Stephen M. R. Covey is co-founder of CoveyLink and the FranklinCovey Speed of Trust Practice. 

Covey is the New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The SPEED of Trust, a groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting book that challenges our age-old assumption that trust is merely a soft, social virtue and instead demonstrates that trust is a hard-edged, economic driver.

Covey and business partner Greg Link also co-authored Smart Trust: The Defining Skill That Transforms Managers Into Leaders, which shares enlightening principles and anecdotes of people and organisations that are achieving unprecedented success from high-trust relationships and cultures. Covey advocates that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders is the critical leadership competency of the current global economy.

He is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world.  Covey personally led the strategy that propelled his renowned father's book, Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to one of the two most influential business books of the 20th Century, according to CEO Magazine.  A Harvard MBA, he joined Covey Leadership Center as a Client Developer and later became National Sales Manager and then President & CEO.

As President & CEO, he nearly doubled revenues to over $110 million while increasing profits by 12 times. During that period, both customer and employee trust reached new highs and the company expanded throughout the world into over 40 countries. The company was valued at only $2.4 million when Covey was named CEO, and, within three years, he grew shareholder value to $160 million in a merger he orchestrated with then Franklin Quest to form FranklinCovey.

Covey currently serves on the board/advisory board of several entities, including the Human Performance Institute—the leader in energy management technology—where he serves as Advisory Board Chairman.

 

“Covey convincingly validates our experience at Dell—that trust has a bottom-line impact on results and that when trust goes up, speed goes up while costs come down.  This principle applies not only in our professional relationships with customers, business partners, and team members but also in our personal relationships.” 
President & CEO, Dell Inc. 

"Covey brilliantly focuses on that overlooked bedrock of democratic capitalism -- trust.  Like the air we breathe, we too often take this critical intangible for granted.  As Covey makes clear, we do so at our ultimate competitive peril." 
President & CEO, Forbes