TRUST - Do you have it? Do you give it?

Welcome to Mike and Sam, as Sam gets a little drink of water there as we start off today's show. Hello, Sam, how you doing?

Hey, Mike, I am great. Yeah, I needed to wet my whistle real quick.

Um, just next time remember to use a certain cup.

Oh, I have that cup, and I had— I was using that cup yesterday. I'm like 24 hours ahead of you right now.

I remember that, actually.

I see.

I always trust that you have my good intentions in your heart.

Oh, there you go, dropping in a little word that maybe we're going to talk about today.

That is correct. And that is the word trust. So, Sam, what does trust mean to you?

Oh, man.

Oh, by the way, before I— before I'm gonna interrupt before we start, uh, and that's for everybody watching, this is for you. So please comment, share your thoughts, share your own experiences with the concept of trust in the workplace, home, everywhere. This is about you. So we want you to engage by using the comments section below, whether Facebook, YouTube, Wherever you're watching from. So, Sam, let's get back to that. When you hear trust— Absolutely.

And if you're watching the recording after the fact, put your comments in also. We'll certainly respond to those as well as if you have other thoughts of areas that you want us to talk about, put those in the notes, in the comments, and we'd love to hear from you on that. So, trust. Back to the original question before you so kindly interrupted. You know, this is one of those, this is one of those words. It's just, it's so powerful and it's so easy to just kind of throw it out there and gloss over it. I, I, to me, trust is about confidence and, and it's a confidence in a situation, but more importantly, it's confidence in a person. And it's, if I have confidence in a person, then that's gonna, That's going to be a foundational stepping stone, if you will, towards building a relationship of trust.

Yeah. And this word is so misused, both in homes and in businesses. You know, you'll hear parents say, I trust, but you cannot follow the word trust with but, because that means you don't trust. You can't have it both ways. You can't play that game. And typically what it's about—

I like having it both ways. I mean, you know, I want to hedge my bets. I don't want to be all in.

Yeah, right. And that's what we do all the time. I trust, but I want to verify. I trust, but I want to confirm. Well, then you don't trust, because I don't need to verify what my wife's doing because I trust my wife. I don't need to confirm what my colleagues in the office are doing because I trust what my colleagues in the office are doing. The moment you need to do those things, before you need to check up on people or check up on situations, trust is not present.

Well, and so what happens is that it's this confidence about integrity, veracity, justice, friendship, whatever it is that you're talking about or characteristics of people. You either have that confidence that they're in place or you don't. And what goes towards that is consistency. So, I look at trust from Am I trustworthy is one thing. You know, what am I trustworthy to you? Am I am I trustworthy to other people? And what what is foundational to that is the consistency in my decisions, in my actions. Is what I'm saying aligning aligning with my words? Is is is what I'm doing aligning with a a character of integrity? Is there a consistency there? Because if there's a lack of consistency, then you're not going to be able to trust me. If I hit the mark. One day, oh great, but if I don't hit it the next day, well then the third day you have no idea what to expect.

Yeah, and it can be little things that can crush the consistency, and we've all engaged in them at some point in our lives. And that's the big mistake about trust, is to think once you betray my trust, you can never have it back. If you really believe that, then you will never trust a human being in this world because everyone has breached it. In some capacity, at some point in your life, I've never met a person who's never talked behind someone's back. Let's just go there, right, as an example. Now, that doesn't mean you can't rebuild it. Acknowledge, I shouldn't have done that. That was, that was not smart of me. It was, it was a foolish mistake to do that, to fall into that trap. Now I'm gonna have to work to rebuild that. If we all say though, I will never trust anybody if they're not perfect, well then you're never going to trust because we're just not perfect.

Well, exactly. And so, let's shift this to an organization and a leadership role. I can't begin to tell you, Mike, how many times I've heard a leader in an organization say, they've got to earn my trust. She has to earn my trust. He has to earn my trust. And when I hear that, I just cringe because if someone has to earn your trust, then they know that you don't trust them. And if they know you don't trust them, they're not going to trust you. And now, you've got this relationship that starts off With a total lack of trust. Don't hire someone you don't trust. Don't hire someone without being willing to trust in them to get the job done, to represent the organization in a manner that is with integrity. And fully give that trust. The reality is, as a leader, we have to earn the trust of the people that we lead. And so, the leader that says, you have to earn my trust, They have it all backwards.

Absolutely. And we have to acknowledge when we breach it. We have to be transparent when we break trust, when we do things we shouldn't have done that is inconsistent with the values that you mentioned, that we have to own those moments because the less we own them, the less we can repair that trust because it doesn't even appear we're acknowledging the breach, which is even more offensive. of a breach of trust. So we've got to acknowledge that. So there's 2 sides to this. We have to trust others and we have to acknowledge our own faults when we breach those trusts towards others, from us to others. That becomes important. I have to be able to say to you, Sam, you know, what I said yesterday was not okay. And then, and I want you to know that because then, you know, okay, Mike's not okay with what he said yesterday. If you thought I was okay with what I did wrong, now you don't feel safe around me? And that's a key word to trust. Do you feel safe, fully safe with this person? Someone you trust you can be safe with?

Well, and usually I feel the most trust towards people that I know trust me. When I'm around people that I don't feel that they trust me, then I'm questioning why they're coming from that place. And when, when they're coming from a place of not trusting people, then I question if they're trustworthy. And so, it is, it, we have to be trustworthy and we're trustworthy through our actions. One of those actions is having the faith to trust other people and to treat them as such.

Yeah. And I think one of the big struggles people have is control. And that is they want to have control over the situation. And this is a massive struggle. I have fallen into this trap myself. Whereas you're not the decision maker in the situation, you're not the one directly, and you want to be. So you want to insert yourself, and by inserting yourself, it appears you don't trust the person who's already in the role. So they think you don't trust me, when really the reality is you want control there. And so you have to trust them to let go of control, and that little circle can be vicious, right? It can be really vicious because you don't even catch it. You think, no, I'm just helping. And what you're doing is making it feel like they're being fixed. They need to fix. They need to be controlled, which is the worst violation of trust because it means you want to control everything I do because you don't trust anything I'm going to do. Right.

And then that goes, you know, what folds into that is going to be micromanaging. And, you know, I have— I'll tell you, I have fallen in that trap in the past where I've micromanaged people and in this pursuit for perfection, which obviously we can never have. I can't be perfect. Why should I expect someone else to be perfect. And it's in that micromanagement that I am basically just screaming at the top of my lungs, I don't trust you. And so, yes, we need to train people. We need to train the people around us to do their jobs. We need to give them the skill sets. We need to give them the resources. But then we have to trust in them to do that job. And there needs to be feedback from time to time. We need to help people on this continual path to grow and be better. But if we can't trust the people around us, then we don't have the right people around us. And if we can't trust them, they're certainly not going to trust us.

Yeah. And to trust means you allow them to make mistakes, that that's part of the process. Because this is one of the biggest mistakes we make also along trust is we say, I trust you until, which then means you're waiting for me to fail, which means you really don't trust me. So instead is I trust you, which means when you make that mistake, I trust you. You're most bothered by that than anyone. I trust that. So you're going to learn from this. So I trust that you aren't going to make that mistake again. I think I've told you, well, not on the show before, but a friend of mine, Rob Bell, tells an amazing story, and it's his signature story, so I won't go into too much detail. But he loses the money bag at the business that needs to go to the bank. Do you know what the owner of the business made sure? He always took the money bag from then on because he's like, I know you're never going to make this mistake again, right? Because that's trust. That's a great example of trust.

Yeah, exactly. Wow. And that's also believing in people and believing in the intent of people. I think for trust to really be strong, first of all, we have to come from a place of abundance and not scarcity. And I think when we come from a place of scarcity, not only are we talking about things from a monetary sense. But we think there's scarcity of great characteristics in people. So we have to come from a place of abundance. And we have to see the best in people. We have to want to help them be their best. And we have to be open to them helping us be our best. Those types of relationships with that sort of intent coming from the heart, that's going to build trust.

Yeah, not seeing them for who you want them to be, seeing them for who they are, valuing who they are right now in this moment, not what you want them to be, because want them to be means you're trying to fix them. See them for exactly who they are. I love that, Sam. That's awesome. Sam, why don't you let everybody know where they can find us every week on our—

Well, first of all, on YouTube, youtube.com/TheCenterForRespect, youtube.com/SamSilverstein. Be sure And like the video, subscribe, click on the bell so you get notifications. Share this with other people. Let's get this message out there. We create a world filled with people and organizations that living with respect and accountability by helping them and by sharing this information. And that's the best way to do it. Also, iTunes. Don't forget iTunes. Leave us comments. Let us know what you want to hear about in the future. And we'd love to talk about it.

Thanks for joining us.