Trust on Purpose
Are you intentional about building, maintaining or repairing trust with the people in your life? Most of us aren’t, and sometimes important relationships suffer as a result. So much of what is right or amiss in those relationships ties back to trust, whether we realize it or not. We are dedicated to helping you become intentional about cultivating strong trust with everyone important in your life: the people and teams you lead and work with, and your family, friends and community, as well. In the Trust on Purpose podcast, we dive into everything that makes up trust, what supports and damages it. We unpack situations we commonly see with leaders, teams, organizations, and others we work with to show how trust can be strengthened, sustained, and repaired when broken. Listen in for conversations between two pros who care deeply about you being an intentional and masterful trust-builder in your life so you and your relationships flourish. We share pragmatic and actionable takeaways you can use immediately and deepen with practice. If you have questions or situations related to trust that you’d like us to talk about in a future episode, please email charles@insightcoaching.com or ila@bigchangeinc.com.
We'd like to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music that 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 the superpower editing work that he does to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to the smooth and easy to listen to episodes you are all enjoying. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.
Trust on Purpose
What happens to trust when we delay uncomfortable conversations?
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Ever wondered how avoiding difficult conversations could be sabotaging your relationships and your career? Join us as we explore the art of timely communication, inspired by insights from Joseph Grenny's "Crucial Conversations." We delve into the reasons we shy away from those essential talks, whether it's fear, procrastination, or the pressures of a fast-paced environment. We share personal anecdotes and reflect on our own internal battles that hold us back from addressing critical issues.
We'll guide you through the complexities of workplace communication and trust, and provide practical advice for maintaining your core values and assessing your role if you're consistently avoiding necessary dialogues at work.
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.
Hello, I'm Charles Feltman.
Speaker 2:And my name is Ila Edgar, and we're here for another episode of Trust on Purpose.
Speaker 1:And my name is Ila Edgar and we're here for another episode of Trust on Purpose. Today we are going to start from a quote by Joseph Grenny, who is one of the co-authors of Crucial Conversations and several, many other books, I think, and we're going to take that and use it as a kind of a launching place to talk about how we have conversations with other people when something goes awry, when something goes amiss, and so let's kind of dig in a little bit. I'll start with actually taking the quote itself and reading it.
Speaker 1:It is the health of any relationship, organization or community is a function of the lag time between identifying and discussing problems. So again, the health of any relationship, organization or community is a function of the lag time between identifying and discussing problems. In other words, if the lag time is long or doesn't happen at all, there is no discussion at all ever. The health of the organization or the individual relationship or the team or whatever you're talking about, that health is impacted negatively. And so what we want to do is start there and begin to talk a little bit about how you do that and where you can go from there. And so I'm going to ask Ila what comes up for you. In our conversation, the famous conversation before the conversation we did talk a little bit about examples that both of us have recognized and know about. That we'll bring into this. But what comes up for you in listening to that quote?
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of went a different direction as you read that, a little different direction than the conversation before the conversation, and I started laughing because I thought about not just the lag time between identifying and discussing the problem, but what I typically do, what my go-to behavior when there's something that's uncomfortable is I run, I'm a flea, like in the fight flight freeze. I'm a flea. I might be sitting here, you might physically see me, but every core in my body has jumped into my car and I'm down the highway at 180. No, that's terrible.
Speaker 2:That's not safe, we wouldn't do that I would be driving very fast, but not that fast, and so that's kind of where I went initially. So not only the lag time, but I think what I'm thinking about is what causes us to cause the lag time. So, assuming at some point I turn my car around and come back and approach you to have a very uncomfortable conversation about a problem or a situation or a conundrum, I think that there's a lot that gets in the way of us being able to actually have the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would agree with that. Unlike you, who actually flees, I'm a procrastinator who stays in place. I'll sit here and procrastinate around having the conversation, find other things to do, but I also tend to avoid those conversations, at least initially, and it's for the same reason I'm. You know the discomfort of having a conversation, and that's a good question. What is it that I'm uncomfortable about? That has me not just jump on it and get into the conversation? I know other people who do that. That's their kind of MO is okay. There's something wrong here. I need to go talk to this person about this right now, and I have trained myself to do it, but it's really not my go-to sort of thing. So I will do it. And that there's something going on in my head and in my body that says, oh, don't do that. What are you doing? That does not seem like a good idea. So what is it? That's a great question, Dela. What is it that stops us or makes it difficult for us even to think about having the conversation?
Speaker 2:Here's my childhood trauma rearing its head, and I'm not laughing about that, but I am laughing because it's usually. I know I'm in trouble or I'm about to get into trouble. That's what the itty bitty committee makes up. Yes, right, if there's I feel discomfort, I'm in trouble, or I'm about to get into trouble. That's what the itty bitty committee makes up. Yes, right, if there's I feel discomfort, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to be accountable. I have done something, so I am in trouble. Or I don't know what I'm stepping into, so I'm probably in trouble.
Speaker 2:That's really the only options that are available, which is really silly, because if I, of course, have developed a practice to make sure that the itty bitty committee doesn't drive everything, but it's like, ok, how do I ground myself and validate, get out of the story in the spin to what's actually going on? So I could imagine in a team and in an organization how each person is running around with their itty-bitty, shitty committees telling stories about what may or may not be true, what might feel true for them for sure, but may not be statistically or data-driven true. I think the other thing that shows up for me when I think about especially some of the organizations and teams that I'm working with now is they don't have any room to breathe, so where would they possibly find a moment of time to have a conversation about something that's important, or a conundrum or a challenge, rather just like sweep it under the desk and keep going, because there's 27 other things waiting to be done.
Speaker 1:I think that is a big issue for a lot of my clients as well is the fast pace, the constant, never-ending to-do list and, even if that weren't valid, a valid assessment that all that's there and I have to do it right now. It's a good place to hide.
Speaker 1:So if I'm facing a potentially uncomfortable conversation, it's really easy to say, okay, I have all this other stuff to do, I'm just going to do this because I get rewarded for this and I don't necessarily get a reward for that other at least I can't see a reward very close at hand here to have that crucial conversation, to use Joseph Crinney's term to have that conversation with that person. So there's that as well, and there is also the fact that we just don't many of us do not come into life, into our adult lives with any tools for doing that. I don't much talk about my family of origin on this podcast, but I will say that in my family of origin nobody talked about anything that mattered. My parents.
Speaker 1:If they did talk about stuff that was important to them, they did so outside of earshot of my sister and I. They did it behind closed doors, did it behind closed doors and the conversations with my sister or myself around things that were important were held kind of like what you were doing, I'm in trouble. It was like it wasn't a conversation that would prepare me for really getting right with somebody. It was a conversation about he'd taken responsibility, the finger pointing and what am I going to do? What's my punishment going to be? Other families have other kinds of situations, but I think many of us don't come into our adulthood with many tools for having those kinds of conversations in a way that's productive, and so that's another reason to kind of avoid them. It's like I've had it fail. I've tried to have that conversation with somebody and it just blew up in my face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that. Similar our family. Well, it was just my mom and my older sisters. So my mom wasn't having any big conversations with another adult in the house because there wasn't one. And this became glaringly apparent to me one day. Rowan came home from school. Rowan is my now 19 year old son.
Speaker 2:Rowan was little and he had come home from school clearly upset about something and I'm like, hey, buddy, what's going on? And he said oh, mom, whatever you know, you wouldn't understand. You never have any problems. And I was shocked by that statement but also then realized well, of course he doesn't think that I have any problems because I don't talk about them. We didn't talk about them openly in front of him, right? Either I would solve my own problems during the day, my desk in my office, or I would talk to a trusted colleague, or Rory and I might, the husband might have a conversation about something, but it was often not in front of our kid, and so of course, that's what he thought. So think about, if you and I have a similar history like that and a similar upbringing, how many other people then enter the workplace and into relationships without having tools to be able to do this, and then there's a huge impact which I guess, if we look around the world right now, we can see that there's a huge impact.
Speaker 1:And layer on top of that. I have an issue or a concern about something that somebody did at work, or a friend of mine or whatever it is, and let's just stick to the work realm for now. Somebody you know, a colleague of mine, a peer of mine at work does something and I don't know if I can trust that person to have a conversation with me, because I don't. Although I know that I see them in action in some ways, I don't see them in action in that way. So I don't know if I can trust myself first of all, and then that person to have a conversation that will end positively for us. So there's the trust issue as well, kind of lurking in the background there, self-trust about me. Can I do that? I don't know. And how about them? Would they be able to?
Speaker 2:I think there's another layer that could potentially impact and that is when there's a power differential. So I'm thinking of a particular client who has been doing a lot of work towards changes and a pretty tight deadline and then heard from more senior that not only were the rules of the game changing, more senior, that not only were the rules of the game changing, but they were changing like right away. And when the news was relayed to me as a support of this organization, I wanted to go find that senior leader and say the hell. So of course it's not my place to have that conversation, but I was. I was really shocked and I'm pretty sure that the person who needs to have that conversation but I was really shocked and I'm pretty sure that the person who needs to have a conversation with that particular senior leader doesn't have time doesn't have time because now they're basically redoing this project on a very tight timeline.
Speaker 1:I don't know that there's trust to be able to have a conversation like that, that there's trust to be able to have a conversation like that. I have encountered similar situations with clients I've had and I think that doesn't have time, like I said earlier, can be a bit of an excuse. If it's really important in the relationship, hey, I can't do good work if things are going to change on a dime unless there's really good reason. And so far I haven't gotten really good reason from you. All I have gotten is we're doing this differently, just go do it, deal with it. So it's easy for me to just hide in my work. You know my to-do list and you know whatever it is that I have to work on then to then take the time to go have this conversation.
Speaker 1:And I think we're going back to Joseph Grenny's comment. The health of that relationship, the health of the organization, is going to be negatively impacted by not dealing with it quickly, not dealing with it when it's right up in everybody's faces. It damages trust for one thing over time Because it sends a signal that I don't care. If I really cared about the team, the relationship, whatever, I would bring it up.
Speaker 2:What if? I don't actually care Right. So what if actually is? We think about the rebuilding trust and what needs to take place when we're rebuilding trust and the very first question is do you want to? What if the answer is no? Actually, I don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that's. I have a client right now who there's a conversation he knows he needs to have with his boss, his CEO, and he's had it to some degree before, but it hasn't really come to any kind of resolution. The boss continues to do this inactives behavior. That's a problem for my client and more so for my client's direct reports, and the thing is he doesn't want necessarily to have the conversation, whether it's about in this case, it's not necessarily about rebuilding trust, but it's about dealing with an issue that's a problem for the whole organization, or at least his whole organization.
Speaker 1:And the bottom line is that and I think why he's eventually going to have this conversation, that and I think why he's eventually going to have this conversation, even though he's uncomfortable with having it is that he really wants to do good work.
Speaker 1:That's important to him, that's a real value for him, and every time he turns away from having this conversation with his CEO, he's also setting aside or turning away from a core value of his. And so, as coaches, that's something that we can really offer our clients is to help them take a look at that and deal with the gap there between what may be showing up as a core value, and another core value, of course, is having an income, and one of his fears is that, having this conversation, and I don't think it's a realistic fear, but it's not my place to tell him I don't think it's realistic. It's his assessment and he needs to ground that. But, yes, those are things that tend to both motivate what's my real value here and get in the way and if I really don't care, I think that says to me that I need to do some thinking about am I in the right role? Am I in the right position? Am I in the right company?
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to throw another plot twist in here.
Speaker 1:I love plot twists.
Speaker 2:So what happens if you're willing to have the conversation but you don't think it's going to change anything? Nothing will happen, and maybe I'm going to throw like a subplot twist here. Maybe you've tried having conversations in the past about a similar behavior. Yeah, and nothing happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that leads to resignation, a mood of resignation which is fine for a short while. Perhaps it's a place to kind of rest into. Okay, I'm going to stop trying. Nothing ever changes, it's always going to be the same. But eventually resignation kills all forward motion and I see you're going to look up Dan our energy. Say that again, okay.
Speaker 2:Purpose is to allow us to surrender and save our energy, Often confused with apathy and apathy is the emotion in which we don't care or aren't aware of our passion Resignation is the belief that nothing we do will make a difference.
Speaker 1:Yes, I kind of disagree with them that it's just saving energy to it can. For a short period of time, yes, but over the long haul, the assessment that nothing will make a difference is kind of toxic, I think. Yeah, I'm going to tell a story about a client that I worked with years and years ago, because it's so apropos here to this particular point. I worked with a guy who was hired. It was a private company, the CEO was the owner, and the CEO hired my client to bring the company into modern times. You know that sales were kind of flaggy. It was all flat, the sales were flat, everything was flat in the company, and so my client was a sales leader. So he came in as I don't know whether it was a vice president of sales or whatever his role was, but he was head of sales. His job, according to the owner of the company, the CEO, was to increase sales, improve sales, and there were some benchmarks that they agreed on and he went to work, except that there were a lot of things that needed to change, and it was not only people. There were certain people that needed to go so that they could bring in fresh people who had more energy and enthusiasm about it, but also some old processes and procedures and so on that needed to go and be changed. And every time he would take something to the CEO, the CEO would say can't do that, you can't do that. That guy's been with us forever. We can't just fire him. That's how we've always done it. We're not going to do that. That guy's been with us forever. We can't just fire him. That's how we've always done it. We're not going to change that.
Speaker 1:And so, after a bit of this, he got pretty resigned, as you might imagine. Nonetheless, he had scheduled a sales meeting. He's going to bring all the sales people from all over they were pretty big, so they're somewhat far flung Brought them all in for a big sales meeting to get people amped up about sales, and he was going to kick it off with a big what do you call those kind of talks Like motivational, motivational talk, right, and he was telling me about his motivational talks, like what he was going to do, and I said so let me ask you, what is your mood? We've been talking a little bit about this. What is your mood right now around this whole project? And he sort of stopped and he said, yeah, I'm in resignation and I said so, tell me, how are you going to do a motivational talk in a mood of resignation? And that just stopped him in his tracks. And so then we went on to say, okay, what kind of conversations need to happen here? And the conversation he came up with is I have to go talk to the boss and tell him that either I get carte blanche to do the things that I know need to happen or I need to leave. And so we talked about okay, well, if you get to do it, what are you going to do? If he says no, how's that going to work for you? What are you going to do? So he had a plan, he had a fallback plan and the answer was no.
Speaker 1:In the end, the boss, the CEO, was not willing to, so he left, left the company I talked to him about maybe nine months later at some point and he said what's the best choice?
Speaker 1:That job was killing me. But you see, he wanted to do, he did care, he cared deeply and he wanted to do the best job he could. And he had some pretty clear ideas about in the ground around that. And what he came up with in one of our last conversations was I should have done that a long time ago because I wasted the last, however many it was almost a year, he said. I kind of feel like I've wasted the last year. I should have had that conversation up front as soon as he started. You know, after the second or third rejection of my ideas I should have said look, here's what we need to do, yeah, yeah. So again, the gap between identifying the problem and talking about it, having a conversation about it, talking about it, yeah and being able to trust. In his case, he needed to be able to trust himself that he would land on his feet, that if things went poorly he was going to be okay.
Speaker 2:Which I think is also sometimes tough to believe that, given the circumstances or the conundrum that we're in. But we started with what seems like quite a simple, clear statement and look at all the complexity that comes out of again. The health of any relationship, organization or community is a function of the lag time between identifying and discussing the problems. Probably right now, if I stop talking to you for a few minutes, write down examples, both in my own life, with clients that I'm working with, with things that I'm involved with, where there's definitely been a lag time, where I have not had the conversation.
Speaker 2:There's one that's kind of glaring in my face right now, but I, I believe I don't. In that case, I truly believe nothing will change. And then there's a reflection piece. I think here Maybe that's another part we can talk about is, rather than looking for intentionally or unintentionally ways to avoid the conversation or sweep it under the desk and pretend that it's not happening, or get down the highway and drive away from it, what's a reflection process or how can we actually see? What do I care about in this relationship? What matters to me for the sake of?
Speaker 1:why would I have the conversation and for the sake of why would I not have it? Yeah, I think those are really important questions to spend some time with In the Thin Book of Trust. When I talk about preparing for a conversation with someone who has damaged your trust in them, it's important to ask, okay, what's the value or potential upside of having this conversation, and, on the other side, what's the cost of not having it, which kind of gets to at least some of that. Why is this important? Do I really care? What is it that I'm caring about here? Is it just that I really dislike coming to work and knowing that this person's going to behave in a way that I find really unpleasant? Is it that whatever they're doing is actually getting in my way, getting in the way of me doing the best work I can do? Do I care about doing that? Who else might be impacted by this? A lot of things to bring into a reflection. Have you ever? Well, let's go there.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking about myself in sort of preparation to have a crucial conversation with someone around trust, and in that case, for me, the one that comes to mind was where I had damaged trust that somebody else had in me and had been confronted with that, and now I needed to actually respond to it, actually respond to it. I wanted to maintain the relationship, so that was really important. But there was another relationship I also wanted to maintain. So I just sat down and wrote out as much as I could all of that stuff, and in the writing I realized that there were some things that were more important than others. But again I wrote out okay, what's important to me here? Who is important to me here?
Speaker 1:Why is that important to me here and what are some of the different directions that I could take and what might be the consequences of each of those directions that I could take?
Speaker 2:Now I feel like I have to do a reflection exercise on that for myself. Thanks so much. She says laughing, but also saying this out loud yeah, you don't have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that was a really important relationship and a really important moment in the relationship and I really recognized. I was able to recognize it. Yes, that's one of the part of the whole thing is being able to identify the problem.
Speaker 2:If you can't identify the problem, then the lag time is irrelevant yeah, mentioned it already, but one particular conversation, I really honestly don't believe that it would make any difference. Reflection and writing down what really matters to me may not produce the awareness or the desire for me that I will actually go have a conversation, and I think that there's incredible value in sorting it out for me because it is definitely taking up mental, physical, emotional energy in my head, in my body.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's a good reason to do that, and I've done that sort of reflection and writing it out just because of that, even though I don't think that anything will change. Yeah, the real piece there is. I don't want it hanging out in my head anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like there's a as I touch my head very gently, give it a little love tap here I'm like oh you poor little head, there's all sorts of things hanging out in there. I was going to say time for spring cleaning, but we're, you know, it's winter. But it's fascinating and I again I say this with so much compassion and so much really just empathy for self too that even though you and I do a lot of this for a living doesn't mean that we don't also bump into our own conundrums as we navigate Like we're pretty skilled at a few things, especially when it's helping others, but that we are still mere humans bumping around in our own lives. Maybe a couple of extra tools in the toolbox, but it doesn't make it easier. We still feel discomfort about having conversations or potential conversations. We still have emotions that show up. We still have our itty-bitty, shitty committee that tells us you know, don't do that, because you're going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, I was going to say well, speak for yourself.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:But I really I want to honor what you're saying because I also, of course, have. I get confronted by stuff that is challenging for me, that's difficult for me, and it's important for me to deal with it. And I think one of deal with it well not just deal with it, but deal with it well and what I mean by well is that myself and whoever else is involved takes the most positive out of that. The conversation or series of conversations or whatever, or whatever happens. They take the most positive out of that. Going forward, all of us take what we can out of it. That's positive. It doesn't mean it makes it any easier, like you said. No, like I said at the very beginning, I still will procrastinate in place. I won't mentally jump in my car and drive away. I'll just mentally procrastinate here in place and find other things to do until it dawns on me that I really do need to and want to have this conversation or this, whatever it is. I'm thinking it might be a good place to wrap this up and kind of bring together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I have some journaling to do. Excuse me, I need to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think that the original quote from Joseph Grenny which I just really caught my attention, because I think it's really the case that when we have those conversations quickly in time, we go out okay, there's a problem here, it's an issue, I need to have this conversation with this person, and we actually do it, not so quickly that we rush into it and put our feet in our mouths, which is something I've never done, of course, of course never.
Speaker 1:But taking the responsibility as a human being to address issues, problems, concerns that I have with other human beings, is something that I want to do and do well, and, like you said, it takes some learning. We don't come into the world we certainly don't come into the world knowing how to do it, and we don't leave our families of origin necessarily knowing how to do it well either. It's something that's learned, a learned set of skills. Just like building trust is a competency that we can learn and improve and get better at, so is having any kind of crucial conversation with someone else, and so I think it's a big part of it is finding resources, and including the book is Crucial. Conversations right Crucial.
Speaker 2:Conversations yes. Crucial Conversations yes.
Speaker 1:That's a good starting place. There are other books out there and podcasts and whatnot, for you know how do you go about doing that, and we may, in fact, actually want to have a podcast later. That's just specifically. You know how do you prepare an app. We've done, of course, podcasts on how do you prepare for a conversation about rebuilding damaged trust, but there may be other things that we want to talk about along those lines.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, identifying that there is an issue, that's step one. If we can't do that, we're sunk. But then, once we've identified it, actually taking responsibility for moving into the conversation into the fire, if you will and doing so with our eyes open, having maybe spent some time, like you said, journaling, reflecting in some way Maybe it's just a conversation with a trusted friend, maybe it's a conversation with a coach, but taking the time to think it through so that when we do have the conversation, we're not speaking off the cuff. We've really taken a hard and careful look and caring, look at what our motivations are for the conversation, what we want to get out of it, how the other person might be thinking about, trying to put ourselves in the other person's shoes, all of those things.
Speaker 2:And knowing that even if we do all of those things and have the courage to have the conversation, don't get a guaranteed outcome and we can't control how the other person is going to respond or react.
Speaker 1:Exactly yes.
Speaker 2:But we do it anyway. Yeah, we do it anyway.
Speaker 1:And there again. And we just recently I think did a podcast episode on self-trust.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because self-trust is a big part of that Trusting that, no matter where this goes, we'll land on our feet, that we have the resources, the resilience, internal resilience, to take what comes and go forward in our own lives with that. Thank you, hila. It's a good conversation and an important one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, I enjoyed it too.
Speaker 1:Thank you to all of our listeners for being part of our lives. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: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 1:And we'd also like to thank you, our listeners. Take care and keep building trust on purpose Until next time.
Speaker 2:Until next time.
