Cambridge Business Association
Trust & Inspire
Book

Trust & Inspire

How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others

Stephen M.R. Covey
Simon & Schuster, 2022
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Engaging
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Stephen M.R. Covey offers an alternative to command-and-control leadership: Trust & Inspire. Covey explains how this approach aligns with modern sensitivities and fulfills the pressing need for effective corporate management. He teaches leaders to become stewards of their workforce by offering a model of morality and virtue to build trust and provide inspiration. Covey calls on leaders to demonstrate imperative workplace virtues – humility, courage, authenticity, vulnerability and empathy – to create and maintain an abiding sense of mission, purpose and endurance.

Summary

Traditional command-and-control leadership treats people like fleas in a jar.

If you put fleas in a glass jar, they quickly jump out. Put more fleas in the same jar, screw a lid on and the fleas will smash themselves against the inside of the lid trying to gain freedom.

Can you guess what happens when you remove the lid? Although the fleas now could jump out easily, they won’t even try. They don’t want to hurt themselves banging up against a possible obstruction. You have conditioned them against jumping out of the jar and have severely circumscribed their potential.

Archaic command-and-control management resembles this harsh conditioning and limits the capacity of its people. The time has come to retire this approach and replace it with a system that earns people’s trust and inspires them.

Wise executives and managers now embrace a new leadership method and mind-set: “Trust & Inspire.”

Trust-and-inspire leadership respects and empowers people. 

Trust and inspire is a fresh way to exercise leadership. It maximizes everyone’s possibilities for growth, makes the most of people...

About the Author

CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide Stephen M.R. Covey is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Speed of Trust. He is the son of the late Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 

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