#29: What We Mean When We Talk About "Trust"

Hi, I'm Sy Wakeman, and you're listening to No Ego, a podcast where we teach you how to ditch the drama, end entitlement, and drive big results in your workplace and your world place. Welcome, listeners and drama diffusers. I I'm excited about today's topic. I've spent the last week in a couple of really cool, great conferences put on by women for women, just really great, great venues and great speakers. And of course, in these times, the situation of all the trust that's been broken has come to the forefront. And a lot of people are talking about how do we create safe workplaces? And I am all in favor of every one of us getting really clear on our own Biases and the impact of our own behavior and ways in which our judging or our ignorance or our unconscious biases or even just our meanness or need for power can really impact other people. And I'm all about really calling people up and saying, clean that up. And I'm just a little concerned when I hear all about trust in the workplace as if trust is something I can create for another, as if it's a unilateral move. If it's something the organization can create that we all can then benefit from. And I'm here to tell you, be very suspicious of anything out there that is telling you that something will be done for you, because that leaves you dependent on whether or not that exists or not. And while that is a nice to have, it is fabulous if we are in circumstances and organizations where there's a lot of trust and safety. I really want you to be wary of arguments that place us in victim-mindedness where we believe that we're dependent upon another delivering something for us so that we can do our best work. In fact, I'm really worried because at times I hear this whole lack of trust or having trust issues as a hot new excuse for getting little results. I don't want this to become the new hot excuse for lack of results, but it's important. Trust is really important. Last year, I read this great research that talked about the fact that employees who trusted their senior management brought 108% value to their shareholders. Now, this is simply employees trusting their senior leaders that the value they're bringing back to shareholders is 108%. Where on the other hand, the employees who are not trusting their senior leadership teams only bring 66% back to their shareholders. So there is something here, folks. But what I don't What I don't think the research got at, what I know for sure it didn't ask, is whether or not the trust is generated by the senior executive's actions or the employee's choices. Now stay with me here, because I think you're going to get a ton of freedom out of knowing that whether or not you can trust somebody has a lot to do with you and has a lot to do with your own choices, that you aren't solely dependent upon others. Their choices or their behaviors. So leaders and their employees are really focused right now on ways that they can get employees to trust leaders, and not as much how leaders can trust employees. But trust me, that's coming. There's a lot of folks out there that are, are talking about trust, and they're citing that trust among organizations is at an all-time low. And evidently, it's up to the leaders to perfect themselves and their employees' circumstances to ensure that employees experience attention and Consistency, and are kept informed and kept safe and secure through high levels of communication and recognition and rewards and briefing and consulting and just a lot of leadership behavior. If only leaders could do this perfectly, then we would have super safe and trusting environments. That seems to be the core assumption, is that the majority of the responsibility of the trust in the organization is On the shoulders of the organization and the leaders. But here's where I want you to beware. Because much of this work, this current work on trust in the workplace, is a fabulous idea, but it's based on a flawed assumption. And it's a flawed premises about the origins of trust. So here's the reality check. Creating trust, as suggested, is an almost impossible expectation for leaders. And it can be this new excuse to explain away the lack of results in the workplace. Now, I am not saying with all of the sexual harassment and profound mistreatment going on in the workplace that there isn't grave responsibility on the people involved in those activities and the people who knew about it and the people who as an organization didn't have policies in place or didn't act on it. I'm setting that aside for a moment because I don't want us to over-rotate on this trust piece and create victims where there aren't any. And in trust, unless you understand your part in this, you can become very victim-minded and then dependent upon others and then really ripe again to be victimized. So I believe that we really need to look at the circumstances today and that they mandate this whole new perspective on the issue of trust. And I just want to put it out there for you to interrupt your thinking and let you chew on it. And I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. I was just so excited to do this podcast because I think it might really generate some good discussion. So here we go. While leaders certainly have a responsibility to act with integrity, consistency, decency, respect, and the rest, OK, I can guarantee you that each one will certainly fail each and every employee at multiple points in their relationship. So when people come to me as their leader, like, Cy, I need you to communicate with me, I'm like, I am so all in. I'm going to do my darndest to communicate with you. Cy, I need you to be respectful. I need you to be aware of your own biases. I need you to always be professional with me. I'm all in. And I know that I will probably screw that up on a regular basis because I'm also human. So my behavior isn't always an indication of my values or my intention. There are just times where I may have overlooked including you on something important to your area. So I want to strive to be really great in all of those things that create safety between us— honesty, self-reflection, you name it. And I know that I don't want to mislead you. I don't want you to have these expectations that I can do this perfectly, because I can't. And that's the reality of it. Leaders are human, and they will fail people on a regular basis throughout their relationship. If we're basing organizational profit, which according to the research I cited earlier, 108% of the value versus 66% of the value, big profit. If we're basing that on trust, and that trust is based on the perfection of our managers in never violating any of these parts of any relationship, then we are in trouble. This is such a fragile prospect. So if only to reduce the risk of your profits, but mostly to reduce the risk of having employees dependent upon leaders' behavior to ensure their trust, I want to call you up as leaders and as individuals, but as leaders right now, to bulletproof your employees so that they can succeed regardless of some of the more subtle transgressions of others. Some of the things that as part of our humanness, not part of our inhumanness, that we will have happen in the workplace. And so Let's just be clear. Profits don't come directly from higher levels of trust between leaders and employees, as the research suggested. I believe that higher levels of trust consistent enough to show up in the form of profits are the results of personally accountable, bulletproof employees. Now, we leaders still have a role. It's in facilitating accountability in our employees so they realize trust is a choice, and then they can marry up to being able to choose trust even on shaky ground so that we can consistently drive profits. It's not just that profits come from trust, we've got to look beyond that and see where trust comes from. And it's not the perfect behavior of our leaders. I am worried that we're over-rotating so that leaders really have all the responsibility to create these safe work environments and instill all the trust. So to ensure profits, I don't want to leave things solely dependent upon this fragile proposition of trust. I want to ensure profits by helping everyone understand that trust is a choice and making choosing trust an expectation of all professionals at all levels. So let me get started on what I believe about this topic. Trust is not something people earn from others. Trust is a choice that professionals make based upon their own faith in their own competencies and their own abilities. It has little to do with the leader and everything to do with the individual. Now, I'm not talking about preferences. I'm not talking about whether you leave or stay a job or whether somebody else's behavior is appropriate. I just want you to just sit with this basic premise that trust is a choice and that my trust in you is It's not about you. It's not about you guaranteeing me that you will behave consistently and perfectly and be able to shield me from different things that come our way in the workplace. That's not where I want to base my trust. I want to base my trust on a choice that I can make when I feel skilled to be able to move freely in the world and that I can trust myself to make good choices. So I don't need to trust you, but I can trust my assertiveness. I can trust my ability to listen to my gut. I can trust my ability to act in accountable ways and account for how I got into a situation so I can make different choices and respond differently and get out of that situation. I can't control whether you raise your voice with me, but I can get so skilled that in the voice raising, I have skills that mitigate that, that can de-escalate a situation. And if I have those skills, I can trust myself around more people, even people who raise their voice. Now, let me give you a couple of stories to illustrate this, because I hope it's a concept that's resonating with you. I worked in a behavioral health unit, and we had one evening where things were really getting chaotic. We had a couple of folks who weren't able to report to their shifts. So our team of therapists and nurses and techs, we were all just trying to cover the needs of our patients on the And we had gotten creative, divided those things up, and I was going to prepare the medications so that the nurses could pass those medications. Under my licensure, I can prepare 'em, the nurse can check 'em, but he or she has to deliver 'em. So I'm working hard, and I come across a couple of meds that I have a question about. And so I call our physician on call, our psychiatrist, and, um, he— I'll just call him Dr. Smith. So I call Dr. Smith, and Dr. Smith, um, did not answer the phone in what I would judge to be a friendly manner. He just said, what? And I said, Dr. Smith, we really— I need you back up on the unit. We need to prepare some meds, and I have some questions. I'd feel better with your oversight. And he says loudly, I was just there! And when somebody is raising their voice, one of the ways I de-escalate— I've been trained to do this— is I go inside, and if it's at all true, I agree with them. Because why argue with something that's true? So I went inside, and I asked myself, was he just here? And lo and behold, he was. He was just on our unit. And I said, yes. I said, I just want to validate that for you. I'm aware that you were just here, and I am hoping that you could stop back up. I kept my calm. He raised his voice. He said, seriously, I was just there. And I kept very calm. I said, you know, I think even if I checked the security cameras, it would again validate you were just here. I just want you to know I recognize and I hear you. And he said, what's your question? And I got really nervous, and I said, okay, SSIR uptake inhibitors, serotonin uptake inhibitors, mouth or butt? I'm like, where do you put them? How should I prepare them? And he said to me, he goes, oh my goodness, are you an idiot? And I went inside, and I listened for the truth. And I said, you know, I am an idiot, especially when it comes to pharmacology. I haven't even had a single class in it. We didn't have that in our curriculum. And he said, this is ridiculous. I'll be right there. And I thought, great, that's exactly what I wanted. See, my not taking that end of the tug-of-war rope and reacting to him is skilled. So that's one way I can be around people who are upset and not feel threatened by that. The more I can grow my skill set— not that this behavior is okay— but the more I can grow my skill set, the more I can wander freely in the world, because trust is a choice. I make the choice to trust people even when they're upset because I feel skilled around them. So he comes up on the unit, and by then the medications were the least of my worries. We had a patient who had become very upset and agitated and was threatening to harm himself. So we needed to go into his room and help secure him, make sure he was safe, and give him an injection of his medicine. So as Dr. Smith came up, I said, oh, I'm so glad you're here. And he was still yelling at me, and I said, you know, things have changed. We need to go into this room, and you and I are going to need to do a gentle And he was continuing to yell at me, so I used another skill set. And I just moved non-aggressively very close to him, and I sat down, and I basically put my hand on his knee. Um, and I was right eye to eye with him, because what I know is that people have a hard time yelling at you when you're really up close whispering about 3 inches from their face. And he just starts laughing. He's like, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm just, um, trying to work so that you'll speak more softly so that we can have a great conversation. Because here's what I'm worried about. What? You and I are going into this room, and I need to let you know that we're taking a takedown, and you're a little guy, I'm pretty big, and so I'm kind of your safety net. I'm the one who you're really gonna rely on to be safe while you give this medication. And right now, I just need to let you know I'm pretty upset with you, and I don't trust myself to do the right thing if we get in trouble in there, if my job's to protect you, because my feelings are pretty hurt right now. He's like, sigh, are you kidding me? I said, no. I said, you have been raising your voice to me, and I really want to know that if I'm in charge of your safety, that I have no ill will towards you. I want to go in there just really confident that my role, without hesitation, will be to protect you. And it dawned on him that there's only 2 people that cared about his safety, and he had treated one of us pretty poorly. And I can enter into this territory because I have some of the skill set where other people would be like, I can't cope. So I can trust— more people, 'cause I can trust myself around more people. He started laughing, and he said, sigh, he goes, what do you need? I said, I need an apology. And he's like, I'm really sorry. And I wanted to know it was heartfelt, so I'm like, for what? And he's like, I am sorry for raising my voice to you and calling you an idiot. I'm like, thank you. And we went in, and we helped that patient, and life went on. And Dr. Smith, as I called him, and I had an ongoing fun relationship, although at times he would raise his voice, and I'd have to remind him that that could really jeopardize our working relationship. And I'm not saying I can control another person, but I was one of the few people that instead of saying Dr. Smith was not trustworthy, the more skilled I was, the more I could de-escalate situations and create safety and be part of that, rather than being totally dependent on other people making sure Dr. Smith did what he was supposed to do on a daily basis. I'm not justifying Dr. Smith's behavior, but I am telling you what it is like to walk freely in the world. Another quick scenario, because I really believe trust is a choice. When I was a therapist, I worked with women who had been in abusive relationships. And when you're in an abusive relationship, trust me, it changes your brain chemistry. You lose your ability to make some of these choices in the acute trauma phase of this. That stuff is real. I would work with women after they had moved out of that and had done some of the trauma work and were really wanting to rebuild their lives. And I did an aftercare group. And I'd often hear this statement. People would say, I don't trust men. And in this particular group, the relationships just tended to be heterosexual. So it'd be women who had been abused by men, just by nature of the group. And they would say, I don't trust men. And today I hear, I'm not able to do my best work because I don't trust my leader. And it brought me back to when I did therapy with these women. So they would say, I don't trust men. And it's as if men were the deciding factor. And when people say, I don't trust my leaders, it's like leaders are the deciding factor. And this happens to be a bit of a victim viewpoint, and it's one held by many people who don't move on to success in their lives. So when they would have this belief, they say, I don't trust men, I would say, I need to let you know, I'm really concerned about your having happiness and great relationships into the future. Because I'm just wondering, is it about trusting men or is it about trusting yourselves around men? See, if you could trust yourself to make different choices, choices that favored you and protected you, you could trust yourself around men. Let's say we go to dinner and somebody treats the food server horribly while we're at dinner. If I trusted myself to make good choices, I would— I would say something. thank them for coming out, but I would let them know that I need to excuse myself, and I would not accept a second date with them. If somebody wanted to limit my contact with friends, I need to have my own centered self that I've worked on, have trust in myself to say, that's not the type of relationship I'd like to have, and trust myself to leave early in those instances. So I gave all these examples because if men or if leaders are the deciding factor Okay. Then this is going to be problematic because the people that continue to hold this belief based on the falsehood that trust is something to be earned by another or deserved by somebody else, they remain in this permanent state of learned helplessness and success really eludes them. And they have no idea why, as they continue to be dependent upon others and they're at the mercy of everybody else's choices and decisions and the actions of others. And I just, I think this is so important that we don't lose as we work hard to promote and demand professional behavior from all of our colleagues and leaders. And we work on safety in our workplace regardless of your abilities or disabilities or gender or heritage or skin colors. We work on that. I don't want to lose sight of what each and every one of you can do to enhance your ability to choose trust. and leaders what you need to do to move your employees from victim-mindedness to really stepping in the power they already have, stepping into that power, and have— being empowered to step up and enhance their skill sets so they can move more freely in the world. You know, my response to the women that I counseled, and even those I coach today, was really surprising to them, and it may be surprising to you right now, but it really is the key to an incredible breakthrough. First, in our thinking, And then in people's ability to succeed in life and succeed in spite of their circumstances. So let me be clear. What I would say is the issue is not that you don't trust men or your leader, okay, depending on the circumstances. Your real issue is that you don't trust yourself around men, or you don't trust yourself around your leader to make good choices, to listen to your intuition, to engage in robust dialogue or exhibit courage. people that trust themselves to make good choices around others have a higher level of trust for their leaders, and they work for companies that are more profitable. And so trust is really about your own courage and not always about somebody else's integrity, because here's what I know for sure is I am human, and I will miscommunicate with you. I will sometimes withhold the truth when I lose my own courage and I can't say what I needed to say the first time, and I've got to come back and make that right by you. I will make my own mistakes. I will make my own bad choices. And if your trust is about me being human, we're in some trouble. And just like that question that says, I trust my colleagues at work, I worked in healthcare, and I will tell you, I trust my colleagues' intentions. I trust their hearts, that they never want to make a mistake, but I will not trust their behavior. And that's why I am their second ears and eyes, just like they are mine, because they're human. They'll make That's why we check and recheck. And so I hope that you're finding this a cool new perspective to contemplate. And I want you to just try to adopt this new belief for yourself, because I think it will set you and employees as well free. Because while you can't control or change the behavior of others, you can enhance your own abilities in the areas I've talked about. And I do have some techniques that I want to share with you about improving trust. And so for leaders, if you're working on improving trust, Self-reflect and begin again. Use mulligans with your people. If I started to sympathize with you, or I colluded with you, or I gave you mixed messages, or I didn't have the conversation I needed to have with you, whatever I've done that would take trust away from our relationships, be really good about, one, self-reflect every day. Where did you step up and lead, and where did you step down and miss Mm-hmm. And then claim a mulligan, claim time again, grab somebody and say, I have been reflecting and thinking about how I led you or how I responded, and I believe I misled you, and I would like to start again. Can we just begin this anew? Can I come with a more centered presence and talk to you about this issue? And then do it right. Do it how we've taught you in Reality-Based Leadership. So one, self-reflection. 2, if you've screwed up, admit it. Leave out the circumstances, leave out any context. Just in one sentence, just tell people what you did. I misled you. I sympathized rather than empathized. Or I told you it was something I couldn't share when in fact I chose not to share. And I think I really missed an opportunity to build trust with you. Whatever it is, Don't say, I was really busy, things happened, the organization set me up. Just leave all the excuses out. You're not ready to apologize until you've got it down to only talk about you and in words like, I chose, I assumed, I denied, I did, I didn't. If you can't get there, write, I did, I didn't, I assumed, I chose. Write those on a piece of paper and fill in the blank until you are ready for a clean apology. 2, go in with no expectations of anyone else taking any responsibility for their own stuff. 3, once you get in there and you make that apology, next, you can't just apologize. You've gotta show insight. I reflected. I have learned from this situation that I tend to sugarcoat things because I fear I don't have the skills to respond to what some of your reactions are that I see in the story I made up. Like, give insight. Like, I understand Understand why I did this without blame, then make amends by saying, here's what I am working to do next in the future. You might say, here's how you could help me, and then do it. And when you're doing it, claim it. Go, I'm a little scared right now. You asked me a question and I wanna be honest with you. I committed to you and myself I'd be honest. And it's challenging right now, but it's my promise to you, my amends, and here goes. And then be honest and kind. So if you've screwed up, just admit it. If you don't know how to make it, the amends, I ask the other person, how could I make this right by you? And then I consider those my simple instructions. So I get clean through self-reflection. I apologize. I show insight. And then I ask the other person, how could I make this right by you? And I commit, the first step in accountability. So if you have harmed somebody's easy choice to trust you, Do that. If you're in the workplace and you're wondering, well, Sai, what if— how do I know when to trust somebody? Let me give you some simple guidelines. And don't take these as sarcastic. They're that simple. What I tell people is when I'm looking at whether I should trust this person I am interacting with in healthcare, step 1 is I ask myself, is what they're doing legal? Is it within ethical guidelines? And if the answer is no, Then call the hotline. If you're experiencing sexual harassment, there's a legal trust fund set up by the Time's Up group that you can contact for advice through. Do not hesitate to speak up. We're just not going to stay quiet any longer. I'm hoping all these brave people have paved the path for folks. If you're experiencing something towards you or towards another, it If it's illegal, if it's unethical, if it's immoral, speak up. So step number 1 is, is it legal and within company guidelines? If not, call the hotline. If it is, step 2, check their badge. Do they work for the same organization or a chosen partner? Are they operating within their licensure, within their authority? And if they are, you might want to trust them. If they aren't, again— And then escalate this, call the hotline. Step 3, choose to offer them professional courtesy of benefit of the doubt and get busy producing results together. If what they're doing isn't illegal, it's not unethical, it's not immoral, it's within their licensure, it is representative of their stature in the company. And I say then just get on the business of producing results together because— You have to be careful that it's not just your judgment that's eroding your own trust. But if you can give benefit of the doubt, and you can grow your skill set so that you can work freely with many types of people, you're going to experience more happiness and success in your life. So I had someone in a healthcare situation say, well, Cy, this clinical person came in, I didn't know whether to trust them. I literally said, is what they're doing ethical and legal? Yep. I go, great. Is it within their licensure? Is it within their authority? Yep. Great. Trust them and get busy. Well, I didn't necessarily agree with it. It's not how I would have approached it. And it's like, that is judgment that's not about trust or not about safety. You can trust yourself a lot if you can trust yourself even to go beyond and give the benefit of the doubt to humans who sometimes make mistakes. So if someone's acting in a concerning way, choose to act in ways that merit trust of yourself and your own ability to handle the situation. Initiate dialogue, have a robust conversation, show integrity, show courage, give people the benefit of the doubt that they may not know better, so they can't do better. Be kind. I was on LinkedIn the other day, and a gentleman reached out and said that he thought I was beautiful and would love to get to know me better. And it was so tempting for me to rage at the man and say, have you not read a single headline? And this is a professional site, and it is not a dating site. And I just really— my anger at the world was coming out through my ego. But I had to stop back and say, how can I be kind to a person and engage in conversation? And I just said, Hi. I want to make sure that you don't have missteps in your career, and so I'm choosing to just provide you some education. This is a professional site; it's not appropriate to reach out to others for any type of personal, non-professional relationship on this site. And I'm sharing this with you—that's not a suggestion; it's really a non-negotiable for most of us in the workplace because I don't want you to make these missteps in. And if you're looking for companionship, there's many other sites that are more appropriate. Now, if this guy had come back and really pushed it and edged against my boundaries, I would have escalated that situation. But many of the things that we need to do to restore trust right now in our workplaces is grow our own skill set, give people benefit of the doubt. And when something is not right, and you can still make it conversational and not confrontational, Have robust dialogue. Share your perspective. Ask people to behave differently. Help them understand why. Help educate the people. And I'm not saying it is the responsibility of someone who's been victimized to educate the perpetrator, because I know some people that are in different demographics that are just sick and tired of educating people who haven't educated themselves. I'm talking about those moments with colleagues, those small moments where we could really do some things differently. So if you want to increase trust in your workplace, while we're all working on this, and most organizations are being held up to work on it even more from their perspective, work on it yourself. Work on your own ability to trust yourself. It's interesting because your trust in, according to the study, profits will no longer be dependent on the action of others. Results will happen because of you, not in spite of you. You will be doing your shared part in this. And it really is a cool way to walk freely through the world. And I came out— I know this is a touchy subject, but I wanted to make sure that we kill another excuse early. And I wanted to make sure that as we're talking about safety, we didn't let ourselves off the hook and take a victim-minded approach, which would give a lot of our power away. Organizations have a lot to do to work towards safe, inclusive cultures. Folks, we have a lot to do, ways we can impact safe, healthy relationships. And so remember, trust is a choice. And if you find yourself thinking, I don't trust a person, make sure it isn't that you don't trust yourself around that person. And if you truly If you really don't trust a person, then trust your own good choices to set boundaries, call hotlines, speak up. I really hope you grow in those abilities so that you can trust yourself so that you can roam freely in the world. Let me know what you think as we get into these podcasts about some of these fun topics. I am so excited. We— I've done a few solo podcasts in a row here because due to My schedule. We haven't been able to line up until a few weeks from now some incredible guests. But once we do, you're gonna have— I'm gonna have guest after guest after guest coming at you with some incredible new things to think about. I'm gonna end by reminding you to please share this podcast with others and review it. I appreciate— we're growing so quickly. And I'll remind you, since our podcast is called No Ego, That trust, if left up to the ego, would never happen. That the place we can find mutual trust for one another is in that hemisphere of our brain beyond ego, in that, that place where we can get vulnerable, and get vulnerable because we've got good skills to keep our own selves safe, not always dependent upon others. So remember, when you're feeling that you don't trust somebody, you might just be heavier be bunkered down in your ego. And I'm telling you, life beyond ego is a pretty sweet place to be. So until next time, keep ditching the drama. Thank you so much for joining the episode today. If you're loving this podcast, just make sure that you check me out on Facebook and Instagram, and especially YouTube.