Can you just unpack those three?

So, when you zoom out in history and you think about, like, trust always existed, right? This is the social glue of relationships.

It's what enables innovation.

It's what enables commerce.

And so I was like, "So how did this work over time before we had these technologies?" And what you see is trust used to be local, so it used to be defined by proximity, physical distance, and largely we used to trust people that were close to us, people that we knew and trust worked by reputation.

Now, when we started to move, when we started to build cities, when we started to trade, this type of trust, it wasn't effective.

It, it no longer sort of held up....to scale and growth, and it was one of the most incredible periods of innovation.

Hmm.

And here's Rachel Botsman, author of several books on trust, including her latest, How to Trust and Be Trusted.

I've actually given a commencement speech, but I didn't give, I didn't say these words, and I always think about the redo.

And I would stand up there and say, "There are three words that have served me well in my career, and I wanna pass them onto you.

I don't know." (laughs)

The three most important words in the English language perhaps, yeah?

(laughs) They are the three most important words that will serve you so well in your career.

Be confident with humility, but also those words, they're what makes me a deeply curious person, right? Like, it's like so much of education is about knowing and it's about those positive capabilities and it's about achievement and performance and outcomes.

And the earlier you can be comfortable in that space of unknowing and complexity and uncertainty, the more you'll be able to handle life, but the more valuable w- you'll be in organizations.

And so if you're a person who's maybe meeting a new surgeon for the first time or a new business partner or a new love interest, and you really wanna kind of make sure you're trusting appropriately, what are some strategies you'd use to do that?

[laughs] Well, I think the business situation's probably the easiest, and it's also where most people go wrong because most people start with the competence piece.

If you think about most job interviews or promotional interviews, like, "So tell me what you've done.

Tell me about your experience," like, they are the easiest things to get from a resume or a reference check.

And the number of interviews that don't get to the why and the how, the how is really interesting.

Like, how people approach things, how they break down problems, how they are in difficult conversations.

So I would, like, focus questions around that.

What is distrust?

I like it.

I love this question too, because Andy, I have the same...

I don't know if it's a gift or a problem, because I can't tell you the stuff that people tell me, whether it's friends, but then, yeah, like total strangers on a plane.

This happens to me a lot, so I'm with Andy.

I don't think it's his, like, energy and his aura, but he's probably not giving himself enough credit that it's his presence, it's the way he's listening, it's the questions that he's asked, that he's genuinely curious about that other person, and that other person feels a very quick sense of confidence in them.

And you have to be really careful, 'cause the worst thing is, you know when people say, "I shouldn't tell you this, because someone told me it in secret."

Yeah.

I have one for you, Tim, that I think will be of interest.

She studies trust at Oxford University, and here's a clip from her TED Talk where she starts by just defining what the word trust even means.

Trust is an elusive concept, and yet we depend on it for our lives to function.

I trust my children when they say they're gonna turn the lights out at night.

I trusted the pilot who flew me here to keep me safe.

It's a word we use a lot, without always thinking about what it really means and how it works in different contexts of our lives.

There are, in fact, hundreds of definitions of trust, and most can be reduced to some kind of risk assessment of how likely it is that things will go right, but I don't like this definition of trust because it makes trust sound rational and predictable, and it doesn't really get to the human essence of what it enables us to do and how it empowers us to connect with other people.

So I define trust a little differently.

Hmm.

How does that decision-making process work when it comes to trust?

Yeah, and there's so much underneath this.

I don't think we often think enough about the relationship between trust and control.

So on a basic level, when you need to control things or you need to feel like, to your point, the illusion of control, it's often a sign of lack of trust, that you're not dealing with uncertainty very well.

And this can look like all kinds of things.

So during the pandemic or during a political period of turmoil, like all the time, or during a serious environmental crisis, like the wildfires, the need to not just find information, but find information that makes you feel a little bit more in control.

So, oh, the air quality is actually okay, so I'm going to go outside.

And it's a point that I think people don't necessarily understand because sometimes they think that, well, you know, you need to kind of, you need to urge, you need to kind of micromanage and do these kinds of things because, well, who are they, right? I'm the boss.

Sure

...

I think this is quite helpful.

I don't usually like those two-by-two matrix, but in this instance it is, is helpful.

So if you imagine capability and character, most people would sayOr 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.

Yes.

What surprised you the most?

The creativity and care they put in creating trusting environments.

So the teacher in particular, her name is Kim.

She won Teacher of the Year, and she works in a really hard school in Illinois.

And, you know, a lot of those children, her students, are coming in with serious trust issues.

Some are living with grandparents, some with foster care.

It's a very difficult situation, and she's teaching Spanish, which is, you know, the, not the easiest subject to teach.

I think about trust, you know, a lot in my professional life and my personal life, and, you know, you've been a go-to trust expert for a very long time, and I'm wondering what gives you hope about the ability to build secure and trusting workplaces?

It was just inconceivable that somebody like that could do those sorts of things.

things.Oh, yes, bland old Doris got up to all sorts of things.

The nanny my parents trusted to take care of me and my brother turned out to be very untrustworthy indeed.

She forged my dad's signature to get a loan for a car.

She stole from us in the most brazen ways, and she was even running a drugs ring.

Really.

Deciding whom to trust can be pretty complicated.

Listen to Bad Women Presents: Stolen Sister wherever you get your podcasts.

Mm-hmm

... that people were better-Tuning in to trust signals so they could detect when someone was lying or slightly embellishing the truth, which I think is really interesting, that once you open yourself up ...

And this is where I think the vulnerability piece comes in with trust.

Like, once you allow yourself to be exposed to different situations and different people, you become a better read as to whether someone is telling the truth or whether someone is lying versus being really guarded and shut down.

I think there is a difference between giving your trust away too easily and people who make fast trust decisions.

So this is something I've personally had to learn, that I have gained so much in life by being a trusting person.

I would say the positives far outweigh the negatives, both professionally and, and personally.

I think that from all the polls and surveys that I've read, it does look like we're at or near historic lows on trust in the media and journalists, on trust in government, on trust in science and scientists, and I think these major institutions are the bedrock of democratic society.And I'd love to hear your perspective on how we think about why that's happening and what we do about it.