High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 57: Developing the Trust Edge with Speaker, Trainer and Best-Selling Author, David Horsager

Episode Date: July 7, 2016

In this interview, David Horsager, the world-leading expert on trust, talks about how a lack of trust is your biggest expense. He describes his 8-pillar framework (clarity, compassion, character, competency, commitment, connection, contribution and consistency). Developing trust takes time - there is no quick fix. The best think about trust bigger and take responsibility for developing trust. He describes his “90 day quick plan” and the importance of asking “How?” “How?” “How?” when thinking about trust. Towards the end of the interview, he describes that we cannot provide anything of long-term value without sources of strength and provide several examples in his own personal life.   You can find more about David’s work including his certifications atwww.trustedge.com or learn more about his speaking athttp://www.davidhorsager.com/.  Buy his products including his best-selling books The Daily Edge and The Trust Edge here: http://www.davidhorsager.com/store/

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff. And today I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to an interview with David Horsager. I've been trying to get David on the podcast for quite some time now, maybe six months to a year. So I'm really excited that we are able to get together and connect about

trust. Now, David is a world-leading expert on the topic of trust. He has two best-selling books, The Trust Edge and The Daily Edge. And I know David for a few reasons. We're both involved in our local chapter, our Minnesota chapter of the National Speakers Association. And I've heard David speak four or five times now. And he's one of the best speakers I've ever heard. Now, the second reason that we know each other is we were both involved in a football team and still involved in that team where David actually helped the team develop a culture of trust, and I did the mental training with the team. It's a Division III team called Gustavus Adolphus College, and the impact of both mental training and the trust edge has been pretty outstanding. A few years ago, Gustavus Adolphus, their record was 3-7, and last year they were 7-3.

So I want to give a shout out to Coach Haugen and anyone else who's listening over from Gustavus Adolphus. So within this interview, David talks about how a lack of trust is your biggest expense. He really talks about why developing trust is essential, not only in sport, but in business, in your family, and in your relationships. Now, he discusses his eight-pillar framework, which you can find on the podcast notes, the show notes at cindracampoff.com slash trustedge. And you can also find those, the eight-pillar framework within his books, The Trust Edge and The Daily Edge.

Now, he talks about how developing trust takes time. There's no quick fix, but the best think about trust bigger, and they take responsibility for developing trust. Now, he also describes what he calls his 90-day quick plan for developing trust and the importance of really asking the big question of how. But he encourages us not just to ask the question of how once, but many times. And you'll hear a discussion about how and why that's important in this interview. So I am so grateful that you're here, ready to listen to an interview with David. Again, you can find out how to connect with David on the show notes page. You

can go to cindracampoff.com slash trustedge. And you can also find David at trustedge.com. Now, if you liked this interview, I'd love for you to share with your friends. David has a lot of incredible resources about developing trust. Again, world leading expert. You'll hear in this interview how he was just in Kenya advising the Kenyan government. And I'd also encourage you to head over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and leave us a review that helps us reach more and more people like you who are working to reach their greater potential. So without further ado, let's bring on David Horsager. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host,

Cyndra Kampoff, and I'm excited today to bring you an interview with David Horsager. I have been working to get him on the podcast for some time now, and David, I'm just so excited that you're here, ready to tell us more about trust and why we should be more trusted. Yeah, thank you. It's great to be here. So, David, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now. Well, all we do is develop trusted leaders and organizations. So, the institute is Trusted Leadership Institute. I speak a hundred or so times a year on the concept of developing trusted leaders and organizations, exactly how you do it in governments, brands, you know, all that.

But we research. We have our new national trust that he comes out in August, probably the marquee study around trust, at least in business and leadership in North America. And we have so research, speak, train or, and also a consulting coaching piece using the Organizational Trust Index. Awesome. And David, tell us a little bit about how you got into this. What's your background and why did you start studying trust? It's quite a story. But basically, I went on to college, went down to Arkansas, Missouri area, then became

director of a youth and family organization, started developing leadership orientation type stuff and, you know, speaking of places like the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and things like that. And it was early 2000 that I started my first company in 1999, moved back to Minnesota. Lisa and I living in a musty basement apartment with a dollar 40 to our name, black mold on the walls, no bathroom, no kitchen. And we started with nothing. And it's everything we we had we you know we started with so um but i would remember had been working with companies different organizations for a few years

being asked to speak at some things i started really largely speaking and working with big youth and family organizations because of my past experience. And basically, that led to me starting to think differently about trust. And that led to my graduate work being all around trust. I can still remember thinking the problem they think they're having is not a trust problem. It's not that problem. It's a trust problem. And so I ended up leading to my graduate work. And then that fueled my passion. And then we started to use the trust work in organizations. And that fueled my passion because we saw significant results. We've seen, you know, everything from people triple sales. I can

tell my own story, losing 50 pounds in five and a half months. We've seen an organization, you know, now we're working with global governance. know two weeks ago I was in Kenya and now on six continents we that led to me doing some things in my own life and that drove the passion now I'm just passionate about this work and started with my graduate

research you know organizational leadership and led to this trust work and led to now working with the biggest marquee brands in the world, I guess, in spite of myself. I love just seeing how your career has developed. I've heard you speak, I think, four times now. And every time, David, I think you're one of the best public speakers I've heard ever. So I just want to tell you that. So tell us what you think the best of the best do differently in terms of trust. Well, first of all, they have to shift thinking around trust.

And second of all, they think differently about how to build it. They think bigger about how to build it. So first, shift thinking. So a lot of times we think, I know it all about trust, right? I'll ask an audience, do you think it takes a long time to build trust? Everybody raise their hand. Yeah, a long time. Well, on a moment, 9-11, crisis, complete strangers trust each other just in one moment.

So sometimes it can be built quickly. In fact, a lot of trust is built in the first 10 seconds with someone or not. You could say, well, if I extend more trust to my team, I'll get more out of them, right? Well, that's true until you extend too much often. People can say arrogance is trusted. I mean, excuse me, confidence is trusted, but arrogance isn't. That's sometimes over the last three weeks. You can say, today there's this big push toward transparency.

You've got to be more transparent. You've got to be more transparent. And yet confidentiality is also trusted. So you see people being too transparent, oh, it thinks they ought not. So they shift thinking, and they actually see the bottom line impact. And my argument in the first half of the research was a lack of trust is your biggest expense. That was the time. The biggest cost people have is a lack of trust.

It's not money. It's not this. It's not that. You know, you think trust doesn't affect the bottom line? Ask Volkswagen. Ask Tiger Woods. One breach of trust, you know, or 25 breaches of trust. He lost $110 million in endorsements in two weeks.

Your credit score is a trust score. Governments, countries where citizens trust each other more, they have lower poverty. Everything is tied to trust. Time goes up. You think, oh, I don't trust you, so I'm going to put a lock on something. What is the cost? The cost is time. The cost is the cost of the lock, but now I've got to open the lock.

There's always a cost in innovation. So they think about trust differently. And secondly, they understand that building it takes more than what people think. So it's not just honesty and integrity. I might trust Sindra to take my kids to the ballgame because of her character, right? But I may not trust you, Sindra, to give me a root canal because of her character, right? But I may not trust you, Sandra, to give me a root canal because of your competency. So they look at these eight, what we call the eight-pillar framework that came out of the research. They look at how to build it more comprehensively.

Excellent. And what do you see the barriers of trust? Like, what do you think gets in our way of really being trusted and trusting others? You know what? In the book, I talk about 12 things. There's actually more, but some of the most common ones are past experience, fear. You'll see different interests. The board might say, we want to build this company for the long term. And the owners might say, we want to build it to sell it. And so they have different interests, conflict of interest. There's a lot of things, diverse thinking. It makes trusting one another challenging, you know, things that have happened to you. So there's a lot of things, but a lot of times it comes down to fear or not understanding. So people that fear technology largely because they don't understand how could I, I don't understand how this iPhone or whatever it is even works.

So I have a fear of it. So I might not trust different things. You know, there's several things I tell one of the biggest global studies, the Putnam study out of Harvard, found that people that are more diverse backgrounds trust each other 50 percent less. Well, we know there's benefits to diversity, right? There's benefits in thinking, there's benefits in innovation, creativity. So we don't want to lose all those benefits, but it does mean something as far as trust is concerned, that we better be aligned on something. We have to find some commonality if we're going to build trust so that it's not bad or good. It's simply a barrier that in fact is worth overcoming. And what would you suggest for people who know that maybe fear is their barrier to trust other people or trust brands or trust anything?

Well, first of all, I was at something recently. In fact, it was just last week and someone said, why should I let this fear go? And to that question in that specific time, I said, I wrote down on the sheet, I shouldn't because some fear is very healthy. Fear can motivate, it can get you to run the marathon as fast as you do. It can get us to live healthier, it can give us get us to do a lot of good things. So first of all, this idea that all fear is bad, I just like all stress is bad, of course, is not true. Good. There's good stress, and there's good fear. But I think Iusing and thinking about it because a lot of fear is bad.

A lot of fear is unhealthy. And so, you know, I would pause and think. So as far as trust is concerned, one of the fears is how much can I trust you? And we know generally if we extend more trust, we'll get more out of our team. So I want people to pause and think, really, what's the worst that could happen? Because it really usually isn't that bad. I mean, on the farm growing up, I ran into our car with a tractor in front of my mom and dad one time and I think I learned a lot.

Now, my dad lost a car that day, but he had this ability to extend so much trust and today he would say in front of you, he would say, my kids cost me tens of thousands of dollars. They made, especially that boy, David. I mean, he costs so much because he had this ability to extend so much trust, but he would say right after that, but I made hundreds of thousands in a motivated workforce. And those 17 grandchildren love to come back to the farm because this ability to extend trust, he got the most out of us, I think. So partly it's how we think about fear and really kind of divide it into fear that's inhibiting and unreal

and fear that's helpful in dividing those in your mind. Yeah, that's a really good tip. What would you suggest for people, if you could give people one signature technique that you usually use take this step, then take this. In this case, for instance, people trust the clear and they mistrust or distrust the ambiguous. So that's one. But they also trust those that are high character so you could be high character but unclear and not be trusted for something you could be have high character and compassion that has to do with intent i trust you if you have intent beyond yourself so if i i believe you actually

care about me and not just the sale then i might trust you right but you just have compassion and you have character and you don't have competency for it, then I won't trust you to give me the surgery. If you just have the competency, but you don't have character or compassion. So in one way, I want them to really think a little more comprehensively. And I want to say, okay, people that want to just a tip to build trust in a second, like a motivational speaker, it's like, this is work and it's worth it. And it's the only uniqueness of the greatest, it's the uniqueness of the greatest leaders and organizations of all time. But it's worth it. And it's the only uniqueness of the greatest, the uniqueness of the greatest leaders and organizations of all time. But it's not this moment. Well, a lot of trust is built in a moment.

It's also something you have to think big enough and care enough about really being trustworthy. So one thing is I'll ask an audience, is it better to be trusted or trustworthy? And some people will shout out, oh, trusted. Well, I would argue trustworthy because the most deceptive person is the one who looks trusted, but isn't in fact trustworthy. And that's deception at the core. And that's, you know, we can manipulate by doing little things. So let's throw that out the window as we think about it. I'll give one tip that makes a huge difference tomorrow under one of the pillars because some things you can build very quickly. This tip changed my life. So in the second book, The Daily Edge, I give the

idea the way I lost 50 pounds in five and a half months. I give the way that people have tripled sales in 90 days. But it comes down to there's six questions in the 90-day quick plan. And I have an argument in there of why 90 days is the best time frame for change. 21 days is a bogus idea that basically cheesy motivational speakers twisted out of the psychosabernetics work in the 1950s and 60s. And there are things you can be addicted to or change habits in 21 days, like crack cocaine you can be addicted to in 21 days. But most real change, that's too short. A year is too long.

You know it. Two to four percent, what, University of Clinical Psychology, Scranton, maybe 8% of people keep their New Year's resolutions. A year is so long. But 90 days is different. But one idea under that one is the last three questions of the 90-day quick plan. And I'm telling you, wherever we go, companies and individuals do not ask those last three questions. And they get to the real

questions of clarity. You got to answer to the first three. You can look those up or ask for them. And I'm happy to give them to you. Go to the Trust Edge. We'll give them to you free, trustedge.com. But for me, those last three are the difference makers. The fourth question is, how are we going to get there? Once you've decided where you're going and all that kind of stuff, how am I going to get there? The fifth question is, how am I going to get there? And the sixth and final question is, how am I going to get there? And what do we see all the time? People say, oh, that's funny, ha, ha, ha.

No. You might have to ask seven times. But we don't trust people until they ask how, until they'll do something differently today or tomorrow. And we force people to ask how. And you see all these meetings, all these companies. I want to have a better culture. How are you going to do that? I'm going to say nice things.

How are you going to do that? I'm going to appreciate people more. How are you going to do that? Until your how gets so clear. I give the example of my weight loss. I came up with 15 ideas. I asked how until I could do something differently today or tomorrow. And it was that clear. One of them was I'm not going to drink a calorie. That's so specific and so clear. I can look at it. Oh, no calories in that. I can drink it. So the how you're not going to change an organization or a person until you're so clear. I can look at it. Oh, no calories in that. I can drink it. So the how, you're not going to change an organization or a person until you're that clear. And that goes under the pillar of clarity. One other quick organizational example is one of

the biggest healthcare organizations in North America. There we are, big company. They're losing HCAP funding. They're losing patients. I say, get every table together and they're going to solve the problem. They come up with one idea they're going to do to start to build trust. The key table, top leaders, leader stands up and says, we're going to be more clear. I say, how? He sits down and talks to his team. When he's ready, he says, we're going to communicate more. How? He sits down, talks to his team, answers, we're going to hold each other accountable. Look, I know what that means. I'm not going to do a darn thing. I'm going to blame everybody else. I said, how? And finally, they got to something they're going to do today or tomorrow. How, how, how, how, how? That is the real word of clarity. And you might

argue why is important. And it is. It's one of the other three words but the why is the motivation people want to just spend time on the why and the truth is there's no hope without the how if i don't have a way forward if i don't have clarity on the how i'm not going to do anything differently it's like someone saying well i really want to get healthy i've got all these reasons to be healthy but i don't have a way that I think I can do it if I don't have if I don't know in the morning at 5 30 I'm either going to the gym or running two choices I'm not going to do either so I've got to actually I've got to be that clear on how I'm going to get to that end to really gain momentum yeah I could see David that a lot of people might

say just have really vague vague answers on how they're going to build trust. But really what you're saying is that you have to be clear on how you're going to build it. Consider the eight pillars, not just one pillar, and it's not this quick fix. You really have to think through how, how, how, how, how. You know, and one of the, I think the first way that we met each other was actually through a football team that we both work with. They developed and used your Trust Edge and now the Daily Edge this last year. I can see a big change in their culture just in general. What would you say to coaches, athletes who are listening about the importance of building trust and what do you see the you know, the top athletes do that are, that are, how do they,

how do they build trust differently? Well, first to the point of that football team, and you were a part of that kind of turnaround and saw change happen. And we all got to be a little part of it. And that was fun. The coach called me and said, this made the hugest difference. And I'll tell you the two projects, the two pieces of our work that they especially use. One of them was a trust shield and that's a way of really connecting with each other on your team and being vulnerable and really building team. Okay. That will throw out. The other one is they use the 90 day quick plan and they off season use it every 90 days. But during the week, as you know, they use it every week. They do it as a seven day quick plan. Where are we right now after the loss or win? Where do we want to be in the next seven days? Why? Get strong enough. Why? And how are we going to get there? And every position group does it,

and they get absolutely clear about what they are going to do differently to move the organization forward or the team forward in this way. And really fun to see in what two, in this, in a way, and really fun to see you in, in, in what, two years, it was three and seven to seven and three, or eight and two, even or something. So fun to see that. So that's one thing. I think there's many things I could say around individuals or top athletes, but they see two things. They see how to build trust with others. So they understand it's on me. It's not, I wish they were here. I wish that person would build trust. I wish them, them, them. It is, I can do something even if they're likable or not, even if they're easy to work with or not. I take the onus and responsibility on myself. That's the top performers. And they seek to build trust even with difficult people. The other side is they trust themselves enough.

And so I could say it this way. They trust themselves enough, but not too much. Okay. There's ego. You know, this is a big problem for athletes is it's all about them. And then you'll see people trust themselves too much to do it all in a particular, if you're part of a team sport, only thinking of themselves, but they have a realistic view of trust of what they can do,

what they can bring to this team. And they trust themselves enough to do it. Hey, I want to be on the field when we could lose everything. I want to be the kicker. I want to be the guy I'm I trust myself. I've worked at it. I've done it. And they put themselves there. But they also are realistic and not high ego about it. They know there's value in others and they trust them also. And let me say one other thing right here.

Some people see all my work around trust and they think, oh, that means you think you think you should trust everyone. No, absolutely not. There's people you should not trust. There's organizations you should or you should trust them for what they are. If someone's late all the time, I'm going to trust them to be late. Right. So we trust people for who they are. So but we can do something. My team can do something.

I can do something to be more trusted and gain this trust edge we talk about. Yeah, I like your distinction of athletes. And you're right that they need some ego to be able to perform to their best, but yet they have to trust each other. And I like what you're saying about how the best really build trust, they take responsibility. Yeah, you know, David, one of the things that you just mentioned, I think, in your 90-day quick plan was the importance of why. You know, what I'd love to know is, like, why do you do this work? What's your why and what really fuels you? Well, I love this work. I'm passionate about it, and anybody who sees me on stage, it's very authentic.

I'm not a runaround, whatever, but I am passionate about trust i i mean i genuinely do believe it is the uniqueness of the greatest leaders organizations pro sports teams governments i i don't know if it's because i saw the research what i've experienced now we've seen people you know we actually unlike kind of some speaker companies or trainer companies we uh really measure. So we see results of that organization went from there to there. A huge global organization we just saw it have for the first time in I think 20 years have an uptick in their engagement score of 400 basis points. We just saw one person go through a 90-day coaching process and attribute 4.2 million in sales to that 90-day process, which is a little unlike other coaching.

They get a call every single day from us for 90 days. So it's unique in that every single day there's a call and connection. But I've seen it, and so I love the changes that it makes. I love the shift it makes. I love the opportunities. I mean, I've enjoyed, like you said last week, speaking to a country and working with parliament and working with the president of a country and these kind of things. That's an interesting thing because I learn and grow and all that kind of stuff. But I think that what fuels me is I'm really passionate about the work.

There's a few other kind other people, speakers about trust. I was one of the first to really tie it to the bottom line impact and certainly come up with a way of thinking how to build it. There'd been work about what destroys trust, but not much on what builds it. Really, my biggest competitor in this arena had a ghostwriter write his book. People people say all the time i can see your authentic passion whenever we hear this person do their work it's like you know so i it's just genuine to to what i see and it goes back even to my roots i talk a lot about the farm and how i learned more growing up on the farm than all the research combined but there's some there's some truth to that and um so i'm passionate about the difference it makes. Of course, I'm passionate about being home with my kids. So sometimes there's a tension of building trust at

home. And I mean, I have a great marriage, great kids. But with as much as I travel, this balance of doing this passion of raising great kids, being a great dad, volunteer with all the work at Trusted Leadership Institute that we get called to do. Yeah, it's not easy, David. No, it's not easy, is it, David? No, it's not easy. Well, tell us one or two things that you do every day to make sure that you're trusted. Because, you know, I know you've got to be a role model for this. And I can hear your passion.

I see your passion every time I hear you speak. So what do you do? Well, I'll get intimate for a little bit about a couple things. Because I think it's really critical. I've sat by so many leaders at the top of their game and they're alone. And I see people get to the top, whether it's athletes or I can tell you with one of the pro baseball teams we work with. I was sitting in the president and COO's booth with him in the top of his box here watching a game at their beautiful stadium. And his suite, totally anybody could be there, 20 spots, all the food you could handle, whatever,

nobody else, just him alone by the phone. And I'm just thinking with myself as we're talking, this guy's at the top of his game, president of a respected pro baseball team in this great country, United States, and he is alone. And talking to him about his life and everything. And so I think it's really critical whether you you're a pro athlete, president of organization, or a speaker on the platform, and I see this happen all the time with speakers, they're not grounded, and they've lost their way, and their life has become about them for a time, and pretty soon it's nothing. And so a couple takeaways, maybe, I'll just, I could jump on a lot of them, but for me, there's some clear things I do.

I have an accountability group, four guys. We meet every year for five days. And this started 20 some years ago, 22 years ago. We meet every year and we go through each of us a series of about 50 questions. We each share for three to four hours each and talk through how can I be a better husband? How can I be a better leader? How can I serve my family better? And it's very authentic. And you can't believe the change in some of us, all of us really. We're better husbands. We're better leaders. But we have

each other's back. We care about each other. They've gotten on me. Hey, I think you're flying out too much, your family. Or I think this too much. Or I think, and what are you thinking about that? And there's this grounding in this close brotherhood of friends I think the same of staying very connected to family and I'll give one idea but oh by the way in the accountability piece not just that five days and one of those guys I meet with every single week and then I'm home then I'm in town but I call him I talk to him three or four times a week if we're not if I'm home, that I'm in town. But I call him, I talk to him three or four times a week if we're not, if I'm not home. And I get asked three questions every week.

How are you doing leading yourself well? How are you doing, and that goes around a lot of different things, how are you doing leading your family well? And we're talking about servant leadership. And how are you doing leading your company well? And we're talking about servant leadership. And how are you doing leading your company well? How are you serving them? And I get asked that and have to authentically, well, this week, I didn't discourage as much as I this week. And a lot of these solopreneurs, especially, and I've got a team, thankfully, but I mean, I used to be one basically or two. And

I really think whether you're an athlete or not, you know, things come and go. But friendships and grounding, and for me, in faith and family and friends is really critical. On the family side, I'll give one idea. So staying connected to my family while I'm traveling, whether, you know, this is similar for pro athletes too, but there's some things I do consistently. I just had a date night with my wife last night. I'm in Minnesota now. There's a lot of things we're doing. I bring each of the kids with at least once a year separately, and we take the whole family on certain trips. So not in Africa two weeks ago, but five months ago, I took the

whole family to Africa when I went and spoke at Africa Management University and stuff. So a couple times a year, I fly everybody. At least once a year, I fly each of them individually. And then Lisa and I always, my wife and I fly a few times. And usually in February, I tie it into some nice spot, like, you know, whatever it was this year, Cayman Islands or something. So I'm intentional about bringing them into our world. But one thing I do and have done for several years now is every day I'm on the road,

I create a one, two minute video. Used to be, we used to use iJot. Now we just use our phone, you know, to do it. But where you'd video yourself and I video some teaching, some encouragement, something about where I am, but something about, hey, do one of those you'd like them to do and do blah, blah, blah, you know, but not cheesy, but some little encouragement to them. So every day at breakfast, they get up and they know. And Lisa shows them this video from dad encouraging them, challenging them. And I, of course, call them and talk to them and stuff. But every morning they know wherever I am.

If I went to bed at 4 in the morning in Seattle because of the flight, I left them a minute of video they watch at breakfast before they go to school. So it's one way. There's some other things. I know a little different idea that I talk about, and it's in the new book, but it's very personal, too, is this idea about seeds. You know, I grew up on the farm and we think healthy things grow and sick things die. Healthy corn grows, corn dies. Healthy organizations grow, sick ones die. Healthy churches grow, sick ones become divided, you know. So we think, you know, before you can do any big goal, you've got to water your seeds, cultivate your seeds first. So Lisa, that should attribute most of this to, but S-E-E-D-S. S stands for sleep. Turns out we need it, right? People think, oh, I don't sleep at all. I'm so tough.

I only get three hours a night. You need sleep, not just weight-wise, health-wise, mentally, everything else. First E is exercise, move. And, you know, obviously you're an example in this field, but I talk about just how can I move more? Walking treadmill desk, I do like to work out, but there's ways for people to just think, I'd never get to the gym, that you could just move more. If I wasn't video being able to look at you, I would be standing. I cannot sit at my desk. I'm standing all the time, whatever. The next E is eat right. Much more important than exercise, I believe. People say to me often, oh, you started to get healthy when you started doing triathlons.

No. For five months, I ate right, had a better weight. I finally felt like doing triathlons. It was eating that was way more important, and you talk a lot about this. I make sure I'm eating at least five green vegetables a day, and then I can handle a scoop of ice cream once in a while, no problem. But that is a big deal how I eat. The D is drink water. Make sure I drink a gallon of water a day.

I'm thinking about water all the time. So the final S is source. Source of strength. And this gets to that accountability and other things. But I talk about if you don't have a source of strength beyond yourself you're gonna have a hard time doing anything long term of value faith family friendships you've got to have a source of strength beyond yourself because you know what everybody you're sometime you're not going to be ceo of that um company or that pro sports team or you're not going to be 20 years old dunking the basketball.

And if you don't have a source of strength beyond yourself, we see people tank all the time. Yeah. And I think really what you're talking about, David, is like how people get so wrapped up in their ego. And what I think you do is you're a living role model of putting service first and connecting with others, staying connected with your family and living for your family. I think the video is a great idea of just like sending your kids a video every day. For those public speakers or people who travel a lot who are listening, that would be a good tip for them. Yeah, sure. Athletes too.

Athletes too, yeah. David, let's go to the top ten traits of high performers. And so this is – actually, this is the structure of my new book coming out this fall. And David, what I'd like to hear is which of these top 10 traits do you feel like that you're really strong at mentally? Well, you know, I think people often say about me a few of these things and I'm grateful for that. But I just jumped to jumped out to me, clear purpose of my work. I feel absolutely clear in the purpose of my work, in the purpose of my life, in the purpose of the impact we make in the,

in my purposes, a dad, father, friends, you know, and leader of this organization and movement around trust. For sure. And which one of those do you, would you say you're still working on? And I ask you that because I think everyone's a work in progress, like no one's perfect, right? Every part of this, I think, you know, there's different things that jump out. And I think when you say self-compassionate, I think one thing that can happen to high performers is they can work so hard, you know, that they sometimes can lose doing some of the

important thing. And this was me. I mean, I think of and it still is me in certain areas, I think. But, you know, gaining 50 pounds when you know better, that is a sign of this piece right here, partly not caring enough about yourself to do it, do something about it. I think, you know, there's some other things there in our business where, let's just take the speaking, not the research, but I say, if you want to be critiqued for a living, if you want to be that role in life, be critiqued for a living, write a book, give a speech, or lead anything. We get critiqued every day. Every day we speak, there's evals on the table and we're going to get evaluated. And somebody's going to not like the color of your tie or whatever it is. And many of us, this is certainly me, I love feedback. I

need it. It's made me so much better. But what do we do? We look at that one thing. Everybody's the best speaker in the world ever. And we look at that one thing and we get wrapped into that. And we and that can tie a little bit to this challenge of self-compassion and more criticalness. My brother wisely says 11 years, my senior wise economist says we're more critical than we've ever been in our world without the ability to critically think. And this is to my four. And I was thinking of this Forbes article. What happens in a Forbes article? What's at the bottom? Well, critique feedback online. They put feedback and it's somebody under a rock somewhere that just says something. Nothing valuable about the article you just wrote, but something about something. And you get critiqued on whatever basis. So that's one thing.

You know, I think there's parts of all these that I can keep working on. I appreciate you just talking about that. And you know what I think is I think people who are high performers, they do have high expectations. And that's, I think, why it's maybe difficult for them to get over mistakes or to be self-compassionate. And they might even fear being critiqued. I think why it's maybe difficult for them to get over mistakes or to be self-compassionate. And they might even fear being critiqued. And that's why people don't go out and write books or speak in front of people. Sure.

So, David, besides your books, The Daily Edge and The Trust Edge, is there anything that you'd recommend us to read or anything that you'd do to stay fueled? Well, one of the things I thought of when you touched on this question before is the whole thing of people finding accountability. I think this is a game changer. I talk about, I don't know, nine ways in the book of how do you stay fresh and relevant and capable. And reading is critical. You know, I mean, I could think of many books. One comes to mind right offhand is Off Balance. I think that's an interesting book, Matt Buckelly, but there's many that would be as recommended as that one. It just happens I'm looking at the bookshelf right now, and I see that one, and it jumped out to me as a valuable piece, but it's good. But I think the thing I would recommend that I don't hear enough about is this kind of staying grounded, especially for athletes and for speakers and for leaders, and finding friends in the team, great, but outside the team that can keep you grounded.

So if you're a CEO of this company, having close friendships outside the company. If you're a COO or if you're a pro athlete, look how fast your team just moved. That one got traded. This one's over here. You better have a core group that's going to keep you grounded, and especially where so much money is involved you've got to have friends that love you and you know love and care about you outside of anything with money or prestige or anything else and you better cultivate those and that's the same with speakers i can remember a speaker coming up to me one time after i kind of mentored them or whatever and they said they went did their speech 2 000 people and they walked off stage and they said david is this it and i said yeah if you're

going to get life from the stage, you're in big trouble. If you don't just care passionately about them and giving them the message you're called to give them, you are in big trouble because if you're looking for life in the applause or standing ovation, you're done. Yeah, really, really good advice. What is a quote you have that's your own quote about trust? What's the most important thing that you want us to be thinking about as we wrap up this interview? in work, we see it in life. If I'm overweight, it's because I've had too many mocha lattes over years, not because I ate too much this morning for breakfast. If I'm a good husband, it's because I've loved and honored my wife over time, not because I gave her a dozen roses one time, not that that wouldn't help, right? But if I'm a good leader, it's not because I'm sharing the vision at the annual meeting, it's because I share the vision every 21, 30 days, because nobody knows

it unless you do it consistently. Sales, it's all built on consistency. We can get a big sale once, but those salespeople that we want are the ones that are consistent with little things, getting the consistent thing. So same with athletes. Little things done consistently make the biggest difference. Not the big, oh, I made that big run, but I didn't run again for three weeks. I did that big thing. I bench pressed that, whatever. If you're not doing the little things consistently, you cannot be trusted. And every brand is built on consistency. This is why we trust mcdonald's whether you like mcdonald's or not we trust them because i've had the same burger on six continents if i'm um you know it's the same with reputation the only way we build a reputation

is sameness consistency good or bad right just like i said before late all the time trust you'll be late but you this whatever you're consistent if you're just kind some of the time when it's people you like i don't trust you if you you just have high character when you feel like, not trust it. Little things done consistently make the biggest difference. Little things make all the difference. So if you could wrap it up for us, David, and do you have any final advice for those people who are listening? And I'm thinking those high performers. And what I mean by those people is people that are really interested in reaching their full potential, who really want to be trusted and develop trust.

Well, I think there are many things we've talked about today, but I think you've got to think about trust bigger, number one. Secondly, you've got to understand the eight pillar framework in my mind and not to be so to my work, but I believe not arrogantly but passionately you can solve every organizational and leadership challenge against the eight pillar framework. It's either a clarity issue or a compassion issue or a consistency issue or a contribution issue, but one thing I'd say about that is people think it's a communication problem. Never is it a communication problem. Communication is nothing.

Communication is always happening. Clear communication is trusted. Unclear isn't. Compassionate communication is trusted. Uncompassionate isn't. High character communication is trusted. So get to the real challenge and deal with that. And always understand a lack of trust as a high performer is your biggest expense. So you better think about what you're going to do to build it today. There's a way to build it, and focus on that. Excellent. You can get both of David's books, The Trust Edge, as well as The Daily Edge. And I know you can go to TrustEdge.com, where you're actually certifying.

Who are you certifying about what you're doing? So the best, you know, there's a lot of ways we go deeper into an organization or company, but we have, we certify people in our work. We have people certified on six continents in taking our deeper work into organizations and they can really learn specific tactics, takeaways, tips on how do I build trust? How do I deepen the eight pillar framework? How do I solve the biggest trust challenges and grow this organization or individual using the eight pillar framework? So that's, you know, you can come, you can get certified. There's a whole lot there. You can go to through Trusted University, our online course,

you can get the books, whatever else, but we're happy to help you and appreciate your work, Cinder. Great to be a part of it. I appreciate that you're here and that you're developing this podcast with us. So tell us, how can we reach out to you on social media? A lot of people, when they listen to the podcast, they'll go on Twitter or Facebook and talk about it. So what's the best way to reach out to you there? So you can find all the spots at TrustEdge.com, TrustEdge.com. Because my last name is hard to spell, we tell our kids, if you can spell it, you can be one. But it's David Horsager,

H-O-R-S-A-G-E-R. And you can find that on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and everywhere else. So if you can spell it, you'll find me because there aren't many of them out there. Excellent. David, thank you so much for your time and your energy and your passion and for giving us your gift of trust and helping us think more about it deeply. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.