I’m happy to start. This is an ongoing thing for me. In fact, I was really inspired, Stephen. I got to see Stephen at the World Business Forum in New York just a couple of weeks ago, and it was sponsored by our friends at the Texas Tech System university system. There was a Q&A that Steve Sosland led with Stephen and asked this just beautiful question. He said, “Is trust-inspire a journey or is it a destination?” Stephen just looked at him and smiled and said, “Yes,” and he gave some great framing because the biggest barrier we’ve found to becoming a trust-inspire leader for most people tends to be that we think we already are one, and that shows up because we look at those fundamental beliefs and we intellectually agree with them. It’s kind of like the same idea of the trusting question of asking a senior leader.

 

I agree I have confidence in things, but where it goes off is where my style gets in the way of my intent. So in that sense, it’s a journey where we’re constantly asking ourselves the question of how am I showing up for other people? Where could my style be getting in the way of my intent? Yeah, I couldn’t tell you if I’m a trust-inspire leader or a trust-inspire parent or spouse. You’d have to experience that by talking with somebody who I’ve worked with. I could describe to you my experience of having a trust-inspire leadership experience with Stephen all day long, but it would be incongruent for Stephen to run around saying, “I am a trust-inspire leader.” You can’t say that it’s a destination that way.

 

It is a destination in the sense that where this becomes really powerful for most people, as uncommon as this is holistically, 92% of leaders and organizations are still operating in command and control. Where it really does become common… We’ve asked this of thousands of leaders, and my guess is your experience is the same. Everybody has somebody who’s been this kind of a leader for them where they’ve been on the receiving end of trust-inspire leadership. You wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing if you didn’t have multiple of those in your life and in your experience.

 

Where for me it becomes clear is constantly answering the question of where could my style be getting the way of my intent? When we have meaningful relationships with other people where we are open and vulnerable, they can tell you that. I’ll give you my wife’s favorite one that she says to me. I tend to be more on the bringing maybe more vulnerability than authenticity sometimes to our relationship. If I’m trying to give her bad news, she’ll say, “When you give me bad news, too often you do that in a way where you try to control my reaction to it in the way that you over-frame it or you soft pedal around things because I need you to be more straight and honest with me.” And so I am not meaning to be controlling, but I end up being that way with a positive intent, but it keeps her from being able to have an authentic response to something. So that’s specifically for me with maybe some large overlay of where, again, it’s ongoing.

 

Nate Regier: 

I can relate to that. In our model, we would say that you were taking too much responsibility for someone else’s feelings. They’re responsible for their feelings. I’m responsible-

 

David Kasperson:   

Without their permission.

 

Nate Regier:    

… for how I show up. Ah, thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. Stephen, how would you answer that question?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:  

Yeah, it’s a great question. For me, the journey and the destination. The destination is the idea that it’s aspirational. It is one thing to say we need to move away from command and control. Okay. Then what do we need to move toward? In that sense, that’s where the destination of trust and inspire is something. It’s aspirational. I can set a standard of what’s possible. That gives me hope. It gives me a vision. But having said that, I’m on the journey and fall short time and time again.

 

David described it. My intent is trust and inspire. My style often shows up still sometimes as command and control, and especially when the pressure’s on, especially when things have to happen fast. It just happened to me yesterday where the pressure was on, I had to make quick decisions. It was fast, and I just went for efficiency and I went back to command and control, my native tongue. I’ve learned to become trust-inspire, but it’s an acquired tongue. There’s times where I show up as command and control when the pressure’s on and the stress is there. So just becoming mindful of that, aware of that, recognizing that between what happens to me and my response, there is a space.

 

Nate Regier:  

There is space.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:     

My father taught that in seven habits, and I choose my response and I choose to be trust and inspire because too often my style still gets in the way of my intent. So I’m on the journey too, and so I try to assess that. My whole goal is with people, especially those I’m working with, I want them to feel about me that I’m their champion, I’m their advocate. So I have a little expression where I say this, I want the people that work with me to feel this mantra coming from me. My passion is your potential. And that’s what drives me is to bring out the best in you because it’s about you. That’s what leadership, is about others, about unleashing them, seeing that greatness, that potential. My passion is your potential. I want to show up that way. I don’t always show up that way, but I want to. My intent is good. I want to now try to better align my style with my intent.

 

Nate Regier: 

I feel that passion. I feel the enthusiasm from both of you. It’s just wonderful to have that energy here in the room. What a great conversation with Stephen Covey, David Kasperson and the book Trust and Inspire. So we’ve talked about so many great topics. Something that I would love to just hear from you, just towrap it up, anything you’re particularly enthusiastic about these days or just want people to know or maybe something about the book that we didn’t talk about that is so important?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:      

The first is how aligned this trust-inspire messages with you and your work, Nate, on Compassionate Accountability. That’s inspiring to David and to me. We talked about this beforehand and there’s a beautiful alignment of the core underlying principles and message behind this. That’s why there’s such a resonance and a connection with you because we’re just coming at a similar principle with different angles and approaches and insights that we’re bringing to it, but it is beautiful what you’re doing, the work that you’re doing. So we’re humbled and honored to be part of this with you.

 

Then the second thing would simply be, and David teed this up, the idea that just like we’ve all probably have had some trust-inspire leaders, mentors, figures in our lives, people who believed in us, maybe who believed in us more than we believed in ourself at the time, who had confidence in us, who took a chance on us, gave us an opportunity. We’ve each have had such mentors. If you think about it long enough, you can come up with examples in your life of that. I can, I bet you can Nate, I know David can as well. So what if we were to turn that on its head and flip it and pay it forward and say, what if we could become that kind of person, that kind of leader to another, just like someone has been to us?

 

What if all we did, as you walk off this, as we leave the podcast, what if each listener or viewer were to just say who, what if we were to transform one relationship, who in my personal or professional life would gain enormously by becoming more trusted and inspired by me? You’re paying it forward. Just like someone who’s done that for you, you do that for another. We’d love to do it with everyone, but I’ve learned start with one because if you can do it with one, you can do it with another. That’s a really practical way to apply some of these ideas of saying, “I’m going to become a trust-inspire person, mentor, leader to this person in my life.” It could be a child at home, it could be a colleague at work, but it’s a great way to think about it. Go first.

 

Nate Regier:

Ah, thank you. David, anything you want to share?

 

David Kasperson: 

Yeah, I’d add to that maybe just a tool or nuance for it that I think again fits beautifully in your world. I think we mentioned this a little bit when you and I spoke last time, Nate. Accountability is such a powerful tool for growth. We can’t grow without it. Where we get stuck sometimes in our language, the term gets used of hold people accountable. We will try to frame hold ourselves accountable first and maybe others accountable second. But it’s that word hold that I think makes the big difference for me. In one context, sometimes when people hear, hold someone accountable, you hear hold in the terms of a holding cell. It’s kind of a containment thing. It’s something being done to you.

 

The heart side of that is what do you do if you’ve got a child who’s in the struggle, who’s crying? You hold them. That kind of holding someone accountable is really being in the struggle with them. I think that as you look at Stephen’s question of who could be more trusted and inspired by me. And the seed already knows where it’s growing, people already have things that they want to be accountable to for their own growth. If you can understand where your opportunity to influence somebody, intersects with what their goals are, you can really hold them in accountability. I think that’s an opportunity for really the basis of leadership.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:  

That’s compassion.

 

Nate Regier:   

Wow. That circles all the way back to how do we create conditions, a holding environment for people to flourish with trust and inspire leadership. So the last thing I usually ask people is how can people learn more? But that’s a question that is so obvious with you two. Anybody can go find out what to learn more by just typing your name in Google. I’d like to know from each of you what is the next step you want people to take right now when they end this podcast?

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:   

Well, for me, I already said it. I really invite each listener or viewer to really self-reflect, think of who has trusted and inspired you in your life, become inspired by that, the person that believed in you, and then you turn that on its head and say, “Who can I be that kind of person for another just like someone has been for me?” If that’s all you do, that could be profound. If transforming one key relationship is the most significant thing each of us can do.

 

I love the Dag Hammarskjöld quote, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, that said that it is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses. It’s just basically saying be compassionate. Be with one. Go with them in their struggle. Become trust and inspire to one person, see what happens there and be inspired by what happens there to give a vision of what’s possible.

 

David Kasperson:    

One piece maybe I’d add to that is Stephen framed this idea of thinking of a trust-inspire leader for you and then paying that forward. When you think of that trust-inspire leader, in and of itself, that experience tends to be very inspiring because you reflect and you feel a sense of gratitude. You want to take that to the next level. If it’s possible, I’d invite you thank that person. Find a way to communicate to them that, “Hey, I thought about a leader who’s really influenced me today and you were that person.” It’s never been more accessible than it is today with social media and ways of connecting with people. Sometimes that’s somebody who might not be somebody you can connect with. Maybe it’s somebody who’s passed away. If that’s the case, I’d find a way to share their story. Post about it, talk about it, share with somebody else what this person did for you, and you’ll find yourself not only inspired to do the same in what Stephen’s asked, but also with a really powerful model of somebody who’s operated this way as well.

 

Nate Regier:  

What a great finishing invitation is. Find that person, pay it forward, and then thank them. Stephen Covey, David Kasperson, thank you so much for being here, for walking the talk, for embodying all that you care about, all that you’re passionate about and for being here and sharing your wisdom and your experience. Thank you so much.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey: 

You’re welcome, Nate.

 

David Kasperson:

It’s good to be with you, Nate.

 

Stephen M.R. Covey:       

Thank you for hosting us and having this dialogue. We’re grateful. Thank you.

 

David Kasperson:  

We are co-purposed with you, so we’re grateful to be doing this work together.

 

Nate Regier:

Thanks for joining me on this amazing episode with Stephen Covey and David Kasperson. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Compassionate Accountability Podcast. What struck you? What can you take and use today? I would love to hear from you. If you haven’t already, pick up a copy of my new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. If you’ve already read the book, I’d appreciate your review on Amazon. Contact us today to learn more about how Next Element helps companies transform their cultures with Compassionate Accountability. Remember, embracing both compassion and accountability is the secret to great leadership and the roadmap for thriving cultures and strong brands.

 

Thanks for joining me, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Compassionate Accountability Podcast. What struck you, what can you take and use today? I’d love to hear from you. And if you haven’t already, pick up a copy of my new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. If you’ve already read the book, I’d appreciate your review on Amazon. Contact us today to learn more about how Next Element helps companies transform their cultures with Compassionate Accountability. And remember, embracing both compassion and accountability is the secret to great leadership, and the roadmap for thriving cultures and strong brands.

Copyright, Next Element Consulting, LLC 2024