 I want to talk about trust today. Trust is really the glue that keeps societies fabric together but also is really important and organizational for business, right? If people don't trust you, you're not going to get much done because if you have distrust in an organization, fear, resentment, anger is going to go between you and other people, you're not going to get deals done, you're not going to be able to collaborate, communicate and if that happens with external parties, it becomes really difficult to be dealing with people that you're selling to or you're a salesperson and you're trying to sell to other people or to collaborate with outside suppliers or partners and so it's really key to understand what are the components of trust and what can you do about those and really when you think about trust, it's about how do you increase trust with someone that you want to influence or that you care about or you want to collaborate, communicate or work together. Secondly, how do you communicate distrust with them when it happens and then three, how is it that you actually restore trust through forgiveness and other things and so I want to talk a little bit about those today and really the key components of trust are sincerity, reliability, competence and caring and those are really the key ones that I want to talk to you about what's going to go on but first I want to go through some questions that you can actually use to see the level of trustworthiness in your organization and you can actually use these and go from one to 10 and one is these people or entities or organization can rarely be trusted and can always be trusted in all situations. One, how do you rate your own trustworthiness because that's really important to see how trustworthy do you think that you are. Two, how do you rate the average trustworthiness of the people that you're working with? How do you rate the trustworthiness of your supervisor? How do you rate the trustworthiness of the company's top management? How do you rate the trustworthiness of your peers? How do you rate the trustworthiness of your direct reports? And finally, how do you rate the trustworthiness of others below that in your organization? And I think when you take a look at that you can actually see the level of trustworthiness around you and is that high, is that low and is that medium and which people are you having challenges with and what do you need to do in order to restore that? So the first thing is really going through these components against sincerity, reliability, competence, and care. And the first thing is sincerity is really doing what you say and meaning what you say so people can know that you're sincere and what's going on. And you've really got to understand kind of how do you build sincerity with other people through your actions. And a lot of it is being congruent with the things that you say and the things that you do and keeping them consistent over time. And one of the things that happens with sincerity is that things shift, right? You may change your own opinion. You may have a situation in which you've been on a certain position but then you change that position. And it's really important when you start changing positions that actually tell people what new information, thoughts, or what's going on in order for you to change that and what goes all into that. So people know that you're actually being congruent over time and the reasons behind that. I think the other thing that's going on is you need to also really be sincere and talk to them about lining up what are your expectations? Like what's really going on in your head? Why are you coming up with that? So that's very important. And part of the next thing is really going on through your internal congruence, right? Really asking yourself am I being congruent on what's going on, right? Am I being really honest with myself in my needs and what's going on in order for me to be sincere with the people around you? Now reliability is actually the next one and really reliability is you can count on what I promised you and you can deliver it within the time boundaries that you set up. So one of the key things in reliability that actually goes wrong is people don't talk about expectations, right? I want you to do X, Y, and Z in a certain period of time and deliver it to me. And so you have to ask yourself, do I understand what they're asking me? Do I understand what the finished product's gonna look like and do I understand how much time that's gonna take? And it's really important for you to spend time with people and be sure that you can deliver on time and you understand what's going on. Because if you don't, people will look at you as being very unreliable and that's really going to hurt your level of trust with people. And so you wanna be able to make sure that you're clear with people on all the things that are going on in order for you to deliver whatever it is that they wanna do. And the next part of it really is competence, right? Is that you can know, I know what I'm going to be doing for you and I'm an expert in and I have enough information that I can deliver whatever it is that you expect me to in a way that will show that I'm competent about understanding the delivery of what it is you want me to do. And part of it with competence is sometimes with people that are really smart in one area, we assume that they'll be able to deliver in another area and that's called a halo effect when actually that's not often true. So we really have to understand whether we can do what people are asking us to do or do we need to tell them that's not something I'm good at or that's not something that probably needs some help on and really clarifying in that point what is it competence-wise do you need to have a node understand to deliver what it is that you're expected to deliver at that point? And I think you also have to look at what are the standards they're looking at for competence when it comes to whatever delivered it, right? It could be a high level plan or they may be expecting to deliver a very detailed plan with detailed steps. So that's really key. Now the fourth area is really understanding care and I think care or caring is the critical step in trust. In fact, I think it's more important than any other piece especially when we're building long-term trust with someone else, right? If someone cares about you, if some things else don't line up you often will forgive them or allow allowances for that. But if you don't think someone cares about you you're gonna feel distrust to them you're gonna feel a space between them because you realize that it's more of an adversarial position. It's more of something where someone's trying to get something and they're not willing to return it to you. In a great book called Give and Take by Adam Grant they talk about giving, matching, and then taking. And what you find is that people that are matching or taking get way less in the end because everyone is looking to either match I'll give you a dollar for what you have or they're taking meaning I want a dollar and I don't want to give you anything, right? And when it comes to giving you're going to get ahead because other people are willing to do anything for you if you're willing to do the same thing. And that's when people start caring and showing you that they're able to do that. And also when people care about other people they're often willing to be much more forgiving. They're often easier to resolve conflict it's easier to back down on demand it's easier to have an argument and then actually apologize and come back because then people don't feel like they have to fall on a sword or it's something that if they do that they're going to be losing out because the other person's going to hold it over them. So I think the caring component is absolutely critical in going through this. And it means you have to develop some areas of intimacy with other people. And I think with caring the easiest thing that you can do to start building caring relationships with people is actually leading, right? Leading with vulnerability leading with sharing stories about yourself they don't have to be anything crazy but you have to set that up so the other person shares about something with you, right? So a great example was probably like almost a year ago I was at an event, a cancer charity event and I was standing in line waiting for a cocktail and a woman next to me asked me why'd you come to this event? And I told her, well my mom had cancer and she fortunately went to Sloan Catering and she got some experimental drugs which really helped her and enabled her to recover. Well that allowed that other person to actually then tell me about the fact that her sister had breast cancer and it really was a conversation where she spoke for a while but it brought us closer together and in that time she saw that I cared because it was active listening, right? And that actually started to build a relationship at that point but the reason it did was because I led and I think you've got a lead in the caring segment in order to really move that forward. Now the next part of this is really when you have distrust with someone, other person you've got to really sit down with them and really before you do that really actually ask yourself like what's the point in sitting down with that other person? Like what is it that I want to gain out of it? What are the things that are really happening in this relationship that are causing it and what parts of I playing it, what role am I doing? And I think you have to ask yourself some hard questions about that but what you're doing in order to really sabotage that relationship because it's never only the other person. There's black, white and then there's gray in between and that's where the truth lies and so I think you have to be able to do that and sit down and give them very specific examples of where their trust went off, right? For example, I've asked you several times to complete a task within a given time. I've sent you follow-ups on that and the last three times you're losing my trust because you haven't delivered on these projects and because you haven't delivered on these projects these things have happened to me. So you have to understand that someone really understands why you not delivering is actually causing them a significant problem in what that's actually going on and then what you can do at that point is listen to them, right? Sometimes people are gonna blame you, some people are gonna be angry, some people are gonna say things but it's really critical for you to let them get the emotions out because the challenging thing when you're having conversations like that is that people have emotions in their head. They're very narrow in thinking. They're not really, they're put on blinders and they're looking basically down a tunnel and if you let people get through their emotions and let them talk, what'll happen is is they'll calm down, they'll feel better and they'll be more open to talking to you. I mean, I'm sure you yourself have had an issue in your life where you've gotten really upset at someone and then you've let it all out and then you're much more at ease and you're willing to have a conversation with someone. Well, this is the same way. You've gotta be willing to do that in the process and then come back and give them alternatives and things they can do and agree upon that leaving. Now, if you're the other party and you wanna take that distrust and actually make it go away, what you have to do is you have to acknowledge what's going on. You have to tell the other person, you understand you didn't deliver the projects on time. You may have not known or even if you did what the consequences were, you have to apologize, give us sincere apology and then take accountability for that and commit to actions that you will do moving forward. And if you do that, people are going to forgive you and allow you to rectify the situation and move forward. So I hope today you really understand the pillars of trust, how you can actually build more trust, how you can deal with distrust and how you can move forward and actually work through those with another person, through forgiveness to actually be much more productive, collaborate, reduce your conflicts which will help you make more money, be happier, be more fulfilled and create a great business and career.