E021: Trust

now on to this episode.

Hi everyone. This is James and Jane, and here we are back again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. Oh, it's nice to be back. It's nice, isn't it? Yeah, it feels pretty good this week. This week, we're going to be chatting to everybody about trust. We're going to try and share with you some thoughts on you know, why trust is important, where trust comes from, how it helps in the workplace, and that kind of stuff. But before we do that, we're just gonna say a little bit of a hello and how we doing, and how was your week? Jen, my week's been. It's been. It's been really good. Actually, a few people have been getting in touch about some of the podcasts they've been listened to, which really unexpected. And I suspect people listening think that's really weird, because usually, if you record something and publish it, gonna get in touch. Yeah. But so just really weird things, like people that I haven't seen in a long time messaging me and say, Oh, I was listening to your podcast about emotional intelligence, and that's so what's happening in my work? So funny, isn't it? I'm like, is it okay? I'd forgotten. What did I say again? And also, memorably, someone quoted myself to me, they were like, it's like, when you said, they do hold me

to that I'm really teasing. But anyways, it's really lovely. That's particularly been lovely. So, for example, the sea the CEO, the chief executive of the organization I'm a trustee at was on Twitter episodes, and I was touched by that. So hello Hugh, and thank you. Oh, good. Well, that's lovely. Yeah, so it's been a really nice week. Good, well, I've had, um, I've had a nice week as well. I've been, I'm still working through my coaching qualifications. I'm part of our way through that, and I've done some more on that. Had a nice catch up with, I guess, my sort of coaching mentor for that, which was really good and positive.

And like you, I've had several people reach out as well. So you know, there are people I know, who've said, Gosh, isn't it fun? You've got a podcast, and I've said, Yeah, that's great. And then there are people I don't know, who've reached out as well, who've got a real, shared, genuine interest in the stuff that we're speaking about, and that was just great. You know, I'm really interested and passionate about all of this stuff. So when we get people who get in touch, who are clearly interested as well, it's really rewarding. So a couple of people have done that, and people have shared stuff on Twitter, which is great. So a couple names, I'd say. Martin Grimshaw has helped share a little bit. Charles Goff deacons has which has been really excellent. Hugh torrent and Graham from Stonehaven. You know, it's like, it's a few people that's a fair switch. Thank you to all those people. Sorry to everybody else. We appreciate all of it. But, you know, we do, and we'll get round if we if, if you keep listening, we'll keep making them, and eventually we'll mention, yeah, no, it's been really good. Anyone really unexpected that's listened how crikey my partner's mother? Yeah? Okay, that's a big one. Hi Margaret. Yeah, that's exciting. So that was a that was an unexpected surprise, yeah,

well done on that. All right. Well, so what we're going to do today, getting into the episode, is the same structure that we always do. So we're speaking about trust. What we're going to show and hopefully help you guys get a bit closer to is what trust is, why it matters, how you how you build trust, what some models are of trust. And that's really what we're going to do. We're going to do it as we always do with a definition discussion. You know, quick fire through that at the beginning. Research round up, then we'll share a list of a week, list of a week this. This episode is going to be 10 things that you can actually do yourself, maybe today, to help build some trust. You know, some Yeah, we've had, we've had a bit of feedback that people really like it when we explain exactly how they can go away and do something straight away. So we're going to try and include a little bit more of that for you guys. So when you're in your workplace and you've taken your headphones out after your ride at work or wherever, listening to us, you can go, right? This is what I'm going to do to make make a bit of a difference today. Yeah, a bit of a quick fire action, and then obviously stories from a keyboard and a couple of final thoughts and top tips from us. And then we're checking out before we get into the definitions. Though, as ever, you guys can get in touch with us at the website, the wild podcast.org, you can check out all the postings we have there for our content, and you can tweet us at the WoW podcast, yeah, that's a minute. Probably our best channel, really, it is, although, if you look hard enough, you'll find us on Facebook, oh yeah, LinkedIn, all these other places we're also in the.

Process of setting up a mailing list. So don't forget to go to the website. And if you want to get some extra information, hints and tips, you can sign up for the while mail. Cool. Yeah, great idea. All right. Well, let's jump into it. Do you want to run through a few definitions for everyone? Yeah? So we're not going to go into much detail, because you guys know this stuff anyway, but it's just some of the things that crop up when we talk about trust quite a lot. So a couple of definitions of trust that are quite different. If you trust someone, you believe that they are honest and sincere and will not deliberately do anything to harm you. That's from Collins or Oxford, which is a firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something. I think that one in particular has got a lot of context around work, because it's this concept in believing in the reliability of someone to do something, yeah, reliability is obviously part, you know, it's a building block of trust and about whether they can actually get it done, right? Yeah, not whether they just mean to credibility, the quality of being believable or worthy of trust. And I think in business, we talk a lot about, are people credible? And I think perhaps that we don't spend enough thinking time thinking about what makes up people's perceptions of credibility. How can we be credible ourselves? Well, absolutely, as individuals, why are people seeing us as credible? And why not we really understand what was what message we're putting out there,

reliability. Follow on from that a reliable person is someone who you can trust to behave well, work hard, or do what you expect them to do. I'm not sure that's true. I have friends who are absolutely reliable. I'm not sure. I'd argue they behave well all the time. But

and then self interest, which will come up, I think, a few times today, which is about a concern for one's own advantage and well being,

and then capability, competence in doing something. And I think, I think both those concepts of capability and ability and also of self interest are really relevant to this conversation. Yeah, cool. Well, I think there's some, some great phrases in there for us, and they're all relevant in the broader space of trust.

So moving on to research Roundup. What do you think people say about trust? If we were to look at what some of the professions out there say about trust? Have you got any thoughts on what about it? Well, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because we talk about trust in our relationship to our relationship to our personal and professional lives. We talk about it in terms of trusting organizations, trusting the government. Yeah, there's a number of of relationships where trust is implied or required or beneficial. But what actually is it? Well, like with all of these things, people disagree, or they most commonly say it depends.

So sociologists will often talk about it as a social construct, and what they mean by that is, you can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't measure it. You can measure something that they believe to be linked to it or be an example of it, they can't actually measure it, and I think that's really important. So it only exists with people, right? I mean, it's not like a natural phenomenon. It exists in the space between people. Well, it doesn't exist outside of relationships, right? So it only exists in the context of you and I. So our trust and trust between us can only exist in the relationship as we view it, yeah, so it's how we perceive. It fine. And I guess that's where the phrase social construct comes from, because it's only constructed in the space where you have a social

I'm not sure, because the well, just because construct in psychology, psychology is about something that is a theoretical why it's not theoretical, but it's a phenomena

that they want to use to explain something, or a theory, a theory that they want to use to explain a phenomena or an occurrence, right? Okay, so

it's effectively the scientific concept. So we talk about a concept, a construct, is something where you put a little bit more of a an understanding around it, and you put some analysis into it to try and explain what's going on in the world. Okay, great. So my assumption would therefore be, in sociology, that a social contract is a

sociological concept, yeah, that they are looking to use to explain phenomena that exists. Fine, cool. So they're trying to trust will be one of many things that they are trying to use to explain how we relate to each other. In

this sense, there are lots of other examples, so things like control, confidence, risk, meaning power is a really interesting one. And actually, I think we should probably do something. We haven't done anything on ravens power yet. No, no. Power is on the list. Okay, so

No, but that's really so they are all things that you can't touch, you can't smell them, you can't see them. But we know they exist, yeah, because we talk about them and we use them as words to explain something that, yeah, relationships and the way we work, and they're.

Our vocabulary. Yeah, so similar. Lee, psychologists would agree, in the sense that you can't see, touch it, and it's a construct. They would also say, I think, or certainly some of them, that it's something that can grow and that you have to develop, and that it's,

it's when people continually do what is you expect them to do, okay? And therefore that reliability develops, and it doesn't necessarily reliable, doesn't necessarily mean that they turn up on time, right? So if someone is perpetually late, yeah, and they are always late reliably, yeah, exactly, meeting your expectations consistently, right?

It doesn't this, but there is, there is a sense, certainly, when we talk about it, that we're talking about the positive side. So, so we're talking mostly about traits and people that are admirable or preferable, yeah. And I think one of the other things that psychologists are beginning to learn is just how influential it is within

what what a major factor it is in influencing people. Okay, so if you trust the the source of a message, you're much more likely to take on the content of the message, right, okay, so if that source of that message has always previously been trustworthy and you have behaved as you expect it to. Why would you not trust what they say? Now, fine, okay, and I think we're seeing quite interesting concepts around, at the moment in society, around something called inherited trust, so where we look at the society we're in, and we have organizations that we trust because of a history, okay, great. So we inherit that trust from a previous generation, gotcha, and therefore when that organization may change or behave in a different way, it takes us longer to figure it out, okay, and we are more more likely to cut them a break because they've been around for long. So reputation, yeah, the classic example would be, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not in any way passing judgment whether it's accurate or not. But lots of people would argue that certain elements or programming on the BBC, for example, is maybe not with the rigor it used to be. So that's for British, British broadcast, yeah, so the BBC News or anything like that. Some people might argue that

some of their content is not as rigorous as perhaps it used to be. Whether that's true or not, it is likely, if it is true, that people would have cut them slack for longer and not questioned it, because, as a society in Britain, we would have inherited trust in it. Yeah, and I guess I've built that up over a long time, and that pass is done, as you said, in that inherited way through generations. Yeah. So there's a really, there's a whole really interesting thing around, around what, uh, what social constructs we inherit, and what we inherit, even from our parents, around what they trust and brands and organizations and behaviors that they would trust. And you see a lot of things like banking, yeah, okay, so,

all right, so what feels like we've talked about what sociologists say, we've talked a little bit about what psychologists say, and we've talked a little bit in terms of broader society. What about in relation to work? Specifically, you know, why does trust matter in the workplace? What's your view on that? Well, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because some would say it doesn't. Oh, so either there are people out there who say it doesn't matter if people trust me or not, I know what I'm here to do, I'm doing it. And you know, generally, they may also be a correlation with people who don't necessarily see the value of integrated teamwork in this. Okay, okay, so like individual deliveries, maybe, yeah, or just people who prefer that way, even if they're not meant to be. But I think for me, and this is kind of a real call out to you guys, my learning the hard way is that you will struggle to influence people. You will struggle to get people to do what you want them to do if they don't trust you, and that's the slightly self interested bit, but also you will be happier if people trust you, because you will waste less time, less energy, less resources and less emotion on trying to get them to buy into your ideas, your concepts, the things you want to do, because they will trust that you're doing it for the right reasons, and they will cut you some slack. Yeah, okay, and that's whether you're a manager, and that's whether you are someone in a team trying to work with your manager and your the rest of your team. It doesn't matter really what the role is. If people trust you, they will cut you some slack. They will allow you to explore far more, and you will be able to bring them on a journey much quicker. So for me, it's about what is effective, but it's there's a third piece around that, which is just about your own personal health. It is, and I know you're going to cover it later, but you know it is hard work when you are having to convince people every day people don't trust you, and if you haven't worked at it and you don't deserve their trust, every single day is tiring. Yeah, in.

Got to prove yourself all the time, right? Yeah. And I think reciprocal trust. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but certainly I've been in organizations where there's been a really low level of trust, either endemically across the organization or in particular teams. Yeah, me too. And sometimes, like, if you move into a new team, it's, it's a different experience. You've got to rebuild that set of relationships and trust and Yeah. And it's just yeah, and it just for me, I think it is really important, as important as any of the other things we talk about in terms of how to build effective relationships. We love all our episodes, equally, they're all really important, right? I know that's true. I mean, if you buy me a glass of wine, I'll tell you exactly which ones I think the most important trust. I've got a list of them as well. It's just funny. I think, I think in many episodes, we say this one's really important, because we believe it, yeah, but this one, I really mean, is important? Yeah, it's a good investment. I guess is my point. Yeah, you get a good return on this investment. Is that right? Okay, I wasn't gonna say that, but yeah, right. All right, accountant, you get a really, if you spend time and energy working on building trust, then, yes, I am absolutely confident you will see a really good return on investment. Nice. I think it's the first time you've actually said it. I'm it sticks in my throat. You'll get better. Okay, so that's, that's what, briefly, the scientists say, and why I think it matters, and a little bit. But why you think it matters? Why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the models out there that people use to explain it. Yeah, okay, yeah. Let's see. Let's talk through some of the models that exist. I think a lot of people kind of know what trust is, and they've got a view of it, and they understand sort of innately what goes into it and how to improve it and things like that. But I think having a model or a framework to actually look at can be helpful, because it breaks it down a little bit. And I'm sure a lot of you have gotten models of your own, or maybe you've seen these before, but we'll run through them anyway, because I think they're useful. So

we're going to share two models with you. We're going to share Ken Blanchard's abcds of trust, which, like a lot of these models, has a different word for each of those letters, so A stands for something, B and so on. And then we're going to share another model called the trust equation, which you've probably seen as well. At some point, I actually prefer the trust equation, but we'll come on to that in a second. So first up is Ken Blanchard's abcds of trust. Now there are four things in here that he describes that he says make people more trustworthy. So the first one is able, the second one is believable, the third one is connected, and the fourth one is dependable. And a lot of these words fit with some of the words we used in our definition discussion at the beginning.

So when we speak about able, what he says is that, you know, if you demonstrate capability

in work context, if you demonstrate the ability to do the work that needs to be done, then that improves your trustworthiness. You know, the way they see you will be higher the more able you are at doing whatever it is that you're talking about. The next one is believable. So be believable. This is about whether you act with integrity. Are you honest? Are you respectful? Are you sincere? Are you non judgmental? You know, do your actions align with the words that you've spoken? And if that's the case, then you're increasingly believable. And the more believable you are, the more people will trust you can Blanchard C is connected, and what he means when he talks about connected is, is it's about your connection with others. You know, how linked are you with the others that you're working with? Do you do you care about them? Do you listen well to them? Are you open with them about yourself and how you're feeling and thinking and what the situation is? Are you empathetic? Are you interested in outcomes for others? The more you are those things, the more connected you're deemed to be, and the more connected you are with others, again, the more trustworthy you will be. And then the last point that D here is dependable, and this is about, you know, really doing what you say you'll do. When you'll say you'll do it to the quality level that you've said you'll do it. So we spoke a little bit earlier. Jen was talking about, I guess, inherited trust. And you know, over time, the longer you do what you say you'll do, when you say you'll do it to the quality you've said you'll do it. If you do that for a long time, people just start to be able to depend on you. You're that kind of Clockwork thing, and they don't need to think about it. And the more you are dependable, the more trustworthy you are. So if we think through those four things again, we've got able to do stuff believable, connected to others, and caring about them, and dependable in terms of doing what you say. So those are the four building blocks of trust in the Blanchard model. Have you seen those before? Jen, what do you think of those? Not actually like you. I've seen the trust equation before, but I've not, and I'm just reflecting on whether I think they're an accurate explanation. And I'm not sure like I like them, but I, I don't. I think I hate to say it.

Depends, but it does depend. I think it depends what you see trust as. And I think there is a very simplistic version of trust, which is people do what they say they're going to do, and a lot of the stuff that he talks around in terms of dependable and believable is there. And then I think there's the trust where you are trusted to do something that needs to be done. And I think that's much more is his a and his C, of ability, able and connected, yeah? And I think those are, for me, that's the more important, yeah side of it. But I would say that, because if I was ever going to be questioned on any of them, I'd be questioned on the dependable. So I'm horribly biased.

That's funny, but, you know, it's a fair place to start. But I definitely, yeah, I definitely, I've got a soft spot for the trust equation, actually, yeah, me too, me too. And I think these are, like, these are building blocks. They're good. I don't think doing or focusing on these things will do you any harm. I just prefer the way the trust equation looks at which we'll share

when we when we look at this framework, the ABCD model, it sheds light on some things that people can do to break trust. And so we're going to just share some of these things that do undermine your trustworthiness with others and reduce trust that you have if you've built it up, or prevent you growing trust if you've not yet built trust. So just a few things you can think about that undermine trust. One is, you know, sharing things that you've been asked to keep secret. If somebody confides in you and you tell people, that's a big trust breaker.

Another one is, you know, lying about stuff or cheating in sort of social norms or even things like exaggerating. You know, these are all things that are just slightly untrue and they break down trust as well. A Biggie in work is and everywhere, really, but maybe more relevant in work is taking credit for someone else's work. You know, if you take credit for someone's work, they're not going to trust you. And you know, why should they? Again, that's sort of social cheating. So it is. I think

I hate sounding like a Slack record. I think a lot of these things are in the context of what you understand about someone. So I have one of the big things about sharing things that you've been asked to keep private is, do you really understand who and why they've asked you to keep it private and whether it actually bothers them? Yeah. And I think the other thing around taking credit for someone else's work is quite often, I hear that a lot, I've got someone who's taking credit for my work, yeah, and my response is always, one, speak up, yeah, claim your work. But two, don't. Don't accuse your manager of taking credit for your work when they're trying to explain how they're running their team. Yeah. And I wouldn't consider about taking credit for you. No, I know, but so I guess my challenge to listeners is, when you're thinking about breaking trust, it's really important to think about how it be perceived by others and to manage. So when you talk about your team, Name Check people totally even if you're taking credit for running the team, which you should, you are absolutely within your rights as a manager, Name Check the people who have individually played, yeah, and let them know you've done that, celebrate their success and yeah. So there's a great example I had at the manager who was absolutely, violently passionate about how brilliant their team was in senior meetings, sure, but no one knew. Yeah. They think she's brilliant, yeah? And I was like, no, they think you are. Yeah. I just didn't. Everyone was like, Is no one told you that she goes to she goes to she goes to bat for you every time. Yes. And actually, they didn't trust her at all because they thought it was just interesting, yeah. So there's something about the visibility of action. Yes, absolutely. Then some other trust breaking things, so not doing the things that you've agreed to do. So, you know, people talk about over committing, and if you over commit and don't do it, that'll undermine your trust, because you've said you'll do it. You know, every time you don't do something, do something, what you've said you'll do, but breaks down a little bit about reliability and dependability. Yeah, and in Blanchard's model, it's what's great about blanche's model is thinking about these trust breaking actions in the context of which of the ABCD delivering down so that that not doing things you've agreed to do right is is totally damaging the dependability that 100% will have in you versus not having the abilities you said you have, which is the the A, the A, are you? That's the ability piece, yeah, so that's right. So if you, if you don't have the abilities that you've claimed, then your ability is diminished. Yeah? Other things that break trust are disregarding people when they're in need, you know? So again, that's a connected piece, right? If somebody really needs something and you're disregarding them, You're disregarding them, be it a work related need or sort of an emotional need, then that limits your connectedness. Another one is playing people off against each other. And again, that's a connectedness, you know, creating that conflict breaks trust, spreading rumors or gossip, that's again, an untrustworthy thing. You might gain a little bit of trust with the one person you're spreading a rumor with, potentially for a little while, but even they will know that you're a gossip.

Withholding information from others is an important thing that breaks down trust, and you see that a lot that's necessitated in certain parts of business and leadership. But again, every time you withhold a bit of information, you.

People lose a little bit of trust in you if they know you're doing it. And then the last one on our list of trust breaking actions is not listening to personal information from others. So if people are sharing stuff with you and being intimate or confiding in you, and if you disregard that, that breaks the trust relationship a little bit as well. So I think it's just worth knowing. A few of the things would break down trust, and that's, that's for Blanchard's abcds of trust. So ability, believable, connected and dependable, right? So I think they're a reasonable set of building blocks. They're not amazing. But you know, if you wanted to do a trust audit on yourself, you could go off and, you know, tick off those different things for your different relationships with people to work out, potentially, how trustworthy you are. I'm not sure if you really need to spend any time doing it, but it just gives you a bit of something to think about with this.

So that's Ken. That's Ken and his abcds of trust. Should we go into the trust equation? Let's do so we've been talking about this one. Yeah, the trust equation. I like a little bit more now, but trust equation. Sorry. Ken, yeah. Sorry. Ken, well done. You managed to get it to a, b, c, d, which was a great outcome, but we dislike the trust equation a bit more. So the trust equation is exactly that. It's an equation, and it tries to say, You know what constitutes trust? What makes up trust and in honesty, it's got very much the same factors as Blanchard's model. It just sits a little bit better with me. So the trust equation says that trustworthiness is equal to something, right? Each equation is an equal right, that's the equation. So trustworthiness is equal to your credibility times your reliability, times your intimacy, which we'll explain before you get any ideas, all divided by your self orientation. So we'll talk about each one of those individually and explain how they fit together. So the first thing that contributes to trustworthiness is credibility, and this has to do with your knowledge base. You know, the base of knowledge and ability from which you speak. Are you knowledgeable? Can you speak? How about that? Are you knowledgeable about the subject that you're you're discussing? Can you back up your words with underlying knowledge and experience, and the more of it you are credible, the more that people will be able to trust you. So that's credibility. The next point here is reliability. So reliability has to do with our actions. It's very much like the dependability in Blanchard's model. Can people depend on us? Do we do what we said we'd do when we said we'd do it to the right level of quality, all that kind of stuff? So that's your reliability. Can people set their watch by you, if you will? And then, then

the next phrase is intimacy, and intimacy is really akin to the connectedness in the Blanchard model. So intimacy is all to do with how, how sort of open we are with our sort of emotional connection with other people. So do we share personal information? Are we open about our vulnerabilities, doubts and security, and are we aligned to some extent with them? You know, do we listen to them when they speak about those things? Do we do we speak to them beyond a transactional level and really get to know them as people and demonstrate that we care about them? So that's intimacy. So the trust equation says that credibility times reliability times intimacy, gives us the top part of our equation. For more of each of those things we have, the more trustworthy we are. And then the trustworthiness equation divides all of those things by self orientation or self interest. And the self interest is a really important thing, right? So what it says is that the more self interested we are, the less trustworthy we are. So here, when we're talking about self orientation, it's around, are we focused on our own outcomes, or do we genuinely want others to have good outcomes as well? Highly self oriented people are hard to trust, because we know that when push comes to shove, they'll be more focused on outcomes that help them than they will be on outcomes that help us as a group, or me as a person trying to trust them. So self orientation is a massively powerful negative factor for trustworthiness. Somebody can be hugely credible, very reliable, and you can have a good level of intimacy with them, but if you think they're out for themselves, then you're just not going to trust them. Because, you know, why would you

so that's the trust equation. Trustworthiness equals credibility times reliability times intimacy, all divided by self orientation. And as I said, you know, a lot of components are similar to blanchards. I just like the framing a little bit more. I think it's easier and more memorable. I think there's number of things. One, if you're a visual person, it's really helpful. To the way an equation is written is such that

something that you're dividing by falls underneath, yeah, so when you present it in a visual, so trustworthiness equals c by times r times i, over. So.

Of orientation or interest. There is something so brilliant about looking at something and seeing it as an undermining factor. Yeah, so I think it's a really strong visual image. And I know that sounds slightly silly, but it's this idea that no matter how credible, no matter how reliable, no matter how successful you are in creating an intimate and as we said, no, no funny ideas, but an intimate relationship with someone. If you act in a way that is self interested regularly, or if you are perceived

in a way that is self interested regularly, you undermine all of that good work. And I think it's, I just think it's a really clever way of presenting it because it's exactly how it feels. Yeah, I have had relationships in teams where I've seen team members have absolute credibility, reliability and decent intimacy in terms of the way that they relate to each other. But when push came to shove, there was always a belief from one party that the other had self interest, yeah? And some people do, right? Yeah? And it's about, it's not even about self interest. It's about hidden self interest. I think I've worked with people who are very, very openly self interested. And do people trust them? I'm not sure they don't. I think they just are very honest and aware of what the shortcomings are, yeah, whereas I think when you act when, when you are perceived to have hidden self interest, then you got problems. I really do, I think,

and the most, the most visible place I've seen it is in a relationship to two people that I was working team with long time ago, long, long time ago, and they got on really well in moments of crisis,

because fundamentally, at moments of crisis, they needed each other. They were aligned, and it didn't matter. They knew that the self interest was the same, yeah, survive. Do it well. And also they were basically decent people, right? So there was a level of intimacy about relationship in terms of trusting that this person was not a terrible person, but when we weren't in periods of critical situations, but we were quite stressed. There was lots going on. There was just constant sniping, because there was a sense that they didn't fundamentally believe that they had each other's backs. Yeah, and that's the whole self interesting. I mean, so if you only think you've got, if you only believe that someone's got your back in times of absolute crisis, it's probably not an ideal situation. It's hard to trust. And so for me, it's a really, really powerful concept of this undermining all the good work you do. And what I'd say is, you know, like to people listening, if you're leading a team, this might be a good way for you to assess some of relationships in the team, you know, to model it's worth sharing with people and helping everybody understand, anytime you're in some sort of partnering relationship with somebody, if you're business partnering, it's a great sort of checklist of things that you can think about to do with your relationship. You can use it as a little tool, a lens through which to see all the relationships that you've got at work from, okay, so And on that for those of you who work in really small organizations and maybe don't get support from HR or don't even have an internal HR function, it is a really simple model. That's how that is neutral, in the sense that it's not coming from you, it's coming from a book which really helps to explain to someone who's quite guarded or closed why intimacy matters. Yeah, it really does. And I've been through that conversation with people as well as I you know, you're credible, you're reliable, you're not self oriented, but people don't know you. Yeah, you know there isn't any of that you've shared, nothing you said they trust. Do you even sleep? I mean, do you eat? I mean, what are you I haven't had that one. Do you sleep? Do you eat? Blimey, they sound robotic. Um, so I haven't had that one. But yes, absolutely, I've had people who have very clear boundaries in their lives and and a lot of people say, You know what, I've got to write to boundaries, but then be open about that. That's the bit. So the clever bit around being that kind of person is, that's fine. Of course you do. You should never share a single thing. You don't want to, but share that's how you feel. Yeah, share that work for you is a boundary environment and or maybe use word that's slightly less jargony, but or trendy and

often, but definitely share that. Share. I don't want to, I don't want to be, I don't want you guys to know, because that's I try and keep my life it's how I cope. And there's normally, you know, something you can share, even if it's how you're feeling about something at work, or it's astonishing, the things will break people down. Yeah, I've got a secret fetish for Percy pigs from my expenses, which would be a sweet sweetie. Yes, not from Britain, but, you know, I, I once, you know, had a dyed my hair black, and just sharing something that makes feel vulnerable. It doesn't have to be current, and it finds commonality with people. It's all good. Yeah, so intimacy is a good one. Maybe that would have been one of our good tips, but we've kind of ticked it off. It wasn't on the tip list, but that's a great tip. You know, share some of that intimacy. That's because, that's because James, you and I rush for. Probably share a bit much. Maybe, here's my heart. It's on my sleeve.

Anyway. Sorry, yeah, carry on. So that's two models, and that's some stuff that you guys can do or think about. You can assess yourself. You can share with your team. If you're a leadership team, it's a great way to share within the leadership team and get people to one sorry, one word of warning, warning on all this stuff around trust is it is not the sort of thing that is particularly well facilitated in a group session, unlike values and emotional intelligence and ice breaks and lots of things we've talked about, it's a really sensitive thing. Yeah, people, it hurts when people find out they're not trusted, and it means different things to different people. So I when we talk about using this tool, I would strongly encourage you to think about what elements you're going to use, yeah, and who is and how, and I wouldn't do it in a group, yeah? And I'd say you can do a teach of a subject in an element, sorry, you can teach for subject in a group, but I wouldn't do sort of reflective session. Yeah, it's absolutely not one way you score each other.

Yeah? Yeah. So don't do that. Just a word of warning. Cool. So, so that's some models. So we spoke a little bit about what, you know, what some of the person say about it, a little bit about why it matters in work. And some models. And the models come back to, you know, your credibility, reliability, intimacy and self orientation, broadly speaking, river same factors in Blanchard as well as in the trust equation. What I kind of wanted to do now was Chuck in a bit of a curve ball, right? And we've explained why,

why trust is important in work some of the things that it helps with. But I was thinking about it when I was doing some of this research, and I actually want to bring in a teeny bit around psychological safety. And you know what we're going to do with psychological safety? Can you guess I'd know, but there's probably an episode. Oh yeah, that's what I was gonna say. We're gonna do another episode on something like that at some point. I've got visions of me recording podcast episodes, we promise when I'm 19. Yeah, exactly my fourth dog. Oh no. Where's our list of things we've committed to

anyway. So hang on. Just let the listeners know there is no list. I was listening back to one little I texted James. I think we've promised to do an episode on psychological context, really,

anyway. So when I was thinking about it, I thought that talking very quickly around psychological safety here would be useful. So for me, psychological safety is an interesting concept. We'll do an episode on it. But fundamentally, what psychological safety is is it's around, you know, do you feel

that you're in an environment that supports you and in a safe zone emotionally around where you work, right? So can you, to some extent, be yourself? Is it an inclusive environment? Do you feel threatened by behaviors or activities around you? And is this where some of the language around things like Safe Spaces has come from? I think, I think it probably, that probably comes a little bit from this, but also a little bit from physical safe spaces translating into this environment, but, but that's what psychological safety is about. And when you're in a psychologically safe environment, you are at your best, right? So if you can be yourself, if you feel trusted and valued and confident and all those things, you can be at your best and be productive and happy. Well, that's the argument, right? There are absolutely just and with all this stuff, we tell you what we think, yeah, there are people who would argue that being in a unbalanced place, or being in a place where you do not feel safe and secure will push you to perform better? That is, that is a belief. I'm not sure I've seen great evidence of it. I don't think I have and so on that stuff. I think those places might drive you to increased performance in relation to more productivity. Well, not just productivity, but certain types of productivity. Yeah, so manual row energy intensive activities can be, I would argue, high adrenaline stuff as well. So some of the, some of the examples they talked about were brokers and sure,

talking about high volume financial transactions and potentially, yeah, which seems crazy to me, but what I don't think it helps with. Last thing I want people worrying about my money, yeah? Well, yeah, not that I've got any, but you know, if they did, they were playing with them, I'd really love them to be in a happy, safe space, yeah, but, but what, you know, those environments might help, but where I don't think it helps is where you need to be creative, right? Where you need to be innovative, all those spaces where you need space and freedom to to come up with ideas and share and change and bring things, it's interesting, isn't it, because my first you're right, but my first reaction is it's the worst possible. The worst impact is where you need to create meaningful relationships. So how on earth can you go about creating meaningful relationships that are beneficial, mutually beneficial, if you are in a bad,

unstable in psychological environment, yeah, I'd agree. I agree. The only, the only people that will form those relationships, I think, are, you know, people joining up to fight against the oppression of the environment. And you could get, like, cabals of strong relationships in subgroups, okay, but overall, I don't think, I don't think you would anyway, so that's kind of an introduction.

Action to psychological safety. We'll do more on it as a phrase. It's fairly popular at the moment, but the model I wanted to share isn't, I think it predates a lot of a common use of psychological safety. It's a model called the scarf model, and I don't think that when it was produced by somebody called David Rock credit, it was reference to psychological safety. But for me, it really fits with that. And what David does in the scarf model is he details five social factors that affect how individuals feel and behave in a social context. So these are all factors that to some extent, define what your experience of being in a group is like. So when we talk about it in this in this

podcast, we're really focusing on work, right? Everything we do is about work. So how do you feel in the group that you're in at work is defined to some extent, by the five factors of a scarf model. So one for s1, for c1, for a, one for r1, for F. I think everyone can spell scarf apart, maybe for me, anyway, so each of those factors affect how you behave. But what's also interesting about the factors is, you know, if you get a large shock to any one of these factors in a place of work, if somebody, somebody challenges one of them, then that can be powerful enough that it actually tips you over into some of these sort of amygdala responses that we've spoken about when we did emotional intelligence, you trigger your threat response. So you can have large events that challenge each of these that knock you into a really bad place and make you unproductive. At the same time, you can be challenged at a lesser level in relation to all of these and over time, that'll wear you down, and that'll lead to things like stress and disengagement and generally make it very uncomfortable for you to be in the place of work that you're in. So I'm sure you're all dying to hear what scarf stands for. Are you dying to hear James? I love good acronyms. Yeah. Okay, cool. So scarf, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. There we go. Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go through each one in a bit more detail, and then what I want to try and do is to look at how trustworthiness affects those factors for you and for the people trusting you. But let's look at the scarf factors first. So Status. Status is all about sort of a relative perceived social importance of yourself as a member of a group, right? Everybody wants to feel a little bit important. Everyone wants to have a place. Everyone wants to feel kind of valued and have a place in the structure within that social group that we're in. And if, if something comes up and really shocks your status, you know, if you think you're in this position, and then maybe somebody who significantly Junior comes up to you and tells you that you need to do something because they're in a position of higher authority than you, that can be a challenge to your status. You might think, oh, no, this is a real challenge. And if that happens, you could have one of these, you

know, sort of threat responses to it. But even over time, if your status gets ground down, that can undermine your happiness at work. The next point is certainty, and certainty relates to our ability to predict the future.

For better we are at predicting the future, the happier and more certain we'll feel. And you know, the happier and more certain will feel, the more confident and comfortable we feel within the, you know, the social group that we're talking about. So you know, certainty is really helpful for creating a sense of well being in your place of work next one's autonomy, which I'm sure you all know, is about your sense of control over what you do and over yourselves, and to some extent, the events around you and the broader environment that you're in. The more autonomy you have, the more positive you feel about the group that you're in. It gives you freedom and takes a bit of a weight off you.

R in the scarf model stands for relatedness. And relatedness like links into intimacy in the in the trust equation and connectedness and ABCD model and and relatedness is really about

our sense of safety with those around us, right? So if we're surrounded by people we think of as friends, you know, people who wish us well, who support our objectives, whose objectives, whose own objectives align with our own, and who we think, you know, have our backs, then we tend to feel safe and positive. But if we feel those around us don't have our backs and aren't on our side, then we tend to feel vulnerable, and potentially it's guard up or guard That's right. Am I sitting with a group of people where I need my guards up? Or can I relax and drop those? Yeah, totally. And then the F from the scarf model is fairness, and fairness relates to the sense of justice and equality

and equitableness in the interactions taking place. Can we make sense of them to the things happening adhere to the rules that we expect is, you know, if it's a meritocracy, do we see promotions based on merit? Do we see rewards based on merit, that kind of stuff? And if we work in an environment that seems fair and people are treated fairly, then we feel.

You know, fairly safe. But if, if we we don't live in that type of environment, if we see, you know, different treatments for different people who do the same things, or if we see bad behavior being addressed in one way, in one instance and not in another, then that undermines our sense of stability in that environment. So literally, like you've lit a touch paper by putting that word in. I mean, I know which one. I know it's not your model. Personally, I have massive

I think that understanding the people you work with perception of fairness and how it relates to your own perception of fairness and how it's different is probably the single biggest thing you can do to build and trust, I would argue. And I think you it's really important that. And I know you guys know this, but it just drives me bonkers. Yeah, and everyone has different understandings. What fair is Yeah, and that's okay. And I think I've used this example before, where my mom always jokes about the fact that we, I've got three brothers, right? And they make an appearance in the podcast every so often in my stories. And when we used to rush down at Christmas, my one of my brothers would count how many presents and check we've all got the same Yeah, one of my brothers would mentally tot up how much been spent. Oh, nice. Professionally, one of one of my brothers would it was about size, okay? And for me, it was about effort. So had my mom really had to think about and listen to what we wanted. So who had the best thoughtful presence, right? Every single one of us would have argued until we were blue in the face that that was what fair meant, and it was to us. So my poor mother is trying to find that's why we all ended up with the same presence, 12 year old girl and a 23 year old, yeah, because it was so difficult to meet the expectations we had being treated equally. And that's, that's normal. But in that instance, you know, and within the scarf model, a lot of stuff comes back to the transparency. So if you're, if you, if you lay out rules for fairness and adhere to those rules, and that's a transparent, fair way to do things as well. I think it helps. I think there is quite weird things around work, especially around pay, around flexibility of work patterns, around who gets to do what work. I think no matter how transparent you are and how clear, yeah, ultimately, if it's like the value stuff, right, the way that you pursue fairness is quite often hardwired, yeah, and therefore, if something undermines it, like you were given, not permission to do something around working from home one day a week, but someone else has, even if there's absolutely great explanation, it's been clearly decided, it's been a process, it will still feel unfair if you perceive the reason is not valuable. Yes, yeah, cool. So, so, so that's the scarf model, right? So, so for scarf models, got these five points, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. And as I said, if you've got a lot of those things, it makes you feel safe and welcome and part of a place that you want to be in terms of social context. If you don't have them, then it can grind you down and make life uncomfortable and unpleasant. And if you get shocks in relation to any one of them, the shocks can be powerful enough that they'll really trigger your sort of threat and amygdala response. So it's a great framework to use to think about your relationship within the group that you're in in a place of work. What I want to do really quickly now is just try and run through those points and see how trustworthiness fits in relation to those So, for example, in relation to status, what's the role of trust in relation to certainty? What's the role of trust in relation to autonomy? What's the role of trust? So I'll just run through that really

quickly. And again, you know, a slideshow on the web, you can look at this stuff, and this is us just kind of exploring a different way to look at this stuff. So if we think of status, you know, being trusted yourself can improve your sense of status, because if you're trusted, people will think of you as a trust worthy individual. They will value you that gives you some sense of position and status, and it can help balance out your sense of status. Similarly, for the people that you're being trustworthy to, it can help their sense of status as well, right? So, by being trustworthy, what you're showing to others is that you sort of respect their position. You will do stuff for them. You'll help them achieve their goals, because you're doing the things that you've said that you would do, and that can help balance out their status. So you being trustworthy can help your own sense of status and help those that you're being trustworthy to sense of status as well. So it helps on that, I guess, domain of a scarf model the next one around certainty. Well, trustworthiness clearly helps me and those I'm being trustworthy too in relation to certainty. So for me, if I'm being trustworthy,

my trustworthiness gives me a decision making compass. It means that I know how I'm going to behave. It gives me certainty over my own behaviors. That helps with my certainty. And likewise for others, if I say.

I'll do something, they'll know I'll do it. So it really helps with that certainty, and it helps them with their ability to predict for future, because they don't need to worry about the stuff that I've said, they know it'll happen. So it reduces that uncertainty for them. So again, being trustworthy helps my certainty and helps for certainty of those around me. From an autonomy perspective, it's a little bit less clear, but I think it's still the case. So if I'm trustworthy, then people will tend to leave me alone. I'll have a bit more space once I've said I'll do something, I'll do it, and people will give me the space to do it, and I won't have to spend extra energy convincing people, and that'll give me a little bit more time and energy to reflect on other things. Likewise, for the others, for people that I'm being trustworthy to, they're not going to need to chase me. They can rely on me doing stuff, and that'll leave them with a little bit more space to do what they want to do. So again, I think it helps the autonomy of both parties

relatedness. So this one's kind of interesting. I think if we start with the others here, I think by being trustworthy to others. I think it reduces some of our threats to relatedness, because essentially, by, you know, being trustworthy to people, you're, to some extent, doing things that support them. If you said you'd would, or even if you're not, at least you're being open and honest about why you're not going to do something, right? So I think that helps with their sense of relatedness. And I think that over time, as you're increasingly trusted by people, it'll improve your own sense of relatedness, because you get a sort of positive cycle of feeling in relation to that set of relationships, which is a bit of a stretch, but I think there's something there. And then in fairness, I think, I think this helps as well, but I really think in relation to fairness, provided that you treat people equally. You know, if you're kind of open in your trustworthiness to a wide range of people, then that creates a sense of fairness. You know, if you if you're equally trustworthy to all of your people that you're partnering or working with, then I think that creates and contributes to a sense of fairness,

which people find beneficial from from the sort of social model that we're looking at here. So if everyone's being treated equal and in terms of a trust that you have, a trustworthiness that you provide, then people will feel a greater sense of fairness. So I guess you know my overall point here on this is that I believe that trust and trustworthiness improve, both

for the person being trustworthy and the person who's receiving trustworthiness, if you will, provide improvements to their status, their certainty, their autonomy, their relatedness and their fairness. And the overall benefit of this is that you have a much better social context. You can work more efficiently and effectively, and there's a lot less wasted effort and energy. So people feel better. Are better? Life's good. How about that? What do you think? I think that

it sounds great. I think it's really hard. Yeah, really hard. We are effectively fabricating relationships with people that we've been forced to be in. You know, I always talk about work like family, not because it needs to be the center of your life or anything like that. You don't get to choose them, but you don't get to choose them. You need. You are stuck with them. You actually the context of this, this period, you are stuck with them,

and you've got to make the best of it. And do you know what? It's a good place to start. Yeah. So yeah. So for me, I think it's good model. I think one of the things I would say is

getting your team or the people you work with, or even just reflecting yourself on what those words mean for those people, is really important. Because actually now I look at it, I was, I was ranting about fairness, but actually that's true for a lot of things like autonomy. We talked a couple of weeks ago about the flip side of giving people autonomy, which is they feel abandoned. Yeah. And I think it's the same thing. What does autonomy mean for your team? What do they want? And actually, I know I sound like a really boring, repetitive soul, but nine times out of 10, all of this stuff is, if you have open communication and talk to people about what it means to them and what's important to them, then it's just a model that helps you have that conversation. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I think you could take the scarf model into your team. You could use it as a little diagnostic. I'm sure that a lot of things like engagement surveys cover similar topics in slightly different ways. I think it's some Oh, I absolutely, I can see, I can already see terminology. I'm thinking, yeah, yeah. You can see where a lot of it comes from. So I think for scarf model, something like oh eight, 2008 not 1908, okay. So I think it's, we do have to clarify sometimes, because there is the odd bit, yeah. Well,

wait till the next episode, and we'll be talking in DC. Here's a little spoiler for you. Well, I've told you my obsession with human capital theory, which effectively argues that we're victorianizing our labor force. Yeah, anyway, well, yeah, don't stop me on that one. We'll never get out of here. Okay, really good model, though. Yeah, interesting, I think. And I love, I really love, the importance of the fat fairness is even I know.

I sound like I'm annoyed about it, but I'm not. I don't think it gets talked about nearly enough. I don't think leaders, I don't think managers. I don't think heads of hrs. Understand how important the perception of fairness is to larger workforces or groups, even in small organizations,

it matters, and you need to understand what they mean by fair to be able to, at the very least explain why they're not getting what they perceive as far as, yeah, cool. Okay, so I think that's kind of research round up. Okay, do you want to run us through a list of a week? Have you got any lists you'd like to share with us? I There's one, as always, one really. We have a very effective set of slides that

I'd love to claim that I had any part of but to be honest, the formatting is so much better than anything I can do, which is part of the reason. But also, we

like to make sure that you can share them afterwards, because sometimes when we run through lists, particularly this 110's it's really good for you to go back and have a look. So in light of what I said at the beginning, we really want to give you some ideas about things that you can actually do now. How can you take action that is going to improve or build trust in your workplace? And you can do that even if you've got great relationships. This is always about reinforcing. Can always be better, always be more reinforced or more resilient. So I'm gonna run these down.

I'm gonna run these down. I'm gonna run from 10 to one. Oh yeah, we're gonna do a controversial countdown at 10, asking for listening to and hearing feedback. Cool. Now, if you wanted to be good at that, James, what would you suggest that people do? Well, I'd suggest, would I actually check out our episode on feedback, on feedback we recorded recently. So I would have a list of that, and you can listen to me ranting about how important it is to give good feedback at nine living in line with your espoused values. Now that's absolutely in line with some of the stuff we talked about, about expectations and about dependability certainty. It sounds quite It sounds quite vague. Yeah, right. If your values are about

loyalty, right, that means you need to write down what that means for you, and then you need to do it. And so quite often it's things. If it's organizational loyalty, it might be you don't speak ill of your organization outside of it, yeah, another way that I always talked about family was organization can fight on the inside, but we're all united on the outside,

so living in with line with your spouse values number eight, delivering to the right level of quality,

which is so hard, because what's the right level of quality is? It is? It's the right quality and and it's difficult, I would say, to the expected quality, yeah, or the agreed quality, because, because one of the biggest challenges I have at the moment is coaching people who are delivering to a much higher level than they need to be for certain products that just need to be good enough. Number seven, admitting when you are outside of your domain, if it's not your bag, admit it's not your bag. If it's not something you feel comfortable in, admit it. You can still have an opinion, but just admit it. There is nothing more powerful around building trust and saying, You know what? I've given it a go, but I'm actually not sure I'm the best person for this. Yeah. Number six, say what you actually think.

Yeah. It actually says, with some editing on the slides, yeah, it literally says it. And that's because sometimes I talk before thinking, say what you think

is important, but don't say things for the sake of it, and don't say things that are hurtful for no reason, if it's not going to help the situation number five, turning up on time, not canceling meetings,

particularly not canceling meetings. I hate it. It drives me bonkers, and it happens, particularly when people who are higher up the food chain do that, as if their time is more valuable. Yeah. I mean, I know it is the organization, because they get paid more, but they get paid more, but that's another story. Yeah. It's about respect for me, that one. And it's about, it's about trusting that someone values you. Yeah. It's about connectedness, relatedness, intimacy, whatever you want to say, about sense of status, yeah, you know, somebody doesn't turn up. It threatened, to some extent, your status, well, they're basically saying you're not important. Dreadful. And no wonder they won't trust you. Number four, doing things when you said you would, my biggest failing,

you know, it's hard though. I, you know, the ABCD model is a really good example. I A, B and C. I am really confident that I understand the importance of and I'm good at, but I neglect D constantly because I overestimate what's doable. Number three, admitting when you make a mistake, if you make a mistake, a lot of us never make when you make a mistake, one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader is be open and candid about the many, many, many mistakes you've made. Even more powerful, be open and candid about the mistake everyone knows you made. So if you hire, not naming any names ahead of operations, right? Who lasts six months and then goes on disappears and goes on leave, and then ends up leaving the organization and leaves behind a trail of certain chaos? Right?

Okay, you don't have to go out and say those words, but alluding to the fact that not all of your decisions are great, and you're going to look at how that you can work with others to do that would be a good thing, yeah, because the whole organization knows you did it. So, you know, helps a lot when you admit it. Number two, sharing things about yourself, and we talked about that, right? It doesn't have to be where your boundaries lie and crossing boundaries. It's about being sharing and open something that you want to and number one of the I feel like drum roll, the trust, building actions, listening to people and caring what they say. So if you do one thing that you go away from today, when people are talking to you, look them in the eye, resist the urge to grab your phone, process what they're saying, and think about why it's important to them, and what you can do about Yeah, yeah. So that's our 10 trust building actions that you can take. Yeah, pretty straightforward, hopefully. I mean, they're not all easy to do all the time, but they're things to help you on your way. Yeah. And I think I look the thing is, right? You guys know all this stuff, yeah, exactly. But in the busy chaos of work, it is really easy to forget these basic, important things totally. You're tired, you know, it's hard, well. And also, you know these guys really well, some of these people that in your team should have worked with for years, yeah? And you, you will make the assumption the trust is there, yeah. But sometimes, if you don't check in on it. Things have gone a bit pear shaped. So, cool. So, um,

so that's our list of a week 10 things. But you guys can do to get bigger, I think, yeah, not bigger, yeah. Next year, next next time, it'll be a list of 100 things. Two things, yeah.

All right, so stories from a keyboard. I'm gonna kick us off with this one, and it's, I guess we're going back to the point of self interest. It's just a little reflection. I used to work with somebody, somebody I knew many years ago now, and that person,

that person was excluded from certain meetings. They were excluded from certain events. There was a situation where, you know, if that person was going to certain meetings, other people would choose not to turn up, or they'd send delegates. And they did that because they didn't have a trust relationship with this person. And it was because there was a real sense that that person was very, very high on self interest. And what that meant is that their level of self interest sort of permeated all their conversations and led to the stage where people didn't want to be around them and didn't want to work with them. And I don't think that person ever really worked it out, you know? I don't think that person ever realized that exactly because of it was very self interest. So I guess that's just a little call out I wanted to say about how important self interest is in trust building. And if you are really self interested, then it's going to be really hard for you to get meaningful, lasting work relationships with people who are going to include you in the decisions that you so want to be part of. So that's it. It's a bit of a somber one now, bit of a warning, maybe as a story there. What about you? Anything? Mostly, I'm reflecting on your corporate life and how glad the choices I've made in my life meant I haven't had to deal with stuff like that. Yeah.

So my story is one where I stuffed up, and it's about how different people I mentioned it earlier, how different people approach trust. So some people in this world perceive that trust is there to be lost and some to be gained. So, and what I mean by that is, when you meet a stranger, some people assume the best of that person and wait for that person to break their trust before they lose it. And some people will say, Well, I don't know you. Why should I trust you? Prove to me you should be trusted. Sure.

I was new to an organization. I was working on support this project with someone. She'd been trying to plug it away for it for ages. Didn't really have any resources. I was super excited to be working with her. I used my big mouth to go. And, you know, I was in another meeting, and I managed to convince our head of department to put some extra resources into it. Nice, um, got, got an extra, extra five digit number, good, um, towards the budget. Came back enthusiastic. So, like, honestly, like, a little school going, Look, you got me, look what I've done. Yeah, and she's furious. Yeah, she was furious because she fundamentally thought that I had taken, not taken credit, because I'd only been in there three months, so it couldn't, I couldn't possibly take credit, but that I had hijacked her project and

undermined, yeah, her relationship with the project, and also kind of that I'd been going out to prove that it was really easy to do, yeah, none of that was true, but I had, I hadn't explained myself, because I had night really naively and really thoughtlessly, assumed she trusted me, because why wouldn't she ask you? And of course, she was not like that. She was absolutely of one person, you know, I don't, I don't dislike you. Let's work together, but you at some point, hopefully we will trust each other. Yeah, just we didn't have any of that conversation. And as sir.

I completely damaged our relationship for a long time. Yeah? And it was really sad, because I was so excited about working, yeah,

so don't do that. People, yeah, yeah, get the resources. But just tell people you're gonna do that, yeah? Come along. So my golden rule is, in work, surprises are not a good thing, yeah, totally certainty piece, right? Don't throw parties, with the exception of my ex boss who threw me a birthday party in the middle of an event. But aside from that, don't throw parties. Don't throw surprises. Don't go behind people's back because they what they you might be doing them a favor. They will perceive it could pursue, yeah, it could go wrong. So that's mine. So that's a tip. Have you got any final thoughts or top tips

you want to share? So oh, so my only thing is to those of you who trust is less important, yeah, in your own personal needs, because you're happy, and it's work within a small part and all of those things, please try and understand how important it is to other people, or can be Yeah, and therefore how powerful it is so to get the best out of people, to get the best out enjoy the relationships that you have with your working people the best, it is worth investing time in it, even if you don't perceive that it's particularly important to you because you relatively trust them, or there's no major issues investing time in building trust in your team. Because, you know what, sooner or later, there'll be a bump in the road, and that's when it gets found. Yeah, you'll need, you'll need those people at some point you need your seat belt. I like it, like what you did there, right? Not sure what it is, but well done. No, neither mine, but it's just visual image of God, yeah, so that's mine, all right. Well, I guess my final thought is that, you know,

not being trustworthy is a total pain in the ass for everyone. I think I can say that word on a clean podcast, a pain in the bottom anyway.

You know, when if you're being untrustworthy, if you're doing anything like playing games, you know, playing people up against each other, playing, you know, manipulating in political ways and things like that, that stuff's tiring. You know, it's tiring for you because it takes energy to remember all the things that are going on in your your constructed efforts to shape things. And it's tiring for other people because they don't know what you're really doing and what's going on. And you just waste a lot of mental energy.

And sometimes you know actual effort when you're when you're playing games like that. So I just say, don't, don't do it. And it's not always easy, but just, you know, and always with my moralistic stance at the end, just don't do it because it's not nice. Basically, just be more than we all think we all, I'm trying to think of, we all think we're on The Apprentice some days, right? But you're not. You're not. These are real people, and they deserve better? Yeah, cool. And even if they don't, you deserve better than being that. Yeah, exactly. Wow, sorry, yeah, there we go. We seem to have a lot of fun. Okay, anyway, so that is us. I think we're gonna wrap up end this episode on trust, like I said. We'll do more on psychological safety at some point, but hopefully you had a bit of an insight into it in this episode,

you can get in touch with us. You can check out our website. You can also sign up for our mail. Oh, yeah, wow mail. And you can tweet us. We like being tweeted. Yeah, tweet us at the WoW podcast, at the WoW podcast. Get involved. You got any questions, comments, any topics you want us to focus on? Check them in we'll see what we can do, and it's has ever been a pleasure. So until next time, I think it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from me. Bye. Everyone. Have a great week.