247: David Horsager — What Makes a Trusted Leader?

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Are you even working on the right thing as a leader? Do you think that you either have it or don't have it, or maybe you should work on some things but you're not sure if you're even working on the right things? Our show's for you. If you are a leader in business, any level of business, and you'd like to become a better leader, we can improve it. And we've got some really great validated stuff. Next up, David Horsager. So we are getting into the whole world of trust, how to develop trust as a leader and why that is so important. Solving the fundamental problem for leaders. We'll talk more about that in a second. Before we get into it, I want to remind our listeners about our sponsor, sweet process. Sweetprocess.com if you're sick and tired of telling people how to do their job, explaining things to them, answering questions, and you'd like to hand that over more, Whether you're a 50 person firm or a 5,000 person firm, I'll bet that like so many of us leaders are still answering basic questions that should be handed over. And our sponsor, SweetProcess.com is all about that. Document it, train it and then let the team not only train, cross, train on board with it, but let them improve the process over time. Create that one unified place where they can figure it all out and get it done without filling your day with questions and problems to solve. That's sweetprocess.com that one central resource. And we've got a special offer for our listeners, viewers of the show if you would like to try this out for free for a whole month. Normally it's two weeks for free. Now for our listeners, they're doubling that time so you can get a whole month to really play with it. Dive into it. See what it does for you and your business. You don't even have to put a credit card. Go to sweetprocess.com scaling up in order to get your try at that software. So sweet process.com scaling up we'll put in the show notes and you probably see it in the crawl. There it was in the crawl down below. So we're gonna get into David Horstager in a minute. Before we do that, I also want to remind you my name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the host of the show your friendly neighborhood Scaling up coach, one of the 200 or so scaling up coaches around the world and the honor and privilege of hosting the show at least once a week. And we've done over 250 shows now. So we bring a new show to you every week with a thought leader. In the world of scaling up, you know, scaling up is a living best of framework and folks like David and so many of the others that we have on the show regularly share their wisdom knowledge with you every week. So if you want to find any of those back catalog of shows with all of their notes, their tool downloads, their special offers, all that kind of thing, you'll go to scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com is where you get all of those and more. I'll even give you a copy of the book Scaling it for free@scalingcoach.com also if we can help you find somebody for your coaching needs, we can do all that scalingcoach.com all right, Dave, David Horsager joins us now and he's in lovely Minnesota, right?

I'm in Minnesota. We love it. We got a fresh 5 inches. It's nice and fresh white stuff. Kids are excited. Went skiing on the weekend.

So David has all kinds of letters behind his name, but he's the CEO of trustedge Leadership Institute and the best selling author of the trustedgen, inventor of this enterprise trust index. And he's been one of the most important studies out in the world of leadership, Trust outlook. He's been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing. And he's worked with the teams at FedEx, Toyota, the Yankees, even Department of Homeland Security and so, so many more. He's been a really well received speaker on our stage at our Scaling up summits. And I'm so glad to have you to the show, David.

Hey, it is a treat to be here. Love you guys. Love everybody at Scaling Up. What a treat.

So we're going to talk about your latest book. The latest book Trusted leader builds on the work of trustedge and the eight pillars that drive results. That core work that's there, this is not new concept but it's about how to apply it right now as a leader you can do, right?

Yeah, but it's absolutely new content. I mean the thing is when I started my work on that grad work a couple decades ago, had this finding no one else was basically no one was talking about trust or thinking about trust the way they have now just the last few years. You know, Forbes makes trust the business word of the year and best place, the great place to work takes off engagement, which trust is the number one metric. We've been arguing this for a long time but very few people are looking research based, you know, in any way at trust in those days. So that first book, 365 pages and you know, I think we cut 200 pages of research out of it to get down to that. And really valuable still selling today that whole trusted work. We changed the name of the institute to Trusted Leadership Institute because of it. But this, this new work is, I mean the eight pillar framework is true, it's validated by universities and so the framework is there. But in the last decade we've learned a lot of new best of class techniques to gain trust, use that framework to build trust more quickly. And we're using it to solve corruption issues in East Africa and team issues and you know, like you said with pro sports teams and company issues and, and of course I'm passionate about. Because it's changed me every day.

So yeah, so it's new stuff about the application of it. But, but it's really. We'll get into all of that in just a minute. Before we get into that, tell folks a little bit more about your background, how you get into the work of trust, the original work, the how, the evolution of this. Sure.

So you know, I, I was directing a youth and family organization in Arkansas and I was, I after college I was on staff and then directing, I built a leadership curriculum. One thing led to another. I think it was a commanding Officer of the U.S. one of the big academies in our country and said our soldiers need this. And so I ended up speaking at that. One thing led to another, but it was all this leadership content. This was back in the 1900s by the way. Our kids need to hear that. And I said, I remember still Lisa and I were at, probably at the time, you know, I didn't have four kids and all that. And we were just, just started speaking some. I think it was the most expensive place I'd stayed up until that point. Because I remember we're sitting in this beautiful Lowe's Resort, I think was Tucson, Arizona or something. And. And I just kind of had this not, not some big spiritual epiphany, but this epiphany looking up the stars that night saying, you know, the issue they think they're having, I don't think that's the real issue. I think that's a trust issue and I don't think that's not a leadership issue, that's not a sales issue, trust issue. Now this led to then me doing all my graduate work and organizational leadership. That research became interesting to some people more famous than me. We started applying it in companies that actually worked. And our case study driven work. That's the thing. We are really there to get results. And the thing when people change, the amount of trust, it changed results. And then the Wall Street Journal bestseller and the research, more research. And now we're doing ongoing research. But it changed me and that's why I'm passionate about this. But I will just say when we move back to Minnesota to start this work because this will be fun for scale up folks that are entrepreneurs too. Because not only am I a researcher and passionate about this trust work and building companies on it. I was an entrepreneur too. I'm building this. I didn't have this office space that you can't see and all the staff out there that you can't see right now. It was Lisa and I and we moved back up to Minnesota. Fun little story for the entrepreneurs. Moved back up to Minnesota, where I'm from. We found a place to stay for about half the price of any other apartment. $350. The basement of 86 year old Clara Miller's. And it didn't have a bathroom, a kitchen or windows. It came complete with black mold on the walls. We didn't know, by the way, you'll like this, Bill. We didn't know it was illegal to live in a windowless basement at the time. We found that out two years later when we moved out. But when there was water and musk on the floor and everything. But we lived there for two years and we'd go upstairs and share her bathroom, we'd go upstairs and get to use her kitchen if we needed it. But that's how we started. And I think maybe that's a sign of entrepreneurism, maybe it's a sign of some things. But for those of you that are entrepreneurs, when you're passionate about something and believe in something and see the impact of it, it changes what you'll do to get it out there. Now, of course, things have changed 21 years later, and I'm grateful for that.

But she's still in jail for renting you that apartment.

Nobody went to jail. But basically while I was there, that led to then thinking differently about trust and thinking differently about leadership and just to get that original finding. And you cut me off with a question anytime. But I'll kind of give you this basis. Basically the original finding that stands firm today. There are two sides of that original research that have been revalidated just last year by triangulated revalidation from an outside university. That, number one, a lack of trust is the biggest cost in an organization. The problem. People are solving the wrong problem. It's always a lack of trust. So if you think you know. And the number one question everybody's asking about you, your company, your brand, is not do I like you? People think they buy from people. No, they don't. It's always, I've got friends I like a lot, love watching the game with them. I wouldn't go into business with them in a million years. And yet when we move, I go to a dry cleaners. I don't like the people at all compared to my last dry cleaners, but it's so convenient on the way. I still use people I don't like because I do trust them to clean my clothes and, you know, get, get the right dry cleaning. So it's always a trust issue. Can I trust you is the question everybody's asking. And trust that first half of the research found trust is the leading indicator. Everything else always lags where people are concerned. So people think we got a leadership problem. You never do. The only reason I follow lead or not is trust. You get. I got a sales problem. You never do. The only reason I buy or not has something to do with trust. You could say, we got a mark. How are we going to amplify this marketing message? There's only one way, and that's increased trust in the message. We got an innovation issue. The only way to increase innovation in a team is increase trust so that people will stop hiding and start sharing ideas. So creativity goes up, innovation goes up. Diversity issues of our day. We've got all kinds of racial and diversity issues of our day. The biggest Harvard study shows on their own. I quote this in my first book, shows diversity on its own. Pits people against each other unless you increase trust. The only way to get the benefits which we know are many of having diversity on a team. The only way to get the benefits of that, there's only one way, and that's increased trust. So even learning.

You let me make sure I understand this. And for our listener's sake as well, it's a pretty situational trust we're talking about here. So I trust the dry cleaners to be open in the available hours, not to ruin my clothes. I'm not trusting them in an absolute sense. I'm not trusting them with my children. I'm not trusting. I'm trusting them with my clothes.

Certainly we trust people, right? We trust people in different ways. And I'll get to the eight pillars of trust. And we need more or less based on different things. Because I might trust. I might trust people to. I might trust a certain golfer to play golf really well, but not to go on a date with my wife. Right? So there's some news about that. So when we talk about the trust edge or the trusted leader, we are talking about a pretty comprehensive high level of trust that I actually would trust them in their character, in their competency in all these eight ways. But that first, it's really important to see the impact that trust that first half of the research. Of course, all the money is made on the second half, how you build it. And we'll get to the framework. But you have to see it's always a trust issue for some people. Solve the wrong thing. They think they have a communication issue. They never do. They got an engagement issue. We're measuring the wrong thing. You don't get engagement with engagement. The only way is to increase trust. We got a net promoter score, NPS issue. You don't get referrals with referrals. The research shows the only way to increase referrals is increased trust. Then you get more referrals. So you have to. And I think we were talking about this before the show quickly. And I won't. I won't give a body of research to bore people. But. So let's look at it anecdotally. A lock business. Why do I put a lock on anything? The only reason is I don't trust you. So what's the cost of having a lock on something? Well, the money, I gotta buy it. But the biggest cost is time. Now I gotta fiddle around and open it. I can't just go through the door. That's a big cost. Or listeners can simply think, text someone you trust. How long does that take? No time at all. Now try to text someone you don't trust. How long does that take? How are they gonna take this? Ooh, I gotta delete that. How are they gonna take that? Ooh, forevermore because of a lack of trust. So when you can see, when you can actually solve or increase trust, you create a place where people can best and you create the greatest efficiency and performance. I grew up in the poorest town in poorest county in Minnesota and I still remember out in the countryside, Mr. Olson's veggie stand where he left the can of money out there and all the vegetables out there and you made your own change and pay what you owe. And the efficiency of that, where you can have it, is that he didn't have to pay anybody to be there. He saved money. People could do it at their own time. He saved time and they had loyal customers. And it was because he built it on trust. This doesn't mean I believe you should trust everyone. I just people. But they have to see the greatest efficiency in business is where you can create the most trust that you can create. So when you.

It occurs to me though, that the, like the government of the dry cleaner example, if I saw the dry cleaner pull up and nick the car next to him and then just sort of brush it off and look around to see if anybody was looking now, I'd wonder, what does he do to the clothes after the service? There's a bleed over out of the car. And we, we think of character of the people that we're interacting with that we see in other domains, even outside the category.

Absolutely. And by the way, I say that about the dry cleaner because I'm thinking of going back because it's been so inconvenient. But actually, since I started, I still haven't gone back. I still actually am going 20 minutes out of the way to a different dry cleaner right now. So there was a cost to them. If I ever do go back, because I need that time back, I. It's. They cost a year of someone who's in a suit every day almost and is, you know, worth a lot of business, you know, you know, in there in a way. Right. So. So there always is a cost and there's skepticism, but you get to a certain level, you'll go 20 minutes out of the way, you know, to get it done. So there's. The point is you've got. People have to see the big cost is a lack of trust. And that's. That was a kind of. At the time, you know, we get it, but at the time that was kind of monumental finding because they were. They're using other indicators and solving the wrong problems. And people still do try to, you know, not solve the right problem. The second half the research, just to give an overview of it, is these, you know, this first half of the research begged the question, how do you actually build it? Right? How do you build trust then? Is it just character and integrity and this. No. These eight research funnels that I use C words for clarity in the book, but they really or denote a really a research funnel of these eight are the framework for building trust globally. And when you have all eight of them, you gain this advantage. The greatest competitive advantage I argue there is. You talk about scaling up. You want to scale up, create this advantage of this eight pillar framework, and you will have trust that helps you scale faster than ever before.

So your second story there about growing up in the poor thing and the can and putting the money in. And it reminds me, many of my neighbors have these little public library things. They give a book, take a book. They have these little glass, they look like mailboxes or whatever out of their house. They're very charming. And when we go in and work with leadership teams, especially in the beginning or if things get broken, we do various trust exercises. And fundamental to elevating trust on the team is giving trust to get trust. So I want to build trust. I'm going to trust you, and so on. And so people share things in a vulnerable way. And that's probably the beginning exercise that we do and repeat frequently with some. And I think that relates to your development of trust in your work.

Yeah, it absolutely is true. I will just make one comment about the way I frame our work is you have to give trust to get it. No doubt about it. In fact, in last year's study, when we asked about half of Americans on the American side of the study, not the global side, half of Americans said, you know, when we asked, are you more apt to extend trust until it's broken, lead with trust, or are you more apt to lead with skepticism? Where you got to build it from the beginning, or I'm going to be skeptical. Turns out in America, it was about half and half.

Yeah, I believe that.

Why is that? Let me just say something here. That's just who we have to work with as leaders. It's not necessarily their fault that they led with skepticism. So a lot of these people on the side that lead with skepticism, something tragic happened to them in the first 20 years of life. Could have been as terrible as abuse. It could have been, you know, something Else. So actually our work, most of our work is spent on how do I become the most trusted, not how much should I trust them. I do have a process for discerning trust and all that. But how do. And what we know is when I build this eight pillar framework, I increase trust in me as a leader. I increase trust in the brand. This way I can solve the marketing problem. This way I can solve against this framework, trust. But it's got to be me. I remember, you know, a lot of keynotes. I'd be at the back afterwards and it'd be signing books and people would come up to me like, David, I love that trust stuff. I believe in that trust stuff. My boss should have been here, you know, my teenage. My spouse should be here, you know, Right. But I'm like, they're not here. You are. I'm here. And I've been changed by this work. And we. So I really try to bring people back in most of my work to what can I do? What can we do? What can our country do? You know, whatever it is and not. But extending trust is a big deal. But I'll make one other comment. You know, some people think I thought I kind of knew it all about trust, but it's more complex than you think. So as an example, you know, we think it takes a long time to build trust. Well, on crisis, like 9, 11 complete strangers trust each other in a moment. Most of your trust is built and lost in a moment. Confidence is trusted. Well, if it leads to arrogance, it isn't, you know, extending more trust to your team can get more out of them. That's true. And let you extend too much. And one comment. You said a little bit ago about vulnerability and transparency, which is often true. Transparency is trusted. However people think transparency is everything with trust and it's not. Some kids of yours that are listening are so transparent on social media. I do not trust them for a second. Because confidentiality is also trusted.

And so you trust them to throw you some weed.

It's just, it's more complex than you think at first. So to say it's just vulnerability or it's just confidentiality. It's just, it's complex. But the, you know, the eight pillars, that's how we have to frame it. And you know, at least from the research.

That's funny, I reveal my own stuff. I think that it's. That it's not. Yeah, I get what you're saying about the transparency. That like they're revealing stuff and they're not realizing what they're revealing. I'm talking more about that vulnerability that takes courage and strength to open up intentionally, not accidentally, undeniably, by the way.

And that's one of the pillars that fits under one of the pillars, which is the connection pillar. And you do not connect without vulnerability.

Let's talk pillars real quick because not everybody's read the first book and that kind of thing, so.

Sure.

There's only eight.

There's only eight. Yeah, I know people. My speech coach 20 years ago, you know, it's better to have three points they can remember that. I'm like, well, it came out of the research and I talk about trust. So what am I going to do? Hide part of the framework, you know. So basically here it is. I'll try to give it quickly as an overview. I talk, you know, we have an.

Encyclopedia, but this is the quick recap.

Here we go. So number one is clarity. What we found is people trust the clear and they mistrust or distrust the ambiguous or the overly complex.

100% right. People start going on and building in your like your trust is dropping.

The longer your strategic plan, the less trust people have in it. Number two is compassion. People trust those that care beyond themselves. So you think the most trusted person in the world in the index, in the research every year is mom Mom. Generally there's crazies on daytime tv, but mom mom has trust because she's willing to sacrifice and you know, stay up late on that science project or whatever and we could just learn something. It's hard to gain trust and accountability if people don't feel like you care about them at all. Number two is compassion. Number three is character. We trust those that do what's right over what's easy. Don't buy into the lie that you're done learning your character at 12 years old. We've seen companies and leaders change. We have a seven pillar, seven step framework for driving trust into a company but driving character. You know, company. But number three is character. Number four is we trust competency. So you I might trust Bill Gallagher to take my kids to the ball game because of his character and his compassion. That does not mean I will trust Bill to give me a root canal because of competency. You've got to. If you're selling the same way you were 20 years ago, I don't trust you. If you're leading the same way you were 10 years ago, I don't trust you. You've got to stay fresh and relevant and capable. That's why your coaching network, we have a Coaching network. That's why you need coaches, you need mentors, you need team. You need to stay sharp and fresh and relevant and capable. And that's what you're, you know, whole team is about. So competency. The fifth pillar is commitment. We trust those that stay committed in the face of adversity. And if you think simply of, you.

Know, anybody that seem really related.

Commitment. They do, yeah, right.

The character to do the difficult and strong things and then the commitment that I'm staying the course to something and they seem really related.

They are very. In fact, all of them are related and you'll notice it.

Okay, now you're down to seven.

Yeah. You could, you could say that there was enough feedback that we divided them, but you could argue that, you could also argue that for connection and compassion, you know, but, but when we had it, there was enough actionables that gave us specific commitment. So anyway, I mean, if I think of anybody, you know, who's left a legacy in the world, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus or Joan of Arc, they were trusted in many ways because they stayed committed to something beyond themselves, often to death. And they were trusted for it. I'll give one takeaway right here. People ask us, well, how do you rebuild trust once you've lost trust, how do you rebuild it? And we got a 10 step process for big companies. But whether you're a big company or an individual, it comes down to one thing and it is not the apology. People think they rebuild trust on the apology. You never ever do the only, the only way to rebuild trust. Here's an example. A CEO from the Netherlands came to America. I said, what's the first thing you notice? He'd been here a few weeks, became friends. He said, David, you got a bunch of lying apologizers at this company. And this was not my company, by the way. Right? And I said, really? He said, yeah. They come in, I said, I'm sorry I'm late. But they're late all the time. They're late every time. You don't trust the apology. The only way you can ever. Doesn't mean you don't need apology to open the door of communication. But the only way to rebuild trust is to make and keep a new commitment. So that's under the commitment pillar. One little idea. Next. Hang on.

So when I think about in our coaching with relationships and where trust is broken in companies and things like that, the thing that I'm always coaching people to do because the apologies are so meaningless, just so thrown around, is like you've Apologized for stuff. One, you haven't dealt with. Whatever it is that you caused, you're not interested. You just want to apologize. You don't want to say, and you're not even curious about what are the ramifications, the ripples of whatever you did. And your apology doesn't deal with what will be different to your friend from the Netherlands in the future. So I say I'll never be late again or you can count on me. And I know you can't because you haven't even looked for yourself at why you were late. You're not even interested. You're not interested in what it did to me, me. And you're not interested in why you're always late. You just say, I'm sorry, I'll never be late again. And I'm pretty sure you're going to be late next week.

100%.

I think if you deal with those two things, the impacts on the people around you of whatever it is that you've done, you're apologizing for and starting to deal with where it went off, the forensic kind of questioning, then you're actually getting powerful and you're building trust.

Right. You should be a double coach, Bill. You should be a trusted coach also.

So you.

You've got it.

I'll take that.

Undeniably. You know, and so much of your work overlaps with what, what, what we're doing. But, but, but truth is truth. You know too. It's like this is. You find from the research. It's true. It's true. 100%. I can't add to that. It's. It's absolutely true. So I'll give you the other three pillars quick, and then we can interact with anyone you want. The next pillar is connection and really the ability to connect and collaborate. So in a company, each of these pillars we look at counter forces. A counter force in a company to connection would be siloing, would be one. As an example. If I see siloing, I see they're unable to share budget here or they gotta have five printers instead of one where they could have one. They can't connect and collaborate. So that, by the way, a big part of building connection on the individual leader level is, is what you said early on, and that is vulnerability. I wanted people to see a little bit bigger. But vulnerability is a huge and critical to building this pillar as a leader. So connection, in fact, last, last research study on that, 92% of people said they would trust their leaders more if they were more transparent about their mistakes. Many people, they think just transparent. But no, we actually connect over failures. If I say, oh, yeah, in high school, I was the homecoming king and I was all state and football, and I'm if, oh, you know what? This happened to me and I failed here, and I lost my, you know, I almost lost my family and my first business or whatever it is. Oh, I can relate. I can connect, you know, on that. And a lot of leaders, you know, I walk with have imposter syndrome, or they're scared to death of being found out instead of just being vulnerable when everybody knows anyway. So the next pillar. Yeah.

And again, we're afraid to show a mistake. We're afraid to show weakness. We're afraid to show failure, that kind of thing. But when I think about the clearest moments where I recognize that I showed leadership or I have seen leadership in others, but when I think about my own, there are moments where I went to my team and I said, I'm failing and I don't have any ideas, and I'm afraid, but I won't quit. So let's look at this together. I need your help. And people are like, I'm on your team. And those are moments where they took huge strength and commitment. There was real clarity. There was connection. Right. There was a lot of those elements going on there where I was building something, but I was admitting that I was clueless and that I had screwed up. And yet those are some of the most powerful moments of leadership when I look back at my whole career.

Absolutely. And they started giving you the benefit of the doubt because they knew you. We do a process called the trust shield. And it's just a powerful exercise with leadership teams. And I often have people. It forces healthy vulnerability. And people after that will go away with talking to each other and say, I've worked with this guy for 20 years, and in three minutes of sharing that, I now know more about him or her. So I think that you people have to have the courage and the intentionality to be that kind of vulnerable. And it always pays off to blame someone else. Toxic. You know, I had to. In one of my. When I was a professor, I had to oversee this one person's research around toxic leadership. And it about killed me. Like, I'm made to build things, not to focus, you know, Like, I'm not. I'm made to grow things. I learned that day I made to focus on. On the good and try to build. Not, like, spend all my time on tearing apart and looking at the toxicity. But it's worth being Aware of so. And by the way, all this talk about my belief in trust, I'm passionate about it does not mean I believe you should trust everyone. There are good reasons not to trust. So that's why I keep coming back to. I need to. You need. You want the greatest advantage of all time in life, leadership and business. You need to build these pillars. You. But that doesn't mean we should trust everyone. If that guy did that to you, trust him to do that again. Don't just, oh, I want to trust him now. It's like people, you gotta. There are reasons anyway not to trust my flight to be on time. I don't trust it. That boy with my daughter, I've definitely.

I put trust in people that not only should I have not trusted in that capacity, but I actually set them up with a core temptation that had I been through thinking more clearly, I should have not done because it made their life harder. They were really willing and able to do certain things, and I put the wrong trust in them and I set them up to make another profound mistake.

And, you know, this is systemic in some types of organizations. I mean, we find this in hospitals. I mean, there's. Hospitals are so made of nurses. Often nurses are really great at nurses. But they all become. But they all. That's their funnel for becoming managers, when in fact they get funneled up to being managers and they hate it when in fact they love being nurses. I mean, you have this in many types of organizations. But the next pillar, sales a lot, right?

Like a star salesperson. Sometimes we make them a sales manager and they just bomb. And somebody else who was kind of a middling salesperson, but who really understood developing people and creating structures would have been a fantastic manager to build out a sales playbook in an organization. We never promote them because they're like, yeah, why not?

You know? Right. Totally, totally. We see it all the time. It's. Yeah, okay, so the next pillar whipping through them at my. My pace. But I love this. So the. The seventh pillar of the greatest leaders and organizations of all time, the seventh pillar of trust is contribution. And really, let's get to the. What are the first words that came out of that research funnel number one was results. You've got to contribute results, outcomes, performance. So you can't just have compassion and character. So think of a doctor, that surgeon. I go in for amputation, the surgeon cuts off the wrong leg. That might have been the most compassionate surgeon I ever met. But we got the wrong result. I don't trust them. Right? So You've got to contribute results, and that's the work of work. But when we do it with compassion, I know companies that have gotten a lot of results for a time, and they neglected character, compassion. They lost everything. I know ones that have, have done just compassion and character, and they got a great mission and they sing Kumbaya all the way off the cliff because they never get results. So you gotta put them together and you gotta think about trust holistically. But when you do and come under this language, I believe you can solve every organizational and leadership issue against these eight. And I do it without a bit of ego, I hope, and with, with a whole lot of research and experience on six continents. But I'm, I don't think it's easy. I don't. I'm not saying it's simple. I'm just saying. And when you do it, you can. Globally, we found that you can do it against these eight when you contextualize it. So the results pillar and the final pillar, I call it the king or queen of the pillars, and that is consistency. Because sameness is trusted. So this is why I said, you know, if you're late all the time, I trust you to be late. This. The only way to build a reputation is consistency. The only way to build a brand is consistency of experience. Sameness is, it's why we. Even if I don't like McDonald's, I trust them because I've had the same burger on six continents. It pickles off centered everywhere I go, right? So sameness, sameness is trusted. And so. But you can go up and down the pillars. Inconsistent. Character is no character at all inconsistent. If it's only compassion, when, when you look like me, that's not really compassion. So, so I say just a couple tongue trusts, right?

I, I trust a Michelin star, and I trust a McDonald's in the same way a Michelin star. I know I'm going to get a certain kind of meal. A McDonald's, I know I'm going to a certain kind of meal. Golden arches, Michelin star, they both let me trust the meal for different things entirely.

Entirely. But it's absolutely trusted, you know, for what it is. And by the way, you know, the price, everything. So I should say a couple things just for context about these eight. So when you get this language, which seems simple at first, it's really monumental that you can solve every organizational and leadership issue against these eight. So people will say to me, well, what about an engagement issue? It never is. Well, oh, you like C's David, isn't it a communication issue, Ladies and gentlemen? It is never, ever, ever a communication issue. At the core, clear look at the clarity pillar. That's trusted. Unclear. Communication is not trusted. High character is low character. Isn't compassionate, is hateful, isn't. So you can go down the list and you can actually look at your marketing and look at your leadership, look at your sales. Oh, wow, we got a clarity issue here. Not a communication is clear. We got a consistency issue. They all also work together in that way that you could say, well, we're clear about the mission, but because you're not sharing it every 21 days consistently, you're losing clarity. So you could say, well, we do not have commitment here. Maybe it's directly a commitment issue, but it could be they're not feeling cared about, compassion, so they're not committed, so they work together. And I can give you more on how this can be used globally, but it's the same eight pillars. In Latin America, I might start more with the connection pillar. In the US I might start more with the results or contribution pillar, because tendencies of where people need to start or want to start, but it still is those eight. And it doesn't mean Latinos don't want results. They do. And it doesn't mean Americans don't want connection. They do. But. But how we contextualize it might matter for corruption work in East Africa compared to work on the Yankees.

Yeah, it's all context to the particular field that you're in, the aspect of leadership that you're dealing with.

Because as an example for clarity, let's say a leader might have a clarity issue. Well, maybe they're not clear about the vision. A salesperson might have a clarity issue, but it's that they aren't clear about the benefits of the product. To me, they're clear about how cool they are and how long they've been in business, but they're not clear about the benefits. And so nobody buys or the teacher. All the students can't stand that teacher. Cool teacher, nice teacher, but he's so unclear about the assignments. Everybody goes home angry with the teacher. In each case, it's a clarity issue. Right. So, you know, under each of these, we have ways that we actually solve for them and practical, actionable ways. You can start tomorrow to build that pillar to increase trust. And that's. What if people can think in terms of these eight and they can see, oh, that's a problem. Which problem is that? Oh, that's a problem of commitment. Okay, I can do Something about it right here. And that's what leads to success and really scaling like you talk about.

So before we end the show, we're going to give people a special link and we've got a whole suite of special tools. We'll tell you about that in just a minute. There's a whole bunch of free downloads that you've got to go along with the new book and so on. Let me remind our listeners about our sponsors tool which will help you bring those kinds of consistent results. And that's getting your processes, procedures and policies really nailed, transferred, trained, cross trained, all of that. When you use a tool like sweetprocess.com, you can actually get everybody doing everything in the same way on a consistent basis. And you can get those process, procedures, policies continually upgrading by letting the whole team refine them and polish them over time. Because things change as you point out, like what you did a year ago, last quarter even is going to go through changes over time. So we want to get that out of your head or a few number of leaders and across to everyone. That's what sweetprocess.com is all about. It's an online software tool, lets you get everything done and everyone dialed in the whole team so that you could focus more on growing the business. And and we have a special offer for our listeners and viewers if you'd like to get double the free time for that, they'll extend their regular 14 day trial to 28 days so you can spend a month figuring out if this is actually going to work for you. So you go to sweetprocess.com scalingup to sign up and start playing with it today. You play with it this weekend and start to see and then start to roll it out with your team and get a couple, couple things in there and see how it works for you. Sweetprocess.com scalingup and go ahead and play with that. So with that said, what are like how do we take away, where do we get started like that in your world?

So you know, like I said, each of them, you can start in any of each of the eight pillars. What I would do is look at that eight pillar framework and say hey, where am I strong? We're doing really well here. Where am I weak? Okay, let's take a look. Take and start with this pillar. We know you can just feel you have a process of a problem there. Of course we have assessments that enter measuremytrust.com will give you ways you can measure trust to look for a weakness. If you don't know where to start. Start with clarity. Because you, you can see clarity results in two weeks. And I'll give you one very simple, clear example. It might seem simple at first. It might, you know, seem. It's not necessarily easy. It's just simple and powerful. The number one most overlooked, underused question that actually takes an idea to an action is not the why. The why is important. Have a why, passionate why. It's not the who. Getting the right people on the bus. I agree with Collins. I like Senec, but the problem is the question. There's three of them. Ready? Yeah. Number one, this would be under strategic clarity. Under clarity. Number one question, how am I going to get there? Number two question, even more important, how am I going to get there? And number three, most important of all, how, right? If you can get good at saying how, how, how, how, how, you have a chance at the clarity I'm talking about. So sometimes people, we've had people use this process to triple sales in 90 days. It's the way I lost £52 in five months. I remember asking people around the world, you know, I'm on the plane, whatever, how do you stay fit when you're on the road like me? How do you stay fit? Anybody that looked fit, and they all said, eat less, exercise more. And I learned something that was not clear enough. So I started saying, but how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it? And I got to houzz and I learned something. You can always ask how until you can do something today or tomorrow. People think by next week, no big global governments. We've done this with, oh, you got 52 rocks. No, you can get to a how by tomorrow morning that you can act on today or tomorrow. So we, we do how, how, how plans. And you've got to get used to asking how. Not, not snarky, how you can do that. But I mean, I'm saying just if you want to have a clarity business you've got in the strategic processes that you have, you've got to get good at asking yourself and your team how. Okay, then how? Okay, then how? And it's not more housed this way, it's housed down. So I'm going to, if I'm going to say I'm going to, I need to take in less calories. Okay, how am I going to do that? I'm going to drink less soda. Okay, how am I going to do that? When I'm on the plane, I'm going to order a fresca instead of a Coke. I haven't had a Coke for 10 years. I've had a Diet Coke. No calories in that. I've had a Fresca, no calories in that. But I made one switch on that one item. Of course, I had to do a few other things, but of getting to a how that I could apply. And when you do this in teams, remember, your final how on a project has to end with a who, when and where, if needed. So in me losing weight, I know it's me, right? But on a team, remember, co leadership is terrible. Collaborative leadership is excellent. The research shows if you have more than one person on a final task, you have 50% less chance of getting it done. You have to get down to a person accountable and then when. Well, am I gonna. I'm gonna work out tomorrow? If I don't know when, 5:30 in the morning, I won't do it. I'm gonna work out somewhere. If I don't, if I don't know ahead of time, I'm either gonna go for a run or I'm gonna go to the gym. I will do neither. You can't have a choice. So if you want to get it done. So your final how is so clear, you can do it tomorrow morning. People say to me and companies, they'll say, well, we wanna have a better culture. Okay, how are you gonna do that? We're gonna appreciate people more. They're gonna do nothing. How you do that? We're going to be nice. How are you going to do that? How? Until someone says, I'm going to write a note every day for the next 90 days. I trust you.

This is really critical and core to the way that we work with people on developing their quarterly plans, either at the company level, departmental level, or down to the individual stakeholders. Ask him how. What do you mean you're going to drive up sales 50% this quarter? How are you going to do that? Well, we're just going to make more pitches.

Great.

How are you going to do that?

Exactly. Exactly.

Yep.

And what it might end up being is right.

How are you gonna do that?

And they might end up going back to where? Because they get there tomorrow, they're like, oh, yeah, I was gonna build pitches, I was gonna do this. I'm ready to make calls. And they don't have the list. And the final how might have been. I'm gonna get the list of 100 on my desk that might be. Or. Or people say to me, I'm gonna read more. I'm just Gonna start reading more. Unless they have the book on the nightstand, they're not doing it. You gotta buy the book or you gotta. Maybe it's going back and getting up earlier. Maybe they have to go back another level and say, actually it's not getting up early, it's going to bed earlier so I can get up earlier. And their final how is going to bed by 9 o'. Clock.

And I think this is the really great thing that ties into the other one you're talking about the apology. That's meaningless. Right. So then you start to execute on something that you planned out with all your hows and all that, and you fail at it for whatever reason for something you didn't consider. You got to ask yourself, okay, how am I going to make anything different now?

And when you can share a new how and a new commitment, people start to trust you. They will not fully trust you till after you've honored the commitment. But when they see that you've thought through, okay, that didn't work. I'm doing a new thing. You have a chance.

Yeah, yeah. Really good. So we want to keep elevating trust and keep considering that trust is the core issue. And there's these eight areas to work on, trust that are really simple and clear, but not necessarily easy to do and nuanced. And so we've got a whole suite of tools for you there. Here's the link. Trustedleaderbook.com scalingup it's got all kinds of special offers stuff. We just put it on the screen for you if you're watching the video or the video replay. So trustedleaderbook.com scalingup the book comes out March 30th depending on when you hear this. But you can pre order it from Amazon if it's before that now. So trustedleaderbook.com scalingup and there's some extra stuff there for our listeners. Viewers, right.

The whole trusted Masterclass 72 videos. You can go deep dig drill down on any of the each of the pillars so you can get other ideas. Under the compassion pillar, you can learn the SPA method of appreciation so that you, your appreciation actually means something. You can learn the ODC method of communication. Clarity. It comes under the clarity pillar. You get some really specific actionable takeaways you can do to become a more trusted leader fast.

That's awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I so appreciate you coming on. We could trust you to deliver a killer show for us and drop some knowledge on people. I want to remind our folks that if our show helped you share it with somebody else right now. And if you'd like to get something really cool, we have a special offer now that we've just started to roll out to people. But if you would like to get a whole bunch of tools that we haven't released yet, these are unreleased tools that that some of the coaches have but are not out there public. We've got a whole suite of special worksheets and things like that for you that we're ready to share with you and all you have to do is let us know you're a subscriber. So take a screenshot of where you've clicked and subscribed or that shows your subscriber to the show, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, wherever you got it. Or on our website@scalingcoach.com send us that to anyone info scalingcoach.com subscriber and we will send you that download of all those new tools that nobody else has got yet. So that infoscalingcoach.com is where to get them. Of course, the back catalog, this show and all the others@scalingcoach.com I want to give special thanks to Verne Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling up framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. And in the background, working here before, before, after, during the show is Lucy Summers, our show producer, our client coordinator and all things fabulous about fulfilling on our work. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at poplight Productions. Our show notes are written up by I. Cadena, proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again to everyone for listening and and to you David for joining us today. Talk to you again next week. Thanks again everyone and keep Scaling Up.

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