In this episode of The Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Zain Raj, CEO of Shapiro+Raj and author of The Pyramid Puzzle, about the transformative power of trust in business. Raj argues that every organization is fundamentally a people business, yet many leaders focus on operations and data without truly understanding the human beings they serve. He shares a case study of a large company that lacked a clear picture of its core customer, illustrating how superficial demographic data fails to capture real needs. Raj expands on Stephen Covey’s two pillars of trust—character (integrity) and competence—by adding a third pillar: commitment. He explains that trust is built through competence and capability, which generate respect, and then through consistently meeting and exceeding expectations. The biggest barrier to trust, especially in larger firms, is a lack of clear, consistent promises and expectations across stakeholders, leading to ambiguity and eroding confidence. Small behaviors—such as punctuality, preparation, and attention to detail—can quickly destroy trust, as shown through anecdotes about senior executives arriving late to meetings and a personal experience with United Airlines during COVID. Raj concludes with a simple, actionable framework: set clear expectations and reliably fulfill them, emphasizing that human responses are binary—trust is either earned or lost. Listeners are directed to Raj’s book The Pyramid Puzzle and Proteus resources for deeper guidance.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you will get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Zain Raj, Chairman and CEO of Shapiro+ Raj, an insights and inspiration company, and CEO of ZedNext, an ideas incubator. A futurist, agitator, and bestselling author, of Brand Rituals and Marketing for Tomorrow, Not Yesterday, Zane has created millions of dollars of value for his clients and investors. Now, with his new book, The Pyramid Puzzle: Igniting the Transformative Power of Trust, he's turned his attention to this powerful foundational element of leadership. So welcome to the show, Zane.
It's great to be with you, Erika.
I'm very excited. Our little pre-conversation made me even more excited. I'm, you know, we're definitely on the same page in terms of the necessity of trust in leadership, you know, and just as a, as a core element of building strong businesses. And so I thought our listeners would really benefit from your insights. So, so let's get started. So how have you say, and I want to know how you've come to believe that, quote, amplifying trust will have a transformative impact on any business. So help us understand that.
Yeah. And so having been in the business of changing human behaviors and changing human beliefs, you know, in the world of marketing, in the world of consulting, and then in the last 8 years in the world of insights, uh, the one thing that has become really, really very clear when you think about the world of business is people in the world of business have gotten to believing that they are into either making something or doing something, right? To talk about, I'm in a manufacturing business or I'm in the hospitality business or I'm a consultant. But what most people don't realize, the absolute foundational truth is every business at the end of the day is a people business.
Yeah.
Because unless and until a human being somewhere has a problem, and then goes to the business to find a solution because a business has something specific, a promise and an expectation of solving it in a way that's better, there is no business, right?
Yeah.
And I think that to me became a learning curve as I worked over the last 3 and a half decades to help either struggling companies, you know, survive and then thrive. or having thriving enterprises that I was a part of seeing. And what became very clear is the concept, the first, the concept of humanity and a human being at the core is an idea that people intellectually agree to. That's why we talk about customer-centered and all that stuff. But they really, really in practice don't get it, right? And they don't use it because they got so caught up in the operational stuff, the financial stuff, the process of the business. that they forget at the end of the day, a business is out there to serve. So I'll give you an example. One of the largest companies on the planet, you know, they were struggling with growth and they brought us in, right? They tried kind of using a number of different ways of reigniting their growth and they brought us in and, you know, they had 300 people insights and analytics organization. So you can see the size of this.
Right, right.
And my first question to the person who headed that organization reporting into the CMO was, tell me something about your customer. Who is your core? That one person that fundamentally is driving your business, right?
Yeah.
Here was the answer. Erika said, well, they're 25 to 64. They make an average household income of $60,000. Their household size is 2 adults and 2.5 kids, right? At which point in time I stopped them and I said, a half kid? I haven't met a household that has half a kid. I mean, what does half a kid look like? Right? And so you think about this, this is a multi, multi-billion dollar organization that really had no idea About who they were serving.
Just had statistics, demographics, psychographics. They didn't actually know who these people were.
Exactly. It was all driven by data, right? It was all driven by transactional data that was forwarded. And so when we went in, and this was one of those, you know, ideas where I said, let's understand people and let's understand who the customers are. And that has been the biggest thing because if you think about human beings, right? You and I. At the end of the day, for you to be able to call me on, on this and be talking about to your stakeholders who are your listeners, right, to create value for them, you have to have one thing. You have to trust that what I'm going to talk about is going to be valuable, right?
Yes.
And interestingly, trust becomes a foundation of almost any fundamental decision we make. Yeah. And ironically, it is the most overused word in business and in life, yet it's the least understood word in a business's life. Because when you ask for definition, go, hey, what do you think about trust? They go, you're gonna believe me.
No. Yeah.
Believing me is not trust, right? It's way deeper than that. And what companies need to understand is They have to look at everybody in their business ecosystem, whether it's a customer, whether it's employees, especially the employees, more importantly, the suppliers, their stakeholders. And they have to look at those people and say, these are human beings who are vested with me.
Yeah.
And without their ability to come together, And the only thing that brings humans together is belief in trust.
Are you— I assume you're familiar with Covey's work in Speed of Trust?
Yep.
I love how he just really pulled it apart and talks about, you know, we trust people's character and we trust people's competence. And it sounds like that's what you're saying too, that we trust who they are and that they're people of integrity and will tell the truth, but also that they're capable of delivering on their promises.
Yes. So, you know, obviously, I mean, you know, Stephen Covey is brilliant, right? You know, I mean, to me, some of his books have defined a lot of our characters and our beliefs and behaviors. But I do believe that he's right on those 2. But I think there's a 3rd pillar.
Okay.
That is, that needs to be talked about, right? It's not about competence and capability, it's also commitment, right? If you add a third.
Yeah.
The fundamental foundation in the way trust gets built starts with competence and then capability. But in my mind, competence and capability deliver, creates respect. What creates trust is once you've created respect by saying, I am capable and competent to do this, so you should expect this from me, is then to consistently meet and exceed those expectations.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He talks about that too, about results. I really agree with that. Yeah. Okay. That's great. So what, so then what, what in, I mean, you've observed this a lot and seen, seen it happen and not happen. So What do you see as the biggest barriers to building trust in a business environment?
I think the biggest barrier for building trust in a business environment, and it gets worse the bigger the business becomes, right?
Yeah.
Is the fact that there is, there is a lack of clarity or in what they're setting out as their promise or what they're— purposes and the expectation that each of the stakeholders need to have.
Okay? Yeah.
And, and so now what happens is, you know, they might promise something to the consumer. And, you know, as we're talking about marketing, right, promises go— there's an ad campaign with a tagline and stuff like that, right? Now think about this. The ad campaigns change, taglines change, right? Okay, they kind of treat the suppliers a specific or different way, right? But they are setting separate expectations of their employees. There isn't a clarity and consistency in what they are promising or what they're setting as an expectation. And so when you don't have a clear set of expectations of somebody, you can't measure them, right? So you don't know if they're meeting or not an expectation. And once you don't have that, there is no way you're gonna trust because you're always trying to go look around, right?
I love that saying. And that's true in every— that's true in personal relationships as well. If there's not— if I expect— if we have 2 different sets of expectations, it's really gonna erode our trust in each other. You know, I— well, you're gonna behave like this. I never, I never said I was gonna behave like that. You know.
It's so funny. I mean, it's ironically, right? And this morning I got my Harvard Business Review alert. And one of the articles in the alert was how to manage an employee that's not performing, right? And, and that makes excuses, right? And there was like a classic HBR article, right? very, very smart, talented people, like 4 things you should do with that person.
Right.
And I read that and see, that's the reason why The Pyramid Puzzle is different. It's not another business book like my first 2 books. I wrote it as a novel. I wrote it as a narrative. So it's a genre disruptor, right? It's a business novel for all practical purposes. It tells a story. And the reason why I did that Is in this article, right? They have all of the 4 things you should do. But when you just pull those 4 things down, it fundamentally gets down to you never really set clear expectations.
Exactly.
You never said, I expect this. And I'll give you a simple thing. When I bought Shapiro, right? And I believe, right, one of our biggest values, right, which is one is integrity, but second one is commitment, right? And when I talk about commitment, You know, it's like you have to show up on time. If you say something, if you promise something, you have to then deliver, right? And I remember my first week, I, you know, I had a number of— I had 2 minority shareholders when I bought it. I bought majority. And it was fascinating. Their rule in that company was the more senior you were, you proved that by coming later than everybody else.
Okay.
So the guy, one of the partners, the president, would come 10 minutes into a meeting.
Wow.
And so, so, you know, my first couple of days I kind of just said, you know what, let's just lean back and see what happens. On day 3, literally to the minute, if the people that weren't in the room, the door got shut down, whoever's in the room got— right?
Right. So you really were clear about that expectation? Exactly.
Like, clear. Like, no way. in hell are you gonna come late to a meeting? And so, because at the end, you know, and this is what I think Stephen Covey talks about as well, which is I think in The Speed of Trust. But it is the problem why trust is so hard to earn and so easy to lose is everybody does the big things right, right? So all of these senior people for big client meetings, they do all of that right. But then the small things like internal conversation, not showing up on time.
Yes.
Not coming prepared. That is what destroys it, right?
Yes.
So everybody does the big things right. And, and business— I'll give you a story about one of my favorite airlines, right? I've flown millions of miles on them. And my hometown airline called United Airlines, right? Their promise is, right, the flight of friendly skies. It's all great, right? And during COVID you know, I got COVID in November of '19, I guess, in Nevada, before it became fashionable, right?
Oh, wow.
So I was one of those early cases when we didn't even know it was— never been that sick. But then I found out I had it because I had all the antibodies, right? And so long story short, I was traveling during COVID and I remember them making up all these promises, right? You know, sanitize the plane. It's all really clean, right? You know, stand 6 feet apart while you're boarding, even though there were only 6 of us getting on a bloody 737. Guess what? I walked into the plane, I turned around, I was in 3E, and the first thing I saw was there was a toothpick lying on the floor.
Wow.
By 1B. And then behind 2E, which is right in front of 3E, my seat, there was a crumpled tissue, facial tissue, on the floor. I did not feel very friendly at that point in time, right in the middle of— when I have my mask on. And stuff like that. They're giving me a sanitizer, and I walk in and go, yeah, I mean, you know, the big thing is you're gonna get me there from here to there, right? You're getting, you know, I'll make, I'll make it to New York, which is where I was flying. But I did not feel, I did not want to eat anything then on the plane. I didn't even take a cup of coffee, right? I just said, I am not touching, doing anything because I don't feel safe.
That's a great example of the little things eroding trust. So the, so So we always tell our listeners, okay, we're gonna give you some practical takeaways. So what, what can our listeners who are sitting here thinking, ooh, building trust, what can they do today to start building greater trust on their teams?
I mean, it's, it's, it's a very, very simple principle, right? Start with make sure that they are setting, if a clear expectation or understanding the expectation the other person has of them.
Yes, yes.
And then do what they say they're gonna do.
Yeah.
Right. It's not— and that's what I mean. It's not a complicated idea. Yeah, it is such a simple— because I mean, humans, as you know, by default are very simple people, right?
Yes.
We got like, by like, fight, flee, right? We always have a binary response. Meet commitments, don't meet commitments. Very simple.
That's great. That's great. Oh, wow. Thank you, Zane. This is so valuable and so kind of practical. And I know we could just keep talking, but we always promise we'll keep it short and sweet. So if you'd like to learn more about the approach that Zane recommends for building trust, you can find The Pyramid Puzzle on Amazon. And to find out how Proteus helps leaders to be more trusting and trustworthy, go to proteusleader.com, click on topics, and choose Accepted Leader. So thank you so much, Zane.
Erika, it was such a pleasure, and I, you know, loved having the chat.
Yes, me too. So thank you for listening, everyone, and until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at theprodigiousleader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
