|
A must read Top Down for anyone in a position of trust or with supervisory responsibilities over others within the organization.
The information is fair (at best). It retells you what intuition and experience told you long ago.
First, I listened to this book as an audio download and although I generally like it when an author reads the book, that was not the case for this one. In light of the recent financial crisis and events that led or contributed to the current recession, the topic of this book is both timely and enduring. He uses financial terms as a concrete way to convey the cost of low trust and the benefit of high trust, describing the former as a trust tax and the latter as a trust dividend. The book includes a multitude of practical applications and pushes the reader to reflect on his or her own behavior.Despite the fact that I have recommended this book, I do so with some caveats. Those examples got very tiresome. The quickest way to make a withdrawal, he insists, is to violate a behavior of character, and the quickest way to make a deposit is to demonstrate a behavior of competence.
His reading style has a hesitating tempo to it that comes across as patronizing, and his incessant family examples are over the top. Covey describes trust as being based on character and competence, where character is required and competence is situational. Covey is a Harvard MBA, but I was astounded at the number of mispronunciations. He goes on to detail seven low trust taxes (redundancy, bureaucracy, politics, disengagement, turnover, churn, and fraud) and seven high trust dividends (increased value, accelerated growth, enhanced motivation, improved collaboration, stronger partnering, better execution, and heightened loyalty).Covey also outlines what he characterizes as five waves of trust: self-trust, relationship trust, organizational trust, market trust, and societal trust. For each of these waves, he applies the concept of the four cores (integrity, intention, capabilities, and results) and the thirteen behaviors of high-trust leaders (talk straight, demonstrate respect, create transparency, right wrongs, show loyalty, deliver results, get better, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, listen first, keep commitments, and extend trust). He's a business man, not a family therapist, and as Tom Peters would say, he should stick to his knitting.
Still, there are nuggets in the book, so perhaps reading it rather than listening to it is the way to go.
But I rarely have time to sit down to soak in a good book so I decided to listen to the rest of it in my car and bought the audiobook instead to finish this off. But with the rapid-fire succession in which he shared it I don't think it quite sank in so I plan on giving this at least one more listen. Of course they wouldn't be able to charge the same price if they did, so I'm sure this is a profit issue, but the audiobook does hit ALL of the highlights. I figured I wouldn't continue where I left off in the book since it is less than two hours long and just listen to the entire thing. gone from the audiobook and good riddance.
In fact, I wonder if the book would have been more effective if it had come this short. Well, I didn't realize it until it arrived, this is VERY abridged. So I thought it would be good to review this from the perspective of mentioning what you might be missing in this abridgment. which is still faster than reading the book once.As for the content, I based the five-star rating solely on that. I've been a fan of the seven habits for years and when I saw this, but Stephen Covey's son, it almost shouted at me, "You've got to read this." So I picked it up.I started reading the book and read about half of it.
maybe more. I thought that story would never end and I don't think it gave much added value to the book in the first place.That being said, I would encourage you to listen to the book twice. Like the trust issues he dealt with in the book during the Franklin/Covey merger. The short answer is, not much.
What you are really missing is that Covey will usually give several examples to illustrate his points in the book but in the audiobook he tends to give only one example and, in some cases, none. It gave me several ideas on how to build trust both at home and at the workplace. I stumbled across the book while looking for another Covey title. He does cover some topics pretty quickly. For example, he gives 13 ways to build trust and I thought I got a lot out of it. Reading the book once would have had it set in but I think a few listens are required to get the same effect. While reading the book I thought to myself on occasion, "Okay, I get it. I've already followed some of its ideals and I've already noticed a difference.
I'd say it has 1/8th of the content. Trust can be earned and lost very quickly and I think Stephen does an excellent job of covering the topic throughout the audiobook.This is a fantastic and relevant addition to the Covey collection and I don't hesitate at all on recommending this to anybody. And I actually like it that way. Next point, please," but I didn't find myself doing that with the audiobook. If found it thought-provoking and very relevant to what I do, or what I should be doing. Pick it up, give it a serious read, and you won't regret it either.
I'm doing a book study with a few people from my church. -Corey A. This book is well written.
I didn't think the Jr. I'm amazed that everything we do as leaders is tied to trust in one way or another. I wasn't too excited when I heard it was this book.
Covey has a lot to say about this simple topic. Covey had much to say and was probably just riding on the coat tails of his father. I was greatly wrong.
Definitely a good read. Jones
|
