Book in brief: Smart Trust

Smart Trust
By Stephen M.R. Covey and Greg Link, with Rebecca R. Merrill
Simon and Schuster, £14.99

In the current tough economic climate and volatile business environment, individuals and businesses are looking at different ways to get ahead.

This latest in a long line of books offering tips on gaining competitive advantage covers the issue of trust – suggesting a direct link between those who are trusted and success.

A brief synopsis of the book follows:

• High-trust organisations outperform low-trust organisations by nearly three times.
• High-trust people are more likely to be hired or promoted.
• They are also the most likely to be given the best projects, the biggest budgets and the last to be laid off.
• For this reason, it is possible to follow a formula that makes trust a “performance multiplier” for leaders, teams, organisations and even countries.
• The book offers a step-by-step walk-through of this formula, claiming that trust is “fast becoming the most consequential life and leadership skill of our time”.
• Trust is now “a career-critical” competency, it says.