Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Trust at Work
20 Plays1 year ago
Dr. D and Dr. C discuss the importance of trust in the workplace, highlighting different approaches to cultivating and maintaining it. They explore the relationship between trust and integrity, accountability, and cultural norms. They also discuss challenges such as trust erosion and the need for leaders to model vulnerable behavior to build trust.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Leadership Dissected
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Leadership Dissected, where we examine the details of leadership strategy, workplace culture, and decision-making through the lens of behavioral science.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Dr. C. And I'm Dr. D. With our decades of leadership experience and PhDs in business psychology, we dig into the latest research trends and practical strategies to help you survive at work without losing
What is trust in the workplace?
00:00:24
Speaker
your mind.
00:00:24
Speaker
Today, we're going to discuss important topic for workplace.
00:00:27
Speaker
Trust.
00:00:28
Speaker
How do we cultivate trust?
00:00:29
Speaker
How do we earn it?
00:00:30
Speaker
How do we maintain it?
00:00:30
Speaker
We'll also explore what happens when we lose trust and when we should try to recover it, when we should cut ties and walk away.
00:00:37
Speaker
So let's get into the topic.
00:00:38
Speaker
Let's talk about trust.
00:00:39
Speaker
Let's talk
Contrasting approaches to trust-building
00:00:40
Speaker
about trust.
00:00:40
Speaker
Dr. C, we have very different styles when it comes to building trust.
00:00:46
Speaker
I trust people immediately until they give me a reason not to.
00:00:51
Speaker
And you're the opposite.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, definitely the opposite.
00:00:54
Speaker
I am very much you need to earn that trust.
00:00:57
Speaker
You need to show me that you can be trusted.
00:01:01
Speaker
People start at zero with me and they have to earn that trust.
00:01:04
Speaker
Now, it doesn't mean that you can't earn it quickly.
00:01:07
Speaker
But I mean, into a conversation, coming into a relationship of any type, you you have to earn it has to grow.
00:01:12
Speaker
You have to foster that trust.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the thing I know about you as well is that once that trust is earned, you are very forgiving when somebody violates that trust.
00:01:22
Speaker
I mean, somebody has to go pretty far before you're willing to not forgive them, depending on the severity of the slight.
00:01:29
Speaker
Once you've built that trust, you are incredibly committed to that relationship and that trust, once it's been earned, gets pretty consistent.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really about level of commitment.
00:01:39
Speaker
And if I'm allowing you to have that level of trust with me, I have to give it to you 100 percent after that.
00:01:45
Speaker
You've proven yourself to be worthy of
Importance of quick trust establishment
00:01:47
Speaker
that trust.
00:01:47
Speaker
So that means I'm going to give you a little bit more space, a little bit more grace when it comes to violating that trust.
00:01:53
Speaker
Although there are thresholds, there are some non-negotiables there.
00:01:56
Speaker
I think back to being a leader and with the teams I've managed, you got to earn that trust.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I try to build that trust up as quick as possible because I need to trust my team members to do the tasks that are assigned.
00:02:07
Speaker
I also trust my team members not to take advantage of that.
00:02:11
Speaker
It's really a give or take in it.
00:02:12
Speaker
And there's an ebbs and flows to the way I view trust.
00:02:14
Speaker
I give trust really easily, particularly in leadership roles where I'm working with other people.
00:02:20
Speaker
I figure, hey, if you're going to start here, I'm going to trust you 100%.
00:02:23
Speaker
immediately from the start, it's up to you to maintain that level of trust with me.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I know everybody's along a spectrum, but you might be surprised at how many people you work with or people that you meet have a completely different point of view on how they build trust.
00:02:39
Speaker
Is it earned right from the start or do you have to build it up from zero?
00:02:43
Speaker
Either way, for me, if somebody violates that trust,
00:02:46
Speaker
It's almost never coming back.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's very difficult for me to trust again because I'm like, I gave you a gift at the beginning and you squandered that gift.
00:02:53
Speaker
So why should I invest any more time in that relationship?
00:02:56
Speaker
Whereas I think your style or the earn the trust, it seems like a little bit more forgiving after the fact because they've had to really demonstrate and really build up that level of trust.
00:03:07
Speaker
Again, not to say that a significant level of trust violation isn't going to change that point of view.
00:03:12
Speaker
Everybody has a threshold.
00:03:14
Speaker
It feels like it's very different in both gaining and in losing trust.
00:03:18
Speaker
If I have a team member who significantly violates my trust, it's very, very difficult for them to earn it back.
00:03:26
Speaker
I wouldn't say impossible, but it is very, very difficult, and they have to try everything.
00:03:30
Speaker
extra hard.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's probably how hard somebody has to try or maybe even harder than when they're first meeting you and have to build up that level of trust.
00:03:38
Speaker
Because if they violate that, you've invested very little time.
00:03:42
Speaker
You can just walk away.
00:03:43
Speaker
Whereas I have given a gift of trust
00:03:45
Speaker
that has been lost.
00:03:47
Speaker
I don't want to invest more time in recovering that.
00:03:49
Speaker
So I might as well just cut you loose.
00:03:51
Speaker
And I think a lot of that comes from how we
The nature of trust: risk and reliance
00:03:54
Speaker
define trust.
00:03:54
Speaker
Every person is going to have a different definition of trust.
00:03:57
Speaker
We look at the Webster dictionary definition of trust, shared reliance on character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.
00:04:04
Speaker
Now, I prefer a different definition.
00:04:06
Speaker
It's a willingness to open oneself to risk by engaging in relationships with another person.
00:04:11
Speaker
And I think that's the crux of a lot of challenges with trust.
00:04:15
Speaker
There's risk involved in building those relationships, essentially giving up a little bit of your power.
00:04:21
Speaker
Because that's what a component of trust is.
00:04:22
Speaker
You're allowing someone else to have a semblance of influence or control over you.
00:04:26
Speaker
So when we think about
00:04:28
Speaker
trust, there's also that risk.
00:04:30
Speaker
And as leaders in the workplace, we have to give up a lot of power.
00:04:34
Speaker
We have to take a lot of risk, even joining a new organization, forming a new team.
00:04:38
Speaker
There's risk associated with that manifests on how we trust people.
00:04:42
Speaker
It's interesting because you think about
00:04:45
Speaker
are different leadership styles, are different trust gathering styles.
00:04:49
Speaker
But I can imagine an employee starting on the end of their first month.
00:04:53
Speaker
Think about the end of the first month where you're just getting comfortable.
00:04:56
Speaker
Everybody's getting into the new rhythm of having a new person there.
00:04:59
Speaker
And a person who is starting as an employee is a type of person who trusts immediately.
00:05:04
Speaker
But the boss or maybe the culture of the team
00:05:07
Speaker
is filled with people who you have to earn that trust how long is that employee going to feel out of place until they've developed that trust and especially if that expectation of the trust style isn't set up first and the employee doesn't know they're just going to feel perhaps like they're not liked or that everything's being scrutinized or whatever imaginary thought processes might be going through their head and conversely
00:05:33
Speaker
In a style like mine, where it's trust everybody immediately, give them 100%, an employee who starts who doesn't trust immediately, this doesn't feel right.
00:05:42
Speaker
I don't know these people yet.
00:05:43
Speaker
Why are they treating me this way?
00:05:45
Speaker
What's the real story here?
00:05:47
Speaker
An employee like that might end up feeling skeptical or, again, equally out of place.
00:05:52
Speaker
And I wonder how many leaders and how many people...
00:05:55
Speaker
have thought down and said, what is your trust style?
00:05:58
Speaker
What is your definition of trust and what qualities of trust are important to me so that when I'm working with a new employee or I'm starting in a new job, I can articulate, hey, this is how I view the world from a trust perspective.
00:06:12
Speaker
It takes me a little while to warm up to somebody.
00:06:15
Speaker
And for me,
00:06:16
Speaker
Reliability is very important in building trust.
00:06:18
Speaker
So if you say you're going to be somewhere and you don't show up, that's going to violate my trust and I'm going to have a hard time trusting you.
00:06:24
Speaker
Or if you constantly change meeting times on me at the last minute, I'm going to feel like you can't be trusted.
00:06:31
Speaker
And so that's going to erode trust.
00:06:33
Speaker
Having that inventory in your mind
00:06:35
Speaker
First, knowing your style and second, knowing what those characteristics are to build or erode trust and being able to communicate that really effectively could really help people build relationships in a way that's more meaningful than just jumping in and going with the flow and seeing how it
00:06:51
Speaker
falls out without that level of insight.
00:06:53
Speaker
I think one of the areas that we as psychologists can really start digging into is let's dissect trust.
00:06:58
Speaker
What are components that make
Key dimensions of trust in leadership
00:07:00
Speaker
up trust?
00:07:00
Speaker
I see three real big dimensions of trust that are pretty uniform across relationships.
00:07:07
Speaker
The first is integrity.
00:07:08
Speaker
The belief that the person is fair and just.
00:07:11
Speaker
I think for a lot of organizations, a lot of leaders, we look at integrity as is
00:07:14
Speaker
Is this person doing the right thing?
00:07:15
Speaker
Second dimension is dependability.
00:07:17
Speaker
We live in a world that's interdependent with each other, especially in the workplace.
00:07:21
Speaker
You're dependent on someone else to finish a task to complete your task.
00:07:24
Speaker
So it's really that belief that the person is going to do what they say they're going to do.
00:07:29
Speaker
And I think the third dimension is confidence.
00:07:32
Speaker
That's really confidence in yourself that you can trust the person, that you can create this space for the person to actually do what they're going to do.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I think for leaders and team members, the dependability and confidence is the two areas where people struggle.
00:07:46
Speaker
That's when you start getting leaders who become micromanagers.
00:07:49
Speaker
They don't have the confidence.
00:07:51
Speaker
in their team member that they're dependable or even in just regular team dynamics, that confidence and willing to take that risk to say this person's gonna actually follow through what they said.
00:08:01
Speaker
That's really fundamental for any team is finding the space, finding and creating the environment for people to really build trust.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I've seen many teams just collapse, fail, or have a revolving door where people are coming in and out constantly as a trust.
00:08:16
Speaker
Now, recently I did a workshop and with this group, I was having this conversation around trust.
00:08:20
Speaker
And having a conversation about why people leave organizations.
00:08:23
Speaker
Majority of time, people don't leave organizations because of the work that they're doing.
00:08:28
Speaker
Generally, people are going to get into a field, unless it's like entry and you're really exploring.
00:08:32
Speaker
The people who are in the profession get into that profession because they enjoy it.
00:08:36
Speaker
But man, they don't like the people around them.
00:08:37
Speaker
They don't trust the people around them.
00:08:39
Speaker
And that becomes really challenging.
00:08:41
Speaker
So as leaders, we have to create that environment.
00:08:43
Speaker
We have to create that environment where people can set this foundation of trust.
00:08:46
Speaker
Now, Dr. D, how can we set a foundation of trust?
00:08:49
Speaker
In your opinion, what do teams need to do?
00:08:51
Speaker
I think it's a couple of things.
00:08:53
Speaker
I think one, it is understanding each individual on that team, how you build trust and make that an active conversation.
00:09:00
Speaker
How people approach risk.
00:09:02
Speaker
You've brought up risk many times in this conversation so far, Dr. C. And I think people's risk tolerance happens.
00:09:08
Speaker
Since a lot of my research is based on how people perceive risk and uncertainty, I know I have a very high risk tolerance.
00:09:14
Speaker
I know you have a lower risk tolerance than I do.
00:09:17
Speaker
And so the fact that risk plays into our decision making process of how we're going to trust, that doesn't surprise me.
00:09:24
Speaker
When I think about the things that I need for somebody to build or erode trust,
00:09:29
Speaker
It's doing things that, as you said, the reliability for me is very important.
00:09:34
Speaker
Showing up, doing what you say you're going to do.
00:09:36
Speaker
That integrity component is table stakes.
00:09:38
Speaker
That's just the bare minimum.
00:09:39
Speaker
If somebody is going to look me in the eye and flat out lie to me about something that we both know is untrue or can be easily proven untrue, that's really hard to continue to build trust.
00:09:49
Speaker
You have to have that level of integrity.
00:09:51
Speaker
But the reliability is there.
00:09:53
Speaker
I'm talking about reliability showing up, being there when you're needed for the really important things.
00:09:59
Speaker
There are inadvertent slights or violations of trust that happen at work all the time.
00:10:03
Speaker
An employee wants a promotion, they talk to their boss and say, oh, I'd really like to get a promotion at some point or I'd like a raise.
00:10:10
Speaker
And the boss says, oh, I'll look into it and then not follow up.
00:10:14
Speaker
That will uprode trust with an employee.
00:10:16
Speaker
One, as a leader, you have to really be cognizant about what people are asking for, have a good list of follow-up questions.
00:10:22
Speaker
The foundation is really communicating about what real requests are.
00:10:26
Speaker
And the
00:10:26
Speaker
If you as an employee have brought up something that's important to you and you haven't heard anything back, it's important for you to reach out and remind the person.
00:10:34
Speaker
And it's up to the person who is feeling like their trust is being violated to actually raise your hand, speak up and say, hey, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable with we had a topic.
00:10:44
Speaker
I haven't heard anything about it.
00:10:45
Speaker
Can you give me an update rather than just relying on the other person to meet your expectations when they don't know that there are expectations being violated?
00:10:52
Speaker
It's not a one-sided thing.
00:10:54
Speaker
If you feel like your trust is being violated, raise your hand and say, hey, we had a conversation about something.
00:10:59
Speaker
I haven't heard anything about it.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's making me concerned that I haven't heard anything about it.
00:11:03
Speaker
Should we have a conversation about it?
00:11:04
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:05
Speaker
And I think to get even deeper, more fundamental, I think in the workplace, we often forget we're working with other people.
00:11:11
Speaker
We're working with other human beings.
00:11:12
Speaker
There's
Social bonding and trust through oxytocin
00:11:13
Speaker
this opportunity.
00:11:14
Speaker
And if we get into a neuroscience part of it, oxytocin is
00:11:17
Speaker
is our hormones.
00:11:18
Speaker
A lot of times it's called the hug hormone, the love hormone makes us feel good.
00:11:22
Speaker
It's actually one of the precursor hormones that is released when we start to do social bond and getting to connect with people, getting to know people.
00:11:30
Speaker
And studies actually show people who build these connections have higher levels of oxytocin, which actually leads them to be willing to take more risk of all kinds in their social bonding, social interactions.
00:11:43
Speaker
Because if you think about it, work is really a lot of different social interactions with different people that you're going to have different levels of trust with.
00:11:50
Speaker
And it's important to foster that foundation, getting to know the people in the room.
00:11:54
Speaker
Some of the workshops that I do with people are really geared around how do I get to know you as a human being, as a foundation?
00:12:00
Speaker
One, to start building a relationship and also building trust to assume good intention.
00:12:05
Speaker
A lot of organizations don't take the time for that.
00:12:07
Speaker
And I'm
00:12:08
Speaker
Automatically people start to assume malintent.
00:12:11
Speaker
They fall into the fundamental attribution error.
00:12:13
Speaker
The easiest way to explain that is the story I'm telling myself.
00:12:16
Speaker
People will start to create all kinds of stories about situations and tension, which starts to erode trust.
00:12:23
Speaker
And as leaders,
00:12:24
Speaker
We do it ourselves.
00:12:25
Speaker
We have to be really conscious about what our assumptions are versus what's reality.
00:12:30
Speaker
As we build more trust, build more trust through these relationships, through these interactions, through getting to know who your team members are on a human level, it helps reduce a lot of these assumptions that are created and a lot of the negativity that we create in terms of why a person is doing a certain action.
00:12:49
Speaker
I'll give you a great example.
00:12:51
Speaker
From one of my workshops, I had one of our participants actually share they had great trust with their senior leader until one day she responded with an emoji to a message.
00:13:00
Speaker
It wasn't just an emoji.
00:13:01
Speaker
She happened to use an emoji that had a darker hue because the person unbeknownst to their leader, she was Hispanic.
00:13:09
Speaker
So she started using the darker emoji.
00:13:11
Speaker
Her leader created this whole story in her head.
00:13:13
Speaker
This person's a racist and trying to make fun of the leader because the leader happened to be African-American.
00:13:18
Speaker
This happens a lot because we don't
00:13:19
Speaker
foster these relationships and start creating these stories, start creating these assumptions, trying to attach an intent to other people's actions without pausing and just saying, what's going on?
00:13:30
Speaker
This person ended up having a conversation with her leader because she noticed the difference in behavior.
00:13:35
Speaker
Turns out the leader just didn't know her background.
00:13:37
Speaker
She never bothered to have this conversation.
00:13:39
Speaker
They didn't find out that this person is Hispanic.
00:13:40
Speaker
So they're using emoji that represent themselves.
00:13:43
Speaker
We constantly in the workplace have to contend these assumptions, which come from a lack of trust.
00:13:49
Speaker
but also on the other side, start to erode any built trust.
00:13:52
Speaker
And a lot of the work that I've done in workplace culture building, this shared intent, this idea of assumed positive or negative intent is one of the most significant areas where organizations lose their employees, honestly.
00:14:08
Speaker
They bring this idea that, hey, integrity is in our values and accountability is in our values.
00:14:15
Speaker
But employees who are not on the inside of a social network within an organization will view and say, hey, I'm not a senior leader and I see senior leaders violating our corporate culture all the time.
00:14:29
Speaker
I worked in an organization where sales was very important and the sales people had a lot of latitude and power to do things that were
00:14:38
Speaker
I would say questionable.
00:14:40
Speaker
They did not treat people around them very well.
00:14:42
Speaker
They were very entitled and egocentric and they were forgiven and cut a lot of latitude because they brought in a lot of money.
00:14:50
Speaker
And it seemed like in that organization and in that culture, the best salespeople were the worst people to work with.
00:14:58
Speaker
They treated people poorly.
00:14:59
Speaker
They certainly were engaging in some questionable activities.
00:15:03
Speaker
But a cornerstone of the culture was integrity and accountability.
00:15:07
Speaker
And if it was anybody outside of the sales team that were operating with those same principles and same behaviors, if it was an accountant, they would have been cut from the organization long ago.
00:15:17
Speaker
So trust is not just performance-based.
00:15:20
Speaker
We're going to trust you as long as you're trustworthy or you bring value to the organization.
00:15:26
Speaker
It has to be, we're going to trust you because you live up to our values and you perform well.
00:15:33
Speaker
Performance without a
00:15:34
Speaker
abiding by the culture that are necessary for team building in an organization.
00:15:39
Speaker
If you don't want that kind of behavior in your organization, you have to be just as willing to cut high performers as you are to cut anybody else for violating those cultural norms.
00:15:49
Speaker
And if trust is a cultural norm within your organization,
00:15:52
Speaker
then you have to do everything that you can to protect it.
00:15:54
Speaker
That's a great example of how organizations actually foster distrust.
00:15:58
Speaker
I think it's important we have trust, really a strong foundation for a successful team.
00:16:02
Speaker
But fortunately, some organizations create this environment where they're fostering distrust.
00:16:07
Speaker
One of the dimensions of distrust is credibility.
00:16:09
Speaker
People doing things ethically, or people being held accountable.
00:16:13
Speaker
They do respect laws, they do respect the policies, or are they just words on a sheet?
00:16:17
Speaker
That creates a really tough environment for people to be connected with.
00:16:21
Speaker
The other side is also malevolence.
00:16:23
Speaker
To your point, is their willingness to allow people to lie or deceive team members in order to increase profits, in order to take more than that they're given.
00:16:32
Speaker
We've definitely had a shift for a lot of organizations in understanding that if we tolerate this behavior, we're going to erode at the STEM.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I love this quote, linking on the organizational psychologist's name, our culture or an organization for a team is the worst behavior that we're willing to tolerate.
00:16:48
Speaker
When a team doesn't have trust, they'll tolerate any behavior because most of the time people have one foot out the door.
00:16:53
Speaker
We're going to talk about some of the more common phrases that we hear right now.
00:16:56
Speaker
We have this quite quitter mentality, but we have to really take a pause as leaders, looking at the workplace.
00:17:02
Speaker
What are we doing to create this environment where we can't trust each other?
00:17:05
Speaker
Where we feel we can have this integrity, this accountability to ourselves, accountability to our team members.
00:17:10
Speaker
I think this is something we haven't talked about yet.
00:17:12
Speaker
We talk about risks in relation to trust.
00:17:15
Speaker
But to that point, there's also a level of vulnerability you have to have when you have healthy trust.
00:17:19
Speaker
And I think there's opportunities as leaders to model the behavior.
00:17:23
Speaker
As I tell my team members, and I've told them in the past, I only know what I know.
00:17:27
Speaker
I didn't take the class on mind reading, so I don't know what's on your mind.
00:17:30
Speaker
You got to tell me.
00:17:30
Speaker
You got to foster this environment of open communication.
00:17:33
Speaker
This takes a lot of risk.
00:17:34
Speaker
When you build the right trust, it makes it easier, this willingness to say I'm wrong.
00:17:39
Speaker
You're absolutely right.
00:17:40
Speaker
Vulnerability.
00:17:41
Speaker
is of real importance in organizations because so many decisions are made at an organizational level because of trust.
00:17:51
Speaker
You brought up quiet quitting, which is an organizationally leadership-centric view of employees who shouldn't be trusted because they're not behaving in a way that is productive to the organization.
00:18:07
Speaker
It's viewed as a trust violation.
00:18:09
Speaker
That's why it's talked about in negative terms.
00:18:11
Speaker
From an employee perspective, there's also whisper promotions where people get a lot more work and a lot more responsibility without the title bump and without the pay bump.
00:18:20
Speaker
A leader leaves, roles get combined.
00:18:22
Speaker
A VP role is combined with the director role that the other person's already in.
00:18:26
Speaker
And they end up taking on a lot more responsibility while the organization wins out.
00:18:30
Speaker
That also erodes trust.
00:18:31
Speaker
It's good for the organization.
00:18:33
Speaker
So organizations don't talk about whisper promotions as much, but employees certainly do.
00:18:38
Speaker
From an organizational perspective, there's also what I'll call the dark side of trust.
Impact of biases on organizational trust
00:18:42
Speaker
In behavioral science, there's this idea of in-group and out-group bias.
00:18:46
Speaker
But also there's something called familiarity bias.
00:18:49
Speaker
And this is when you trust somebody, you give them a lot more forgiveness than when you first know them.
00:18:55
Speaker
I worked in an organization that had a very loud and very aggressive and a very abrasive leader over a part of the organization.
00:19:03
Speaker
The things that he would say in meetings, talking about politics, talking about gender, having a very definite worldview that was not necessarily consistent or sensitive to other people in the room, he would just say things.
00:19:16
Speaker
And when it was brought up to his boss, they would say, that's just who they are.
00:19:20
Speaker
They've been here for years.
00:19:22
Speaker
We're not going to change that behavior.
00:19:23
Speaker
That's just who they are.
00:19:24
Speaker
And while that person's performance was good, I don't know just forgiving it because they had a long relationship and a lot of familiarity.
00:19:32
Speaker
They were basically on the in-group for that group, and they were given a lot of forgiveness.
00:19:38
Speaker
And people on the outside would go, how can that person talk that way?
00:19:42
Speaker
Or how can they say something like that?
00:19:44
Speaker
Because a person who's only been in the organization for a month, if they were talking like that in a meeting surrounded by senior leaders, they would be quickly
00:19:53
Speaker
escorted out the door.
00:19:54
Speaker
But because this person had been here for 20 years, they've accepted that behavior.
00:19:58
Speaker
Why was that behavior acceptable?
00:20:00
Speaker
And that would cause a lot of mistrust from employees.
00:20:02
Speaker
Other people who had experienced from a leadership perspective said, if the organization is not going to handle this, I'll go work somewhere where they actually respect our values.
00:20:10
Speaker
That's a great example of the quote I gave earlier.
00:20:12
Speaker
Culture you foster as a leader is really the worst behavior to tolerate.
00:20:16
Speaker
And in that sense, what I interpret is this organization was willing to accept that behavior as part of their culture.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:23
Speaker
And people from the inside did not see it as a problem.
00:20:27
Speaker
They just washed it away because they couldn't see it anymore because they had blinders on around this person.
00:20:33
Speaker
This brings up the idea of the old boys club in the C-suite.
00:20:36
Speaker
A lot of people can't get into the leadership in an organization because a group of leaders have built such a tight bond of trust that they forgive each other, but they also don't allow outsiders into their in-group in their leadership of an organization.
00:20:50
Speaker
A well-established company that has a well-established leadership team might be very skeptical to allow an outsider to come into that leadership team and become part of that leadership team.
How to start building trust in teams
00:21:00
Speaker
because that's a big risk to allow people onto the inside.
00:21:03
Speaker
Meanwhile, that makes people who are looking to grow within an organization feel like it's an impossibility to work their way into senior leadership because they're not afforded the opportunity to develop the trust because the senior leadership team has already got their in-group and they're not really looking to bring more people in from the outside.
00:21:21
Speaker
So Dr. D, how do we fix this?
00:21:22
Speaker
How do we build trust with an organization with a team?
00:21:25
Speaker
Well, that's easy.
00:21:26
Speaker
you just fix it.
00:21:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:29
Speaker
Maybe it's not that easy.
00:21:30
Speaker
I think there's a little bit more to it.
00:21:31
Speaker
Otherwise, we have the magic wand.
00:21:33
Speaker
We'll just wave it.
00:21:34
Speaker
You trust each other.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, let's not trust that.
00:21:36
Speaker
Let's think of some real ways.
00:21:38
Speaker
For me, it is taking blinders off.
00:21:41
Speaker
It's with an open mind and a want to get feedback to really try to understand what the perceptions are of people within the organization.
00:21:50
Speaker
If you're a senior leader, you should
00:21:53
Speaker
Take on that responsibility to understand across the organization what that sense of trust is.
00:21:58
Speaker
If you're over a team or if you're on a team, it means having a conversation with your peers, your employees, your supervisor, the constituents that you work with, and really creating opportunities to take feedback and act on that feedback.
00:22:13
Speaker
Because listening and putting an effort towards whatever that feedback is, is a great first step.
00:22:19
Speaker
Lacking anything else.
00:22:20
Speaker
bring in somebody from the outside, somebody who can be impartial, somebody who can listen, develop trust, develop a plan of action, who can see beyond your own or your organization's blind spots.
00:22:32
Speaker
That's where I would start.
00:22:33
Speaker
How about you, Dr. C?
00:22:34
Speaker
I think at a foundational level, you got to connect.
00:22:37
Speaker
You got to find out who's in the room.
00:22:38
Speaker
You got to find out who they are.
00:22:40
Speaker
There's this perception that we are our employee number.
00:22:43
Speaker
We're our role title.
00:22:44
Speaker
We all know that we are much beyond that.
00:22:46
Speaker
As leaders, as team members,
00:22:49
Speaker
Taking the time, just connect with the person on a human level.
00:22:52
Speaker
It goes a long way.
00:22:53
Speaker
Matter of fact, when I did one-on-ones with team members, even group meetings with team members, start off with two fundamental questions.
00:22:59
Speaker
Where's your head at?
00:23:00
Speaker
Where's your heart at?
00:23:00
Speaker
Head is really what's top of mind.
00:23:02
Speaker
What's your focus?
00:23:03
Speaker
Heart is how are you as a person?
00:23:05
Speaker
How are you as a human being?
00:23:06
Speaker
What's coming up?
00:23:07
Speaker
You got to give yourself permission to be human.
00:23:09
Speaker
That's a foundation.
00:23:10
Speaker
We are social creatures.
00:23:11
Speaker
We want to be around people to some extent.
00:23:13
Speaker
Foundation of trust is just connecting with human beings.
00:23:16
Speaker
Just connecting with someone, finding out who they are.
00:23:19
Speaker
Does it mean deepest, darkest secrets?
00:23:20
Speaker
No.
00:23:20
Speaker
Does it mean I know who you are?
00:23:23
Speaker
I know what you enjoy.
00:23:24
Speaker
I know where you may struggle and it's okay.
00:23:27
Speaker
We're going to create an environment where we can give you that support.
00:23:29
Speaker
I think at the basic level,
00:23:30
Speaker
For any leader, for any team member, if you can start connecting and building relationship, you can start building upon it.
00:23:36
Speaker
The more formal asking of how is it that you like trust?
00:23:39
Speaker
How is it that I can build trust with you instead of going into an automatic assumption?
00:23:43
Speaker
I think that's really important for building the relationship, bringing people together so that they do take advantage of that familiarity bias that we talked about earlier.
00:23:53
Speaker
You're more likely to take a risk with somebody that you like and somebody that you know than somebody that you don't or that you don't like.
00:24:00
Speaker
So building that likability is, I think, a really great way of building that trust.
00:24:05
Speaker
I'm going to say something controversial, and I'm curious about your perspective, Dr. C. Let's hear it.
00:24:10
Speaker
The work that people do is a transaction.
00:24:13
Speaker
A lot of the challenges that people have with mistrust at work is because they try to make it their second home.
00:24:19
Speaker
What if we approached in the absence of trust, work neutrally?
00:24:24
Speaker
We say, I'm here to do a job.
00:24:26
Speaker
I'm going to show up and do the job the best that I can.
00:24:28
Speaker
I'm going to try to better my expertise so I can do my job more efficiently and grow in my role.
00:24:33
Speaker
But trust doesn't.
00:24:34
Speaker
play a role in it.
00:24:35
Speaker
I just need to do what I'm here to do and I need the people upstream and downstream and the people that supervise me to do what they need to do.
00:24:43
Speaker
As long as trust isn't violated, in the absence of trust is trust in the process, trust in the transaction, and trust in the part that you play under the agreement that I'm going to do this work and I'm going to receive payment for that work.
00:24:56
Speaker
Is that adequate?
00:24:57
Speaker
I think the challenge
00:24:59
Speaker
And that scenario is, although a lot of work is transactional, there is an interdependency when it comes to work.
00:25:05
Speaker
A lot of what we do is a sum of our labor, not just one person doing one component.
00:25:09
Speaker
I think the neutral mindset only goes so far as more complex to work gets.
00:25:14
Speaker
The more we start digging into what is this system of work?
00:25:16
Speaker
What are all the levers that are being pulled?
00:25:18
Speaker
I think that neutral mindset is not sustainable for an organization.
00:25:22
Speaker
As lo and behold,
00:25:22
Speaker
People have personalities, people have their wants, people have their needs, people have their perspectives.
00:25:27
Speaker
And it's important that you see people's perspectives.
00:25:29
Speaker
We see their wants, their motivations, because then we can make this neutrality that you're proposing to make it more effective by finding those components, those levers to pull.
00:25:39
Speaker
It actually is going to increase productivity, increase people's sentiment of the workplace.
00:25:43
Speaker
I'll be honest, I don't want to work in a place that's neutral.
00:25:46
Speaker
It just doesn't sound appealing.
00:25:49
Speaker
I agree.
00:25:49
Speaker
And I've heard leaders, and the reason I bring this up is, one, I think it's a good mental exercise.
00:25:55
Speaker
Would you really want to work in a place like that?
00:25:57
Speaker
I've heard leaders say, this is a social contract.
00:26:00
Speaker
They're here to do work.
00:26:01
Speaker
We're here to pay them.
00:26:02
Speaker
We don't need to get along.
00:26:04
Speaker
They just need to do their job and let me do mine.
00:26:06
Speaker
And that really is a mentality of some leaders.
00:26:09
Speaker
I think about this idea of work from home and hybrid and the sense of mistrust that drives a lot of senior leaders to say, I can't see what they're doing.
00:26:20
Speaker
Therefore, I don't know what they're doing.
00:26:21
Speaker
Therefore, they can't be trusted.
00:26:23
Speaker
Therefore, we have to get them back into the office because we're missing out on something.
00:26:26
Speaker
Whereas an employee who's working from home says, I'm working hard over here.
00:26:31
Speaker
I'm doing everything and more than I did while I was in the environment of the office.
00:26:35
Speaker
Only I'm surrounded by people that I really like to have relationships with and I'm not forced through circumstance to have relationships with.
00:26:42
Speaker
So that dichotomy of trust is leading leaders to make these wholesale changes, eroding engagement.
00:26:50
Speaker
The engagement of an organization is feeling connected to your work and feeling connected to the people around you.
00:26:56
Speaker
in a shared purpose.
00:26:57
Speaker
And that comes from trust.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I think part of what creates that environment, leaders not knowing what their team members are actually doing, and they're getting questioned by their leadership.
00:27:05
Speaker
Where are we on this project?
00:27:06
Speaker
Well, I can't, as a leader, run over to your desk and go take a peek or corner them and say, where are we?
00:27:11
Speaker
I think in that example,
00:27:13
Speaker
It's more so the interweaving of trust and power dynamics.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's a semblance of control.
00:27:18
Speaker
Trust, that also is a scale of how much control we're willing to give another individual or how much control we're willing to take from another individual.
00:27:26
Speaker
We talked about earlier micromanaging.
00:27:28
Speaker
That's not trusting persons.
00:27:30
Speaker
You're taking away all their control of autonomy and making decisions the right way.
00:27:34
Speaker
And that creates that environment where people can't do what they need to do.
00:27:38
Speaker
Depending on how we view trust, how much trust we're willing to give, how much trust we're willing to take as leaders.
00:27:44
Speaker
We have to understand that there's an ebb and flow to it.
00:27:46
Speaker
Having people return to the office, just a semblance of control.
00:27:50
Speaker
And a lot of time it's because someone has questioned that leader's knowledge or has questioned that person's trust.
00:27:55
Speaker
So in turn, you're questioning your team's trust now.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, I will stand behind this thought process.
00:28:01
Speaker
If you show me a leader that can't manage a team that's working from home, I will show you the same leader is one that can't manage a team while they're in an office together.
00:28:09
Speaker
I 100% agree with that.
00:28:11
Speaker
If you show me a team member who can't be trusted working from home, I will show you a trust a team member that can't be trusted working in the office.
00:28:19
Speaker
If a leader can't trust their team to work remotely, then those team members shouldn't be on your team.
00:28:24
Speaker
If they aren't trustworthy enough to be productive and do their job and live up to their social contract.
00:28:31
Speaker
of I'm earning my paycheck and I'm going to deliver the work, then they shouldn't be on the team.
00:28:35
Speaker
And if a manager can't manage their team effectively to get the best out of their team while they're working remote, you don't need that manager on your team any longer.
00:28:42
Speaker
But many leaders won't admit to that because they're the manager that doesn't know how to manage a team remotely.
00:28:48
Speaker
And they might have to face the hard truth.
00:28:50
Speaker
They might be the manager that doesn't know how to manage a team in-house as well.
00:28:54
Speaker
Good communication is agnostic to location.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, that reminds me of the movie Office Space.
00:28:59
Speaker
You got four different managers coming to the same person, seeing if they read the memo.
00:29:03
Speaker
Do you have my TPS report?
00:29:05
Speaker
I don't.
00:29:05
Speaker
My 2K already passed.
00:29:07
Speaker
But I think that's an interesting conversation.
00:29:09
Speaker
What makes good leadership in-house remotely?
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:12
Speaker
One more thought exercise before we wrap.
Fostering a culture of trust in organizations
00:29:15
Speaker
Dr. C, you are building a new organization or you're consulting with an organization that
00:29:20
Speaker
And they want to build into their culture a high level of trust.
00:29:23
Speaker
What guidance do you give them so that they really build that in?
00:29:27
Speaker
And there's accountability around ensuring that core part of their culture, trust, is something that is sustainable, believable, and trusted in their culture.
00:29:36
Speaker
So there's a couple of components that I would say would be the starting point.
00:29:39
Speaker
First of all, you have to be clear on why you exist as an organization, why the team exists, especially with a startup growth organization.
00:29:46
Speaker
It's making sure there's alignment with the teams in terms of what are we here for?
00:29:50
Speaker
Once you have that alignment, it's important for leaders within the organization to actually have trust with each other.
00:29:56
Speaker
Because a lot of times team members are going to
00:29:58
Speaker
look at leadership or cues on how should I behave with this team?
00:30:01
Speaker
How should I behave with this other team?
00:30:03
Speaker
When we don't build that trust with the leadership team, an early foundation, you end up having a lot of silos that are interdependent with each other.
00:30:10
Speaker
And you end up failing as an organization, failing as a team, or you're constantly trying to fix relationships.
00:30:16
Speaker
So building a strong foundation with the relationship, I think where a lot of organizations miss the target is not providing expertise and support to middle and frontline managers and supervisors on how to foster strong teams.
00:30:28
Speaker
Reality is they're the ones doing the work.
00:30:30
Speaker
They're the ones that are going to have the revolving door of team members leaving and
00:30:34
Speaker
Now we have these increased costs and it comes to recruitment and retention, sentiment, where there's no trust, trust in the product, trust in the system, trust in the organization.
00:30:43
Speaker
It becomes reflective in our interactions with our stakeholders.
00:30:46
Speaker
So I think a big miss for a lot of organizations is they don't actually create the space and have these real conversations about what is trust and how do we foster trust as a team in the organization?
00:30:55
Speaker
How do we foster trust with each other?
00:30:57
Speaker
So having that additional perspective, having
00:30:59
Speaker
expertise come in to actually facilitate these conversations.
00:31:02
Speaker
So many times I see as a senior leader, should be a participant in a conversation, trying to facilitate the conversation, yet consciously or unconsciously, they're staring at the way that they want it to be seen.
00:31:12
Speaker
So for an organization, there has to be attention to fostering trust and building a foundation of trust for teams.
00:31:19
Speaker
I agree 100%.
00:31:20
Speaker
And we've touched on a lot of really cool topics like psychological safety, culture building.
00:31:26
Speaker
You just talked about how to de-bias meetings, coaching emerging leaders in an organization.
00:31:32
Speaker
I think I'll just say this was a lot of fun.
00:31:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:31:35
Speaker
I think we've got interesting, relevant topics that you and I have a pretty good perspective on.
00:31:40
Speaker
And I'm really looking forward to continuing the conversation next time.
00:31:43
Speaker
Absolutely, Dr. D. Excited, excited to have a conversation.
00:31:46
Speaker
All right.
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, I think we're done here.
00:31:48
Speaker
Let's close it up.
00:31:50
Speaker
I'm Dr. D. And I'm Dr. C. And we'll keep dissecting leadership so your time at work sucks a little less.
00:31:55
Speaker
That's all we can ever hope for, right?
00:31:57
Speaker
Right.
00:31:57
Speaker
All right.
00:31:57
Speaker
Until next time.