Show Notes

Emily is a Director of Product Management and Design at Wayfair. She has a passion for organizational behavior--frequently writing and speaking about the role trust and psychological safety play in organizational creativity, risk-tolerance, and resilience. Prior to joining Wayfair, Emily had a career in professional theatre production.

SHARED WISDOM:

WISDOM #1 When building trust the "little stuff" makes a profound difference.

WISDOM #2 To repair trust, the least that has to happen is we have to acknowledge what wasn’t right and the difference it made for others. If the trust is broken, we need to invest in rebuilding it.

WISDOM #3 Having honest humility on what we can't deliver opens up a whole realm of what we can do. This will help in building trust in a relationship.

CONNECT WITH EMILY: LinkedIn | Twitter

Transcription

Intro 00:03

In the theater, there's a very high expectation particularly about on time you have a call, it's a half hour if you're one minute late you're understudies getting called, but it's a very high price to pay in that culture. Five minutes early is on time.

Charles 00:16

Welcome. This is the old wisdom, New Era podcasts. My name is Charles Vogel, and today we're going to talk about trust, something that all of us want to build more of, and it's often confusing how we get to trust from where we are. I have back with us, Emily levada, my longtime friend, to share about some part one lessons that we have about trust. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time. In this podcast, we share a life changing lessons that form us and give us all meaning if you're both desperate in happy times. In this context, wisdom refers to the enduring lessons that aren't only helpful to us personally in our own time, but also true for others. In many times, we often know something is wisdom, as opposed to a hack, because it must be interpreted and applied newly in a new era. My name is Charles Vogl, among many things. I study religion, ethics and connection, I advise a handful of organizations. And I'm now the author of three books, including The Art of community. And today, we have back Emily, welcome back, Emily.

Emily

Yeah, thank you, it's great to be back.

Charles

For those who don't know you. You're a director of product management and design at Wayfair. And you've been there since company employed less than 100 people. And now the company employs over 17,000 people. So you've been on quite a ride of expansion, you have a passion for organizational behavior. And you frequently write and speak about trust and psychological safety, organizational culture. And you do that to improve creativity, risk tolerance and resilience in organizations. And of course, before joining Wayfair, you had a whole career in professional theatre production, you and I met in graduate school about 10 years ago. So I'm delighted you're joining me on this.

Charles

So Emily, last we spoke, we touched on the subject of trust and how important trust is when we're working with groups or just trying to build a life that works together. And I know that as I'm talking to organizations that want to connect people important to them, at some level, often what's missing is trust. And there's about a gazillion things that can go wrong, that destroys trust of those trust really hard to get people to feel safe around one another.

And I'm always amazed, or I'm often amazed, just how lost some leadership is on how to even approach that. And so we can just share here some long held wisdom that we've had to learn over the years. And the idea that came to my mind that I wanted to share was the little things profoundly matter. And I know when I was a young film producer in New York City, and I didn't ever have enough resources to do the stuff I wanted to do, which meant I needed to ask people who are often more experienced than I was and seemed more talented than I was to do things that I didn't have enough money to pay them that other people pay them, but they would do it because they like the work or they like me, or they like both and we share values.

We didn't have a strict relationship of transaction where I was paying them what they were worth, and they would do it, they do. And so it was really difficult for me to call people to accountability, if they didn't do something on time, or they didn't do it well, they didn't do it at all, because like, Well, gee, I'm not paying them. We don't have this transactional relationship. So I didn't have that word yet. How do I do that. And on the other side, I wanted them to work with me, even though maybe they had more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. But they did so because they wanted to work on my project, maybe with me, which is to say that would only work in a context of trust, they had to trust that I was really creating the project that I said I was and it was worth their time. And I had to trust that even though I couldn't withhold payment, or very much payment that they would deliver. And one of the things that I had to be taught and became profoundly important is that in building our relationship over the long haul, in the landscape of our experience, the little stuff profoundly matters. Did I make a phone call when I said I would make it? Did I show up on time when someone scheduled their time to meet with me? Did I send over documents in time and adequately made for someone to repair whatever they're going to do? So in filmmaking, that could be budgets, or that could be research or that could be notes. So that can be time codes? Did I do that? And I've noticed that when I left that work, where we all had to develop strong relationships, get the work done, develop strong trust how much I noticed other teams didn't take the little stuff seriously. If I asked, accomplished professional to meet me at seven o'clock, were we ready to go at seven? And was everybody in the room present? And did they do the work in preparation. So that meeting could be effective, because obviously somebody is giving me their time at below rate because they want to work with me, and then I waste their time, the trust evaporates. And I was a producer and so everybody was working for me. And some people think that if you're at the top, then that means you don't have to deliver the little stuff that you can be late or you can return phone calls never or late or you don't have to prepare the documents in time.

And what I found was that profoundly erodes the trust of the team that's trying to back up the leader, this case me to do something big. Maybe if we're doing something small, we have plenty of resources and plenty of time. And the stakes are that high, maybe that works. But we don't have enough resources. And we barely have enough time. It all counts. And so I'm astounded now that I'm on this end of my career now, closer to 50, than 40. How I see people just ignore the little stuff. And you know, now I'm in a place where people want to work with me, because the projects I'm on, and I have more experience, 20 years more experience. And I'm amazed who just won't return phone calls it timely that they said they would, or they won't get the documents when they said they would. And they seem confused that that affects our relationship that somehow I trust them less. And one of the things that I have to bring up when I'm working with young people who asked me to help them mature in their lives, is, as a general rule, we don't ask people to take on bigger projects with higher stakes, if we've noticed that can't handle the little projects with little sticks. And you know, the conversation might be on the other side, well, gee, that was just a little thing. I didn't show up on time, or I didn't prepare, or I didn't give you enough information when you needed it. It's a little thing. There's low stakes, but really, I'm really dependent on big stuff. Maybe that's true, right? Like maybe you do deliver when the stakes are higher, and maybe you will when you understand support, but I'm not going to give you the chance. Because if if you can't even hit a little stuff, there's no way I'm going to turn to you and I need the bigger stuff. And I'm going to give one other example where this shows up in my life. And I really want to share this to others who want to mature faster than I did in the long haul it took me to get here. My wife and I, when it's not COVID are hosting a lot of social events very often in our home. And because of the nature of what we do and who our friends are. And what we like to do that often includes professional chefs or people who are as good or better than professional chefs spending five to six hours, often more making a meal for home. And just because the nature of our home, we limit how many people can come to about 12, which is to say every seat is precious, if you're sitting down for a meal at someone's made, been cooking for six hours and professional level. And if someone says they're going to come and maybe come with their partner, and we mark off those seats, and I don't invite anybody else for those seats, and then someone doesn't show up at all, or they show up late. That's a big deal. Because if you don't show up at all, that means that somebody has a gift spent no less than six hours pairing and experience for you. And you demonstrated it wasn't good enough to show up to respect their commitment. Now emergencies happen and emergencies happen. That's different, right? If you get in a car crash, or you have a family member get sick, fair enough. But I notice we're in a culture where people know us, they're excited to get to know us better. And then we'll invite them participate in something and then they blow it off.

They just don't understand that it's important to us that you show up when you accept an invitation. And then we have this experience or some people we invite them for dinner and we'll explain that someone's cooking and, and that someone might be me or several people with me. And I'll show up 45 minutes late or an hour late. Well as a cook. I want people to eat meal when it's hot, and it's fresh. And after I've planned for six hours to make it hot and fresh in a certain time. I don't want to serve it to somebody and say, gee, this was really great 45 minutes ago, right. And if you put me in that position, and as there's no emergency, then that's not fun for me. And what it communicates to me is I don't trust you to honor what we're doing here and the hours that several people put in to make this a special experience. And I don't often want to have a conversation about someone's tardiness and how that impacts sacred space recruiting around the dinner table. And so they just think they're having a good time. And it's okay that they're showing up 45 minutes or an hour late to something so unprepared for six hours. But what really happens is we don't invite them back. Because I know exactly how many guests I want on my guest list that I can't depend on them to honor the chef who's spending all day making a meal, which is to say I'd realized that a level above zero, they have a missing of a feedback loop to tell them how it's impacting their life that this little thing showing up 45 minutes late to an event you're excited about. And having no good reason for that, changes their future. Because if they want to come back or they want to know us better they want to other people who are joining us at our home better that opportunity is largely going to evaporate because there's going to be somebody else within 30 miles where I live who actually will show up after chef spend six hours making a meal and will appreciate that event. Mm hmm. And that certainly cumulatively is a life changing relationship to people, invitations and events, right that might even go unnoticed.

You don't even know what products you're invited to. You don't even know what responsibilities are invited to take charge of you don't even know it rooms you're getting invited back to are not getting invited back to you because you're not handling a little stuff. So when we think about how do you want to build trust with the people who are important to us or we want to be important to us the little stuff makes a profound difference in a life changing difference. Of course what really happens is when we get the little stuff handled, we make the calls back we do the preparation we send the documents we show up on time. What really happens is just becomes the landscape of our lives. People expected of us we expected of ourselves and our whole life changes because we relate to a world that trust us, so that's what I wanted to share. Thanks for listening.

Emily 10:04

Thanks for sharing. As you were talking, I was reminded, I recently did a workshop on trust with some folks. And I'd asked them a pre work question of What if trust mean to you, and then I'd made a word cloud. And I was actually surprised the most dominant word was the word knowing that so many of the responses had been written in a form that was like, knowing that someone will do what they said they were gonna do, knowing that they will show up on time knowing that they will keep a secret, right. And people maybe were meaning those other things as being the things that drive trust, but it was actually the dependability, that confidence, that ability to know that a thing is gonna be.. meet your expectation that was actually kind of at the center of all of their feelings about trust. And I was thinking about that, as you were talking about this,

Charles 10:50

what that reflection is, like, their perception of how trust plays in the relationship may be different from how it actually plays out, right? Because if I know that you're going to show up on time to record a podcast with me, the actual minutes of the day that you show up on time, are very, very few, maybe one, right Oh, there she is. But the relationship between us of knowing that your person that we say we're gonna schedule this time, and we're gonna be prepared to do this is present all the time. And so if you're building trust with me, that very minute are those three minutes before we're supposed to meet, change our entire relationship. But if you're not mature enough to notice that you don't honor that the critical importance of those three minutes, I'm working with a team on a project right now. And there was some traffic and some surprises on my schedule, and I texted the team and said, I'm going to be running a scant few minutes late. And I put scamp Meaning I'm not 20 minutes, it's just not at the exact time, I think we're meeting at noon, I was gonna be late. And after I got home, and I booted my computer and got on our COVID Zoom call, one of the three of them joked, oh, Charles, four minutes late. And he was joking, because I had texted to communicate, I was gonna be late, and it was only four minutes. And I had to explain, look, I know that there's difference between you expect me to be on time and not. And if I teach you that, I think that four minutes late is okay, then first of all, you're going to know that when I say I'll be on time, and I'm not telling the truth, or might not be telling truth, but be next time, six minutes might be okay. And then after that 12 minutes, and then you're not gonna be ready on time, then you're going to think I'm going to write it and then pretty soon, we're not getting stuff done in an hour that we could just because you don't trust me to show up on time. And so now, I can't trust you, because you're going to respond in kind. And that's why I attack even when I'm four minutes late, when I know I'm going to be late is critically important. And when they got that, I could see that there was more trust between us. But I was also clarifying why I sent a text performance late. I respect your time enough, if you're ready for me, and I'm not ready for you. Because there's traffic, I want you to know that I recognize that needs to be said out loud between us so that you know that I'm still honoring you. I'm just running behind and the way the world really works is we're going behind some stuff, planes are going to crash, subways are going to flood, fires are going to burn down a state that's going to affect somebody's schedule somewhere. That's not the problem. What do people expect of us? And when I think of one of the ways I can measure how much trust am I building with the people I work with and care about, it's if I don't deliver something, I don't show up, I don't make the phone call, I don't pick you up, I don't get on the call, I want their first thought to be what's wrong. Charles isn't here. He didn't call, he didn't send a text. We didn't get a message telling me what's wrong, because it's weird that we're ready, and we're here and he's not. And it could be I'm stuck on a freeway with a state that's burning down and the cell phones are not working. And I can't say what we like, you know, fair enough. But that tells me I'm in a level of my relationships where I want to be. And if people aren't asking that, when I don't show up, then I have failed somewhere else in the past. That is not a surprise to them that I'm not delivering,

Emily 13:47

You’ve talking a little bit about the expectations that people have and about our people getting the feedback that they need. And I was curious for any reflections you have about the expectations being different in different cultures. And I've had this experience definitely where in the theater, there's a very high expectation particularly about on time, you have a call, it's a half hour if you're one minute late your understudies getting called, but it's a very high price to pay. And there's not really that wiggle room. And so in that culture five minutes early is on time in the culture that I'm in now, that's just not the expectation, actually. So I had a co worker who I felt we didn't have a very interesting relationship partly because of the things you're talking about. He didn't show up on time to meetings, he would often give other people assignments and meanings but not take assignments himself. And I felt that he wasn't that trustworthy versus my expectations. And I was trying to give him feedback on this. I'm feeling like we didn't have a lot of trust in our relationship. And what he said to me was I'm confused because I thought we had a great relationship. And the evidence I have for that is when I came back from maternity leave, and I saw you in the hallway, you gave me a big hug. And I thought that that meant that we were really close and we had a great relationship. And for me that sort of confusion about my expectation of what builds trust versus his expectation about what a trusting relationship looks like. That was a real in terms of different expectations that we have.

Charles 15:03

Yeah, well, you've touched on a point that literally books have been written on trust. And there are people who have entire career studying this, and we're not going to cover all of it or and try in this medium, we're just sharing just be honest, what we can do, we're trying to do, we're trying to share wisdom that we've learned has been really helpful that we hope you have a shorter journey than we did to get here. And you're absolutely true, you're absolutely right in as much as trust as expectation like until you deliver, don't deliver, there is trust or not trust even before you have or have not done that. And that is based on what we think we know about you from the past. And of course, people surprised us when they're not trustworthy, even though we thought we knew something about them. So we can be wrong. But nonetheless, it's based on the past. And of course, everything that we know, and how we relate to people is based on some culture. So when I teach leadership stuff via intensives, or retreats, or workshops, very often we have to bring up keeping integrity and trust, and very often has to do with at some level time, if I say I'm going to pick you up from the hospital after your surgery at six, and I show up at 830. That's going to affect our relationship. And I say, but I picked you up, you didn't have to hire a car. And I said I would be there, gee, chill out, just because I was two and a half hours late. And to be fair, there are cultures where that is totally appropriate. And I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia. And waiting to NFRs for somebody is not unusual. And that would be an expectation. But between you and me that would change your relationship a big deal. If I left you at the airport for two and a half hours, and you didn't know why. And I didn't have a reason why I met you and there was no urgency. So they are culturally rooted. And whenever I teach about these things, I noticed that for students in this context, who are coming from Latino or South Asian cultures will talk about the importance of delivering when you see her and deliver what people expect. And for cultural reasons, it seems that all they can hear is You're terrible. Everybody in your family is terrible. Every No, you know is terrible. And every thing you do is terrible. And that's not the lesson I'm trying to teach if you're trying to navigate a very dangerous project. So for example, in Zambia, we need to cross some dangerous areas in the rainy season where there was flooding and mud vehicles got stuck, and you need to leave at a certain time to make sure you can make the journey during daylight, a starting two and a half hours late can be mortally dangerous change, right. Or if you're expected to have enough fuel in the vehicle when we leave so that we can leave during daylight, and you only have half the fuel. Getting stranded in the bush during the rainy season in a place without communication can be a very dangerous situation, it's not a matter of are you a terrible person or not. If you were supposed to have the vehicles in good shape with fuel in it at 6am. So that we can make that trip during daylight, it just makes a difference. It's not about a moral fiber in your body. And of course, if I asked you to have those vehicles ready, fueled up tires on ready to go at daybreak, and you don't, it doesn't matter whether you have a cultural landscape or being on time is different from mine, I'm going to trust you less next time, I need that vehicle to make a trip during Daybreak safely to save somebody who's sick or evacuate somebody is in danger. I'm just going to trust you less until you can show me in some level that I can trust you, which touches on another subject. How do we repair it when it's broken? And I see this broken all the time when we break someone's trust. And we all do it by accident and maybe even on purpose. But certainly by accident, in order to repair that trust, the least that has to happen, at least in my understanding of relationships that in my culture is we have to acknowledge what wasn't right. And we have to acknowledge the difference that made the impact. Right. So the vehicles, I understand I agreed to have the vehicle field ready to go at 6am. I didn't, right. And the difference that made is we couldn't evacuate those people in a dangerous flood because we couldn't get there in time during daylight. Right? I'm sorry. And why you know that I'm committed to getting this right next time. And I've learned, right, I've matured from that. And very often when I'm working with folks, and they are surprised that trust is broken, or they don't recognize they need to do something to maintain trust, or they don't even recognize they need to invest in creating trust. They'll say Sorry, sorry, sorry. And in some level, be it explicit or implicit the next messages, and you should get over it. Not this made a difference. Like we couldn't get things done high stakes or low stakes, because I didn't deliver. And even if it was low stakes, it affects how much you can trust me to do bigger stakes. If we can't pick up one family in a flood because you can't get the vehicle fuel on time. I'm not inviting you to prepare the aircraft to get a whole village out the next time there's a flood, right and then make sure that aircraft is air worthy in a storm. That's certainly not happening. Right. And if I don't have a team that I can trust to do that it doesn't get done. Right. And we could go on and on about what level of stakes but the lesson here isn't what is the stake and when you come in to show up and trust but when we want to grow to be effective in our lives, what do we have to pay attention to to make sure that trust in place and the answer is A lot of little stuff. And it makes a profound difference. Thanks for sharing, you know, glad I can share it. I'm curious what's on your mind that you wanted to bring to the microphone today? Yeah. So

Emily 20:09

actually, a trust framework that I use all the time today is something that you introduced me to many, many years ago, which is the trust equation from the book, the trusted advisor. And I think for me, that was really interesting piece because it gave me a way to think about the different components that drive trust. For those who don't know, basically it says trust is made up of credibility, reliability, and this term they call intimacy, which is essentially like discretion, or can I trust you with my emotions? Can I be vulnerable, and then this sort of Great Destroyer of trust, which is self orientation, and that's stuck with me. And I think the thing that I've learned, and I'll tell you a story about the one that really hit home is how important self orientation is, as the driver of trusting cultures are sort of the opposite of self orientation, other orientation or group orientation, community orientation, or generosity, right, right, and how detrimental self orientation is. And for me, at the time that I was sort of discovering this, I was doing a review of kind of culture and organizational psychology things. And this shows up everywhere. And Adam grants, givers and takers, right? Being a givers entirely is essentially saying don't be self oriented. Kim Scott's radical candor had sort of just landed at the time I was working on this. And this notion that you can't just challenge people and have high expectations, you also have to care about them. And you have to show them that you care is all about how do you understand the needs of the other person and do what's best for them. Andy Grove in the book, high output management has this discussion about how you can control organizations and he talks about one factor is how complex or uncertain what you're doing is, and then the other function is are people motivated by self interest or by group interest. And what he says is, if something's not complex, and people are motivated by self interest, then you can control things using the market what you were saying transactions, right, like you do this thing, well, if you don't do it as well, somebody else will hire somebody else. If you have something that's low complexity, and you have a group orientation, you can write contracts. And basically he says, if you have a goal, that's high complexity, and you have people who are motivated by self interest, there's basically no right you get chaos. And what you need is you need a group orientation, and you need cultural values, you need a value oriented system to manage through high complexity, high ambiguity, high uncertainty. And so this concept that like self orientation is the thing that matters to build trust really resonated with me, and you reminded me of one story about sort of my own behavior from a while ago, I don't know if you want to tell this story. Or you want me to tell this story about a scenario that I had with my own employee, that was just sort of a reflection of this. So I had an employee who messaged me one day and said, Hey, do you have a minute? And I responded, Well, not really, I'm back to back in meetings. I think I had a important meeting with maybe like my boss's boss, or something, something was going on. And I said, not really like what's going on. And my employee said, I'm having a bad day, and I want to talk to you about it. And I think five or 10 minutes later, I showed up at his desk and said, Hey, let's go talk. And he said, I thought you're busy. And I said, I was busy. But that's the point is like, when it's about a person, when someone says, Hey, I need help, or I'm having a bad day, that's a much higher priority than whatever. The other thing that I had to do was the kind of hey, do you have five minutes for me to ask you a question or ask you to look at something or especially most of as a manager, a lot of the questions you get are questions that someone could probably answer themselves, but it's easier to ask you for your input, then maybe those things aren't as high priority. But there's a moment where that self orientation right reverses that I think is really important. And so let me tell you about the kind of the big moment that really hit this home for me, particularly at Wayfair. I'd been at Wayfarer for about 10 months, and I'd switched roles. And so I was going into a new role. Now I wasn't new to Wayfair, I was very much in this kind of new employee mentality of I have to prove myself, right, I have to do a good job. I have to prove myself I was really excited. And I had been in the role for just a couple of weeks when my manager pulled me into a room. I'd waited actually for months to report to this person who knew a lot about how everything worked. And I was really excited to learn from them. And he pulled me into a room and said, I'm taking another opportunity that was with Wayfair but in New York, you know what I'm going to be leaving and you're going to be reporting this person that you've never met before, who by the way is out on our honeymoon for the next few weeks. Good luck.

Emily 24:43

Shortly just after my new manager had gotten back, I had some time off. We had a family wedding in Oregon. So I had I think like a five day weekend we were going to Oregon and then just before we were supposed to leave probably three or four days before we're supposed to leave We got news that my husband's grandmother had passed away. So we flew to North Carolina for her funeral. And then we basically flew back to Boston, like unpacked our funeral clothes, repacked our wedding clothes and got on a plane to Oregon. And so I've now been gone. This is like headed into our q4 holiday season, it's a new job, I've got a new manager, I've taken sort of unexpectedly long vacation feeling sort of stressed about that, while we're in Oregon, we get a phone call that my grandfather is not doing well. And we should come to Florida. And so my mom leaves pretty much immediately. And we stayed, you know, sort of the extra 24 hours or so to catch our kind of regularly scheduled flights home and I got back to Boston, I remember, as a Tuesday, it was Tuesday, at about nine o'clock, I'd gotten back to Boston, and I was looking at flights to Florida online. And I sent my boss a message that said, hey, so you know, this happened. And I've already been out longer than I expected. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to come in tomorrow, I'm going to try to put as much in order as I possibly can, and then I'm going to take the last flight out, that would have been Wednesday night. And then I'm not entirely sure exactly when I'll be back. Quite honestly, I didn't expect to get a response. It was late on a Tuesday night. And my boss emailed me back within 10 minutes. And her email said, Don't be silly, you're getting on the first flight out in the morning, we'll take care of everything, don't worry about it. And I did, I got on the first flight out. And I got in around lunchtime. And I spent a few hours with my grandfather, and he passed away that night. Sorry, I'm getting emotional. And I reflected on that, you know, that email from my boss, she did not have to do that she very easily could have sent me a response either not responded or send me a response that said, whatever works best for you, or just said, sure. But she, I think recognize that I was making a mistake and how I was prioritizing. And she corrected me. And it was only because of her action and her words that I got to see my grandmother one last time. For me that experience was actually really formative for me in terms of how I thought about being a manager and about the culture at Wayfair. And sort of how we should think about the prioritization of kind of our own needs or team needs versus the needs of others, are the needs of the individuals in our team. So that was the story that I wanted to share.

Charles 27:30

Thank you for sharing, you've touched on so many profoundly important ideas around trusts that are floating in my head that I wish I could share. And one of the things that jumps to my mind is in the life of that manager, right, that was less than a minute, maybe three minutes, and look at the profound way it changed relationship to her, and in as much as that change to the company. And you're now telling that story publicly right now. And one of the ways we know what a culture is, or what the values of culture is, is what are the stories that are told, or the stories of exploitation, or the stories about trickery. And in this case, it's a story about generosity and kindness and compassion. And again, trust is built by many, many little things. It's never just one big thing. Well, maybe never too strong a word, but the landscape of our lives, we're collecting an infinite number of little things that build this profound trust. And the other idea that you touched on that really landed for you while you were sharing is, as I study mystic spiritual traditions, one of the ways we can recognize an authentic tradition, one's been around for a long time, and isn't falsely promising quick results is this maturation of the expansion of concern. So going from concerned about myself, to my immediate family, to the extended family, to my tribe, to then my nation, and then the world, the tradition calls us forth into bigger generosity. And in a mature tradition, the elders have a bigger realm of concern than younger members, not the opposite. We don't have people at top saying, I'm here to get mine from you. And so I think the big wisdom about truth that you're touching on here is the trust that you seem developed, like, it's the requisite trust, to do complicated things bigger than ourselves, is have mature people who are thinking beyond their own reward. Right? And we call that generosity, right? They're willing to be generous, they can be generous. They relate to the experience, fundamentally with generosity. And when you're terrible, share the story about your employee who said he had a question, you said, I'm busy and he said, Well, I wanna talk about something personally, and you showed up at his desk within minutes. There is generosity, one of them. The first communication was about task and you're busy for a task conversation. We'll get to it. Not now. You recognize when there was a relationship conversation? At some level, there was a call for help you knew how to reprioritize and Part of that is generous, because we don't know if at all, and certainly if how much you personally were going to gain by leaving meetings are important to talk somebody about something you didn't know they're going to talk about, and not knowing where their place would be and not knowing if we better once you talk to them, you demonstrated a sort of maturity of generosity to say, and that's what needs to be important right here. And I'm confident not having spoken this employee or not even knowing who it is that that was a fundamental anchor point in his relationship to you and the firm, because in a matter of minutes, you showed his welfare was more important than whatever task was on your schedule.

Emily 30:37

Yeah, I certainly hope so. And for me, it's one of these things that it's something I've seen elders to me, or those above me in a hierarchy do for me, and then for me to be able to do it for others. And I hope it's a lesson that we continue reinforcing and teaching in the cultures and communities that we're in.

Charles 30:54

Yeah, well, the ideas that come into my mind now that you've brought up these fantastic examples is one of competence. One of the components of trust, and this has been written about, I didn't invent this is competence. Like, if you're going to do surgery on me, I only trust you, if I think hopefully, accurately, that you have competence. If you demonstrate you don't have competence, I'm not going to trust you. But most of us are incompetent in many things. And I think all of us are incompetent in something we've tried. Right? And hopefully we recognize very competent, but nonetheless, there was incompetence, right? And then how do we maintain keep build trust if the competence is squarely and what's coming to my mind is, I may not trust you to make a meal well, but I may trust you to do everything that you know, to do to make it well. And when you have demonstrated that part of the equation, like the commitment and the integrity, and well, I'll read the books while I watch the videos, well, I'll practice with the equipment, right. And I may not get good at it in time, but I will do the work. Right? That totally counts. We may not have control whether we have competence, yet. We do have control whether other people can see we're doing the work. And where I see people mess up is they know they're incompetent, or suspect they're incompetent or afraid. They're incompetent, and maybe they're right. And so there's fear, they're gonna embarrass themselves, maybe they will, maybe I will. But where they feel is they either then don't do the work and just kind of allow themselves to be incompetent, and then think it was a lost cause that nobody would trust them. Or they do things that signal they're doing the work, but it's just a signal. And I found the trust, you can fool like some of the people much of the time and many people some of the time. But at the end of the day, you there's going to be rewards on that. And we've seen that with corporations, and so called greenwashing. And we've seen that in the government, right, where people say they're doing things and it bites them eventually. So part of the wisdom I'm thinking of is when we are afraid we can't deliver, we can agree, we can communicate what we can deliver, I can practice, I can read the books, I can take the class, I can show up on time, I can bring equipment, that doesn't mean I can make this meal as you want it. But I can show up with this. And having humility in our work and with others, opens up a whole realm of what we can do, right? Because now I can commit to doing things with people or for people and being crystal clear, this may not go well. And if you're okay with that, or you have a backup, we can still build a relationship of trust, I'm going to do what I can do.

Emily 33:24

Yeah, I think what you're saying is really important, this thing about being open and clear about the commitment you are making. And when you were talking earlier about if I think that you're going to be on time, but you don't show up in time, it doesn't matter what your cultural norm is, I'm going to have lost trust. That means there's a necessity to understand how the other person views trust, what is it that they're basing trust in the relationship on and so I think being transparent about, hey, this is what I'm actually committing to, right? And then these are the places where actually, I think I might not have the skills or I might not have the time or I might not have right? and I can try. But I'm committing to try not to do anything that helps, I think, potentially head off some of these places where you have a miss in terms of expectations and then output.

Charles 34:08

Yeah, and you touched on this idea of communication for those expectations. The other idea that you've touched on here is if I'm making a coconut cake, and someone is cleaning in the kitchen while I'm making it and they spill a little bit of dust on the cake, we might say it's not very much dust and maybe you won't even taste it but when I serve you the cake and there's dust on it, the difference between no dust in a teaspoon of dust is light years. It doesn't matter that it took me two years to make that cake and I fermented the candy the coconut like a teaspoon of dust makes it a sucky cake. And I found that that works on team with trust that if everybody showing up at a meeting on a project, committing to an adventure, trust everybody else well at least do the best they can right there may be failures, but they're trusting a teaspoon of distrust right will Emily have actually Brought the rain gear wheel Charles have actually filled up the water jugs, right? Will Scott actually have made sure the tires are proper temperatures, if there's a teaspoon of distrust, things can happen. People might have fun, we might have measurables and say declare success, but it radically changes the experience and also radically changes the potential. We're using a really poor metaphor of an adventurer in a vehicle, where we will commit to go thinking we're safely knowing that everybody in the vehicle and planning it brought proper equipment, put it in correct order, and it shows up on time, ie, when there's gonna be a daylight, right, where we'll go when those conditions are in place, then when there's 5%, missing, right? Well, there may not be enough coolant, the tires may not be adequate for the terrain, we might run out of fuel, right? The communication devices may not be charged last night, right. So radical, different adventure we're going to play on when all that is in place. And I noticed some people don't understand that. They think those of us in leadership role are really ridiculous for trying to close that gap. Or even just pointing out there's a 5% gap, there's a teaspoon of vacuum dust on the birthday cake. Like, gee, it's only a teaspoon of dust, Charles, it's a whole cake..get over it. Right. And I struggle sometimes to have them understand. Look, I realize you don't see the deficit, but it's light years away. And let me tell you people really like birthday cakes better when nobody's put a teaspoon of vacuum dust on them. Right?

Emily 36:34

Yeah, I'm curious. One of the things that I struggle with is like given this given that a little bit of distress can be really overwhelming, of sort of all the good experience, how do you think about building new relationships?

Charles 36:48

I’ve written three books on that. So I don't know where you want me to start.

Emily 36:54

So I've been part of cultures, particularly where cultures I've been part of cultures where there's sort of trust is implicit, when you walk in the room, like, I trust you until you prove me wrong, that I shouldn't trust you. And I've also been part of cultures where like, there's no trust, you walk into the room, and the first thing you have to do is prove yourself and prove that you're kind of worth someone's time. And those are fundamentally different cultures and structures. And I'm curious how you think about like building sort of high trust cultures and communities when the cost of distrust is so high?

Charles 37:25

Well, this is a very nuanced and lengthy conversation that can be had. And just let's be honest, the people smarter than us have written literally books on this. And we don't think we're smarter or know more, but we can address what we can address here. So first of all the rooms that you walked into Windows implicit trust, there almost certainly was a sense of boundary, that not everybody was welcome into the room. And it was not an accident that you were in the room with them, and hopefully, you're accurate about that. But that provided some of that trust. And part of that was there was a sense of, and I hope it was correct, that there was shared values and purpose, which is why it was an accident, you are in the room, and they are in the room. And now you're talking, if we extract that perception of shared values and purpose, there's gonna be a lot less trust. Another thing that was in the room was a sense that if somebody does something selfish, so it's harming other people for an individual gain, right, maybe because I think they get away with it. Or maybe they did a calculation, it's perfectly good calculation for them. In the rooms where there is an implicit trust, there is a sense that somebody would reset the rules would correct negative behavior, selfish behavior, and then maybe someone would pull it, but it would get a trust, there would be what we call accountability, whether it was an individual who would do that, or a group, whether it was formal, informal, it doesn't matter. You had this perception that would happen. The problem happens when we think that's in place, and turns out it's not. And then people get away with it. And that's why certain organizations are shocked that they were so beloved last week. And then the turns out a scandal had been covered for years. And now the world hates them and like, but gee, were the same people doing the same thing. It was just this one bad apple. Well, it's not about the bad apple, it's about the fact that you apparently weren't minding the store. You weren't cleaning out when to be cleaned out. And so now everything is in question. Even though from your perspective, it was just one thing, golly, get over it. So those two things were in place. And that's important for us know, under building our teams, when people show up? Do we just expect them to believe that everybody's there for the right reasons? Or are we making that explicit? How do they know that we curated the room that somebody who just wants to come in and get leads for the real estate business isn't in there, and they say that they want to feed the homeless, but what they really want to do is just get Real Estate Leads, right? Someone's got to clean that out and clean that out can mean just correcting them for the why we're here and that doesn't fit. This is a place for you. And then we could go on and on. Another big one is building trust is what are the stories that are told for anybody who's going to hear you sharing that story? Or the stories about Wayfair. On their wondering is Wayfarer, where I want to spend most of my waking adult hours next year, hearing stories of a senior manager at Wayfarer seeing I was treated as an asset such that my personal life and the crisis I had to attend to are more important than whatever spreadsheet was waiting for me to Wayfair makes a difference hearing that you manage your teams aware that making sure my team has mental health consistently needs get done more than whatever meeting I need to meet makes a difference that builds trust. And if somebody is wants to work in a place, because they're stuck in a immature state of selfishness, right, they're calculating an ROI and everything they do, I don't know if I'm going to talk to employee about their personal issues, because I don't know what the ROI is for me as a manager, right. And it tells them to explain that to me that that's a distraction for when I really need to do. If someone's looking for that, then hearing that you're in some huggy emotional conversations with a tech company with a multi-billion dollar valuation maybe will drive the way because they don't feel safe in that environment, they're not going to be welcome. And the reason that's important is when we're in a leadership role, and we want our teams to feel safe, and we want to attract the right people, the most effective people to ditch wherever they are to join us, making sure those stories get told no real stories, and they really reflect the values of our team is critically important. Because those stories aren't told they don't know how trust is built and what their priorities are. And that in fact, we are different from where they've been.

Emily 41:12

Yeah. I love this idea that the stories that get told her really important and reinforcing the cultural community, I think for sure..

Charles 41:20

What's really funny for me as I go around the country and talk to organizations is how they don't even recognize the stories they're telling. They're just like cute experiences, they like to tell, because I get there and I'm meeting some teams and they set up sessions with me, and they Oh, yeah, we want to tell you the story about this building, or like when we did this transition, those are all the stories telling me what are the real values here. And famously, in the American religious landscape, many churches now are largely worshiping the building, what they fundraise for, where they spend their money on what the meetings are about, right? It's not about the youth programs. It's not about the homeless ministries. It's about how do we raise money for the steeple? How do we deal with maintaining the steeple and maybe that's not bad? Preserving architecture is not fundamentally bad. When you tell the stories about all the fundraisers for the steeple and the difficulties with the architectural preservation of the steeple. What we know is Oh, that's what your church is concerned about, as opposed to other more generous things. This has been a rich conversation for me. Thank you for this Emily looking forward to seeing you next time. The old wisdom New Era podcast associate producer is Margot Madonna. Post production by Podcast Fast Track theme music light patterns is written and produced by Gil tell me courtesy of constant music. I'm your host Charles Vogl and until next time, take it slower than you think you should.