The TRUST Show

Being in a conflict of interests is not a trust issue. How you handle it is. This episode will explain what conflict of interest is, how it relates to trust, how the way you are handling it will affect your trustworthiness, and how to handle it to increase your trustworthiness.

A 2020 article claimed that 70% of business partnerships fail. Different reasons are given, but the main one is that trust breaks down. A business partnership is an intense environment to test trust. Unfortunately, so many of us enter business partnerships without first thoroughly analyzing whether we should trust our new partner, and don't build the relationship in a way that will build trust. Often, there are severe consequences to the breakdown of that trust, both financially and emotionally. This episode addresses the relationship between trust and partnerships, how you can determine whether you can trust your partner, and how to build trust into a business partnership from the beginning (hint: it's not the contract you put in place). 

This episode revisits the content of the second episode of the third season. I learned a lot more, and continued to evolve the mathematical model of that reciprocal relationship between trust and trustworthiness that emanates from the sixth law of trust (trust is reciprocal). Leaders often, yet unintentionally, kill their employees trustworthiness. This episode will explain how it happens, and why. Finally, at the end, you will get some advice on how to reverse this trend. How to start with TRUST, and why it's so hard. 

Most trust-building frameworks about leaders focus on how the leader can become more trusted—a trusted leader. There is no doubt that if, as a leader, you wish to build trust in the organization, you must first be trusted by the people in that organization. The Trust Habits framework focuses on trustworthiness, and is a highly structured and prescriptive process that combines the science of trust and the science of habit forming. It has 3 layers: motivation, understanding, and application (becoming more trusted). As a leader, you may be interested in the 4th layer: coaching others through the Trust Habits process. This episode will cover that. 

I often get asked the question: why is trust, really? It's hard to rely on dictionary definitions to give a thoughtful answer. This episode will answer the question by answering another question: why do we trust? In this episode, you will learn that we trust, in the most simplistic way, because we want to get a reward while feeling safe. You will learn that trust is about risk, fear, safety vs. danger, it's about giving control, and about choice. This episode might feel a little philosophical, but in the end, you will get my definition of what trust is. 

Over the years, I developed the Trust Habits™ framework. It has some unique characteristics, such as the recognition that trust is relative, which adds a level of complexity to how you help people become more trusted. You can’t just give “generic” strategies. Being more trustworthy is something that must be developed one relationship at a time. After delivering many, many workshops, I realized that the ideal person in the organization to help build trust, not only for themselves but for everyone in the organization, is the HR professional. In this episode, I explain how I reached that conclusion.

I’m also really excited that I have partnered with a major HR association to deliver the first Trust Habits™ HR Certification program, a 3-day program, in January 2023. In the following weeks and months, we will release more information.

In this episode, recorded three days before the U.S. Independence Day 2022, I decided to share two personal stories related to it. The first is the story of getting my citizenship and something that happened during the final interview. The second story is about a strange email that I received in 2013, supposedly from the White House. Finally, I wanted to share the foreword for The Book of TRUST, written by the late Congressman Sam Johnson, who passed away four months after the book was published, and to whom I dedicated the book. 

To close the 5th season, this episode includes the actual soundtrack of Yoram's second TEDx talk, given in May 2022, titled "The Relativity of TRUST." In 13 minutes, he covers one of the main differentiators of his insights from his trust research, put in The Book of TRUST. Trust is not absolute or universal. It is relative. The exact same behavior could cause one person to trust you and another person to distrust you. For that reason, you must consider your trustworthiness independently, one relationship at a time. This episode starts with the background story for that TEDx talk. 

Link to the TEDx talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/yoram_solomon_the_relativity_of_trust

Previous TEDx talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/yoram_solomon_the_day_that_forever_changed_american_culture_yoram_solomon_tedxoaklawn 

This episode draws on my trust research and also my work as a professor of entrepreneurship. Often I ask my students: if a product (or service) costs you $100 to make, how much should you sell it for? This episode will address this question and the relationships between four components: cost, price, perceived value, and real value. In this episode, you will learn that the relationship between every two components determines the company's sustainability, market share, and trustworthiness. In other words, it determines whether customers will buy from it now, buy from it in the future, and whether it will be able to make money. 

Previous episodes dealt with how to be more trustworthy and therefore trusted. But what happens when you lose someone’s trust in you? How do you recover from it? Should you even care? This episode will answer these questions and more and give you a framework to rebuild your trustworthiness once you lose it, using the framework of the 8 laws of trust and my 6-component trustworthiness mode.