126 | Building High-Trust Cultures: Leadership Strategies for Hybrid Work Success | Tim Threipland

If you have a low-trust culture, everything grinds to a halt. When you talk about trust, it's not to avoid the conversation, but it's to understand what's the business case that would cause us to realize this is a valuable thing to look at.

At Inspiring Change, we're here to help build work cultures that bring out the best in people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from people shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa or pop in your earbuds wherever you are. Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. And I am smiling because we have been away for a while. In fact, by the time this lands, it'll be about 14 months since we put out an episode. So it's really, really nice to be back. We've got a really nice series of 6 episodes coming up over the next 6 weeks. So something hopefully for you to look forward to, or at least for one person to look forward to, because I did get somebody approach me on LinkedIn saying, when is your podcast coming back? Which is lovely because at least I know there's somebody out there listening. So that's, that's very, very nice. One wee thing on the housekeeping housekeeping before we get on. If you are listening on Apple or wherever you're listening, if you could maybe just take literally 10 seconds or 30 seconds to give us a little 5-star review, that'd be really, really appreciated. It does really help with getting the podcast out and about. So today we are starting with a guest who comes to us from Franklin Covey. Tim Threapland is the OD practice lead over there, and I saw Tim speaking at an event that I was at back in, back in London in October. And of course, many of us know Franklin Covey from the work that they do with trust particularly. And that was one of the things that Tim covered in that conversation. And I thought, wouldn't it be a great way to kick off a new season by talking about trust, which I think is, as I think we'll probably get into today, very much core to leadership, but also very much core to organizational culture, particularly given the context of how we are working these days. And maybe trust isn't in as great a supply as maybe it needs to be. So, Tim, Hi there, thanks for joining us.

My pleasure.

Listen, why don't we kick off? What we always do is we just get you to give maybe a minute or two about Franklin Covey, about the work, and a little bit about you.

Great, uh, Scott, thank you. And thanks for the— it's a privilege to be on your first of the kickoff of the new season, so, um, I feel I have an elevated status. So thank you for that. Um, so my background is I've always counted myself as, um, Slightly lucky in many ways. I've never had a career mindset in what I do. I very much run projects and the projects lead onto other projects, which lead onto other projects and take me where I am. But I, I've kind of loosely been in the leadership development space most of my life really. And it's, it's taken a variety of different formats. I've worked in the normal kind of business corporate world as you'd expect. But I'd been dragged onto rugby, international rugby pitches. I'd been sitting on rather large steel-hulled yachts sailing around the world as part of global sailing races through to schools and trying to kind of avoid getting everything stolen from me out of my bag by a bunch of kids. So it was, I'd been able to take myself everywhere. And in the midst of all of that, my kind of relevance to Franklin Covey is that, um, I kind of finished off my last role in Microsoft for about 5 to 6 years running a coaching program out of Seattle and really came across a lot of the kind of the approaches that Franklin Covey takes. And their success is based around their signature dish, which you may well know, which is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 40 years ago, the business started up, and I think what What attracted me to Franklin Covey, which keeps me very excited about what we do, is essentially the complexity of the world around us is difficult to navigate. And what you need inside that, and then we'll talk about it today, I think in the conversation, is, is some structure and some kind of stepping stones or frameworks, whatever you want to call them, that are pretty validated and that give you the confidence to make, take steps forward or momentum, if you like, in the midst of uncertainty. And so that's really what caught my attention. And I find that they again and again and again seem to elicit the right level of result in people's behavior change, because human beings are appallingly bad at that. So if it helps people to be able to grow and develop, I'll keep working with them. And I think their frameworks are very validated and proven. So that's a bit about me personally. Live outside Oxford, lovely wife, 4 kids, 2 spaniels, 5 chickens. But I'm the same as most of us, but trying to work out and make sense of the world, I think, is what we're all about.

Yeah, yeah, too right. And I think there's a— yeah, I'm not sure there's ever an endpoint on that journey, is there? Making sense of the world. I think we'll be at that for a while. So you mentioned the 7 Habits, which is something that Franklin Covey is well known for. Another area, as I mentioned at the top, that the organization is well known for is conversations around trust.

Yeah.

And we know that trust in business is important, but what does your research and experience tell you as to why it's so important?

So what's interesting is trust is the kind of the entry conversation for a lot of what causes us to get involved with client work. Very quickly though, we don't want to avoid the issue that that trust is inside the business needing to be addressed, but what is really driving it is a performance-based issue or conversation. And one of the key conversations we end up with very quickly in talking to clients is the fact that what are you hiring trust to do? And it's an odd question, but it's so easy to learn the content of trust. And most people are smart. They've had relationships all their life. They understand them in their personal life. They know what's a good relationship, they know what's a bad one. But it's the implication of if you have a good and a bad relationship, they're almost black and white in terms of those that are your kind of really strong relationships against those that aren't. And so quite often the research we ever do is not so much about the behavior of trust, but what does it enable us to do if we did have a high trust culture? And that makes it compelling. So for example, obvious things like if you have a high-trust culture, you're gonna find that the speed by which you get things done is accelerated exponentially because we don't need two meetings. You know, we can just trust that you've said something and you're gonna go and do it. And so everything gets to a kind of an increased pace. But also then on the back of that, another variable could be a cost issue. You know, we don't spend so much money getting the result because we inherently trust each other. And you could ripple out into almost any of the variables you like, uh, staff engagement, uh, customer experience, uh, retention of talent. You could almost have a look at anything, uh, and say that there is some correlation with a high-trust, low-trust culture. If you have a low-trust culture, everything grinds to a halt. Uh, the wheels don't move as, as freely. We need to have full meetings. We need to make sure we spend more money. We're losing talent. We're not retaining people. We're not attracting people. So that the kind of idea of when you talk about trust, it's not to avoid the conversation, but it's to understand what are the business imperatives? What's the business case, if you like, that would cause us to realize this is a valuable thing to look at? Otherwise, trust has a little bit of a legacy behind it, which is it's a bit of a soft and fluffy skill. It's not at all. It's a very pragmatic, intentional thing. But to get a conversation at the seat of the table, you often need to bring it into a very measurable business outcome. And then once you've done that, it's amazing. Everyone says, this is a no-brainer. We should be, we should be looking at this.

And that's the challenge, I guess, with, with much of what's going on in, in organizations today. And a lot of it's being driven by HR. It's not necessarily an HR issue, but it's being driven by HR, whether that be engagement, whether it be culture, whether it be values. What I love about that idea, That trust really is about the business imperatives and about the outcomes. I think that's really interesting because often we will do work with clients on their values and they'll say, well, we want to have trust as a value. And I'll say to them, but actually, is trust really a value or is trust an outcome? A little bit like engagement, is trust an outcome of doing the things you do? And by doing the things you say you're going to do and by living the values that you have, by delivering what you say you're going to deliver, all of those things, actually, the outcome of that then is higher trust. Is that fair?

Yeah. I think that's totally right. And I think there's a brutality if you start to get it, look at trust in terms of organization. If it's an imperative inside a business, we want to create an impact on the results and outcome. There is a certain degree of— I think a lot of people have softened the term trust, and they're still sitting in the messy space of not really getting the benefits from it. We would suggest to clients, you talk about trust in terms of you either trust someone or you don't. And the point is that most people travel around, if you ask them about their relationships with people, they say, well, we kind of trust each other, we're okay, you know, it's all right, it's, you know, we're getting on, it's, you know, there's nothing broken. And the minute people say, I kind of trust you, They don't. And that is, again, you're still sitting in that space where it slows down things, it increases costs, it loses talent, because people always, as human beings, defer to safety. If I'm feeling there's a slight ounce of doubt, I'll always go back and protect myself and be safe for survival purposes, really. And so therefore, you get the same negative aspects of a low-trust culture even though you've got a good culture. You still don't get the benefits of a high-trust culture because you haven't quite gone to that extra mile where you've really committed to it and hold each other accountable to it as well.

And I guess, and, you know, we'll hear again in the work that we do that the organizations quite often don't have— in fact, probably most often don't have very psychologically safe cultures. So I think the lack of a psychologically safe culture means that I'm less likely to want to trust Tim to do something? If I only do, I, you know, I kind of, you know, yeah, I kind of trust him. Am I going to really put my head in his hands and let him deliver on my behalf in an organization where if something goes wrong, I'm going to get it in the neck? The answer is probably no.

No, I think you're right. And I think, you know, consciously or unconsciously, if people don't give me understanding of what you want me to do, or the task itself is moving into a space which is is new and complex and unpredictable and we haven't been here before, unless it's intentionally, that psychological safety you talk about, unless it's intentionally created, people will fill that with anxiety otherwise. And then the anxiety causes people to step back again. So the intentionality of creating a high-trust culture, I think, is part of not just learning about trust, but how do you make this embedded into the DNA of our business? And that doesn't happen accidentally. You've gotta do that intentionally, I think. And it's often not just about trust, it's about systems and processes and structures and all of that and strategy. So it gets, it opens it up into a more systemic situation, which I think is more enduring if you're doing this.

And I think that idea, I suspect we'll talk about that idea of intentionality a bit more as we move along, as well as systems and processes and procedures and everything else. I wonder, you know, we've moved on fairly significantly over the past 4 years since, you know, during COVID we had to move to a fully remote world. It's actually interesting. I wonder when we're actually gonna stop talking about this and I wonder when work is gonna actually just become work. I think that's gonna be really interesting to see 'cause I feel as though I've been talking about pandemic and post-pandemic working for ages. I don't think anybody's got it right. And I wonder from your experience and the work that you've been doing, what impact has the pandemic and the post-pandemic way in which we work, what impact have they had on culture and trust in organizations?

So I think when we were in the midst of it, I think we saw an example of what I think human beings are capable of. We know very well that crisis is kind of almost like an adrenaline for change and innovation, but we don't want to live in a world of crisis every day. But We've seen the most extraordinary pivoting and adjustments in organizations' response to situations because of that crisis. So I think that the first thing is the belief in human potential, I think is one that I picked up from that, was that people can do the most extraordinary things if they have to, or you can create the right conditions for people to do that. But I think what has been interesting and, I'll express an opinion around that personally, which is that I think the hybrid that, that kind of came out of the back of that, which allowed more flexibility for people, which was all right and ticking the box for that. And the, what we're seeing more recently is that temptation to revert because of a fear of production paranoia. And are we actually producing the results? And is it because they're remote working and Can we trust people and are they working in the right way? Are they as productive as they used to? I think we, what we've seen, I think is the exposure of a complacency that we had before the pandemic in that we thought cultures we had in our businesses were, we've got a great culture, haven't we? You know, kind of statement. And I'm not entirely sure that was true. I think what we had was a culture that organically grew out of proximity, of familiarity, of routine, of sitting in the same office space, seeing each other at the coffee machine. I think that was a culture, but was it created intentionally or was it just almost like an accident of time? And I think what happened is when we were in the hybrid is what's being exposed is that the culture probably wasn't as robust or intentional or designed. And all we're seeing now is that it's just highlighting the weaknesses in that. And my worry for it is, if I was to slightly kind of look at the future of work and seeing the opportunity we have, I think this is a tipping point where to revert back to the office and I totally understand why, is missing out on an opportunity to, in some ways, redefine the future of work and also recognize that actually this kind of constant conversation around work-life, we could end up having an opportunity to completely recharacterize that and redesign that and actually trusting human beings to be able to do what they should be doing. It feels like there's so many opportunities that could be available to us if we held steady and kept working through it. But what I do think is it's doing is it's exposing the weaknesses we had inside our cultures before the pandemic. No judgment attached, but I just think there was some slightly complacent assumptions being made about our culture.

And I've been saying for ages that I think that what the pandemic did was It amplified culture, communications, leadership, trust. And if those things were bad, they just got louder, badder. If those things were good, they got louder, better.

Indeed.

And I think that's what I take from what you're saying, that maybe the culture that we thought we had, we maybe didn't have. And back to that word of intentionality, were we actually intentionally designing our culture in pursuit of the strategies and the KPIs and the objectives that we had to have as businesses? And I think the answer in many cases maybe was no. Back to that piece about fear. You said, you know, there's a fear of— where's that fear coming from, do you think? Whereabouts in the organization?

I think fear's gonna sit everywhere. I think, to be honest, I think again, if it— the fear is coming out of probably what is being highlighted is people being put into spaces that are new. For a lot of us. Managers or leaders leading teams that are now remote and distributed is a different DNA that wasn't probably in most of their development when they learned Leadership Skills 101. I think employees at home sitting there slightly fearful of whether they're doing the right thing and are they going to lose their job and should I be at the desk now or am I allowed to go and pick up my kids or care for my, so whoever I'm caring for or whatever it is. That sense of uncertainty, I think, has created a fear, which fear then drives us back into control. And I think that's what is probably playing out here is that people's— and again, throw on top of that elections, financial anxiety, business not performing, you name it. You put a layer into that, anything else that's going to add to the anxiety that someone's sitting there having to navigate through. You can understand why people go back into, well, let's control the heck out of this. Let's go back to kind of bringing people close in so I can see what they're doing. Let's scrap this kind of rather trendy idea of hybrid, and, uh, it's our business, so we should be allowed to do that. And, and I— all of those are totally justifiable. But I think the fear is, uh, a societal issue, if we wanted to get into that. I mean, I think, you know, Just take fake news and taking the idea of uncertainty. What do you believe these days? You know, when you read anything, you know, you just hear what's going on about what went on in the American elections and that Elon Musk's involved. And I mean, you know, all of that level of influence that people have around information that we're all gleaning on our phones every day. What do you trust? And it creates and amplifies. If I have a little niggle of worry, it's going to get blown up pretty big, pretty quick, particularly if I'm sitting here, mortgage payments, 4 kids, 5 chickens, 2 dogs. I'm worried about paying for the bills. I'm looking out for my career. All of that on top without a sense of certainty, it's going to create a more protectionist and defensive strategy for a lot of people or irrational behaviors on the behalf of the leaders. They're going to do things that are totally against their own values, but they're kind of almost feeling like they have to do things and they've got to be seen to be busy and taking control. So you're going to get the unintended behaviors in there, which I don't believe human beings get out of bed with the intent to do, but they're out of their depth, some of them. Yeah.

And I also wonder, back to that point, you know, about— back to the intentionality thing again, actually, um, it's the easiest choice to make is, okay, everyone back, everyone back in the office 5 days a week. That's easy because actually managing culture and managing organizations in a hybrid environment is bloody hard. It's really, really hard. And it's much easier to have everybody sitting in front of you 'cause then there's less to have to think about, less to have to change. And if you're being intentional about that whole idea of how do we get hybrid to work, and by the way, maybe the answer for some organizations is to be back in the office 5 days a week. I know it's not very trendy to say, but maybe that is the answer for some organizations. I think the sense that I'm getting is that for the majority, that hybrid working can work and will work. There needs to be more and better thinking from leaders in organizations that hybrid working isn't just about, am I at home in my cabin or am I in the office or am I in wherever, Barcelona, it doesn't matter. That it needs to be less. I think hybrid working has become about where, and actually it needs to become much more about what am I doing? Who am I doing it with? When am I doing it? Where am I doing it? So that leaders can organize teams better. But also let's not forget, we keep pointing at leaders. There's a role for people in organizations as well, the employees in organizations, not to put 6 hours of one-to-one phone calls in their diaries on Wednesday, which is our core day to be in the office, because that's the day that we should be getting together. So I think it takes two to tango, or maybe three to tango, the organization, the leaders, and the employees.

I think you're absolutely right. And I think just answering what you're just saying, I think that the first is, even if I'm not against hybrid or not against going back to work, but I think if organizations go through the kind of process of exploring how they could make hybrid work, even if they then at the end of that still decide to go back to bricks and mortar, what they will have learned and designed in that journey will pay dividends back in the bricks and mortar environment. So I don't think there's any loss in going through the process. And I think it's also, I think as you say, the maturity of individuals working in a remote environment, they have a duty of care as well. It's not just the leaders, you're right. They've gotta sit there looking at actually maybe I was complacent, sitting in a bricks-and-mortar environment, going to work every day, doing what everyone else does. Maybe this is causing me to start to think about the choices I have and what is my own sense of contribution I want to make to the business and what is the kind of way of working I feel I can best contribute to. So you start to take more ownership as an individual and you join into the conversation a bit more proactively. Then I think you're going to work as a partner with your leaders. To work out together, how do we make this work? But the individuals can't be drip-fed food, whatever's the answer. They've got to lean into this and they've got to stand true to their own— if this is a flexible environment, you in your home space and us in a bricks and mortar, let's say, you've got to stand up for what is going to make this work. And part of that is not that we have to be experts as leaders about your personal life, but you need to make sure you inform us about what's going to work for you. You've got to stand up for where your commitments lie. You know, a large percentage of people are caring for not just children but for other members of their family and friends. They need to bring that into the conversation. So their own internal confidence to bring their voice into that discussion, I think, is important. Otherwise, we won't get a perfect solution and it won't work.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it is about all of those people having a say. And I think, for me, it very much comes back to that outcomes versus outputs. Let's measure outcomes. If we know that organizationally we have to do X and therefore divisionally we have to do Y and therefore team-wise we have to do Z, let's look at Z, work out what Z looks like, and then agree between us what's the best way to get that done. Do we need 3 days in the office this week and 2 days next week? And actually, what are all the other teams doing in organizations? How do we bring them in alignment so that we are not always in on the days when they're always out, because that's, that's a waste of time. Again, back to that being a little bit more intentional and creating that web that we're working in within the organization. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's get back to the idea of trust where we started at the top of the organization. And I wonder, I mean, I don't think hybrid's going away. I think it'll change and morph over time. I don't think we'll see everybody going back to 5 days a week in the office. You heard it here, people. Feel free to come back to me in a couple of years' time if that should change. But I wonder what is the role of those leaders and what is the role of those employees in building those high-trust cultures? How do we do it?

Yeah, so I guess a number of angles on this. I think the first is just understanding a human behavioral thing, which we've mentioned already, is human beings don't like empty spaces and voids very much. If there's an empty space and there's no definition to whatever it is, your leadership, What you want me to do? What's happening next? If there's a void and it's empty, we don't handle them very well. What we tend to do is if you don't fill it as a leader, I'll fill it with prejudgment or judgments or folklore or hearsay because I need to. Because if I fill that void with something, then I can make sense of it and therefore I can navigate through it. If there's an empty space, I don't, ah, it's a bit scary. So we tend to do nothing. So firstly, the idea of, of leaders and teams is that I think the idea of that empty space mindset is almost at the core of the need. So if I'm sitting in the office or I'm sitting as a leader and a manager of a team, and if in any ounce of my day I'm guessing what I think my team are doing, or if my team is sitting at home or wherever they're working, and they're guessing what it is that I'm expected to do, or how am I, you know, aligned to whatever the strategy is asking from us, or if the leader's sitting there saying, I'm not sure how to kind of help people feel valued because I don't really know them well enough. In other words, there's a void again. All of these voids, they typically end badly. Because we always fill it with something that isn't necessarily by design and doesn't always encourage the right behavior. And sometimes the filling of the void is in a more defensive mode, which means it's probably not going to be very kind of positive sometimes. We're justifying the reason why I shouldn't trust you rather than why I should trust you. So, I think the— what helps in this is the intentionality of a leader and a team And it has to be an engagement, you know, working together solution here. The leaders can't sit remotely and work out what that should be for the team. The team and the leader have to work across. And it's a— in a hierarchical business, this is a breaking of the DNA slightly, because I need the team to show up with what they've— their needs are. I need to come in as a leader representing the business needs. And don't get it wrong is that if you're, if you're employed by a company and the company does X, that's what we're here to do. We're not here to kind of listen to everyone's possible needs and meet every one of them. As a hybrid, you're gonna have to recognize there are going to be some pieces which, if you don't like them, you may be in the wrong business. But that is the business. Don't let the business start to bend too much. But it is sitting down and say, so okay, how does a leader in a team work out, for example, How do we value each other? How are we gonna recognize each other? How are we gonna make sure people feel that inclusiveness and safety psychologically to be able to bring their voice into everything? How do we, um, make sure that we're gonna win and keep winning as a team when we are in a remote environment? So how do we make sure that if there are organizational roadblocks getting in the way of you working in a remote space, I as a leader have gotta work out how to iron those out for you. If we wanna talk about the Classic scarcity of time. You know, if there's a time issue, how are we gonna prioritize in a remote world? And how do we make sure we execute with excellence? How do we make sure that what we do is exciting for us and that it is compelling and that we feel that we're doing something that's meaningful? So these are conversations that they're not accidental. They are, we sit down and we work this out and there's almost a contract that we build between the business and employees that both parties have been involved with. But it is different in that we, that, that kind of contract is setting up the controls. If we set up controls and we set up boundary fences and perimeter fences and guardrails and everything that gives people knowledge and security, then people know where to operate. It's when there aren't those boundaries that, that gets messy. But there's a big difference between setting up the controls and not become controlling of the people, because you cannot control people in a remote space. Well, we naively thought we could in the BRICS, because actually you still can't control people because they're human beings. But I think some people think that their job is to control the people in a remote environment. That's never going to work. But to own the controls that set the parameters and expectations, that is the rigor that's needed.. And if I see anything in clients I work with where it's falling down, it's because that hasn't happened. And they're good people on both sides working their backsides off, but not having agreed it. They're all guessing about what each other's doing, which breeds a slightly unpleasant kind of taste in the mouth in the business. And that escalates into then, well, we need you back in the office.

I love that idea. You can't control people, but you can control the environment because actually it rings really true with a piece of work that I did with Kevin Empi, who's a former guest on the podcast as well, a couple of years back, where we talked about freedom within a framework. So yes, we can have freedom within organizations, but actually people still like to have guardrails. They like to know where the line in the sand is so that I know I'm not going to step over it, or if I am, I'm doing that with good reason. I think what's really interesting is that a lot of what you talk about there, Tim, was embedded quite heavily in leaders being really good communicators. I don't think they necessarily always are. And I don't think the organizations necessarily see that and provide them with the upskill. And in fact, if you look at the State of the Sector survey that comes out from Gallagher every year, every year we see it as an issue and every year we see organizations not investing in it. If it's that important, why don't they invest in it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. And that's kind of a great question to ask. I don't know what the answer is to that, but But I think a lot of people, I think what you're resonating is that people are smart. And I think it's very unlikely I get out of bed with a belief that people aren't. It's just how do we find ways to not only just believe that I've got a bunch of really smart people that are trying to do the right thing every day and yeah, working together with them to find ways to unlock that potential. If I think it's about me, in other words, I'm old traditional leader that says, you know, these— my team can't do anything if I'm not around. You know, they need me. Even to the point where I was having a fairly good argument or discussion with someone the other day when they were saying, I need to work out how I can help the team. And I challenged him on it and said, you're thinking about the team needs help means you think they're helpless. And it was a play on words, and it wasn't his intent, but it was an interesting one when you think about it, is that he felt that he needed to be the person to fix the problem. And the minute that he was thinking that way, that was the problem, because he can't fix other people's challenges. They've got to work together on that. And actually, you've got to trust that people have the intelligence and the willingness to do it, and that they are smart. People are smart. They're trying to I don't think I've met anyone whose life goal was to be average. I don't think. But, you know, people are trying to do the best they can. So if you find the space to unleash them, I think most people do a good job on that, but they need guardrails, they need security, and they need— they don't need data. They don't need to be told that the 90% of the country's doing— I mean, I do think there's a lot of stuff that is out there in the media that distracts us away from the core of this, because I think most people If you talk to them in a safe place, they want to do the right thing. They want to do a good day's work. They don't not want to, but they do find it difficult when there isn't clarity or understanding or there is a void. And I think that just doesn't work for people.

So yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that the— do people come to work to be average? No. Do they come to do a good day's work? Yes. But if they are coming to work to be average and they are coming to work not to do a good day's work, then arguably there is possibly somewhere else they should be spending their career. And that— and they're— and their conversations that actually, I, you know, we're not often very good at having from, from either side.

Not at all. And I think this comes back to, uh, a leader's— or leadership in an organization's set of beliefs. I think there's a skill in here, of course. You can learn the skill of building a high-trust culture, but it has to come from the basis that the leadership has sat down and worked out what is our belief system as leaders in terms of creating the culture we're looking for. Because leaders technically work on the system, not in it. They're looking at constant improvement about how the system's operating and working better. And I think the idea around why we do what we do as leaders has got to be a conversation that is quite a rigorous one and that we hold each other as leaders rigorously accountable to that. So, you know, definition of leadership, you know, as an organization, have we worked that out? That's your belief system. And I think part of that is about the fact that the beliefs have to mirror or reflect the intent to create the high-trust culture we keep talking about. If they've got the word control of people in there, then that's not going to happen. If they've got the idea that it's about us kind of directing and controlling, then that's not going to happen. If they've got the idea that it's about us as leaders and our status and our corner office size, that's not going to happen. So there's lots of kind of things you could listen for and track that would indicate whether the leadership team is set up for the success you're looking for. But it has to be performance-based and outcome-based. In other words, you're going to motivate a lot of leaders that are probably a little bit against this idea of trust and investing lots of money in trust development. But if you sell them a gig that says we're gonna increase the speed by which we can execute the strategy, or we're gonna increase exponentially the revenue from the year by the fact we— then they're gonna go, no brainer, let's do it. Mm-hmm.

The ears, the ears prick up.

Yeah, it's a different conversation, but I think the need's still there. It's just framed in a different way.

Yeah, for sure. Listen, we started on trust, we've talked about trust, and we're gonna finish on trust. There, there are a million things that organizations and leaders could do to build trust. If you had to pick one, one critical thing that leaders listening to this could go out and do tomorrow and nudge that needle forward a little bit to a more trusting environment, what would that one thing be?

As always, one, I think I would say focus on setting up the right level of controls so there's no ambiguity. And the second is extend trust by default. In other words, go first. Um, don't wait. Just be the person that, that trusts people, and you give them trust. Even if they abuse it, that's a separate conversation. Always extend trust, because I think that's the only way you're going to start to generate this culture, is by leaders constantly believing that people come to work every day trying to do a good day's work. And if they do, then just extend trust to people. Keep extending trust. So set controls and extend trust to people. I think those are two things I'd always back to.

Brilliant. Tim, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for joining us today. What we'll do is we'll pop your LinkedIn profile into the show notes and Franklin Covey's website as well, in case anybody wants more information. But for now, thanks so much for coming on.

Scott, it's been my pleasure and nice to chat with you. Thank you.

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