The Speed of Trust: Summary, and What the Research Says About Trust at Work

What the book argues

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything is by Stephen M. R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill, with a foreword by Stephen R. Covey. Free Press published it on October 17, 2006 (Open Library, n.d.; Niagara Falls Public Library, n.d.).

The publisher's description sets out the claim. Trust is usually treated as a soft, social virtue; the book argues it is a hard-edged economic driver, a learnable and measurable skill. Trust starts within each person and moves outward, like a ripple, into relationships, organizations, the marketplace and society (Open Library, n.d.). Publishers Weekly's review says the book outlines 13 behaviors of trust-inspiring leaders, such as demonstrating respect, creating transparency, righting wrongs, delivering results and practicing accountability, drawing on Covey's years as chief executive of the Covey Leadership Center (Publishers Weekly, 2006).

In my words: low trust shows up as delay and double-checking, and the fix starts with keeping your own commitments where people can see it.

Who it is for

Leaders who notice that work slows down because people verify, escalate and protect themselves. The publisher's description names business, government and education leaders as the audience (Open Library, n.d.). Publishers Weekly praised its down-to-earth approach and personal stories, but found that the book's length and occasional lack of focus sometimes obscure its good advice (Publishers Weekly, 2006).

What the research says

The book draws on the author's experience and on business cases, and I found no test of its 13 behaviors in the evidence I use. Its main claim, that trust shapes how well people and teams work, is close to research.

Trust in leaders, and which leader. Dirks and Ferrin (2002) pooled research on trust in leaders (k = 106). According to their abstract, the links between trust and outcomes differed by which leader was trusted, and direct leaders such as supervisors appeared to be a particularly important referent. That loosely fits the book's ripple model, which starts close to home.

Trust within teams. Breuer, Hüffmeier and Hertel (2016) pooled 52 studies. According to their abstract, team trust was positively related to team performance, more strongly in virtual teams than in face-to-face ones. It is correlational, so it supports trust as a correlate of performance, not the book's claim that trust speeds work up by a given amount.

Trust during change. In two experimental simulations with more than 800 participants each, Devos, Buelens and Bouckenooghe (2007) varied the features of a hypothetical change. According to their abstract, in the second study, which crossed only the history of change and trust in executive management, openness to change decreased dramatically only when both were low. That is a scenario study, not a real reorganization, but it is the closest thing I have to the book's claim about the cost of low trust.

Where middle managers' trust comes from. The Atlas records, from the abstract, a survey of 545 middle managers in China in which support from their own boss was more strongly tied to trusting the organization than the terms of their employment were (Zhang et al., 2008). It is one survey, and its authors say both formal structure and social processes matter, so it fits only loosely with the book's stress on everyday behavior.

Where the evidence is thin

The book's economic claim, that trust is a measurable driver of organizational results, is not tested in the research I use. Most of the evidence on trust is correlational, so it cannot show that building trust causes better results rather than the reverse. And I found no test of the 13 behaviors as a program, so the list is the author's synthesis, not a tested method.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

This mapping is my judgment. Trust is the culture ring of the Unfrozen Loop: safe to speak, and speaking changes something. Behaviors such as creating transparency and righting wrongs are how Surface both ways works in practice, because people are more likely to send bad news up when they trust what will happen to it. The Devos finding about a poor history of change is a loose fit for Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace: in that scenario study, a poor history of change together with low trust went with much lower openness to the next change. See the Atlas answer on trust during change.

What I take from it

The book's case that trust is practical, not decorative, is consistent with the research above, and its behaviors are concrete enough to act on. I would read the book's economic argument as the author's case rather than as a tested finding. If you lead a change, pick the one behavior your team most doubts you on and make it visible for a month. For a related model of trust between advisers and clients, see The Trusted Advisor.