Trust and transparency are more than just buzzwords. They’re the secret sauce behind thriving workplaces. In this episode of “Can You Hear Me?”, Rob and Eileen dig into why trust is the foundation of employee engagement, what happens when it cracks, and how leaders can create a culture where honesty and openness fuel success. Whether you’re a leader or team member, tune in to discover practical insights that can transform your workplace from the inside out in Building Better Workplaces: Trust and Transparency.
The Trust Gap Between Employers and Workers
Rob Johnson: [00:00:16] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Can You Hear Me Podcast, I'm Rob Johnson. [00:00:21][4.3]
Eileen Rochford: [00:00:21] And I'm Eileen Rochford. I'm the CEO of the Harbinger Group of Marketing and Strategy firm. Today we're diving into a topic that's at the heart of every successful organization. Trust and transparency. They go hand in hand within our successful workplaces. What we really want to talk about though is why do trust and transparency matter so much and what happens when they are missing or when they falter. [00:00:45][23.9]
Rob Johnson: [00:00:46] It really is because I suppose if you're the leader of a company, you can say, well, we don't have to do it that way. The answer is, of course, you do not have to do it this way. But the next piece of that puzzle is, would I have a better organization if I did do it in that way? I think it's something people need to be a little introspective Don't you, Aileen? [00:01:05][18.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:01:05] I do. The thing that I always say about this topic is, have you ever been in any relationship that felt good where you didn't trust the person you were involved with? [00:01:15][9.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:01:15] That's true. And who do you spend more time with than your spouse or your loved one? [00:01:19][3.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:01:19] People at work. [00:01:19][0.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:01:19] Keep it york way. [00:01:20][0.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:01:21] Not to mention that if you're not, you know, you're never going to fire at all or have all pistons firing if you don't have a nice bedrock, frankly, of trust. And it's just the concept of trust can't be present without transparency. That's what I think people question. I think they think they can just they can trust me. Why do I have to be fully transparent? Don't you agree? [00:01:43][21.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:01:43] Right. Then again, if you look at it that way and your actions are, I'm not being fully trustworthy or collaborative, how do people respond to that? Again, if you have any self-awareness, you can see cracks developing. You can see things that maybe you have or have not done be responsible for some of those cracks. Then the question is, am I okay with it or what changes am I going to make in my behavior with this team of people to make sure that we fill those cracks in. So I read a Fast Company piece recently that really stuck with me. It talks about what happens when employees lose trust in their leadership. I think we all know that morale tanks, people disengage, and turnover goes through the roof. And we all know that retention is such an important factor in what companies are doing this day and age. It's like the whole foundation of the workplace starts to crack. So we're using that analogy over and over again, but it is very apt for what we're talking about here. [00:02:38][55.3]
Eileen Rochford: [00:02:39] That's right. I think Forbes called it the trust gap, if I recall correctly. So, and I define that as when employees, since leaders aren't being upfront or honest, it creates an invisible barrier. I thought that was a pretty cool description. If you're, if you think about it, that's what it is. It's like, when you, when, you know, something's off, that, that is the invisible barrier that they're referencing and people start to feel disconnected. And it makes it just a, so much harder to get everybody. On the same page moving in the right direction. So you just have to think about it being critically important to the success of any team, any organization, frankly, for profit or non-profit, doesn't matter. If you don't have it, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble in a short period of time. [00:03:27][48.4]
Rob Johnson: [00:03:28] Not to go off into a rabbit hole or off the beaten path here, but the trust piece always starts and ends with communication, which sounds a little self-serving since we're both in this industry, but it also happens to be very true. Let's say, one quick example, then we can move on. If you are being managed by somebody, if you're not the boss and somebody has a relationship with you, and you are detecting that perhaps things aren't going your way, sometimes it It might be that you need, as the person who is being managed, who is reporting to that person, you need to make sure that you're communicating that message, that if there's any doubt about whether you should be seen as trustworthy. Then you need to communicate that. And then unfortunately, if you do that and it still doesn't get better, you've done what you needed to do. But that's why I really wanna drive home the point about how communication is at the core of this idea of trustworthy, of trusting each other. [00:04:25][56.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:04:25] That's right. I just think about periods like. What we're experiencing right now. Some have called this the most rapid and intensive period of change ever in the history of human beings. And change creates uncertainty. There's often fear that goes along with change. All of that is present right now for a multitude of reasons, whether it's economic fears, fears about the future of your jobs, which that's, we're going to tackle a topic on that not too far in the future on the show, the impact of AI and how to communicate about that. All of that demands, you know, you're intending to Keep your company moving in a positive direction to keep people's trust. It's almost like you have to triple down on creating open communication and fostering psychological safety. That's really where it's okay for people to talk about their fears, talk about their failures, talk about what their concerns are about the future. That's what psychological safety looks like, feels like. And also focusing on how can you use communication to keep people working kind of consistently and that hand in glove idea like we're we're in this together, we're doing it together doing the right things to move us in that direction together. So I think right now is Yeah, it sure does. And psychological safety is something that I don't think people really understand how you create that. That's one of the hardest things. So do you want to talk about that for a minute? Ways. Yeah, I do it. [00:05:56][91.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:05:55] Yeah, I do. And again, I know that on this program, occasionally, I bring up the book that I'm writing over Communicate, which I'm finishing the rough draft on, which you are featured in one of the chapters, which has been referenced more than once in there about guests we've had on this program who have exhibited good communication skills. So I'm not trying to go off into this major promotional thing, other than to say the part about psychological safety That is something I've spent a lot of time looking at recently and it is a real thing and it is and when it comes out of your mouth if you're wired differently it might sound like soft skill, oh god, coddling. [00:06:36][40.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:06:37] Yeah. [00:06:37][0.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:06:37] Whatever it is, and it's just not. And I think the most important thing to do, one of the things that we can convey today, Eileen, is that it's a bottom line issue. It's a profit. It is going to affect your bottom line eventually. It isn't just a soft skill. It important to have that psychological safety for the people that work in your employee, because they're going to produce more. They're going work harder. They are going to have better attitudes. They're going to feel like they're part of something special if you, the boss, make it that way. [00:07:10][32.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:07:10] Yeah, for sure. So some of the ways to foster psychological safety, let's talk about some concrete examples. They an underpinning of fostering psychological safety is normalizing failure, which is interesting, right, especially as leaders, we've almost been it's been ingrained as you kind of rise through organizations that talking about failure isn't something that you know, you waste time on. But if you're vulnerable and willing to share that I've screwed things up. I've had major screw-ups, you know, in my experience as well. And here's an example of one of them. If you're willing to do that as a leader, people can see their failures, whether it's collective, individual, it doesn't as opportunities to learn and to grow. So just having frank conversations about, all right, we screwed this up. This isn't what we wanted to end up with at the end of the day. Let's talk about what happened. Talk about what we can learn from it so that we can get out of this. That's one way to approach it. It's one that I personally use a lot, but they're not setbacks. Even the word failure, it's like, yeah, we didn't succeed. Why didn't we succeed? Let's be curious about that and dig into it versus we suck, everyone's fired. [00:08:26][75.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:08:27] Right. I mean, making a mistake is not failing. What is failing is failure to be able to articulate how we learn from the mistake. So somebody's like, I don't want to make a mistake. And then they kind of try to brush it under the rug. Or in some cases, and I love this when I'm dealing with people, especially younger professionals, who I always tell, if you don't know the answer, don't lie. Don't make stuff up. Just go find out the answer and give it to people. Well, then it looks like I don t know anything. I said, Do you know what's worse than not knowing anything? Lying to somebody or misleading them or giving them bad information. That's worse that not knowing. The answer, and I really liked what you talked about leaders just kind of owning up to mistakes and communicating openly, even when it's uncomfortable, it's okay to have uncomfortability. It's okay, to be kind to someone and say, here's the truth, as opposed to, I'm going to be nice. I'm gonna let you hear what you want to hear. The problem is organizations don't, they underestimate how quickly trust can erode if they're not careful. And if you're sitting in one of the leadership chairs, you have to be extra vigilant about it. [00:09:30][62.8]
Eileen Rochford: [00:09:30] Absolutely. The ideas of, you know, if you want people to trust you, you have to consistently commit to doing the activities that will help them to trust you or to trust in the purpose of your organization, the mission of the organization, the way that you're doing things as an organization. You have to commit to that. And communication is a huge piece of that. It's the last thing that solves your trust gap problem is shooting off an email or some kind of directive and setting it and forgetting it. There's no way that that's going to do anything for you. You just have to have a consistent practice of sharing information and making sure that you're thoughtful about sharing the information that people need to both do their jobs effectively and to work together effectively, but to also. At the while they're doing that be kind of comfortable and feel valued and that they have purpose. All those things are critically important. It's I believe and I know that I see this in many organizations, you can foster a culture of accountability. One of the you know, lovely phrases that's probably 20 years old or now but still used all the time. You can do that while also supporting your people to Explore new ideas to analyze and I think this is critically important a practice of analysis when it comes to What did we do there? That thing that didn't go so great. Let's go, we need to analyze that and spend some time in it and be okay with that. Strictly for the purpose of learning and growing. There's no finger pointing involved when there's, again, air quotes, failure. It's just when things don't go your way, embrace the practice of getting your folks together, no finger-pointing, no, this is so-and-so's fault. It has nothing to do with that. It's like, all right, this didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. Let's get to the bottom of it and change our processes so that next time we do this, we're going to get an awesome result instead of what happened here. [00:11:35][124.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:11:35] Yeah, and people need to make sure you use use the word accountability and accountability doesn't mean oh, I'm getting yelled at or [00:11:42][6.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:11:42] No! [00:11:42][0.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:11:44] Top down, do what I tell you, just do it. Just do it because I said to. We're not talking about either of those things here. Making people accountable, making them understand it's okay to, if you will, make a mistake, what you were talking about earlier, and it's not the end of the world. It's not end of world. People that I work with, people that I've interviewed for the book, whatever the case is. Them to say, I feel comfortable going to my boss. If a mistake was made, I can tell them that. That means, oh, well, look, that culture is working as opposed to where do I go run and hide? Because you might be able to run and hid for a short time, but they're going to find you. And then they're gonna ask you the question that you may not want to answer. And if you don't have a proper answer for it, then things are going to escalate in a bad way. And there's no reason to have that happen if you have accountability, communication, and trust. [00:12:31][47.3]
Eileen Rochford: [00:12:31] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what does that look like? To me, it looks like curiosity. Like, let's be curious about what happened. Let's just kind of get inside of it to understand it better, you know, like that whole like bringing that curiosity every single day to what you do, whether it's like, oh, I want to explore this exciting new idea that's going to lead to the, you Thank you so much for being with us today, and we'll see you in the next video. Campaign, or whatever, that's our language in our world, or just curious, God, why did this get so screwed up? I can't understand it. Be curious about that. And by doing so, whether you're doing it as a leader, a manager, it truly doesn't matter. Demonstrating that practice, that willingness to be curious about the good and the bad, definitely fosters trust. Um and being transparent about it will foster trust even more but you got to find ways to get inside the hard stuff and talk about it be okay with that a little bit of discomfort you know that comes along with that without um you know, playing the blame game. That's what you're going for. [00:13:35][63.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:13:35] What you're also talking about, and you touched on it a little bit earlier, Aileen, is, as a leader, showing the vulnerability. Other people see it, and then they see, oh, that's a safe space, so I'm trying to kind of connect some of the earlier dots that we were putting out there. And I want to give one example. I just got off a call with somebody. It's a new client, and they're a terrific company, very innovative, trying to scale up, and their owned by a big behemoth. Who is just so so culturally there's not a great fit there but the CEO of this company that I'm going to be working with is going to have me come and speak at a you know do a kind of a workshop at a retreat with everybody and kind of dig into what the issues are and so I've been meeting with various people trying to determine what are the issues what is keeping you from going where you want to go and one of the people that spoke to today said. I really think, you know, our CEO, by bringing you in, is showing great vulnerability and great self-awareness. And I was like… That's exactly right. So many people don't want to do that. So many people, their initial reaction want to be like, I got this. I got a marketing team. I got communications. I don't need any of this. And then some people are like, listen, we are working in the pulling in presumably in the same direction every day and our heads are barely above water and we're achieving the goals. We're clearing the bar barely. How do we scale up? How do put ourselves in a position for more success? And sometimes, in this instance, I think I'm going to be very helpful to them. But it wouldn't have happened unless the leader, somebody else said, you know, that person's being vulnerable and self-aware. And I'm like, those are great attributes of a leader, I think. Even though when they come out of your mouth, you go, vulnerable? I think it's a good thing. And it really helps spur that trustworthy element that we're talking about, also the safe space that we feel so strongly about. [00:15:30][115.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:15:31] Yeah. And that kind of leads us to a nice conclusion point on this discussion, which is if you're not, if you listen to this and you're here, you're not sure, do I do those things? Do I communicate enough? Do we communicate about the right things? Do I need to be more consistent? Does it need to more frequent? Any of those questions, if they're popping into your head, those are good signals to you that talking to an outside consultant who can see things very objectively and evaluate, oh, well, in terms of at least best practices, here's what we see that you're not doing that you could, should do and easily do it. You can get some great advice by seeking some outside counsel. And also just take a look at how frequently, whether it's formal or informal, you are seeking. Input from the people in your organization. What does that look like the feedback that you're actually getting? That's very telling in and of itself. If it's superficial, if they're not in, say, town hall environments, very willing to offer feedback or ideas, they don't feel comfortable. Those are things you should pay attention to. Those are signals. And that is probably another signal that you could use some outside objective Um both collecting input from your folks or restructuring how you're communicating with them and what you're saying when you're communication with them. So just a closing thought for the day. [00:16:53][82.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:16:53] No, it's a really important closing thought too, because it requires, when that little voice in your head is asking you the questions you were just talking about, Eileen, and the answer is, if you feel like, yes, I could do better here, no, yeah. If you're asking yourself those questions, you've already answered them for yourself. And the answer, is I can do better. I can bring in other people to help assess things because we're always on task here. So I think that's excellent advice that you. Well, I think that's going to do it for another edition of Can You Hear Me? I'm Rob Johnson. If you'd like to comment on this podcast or any others or suggest a topic, please reach out to us at our Can You hear Me podcast page on LinkedIn. [00:17:36][43.1]
Eileen Rochford: [00:17:37] And I'm Eileen Rochford. If you like what you heard, please consider giving our show, Can You Hear Me, a positive review wherever you get your podcast like Apple or Spotify, because your reviews help other listeners find our show. We appreciate that. So thanks everybody for listening. Till next time. [00:17:37][0.0]
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