This is Part II of a special guest episode, where we delve into how trust manifests and shapes societies across the globe - with Andy Vasily.
Andy has immersed himself in diverse cultures and gained invaluable insights into the dynamics of trust in the many places he and his family have called home. He highlights Charles' book, "The Thin Book of Trust," as a valuable resource for understanding trust dynamics across cultures and we discuss how different cultural perceptions of care, sincerity, reliability, and competence shape interpersonal relationships and interactions.
The conversation takes a reflective turn as Andy emphasizes the universal human desire for connection and belonging. Drawing from personal experiences, he shares how prioritizing self-care has empowered him to cultivate trust within his relationships and emphasizes the importance of psychological safety in nurturing personal growth and fostering connections.
We invite listeners to embrace the inherent caring nature within each of us, and encourage a shift towards prioritizing values that promote trust and authenticity, both within ourselves and in our interactions with others.
We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.
This is Part II of a special guest episode, where we delve into how trust manifests and shapes societies across the globe - with Andy Vasily.
Andy has immersed himself in diverse cultures and gained invaluable insights into the dynamics of trust in the many places he and his family have called home. He highlights Charles' book, "The Thin Book of Trust," as a valuable resource for understanding trust dynamics across cultures and we discuss how different cultural perceptions of care, sincerity, reliability, and competence shape interpersonal relationships and interactions.
The conversation takes a reflective turn as Andy emphasizes the universal human desire for connection and belonging. Drawing from personal experiences, he shares how prioritizing self-care has empowered him to cultivate trust within his relationships and emphasizes the importance of psychological safety in nurturing personal growth and fostering connections.
We invite listeners to embrace the inherent caring nature within each of us, and encourage a shift towards prioritizing values that promote trust and authenticity, both within ourselves and in our interactions with others.
We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.
Speaker 2:
Hello and welcome to Trust on Purpose. My name is Charles Feldman and my name is Ila Edgar.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to our extended conversation about how trust is understood and built in different cultures with our guest, andy Vasily. Andy and his family have lived in several different countries with markedly different cultures around the world, including Japan, azerbaijan, cambodia, china and Saudi Arabia, and I believe you're just about to move to Belgium yet another culture. Yet, as you were saying when we ended episode one of this two-parter, andy, there are some aspects of trust-building that are integral to us as human beings and seem to show up in every culture you've experienced. Ila, would you like to start us off in this episode?
Speaker 1:
So I'm percolating in a larger question and this we touched on it a little bit in the conversation. Before the conversation you and Ila have been cooked in quite an incredible soup. Think about 25 years of experiences in different countries, how you've built and navigated the relationship that the two of you have, and also your two boys. So I guess my question is how has this impacted, influenced, how have you navigated trust with each other? As now you're going into another new country, Tell me a little bit about what's coming with you. How has this impacted your family? And now, as you embark on another adventure, what does that look like for you?
Speaker 3:
You know, I appreciate that question because today we were actually we're empty nesters here. Our boys 18 and 20, are back in Saudi and this is one of the few vacations so-called vacations that we've taken without them and we've been making meals every day. There's not a lot of restaurants around where we are and we've been sitting down just the two of us. There's a sense of a little bit of loneliness, like we felt, like we should be happier. We're here in Belgium, we're moving here Look at this amazing opportunity. But then a part of us you talk about Richard Schwartz and his parts therapy, parts work A part of us was sad and I was like why? Like I feel it too, and we opened up to one another. We realized that over the next six months we're going through all these incredible transitions. They say life's most stressful moments come from changing jobs, oh, but also moving, but also when you're an empty nester, right. So we're going through it all and we leaned on each other this morning to say, well, you know what? It's okay to just kind of experience this as not a high or a low, but to be okay because we are entering a new phase of our life and we just opened up to one another about it and that's what really mattered, because we were both feeling a bit down and we tried to make sense of it. So, to answer your question, it's like opening up to your critical partner in life, whoever that is, and if you're not lucky enough to have a spouse or a partner, it's opening up to a critical friend and to share what's happening. That today, immediately I thought of what happened today when we were having breakfast and feeling this and just talking about it, which is a sense of vulnerability, which is a sense of not knowing the answers, which is a sense of just sharing what's going on. And that's how we're navigating. This current space is like we're moving into the unknown.
Speaker 3:
But going back to Hila, the podcast you and I recorded a couple of weeks ago, is like if you have skill or if you have tools, the tools don't matter right, unless you're actually putting them into practice. Doesn't matter what a screwdriver does I have to use a screwdriver to screw in screws in the wall for a particular purpose or whatever. But it's actually like trying to put the tools into action and to challenge ourselves to do so, even if it's uncomfortable, and that's where the good stuff is. So I think, through it all, through every transition, whether it be Japan to Azerbaijan, to Cambodia, to China, to Saudi, to Belgium, it's like doubling down on communication what's happening for you right now and how are we going to navigate this space together and to accept everything that comes up? We weren't very good at it before, but with each transition and the skills we build, we become better at opening up and to share that with one another so that we can equip ourselves with the skills necessary to get through the next transition.
Speaker 3:
And I think that directly stems back to Charles, your work. With trust and the care, sincerity, the competence. You can try to be the best husband or wife in the world, but you actually have to apply the skills of being the best husband or partner or wife possible. I think that's what comes up for me with that question.
Speaker 1:
Thank you.
Speaker 2:
I love that, andy, thank you. One of the things in listening to you that really strikes a chord for me is that you're deep trust in each other and your trust in yourselves as separate people who are in relationship, your willingness to be vulnerable and open, and that is, I think, really the strongest source of trust. I think you're pointing right at it, that willingness to be vulnerable and combining that with the skills required to listen deeply to another person, to listen deeply to yourself and to be able to make mistakes and acknowledge them. Yeah, I think it's beautiful in the sense that that's at the heart of building trust, I think, is that vulnerability, that using the tools well, honing them, saying okay, I don't really know how to use this tool yet I need to sharpen my capacity to do that Asking for help, acknowledging when you maybe haven't done it as well as you'd like, and what I think also comes to mind for me as I listen again to what you just said is that.
Speaker 2:
So there you are, neela. You know the two of you have this deep trust to each other, which, I suspect, extends out from there. Other people can feel the gravitational pull of the relationship that you two have and the deep trust you have in each other and in yourselves as human beings. I would propose that some of what you experienced in these other places, in these other critical situations, came from people recognizing that in you and responding to it, whether or not you had deep, strong relationships with them. They were responding to your own capacity to be deeply vulnerable, deeply trustworthy to each other. I'll just stop there, but that's what comes up for me as I listen, and thank you, it's lovely to hear that.
Speaker 3:
Well, I actually want to just turn it around and ask you, charles, if you don't mind. Eli, I just want to ask Charles this because your book has meant so much to me, you know, in terms of trying and in particular, with my leadership, and where have I let people down many times since? Because it's a thin book, you can read it many times over and over. Yes, but your book allowed me to really explore where, not just where, people have screwed me over and you know it's easy to get caught up in our own story about that person screwed me over and just be so angry and to cut them off. Your book was one of the first ones that allowed me to okay, well, let's just sit this little prob-la-tunity. You know a problem I'm having pitch it as an opportunity to explore where did things go wrong? Was it care, sincerity, reliability, competence, but then sometimes it's a mixture of things, right, as you think about your own four, you call them assessment domains.
Speaker 3:
And then we had a conversation with our friend from Japan, scott McKeeman, who works for a transportation company, who basically told us that the boss of the company is like a fifth degree black belt in jujitsu or whatever. He is karate when the taxi drivers get screwed around by customers who are giving them a hard time. He shared the story of well, you know, the boss comes in this was like a few years ago and the customer is drunk and complaining and being disrespectful and then the boss of the company, the owner of the company, literally chokes him out, drags him to the park and just makes him go to sleep for a couple hours, right by choking your mouth and that's how trust is shown is like I have your back If something happens. I have your back Violently, but I have your back. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:
And I have the competence to know where to choke you out, where it doesn't get worse.
Speaker 3:
Where you can cut off the blood supply and not kill the person, right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
But the interesting thing is, when you hear stories like that and you begin to think about your domains of trust in different cultures, there is absolutely 100% a place for it. And then you begin to map it against Aaron Meyer's culture map, the eight scales originally wrote the book. Were you kind of writing it to a North American audience without knowing it? And then the more you kind of double down and dig into trust, you're learning more and more. So what comes up for you when you think about your four assessment domains in different cultures in Azerbaijan, in Cambodia, in China, in Saudi, like what comes up for you in relationship to that?
Speaker 2:
Okay. So there's a bunch of questions there so I'll kind of take them as I kind of listened. First of all, when I wrote the book, I was completely transparent to my culture. So I wrote it not really thinking about applying it in other cultures, or how would I even say, I just wrote it as applied to the culture that I was in and because I'd been using those distinctions, those four trust assessment domains with clients for quite some time in the culture that I'm in and I saw how it worked. So that's what I was writing, that was my audience. I didn't think about, oh, how would this play out in Japan or Argentina or Saudi Arabia or whatever. But I also want to say that even though I had some experience at that point using the different trust domains and to help other people build stronger trust in their worlds, I didn't have as much experience then as I do now.
Speaker 2:
I've learned a lot more way, a lot more about using and thinking about trust and people's issues around trust through that lens. So part of it is understanding and deepening my understanding of trust and how it gets built, maintained, how it can be repaired in this culture and at the same time, as I've worked and used it in organizations where the people in those organizations, the people who live in those organizations, are from very different cultures often. And running across that and at first trying to get them to see my perspective on it right Just like you in the football game, it takes for a while and then it doesn't take so much because they're going wait a minute. That doesn't fit for me. So having to kind of think about, well, wait a minute, where is this person coming from and how does this fit for them? Does it fit for them, I don't know, and exploring that a little bit.
Speaker 2:
So I've been able to do that with some different cultures through the process of working with them in their organizations, to some degree helping them understand the sort of Western culture in which I was writing from, but at the same time, trying to understand their cultures better and how trust might actually be built in their cultures that are different from North America, western Europe. And it's still a work in progress, andy, it's really still a work in progress. I've enjoyed this conversation, in part because, again, I'm learning a little bit more about that, but I find myself not being anywhere near as dogmatic about applying the four assessment domains and the different practices and language around trust building now than I was back when I first wrote it, and I think that can only improve my ability to be of value to clients when they need to understand trust building.
Speaker 3:
I think that's the simplicity piece of the four domains. Like Aaron's work is amazing. There's eight scales, so now, suddenly it's like I have more to think about. And, hila, you, I think, hit the nail on the head when you said well, I think that Aaron's trust piece relationship versus task can really be broken down into care and sincerity. So I think the simpler we can get with it. And then every culture has to value care, sincerity. Then every culture has to value care. Sincerity has to value. Are you going to follow through on the commitments you make and are you working hard to improve how you show up in the world? I think that's the competence piece, right, so that's what comes up is the simplicity of it, and I think it's multicultural.
Speaker 3:
And this is what this conversation has allowed me to reflect on is whether it was reflecting on living in Azerbaijan or Japan or Cambodia or China or Saudi, or moving to Belgium, is like I just want something simpler. I don't want to think about 19 things, I want to think about four. And then I want to think about how those four apply and what is the relationship of the culture with care? What is the relationship of the culture with sincerity and reliability and competence, Because every culture, depending on what they've gone through, will have a different experience with those things. So I just wanted to share that back and with those things. So I just wanted to share that back and that's what this conversation has had me really reflect on over the last few days.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think they do show up differently, thinking about a high context culture where people are expected to sort of read the air to understand what's meant, and that the words themselves are not really the point. It's the mood, all the background that came to that moment when, okay, we lost the game because the ref made some bad calls, and so what do we do here? But I like what you're saying. We all want connection and a sense of being backed up by others, be part of a belonging to something that's bigger than us, that we can support and that can support us. We all want to feel I think all human beings want to feel that others believe us and that we can believe others. We all want to have a sense of our competence, our capacity to actually use the tools, whatever they are, and to show up specifically for people when we make an agreement with them. But how that actually comes out in practice is different, and I think that's the key. Ila, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1:
I'm spinning, percolating up to my heart in the care domain and I don't want to oversimplify this, and so please know that I say this with so much love and respect for humans and knowing that I have a lot of privilege growing up where I have. Anyway, I just I feel like we all care about something, every single person, and for some it's safety. Right when I live is not safe, and so how can I protect and care for my safety? How can I be safe to? You know, I care about making a bigger impact in the world to I care about my family being able to have their next meal. Maybe that's the one thing that we don't have control but we have choice over as a human.
Speaker 1:
How do I display my care? How do I show my care to other humans and also invite or be curious or hold the possibility whether they're willing to tell us or not what their care is, but realize that there is Acknowledge that there is that again and I don't mean to make light of this, but every single person wakes up and puts their feet on the floor and there's something that is critical for them, something that is really important for them, and that may shift from day to day. It may shift from where we are in our life cycle and life events or what country we live in. But how do we hold on to that and, I guess, have a little bit more heart and a little bit more care with each other? It's kind of where I'm sitting.
Speaker 3:
I love that and what comes up for me is like the relationship with care. I think, charles, I've always thought about your work in a way in reflecting on my own life and my own relationship with care, sincerity and authority as well. Right, I feared authority in my life from an early age in my life from an early age, failure, success like unconditional or conditional positive regard. Right, you were only loved and accepted if you succeeded. If you didn't succeed, then you were a burden and you were told that literally through actions and words. And I think that the domain of care and sincerity comes alive for me more than ever because each of us yourself, charles, and Ila, your relationship growing up with care and sincerity we're all different in that way and it's navigating that space of care and sincerity and what we learned about how much we're cared for and how we are cared for and what are the conditions attached to being cared for or not cared for. When you, ila, talked about like what's important to you, I think of Denzel Washington, and what Denzel Washington says is that every day he wakes up, he pushes his slippers under the bed far enough that make him get on his knees to reach for them because he needs to pray. He needs to pray for whatever. He needs to pray for each day and I loved when he shared that story is like what matters most to him is praying to a higher being for the answers to help him be a good father and husband and actor, whatever. But the point is that what we value and prioritize will manifest in our lives if we double down on it. And that's what comes up with the Karen's sincerity piece and that's what I'm grappling with the most in my own life is like how much am I caring for self? How much am? And if I care for self a lot, then it allows me the freedom and space to care for those who I love my boys and Neela and regardless of the cultures we've grown up in. I guess maybe this conversation has helped me understand that. You know, I've doubled down on Karen's sincerity and I think in any culture, the beautiful people that I've come across, including Saudi culture that is in the media is just ridiculed sometimes.
Speaker 3:
But I said in the recording before, the recording is the Saudi government.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, they're wealthy, they have a lot of money and they can hoard that money, but what they do is they care for their people and every Saudi person who graduates from high school gets free university tuition to America or the UK or wherever it is.
Speaker 3:
So the Saudi government invests in their people. So the people of Saudi deeply care for their government because they know the government has their back. The government wants them to succeed and in providing the conditions for the Saudis to go and study abroad, including masters and PhDs, they trust that you're going to come back to the country and you're going to make a difference, because we're going to run out of oil and now we need the younger generation to step up and make a difference. And that's care and sincerity being manifested tenfold. And that's a little known fact about Saudi and the Saudis that we know, who are middle class, have such tremendous gratitude for the government paying for their tuition to go to Canada or the US, where they have tremendous gratitude for having that experience, because then they can come back and contribute to society, as Saudi society continues to change. So I guess for me why I'm sharing that is it goes back to care and sincerity and then reliability and competence will take care of itself, because if I'm not psychologically safe, if.
Speaker 3:
I don't feel psychologically safe to try to pursue the best of myself, then nothing will happen right. So I need to feel psychologically safe to pursue the best of myself in order to do the best that I can, and that's that care and sincerity piece for me.
Speaker 2:
I guess I'd have a little bit different take on that, if I may, and that is that care and sincerity are critical, they're fundamental, and if I neglect reliability and competence, which is the doing in the world in a way, if I neglect that, I'm actually not really caring, I'm not being sincere. If I show up deeply caring with someone and I'm honest and sincere and yet I don't do what I need to do to be able to perform whatever I'm saying I'm going to perform, I don't meet my specific commitments with them. I think that's going to undermine the other two, the care and sincerity. For me personally, it'll undermine my own sense of care and sincerity myself and I think clearly can undermine other people's sense of my trust in my care and sincerity. So I think that takes all of them, maybe some more than others, some of the domains more than others, but I think if we neglect any domain, it's to our disadvantage in the sense of really building honest, strong trust. This has been a great conversation. I love that.
Speaker 3:
And I just want to add one thing here Sure, please, you can cut this part out or not? No, no, no, we won't. But then I actually think, like going back to the Karen's sincerity piece, that if I feel psychologically safe, it's not going to come from proving myself in terms of competence. If I feel psychologically safe, I feel in a good space to, with vulnerability, pursue my competence. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely yes, and that's what I'm thinking of when you say that is like if I know I can make mistakes and I know that I can screw up, as long as I don't keep screwing up in the same way, that I'm going to continue to get better and better and better at what I do. But that's going to require me being vulnerable.
Speaker 3:
And Simon Sinek we know Simon Sinek right Says yeah, you need to step up and say what you're not good at and where you need to lean on people for others, for support. And if you can't lean on others for support, then you're on your own. But when you can lean on others, then they can help you fill the gaps with your competence. And that's where the care and sincerity comes alive. For me is like if I'm going to open up to you, charles, and say I need to be a better leader, I need to build my competence.
Speaker 3:
If I can't open up to you, then I'm not going to be able to admit that I need to grow in this area, which will impact my competence, which will impact my ability to work on what I need to work on in a psychologically safe way. Yeah, that's where I love having the conversation, but I know that you place equal value on all of them. But I think that's shifting too. You know that shifts as well, because if I feel psychologically safe, I'm going to be able to say where I've let myself down, where I need to improve on in order to build my skill, which will build my competence, which might impact my reliability to show up when I need to show up in certain ways. So I'm not pushing back, I'm just saying like I think it just comes down to care and sincerity.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I guess I would be just to be clear I don't see each of them as all of them as equal at all.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
What I do see is that there are different domains in which we can show up as trustworthy.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:
When and recognizing that I may care a lot and I may be sincere, but I've been and I'm talking to Ila before you got on about a situation where I did not do my reliability piece, I didn't follow through on something. I realized it last night and as this morning I'm thinking I got to get on that one last night and as this morning I'm thinking I got to get on that one. So, recognizing that I need to pay more attention there, maybe right now for a little while, I need to focus there. It's more dynamic than it is static.
Speaker 2:
For me, the trust building is a dynamic process that involves all four domains and my behaviors and my assessments of other people's behaviors and my willingness to look at my assessments of other people's behaviors honestly and not just go okay, I don't like that behavior and I'm going to call it untrustworthy, and then I'm going to go from there and call it that person untrustworthy completely. We're done. That, I think, is the value of the four assessment domains. Thank you for bringing that up and pushing back. I love it. It's good to have someone kind of help me question my own thinking. So thank you for making yourself vulnerable and risking that. Yeah, thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:
Appreciate it. So I think maybe we should bring this conversation to a close. We've been everywhere. We've been all over the world we have. I've loved it.
Speaker 3:
So I think maybe we should bring this conversation to a close. We've been everywhere.
Speaker 2:
We've been all over the world. We have. I've loved it. Yeah, I've loved it. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us, andy. It's been a really fascinating journey. Thank you for bringing your own honesty and care and deep sincerity to this and for showing up on time. Yeah Well, no, wait a minute, you were on time. We hadn't sent you the invite on time because I hadn't told Hila that you were going to be here today. So, boy, am I messing up on my competence and reliability here?
Speaker 3:
But we all care for one another.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we all care.
Speaker 2:
And notice that it's easier to forgive someone their trespasses, if you will, in the domains of reliability and competence, if there is a strong sense of care and sincerity.
Speaker 3:
Well, that's what I love, and I want to thank you both too, ila and Charles. I'm so grateful to be connected with you and I love your podcast and I share your podcast with all the leaders that I coach with you, and I love your podcast and I share your podcast with all the leaders that I coach. Thank you, because you guys get down to the real guts of what authentic leadership means.
Speaker 1:
Thank you.
Speaker 3:
It's not reading books, as you say, ila, reading about these tools. It's about actually applying the tools, and then when you do that, that requires vulnerability. The leaders who are willing to explore that space will be the best leaders. So I really want to thank you both for this opportunity to talk to you and to truly reflect on living life in so many different countries, because it's brought up a lot for me. So thank you so much for trusting me with this conversation.
Speaker 1:
So welcome. Yes, you're very welcome. We're happy to have you. Thank you for sharing so much of who you are and the soup you've been cooked in and also about, I think, the relationship and the deep care and sincerity that you have for Nila and your voice. Thank you for bringing them into our conversation too. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:
On behalf of both Charles and myself, we want to say a big thank you to our producer and sound editor, chad Penner. Hilary Rideout of Inside Out Branding, who does our promotion, our amazing graphics and marketing for us, and our theme music was composed by Jonas Smith. If you have any questions or comments for us about the podcast, if you have a trust-related situation that you'd like us to take up in one of our episodes, we'd love to hear from you at trust, at trustonpurposeorg.
Speaker 2:
And we'd also like to thank you, our listeners. Take care and keep building trust on purpose Until next time.
