Vince Moiso and Scott De Long discuss the critical role of trust in the workplace on the CEO podcast. They emphasize that trust is essential for building a positive workplace culture and is equally important for internal relationships within an organization as it is for external client relationships, using the example of sales. Scott De Long shares his research on building trust in cross-functional workgroups, highlighting the importance of cognitive trust and the emotional aspect of trust, which involves an affectionate connection. The conversation delves into the complexities of rebuilding trust once it’s broken, emphasizing the need for sincerity, vulnerability, and proving oneself through actions. The discussion concludes with the connection between trust and communication, presenting a “circle of trust” model that emphasizes respect, listening, shared experience, and delivering on promises as crucial components in building and maintaining trust.
Transcript | Season 1, Episode 4
Vince Moiso
Everyone, welcome to the CEO, podcast, cocktails, entrepreneurs, and opportunity. I’m Vince Moiso. I’m here with my friend Scott De Long today; the topic will be around trust in the workplace, which I think is a hot topic. You know, trust is a big word; it’s a general word. Yet, I feel it is incredibly important within any workplace and can be the foundation of a culture within a workplace. Scott, you’ve done a lot of work on this in a previous podcast; we talked about communication, which is, I think, you know, trust and communication are probably the two biggest topics for you that you’ve done most of your work, I think you included, both of those topics within your dissertation when you got your Ph.D. Tell me your feelings on trust in the workplace.
Scott De Long
My doctoral dissertation was on building trust and a cross-functional workgroup. There are a lot of studies on how to build teams and all that. And trust is always on top of that list of how to build teams. And it also says that homogeneity is also good. Cross-functional work teams are even more difficult. Because if you’re in accounting, and I’m in sales, we already have this natural, you know, Cobra, like conflict with each other. Right? And building that. My dissertation was based on building this, and we found a process that works. And the process is communication.
Vince Moiso
Tell us more. I mean, I know it feeds from the deep discussion we had. We cut it into two parts because there’s so much you can talk about regarding communication. What can you do to focus on trust as a part of communication in the workplace?
Scott De Long
Well, let’s define what trust is. Sure. Right. Trust is the, and the seminal research on this was done by a group back in the 90s. What they claimed to trust was the vulnerability of others’ actions and the faith that you have that they will perform those actions. So, I’m giving you trust; it’s broken down into a couple of different things. There’s something called cognitive trust; cognitive trust is where I know you’re competent to do the thing. I trust you can do it. And then there’s the aspect of trust, an aspect of which I believe that you have the benevolence to perform; not only do you have the ability, but you have the benevolence to perform those acts, and therefore, I can trust you. What our research does is say that in workplaces, there’s cognitive trust all the time. I know the accountants do a good job; they’re fine. They’re not account beans, salespeople, not Excel things, that sort of thing. I know what you’re good at your thing. Good. I can trust that you can do that. But it’s the aspect of trust that we worked on building within this study that allowed teams to be created. My aspect has an affection for you. I like you. That’s the type of trust that we’re talking about. And that’s an important part, if you want to build a team, not just they know they can do it, which is important, certainly. But I want to do this with you because I like you. Right? And that I know that I can be vulnerable with you and that you’re not going to, you know, put your boot on my neck because I’m being vulnerable and take advantage of him in those sorts of ways. It becomes important, especially if you want to build cross-functional teams. But even with a sales organization, if you just take one portion of a team that everyone has, you will think the same motives, right? And that same thought process. You want that team to trust, while you would think you want that team to trust each other as well. Sales might be a bad example because it’s a great example.
Vince Moiso
I think it’s a great example, and I think it looks. I love that definition that you put together, and you know what I heard, But the key component of all that is vulnerability, and there’s no quicker way we know this is. There’s just no quicker way to trust than being vulnerable yourself. You know, and I know this, I learned the hard way that the only person I can control is me; I can’t control anybody else. If I’m willing to be vulnerable, then I can create trust very quickly with another individual. And that’s where that stems from. Now, what I want to hear from you is what it takes to build trust within an organization.
Scott De Long
Same for me. There are a few things, all right. Trust is broken, and in some other categories, there’s a propensity to trust; there are certain people who are more trusting than others. Those with a propensity to trust and those without exhibit trusting behaviors. So, if you want to build trust, especially with someone who doesn’t have a propensity to trust, you must show trusting behavior; start with vulnerability, that I am willing to be vulnerable to you. First, I will not wait for you to do it for me. And that’s trusting behavior, right? That I’m willing to do that. And I’m going to take the risk, and there’s a risk and be involved. Like, I grew up with that, right, in my family of origin. Vulnerability was a weakness, not a strength. There were a couple of people in my family that if you were vulnerable to things, they would either laugh at you or that boot on the neck; that’s where that came from, for me, right? It took me many years to get to that spot where I could be a vulnerable area. But here’s what I found out: vulnerability is attractive. And I don’t mean sexually attractive, but it’s an attractive quality. The more vulnerable I am to you, the more you’re going to want to hang out with me and then share with me and do things more with me. It just works, right? There’s a keynote that I give on this. And it’s interesting. The big group of people out there, and I’m saying, here I am, a 61-year-old guy, overweight, you know, my best days are way behind me. But I tell people, I can get a, and I’m a happily married guy, too. But I can get a date in any place that I go to. And that is by me being curious, me wanting to know about you. And I do this: I take someone in the front row, and I just start a conversation. And then I started asking her about her, like me being interested. There’s an old saying that says, you want to be interesting, be interested. The way this normally goes is the last question, and she’ll answer that and then ask another question based on her answer. And another question based on her answer. And I think I did this in the thing that I did with the EO with that group. And then I finally look down and say you want to get a coffee? They always say yes, like, now, I don’t know if they’re planning on with the game or if I really could get that date. But by me being interested in you, you have more affinity to want to hang out with me. Because what’s more, go back to the Dale Carnegie stuff, right?
Vince Moiso
Really, the reciprocity of what you’re talking about is the big issue. Right? If I’m willing to be vulnerable, then that means, Scott, that you’re willing to be vulnerable with me. I mean, it just lets it immediately let the guard down. Now. Okay, here’s the debate for me: is trust earned, or is it given?
Scott De Long
That goes back to that propensity of trust. There are some people like me, I’m a very trusting person. That’s my nature. And I do it based on my thought process on karma. And saying, I’m going to do this with you because I learned that it works. And if you screw that up, that’s on you. That’s not my problem. But not everyone’s like that, and I get I wasn’t when I was younger, as well. There are places where trust needs to be earned. For me, and in the future, I want trust to be given until you screw up. And that doesn’t work with everybody. Right?
Vince Moiso
Under that model, and I agree with it, because that wasn’t where I was at a younger age, especially throughout the years. You know, again, I’ll just tell this quick story is, you know, my dad passed away at 62 years old. He had Alzheimer’s and dementia, and he had about a four-year battle with it. He had an early onset. Well, he was diagnosed at the age of 58. And it went fast. And I did what I I’ve said before in our introduction, and I come from, and it’s an American Italian family; I was laughed at for being vulnerable, you know, at an early age, not to mention the fact that we didn’t show motion. You know, crying wasn’t a good thing, all these things. What do you think I did with all that grief and guilt about my dad’s passing? I just packed it up in a nice neat little ball, shoved it as far down as it could go, and, narrow, it stayed for about 17 years. You can imagine it became more difficult as I became closed. It was vulnerable. Vulnerability is a learned behavior.
Scott De Long
But think through that. What if, right? What if you decided to tell somebody that story, and they just looked at you with loving eyes and empathy and like, wow, how do you feel about that person, then?
Vince Moiso
They’re just listening. You know, and I feel good about that, you know, you’re just, you are just I said, wow, somebody really listened to what I have to say, and, you know, puts me in a comfortable place, right, a place of trust. What I was getting at was I agree with the fact that, for me, trust is given. I trust you, I don’t really, you know, it’s like, if I’m in a situation with somebody, I don’t really know you; I don’t want to come from a place of distrust you because I don’t know you, that’s terrible. To me, my trust is yours until you lose it. And that’s the way I approach most situations. There certainly are exceptions to that. With that said, I heard you say something interesting to me is okay under that model, right, Scott? You have my trust until you lose it. Can you re-earn it?
Scott De Long
But it’s harder to do so in the research talks about this as well. It is harder to re-earn a trust that’s lost rather than have it initially with everybody. But there’s a process that you need to go through. The first thing that we need to do if we want to rebuild trust is to own our mistakes. We need to own the thing that we did that broke that trust and apologize to the person. A sincere apology, not like, you know, I didn’t mean it.
Vince Moiso
Ownership creates a lot of trust along with vulnerability in my mind. One of my favorite books is Your Awareness. By Jocko willing, he’s an ex-Navy SEAL. It’s Extreme Ownership. It’s such a powerful book, and I did the audible version. And he tells it, he’s got this deep raspy voice, exactly what you would picture this navy seal that’s, you know, out in the Middle East. I just fell into this book, and in a big way, and I’ve listened to it a couple of times. But you know, Extreme Ownership is what you’re talking about. And I totally agree with that. There’s no easier way to just knock the wall down between two people. If you just own your shit, you know, just immediately, whatever happened? You say that’s on me. 100%. What else is there to say at that point, right? Like, what argument is there? Well, you’ve just when you’ve just owned the situation, and you said, that’s completely on me. And then, even if it’s a trust scenario, where, okay, great, because we’re talking about returning trust, right? If it’s a trust scenario, and I’ve lost that trust, and I walk over to you, Scott, and I say, I own 100% of what I did, I lost your trust, Scott. And that’s on me. And there’s no excuse. I’m not going to stand here and tell you any story about it. I’m not going to give you any reasons or excuses or anything that you could perceive as excuses because there is no excuse for my behavior. And the fact that I lost your trust, Scott, how can I re-earn it? How can I earn your trust back?
Scott De Long
That’s a good start, and for some people, that may be enough, but for others, it may not be. Now, we may have to prove it.
Vince Moiso
Nor should you expect it to be right. Like you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t expect it to be one or the other. Like, that’s enough, right? Sometimes. You know, I’ve heard this before. Just say I’m sorry. And shut up. Don’t say anything else. Say, I’m sorry. And then, from there, just listen.
Scott De Long
And that could be a good start. Now, I may have to prove myself again. I may have to go into my actions speak louder than words, right anyway. You can say they’re sorry and move on. And I’ve dealt with lots of narcissists, in particular, right now that will apologize for beating the woman, and then they’ll beat her again.
Vince Moiso
Well, there are extreme versions of it, right?
Scott De Long
Your apology may be appreciated and still may not land; it may not be enough for you to earn that trust back. Now, I’ve got to prove it. Now I’ve got to come back and come and can keep doing the thing that I’m doing, and showing who I am and show my true stripes and show that thing that broke your trust was a mistake. One that I owned to it; it’s not going to happen again. And here’s who I am. But it takes a lot. It is easier to get it the first time, as you only get one chance to make a good first impression. I don’t believe that necessarily. But in trust, if you screw up once, you may end up with somebody, especially if you don’t own it.
Vince Moiso
Well, let’s transition. I have all this fit into the workplace. Let’s talk about why trust is so important within an organization. And why is it critical to the culture of an organization?
Scott De Long
I believe that there are no true relationships unless they’re built on trust, positive relationships. And in the workplace, it is a series of relationships that we’re dealing with; it’s not, we’re not dealing with spreadsheets, we’re dealing with people, right? There’s like, we can have systems and processes and spreadsheets, and we can have all the data analytics and all that great. And a company needs those things to operate. Absolutely no question you need to have processes.
Vince Moiso
We are only as good as the people running them.
Scott De Long
But then you’re dealing with people, right? Are people going to act in the best way for the organization? If they don’t trust you? The answer is no. They’re not. You must as a leader, teammate, or whatever relationship you want to do. If that’s not built with a level of trust, and I’m not just talking about cognitive trust, that I know, you can sell the crap out of that thing. You’re good at that, right? I want to hang out with you to give you more of my stuff. For me to be more vulnerable. I think the aspect of trust is as important, if not more important, than the cognitive trust of knowing that you can do the thing. But I want to provide you with the information as well.
Vince Moiso
Certainly, we were talking about sales earlier. You gave sales as an example. And I think it’s a quintessential example. It’s a critical part of the external relationships that you build with clients, which is typically based on a high level of trust. And what I’ve learned from leading and owning, you know, many companies at this point is that internal relationships are equally as important, right? And if it was the adage, take care of your people, your people will take care of your customers. I think if you build trust within an organization with your people and the relationships that are built from that within the organization, the rest just falls into place because the expectation within a culture is a culture of trust within the organization that exudes to what you’re doing out.
Scott De Long
Let’s go back to the sales context. A customer’s not going to buy from me unless they trust me that I can deliver that or whatever. I look at internal issues in the organization, which are a series of two things. You have your team, and you have your internal customers. The folks in accounting, the folks in manufacturing, the folks in shipping, the folks in whatever, are my internal customers; if I’m on, if I’m a sales guy, says I need to take care of them like I would take care of the customer. And if the people are in shipping, if the people are in manufacturing, go with that. I placed an order. You need to go build a whole bunch of things, right? Whatever widgets that you’re building, and you don’t trust it, that’s a real order. You’re going to build them. Is the CFO going to give you the money to build them if they don’t trust the sales guy with his order? Trust is as important internally as it is externally.
Vince Moiso
I have that scenario with two of my guys right now where, you know, they are as good as it gets, as far as I’m concerned with the way they are with external customers. I mean, I’ve watched them in presentations. I’ve been in many meetings with them, and they’re as good as it gets. And then it’s funny how they treat employees internally; they treat them quite differently. And my coaching tends to be focused on. Well, hey, how were you? When were we with the customer? ABC? Right? As let’s recall that meeting, you know, we’ll call that meeting. And I said, remember when we were having a meeting internally with, you know. And I said, did you act the same way? No. Well, the way that you acted there, would you ever act like that for the customer? A, B, and C? No, never. Right? Well, did you share what you said? You know, I mean, I mean, you’re creating trust here and not creating that trust here. Do you see where the breakdown is? And it’s a powerful thing. When you can have that conversation, you realize that it boils down to trust, right? What about you? These are the worst words, and I’ve heard these words before. I’ve heard them, and they’re gut-wrenching. Oh, I can’t trust you anymore.
Scott De Long
I can’t think of when I’ve heard those because this was this. Trust has always been a thing for me. It’s not like there are a lot of things that I didn’t learn until I hit 50. But this has always been one that’s big for me. If someone didn’t, as I remember as a kid, I would say, because all kids lie, right? I don’t ever remember lying. Someone said they didn’t trust me; it would crush me.
Vince Moiso
I think most people feel that way, Scott. Well, let’s bring this home. How can you bring together the connection between trust and communication?
Scott De Long
That’s simple, and I’ve talked about this before. I’m going to talk about every good theory in everything that I do. It’s what I call the circle of trust, and it’s turned into a cycle. Then, the circle of trust starts with respect, and it’s the respect that is given to another human being, not the one that’s earned because you’re awesome at something that comes later. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. Start with respect, that’s. Human beings deserve some level of respect, and the way that I communicate with them moves into listening, the whole listening skills back to the communication portion, listening to understand the Stephen Covey concept, listening to understand as opposed to listening to reply, trying to find out where you’re coming from, the more I do that, the more you’re going to want to hang out with me. Alright, the next portion of that is an EEO concept of sheer experience, as opposed to telling you what to do and what you should do more; the biggest thing that’s happened to me in my life is taking the word should out of my vocabulary. And that has been dramatic. Even with my own children, I take that out. They liked me better because I didn’t tell them what they should be doing. Yeah. And then the last piece is delivering on the promise. That’s the circle of trust. Now, that turns into a cycle. And I believe this, and I haven’t proven it yet, you know, empirically, but I believe I can. And that is the cycle that says that you start with intention. At the start, if I don’t have an intention to build trust, it doesn’t matter. Don’t even bother, like, I need the intention. Go through that cycle one time or circle one time. And you get to the next stage of that, which is that authenticity that you see. I’m a real guy. I’m real. Like, I believe in this, right? Yeah. Then, it turns out authenticity goes into the cycle, the next one, and we’ll put a graphic on this. But that turns into respect. And this is the respect it’s earned. If the gun didn’t have tension and authenticity, now I’m starting to earn your respect, right? Yeah, that turns into building trust. I got it that moves into a relationship without those first. People say that, while it takes so long to build trust, because they go through a normal cycle, and say, I just got to going to keep doing what I’m saying to do. And I’ll get trust. Yes, that’s true. But it takes a long time to do that; I believe three times through the circle of trust, intent, authenticity, and respect turn to trust, and that trust builds a relationship.
Vince Moiso
I’m visualizing all of this, right, as you’re saying it as this flow chart. It’s a symbiotic relationship, trust, and communication, right? You know, when I’m looking at it, you can interlock it, right? It’s like they’re almost interlocking circles. And then as you put respect and authenticity and all these things around it, right, you’ve got what visually looks like this, you know, connected, completely connected relationships. The one goes hand in hand with the other. Yeah,
Scott De Long
We’ll put up a graphic on this because it’s exactly what it looks like. It’s a cycle that goes like this: boom, boom, boom. Suddenly, we’re in a relationship. And that relationship is built on trust, not built on need, right? Like, I need to, I need this from you because you have got to deliver that thing. Let’s build it based on trust.
Vince Moiso
Thanks for listening to the CEO podcast. You know, and as always, we could talk about these topics for an hour or longer. We teach we coach, and we spend weeks with organizations on these topics because it’s not enough to just talk about it. The execution of these topics is critical to any organization. It takes development, it takes training, it takes practice.
Scott De Long
I’ve been working on this for the last 11 years of my life, and I still mess up from time to time. But I do believe two steps forward and one step back is still forward. We’re going to mess up; we’re human, and things happen. Forgive yourself, move on, and try and continue to do better, but it takes practice.
Vince Moiso
With the sports analogy, right? You know, it’s almost funny how we lose in business. What is just this, you know, super basic thing about sports, right? Well, you can’t just show up to a game and expect to win that game if you haven’t spent the whole previous week or month practicing for that game. Right? But, in business, we lose sight of the practice we need for these things, right? You need to practice earning trust, communication, and all the things we’re talking about. And if you do that on a regular basis, it starts to become very natural; it starts to become a habit. Again, if you have any questions, please let us know any feedback. We’d love to hear from you. If you have differing opinions, we want to hear from you. Let us know if all feedback is great. Scott, what do we get today? This is tasty.
Scott De Long
This is tasty. This is a mass-produced beer. It’s another IPA done by the Kona Brewing Company, and it’s just their Island IPA.
Vince Moiso
I haven’t had that one before. Kona Brewing Company is great. Like, I they put out some good beers again, you know, easy ones. Store-bought that you can, you can grab. We were talking about this earlier. You know, I prefer bottled over canned water. I like bottled beers. And there’s a lot of them in the stores that you can get now. You have a lot of choices from a lot of, you know, craft breweries. That man, it’s as good as it gets. As far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing like getting a draft beer.
Scott De Long
Nothing like a draft. We’ll bring John on soon. John’s our producer, and he does those. He’s a beer guy. He brews his own. And he’s been telling me that in the crafting world, that cans there’s something about cans, and I think it’s just easier to can than a bottle, but we’ll bring him on, we’ll have him talking about.
Vince Moiso
What do we know, right? I’m not a brewmaster, but I know enough to be dangerous. Anyway, this is good. It’s tasty. Cheers.
Scott De Long
Thanks.
Vince Moiso
Until next time.
