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:

- Why trust is your leadership operating system for stage 4 success

- How to identify trust levels in team relationships to address tension

- What trust contract fosters accountability and cultural alignment

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

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 thetrusttransformation.com

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

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?

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.

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?

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.

Yeah, what have you found are some of the

most common behaviors that founder, CEOs engage in and

unconsciously destroy trust or reduce it?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.