Trust is hard to come by

A person can't be a leader if he or she is not trusted. Trust is key in order to be able to lead. It has to be all around trust. Trust that the leaders is going down the right path, trust that the leader has everyone's best interest at heart, trust that they will value and respect those he is leading. Guy Kawasaki states that you trust people first and then you are trusted.

Building a trusting relationship with your customers is key. Frank Levinson stated that you want to weld your customers to you. There are a few great companies that have figured out how to weld their customers to them. This takes good companies and makes them great. In the book Good to Great by Jim Collins he outlines the key concepts that took those few companies from Good to Great. He separates 6 key concepts into three themes: Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought and Disciplined Action. All of the great companies had disciplined people at the head of the company. Jim describes them as Level 5 Leaders with the mind set of First Who Then What. The concepts for the theme of Disciplined Thought are Confront the true facts and Hedgehog concept. Culture of Discipline and Technology Accelerator are the concepts in the Disciplined Action theme. As he goes into detail about each of these key concepts you can see the difference the the Good and the Great companies.