The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 621: Rachel Botsman - Being Comfortable with Uncertainty, Giving Trust Before It's Earned, Being on Time, Giving Great Keynotes, & How To Trust and Be Trusted

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes. This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Rachel Botsman has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She's written three books: What's Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted. Her TED talks have amassed over 5 million views. And she teaches at Oxford University's Business School where she created pioneering courses on trust in the digital age has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She's written three books: What's Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted. Her TED talks have amassed over 5 million views.  Notes: Trust is being comfortable with uncertainty. Capability and Character - Assholes are capable people with low character. Demonstrate the ability to take risks. Confidence in the unknown. Healthy challenge and push mentality. Trust willing – Lead with Trust. Make the trust wager. What's the best way to earn someone's trust? LEAD with trust. Trust them first. This also creates a highly attractive company or team. Don't you want to attract highly trusting, capable people? The best way to do that is to lead with trust. Be more trust willing. Lead with Trust. Jim Collins story. Make the trust wager. You don't have to earn it, you got it. Willingness to be a beginner. Be curious. Look stupid at first. Those are good qualities in a leader. For keynote speaking: Share your expertise, but don't seek approval Share your stories, but don't look for validation Share your passion, but don't perform for the applause Don't sell from the stage. Don't show your book. Don't give your resume. Honor the present. If you're running a meeting, start it on time. Honor the people who showed up on time. Leaders who are overscheduled… It's usually their fault and it comes from ego. If you've hired a capable team, then you don't have to be in every meeting. Also, if you're always late, you aren't reliable. And that becomes part of your reputation. That's not something we want to be known for. How can people trust you if you're always late? They won't. You aren't reliable if you're always late. Reliability is a big part of your reputation. It can become the thing you're known for. That's bad. The power of consistency: Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress. Consistency builds trust. Leaders who are overscheduled have a problem they've created for themselves. It's usually from ego. Interviewing leaders for jobs. High character is a must. We can teach capabilities later.  Paul Simon's audiobook with Pushkin is awesome. Rachel's five principles for trust: Competence: Having the skills, knowledge, time, and resources to do what you say you'll do  Reliability: Being dependable and consistent in your actions  Integrity: Being honest about your intentions and motives, and ensuring your words and actions align  Empathy: Caring about others' interests and how your actions affect them  Consistent action: Earning trust through how you show up, set expectations, and deliver acts of caring Life/Career Advice: Don't get boxed in too early and grow a career based on being able to tell people at parties that you work at a prestigious company.  Look for great teams and great bosses. The industry doesn't matter as much as the people. Culture is everything. People are everything. And then when you're younger it's helpful to be a generalist. Know a little about a lot of things. But as you get older, it's useful to become a specialist at something. Become an expert. Go deep on a topic. This is similar to what Mike Maples Jr said on episode #619.

Very skilled leaders are very comfortable with uncertainty. They can be in the unknown. They don't need to be highly scheduled and know the outcome of everything. It's those leaders that actually have high negative capability and positive capability that often accelerate really fast through their careers. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company that builds world-class technical teams for clients around the globe.

If you need help with your applications, infrastructure, or data layer, Insight Global's team of technical experts can build custom or manage services to deliver the outcomes you desire. Getting the most out of your technology can

be tough, but growing your business with the right technical solutions can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader text talk to 66866.

Now on to tonight's featured leaders. So good. Rachel Botsman has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She's written three books. What's mine is yours. Who can you trust? And how to trust and be trusted. Her TED Talks have amassed over 5 million views.

and she teaches at Oxford University's business school where she created pioneering courses on trust in the digital age. During our conversation, we discussed the most powerful lessons. She's learned from her public speaking career, including all of her TED Talks. And Rachel shares the most effective way for a new leader to build trust. So good. And then she went deep on the interview process within companies

and how we can get better at hiring leaders who have high character combined with competence and the ability to grow. Wow, I love this conversation. Please enjoy Rachel Botsman. To start, I'm curious. When you think about the leaders you know and the ones you've studied that have earned trust, they're trustworthy and trustworthy. willing people. What are some of the commonalities among those people? It's a good question. It's a question I'm often asked. And the number one trait, I would say, is integrity. They lead with integrity. They are very clear about their interests and their

intentions and motives. They're very clear about how those align with their team. And they're very clear about the decisions they make, but equally they understand the decisions they don't make. So the things they choose not to do are as important because in some way, if they chose to make that product, or they chose to do that business model, or they chose just to make a tiny bit of a pricing change

that maybe people wouldn't notice or a policy change that was on page three, they would know. And it wouldn't be serving the best interests of their clients. the customer at the public. So integrity is number one. It's like their moral compass and their decision-making compass. It's very hard to be trustworthy without integrity. It's the one trait where it's a non-negotiable, whereas empathy is slightly different. There are some leaders who struggle with empathy and they're still trustworthy. They're still really supported and

often adored by their teams. The obvious one, and we forget this sometimes, is they are highly capable. So it's not confidence and charisma. They really do have the experience, the skills, the expertise, and they're very good with their time to do what they say they're going to do. So these leaders that are very confident and charismatic, they reach a certain point where you realize there's a gap between that and their capabilities. It feels like they have this high level of character, right?

Good character skills. They don't lie to themselves. They follow through on their word, both to themselves and to others. And then they're highly capable. They're high levels of competence with what they're doing. So I sense that those are two of the most important. And you get into it in your most recent audiobook as well. Can you go deeper on, let's say somebody's newer.

They're taking over a team or they got promoted or maybe they got hired to a different company and they're in like a VP level. So they skipped some steps and didn't just work their way up within a company. How does a person like that speed up the process to earn trust from their new team? Yeah. Yeah. Can I just go back one step? Sure. I think this is quite helpful.

I don't usually like those two by two matrix. but in this instance it is helpful. So if you imagine capability and character, most people would say, well, leaders and high performing people are always high capability and high character. And it's not true. Now, obviously, you don't want low capability and low character,

but high capability and low character, they're the assholes. They are the people you do not want on your team. And that's the mistake a lot of people make. What we often see in hiring and development is your leaders come from the high character developing their capability. There's still expansion there.

And when I talk about capability, this is quite important. And this actually links to your next question. I mean positive capabilities. So it's how we think about capability in terms of doing stuff. And then what we also call negative capability, which is kind of a tricky concept

to get your head around. But imagine it like a container. And it's the space that it can hold. and very skilled leaders, and this answer to your question when you're rising up in an organization, they have that capacity to hold space. They are very comfortable with uncertainty. They can be in the unknown. They don't need to be like highly scheduled and know the outcome of everything can be really, really prescriptive. It's those leaders that actually have high negative capability and positive capability that often accelerate really fast through their careers. So if you're sort of

rising up through the ranks, there's two things that are actually quite important that seem at odds with one another. The first is demonstrating your ability to be able to take risks and to be confident in the unknown. So are you someone that's just going to follow instructions and you're going to be a really good doer and implementer, but you're not really going to spot new opportunities, you're not really going to critique or question decisions that the organization is making. You're not really going to generate energy or friction, right? You're going to stay, if you're in a good organization, you're probably not going to get to the top. But it's those ones where you feel that energy and that charge and that healthy kind of

challenge and push, that is a real accelerator. And with that, this is really, really important. You have to be confident with humility. That is the rocket fuel when you're going up through an organization. So the ability to say, I don't know, the ability to admit that you don't understand something, the willingness and openness to be curious and to learn new things and to be a total beginner at something. So it's that willingness to take risks and be in the unknown combined with that confidence of humility where you often see this accelerated leadership path.

It's hard to find those people. I feel like a good interview question. I don't know why this popped up my mind, but I feel like a good interview question, if you are hiring a leader, maybe they're outside of your organization so you haven't got a chance to know them over the years would be share examples of times when you've put yourself in the position to be a beginner, right? Learn something new, signed up for the triathlon, tried to speak a second language, tried to do something that you were an amateur at, that you were really bad at and you were okay to look stupid, to not know how to do it, and then you progress through that. I feel like that seems to be a good quality in someone who has the confidence to go try it and

do it and they're comfortable enough within their own skin to get embarrassed or to look like a complete amateur around other people or for those who may judge them. But I think that's that that that that that peanut butter and chocolate right of confidence and humility seems to be like a really good attribute and a leader. Totally. And it's also very revealing of ego. Like yes, you willing to be a beginner at something and start again. Most adults are not comfortable. doing that. And equally, like, how long did you stick with it? Um, right? Oh, I tried the piano. It wasn't for me. I tried to learn any. Oh, it wasn't for me. It was too hard. Why? How did you push through that? Like, those questions are fantastic and, and understanding why you've given up

on something as well, I think is, is really good. The other really good interview question is, what's something you've unlearned as an adult? Um, so I'll give him, there's two things I had to unlearn. One was swimming. So this is, I was a competitive sprinter as a swimmer and I wanted to do long distance open sea swimming. And they're very different. Like you have to completely change your stroke. And the deconstruction, when you've been really good at something and then someone says, you're really bad at that now and they show you recordings, that is, it's really hard to take and really hard to adapt. And then my cadence, I've had to change the cadence in the way I speak because my cadence in the classroom is slightly too fast versus on the stage. And learning how

to adapt and to slow down in those environments is an unlearning process. I can't help myself. I got to drill down on that second one. How do you, as someone who speaks on stages and help others who speaks on stages, when we get nervous, or get even just get excited about the moment. There's 500 people out there. I'm with you. There are times when I start going fast because I'm juiced up, I'm amped up. And I go, you know, you just go, go, go, go.

How have you unlearned what seems like your natural style of going fast to adjust your cadence, to know when to go fast, to when to pause, when to use silence, when to go slow? How have you unlearned and relearned the right way to do that? It's very physiological. So it's actually being, I know there are certain things I should and should not do before I'm going on stage and being quite strict about those. I should not be in a green room with other people because what's happening, I'm actually not a nervous speaker and you're absorbing their nerves and their noise. And I don't know a good conversation you've ever had in a green room. like it they're all like so you're giving out their energy and you're absorbing their energy like that

is is one another one is i can't sit there for long periods of time the rooms are often cold you know what you have to wear on stage because you've got the lights you're often dressed for a slightly different temperature these may sound like really silly things but they're really important i walk quite slowly to the stage and i i really feel every footstep before i go on the stage and then I just simply take a breath and look at the audience and smile and have this moment where I, in my head, I say, I'm okay, it's going to be okay. And like this beat before you begin is really, really powerful. I often also, I really don't plan the first five minutes. I know where I'm going, but you're leaving enough space to really adapt to what's going on in that moment. I never tell a joke. I never tell a joke. I never. never try to be funny. That will increase your speed as well. And I often ask the audience a question. And the question, it's such an underutilized thing in public speaking. The question is doing two things. One, you're forming a connection and the audience are actually doing the work in that

moment. You're slowing yourself down because you have this pause in between. And they're giving you material, right? And that's the moment you can be funny and you can bounce off things. And I found that question is the key to creating resonance. And resonance is like magic for you to find that right cadence. It's when you feel that disconnect from the audience and you're trying to pull them in because it's not quite going the way you want it. Like that's when people speed up or they look down or they get really, really stiff. So it's those things.

And then you just feel your whole body relaxed because the audience is, with you. What type of questions do you ask? Really simple questions. So I talk about trust. So I will ask them if I say the word trust, what comes to mind? Don't overthink it. Okay, what word comes up? And you just randomly pick people. You don't even ask them to raise their hand. And people come up the weirdest things, like I have to say, you're like, it's not really hard question. But sometimes you hear the same things. And then it's amazing when you hear like some people, like I was giving a tour last night. And this woman had like a fully formed,

incredible explanation of trust and self-agency and control. And you were like, have you done a PhD in this? Like it was like, and even the audience had this moment of like, I never knew she was so smart and articulate. Like, and that's magic in itself. That's just one example for the question. I like that. I like making it more of a conversation and less of a lecture.

It feels good, especially for someone who actually gives lectures at times. I couldn't help but look at your TED talk and then you followed up and you've had millions and millions of views of TED talks. And so if we can go on the speaking thing for one more question and then maybe we'll shift to some trust stuff, you wrote things that you've learned about public speaking, show up to give. And I like these three bullet points. Share your expertise, but don't seek approval.

Share your stories, but don't look for validation. Share your passion, but don't. form for the applause. Okay, can you go into each of those? Because again, selfishly as a speaker, this really piqued my curiosity. And there are leaders from all over the world who give quarterly business reviews that do town halls with their teams that are trying to share the vision with their team as they're building their startup that are listening to this. So I feel like this is very important from a communication perspective and you're one of the masters at it. Could you get into each of those three? Sure. Give me the top one. I should say, actually,

I'm actually, this is a craft. I've spent 15 years. It's probably speaking is hard work. It's a craft. I'll go by each one. Okay. Yeah, go by each one. Okay.

So the first one is share your expertise, but don't seek approval. What do you mean by that? Yeah, that's where you're like, they're trying to validate your intelligent or that you know your stuff or that you're the best at this. So, and this is where the next one. comes in that you are there to give. You are not trying to prove anything. You are literally taking all the knowledge that you have accumulated or your observations or the research you've done and you are joining dots and you are there to help them think differently with a lens that you have that maybe they don't have. And so the biggest compliment, you know, I'm not a speaker that

does like self-help staff or so for those speakers, they'll say like, oh, like they moved them. They felt something. The biggest compliment for me is when I meet someone three years later and they're like, I hear you in my head and I can never make a decision again or when I'm hiring something, I hear you in my head. And that's the compliment, right? Because somehow you've passed something on that isn't for you.

It's for them. So that's what I mean by those first two. And the giving is also you cannot sell. You know, you cannot. I hate speakers when their first slide is their book or that's tied to the expertise as well. It's their credentials or they go through their resume. No one cares, right? On that stage for a reason, you don't need to tell people you're the milk monitor. And then consultants also do that. Where in the back of their mind, they're trying to sell a service. So that all goes up into those

one or two, which happens so often. It's painful. Yeah. I actually had a, the company I was speaking for a couple weeks ago, they go, hey, it was in Boston. And they go, just, you know, We hired you. We want you to do your thing. With that said, do not, under any circumstances, mention a book, a podcast, a newsletter, any type of service that may be seen or felt as selling something. If you do, you are done. And I was like, okay, I appreciate you tell me.

That was not going to be a part of it anyway, but it is nice when someone's like, I hope you to tell everybody that, though. And I wish more people gave that advice. of just do your thing, but going up there like selling or even any handouts with all of that marketing stuff gives you a bad, a bad feeling as you're leaving the room. Yeah, and people do it in the opening and then they do it in the close. So even the thanks slide is thanks. It's like taking the best moment at the end of theater and doing a promo.

Like you wouldn't do it, right? So if that audience likes you, they're going to buy the book. They're going to listen to your show. They're going to sign up to your newsletter. They'll find you in this day and age. It's not that hard. It's an easy trap and it's very tempting to do and I would stay well away from it. Yeah.

Okay. I want to get into your book, How to Trust and be trusted. And let's first talk about your choice of how to publish this book. I remember when I first heard about it and was talking with your team. I was like, oh, I want to read this. This is cool. I like this topic. And I go, I can't read it.

Where is it? And you chose to work with Malcolm Gladwell's company, Pushkin and read it. You did a beautiful job. You have an amazing voice. accent doesn't hurt. I'm not going to lie. To put this book out, what made you want to work with them and do it as an audio book? So with them, it's easy. They are probably the best.

They are the masters. And honestly, I had just heard Malcolm do Paul Simon's book, which if you haven't listened to it, it's what audio should be. It's written for audio. It's just beautiful production. And I thought, I want to make something like that. So I literally just emailed them, which is, you know, if you take a risk, sometimes it works. So it was, first of a challenge for me because I've never written scripted audio,

which is very different from podcasting. So to learn how to do that, an opportunity to work with their team. But mainly it was really thinking about what is the experience with this book. It's very different from the other books that I've worked on and another book I'm hoping to do, which will again be print, which are about big societal changes. This is me with listeners. This is me like a toolkit. This is me trying to prompt listeners to think about patterns of behavior

and think about choices they make and decisions they make. And for them to have a moment where they go, oh, maybe not oh shit, but I've never joined that dot before, or I've never been conscious of that, or I've never been aware that the reason why I do this is because of this. and audio is a very powerful way to do that through people's, is you can do exercises with people, which I do in the book. You can pause with people.

And so I was slightly wary of the category before I went on this experience. And then I'm now a huge believer if you're writing a book that really is about learning and change and self-reflection. audio is an incredible category to sort of curate their experience with the listener. It's a very intimate thing. You're in somebody's ears. It's just you and them. They may be driving or working out or walking their dog or doing the dishes. And just you and them. You really can build, you know, we've felt this with podcasting over the years, right? You really can build this deep parasocial relationship with other.

when you're in their ears. And because then they can't hear anything else, right? So they're focused in just you and them. And I like that style. Obviously, I've done it for a decade now and not necessarily. I mean, I've read all my books as well in addition to writing them, but I like this idea of it being audio only in the intimate relationship they can build with your reader slash listener.

Totally, totally. And I think it's still a slight, it's a very nascent category, right? There are audio books, the majority, 95% are audiobooks that are books that are read, not written to be listened. And there's still only about 5% in the market that are written for audio. So it's a bit like writing a play that then gets made into a film. It wasn't meant to live in that format versus intentionally going, no, this is a play script. So, yeah, it's interesting how people respect it slightly differently, which I thought is really interesting, where they're like, so when are you going to write your next rule book? And you're like, I swear

have had that question. Really? If anything, it's probably harder, isn't it? It's more time consuming because, yeah, you've got production and all these things on the top of it that you just don't think about. So yeah, so I don't know if it's tied to a lack of tangibility or whether because people are listening to so many podcasts and so much music, they put it in the same category of value. It's a very interesting thing. Hmm. Okay, I want to surface a thesis that I first talked with Paulina Pompiliano about a few years ago when it comes to trust. We both are consistent people.

She publishes her newsletter at the same time on the same day and has for years. This podcast comes out Sunday night, 7 o'clock Eastern, and for a decade every Sunday with zero misses, no misses. And what I think we both gathered and others have two. And I want to hear your thinking to go deeper on this is that consistency is an amazing way to build trust, whether it's with an audience, whether it's with your husband or wife or your kids, especially consistently showing up, right? Consistency seems to be this magic elixir to build trust. can you give me your perspective on that? Yeah. So you're right and you're wrong and I'll try and explain why.

So I'll go with way you're right. So it consists. I don't know if you read James Clear's brilliant book, Atomic Habits. Have you ever read Atomic Habits? Yes. So there's a line where he is talking about habits and he says, intensity makes a great story, but it's consistency that leads to progress. It's such a good line in that book.

and that is very true for trust. So you know people who they show up in big ways. They buy the big gift, they give the big speech, they host the big leadership day. And then for the rest of the quarter or even the entire year, they're really inconsistent in the way that they show up. You never quite know what you're going to get. That's really bad for trust.

But to your point, whether it's a child, an employee, a student, that consistency, which has, a very, very strong relationship to time. So you mentioned the podcast always comes out on a Sunday. My newsletter always comes out on a Monday. We underestimate consistency in time. So people who are just always a little bit late or people who reschedule at the last minute and it's about them or they always overrun or meetings. It's that lack of respect for time can be really damaging to trust because it leads to the other person saying, do you really care about me as much as your own time?

So the consistency piece is really important. But trust in itself, the way I define trust, is a confident relationship with the unknown. So this is where there's a slight paradox, because if you know exactly what to expect, if you know what the outcome is, you don't actually need a lot of trust.

So when you're consistent over time, what you're actually doing is you're reducing the cognitive load. You're reducing the need for trust. Do you certainly mean like you don't even need to think about, do I trust that Ryan's going to drop a show on Sunday because it's going to come out? You don't even think about that decision. So trust in itself becomes lower, but trust in the person is increased. Slightly conceptual. But you want to imagine it like. kind of like a barometer that what you're doing is you're pulling the amount of trust when you

reduce the unknown, when you know what to expect, you're reducing the amount of trust that's required. So, but doesn't that mean that they trust you so much that they don't even think about it? It's just the default mode that, which I would argue is probably the spot you want to be in? Totally. It's totally the spot you want to be in. So by missing something because you said you're right and you're wrong and I maybe I'm not smart enough to realize, but part of my wrong, I guess. It's very deep trust in the person, right? Like that and if you didn't bring something out, they wouldn't even need to know the reason why. Like that's the important piece, right?

They would trust there is some reason because you've been so consistent to this point. The bit that's slightly wrong is that it's not, how can I explain this? The trust in the moment is lower. So the trust on a Sunday that something is going to come out is lower because you expect that to happen. Yep. Okay. It's like a product that you've used over and over and over again, and you know the outcome of that product. That requires less trust than, say, putting on glasses with virtual reality or using AI to diagnose something with health.

That is a new situation. You don't know what the outcome is, so it requires more trust. Got you. Okay. Let's talk about time and being on time. Okay. I am think of the nicest way to put this. I hate it when people are late.

hate it with a passion. It's one of the few times I feel like I get very judgey of others. And I don't like judging other people. But if I'm being honest, I do in those moments, especially the ones that are regularly three minutes, four minutes, one minute late to our meetings. Yeah. Whatever.

Whatever. Or even worse, the leaders who start meetings late because there's, now with that said, I am not a busy senior. executive at a Fortune 500 company. I used to be, right? And I'd like to think I never was late then either. But the schedules for a lot of them are insane. They are in meetings back to back to back. They are, sometimes it's out of their control if they're with the CEO or other things like that. They're worth customers. I do try to have a little bit of understanding at times.

But the ones who are regularly late almost every time, I just hate it so much. I can't explain. how much I hate it. Have you figured out why? Well, okay, growing up, I played sports. And my football coaches, especially in high school and college, you had to be like five, 10, 15 minutes early to everything, practice meetings, wait room, like everything, everything. So it's been drilled in my head since I was in like middle school through post-collegiate playing

days that if you're late, you are a saboteur, you're hurting the team, you're selfish. you're only about you you're putting yourself above the team and so like it's ingrained in my mind if you're late you're putting yourself above me you're putting yourself above the team you're a selfish individual and i don't want to be with selfish people so i think that's that's where it comes from and so i try to always be early right early to everything a little bit early and but i do have to arrange my calendar in a way that i can't be back to back to back because if i am then i won't be able to be early. So that's the problem here. That's the thing I deal with. I'm just curious when you hear me be a judgmental person here in the moment, which again, I don't love. What do you think of those who are

perpetually late and how that damages trust and what they could do to then regain some of that trust and not always be late? Yeah. So it's a really difficult one because when I see the schedules of some leaders, I don't actually, I don't think I could get through a week. No. I, I, It's like there's no off. There's no space. There's no oxygen. So this is said with a great deal of empathy as to how their life is scheduled. But if you are someone where there is wiggle room and there is gaps,

you know, first of all, a practical thing, don't put things back to back. Just don't do it, right? Like always say there's a half an hour gap between things. I mean, it's so basic that it's obvious, right? I've said this, but they always say it's easy for you to say, it's not it's he's like I have more a lot of them say I have more meetings more time that people want of me than than I already have and I'm back to back starting at eight o'clock and finishing at six and I'm just like God that's when I say I'm one with you so I think some of it is people rolling their

eyes when they hear you and me who are able to do that yeah say well yeah easy for you impossible for me given all of the people I don't know if that's just an excuse but that is what I hear when I give that type of advice. The first thing I would say, so let's start with the leaders that are scheduled to the hill. The first thing I would say is like any leader that is over scheduled, that's a problem in itself. Right. So like you have to find a different team around you.

You have to get better at letting go. You have to find a few things that you do not need to take part in because I would argue if you are on all day, that is not great leadership. Right. And then you do your work, work at home. It's formative. you're performing all day with people. So that would be the first thing is you have to redesign your schedule. Is that really sustainable for most leaders? But the majority of people are not like that,

right? They may schedule their calendar like that, which is an ego thing, because they want to appear to be absolutely jammed, which is another different issue, a trust issue, actually. But the majority of people that have sort of 50-50 control, I would just, you know, what is it, what is it, it's often a pattern, right? So write it down. When am I always late? Is it always the afternoons? Is it always after lunch? Is it in the mornings? Like, just identify, it sounds so simple, but identify those patterns that are causing that behavior and become very aware of the impact it has on other people. Like a really simple thing, like in the classroom. So I typically teach for three hour blocks. It's actually quite long. And we take a break halfway through. And you give

people 15, 20 minutes, and there's always stragglers that come in. Now, some professors do really weird things. Like, they make those people's dance. They put them in the front row. And I'm like, they're adults, right? Like, that's humiliation. You just start the class. Right. My dad would always say, honor the present. Yes. Under the present. So that's why you start meetings on time. And if the

person isn't there, that's on them. We're going to honor the present. If there's supposed to be 10 people here and four are here, those four people. are going to be honored for being on time. Honor the present. Tony, and I love that way of putting it. And if you do arrive late, do it quietly.

Right. Like, I'm sorry, like, blah, blah, right, just,

no one cares. You're late. Just sit out. Just sit out. Right. And so, um, I think,

yeah, I think time is, is, it's such, it's such an unexamined. Does it impact trust, though? Like,

I can, I can tell you how it makes me feel. I feel like you already probably know, so I don't need to drill that down anymore. How does it impact trust specifically of leaders? Let's say they're trying to lead a team and you go, oh, like we had a leader back in the day, early in my day when I was a mid-level manager, he was a VP where I'm not going to say his name, but you used his name and then added the word time. So blank time meant meeting started 15 minutes late, like blank time.

And so what a bad brand of a person. Like what a bad thing. Like if you're on blank's time, that means the meeting. starts late and will probably run late. Yeah. How does it influence and impact people's trust levels of you and all of the work you're doing if you're perpetually late? It's a really good question.

So I think this is actually quite helpful. So it impacts two things. So when we talk about trust, we're talking about trust in someone's trustworthiness, right? Their behaviors. And we've talked about some of these traits. So you have the capability side and you have the character side. Now, on the capability side,

you have the competence, which we talked a little about, but the time is a reliability piece. So when you're very erratic with time or you're inconsistent over time, you don't have respect for time, reliability wobbles. And so it's not that people don't trust you. You might have really high empathy and high integrity and high, but what happens and what people are not aware enough about enough is that trait becomes the loudest trait.

And that becomes your. reputation. Because your reputation, if you imagine this like a stack, you've got trustworthiness on the bottom, they're your behaviours. They're the things that you can control, competence, reliability, integrity and empathy. Then in the middle, you've got trust, which is the belief, what other people believe about you. And then the top is reputation. That's narrative. That's what people say. And sometimes, you know, if you're really competent and you've got really high in empathy, but you really, really wobble with reliability, it's so frustrating, and you probably aren't even aware of it, but your reputation is you are not reliable. It's not that you're really competent or because

that signal is becoming the loudest. So I found that's quite an effective way of people, you know, everyone's very concerned about the reputation more so than time. So if you talk to people about what do you think your reputation is around your reliability and your consistency. You have a very different conversation than, are you always on time? Do you just manage? Because that feels like personal and to a leader, like they'll feel like it's below them. But reputation is really important to them. You have to be so insanely good or smart if you're going to be like regularly. I feel like, and it's still, you just got to be like otherworldly smart, you know, like, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to be that person. So I just got to be on time. I feel

Like that's, but if you are insanely smart and otherworldly good, just think of how powerful it is if you also honor the present and you honor everybody else and you respect. That's what it's really about. It's about respect. You respect them. Okay, I don't want to harp on this too much. I remember a conversation, Rachel, with Jim Collins, one of my leadership heroes. And he was talking about a conversation he had with one of his mentors, Bill Lazier, where they talked about making the trust. wager, right? And that is being a trust willing person, leading with trust. And this is the way I try to live my life. And I think it makes it a more enjoyable life. Nobody in my life ever, ever has to earn my trust. They've got it. They've got it. They don't have to do a single thing. Now, they can lose it. And if they do, that's not good because you got it for free. So I think this is a quality that would be useful for a lot of leaders, being cynical or skeptical or because I've had a boss say, you have not earned my trust yet. I'll never forget that meeting, right? So how can leaders become more trust willing people, making the trust wager, even though they know, yeah, I might get

burned every once in a while, but I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop. I'm going to continue leading with trust. I'm going to give it before it's earned. How can we get better at that? Oh, that is, I've never been asked that question. And it's a really great question because so many leaders have to give before they earn. And it's tied to actually weigh the number one question I'm asked by leaders is how do I build trust? And that's the opposite of what you're talking about, because when they're thinking in that way, they're thinking it's called power over. So, you know, I'm going to do something and then you're going to follow me, right? Like you're going to do something because you trust me. And that's very different from what you're talking about, which is like, I inherently

trust you. I'm giving you my trust and then I want to earn it back. And what literally happens if you live your life that way is you form what we call these trust loops. So you demonstrate trust. And that can be anything from, you know what? No, I don't need to see that report. I trust you. And then, you know, if that report's really shit and then you do that three times, that trust comes back. And it's interesting. It's tied to actually a story I tell in the book with the rear admiral. So he had 75,000 people in his care under his management, Brian. And he said something really similar to what you said. And the thing that was so powerful about it is he said, you know, in the Navy, they have this way of saying, you have the con. They literally say that.

I trust you, you are in control. But the trust is that if they are in a moment of danger, if the leader can see something that the other people cannot see because of perspective, because of pattern recognition, whatever it may be, he says taking back the con. He's taking the trust away in that moment, taking back control. And the most important thing is he doesn't then say, okay, well, you broke my trust or you did something wrong,

so I'm withholding that because that's, not healthy or productive. When the danger's passed, he says giving back the con. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone walk around their organizations and be like Star Trek. You know, I have the con. You have the con. But what's so powerful about that is they have a language for signaling what you're talking about. I'm going to lead with trust.

Do you know what? I need to take it back in this situation because it's high risk or someone's in danger. All that's passed. I'm giving it back. And now I'm going to explain why I took it away from you. 99% of organizations do not work like that. And he's actually struggling going into corporate companies and the private sector because the culture isn't that clear. Think about, I always think about attracting the most talented and skilled people to want to work with me.

That's part of how I think about that. Okay. Now think about if you are skeptical and cynical and cynical and make. people earn your trust or think about if you're the type of leader who gives it without even thinking. That's just your default mode is to trust other people. Don't you think that's going to attract the most talented, highest skilled people to want to work with you versus this you got to earn it style? That's the other thing too is it's going to attract all of the best people. It's going to attract the most talented ones. And so it'll end up benefiting you anyway, but it does seem,

and maybe, okay, now, I have not, we've all been burned, but I probably haven't been burned as nearly as bad as others. So maybe it's easier. And I could hear people like in their car saying, well, you know, easy for you to say, I've had these people cheat on me and I've had this happen and this happen. And I get it. And I think, okay, it probably would be harder for them. So let's go to that then, Rachel. Let's say somebody has been burned quite a bit. They've, Maybe they didn't grow up at as nice as a home as I did. And my parents are still my mentors and I love them more than anything in the world. Super, super lucky, right?

Never had to doubt any of their trust or my trust for them. So let's say they have been burned a lot. How do you get back to being a trust willing lead with trust? You got it. You don't have to earn it person if you've had some bad experiences in your past. Yeah. And I think this is a really important distinction that there's a difference between sort of trusting people that are already in your circle, right? And decisions around trust. So decisions that require

a high degree of trust or that are really high risk, high value decisions. Stanford actually did a recent survey that said eight out of ten leaders have made a terrible trust decision that has had serious consequences on their career and their mental health, right? That's really high. And when you dig into the research, what you find is they made the decision really quickly. They over-relied on their intuition. They tuned in to familiarity. So the most common bias, this person looks like me. They went to the same school, like they were looking for confirmation,

or they didn't have enough or the right kind of information. That's where I would say, like, why did I get burned? was it pretty early on in the relationship? Because I actually made the wrong decision. I shouldn't have hired that person. I shouldn't have brought in that consultant. I shouldn't have made that investment. I shouldn't have worked with that client.

And that's why, you know, when we started talking, I was like, great leaders are very good in that we should not do this decision because we're under pressure. We're acting. Not sometimes you have to act quickly, but we're reacting to things, right? We're overreactive. We're emotional. We don't have enough information.

Often trust gets broken actually pretty early on in a relationship because the decision was wrong versus that the person wasn't trustworthy or you weren't trusting. How do we get better at that? Eight out of ten seems insane. That seems crazy to me. It's so much of it is recruiting. It's terrible, right? Like the way people are hired is still, there's so much improvement that needs to happen.

In most organizations. Do you help people with that? Is that part of your work? No, I mean, I do actually talk about it in the book, and it's quite interesting because when you look at a lot of interview design, it's based on one trait, competence. And so it's skills, knowledge, experience. Maybe people get into empathy because it's quite a hot topic, right? So like collaboration and how you support people and are you a team player?

Very few questions around integrity. That seems crazy to me, right? Really? Like maybe I'm out of touch. Really? Yeah. Like, you know, how do you really understand, not why someone wants to join this organization, what their real motive is and have them be honest about that motive? And if people are honest, you know, actually, I just want to come in and make a lot of money for three years and you're like, great, well, we're in a growth phase. So come on board. That's okay. There's an alignment in that intention. But yeah, it's really interesting. Most of it, I think, comes from recruiting and then those very early days of cultural

assimilation, which is really hot. Okay, let's go inside that process. I am fascinated by interviewing and recruiting and past lives. I was building sales teams and organizations, both individual contributors and hiring leaders. And so did hundreds of inventories prior to even having a podcast. And I'm curious if you were going to help some do better interviews or recruit more effectively so that you get it right on the front end. Again, I may be putting you in a weird position. If so, we could cut this and move on. But I do, I am curious about it genuinely, whether it's questions, like specific questions

you could ask, like how would you design that process to be better at hiring for both character? and beyond just competence, but integrity, character, empathy, like these important traits to build a trustworthy organization. Yeah, and this goes back to where we sort of start at the beginning, that we know that high potential is what they call the hippos in an organization. They are high character and they are so-so-uncapability, right? Because the so-so-uncapability means they're curious and they want to learn. So it's kind of problematic when you bring someone in and they are high capability and

high character. Where are they going to go, right? you've got to have a very quick and high leadership path for them because they're going to expect that. So that's the first thing. Like, you know, when people go, I want to hire the best of the best. Really? Like, is that the right hiring strategy? So that's a place it starts.

The second I would say is this is so obvious, but look at the whole process and make sure you are in some way testing each one of those four traits. Integrity, empathy, competence and reliability is really key. We talked about this at the beginning. Like, how do you really get to someone's humility and their openness to learning, how curious they are? Like, questions around what hobbies they do and what they do in the spare time. It's like when kids go to secondary school, worst interviews, right? And then the last thing that I think is, of the missing is context in so many different areas of our lives, right? Context goes, right?

And I mean this in different ways. references, we go to a really obvious context, like the past employer. So to give you an example, if a board trying to recruit me, I want to speak to the board member that left. I don't want to speak to the existing board. That's where the value, why did they leave? What did they see? Why were they uncomfortable?

So context around the information that you're getting. And then also context around how that person performs in really different environments. So yeah, they might be amazing in a one-on-one, but put them in a meeting or even put them in front of a room of people and they're going to completely flop. So really knowing the context that person has to perform and be comfortable in and making sure that the interview situation matches up with that. Now, all of that, of course, takes time. And that takes resource and it takes money. So most people go, I just don't have time to do that. The bad hire is going to cost you more by far, right?

Time, money, all of it. headaches. Somebody said if they're if they talk about a guy said told me if I am complaining about somebody three times within the same week to my wife, I messed up. I messed up on the hiring and I shouldn't have done it or whatever. It's funny. I interviewed Brian Copplement. He writes movies and TV shows, writes and produces and makes them. And one of the recent shows is billions that was on showtime. Yeah. I love that. It's so good. And actually I went there in person in New York City and toured the office and sat and like sat in the writers room not the writers weren't there was just him but I said this is crazy I mean one very cool but how do you build this room meaning how do you decide who comes in

this room and he said one of the biggest parts of the process and it was a an exhaustive long process was what you just said references like spoke to lots of people who they had worked with both the good and the bad and the ugly because it's a messy process to create a world out of thin air and make it a TV show or a movie. And that's where I feel, and I've done this myself. I'm like, oh, I like them. I think I jive. I think we're good.

I think I'm good. And like you just skip that part of the process. And then you go back. Wait, why did I miss? What happened on this one? Oh, I just, I went too fast. I wasn't patient enough. I didn't call the references.

I didn't do extra. And it's just like anything else in your life, right? What do you do? You shortchanged the process and it cost you. And sometimes you get lucky, right? And so that's why you keep going. And I feel like that's the lesson just for life in general is don't shortchange the process when it comes to doing something that's really hard. Yeah, totally. And it's like if you are shortchanging it, why? It's usually because you're under pressure. You want to get this thing done. You want someone to take something away from you. You think your life's going to be easy if you make this decision quickly. Or you've been over influenced sometimes by someone you trust. It's another really big mistake, right? Your friend. reason for hiring that border, they might have a builder, they might have a very different criteria

to what's important to you. So that's why I think you have to be really careful with like trusted recommendations and reviews. And I mean, it sounds so there is a correlation here that the problem with most reputation systems is context. It's, is that person staying in that house or that, I mean, are they in the same context of you? Do they have a family? Do they have a dog? No, they're a business person on their rec. It's so obvious when you see it. but context and trust go hand in hand. Oh, there's so much good stuff here. Maybe slightly adjacent to this, Rachel,

but given the career that you've built and the amazing things that you've done, I am curious if you were speaking to somebody a bit earlier in their career who's graduated from university and isn't fully sure what they want to do, but they're high character person. They're certainly capable enough

for whatever age they are. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? That's a really great question. I would say don't get boxed in too early. So I'm now 47. And when I look at friends that are miserable and still complaining about their career 20 years later,

it's because they went into very high-paying jobs or prestige professions very early on and they got locked in. So they built their, life and their lifestyle, but also their ego and their identity around going to a party and saying, this sounds really bad. I'm a partner at McKinsey, right? Nothing against partners at McKinsey, but you know what I mean. Like it became, that's all they felt they needed to say and how they walked away from that. I never did that. And actually, it's a good test that, you know, you go to a dinner

party and people say, what do you do? And you don't mention a brand or a name or you just trying to stay in the process of your work and why you love it so much. That's when you know you've sort of removed from ego. So that would be one. The second, look for great teams and great bosses. The culture of where you go is, I would say, more important than what you're doing in those first five years of your career. I had a great boss who I learned so much from, even like little things, like in meetings,

know me, always we. Never I. like those small things that stick with you. And also, you know, bosses that will tell you your strengths. So I had a boss very young who said, you know, you're very good at emotionally connecting with people. Hold on to that. But you jump to answers very quickly.

You think you know the answer before everyone else. And that's not a good trait. So, yeah, really focus on your culture and your boss. And then I think, you know, if I think about the first 10 years of my career, I would was very much a tea person, a tea where you're staying quite broad. You are playing in really different cultures. I traveled the world.

You know, I've worked, I think on every continent except Antarctica. I've lived in South Korea. Like, that is so valuable to work in all these different organizations, really, really different cultures to travel the world. And then know when you've got to go deep.

If you are a generalist, fine, and you're happy doing that. But if you want to be, paid for your expertise. If you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to be independent, whatever it might be, you have to somehow find that depth. And that might be a subject area. It might be a skill. It might be that you're really, really funny, whatever it might be. But there's something got to be very deep in the tea. And knowing when it's time to really focus on that

and start to take risks that mean you're going to have to move away from the safe and familiar. And this might take six months if you're lucky, but it's probably going to take around two years for you to make that breakaway and be that person that you really want to be and find that career that's really aligned with your values and your creativity and what you really want from life. Wow. We should have a whole conversation just about that. Next time, honestly, we should. I have to tell you, sorry, Ryan, like every big decision I've made, people have gone, are you mad? Like it's never going to happen. Like what?

What do you mean? Like what? Oh, like, you're never going to get a book published by a top tier publisher. You're an unknown author. Somebody said that to you? Yeah. Why would you do? Why would somebody do that, though?

Like, is it fun to squash a dream or to say, let's go, Rachel? Yes. Like, let's go. Isn't it more fun to get behind? They think they're protecting you from disappointment. No. What do you think about that? Oh, I would never do that. I would hold their care. Like that person's taken a risk. What I would say to that person is find the right scaffold. Not the right support structure. Like a scaffold is like a very specialized type of support that you need to put around you to make that thing happen for a few weeks, six months, whatever it might be. It might be financial. You might need to hire a specialist that's done this many times before. Find the scaffold. hold it with care. I would never squash their dream. No, I think that's really good advice and that's really reasonable, right? If you do want to do something big, there are ways to get there if you've

never done it before, if you're unknown. And one of them usually is around people, right? Is trying to genuinely specifically ask others. Most people are willing and they like giving advice or they like responding to those if people are good about their ask. about something specific. I want to publish a book. Here's what I have in mind. What do you think? How did you do it?

What was like at the very first time you published a book now that it's, you've had multiple like that type of thing, whatever it may be. But I like betting on people. I like betting on something. I like cheering for people. I like rooting for them. I like others who do the same for me. And it's so much more fun.

And then when it goes well, like we're all celebrating together. It's not very fun to root against. I hate rooting against teams and sports. I don't, I just root for like good games. I mean, I have favorite teams and I want them to win, but I'm really rooting for the team to win.

I'm not rooting for the other team to be bad. Just one point worse than my team. I don't know. I think it's a more enjoyable way to live. I wish I'd learned this much younger that there is more joy in other people's success. There's far more joy, right? Like when you are successful or something, it is gone, right? That moment you win, the moment you give the greatest, it's gone.

But like the joy from like, you know, know I've had a few people and they're like, I've got to give a TED talk to. I'm absolutely petrified. Can you hold me through this process? I'm not going to write it through you. And you see them knock it out the pot. That's better feeling than when you do the talk yourself. Right. It's, it's, it's really, I think it's, I wish I knew that in my 20s. Yeah. So cool. So cool. We're usually kind of insecure, though. It's harder when you're in that age. I know, I was. I just wanted to win and I wanted others to lose. You grow up a little bit and get a little bit mature and, you know, read Adam Grant's book, give and take. Like do the things you got to do and maybe you'll learn and get better.

And then you just need more life reps, right? You just more time, more age. Anyway, sorry, I could go on forever. How to trust and be trusted. What a great experience to listen. It's by Pushkin. So it's with the best company in the world when it comes to audio. Rachel, this book is so good.

And I love the way that you read it. I love the production value. I love how useful it is. And I highly recommend switching over. You could do it right in. Spotify and listen to how to trust and be trusted. Rachel, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Yeah, no, I'd love that too.

Thank you for being such a trusting and generous human being. You seem to live by Adam's values. He's a dear friend, so he'd be proud. Awesome. Awesome. Same. This was awesome. Thank you so much.

All right. You take care. Bye-bye. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan, at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Rachel Botsman. A few takeaways from my notes.

Be a trust-willing leader. Lead with trust. Make the trust wager. What is the best way to earn someone's trust? Give it to them. Lead with trust. Trust them first. This also creates a highly attractive company.

or team. Don't you want to attract high trusting capable people? Well, the best way to do that is to make that trust wager, is to lead with trust, is to give it to them first. Then, I know I went on a little tangent with this, but honor the present. If you're running a meeting, start it on time. On to the people who showed up on time. Leaders who are over-scheduled, it's usually their fault and it comes from ego. If you've hired a capable team, then you don't have to be in every meeting. Also, if you're always late, you are not reliable. And that becomes part of your reputation. I don't think that's something any of us want to be known for. And I really love at the end, her life slash career advice. She's really interesting person. I'm looking forward to our next

conversation. She said, don't get boxed in too early and grow a career based on being able to tell people at parties that you work at a prestigious firm, right? Look for great teams and great bosses. The industry doesn't matter as much as the people, culture, is everything. People are everything. And then when you're younger, it's helpful to be a generalist. Know a little about a lot of things. But as you get older, it's useful to become a specialist at something.

Become an expert. Go deep on a topic. I think this is similar to what Mike Maples Jr. said on episode 619, right? you start out being a generalist, you know a little about a lot of things, then you go deep on specific topics so that you can become the subject matter expert. So good. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Rachel Botsman.

I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you subscribe to the show and write a thoughtful review and rate the show, hopefully five stars by doing all of that. You give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk you soon. Can't wait.