Trust is Underrated and Overused

Robert Greiner 0:05

I don't know if we've talked about this, but I always thought podcasting was more of a presentation. And maybe it is for some and that's fine. But I'm it's more of a like conversation where we, for me where, like, I'm furthering my thinking on these topics. I don't actually don't know, when we start talking where it's gonna go.

Tiffany Lentz 0:23

I don't always either. If I can't I like to do a little bit of homework, because then I'll think after we hang up, I'll think about that book I read a year ago me like, Oh, right, I should have referenced that. So but I don't. I don't like the script. I like the unscripted nature of Yeah, I do, too.

Robert Greiner 0:39

Yeah.

Tiffany Lentz 0:40

Thank you for the deck, by the way.

Robert Greiner 0:42

Sure.

Tiffany Lentz 0:43

So what are we talking about today?

Robert Greiner 0:45

Well, we

have a couple threads we want to pull on last time we spoke so we finished minimally viable crisis leadership model. And then we talked about returning to work and maximizing flexibility and those kind of things. And again, I mean, we just talked about the need for communication. When no one knows what to do. Increase in communication is, is so important. And it's funny, because you should probably feel like you're on the table jumping up and down yelling before, it's just barely enough. It's like, even if you feel like you're doing it a lot, you don't eat, you're probably not. Yeah. And then so we have two, two areas we could go into. One is the trust. The idea of trust is underrated and overused, which is kind of an interesting term that you use last time we recorded or creating experiences around trust. Yeah. So those are on our backlog. If you want to start with one of those.

Tiffany Lentz 1:39

Let's see creating experiences. Okay. And I failed to send you the two articles specifically that I was thinking of, well, we could run it live in terms of trust becoming like, the latest buzzword? Oh, yeah. That's what I mean by by it being overused. I've noticed. I don't know which one, which one is most interesting to you today?

Robert Greiner 2:04

maybe maybe underrated and overused, I think is under So you said it that way. And it seems like on the surface. You're underrated and overused. That's kind of a funny sentence. Right? It does seem like we undervalue, don't think about building trust effectively, and what positive like ripple effects that creates and then, but everybody sort of wants to use it at the surface level, like as a buzz word. And I think by maybe invoking the word trust, that somehow it gives you that thing, right, but it's not the case. And in fact, it hurts hurts you most of the time. Like, without appropriate follow through actions, or usually follow up by trying to cover up something or doing something that diminishes trust. And so yeah, maybe let's dig into that a little bit. I'm curious to hear what you thought,

Tiffany Lentz 2:59

I'm noticing a couple things. And this is this is in the both of the articles I meant to send you. And I will do, I've started to see in my personal inbox and in LinkedIn, and then just like these kind of random threads I follow, I'm just I'm starting to see larger companies using a couple of different and not related expressions. But it's like everybody's doing it. And one of them is around trust. Hri. One, a large consulting firm recently kind of re packaged all of their offerings, especially as it relates to financial services into this is our trust department. I'll just leave that with you. You can look at the expression on my face. That your trust department,

Robert Greiner 3:48

we're quarantining trust off into this amazing, they'll sorted out.

Tiffany Lentz 3:52

And does that mean that the rest of the organization has no trust that I shouldn't trust the products you have over there? I mean, it's like this odd sort of somebody thought it was really clever. I think it it waters down something that is real and meaningful. But I also think people are smarter than to be like, Oh my gosh, now I can trust you. That's so great. Sorry, I'm getting a little bit of my sarcasm. today.

Robert Greiner 4:15

It's a good day for sarcasm. I'm just back from vacation. So

Tiffany Lentz 4:17

I know I know that you're like punch drunk right now. That's right. I am starting to see a lot of the use of we're gonna have this trust seminar. Trust some, it's like this is the buzzword, but it doesn't make it real and actionable lasting. Because it's a human behavior. I think the old quote is still true trust comes in on foot and out on horseback. You can use it, it doesn't mean that I trust you because if you look at like Rene Browns research, her research that we've talked about before is all about, base it based on small consistent experiences and interactions and it takes time. And so yeah, we have a question. conflict with crisis for sure. But just just using it as a brand and being the first person to the market to use the word trust in a brand doesn't make you doesn't change hasn't changed your behavior for me. The other one I keep seeing is this, this use of like we're going to now add impact we're going to be it's it's like people relabeling Corporate Social Responsibility into ESG, or er, G's or something that's related to environment and making a difference in the world, all because of COVID. But it does, at the, at the, at the coalface, if you will, it doesn't really change the way they're fermax. They're just, oh, broken relabeling. So

Robert Greiner 5:42

yeah, I see what you're saying. So there are a few if you take current events over the last year, there are companies that have leaders that are personally moved towards a cause and one to align some of their organization's actions towards empowering women helping minorities, the environment, human health services, right, like COVID, like how we're going to navigate those tricky waters, I was just in Galveston, they were hit pretty hard with COVID, the local restaurants, which there's a lot of them that rely on fish and shrimp from the Gulf, they all banded together, and they were feeding each other for free. And there's all sorts of altruistic intent from organizations large and small, that try to interact with the world. And you can, you can bicker about whether or not that's useful or effective or a company's place. But there's also this other group, which I think you're talking about, which is trying to capitalize on these current events to make money. So we're going to market towards the underprivileged. Or we're going to acknowledge the underprivileged, the disenfranchised in this space so that someone else goes and buys my sneakers, or whatever. And so you're saying that trust has now been sort of CO opted by this group of marketing hunters that are just looking to find the next word to go and hook people into selling their products and services?

Tiffany Lentz 7:10

Right? That's exactly right. And I wonder why. Surely I'm not the only person who reads that and goes, Okay, yeah, I have. So it doesn't change anything about the way that I think of you. Because you're trying to monetize on you're trying to monetize something like this. But I'm not I'm noticing it as a as a trend. And maybe the first time I noticed, because words matter. The first time I noticed this was a number of years ago, it might have been McKinsey, when they started coming out with the expression, become a trusted adviser, become a trusted adviser. You can say that as many times as you want. But if your actions don't show that you're trying to build trust in a way that is transparent and accountable, and partnering in a way that is for the other person, even at your own expense, or for the other firm, at your own expense, to show good faith, you haven't become my trusted advisor, you have to earn that you don't just claim it. And I feel like there's another wave of that coming right now.

Robert Greiner 8:17

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Now the interesting thing about trust and we're honing in on this, because that's sort of the the sub current of our podcast here. So if you look back at the trusted advisor, book, so there is the the trust equation, who had the trusted advisor, I can't remember. But I look at that real quick. maser? maser? Robert Galliford. All right. No. David Maser, Charles green Robert Alford. Yeah, Mr. David Maister. Yeah, they sort of define trust. And this this sticks with me constantly. Because if you say something like trust, like, what does that mean? Right. And they define it by credibility, plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self orientation. Which is interesting, because if you double your credibility, and you double yourself orientation, your trust diminishes by a factor of two. And so they'll say, credibility is it has to do with the words that we speak, right? I can trust what Tiffany says. Reliability has to do with actions. So Tiffany follows through intimacy is around how people feel around us. Right? You haven't violated someone's confidentiality before I get a good feeling whatever, you're not going to embarrass me. So there's like just that like an interpersonal feeling, what you can have towards people or organizations right or things and then self orientations obviously, what the focus is. And so when you try to cover up the word like trust and that you are increasing your self orientation in an equation that diminished that like rapidly diminishes trust, right, so you may be able to do it with with poverty with the health issue. Something else and your, your intentions even if they're not pure you, maybe you can get away with it. But when you're sort of like co opting or overusing this trust term as a company or even as a leader in an organization with your people, your the, like the equations working against you. Does that make sense?

Tiffany Lentz: 10:19

It does. It does. And I hadn't even thought to break it down that way. It was, for me, it was a gut reaction. Like I don't, I don't believe you. In fact, I believe you, I feel that you're less sincere because you're trying to co-opt a concept. That does mean something, if I can be so jaded. Sure.

Robert Greiner: 10:39

I'm still on vacation. Hi. So I'm good. But yeah, and also, in situations like this, too, it's very much more about how other people feel, right? So if you care about somebody, and that's how you feel, but you're not demonstrating it, and they don't feel like you care about them. That's what matters. It's what the listener does. It's what the recipient how they feel. And so if you're an organization, and you're trying to align with some of the other things we talked about, you might get followers, you might get people buying in because I don't trust them, but at least they're like, we're kind of on the same side on this issue. So fine. But in this case, where it's like you're trying, you're wading into, instead of like an opinion about the world, it's like, you're it's a character thing. It's like this is this is how I'm built like, you can trust me, Look, we have this trust department. And that's, it doesn't seem like this works the same way.

Tiffany Lentz: 11:30

Right? Yeah, I'm still parsing out, I really like what you've said, kind of breaking the equation down in the pieces that they work against this whole concept, just so kind of tearing that apart in my mind, because there's only one piece of that, I guess that is a bit whole equation that's about that is about words, everything else is about action that would have to be over time emotional connection, caring and being personally invested. And I don't, I don't know how that scales, how, if the lowest common, it would have to be the lowest common denominator, the individual representing the brand constantly in order for the brand, to relate to, to trust worthiness. This is very interesting. This is just a very interesting idea. Like I never, never even occurred to me that that large companies would would collect like this particular concept and and the timing is very interesting, because there's last year we saw this constant just erosion of trust of gut trust in government officials trust in stabilized processes, whether it's the election or police or like insert your insert your your preference there, we saw this erosion of the citizen from the infrastructure, the citizen from the from authority, using that, broadly, sources of truth being kind of dismantled, with the insertion of the whole concept of something being something being fake news, or one, I believe, coming out about, yeah,

Robert Greiner: 13:14

Algorithims intentionally putting stuff in front of you. That's sensational. Yeah. And, and it's interesting, too, because like trust, it's almost organic. Anyway, like it erodes over time. It has a half life. And so we're all like you and I have never met in person we've known each other for over a year now. I could, there could be a situation where it's certainly not as effective to build one on one relationships over the phone, even with the great benefits of video. So if you have this idea that trust everywhere is just decaying over time. We're less effective as a society as an organization as a team, whatever, and building it and cultivating it and in growing it, so it's just like it you have this linear decay over here and then doing dumb stuff out in public. That massively erodes trust and like No wonder, right? No wonder why someone looked up and said, here's an opportunity. We want to rebrand as trustworthy because nobody like trust is I think, maybe we could say globally at an all time low. I don't have any data to back that up, but it certainly feels that way.

Tiffany Lentz: 14:17

Or I don't know who to trust at this point. Yeah. Everywhere I look someone has there someone has a hidden agenda or their own best interests at heart as opposed to mine so I don't know who to trust.

Robert Greiner: 14:30

Yeah, hi interview. So Jocko Willick, who I've talked to you about before, what ex Navy SEALs commander wrote a couple books. He also owns a like clothing company. He builds like, like a jujitsu gear and jeans and stuff. And he was saying on an interview, like he retooled his whole company to build masks when the call came out from the government's like, hey, if you can build masks build and we need more, and so they design some and build some and they were six Munson and he was on an interview. He's like, Yeah, I don't even like I don't even know if this works. like no one's told me, I haven't found anybody that I trust that says this works or doesn't work. We just got the call and we responded to it. And it's like, man, if you can't, that seems like such a black and white thing to be able to assert and backup with information. And we're split like 50/50 on it. And so if you can't take something as discriminant as discrete and bounded as, like, the physics and biology of whether or not masks work, and when, and what kind, like, this should be very obvious by now. And people still don't trust it. It's like, yeah, they're not going to trust anything more complex, like you're going to be split there as

Tiffany Lentz: 15:44

well. There seems to be another, there seems to be another principle at play, it's probably found somewhere in the the trust equation, just not sure where, and I there's like, a desire, like to, if someone doesn't want to believe that masks help in your example, like they simply won't, they will simply continue to say, the vaccine is poison and masks don't help it like facts aren't going to erode their emotional commitment to their opinion. Yeah, you can't fight

Robert Greiner: 16:22

like emotions with facts. Like that doesn't work. Yeah, right.

Tiffany Lentz: 16:26

Right. So there is there is something to if one needs to establish trust, I'm just thinking out loud here. If someone needs to establish trust in the in a highly emotive environment, the way to go about it is not solely with data, it might not even be with data at all. It might actually be trying to get to the root of the emotional commitment. Yeah, the pert, the personal, the human driver.

Robert Greiner: 16:58

Yeah, we've talked about this, too, it matters. And I've heard this and in professional, it doesn't matter how good of a job you do, it matters how good you look, while you're doing it. Like there's a, we talked about wanting to give people in our organization more input into their futures, and sometimes you just can't, or you can't yet it'll take a year to get there. And so in the near term, it's like, well, how do we make them feel good about an informed and well communicated with about these things? So I think a lot of it has to do with, I think showing up, right? Like there's a, if you look at the individual, if you bail me out of jail at 2am, I'll trust you much more than if I call you up. And you say, hey, I'd love to, but I can busy right? So I think there's action for sure. And and also, it really matters what the the group around you how they feel, and yeah, data, information, figures, words, those aren't always aligned.

Tiffany Lentz: 18:00

What's the what's the other quote, people won't, people won't always remember what you say or what you do, but they'll remember how you made them feel that's right there, there is something there's something to that here that is there there they will they will choose to reject your facts and figures by simply by saying well, but your your facts might be wrong, I can come up with alternate facts, I can come up with a different algorithm. That's fake news, whatever, to, to reject, but they won't reject their feeling their emotional response. So when I think back to I haven't listened to it in a while, but when I think back to Rene browns, research on building, building trust and building relationships, her every one of her examples and she had a she had a nice little rubric for it but every one of her examples was around being present. being there when needed being consistent, taking thankless jobs, it was a way of relating to someone and one of the examples she she cited that always stuck with me was or continues to stick with me is the example of someone like showing up meeting someone at they were both like soccer moms. And one woman might showed up at the other woman's mother's funeral just like showed up. They don't didn't know them that well didn't know the person who passed but being present in a time of need. And then there was another example similar situation but at a school event for for their children. One particular woman met the other the grandparents. And then a year later she still remembered the names of those people and asked about them. How are John and Susan that was that was the small things that was the you remembered someone's name or that you asked about them. It was the always the little things that was never these momentous occasions are the big, really big things that was just consistently being present, remembering being thoughtful that would build trust.

Robert Greiner: 20:08

Yeah, yeah. So you have these very human interactions that have to do with words, actions, how people feel around you. And then I think the self orientation side, though, where getting that as close to zero as possible, I think is really where you're going to get the most get the most lift for your organization.

Tiffany Lentz: 20:29

Right, right. And since in an organization, an organization cannot manifest these different pieces that will reach an individual, then this these behaviors have to be individual to individual in the organization that has it. It has to be lowest common denominator. So all in all, I don't believe people when they throw around the word, trust. Yeah, I'm not sure the rest of the industry does either, I guess, well, I guess we'll see what happens. Well,

Robert Greiner: 21:00

it's certainly being experimented with right now. So we'll see a play out in real time.

Tiffany Lentz: 21:04

Yeah. Yeah. It's also something that I'm still hung up on your quote that you said a few minutes ago, trust, trust has a half life. Like there is this this is not something that is ever stagnant. It's something you're constantly working on constantly investing in. Just like, being a person of integrity, a business person of integrity isn't something you like, do and then stop doing. It's like, it's part of the essence of who you are. So it has to continue to live, or it erodes almost by itself.

Robert Greiner: 21:38

Yeah, I don't think we were I don't think we view at least maybe intellectually, we do. But we certainly don't, you know, feel it, that that relationships, that trust is decay. But they Yeah, they have a shelf life. They have a half life. Yeah, I certainly don't. That's not how I view my relationships with other people.

Tiffany Lentz: 21:55

Yeah, I think I think that's something worth reflecting on. I mean, it's one thing to say, oh, I've invested in, been friends with someone for 15 years. And so we haven't spoken in a while not worried about that relationship. Really, I may not be up on your current events, but there's that relationship is still solid, versus not, you can't, not every relationship is going to fall obviously fall into that category of we've spent 15 years doing life together, or something. So there has there almost has to be this continual, this continual like stirring, ruminating to keep that going, which makes me immediately as someone who like is a time budgeter, either makes me feel stressed, or makes me think I have to be very careful about like, I have to choose wisely. Those relationships that I really cultivate, both as a professional and personally because my time is a fixed a fixed entity. So I have to think carefully about where I invest in.

Robert Greiner: 22:58

Yeah. And that's true at the individual level. And at the leadership level, no matter how big your organization is, like that's those rules still apply. It's just hard to scale. This is a hard thing to scale.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:09

All of this is hard to scale. So I still think it's the right thing to do just a lifelong journey.

Robert Greiner: 23:16

We'll keep trying to figure it out.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:18

Yep. Yep. Pretty. It's thought provoking stuff. This is this is deeper than it than it looks on the surface.

Robert Greiner: 23:26

Yeah, then yeah. Especially second into it.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:28

Me just poking at somebody's branding. Which is still true.

Robert Greiner: 23:33

Yes, definitely. All right. Well, I think we're running up on time. It's great talking to you.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:38

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Robert Greiner: 23:39

Yeah, we'll talk soon. Bye.