In this compelling episode, Roy Reid, Owner of www.roywreid.com/, shares strategies to build trust as a leadership operating system. If you struggle with low trust or team tension, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What trust contract fosters accountability and cultural alignment
– Why trust is your leadership operating system for stage 4 success
– How to identify trust levels in team relationships to address tension
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that scales with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder and as a founder. If you haven’t realized this already, you’re likely to discover that it is possible to make all the right decisions and choose all the right strategies and still fall short of your goals. Why? Because at a certain stage, if you don’t learn to create and replicate a high degree of trust, then you’ll find it virtually impossible to see any of those decisions or strategies come to life. And here with us today to help us to transform the trust in our leadership teams and our organizations as a whole is the one and only Roy Reid. And Roy helps CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs go from frustrated, overwhelmed and weary, from the pains of low trust culture, or even a distrust in themselves, to becoming confident, satisfied and encouraged, improving their health, well being and performance. He helps them develop resilient and courageous teams that foster a high trust culture where people feel safe, do the right thing, deliver outstanding service and strive to improve daily performance. He’s also the author of the trust transformation. Trust transform your health, well being and performance through the power of trust. And he’s here with us today. Roy, thanks for being here. Glad you’re on the show. First question out of the gate is for a founder who’s navigating this world that you and I know of entrepreneurship, especially when there’s some success that comes with it, and it’s fast paced, it’s chaotic, it’s firefighting, like everything’s going everywhere all at once, and in a moment of sobriety, they’ll sit back and say they’re really struggling under the weight of it. All right, may not say that openly to a whole lot of people, but they’re feeling it, and there’s some folks listening today that feel that way. What is this thing that you call transformational trust, and why is it so important to helping them in their organization right now?
Roy Reid
Well, first of all, Scott, thanks for having for having me. I’m excited to be here. I love the profile of the audience we’re talking to, because in large part, as you said, it is me and the things that I deal with every day as leaders in an organization. It’s important to understand that before we can do strategy, before we can do sales, before we can do all of these other things, it’s critical to have a foundation of trust in the organization and be able to understand how it works and what it looks like and Where the practical ideas around trust are oftentimes, people look at trust through this lens of this one big, sweeping idea that either is or isn’t. And what I like to say is I want to help people understand that trust isn’t just a feeling. It’s your leadership operating system. It’s the OS within the organization that allows you to do the things that you do. And so if we can look at trust through that lens, through the lens of of it being this operating system, just like your phone’s operating system, there are things that you need to make sure, stay updated, stay engaged, that you’re actively involved in, otherwise, like, like an operating system or even a living thing. If you don’t feed it, it’s going to die. Yeah. And so I initially started on this journey as early in my career, working as a public relations consultant with the idea of helping people understand that the outcome of every communication ought to be to improve trust. And as I broke that down and looked at trust, recognized what are the moving parts, one of the key ideas that a leader needs to step back and look at is that trust is built on a foundation of both emotion and experience, and so a lot of people lean into one or the other in their leadership style, and we’ve got to focus on both understanding that that emotional connection that people make often fuels what that initial idea of trust is going to look like, but it’s over time, and that experience that they have with us that’s going to nurture, foster and keep this thing at the level that it should and as we even take a look at the two drivers, one of the key concepts that we developed is that trust has four attributes that people look for in terms of wanting to trust you. The first being trustworthy, which is different than trusted. Trustworthy, congratulations, you’ve earned the right to be trusted, and it’s the level of trust that we have within ourselves. The second attribute is authenticity. People want to have a real and meaningful relationship with you, something that goes beyond the surface, and know that you’re prioritizing that relationship equal to the. Work, and the third attribute is dependability. Do you deliver a consistent, reliable performance in the things that you do? And then lastly, and really kind of the outlier, is influence. And influence is leadership. It’s when we have the gift of trust people are giving us this idea that allows us to exercise that influence effectively. And then there’s, there’s details and attributes within each one of those larger ideas that we look at and really inform to in the program and in the book.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I want to break a couple of those down here in just a moment. But before we get there, one of the things that I have found is that’s tricky about trust is it’s one of those things that it’s it’s kind of easiest to have when you need it the least, right, and easiest to lose when you need it the most. And so for folks who, who’s there, it’s just hair on fire right now, and trust has taken a beating because they didn’t cultivate it well, because they’ve just taken a few losses as a team, because fill in the blank, yeah, what would you say to someone kind of sitting in that right now thinking like I don’t even know where to start?
Roy Reid
One of the first things that I help people understand is acknowledging this and even starting just a conversation where you think it might be weak, one of the important things that we help people understand, just to give some context to what this looks like, is you’re always going to have four kind of relationships in your life, the people that you work with, or the people that You do business with, or even in your family. They may they may flow in and out of these four characteristics, and the first one is your advocates. These are people that are at the highest level of trust in your life. They show up when you need them. They’re there probably even before you know you need them. The next level is your allies, people that tend to support what you do, tend to fall into the same camp that you do have the same ideas. The largest group are your agnostics. They’re the blank slate, the people that you don’t quite have a relationship with. And then at the lowest end of that spectrum are adversaries, people that you have a harder time with you. They may have some tension in terms of what that looks like. And the important idea that goes along with this is that those are conditions, not judgment. We’re not saying that those people are good or bad. We’re just saying at this point in time, that’s where they fall in that relationship. And so when your hair’s on fire and you’re trying to understand what’s going on really, the first thing is to identify where this person that I’m feeling that tension with or that group, where are they on that spectrum? Where’s the work that I need to go for? What’s the goal I need to set? Am I moving an ally to an advocate, which is not a big move, or am I taking somebody who’s maybe at an adversary level where trust has been broken and I know it, or they know and I’m just becoming aware of it. Am I having to move them up into a better position? Yeah, and one of the guiding principles that we teach is that we we take responsibility for the relationship, which doesn’t mean we try to control it, because we can never control the outcome. But once we take that initial step, once we move into that space where I’m saying, Okay, I know something has to be done. I know that I have a portion of that responsibility, it immediately changes the dynamic, both from the way you’re looking at it, but also when people are engaged, they look and say, oh, okay, I recognize that problem, or thank you for acknowledging that problem. Or they may it may not work. It doesn’t always work, but at least getting at that point where you’re engaging in it allows you to have an impact on your own perspective. And when we do that, everyone’s watching. So our team members, our employees, other customers, they’re all watching. And so when we model that behavior, that in itself has a transformational impact on people.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, what have you found are some of the most common behaviors that founder, CEOs engage in and unconsciously destroy trust or reduce it?
Roy Reid
Well, that’s my favorite question. I tell people, the most consistent thing that I see leaders doing that damages trust is just, is to assume it, it’s just to assume it’s there. We we get into business because we have an idea that we know can help people. You know, we pursue something because we know that we can change people’s lives with whatever it is we’ve invented, developed, come up with or championing. And so our intent. Tension is good going into it we mean to do and make a positive impact. However, when we assume trust we we are neglecting to understand that not everyone comes from the same place that we did, not everyone’s had the same upbringing, training background, and so forth. And so when we assume it, we step past a very important idea that says, Do I fully understand their point of view, what their perspective is? And I have an amazing co author on this program and journey with me, Dr Meyer Mansfield. She’s a great physician, Chief Medical Officer at a very large hospital system, and she tells a story of being in a position of leadership and having this kind of contentious relationship with a colleague. Every meeting seemed to create friction, fights and otherwise negative situations. And she sat back one day and said, Man, I just don’t trust this person. But as she leaned into this idea of taking responsibility for the relationship, she said, You know what? She doesn’t trust me. What do I need to do about it? And she initiated a conversation. The other person recognized the same thing. What they discovered, Scott was that they were both passionate about the same idea, which was caregiver wellbeing, but they were coming at it from their grounding, Elmira being a physician, this other person being a nurse, and there’s just some natural tension in the mix there. Once they got that cleared, and they started to move in a direction where they were recognizing that they were pursuing the same thing. It changed everything. But had omaira not taken that initial step, taken responsibility for that relationship, acknowledged that I have a part in this, that I’m contributing to how do we get past that? It might not have happened, and what her testimony is, she says, had she not had that relationship at an advocate level, and it remained at this adversary level, she might not have ever become a chief marketing officer, because she leaned into that relationship so much, and it it changed the way she led and opened up so many doors for.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, there, there was This thing I kind of stumbled on as a leader, and it’s played out in a lot of different circumstances. What I think we have a tendency to take disagreement, first and foremost as misalignment, right? And we are going after two different things, when probably 95% of the time it’s really just miscommunication, yeah, and so what I love about taking ownership of the relationship, taking that responsibility, to look at it through their lens, is it starts to peel back that assumption, right, that, Oh, they must just be out of alignment with Me. It’s so powerful. So for a leader in a successful but, you know, struggling but successful. You know, it’s both of those things all at once organization that is trying to not just build trust with them and their leadership team, but also replicate that trust through their organization. What’s the key to getting it reproduced throughout the ranks.
Roy Reid
Leaders, people look to the organization to help define what’s important, and we create culture drivers to do that. We spend a lot of time working on our mission, our vision, our values and our service standards. And what I try to encourage leaders to do is to codify trust in your organization. And so by one step, you could, you could incorporate the concept into those other areas. What we do when we train a leadership team is is we help them create what we call a trust contract so that team using those other parts of their cultural construct lean into the idea of saying, what are specific things that we need to be doing on a regular basis? What ideas do we need to hold ourselves accountable to when it comes to the relationship? How do we deal with conflict? How do we deal with collaboration? How do we set ideas in place and something that we hold to both an inspirational idea but also an accountability idea to put into our structure? And that’s what the trust contract does. So we’ll have an organization develop 10 principles or ideas that they’re going to live up to. And then everyone signs it, and that becomes part of that cultural construct. And if you bring someone new on, it becomes part of the onboarding that says this is the expectation that we have of our leaders in terms of how we both prioritize the performance. Performance that you do and the relationships that you have. A lot of times we So focus on performance that we run right past or over relationships. And it’s, again, not mal intended. There’s no devious idea behind it. It just we get caught up in it. So you need to have something within the construct that reminds people day after day, this is the priority, so that when something does go wrong, when there is a break, the leader can sit down and say, let’s take a moment and review what we’ve committed to here and now it’s in the same it’s held at that same level that those other culture drivers are.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good, so good. I love that. So much practical wisdom in there. Roy, before I let you go, I’ve got one more question for you, and the question I ask all my guests, and it is this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Roy Reid
I appreciate that too. So Scott, I have four kids. My three older ones are boys, and my youngest is a daughter. And when my daughter was five years old, I came home one Friday night and she had turned my entire dining room into a bracelet factory. And if you have kids, you know what I’m talking about, it’s an OSHA violation. But she was so excited. I put the bracelet on. It was Memorial Day weekend. I wore it everywhere. I became what’s technically known as show and tell. I got up on Tuesday morning to go to work. I took the bracelet off, went to work, came back that night. She’s still making them all all day, all night, and my wife and I are having making dinner, and she comes in the kitchen, and she looks at me and she’s got another bracelet, and I think I’ve only got so much arm to give to your cause. And Scott, she looked at me and said, Daddy, if you didn’t like the other bracelet, will you wear this one? Oh, wow, that’s a heartbreaking moment for a dad. You’ve completely let your child down. So I put the bracelet on, and I wear it every day. This is the bead bracelet here, and I’m sharing that because the thing I’d want everyone to walk away with today, because and what this bracelet reminds me is that every little thing that I say or do is either contributing to or taking away from the trust that people have in me. So we’ve got to be mindful. We’ve got to be intentional, and we’ve got to keep trust at the front of everything that we’re doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
So true. What a story. Roy, what a story. So there are some folks listening to this, and they know that this is something they need to prioritize. They want to learn more. Where can they get a copy of your book or find more about the work that you do.
Roy Reid
Appreciate that. So if they go to the trusttransformation.com I have a free leadership community that I’ve built, and within the framework of that community, they can actually buy the book at a 20% discount from the retail price. I have additional information and resources available for them, something I call the CEO trust blueprint, which is sort of a an outline of the program, but from the perspective of an operator, Owner, leadership or founder, that they can have with some free other educational information available.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant, brilliant, well, head on over, check it out. We’ll get both all those links in the bio, highly recommend it. Roy, thanks for being on the show. Just a privilege and honor having you here today, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Roy Reid
Roy Reid helps CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs go from frustrated, overwhelmed, and weary from the pains of a low-trust culture (or distrust in themselves) to confident, satisfied, and encouraged, improving their health, well-being, and performance. He helps them develop resilient and courageous teams that foster a high-trust culture where people feel safe, do the right thing, deliver outstanding service, and strive to improve daily performance.
Want to learn more about Roy Reid’s work at roywreid.com/? Check out his website at https://www.skool.com/the-trust-transformation/about