Now more than ever Stedman’s advise is critical to navigating an increasingly uncertain world.  As Stedman says; extraordinary people are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them.  This book helps you clarify your personal brand and reputation and inspires you to find your calling. This one insight is worth the price of the book and can change the trajectory of your life and amplify your success and more importantly your happiness.

The entire foundation of social media relies on trust and the brokering of that trust among friends, colleagues and collaborators.  Just as the economic melt down was rooted in a breach of trust,  smart trust fuels the growth of social media.  A seismic shift in the success of social media was, I believe, somewhat unknowingly implemented by Mark Zuckerberg even before Facebook exploded.  It’s early success was predicated on the requirement of the use of an authentic identity, instead of the pseudonyms prevalent on AOL and others at the time.  The accountability and transparency of using our true identity not only facilitated the ability to transfer trust and reputation, but provided a level of accountability and civility required to become a “high ground” force for social good.

Stephen and I resonate with a concept I first read of in Think and Grow Rich published in the 1930′s, that of signing your work as if it would be published in the newspaper the next morning.  Warren Buffet, in a message to his team at Berkshire Hathaway said it this way as we noted in Smart Trust:

“We can afford to lose money—even a lot of money. We cannot afford to lose reputation—even a shred of reputation. Let’s be sure that everything we do in business can be reported on the front page of a national newspaper in an article written by an unfriendly but intelligent reporter. In many areas, including acquisitions, Berkshire’s results have benefitted from its reputation, and we don’t want to do anything that in any way can tarnish it. Berkshire is ranked by Fortune as the second-most admired company in the world. It took us 43 years to get there, but we could lose it in 43 minutes.”  

In a very real sense social media brings this abstraction to life.  Virtually any thing we say or do can in fact be published in the next moment.  This is a very sobering level of accountability that I feel is potentially an extraordinary force for good and will help restore the civility we have lost of late.

Read this interview with Stephen in Linked In and Business Magazine and it will further  expand your understanding of the  significance of social media, not just the history so far, but more importantly the critical implications going forward.  The more I understand the extraordinary influence of this new media, the more I am humbled by how little we yet understand.  This is just the tip of the iceberg of what can prove to be a medium to restore trust and accountability of global citizens at a scale never before in history, and to do it in real time.  Leveraging our influence at the scale enabled by social media can unleash a ripple effect of positive change we refer to as a global renaissance of trust.  I predict this will spark a positive sea change of trust of historic proportions. (for the record we do understand the possibility of social media fueling the dark side, that’s why we call it Smart Trust not Stupid Trust. More on that later)

Today Fortune Magazine highlighted Smart Trust  in Why Trust Matters so Much In Business.  Smart Trust was #7 on Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list and is rapidly spreading through North America’s best led organizations.   Creating cultures of high trust is a growing 2012  focus of progressive companies recovering from the recent downturn.

If you missed last weeks telecast on Smart Trust or if you want to share it with colleagues or friends (please do) it is available now at SmartTrustBook.com.  Thanks for all the tremendous feedback and positive reactions as evidenced by the continued strong sales of Smart Trust!  

Please help us spread the word:  Go to the help us spread the word tab on SmartTrustBook.com to access numerous free resources, a picture of the book, excerpts  and other digital files you can use to blog, tweet or write newsletters including Smart Trust.  Become an advocate of Smart Trust by forwarding links to friends, colleagues, and other stakeholders.  Together we can start the ripple effect of a global renaissance of trust

Thanks for being an ambassador of Smart Trust

They also announced today their prestigious 2012 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior list that Stephen M. R. Covey and I are honored to be included on for the second year in a row.

Trust Across America, the respected international think tank and research firm known for developing pragmatic criteria for identifying the most trusted organizations, today announced their 2012 list of Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behaviors.  Stephen M. R. Covey and I are honored to be included for the second year in a row in this unique and prestigious company.  We join many of our  North American mentors, and peers including Barry Rellaford, one of our business partners,  Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo who wrote the foreword to our new book Smart Trust, Tony  Hsiesh, CEO of Zappos who we interviewed for our book and numerous other long time friends and colleagues.   We are humbled to be included and intend to do our part to follow the lead of Trust Across America to amplify the significance of growing high trust cultures and restoring trusted behavior as a recognized driver to restoring our global economic growth.

Renowned leadership authority Warren Bennis, also on this list, had this to say when he read our new book: “Smart Trust is without doubt one of the most powerful and seminal books of our age. It exposes and helps solve the most dangerous crisis apparent in almost all human institutions: how to trust in a low trust world.”  

We feel that Trust Across America is contributing an important platform to as Steve Jobs said: “put a dent in the universe”  as it relates to transforming our toxic economy as it relates to trust.  We applaud their efforts.

Smart Trust teaches how to trust in a low trust world by mastering a skill we call Smart Trust that help you navigate risks and maximize possibilities.

Thanks to all our customers for advocating trust and propelling Smart Trust to bestseller status.  More importantly thank you for leading out and demonstrating that Smart Trust is a better way to live and to lead.

Forbes’ Dan Schwabel interviewed Stephen M. R. Covey about Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World in an article he called How to Build a Company People Trust.

Stephen told Dan in part:

“At its core, building trust comes down to your credibility and your behavior. In the book, we identified 5 Smart Trust “actions” that were common to high trust leaders and organizations. For example, the 5th action of Smart Trust is to “lead out in extending trust to others,” highlighting the reality that one of the best ways to create trust is simply to give trust. This is because of the reciprocity of trust—when we give it, people return it; when we withhold it, they withhold it.

Yes, a few may attempt to abuse it: but we shouldn’t allow the few that we can’t trust to define for us the many that we can. Instead, focus on building a high trust culture around the many that will help us weed out the few. And it’s the leader’s job to go first in extending trust. That’s what leaders do. The first job of any leader is to inspire trust; the second job is to extend trust. Leaders need to be smart about it, of course, because there is risk in trusting. But there is also risk in not trusting—in fact, not trusting is often the greater risk. Smart Trust helps us find the sweet spot and develop the judgment of how to wisely extend trust in a low-trust world.”

Join Stephen and me for our first live telecast on our new book Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World  this Thursday January 12th.  We will candidly share and discuss with you a one hour overview of the book.  Go to SmartTrustBook.com to register.  Join us whether  you have had the time to read or even buy the book yet.  We trust you will do both.

Finally we are on the verge of publishing our new book Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a low Trust World,  after several years of extensive research, interviews, collabortion and study.  Smart Trust  highlights enlightening principles and anecdotes of people and organizations that are not only achieving unprecendented prosperity from high-trust relationships and cultures but–even more inspiring–also attaining elevated levels of energy and joy. 

The sustainable success these leaders and enterprises are exhibiting is paradoxically being produced in what has proved to be the lowest trust economic climate in years, if not decades.  Smart Trust shows what they are doing and the 5 actions they are commonly taking to prosper, against all odds, in the same economic circumstances causing so many others to fail.

Smart Trust has met the strict scrutiny of business  leaders around the globe and is validated by research from multiple sources that confirms that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by nearly 3 times.

Find out why trusted people are more likely to get hired or promoted,  make more money,  get the best projects and the bigger budgets, and are typically last to be laid off.  It is our hope and intent that reading Smart Trust will increase your probability of not just thriving, but prospering in this increasingly unpredictable economic marketplace.