Next Level Pros - #37: The Foundation of Trust: A Blueprint for High-Performing Teams

Starting point is 00:00:00 fear of conflict. You actually want conflict in a good, healthy, functioning team. And the reason why people are unwilling to conflict with you as a leader or in your team is because there is that absence of trust because people are speaking over confidently about things that they don't know and thus creating mistrust within their teams and their organizations versus if there is a good solid people are talking within their realm and then not talking as confidently about things that they don't quite know, there's going to be much more established trust in the which you are going to induce conflict within your teams. And conflict in this way is healthy, right? Yo, yo, yo, yo, what's up? Welcome to another episode of the Founder Padcast coming to you live. Not really live, but right here from Harvard Business School.

Starting point is 00:01:02 So as you guys know, I've been attending HBS for the last, I think I've been here 12 days, and it has been just an incredible experience meeting so many remarkable people, reestablishing relationships with the people that I was a part of in the first session, which took place last year in the fall of 2022. But today I want to talk about a really cool thing. So when I try to contemplate and think about my key takeaways from the week, one thing that I continue to focus on, and that is the topic of trust. So it's interesting. One thing that I've always taught my sales organizations, my different sales leaders or whatnot, is that in order for a prospective buyer to make a decision, it requires two things and two things only. One, they have to have enough information and enough means not too much,

Starting point is 00:01:59 not too little. In fact, most salespeople err on the side of too much, thus confusing the customer, a confused customer doesn't buy, or they give them too little in which they ask more questions and they give them just enough information. So that's number one. But number two is trust. And so when you think about trust, trust is required for any transaction to be able to take place, whether that's in interaction at work, within team organizations, somebody to buy a product, whatever it may be. And trust is the foundation of a successful organization. And when you think about trust, there's really two different types of trust. And let me walk you through those. Trust number, so the way to properly identify, you got to trust in

Starting point is 00:02:46 ability and trust in character. And the way to really properly identify them is ask yourself this question. One, do I trust my grandma? Or if I knew my grandma or grandpa, do I trust them? Okay. So of course the resounding answer is yes, right? I trust their character. I love grandma. She's fantastic. She is always taking care of me. She puts food on the table. Whenever I come in, she gives me cookies. She gives me hugs, kisses. She's phenomenal. She was always a woman of her word, whatever it may be, right? I trust grandma. But then the second question is, do you trust your grandma performing open heart surgery on you? And I would say that the vast majority of you guys are going to say, absolutely not. Grandma is not going to be performing open heart surgery.

Starting point is 00:03:30 And it's because this quantitative trust is different, right? Like this is a trust in ability, right? And so typically you gain trust and ability through confidence, through knowledge, through a variety of different things. And trust and character is done by, do I do what I said I was going to do? Am I a trustworthy person? Okay. And so really the goal within any organization is we want to try to establish both of those trusts because really there's nothing worse than doing a transaction with somebody that you trust their ability, but you don't trust their character. You're like,

Starting point is 00:04:10 man, I know that they can get this done for me. They're a phenomenal surgeon, but man, I just see the way that they're living their lives or whatever it may be. And so there's just this big issue. One of my favorite books and actually just pure business philosophies is one that I've called the five dysfunctions of a team. For those of you guys that haven't read that book or studied up the principles of five dysfunction of a team, I would highly recommend it. In fact, we use this over at Solgen and building my different businesses and different business courses and whatnot. I brought this up many times because the five dysfunctions of the team are really the key indicators of whether or not you have a functional team or not. And so you focus on, do these

Starting point is 00:04:55 dysfunctions exist? And if they do, you know, the opposite is what you need to focus on. And in five dysfunctions of a team, if you go ahead and give a quick Google search, you're going to see a pyramid, right? And in that pyramid, the very bottom, the foundation of this pyramid, the foundation of a functional team is, or the bottom of a dysfunctional team is the absence of trust. When we do not trust somebody, when we do not trust their character, when we do not trust their ability, we're constantly questioning, does this person even know what they're talking about? Do they do what they said they were going to do? Are they a man or woman of their word? This is what we're talking about when there's absence of trust.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And the way that you establish trust is you've got to start creating vulnerability. Vulnerability in the fact that like you don't claim to know everything that you say you do. Or, you know, you have good, meaningful conversation. You actually begin to understand where this person is coming from, how they grew up, what shaped them into the person that they are today, right? You start creating this different vulnerability. And a professor this week here at Harvard shared something that was pretty interesting. And she talked about the circle of confidence that we have as people, right? And the circle of confidence is what we confidently talk about, right? Like what we say, I know this to be true or whatnot. And then the square,

Starting point is 00:06:29 and maybe some of you guys saw that I put on my Facebook and Instagram story today, is what we actually know, right? And where we get in trouble and we lose trust is when we confidently say or speak about something that we don't know, right? That's when people begin to lose trust, right? When you start claiming that you're a professional, you talk about some, you're like, wait, does Chris even know what he's talking about in regards to this versus like, hey, I don't know this very well, but this is my opinion on it. That's where you start layering in trust and you start establishing trust is when you are outside of your circle

Starting point is 00:07:13 or you're outside of your square of knowledge, right? That you've learned, that you developed, that you have experience in. And when you're outside of that and you're speaking confidently, you just reduce your confidence, right? Like, hey, I'm not 100% confident on this, but this is my opinion. What are you guys open to? What do you guys think, right? This creates a completely different team dynamic when it comes to trust and building trust. And so once we can start removing the absence of trust and start to build trust, we have now created the foundation of a functional team. And it's interesting because it goes through the four other dysfunctions of the team. You have fear of conflict is the next one, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and all, and at the very top is in intention to

Starting point is 00:08:07 results. So you don't, people don't care about results ultimately in a dysfunctional team. It's interesting, fear of conflict. You actually want conflict in a good, healthy, functioning team. And the reason why people are unwilling to conflict with you as a leader or in your team is because there is that absence of trust because people are speaking over confidently about things that they don't know and thus creating mistrust within their teams and their organizations. Versus if there is a good, solid, people are talking within their teams and their organizations versus if there is a good solid people are talking within their realm and then not talking as confidently about things that they don't quite know, there's going to be much more established trust in the which you are going to induce conflict within your teams. And conflict in this way is healthy, right? Meaning like,

Starting point is 00:09:04 hey, look, Chris, that is a great opinion, but this is my thought. It's actually an opposite opinion against what you are saying. And teams are willing to do that as long as there is an underlying foundation of trust. They know that they are safe. They know that they're going to be taken care of. They know that they're not going to be, oh, you're wrong. I know everything about this particular thing. And so for me, this has always been a wake-up call because I am an uberly confident person. When I think I know something, I know it. And the things that I know, I absolutely know. And so this is always a wake-up call for me. Like how am I being way overly competent in things that I don't know? And am I open to others' opinions within my team,

Starting point is 00:09:52 thus producing a foundation of trust that allows my team to ultimately conflict, which if we are able to conflict and have different points of view on different things, my team will now become committed to the cause because the next one is lack of commitment. And the opposite is they're going to be committed and then they will be accountable. And if they are accountable, they will care about ultimately the results. And we all know that KPIs, key performance indicators, results, money in the bank account being in shape having great relationships having a spiritual relationship with with our father in heaven or whatever it may be these are the

Starting point is 00:10:32 things that we desire we each and every one of us desire results anyways that was just one of my few of many many many many takeaways from this week at harPM. Man, if you are a business owner and you are thinking about attending something like this, man, Harvard has absolutely incredible programs. I highly recommend it. Definitely reach out to me. Also stay tuned. I am going to be releasing my weekly mastermind. So we are going to be meeting up three times a month. It's going to be a monthly service that you can be a part of. It's going to be phenomenal. The founder project, it's going to be insane. This is going to be available to entrepreneurs. Go ahead and DM me on Instagram. If this is something that you're interested in, we're going to be launching it

Starting point is 00:11:19 here soon. There are going to be a website in which you can sign up. If you have ever thought about coaching, consulting, or being a part of an incredible network, once again, I've spent over a million dollars on my personal education so that I can share these incredible nuggets with you as you build your business, as you build your life. And remember, you don't have to be a business owner to be a founder. Everybody needs to be a founder of their future, a founder of their family, a founder of their wealth, right? What you do have is Tony Robbins talks about, you do have to have an equity or ownership in something, whether it's stock market or real estate or whatever it may be, you have to start taking an ownership perspective, regardless of who you work for,

Starting point is 00:12:04 you are a founder. Make it a great day. Until next time.

Next Level Pros - #37: The Foundation of Trust: A Blueprint for High-Performing Teams

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