Promises Promises: Fear, Trust & Trustworthiness

This is a JLC event which can be found on the JLC YouTube channel and your subscribed podcast channels. At JLC, we focus on holding conversations that produce desired results. This series is on relationships and results. This episode specifically is called Promises Promises, Fear, Trust and Trustworthiness. And it explores our collective understanding of ourselves and the team environment that impacts relationships and the outcomes. I'm Julie Wise, and I have my colleague here, Vince Starks, with me today. And before we move forward, I'd like to do a quick, short introduction, something professional and a little fun fact with my colleagues. So Vince has professionally been serving our country in the Navy, Navy medicine, specifically the nurse corps for 30 years. He has now retired and has joined us at jlc. So we couldn't be prouder to have him here. And the fun fact that you may not know is that he loves to ride motorcycles. And so a few times a year he drives across country. Unfortunately, with the COVID situation, that sort of slowed him down a little bit, but he's looking forward to getting back out on the road. Vince.

Well, thank you very much, Julie. So, folks, it's a great opportunity to be here with you. So let me introduce and give you a fun fact about my colleague, Julie. So Julie is an educator and a quite intense and serious person professionally. She has a PhD in education. She worked in the education System for about 24 years, and at some point she decided to transform her leadership criteria from the educational community to the business community. And so that has brought her to jlc and her leadership has been just outstanding. And she's an incredible, incredible force. So I'm very proud to be here with her today. And my fun fact about you, Julie, is that as intense as you are in everyday conversation in the work environment, you're really like the Martha Stewart in your personal life. She likes to bake and do a lot of very cozy things. And so when I get to work with Julie, I'm often thinking of us as she's Martha Stewart and I'm Snoop Dogg, and we make a great combination. So there you go. That's my colleague Julie, and it's a pleasure for us to be here with you today. So, folks, what I would like to share is simply this. Now, the JLC team recognizes how busy all of us are during this incredible time of change. We are so incredibly grateful that you chose to spend one of your primary resources, time to engage with us in learning. Learning and time are connected, and when used well, all of us can improve the quality of our leadership. So we invite you to simply let go of distractions and top of your mind concerns for the next few minutes and lean into learning and personal development. All of us at JLC wish you an enjoyable few minutes with us today. And so with that, Julie, why don't you take us through the topics that we're going to talk about today and to set us up with the maybe CPO statement.

Thanks, Vince. When we work with leaders, trust is usually always one of the main topics that leaders want to establish trust or improve their trust or learn more about trust. And really we have to understand that trust is a practice and it's deeply personal and it's inherently collective as well. And so when everyone on the team is collectively aware of the impacts of certain things like fear or trust or trustworthiness, and they continue to work toward enhancing that personal practice, the whole team improves. So it's not just about one person and it's not just about the whole team. It's both the person and the team working together to establish those environments of becoming more trustworthy ourselves. And when we become more trustworthy, then, then others then can show up and support each other and be more trustworthy as well. And the key to building this trust is actually courage. We often think, oh, we just take time. I just met this person and it's not time. It's courage to be willing to admit the truth about themselves and each other and so that they're willing to show up and not waste each other's time and energy by not sharing what was on their heart and mind. So trust can be maintained and it's always developing as long as people are willing to speak what's on their heart and mind. And that takes courage. Vince, I know that was a large CPO to start with. Is there anything there that you really heard me say and resonated with you?

Sure. So I think what I walked away from was trust is deeply personal. And so as a leader you have to have some self awareness of what that is for you. I think I heard you say that the importance of creating trust in a trusting environment allows the team to support one another.

Yes.

And then finally what I believe I took away was that if you're able to create that environment of trust, you can maintain and develop positive outcomes. But you have to recognize that that environment of trust is an ongoing aspect of what you have to have in your environment, not just a one time thing. How did I get that captured?

Yeah, you're exactly right. And you know, when we're thinking about recognizing that sometimes some meetings may be Great. And there may be a lot of trustworthiness. And then the next meeting, there may be an environment of fear. And it's really the responsibility of the leader to notice that there is a difference in the feel of the energy, because things can shift really quickly. And there are certain things that the leader can constantly do and the participants in a meeting that they can do to shift from a fear environment to a trust environment to a trustworthy environment. And each one of those impacts the relationships differently. So, for example, if I'm in a meeting and there's no one talking, and even if, you know, a lot of times leaders are getting much better at inviting voices in the room and no one talks, there's a level of fear there. Now, it might be because they just are new relationships with each other and they're just not comfortable yet sharing their own thoughts. Or maybe it's a really touchy topic that everybody has different strong opinions for, and they're afraid to share what they're thinking. And so one of the things to keep in mind for fear as a leader, when you notice that people aren't talking or people aren't engaged and they're just sort of maybe arms crossed, you know, look at the body language as well. There's a way to reduce that fear. And one of the ways is by having short, paired conversations. You can simply invite people to turn and talk to a neighbor about what they're thinking. You could have them write it down. You could have them stand up and get with a different partner, a different group. Just simply having them share first and get them to practice what they're thinking and sharing gives them a little bit more courage to share to a group. So that's one way to sort of change from a fear environment. And they reduce the risk of sharing that thought individually to sharing it as a group and practicing together to hear what everybody says. And then the next one is trust. And so, again, when we're thinking about trust, we want to make sure that everyone is willing to show up and say the truth and be authentic. And that's dangerous because I may say something, I'm vulnerable to say something that might offend you, whether I intend to or not. And as a team, I have to know that you are willing to say things that may possibly hurt my feelings, but you're saying it because you truly care for me. And so as a leader, if you're noticing people are getting upset or there's conflict or there's fighting, that actually is a really good sign that there's trust. In the room. Oftentimes we think, oh, no, no, we can't have conflict. We can't have people fighting and sharing their opinions. It's got to be all happy. No, when you see that, then you say, yes, there is trust here. Everyone can trust that. I'm going to share with you my thinking, and then we can stay in the conversation long enough in order to come together for a consensus, in order for us to move forward. And the final one, and then we're going to ask you to sort of reflect back. What were some of the things that really stuck with you in this is trustworthiness. There's a little bit of a difference between trust and trustworthiness. And the trustworthiness is. Is how am I showing up consistently? Am I the same person in every single meeting or every single conversation? Do I say and do that? I promise. And that's why it's sort of called promises promises. Because if I promise something and then I don't do it, that shows that I'm not trustworthy, which then impacts the trust, which then influences the fear. So you can see how what we say and honor our word through integrity is. Can really impact the environment of a meeting. So those are the three different types. And I'm gonna ask you, Vince, to sort of close the loop with us and summarize what were some of the key factors that you heard?

Okay, so let's see if I can do this. So you start off, you talked about fear, and then you talked about trust, and then you talked about trustworthiness. So let me go back to fear. I believe what I heard you say was the leader has a responsibility to have awareness of the environment to which they're leading within the group. And some examples. And some of the things you cited were body language. You have to be aware people are there in the room with their arms crossed, or if people are not talking. And you have to recognize some of your staff may be new and they are not sure about the environment. Some people have been there for a long time, and they have established methodologies and how they like to approach things. So we have. Your sense of awareness of your environment is very, very important, because if your people are not talking, then that is an example of perhaps an environment of fear. And you can't get to where you want to go if you have an environment of fear. So that was the fear box. Then you moved on, and you talked a little bit about intentionality and creating an environment of trust. And how do you do that as a leader? So the examples in Which I see. That is what I call that creating that psychological space. And in this environment, you talked about the importance of creating the environment, trust. And so how do you do that if you're a leader? So the thing that comes to mind for me is, you know, you have a variety of people around your table. Some people are extroverts, some people are introverts. Right. And so while the extroverts are talking and chattering away and spitting ideas, the introverts are thinking. And you may not hear their voices for the first time until the meeting is getting ready to close. And so it's important as a leader that you bring other voices into the conversation. And so you may have to proactively go and say, hey, John, let me pause. What are you hearing? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? You may have to very intentionally invite those voices around the table so that you get a collection and a diverse spectrum of ideas. Now people are talking, as you cite it, and you have energy. And even if it's collaboration or debate, that's still an environment of trust that's being created, where people feel comfortable talking. Okay, that was the second box then. I heard you say that to have trustworthiness, you have to be very deliberate. It has to be ongoing, and you have to be aware of how you show up each and every day in the conversation. So if you say at the beginning of the month that I want to create an environment of trust because I need to hear voices, and the second time you come into a meeting, you shut people down because you have a very deliberate idea what you want to achieve. And the third meeting, you do the same thing. Well, now you're not meeting your commitment and your promise, right?

Yes.

For ongoing environments of trustworthiness, which ultimately will negatively impact the outcome or the desired outcome of what you hope to achieve. So that's what I captured. How did I do? Did I capture the thoughts and ideas we talked about?

You did. And I'd love to learn a little bit more about this understanding of the safe space that you talked about with trust. Can you tell me more about that?

Sure. So I think that when you're trying to create a safe environment, one of the primary reasons that people are not as comfortable, in my experience, is that they don't necessarily come with all the personal, professional knowledge. Right. And so I think that it's important as a leader that as you're working to create this environment of trust, you have to have awareness that your responsibility is also to recognize that you have to provide the tools and the resources and, and to enhance and elevate the professional knowledge of the folks that you're responsible for. And so that is another key component of creating an environment of trust, is creating an environment so that you can provide what we call ppk, personal professional knowledge to your staff. By doing that, you now enhance the overall knowledge and skills and abilities of your people. And once they have those tools, that new knowledge, wow. Now you have what I would consider a more engaged workforce, a more engaged team, and the ability then to influence outcome by changing the efforts of the group in a positive way. And so tell me how that resonates with you. What are you hearing? What are you thinking?

I really like this idea of focusing on the individual with the PPK development. And that's sort of what we were talking about in the beginning, that trust is both individual and collective. And if we constantly focus on the collective, we have to be a great team. We have to be a great team, but we don't unpack individually. What is it that you need in order to trust me, in order to get the things done? What are the resources? What are the training? If we don't take that time to build up their knowledge, then it's sort of like that insanity, right? We show up day after day and frustrated. Why aren't we getting the trust and the trustworthiness that we need? And it's because we need to sort of slow down and that's counterintuitive as a leader because we want to keep moving forward and we want to keep accomplishing and we want to keep this success and to have to slow down the conversation and say, okay, where do you feel that maybe you don't have the skills that you need or the knowledge or the resources. That takes a lot of trust and courage for people to be willing to say, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't understand where I'm going. I. I need more resources. And then once everyone is as people are starting to develop that PPK as a group, then you're starting to trust each other because you're willing to be vulnerable and say, I don't know or I didn't understand or I made a mistake. And so again, this is this idea of individuals need to continue to work on their courage to say what's on their heart and mind so that collectively they can have that trust environment so that they can be trustworthy every day.

Yeah, I think you're spot on. And then as you said that, what resonated with me was I started thinking about reciprocal leadership, right? So as a leader, as I'm making an investment into my people and they're enhancing their knowledge, they are also expanding their leadership perspective and their leadership engagements. And I'm learning as a leader, right? I get better. So it really helps me to show up into my leadership environment, excuse me, in an important and effective manner. My little T's, my big T's, how do I show up in the conversation every day? And if I'm able to reciprocally learn from my leaders as well as I think that I'm imparting knowledge, then wow, that further enhances trustworthiness, right. In the overall collective and really helps the team to win and help us to accomplish our mission. So that's, you know, as you talk, that's really, really just stood out to me. And that took me right from creating environments of trust back into trustworthiness, into what we talked about.

You're exactly right. And do we have just a few more minutes?

We do. We do.

Okay. So, you know, when you're thinking about the very last part of this building trust and trustworthiness is the awareness of you as a leader. How are you? What is your leadership presence and your leadership awareness as you walk into the room? And often then I'm going to ask everyone to sort of pause when you show up to the meeting, what do you tend to show up thinking about? What is your abba? We call it. So assumptions, biases, behaviors and attitudes about certain people, about certain topics, or maybe even about you as a leader. One of the things that I found is a lot of times leaders feel like I have to always have the answer. Another one might be, I don't have the answers. And I need. That's why we're here in a meeting, because I need to hear everybody's voice and what your ideas are, and then we'll consider them together. And maybe another one might be, I'm not able to share that information. That information is mine and it's a need to know. So depending on how you're showing up to the meeting with these types of attitudes and thoughts in your head, as what a leader should do or does can impact the relationships and that environment where you're either doing trustworthiness and you're being open and you're asking for people's feedback, or you're being really closed and people can sense that you're not sharing with them the whole information and that in essence ends up in a fear environment. So, Vince, can you give me an example maybe of a Time when you were in a meeting and you had this awareness of these little T truths, of meaning that this is what a leader should do versus what was happening in the room and having to adjust to that.

Yeah. So really briefly, this happens all the time, believe it or not. It's just having awareness. So I can recall being in a meeting and my organization, we had some regulatory compliance issues that we had to complete. And I was working with the leaders to make sure that we were on track, were we working towards our goals. I had a very deliberate perception in my mind of where we were and where we need to go and we need to get there in these steps. And as the information was being reported, it was not being reported to me in. In a manner to which I expect it. And so what I thought I was doing was being very collaborative and just being clear with my staff about how we should package information. What I learned very quickly by the expressions in the room was I was not creating a trustworthy environment. I was being very directive about what I wanted and how I wanted it. And I began to see the body language and energy change in my leadership spectrum where people stopped talking and they sat on their hands, and people were just waiting for me to give direction on how I wanted to do it, as opposed to how the team was contributing to that success. That was very fortunate, where I was able to recognize that. And once I recognized it and saw what I was bringing to that conversation, that space, I was able to regroup and to shift my own attitudes to accommodate the team, and we were able to recover and able to win. But just having that awareness was very important. That's an example of something that has actually happened, and it probably happens every day. Just leaders have to be aware. How did I do?

Yeah, exactly right on. And sometimes, like, you're exactly right. It's hard for us as leaders sometimes to get that awareness. So one strategy that came to me as you were talking is possibly if there's someone that you really, truly trust in the room that maybe you're concentrated on what you're saying and what you're doing, and there's so many other things that you're focused on and don't have that awareness yet, is there someone in the room that you can ask to sort of give you a signal to say you're sort of being directive and you're creating a different environment that you need to come back and be present here? You know, whether they put their arm here or, you know, sort of do a little stretch or, you know, do a Little high or something. Some sort of, like, subtle movement that you can trust that person to say, hey, check in here. Something's not going on. Really good.

I laugh, Julie, because that's exactly what happened. My number two, we had signals, you know, and when I saw that signal ahead of time, we would say, hey, because I know myself, I'm ready to go all in, man. I'll go jump off a cliff. And so his job was to grab me by my belt buckle with a tug. And when I saw that signal, it said, stop what you're doing and regroup, and that will save you. So it's ideal that you picked up on. I didn't say that for a fact, but that's exactly what you can do. And it works. It's effective.

Awesome.

So I think we're coming close to our time. Perhaps what I would like to do, Julie, is just to pivot a little bit and perhaps invite the audience to consider intentional reflection on how they contribute to shared conversational environments as leaders, and just ask, do you create an environment of fear, trust, or trustworthiness as you move forward as a point of reflection for our potential audience? So that would be a provocation. I would like to invite those who are listening to this podcast today to take away and to go with them. And so with that, Julie, closing thoughts.

Yeah. So when we think about trust, we don't often think about fear or trustworthiness. And we have to realize that there's a wider lens to trust, and there are certain things that we can do to mitigate the fear, to bring it more toward trust. But at the same time, we need to be intentional, and we need to be consistently ruthless with ourselves in our discipline so that we can get to the trustworthiness where we know on a daily basis, we show up consistently, we honor our word, we're a person of integrity, and everyone around us does the same thing. And then when that happens, we are all aligned, and we're able to continue to have stronger relationships and get the results that we desire. Vince, how about you?

So what resonated with me in our conversation today, to be very honest with you, was just the awareness of the environments that can be created. I think that knowledge is power. So just walking into a room and having awareness really, really takes you a long way. But the second point that I've taken away is that as smart and as capable as we are, learning is an ongoing process. And what we're talking about is not magical, but it's something that, as leaders, you really have to have continual awareness and continual learning. And as you talked about throughout the podcast today, the ability to know how you show up every day. That helps us get to the environments of keeping our promises that we make to both ourselves and to the people that we lead. That's my takeaway from today's conversation. And with that, Julie, I'm out.

Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of this event and we have modeled a practice that, when used, has immediate impact on both yourself as a leader, the facilitator, and the participants in your meetings. And as we've been answering provocations throughout the podcast, again, we invite all of you to possibly take those provocations and write them in journals for yourself. Ask them at your meetings. Get people to start to think about this Fear, trust and trustworthiness environments. And are you keeping your promises like you say? So we invite you to join us next time and have a wonderful week. Thank you for joining us.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.