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
How workplace silence kills trust
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What happens when you pour your heart into work only to be met with silence? Or have you ever felt the sting of being ignored after applying, and even interviewing, for a job? You’re not alone. In a new episode of Trust on Purpose, we unravel the silent killer of workplace trust - ghosting.
The frustrating reality of unacknowledged contributions almost always erodes trust. From candidates experiencing profound disappointment and companies unknowingly tarnishing their reputations, to employees becoming disengaged and resentful, we shine a light on the critical importance of closure and honest communication.
Drawing on our own experiences and Brene Brown's principle that "clear is kind," we discuss how a lack of transparency and acknowledgment can leave people feeling undervalued and relationships strained. The key to transforming your professional interactions? A small shift in awareness.
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.
What Wait?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're good.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Boo, I did. Devil dog, dare you to do that?
Speaker 1:But you didn't think I would, did you, I didn't. So we're going to be talking about ghosting today and how that affects trust, so I thought I'd start it out kind of in line with you know, of course this would have been great at Halloween, but we're past that and this is a topic that I think we've both and many of our listeners have had the experience of being ghosted in one way or another under one context or another. So that's our topic today. I'm Charles Feldman.
Speaker 2:Well, boo back to you, and I'm Ila Edgar, and we're here for a ghosting version of Trust on Purpose. We are not going to ghost you on this podcast, although that would be funny if we just suddenly disappeared.
Speaker 1:It would be funny to us, but probably not to the people listening.
Speaker 2:Not to our listeners, not to our listeners. So obviously we well I think many of our lovely listeners know that we have a conversation before the conversation and this is a topic that I'm actually quite spicy about this week for a number of reasons the whole dating up romantic partner, looking for your special someone. So that's not the part that we're talking about. We're talking about how ghosting actually does happen in working relationships, professional relationships and organizations, and so a couple of the examples that we were talking about before we started was you know, have you ever had someone maybe your leader, maybe a peer, a colleague, somebody that's working on the same project team ask you for work that you then deliver and then you hear crickets, radio, silence, nothing, zero, not. Hey, we've got it, thanks for doing it received.
Speaker 2:This was super helpful. Like we're talking crickets zero or potentially and I think Charles and I have both had situations where there's a potential relationship, whether it's a service partner or a potential client there's conversations had and then they just disappear. I was sharing that there's someone I was really excited to work with, had a number of conversations. She was going to support a big change in our team here and everything looked great. And it's been a year and a half since I last heard from her.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's ghosting for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like what did I do? Well, and then the other one that we came up where there actually has been a commitment made of some sort and then again nothing, zero. And so we want to dive into this topic of ghosting, and not only what does it feel like, what's the impact on the relationship and what's the impact on trust? So, I'm going to pause there, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can say very clearly from my own perspective that over the years, as a coach and someone who delivers various kinds of workshops, I have had inquiries from potential or prospective clients and been asked for a proposal, and then nothing happens. I hear nothing back. I even have followed up and you know, hey, what happened, or you know what's going on. Sometimes I'll get something, but sometimes I won't. That's one thing. But you know. So that damage is trust. Even if they came back to me later and said, hey, you know, sorry about this, I know, and that has happened, I know that my trust in them has gone down at that point, the point where they ghost me for a long time. Initially. But in work relationships, it just occurred to me as I was listening to you, hila, it just occurred to me. In work relationships where we're working with these people all the time and we get ghosted, if you will, we deliver something that's been asked for and we don't get anything back at all.
Speaker 1:That has a well, the usual impact that distrust has in an organization. When two people distrust each other or one person distrusts another in the work setting, that's a longer term or in some ways bigger impact Someone who doesn't get back to me regarding a proposal that I've sent to them. I've spent some time at it and I can send it off. Get nothing. Yeah, I won't trust that person unless they really do come through and we go somewhere. But it doesn't matter that much because there are other people and I'm going to have other prospects and other clients and so it goes. But in the workplace we don't have the ability to do that, so we're stuck with a situation where we're our trust in that person. We carry forward day to day as we interact with them and the rest of the people in the organization. I think that's where the impact is most strongly felt and most damaging.
Speaker 2:Well, and what also comes up for me is then I'm going to look for ways to work around, work without and not have to interact with that person, because I can't trust their follow through, I can't trust their reliability and even you know, we did this episode quite a while ago, but the one where we were talking about things unspoken, and so these are situations where often the disappointment, the resentment, the frustration, the annoyance is not spoken and that continues then to have an impact on the relationships.
Speaker 1:Yes, on the relationships. Yes, we talked about the cycle of commitment, sort of the last move, if you will, in that conversation or ongoing series of conversations that starts with making a clear and complete request. The last move in that series of conversations is reporting completion. Hila, here it is, I've done it, and then, on the other hand, or from the other person's perspective, it's done, thank you, or whatever it is, that lets me know that we're done and what we're really talking about is that that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen, and this is like pushing a button, a really big button for me, because I'm thinking of a recent leader, not necessarily talking about ghosting, but this concept of you know, receiving work and thanking the other person to close the cycle of the commitment, and I think you're very much like this. So maybe there's canadian flowing through you too, but canadians, like we, say thank, please and thank you all the time. We're so, so polite. And there was such resistance to say why should I have to say thank you for something that's their job, which was oh, this is so good, this is so good. And what about if it's not necessarily the linguistic politeness of saying please and thank you, but rather the completion of a shared commitment that the performer now knows the work is complete and there's nothing more I need to do. I can close that loop.
Speaker 1:It's going back to another previous episode. It's a declaration of completion. So you're using thank you as that declaration of completion and you can use other ways to complete. I appreciate it. This is good or well. What keeps coming up obviously to me is thank you, but yes, so stop being so polite, I'm kidding. I'm not Canadian, but I don't know. I may want to be at some point.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other topic. We're not going there. That's a whole other topic.
Speaker 1:No, anyway, yeah.
Speaker 2:One of the other things that and I will say that this is something that's really showing up with a number of the teams that I'm working with right now is overwhelm. And so what if the ghosting actually isn't intentional? What if it fell off my radar and I thought I sent it like I literally forgot, or the whole? Yeah, it's a breakdown and I didn't do it and you're right, and I'm here to take accountability. So I think there's a couple of things. So one, the concept of overwhelm and how that impacts our stories that people have ghosted us, and then the other tangent that we'll talk about is what happens when somebody becomes, like, aware of their missed commitment and takes accountability. So first, overwhelm, and let's dig into overwhelm and ghosting or missing commitments.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, there's, of course, two sides to that. There is the not completing or not finishing the commitment that I make. So, in effect, from the person who has asked me to do something and I've committed to doing it, from that person's perspective I've disappeared. I didn't do it, and so there's not only the missing product but also the missing connection there that I'm losing trust. But if I turn it around and say, okay, I turned it into you, trust. But if I turn it around and say, okay, I turned it into you, I don't hear anything. That also creates a situation where I don't know if I'm still, if something is still outstanding. Maybe you're waiting for something else that I haven't completed, and that adds to the overwhelm that people feel. Is this actually done? Have I done it? It says, you know, are we complete? I don't know. So there's that little nagging. It takes up brain space, it takes up a little bit of brain cell activity in the background a little bit of brain cell activity in the background, along with all the other things.
Speaker 2:I spoke to a leader recently I was working with a larger team, but this was a one on one conversation during our break and we talked about especially when people are in overwhelm, how the clarity, the transparency, the reliability you know Brene Brown's clear is kind and clear is unkind is really, really important. Otherwise we're leaving people spinning mentally, physically, emotionally every elite that you could possibly think of. And why would we do that? Because it's taking that energy that they could be focused to something else. And so the you know, the ghosting, whichever end it happened on, is contributing to these lovely humans. Should I have done this? Or why haven't they followed up? What's wrong with me? Was I not cleared? Am I missing something?
Speaker 1:and even as I say this, like my whole body is like oh yeah, uh-huh well, and then on top of that and this is where the ghosting often uh is has a strong Trust impact is when I do the work, I turn in, you know, I complete it and let the person know, or go to let the person know that it's complete and oh, they're on vacation, or you know, they're somewhere else, they're out of town. They can't use what I've just busted my butt to produce by this particular completion time and date, and they can't even use it for three, four days, five days a week, two weeks. Wait what? There's another kind of form of ghosting and that really damages trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because can you imagine I'm under pressure, I'm meeting this deadline, I send this work to you and find out that you're on vacation and I could have had another 24 hours, 48 hours, seven days working on it and not, you know, know, burning the midnight oil. Um, there's two things that are coming out of here, and I want to give a huge shout out to someone that supports my business kelty. Do you know what she does that I love already in her signature line?
Speaker 2:right now she has dates that she's not going to be available that are weeks away, and so I already know, plan my work accordingly. Don't expect her there and I just, kelty, I love that you do that. I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant. You're really helping the people that you do that. I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant You're really helping the people that you provide a service for manage what they need from you. So one point.
Speaker 2:The other point we haven't talked about with this whole ghosting thing is so, let's say, you and I have talked about potential work together, so I'm a potential client, have talked about potential work together, so I'm a potential client, you're the provider. We have all these conversations and I don't respond. After we've had conversations, the proposal is spent, sent. Now I'm pretending to be you, but I would be making up a story if I were you that I don't care, that it's no longer important or valuable, and so the same can be said in an organization. A leader has asked for work, we've delivered. There's no closing the cycle of a commitment, and I can imagine that happening once, twice, a few times and pretty soon. I absolutely believe that my leader doesn't care, doesn't value my work, doesn't value my contribution, which is devastating my work doesn't value my contribution, which is devastating, Devastating or at the very least damages trust and pisses me off.
Speaker 1:I worked in organizations for quite a long time early in my career, my work life, and that did happen sometimes, and that's exactly my response was hey, this person doesn't really care, and or they didn't like it and didn't want to tell me, which is also a form of not caring, not giving me the kind of feedback I needed to get better at. Whatever it was, those are the stories that I'd make up. Who knows what the actual story was. Sometimes I'd find out, sometimes not. In any case, it damaged my trust in the leader or the peer, whoever it was, that that person was not getting back to me and saying, hey, thank you, or whatever it was to close the cycle. Yeah, that has a not good effect.
Speaker 2:And I want to normalize that again. We're all human. I want to normalize that again. We're all human. So this is also about oh my gosh, charles, I forgot to get back to you. You did send me that piece of work. I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Here's my feedback, or thank you for getting that done. I'm going to be taking a look at it next week. So there's the accountability part of an unintentional ghosting or an unintentional delay, where we take accountability for the damage, potential damage it's done to the relationship, and also honoring that the person has put you know, care and attention and work into whatever this this was. So I again want to normalize we're all going to do it at some point and so it's. It's not a thou shalt never be aware of what's happening when you do. And then how do we take care of the relationship if we have and that and I think you had a story that a ghosting- story.
Speaker 1:So I had asked someone to do some things that was to our mutual benefit. Well, she had asked me to do something that was to our mutual benefit and I asked for something from her that would help me do what this was and didn't hear from her for about three weeks, and so I you know, kind of I my assumption was that she was not going to get back to me and that this was just gonna go away, whatever it was, uh, and then after about three weeks, I got an email from her saying I'm so sorry, it fell off my radar. There's some other things that were going on here. It is really appreciate you taking this forward, and so, in that case, yeah, I felt okay, she's taking accountability, she's getting back to me, she's getting me what I need.
Speaker 1:Even though it's late, it's not the end of the world. I can make it work. I can continue to trust this person going forward. If there's any need for us to interact or desire for us to interact going forward, that's good. Thank you. So, yeah, very much appreciated how she took care of the situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's again. Life happens to all of us. You know from I spilled coffee all over my computer and haven't had email for a week, or you know. Hopefully that doesn't happen, I'm not. Please don't let that happen. I'm not, please don't let that happen.
Speaker 1:I just had no email for a week for a different reason. That was not coffee and was not my problem, it was someone else's and anyway I was not happy about that.
Speaker 2:Not happy, I you know. So again, normalizing that life does happen. And also I think that there's sometimes things that get in the way that cause maybe the ghosting to happen in the first place. So you know, I'm thinking of proposals that I've sent out and I don't hear back, and and it's often that they don't know how to say you know, we've changed our minds, we've lost the budget or you're not a fit Like this isn't really what we're looking for, and and again, it takes a little bit of courage to say those things, but it also actually builds trust.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's okay. Right, I'm open to the decline. You're not declining me as a person. You're declining this particular opportunity to work together and that's okay. Yeah, because I know you're very similar. We want our clients to make the best decisions for them, whether that's us or someone else. And then I think even in the workplace, right where there has been an unintentional ghosting, it may be that the leader or the peer or the project manager whoever isn't clear on how to say this isn't actually quite what I wanted. Or I feel disappointed, and maybe it's also a self-reflection that, oh, in seeing the report or the results of the work, I see now how my request wasn't clear. So now I need to take accountability because I didn't get what I wanted, because I wasn't clear in my ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that doesn't happen as often as one might like that they take, you know, responsibility for their side of it and say, whoo boy, my request wasn't all that clear, but you know kudos if they do, because that does also build trust when you can go back and say, hey, I get it. I didn't give you a very clear request here. It was about as clear as mud. Let me try again. Let me try again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is actually not on you, it's on me. Let me try again. Let me try again. Yeah, and this is actually not on you, it's on me. Let me take accountability for this. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:What I, of course, do see is sometimes with my coaching clients that you know, when I ask them to just tell me, well, but tell me your request exactly how you made it, and I listen and I help them work on it, and they go wow, that's Typically what they are doing first, before they get there is blaming the other person for not doing what they asked them to do and being annoyed and upset, and so they distrust the other person for being incompetent or unreliable or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:They distrust them. I also want to point to another area where ghosting has a profound effect on trust that people don't generally think about that much, but I know you have, and that is when I go and apply for a job somewhere, for a job somewhere. If I'm a job seeker and I go and companies said fill out an application or do it online or Glassdoor or whatever other platform you're using, and I do that, I put my best foot forward. I really try and think, you know, think about it and come up with, you know, something that's that directly addresses what I think are the concerns of the company I'm applying for and I never hear from them again. Or I do hear from them again and I get to the first interview and I think it's a pretty good interview and I never hear from them again.
Speaker 2:Or even if I get to the second interview and I'm really thinking you know, things are good, likely that I might get this job and I never hear from them again, or they actually say we're really interested in you, we're going to be back to you next week, you know, expect we want you to meet with, know so and so, or we're going to put a draft offer in front of you and you never hear from them again. This one, I really have to bite my tongue and temper because this is probably one of the things that would like. I'm deeply passionate about. It's really really, really unkind and I've put my heart and I live. You know that I lived in the world of recruitment for 20 years. So when someone has put time, effort, energy, gotten really excited about applying for a job with XYZ company, the chances again with applicant tracking systems nowadays and actually getting through to you know, a prescreen or a recruiter, is like oh yay, the excitement builds and then, at whatever stage, to be completely ghosted and not know why.
Speaker 2:I know I've been on the receiving end of that. You've probably been on the receiving end of that. You've probably been on the receiving end of that. And my experience is we most often make it something that we have done wrong or that we weren't enough. And again, human to human, that is a horrible way to leave someone. And again, human to human. That is a horrible way to leave someone. When maybe it was again, we lost funding, we found an internal candidate. We had to take the posting down, you were fantastic. And we hired someone else, like whatever the story is to leave them with, I have no idea. Yeah, this is me tempering this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can tell Because I could go like, and it also has an impact, pretty profound impact, on trust of that company, because now I'm looking, I distrust the recruiter or the recruiting process or someone's there at that company and therefore basically the entire company, which a lot of companies don't care, but they actually may be creating distrust in someone who somewhere down the road they really would like to hire, somewhere down the road they really would like to hire. Or maybe that person gets hired by a competitor or even potentially a vendor who now really distrusts that company and is not going to be disposed to treat them well, to trust them, to work with them going forward. So I remember, you know, working, of course, in Silicon Valley the saying goes.
Speaker 1:You know, build strong relationships, build trust, because you never know if that person might not be your boss. Six months from now, the person you did not honor as a human being and get back to them may be back and you may be reporting to them. And it happened a lot, you know, in Silicon Valley throughout the 80s and 90s and probably even now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It can happen so easily, so unintentionally, I think, sometimes even our systems and processes and procedures systems and processes and procedures no one is looking at. Is this helping us build trust and transparency and relationships through this process, or are we unintentionally causing harm or distrust or ghosting people? And I think that, again, that can happen in a lot of different processes, not just recruiting. So what do you think? What comes to mind as far as how do we reduce or be more intentional about not ghosting or being more aware when there is ghosting or some variation?
Speaker 1:in there, yeah, variation in there, yeah, I think. Well, as I say, in all aspects of trust building or even maintaining trust, it takes the intention to do that in a way, that's you know, to act in ways that are trustworthy to other people. The other people see you as trustworthy, but once you've made the intent, or you've declared the intent, to do that, then it's a matter of really being aware, of paying attention to your behaviors and actions. And so if I want to, if I care enough that I'm not going to be ghosting people, then I can track and be aware of my behaviors and notice when I'm behaving in a way that's I'm ghosting people, basically. So I don't want to do that. So now I just got to watch my step here, watch what I say.
Speaker 2:I had.
Speaker 1:A while ago I had a it didn't get to a proposal stage, but I had a great conversation with a potentially client.
Speaker 1:I thought it was a really good conversation. I thought it was a good meeting of the minds and they said okay, this is great, you need to have a couple of conversations In turn. I'll get back to you by the first part next week. This took place on like a Thursday or something, so I'm thinking Monday, tuesday, maybe Wednesday at the latest, a Thursday or something. So I'm thinking Monday, tuesday, maybe Wednesday at the latest.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, I had another potential client ask me about dates and that one worked very quickly into a here's a date we'd like to have you. Here's a date, Can you make it? It was in the same date that this other client had asked for, and so I thought, okay, what am I going to do here? I haven't heard back from them. So I emailed and I said hey, what's going on? I was curious if you wanted to go forward. I wasn't sure and got a pretty quick response of hey, sorry, I didn't realize that we sent you a signal that we might not want to work with you. We really do, and so I sent back an email saying, well, great, let me know what's the next step, because I had a potential client. That client actually did end up moving dates. So it would have worked out. But I said, you know, let's move forward with this, and never heard from him again, and I don't know what happened on the other end.
Speaker 1:But it seems to me that there was likely an awareness that not responding to my email that last one saying let's go to the next step was ghosting me. They had to have known that. And so that's where you, if you want to be worthy of other people's trust, you pay attention to those things Say okay, even though maybe things have changed here, maybe we're not going to, maybe the budget has gone away, maybe my CEO said you know, no, we're going to change the whole focus of the workshop and we don't want to include that in it or whatever it was. Let me know, just like the VP in the company saying, you know, going back to someone who's done all this work in preparation for something they were asked to do and then it's been a change of plan. We're not going down that route any longer.
Speaker 1:Let them know. Yeah, let them know. Sorry, we're not going to go that direction. I know you did a lot of work. Thank you for doing it. I'm sorry that it took the time it did, and now we're going to have to do a little fast, turn on our heels here and go in a different direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I really need your help with that. I hope that you can still commit to doing this with me. Yeah, and I really need your help with that. I hope that you can.
Speaker 1:You can still commit to doing this with me, right Right, as opposed to simply going we're not going to do that here, we got to do this. Change your plans.
Speaker 2:We're going to do this now. So, and so many of these conversations we have, or examples that we share, it really comes down to just being a tiny bit more intentional, a tiny bit more aware, even if it's just, you know, one or two, or 4%, about our own communication, our clear requests. How are we being transparent, how are we being reliable? Our sincerity, you know all those four quadrants of trust. You know just that little thing.
Speaker 1:Just that little thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, little thing, absolutely Just that little thing. Yes, well, from our hearts to all of yours, our lovely listeners, because now it's bumping into Valentine's Day, not Halloween. Yeah, that's right, I know.
Speaker 1:We're coming up on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can we reduce the amount of intentional and unintentional ghosting? And come from a place of love and care.
Speaker 1:Yes, and unintentional ghosting and come from a place of love and care. Yes, yeah, let's reduce the heartache of ghosting people or being ghosted out there and rather care demonstrate care yeah. Thank you, Thank you Willa, and thank you listeners.
