Speaking and Communicating Podcast

When people trust each other, everything works better.

And it works better because people feel safe.

They feel safe to speak up when something's going wrong, that they're not going to be attacked or put down for their opinions, that there's a level of candor, a level of openness, and a level of honesty that is everyone's held accountable to at that point.

Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with our guest today joining us from Florida.

His name is Roy Reid.

He's an author.

He helps leaders improve their relationships so that they improve their results.

He is a specialist on trust and how transformative it is for your results.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Roy.

Well, hello.

How are you today?

I'm doing fantastic.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

I'm really happy to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for joining us.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Absolutely.

As you said, I'm Roy Reid.

I have about 30 years experience in the communications, public relations, and marketing space.

I've worked with a number of large Fortune 500 companies as a consultant.

When I was an agency partner at a public relations firm, I spent about 10 years of my work at Advent Health, which is a large nonprofit hospital system here in the US, where I was executive director of communications in my last role.

And it was in that last role where I had brought a system for helping people build, cultivate, repair, and restore trust, I call The Trust Transformation.

And partnering with them, we launched it as an employee training program in 2017.

And I'd say up to this date, they've probably run 8,000 or more employees through the program.

We saw significant results in how they were performing in their jobs, but also, and maybe more importantly, how it impacted them at home and in their personal relationships.

My co-author of the program is also my co-author on the book that we went on to publish late last year, called The Trust Transformation.

Since then, I left Advent Health in 2022.

I've been teaching, training and working with leaders in a variety of different organizations, primarily coming in and working with a team, taking them through the program, which now I really focus on helping them understand that you want to embrace trust, not as a fragile emotion, but as your leadership operating system.

Like any operating system like you have on your computer or your phone, it should be what runs in the background and informs the way you communicate and how you engage people.

And when you do that, you get better results.

What was the motivation behind focusing on trust when, I mean, there are so many leadership qualities we encourage leaders to develop.

What is it that made you think trust is the key here?

Roberta, I was, as I mentioned before, a partner in a public relations firm, and I really wanted to find a way to help leaders understand that the outcome of any communication should be increasing trust, regardless of whether it's a simple email or some kind of an event, or whatever the medium of communication is.

People should trust you more when they get that.

I started on Packet, and when you look at something like Trust, which is this big sweeping idea that we talk about, what are the little pieces?

What actually makes it work?

That led on a path to really unpacking a lot of details, doing a lot of research.

I actually became obsessed on the idea and left the agency and went to work at the University of Central Florida's College of Business, and used that as a laboratory, if you will, to really try this idea out and work with the number of organizations, did it at the college, and started to see real impact for it.

And so around 2015, I packaged it up as a team training program.

I worked with a couple of hospital leaders.

I worked with a local nonprofit organization, and really helped them implement it as an operating system.

And then the outcome of the training is that they adopt a trust contract.

And so when you think about your cultural construct, you have mission, vision, values, service standards, and the trust contract hangs alongside of those to really define how we're going to treat others, how we're going to focus on improving relationships, all on the foundation of trust.

And what are some of the results that were noticeable, and you could look at the matrix and you go, huh, this is where we were when it comes to this outcome, and this is where we find ourselves now after the trust training program.

I'll start at a macro level and talk at it really from an organizational standpoint.

So I'd say one of the most impressive results that we saw was just four years ago, we went in to a hospital that had the lowest scores in terms of patient satisfaction, they were in the lowest 5%.

Even on some of the clinical outcomes, they were performing at about that same level.

So for hospital-based infections, they were at the lowest 5%.

We came in, took the leadership team through the training, they adopted their trust contract and they implemented the system.

15 months later, I invited the CEO in to interview him and really talk about what were the measurable things that occurred during that process.

There's a laundry list of things.

So retention improved, all the satisfaction scores, but for those two scores in particular, they moved from the lowest 5% in patient satisfaction, upwards of 60%.

Multiple, multiple impact on that.

More impressive and more important, if you will, for what hospitals do, they went from the lowest 5% to the top 80 to 90% on their hospital-based infections.

And when Tim came to see me that day, they had gone six months with zero hospital-based infections.

And I asked him, how do you align this to the training, the operating system, and the contract?

And his response was, when people trust each other, when it's evident that they trust each other, everything works better.

And it works better because people feel safe.

They feel safe to speak up when something's going wrong, that they're not going to be attacked or put down for their opinions, that there's a level of candor, a level of openness, and a level of honesty that everyone's held accountable to at that point.

When someone adopts a trust contract, one of the things we encourage them to do is put it somewhere where everyone sees it.

So at the entrance of the hospital, this hangs up huge right there.

Every leader signs it and every leader lives and abides by it.

When they do that, it works.

When you talk about the environment being safe and everyone being able to express their views or how they think things could improve.

We started working in the 90s where you only listen to your boss because you think only your boss knows what's going on.

But now when we talk about leadership, it can even go from the bottom up.

Have you found that through this program, you have what we call subordinates being more open or displaying leadership qualities because now they feel safe enough to express, whether it's their creativity, innovative ideas?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Absolutely.

And probably the best example, a year ago, I went in to a hospital that had gone through a really rough transition between owners.

So it started under one ownership, then it was under a partnership with two groups, and then there was not a really good parting of the ways between the two, and now one of them was going to be left in charge.

And that previous group left a wake of really bad experiences for people, and it scarred the culture.

And so we went in there and spent a week working with 130 of their leaders going through the program in different groups.

And a year later, talking with the CEO, all of that flipped, and to your point, it empowered people to be able to speak up, and it created a new sense of belonging and inclusion that people had because when you define how you're going to treat people at the granular level that we do with a trust contract, you create two things.

There's an aspirational aspect to this that says, this is what we're going to live up to, this is what we expect, but then there's accountability as well.

Because when you go to your boss to complain about somebody, the first thing they're going to do is pull the contract out and say, have you followed all of these in your pursuit of trying to resolve the situation?

And now the onus is back on that person to take the initiative, which is a big part of the training is the understanding that you work to control the things that you do and take the initiative and be intentional about that.

And then you set the expectation for how others should then treat you.

That's a great one because, you know, when we talk about leadership, we always say they still continue to do some of the work they used to do before being placed in the leadership position.

But now they have to manage people as well, which means if there's conflict, we must bring it to your desk.

So you have this additional layer of responsibilities.

So if there's accountability due to the trust contract, it really helps to not have this all at the leader's desk.

Everything just piles up.

That's right.

And I'll give you a really good example.

One of the CEOs that I worked with had this great policy.

The policy that she implemented once they adopted the contract, it was something like this, that if a new director came into the leadership ranks, it was then the responsibility of two other peers to bring them that contract.

So they might invite them to lunch, talk about the expectations, go through the contract with them, talk about it.

And then the three of them at that lunch would sign it together.

And then the additional signature would be added to the master document that actually hung over their HR department.

So, anyone that walked into HR, that was the first thing that they saw.

And what she'll tell you is that put the onus on the team to own it.

So, it wasn't the CEO that took this person to lunch and laid it out.

It would have more felt like a mandate at that point.

These were two peers, so it was sort of a team building exercise, just in that moment of teaching somebody what it does and then all being accountable for it at the lunch.

Yeah, that's great, Comrade, in a way to welcome a new team member.

Now, if you have a client who approaches you and they say, Roy, these are the challenges we have.

Do they usually think trust is the issue?

That's a great question.

I would say 50% of the time they recognize it.

And the other 50%, it's usually they're struggling to figure it out and they can't put their finger out it.

And quite frankly, that's the problem with trust is it's been left to be one of those things like art.

I know it when I see it.

Or like I said, hanging on like a fragile emotion.

And it's been treated like a soft topic, not a hard topic of measure.

And when you unpack it as an operating system, when you can show them, here are the pieces by which it should function and work and utilize those pieces as tools to help you prescribe what the problem is very specifically and address that issue to make sure that it works.

You know, as anybody else would, that when it comes to communication, everybody's filters are different.

And so I could break trust with you communicating with you the wrong way.

If I just see trust as that emotional state, I might just write it off into how you feel and therefore I'm not responsible for it.

But in the training, we're talking about a guiding principle that says you take responsibility for the relationship.

So when it's gone wrong, you can't fix it and you can't make anyone do anything.

But you can take actions that open the door, create the opportunity, set the stage, and then have the conversation.

My co-author has one of the best stories about this.

And one of the things that we teach in the course is that you're always going to have four kinds of relationships.

You're going to have your advocates that are your rock star fans that are there for you whenever you need them.

You're going to have allies, people that tend to support you and they're positive in terms of the level of trust you might have with them.

There's going to be agnostics, which is the biggest group.

These are people that don't know you don't have anything to draw conclusion on.

They're sort of the blank slate and the great opportunity.

And then you're going to have adversaries.

You're going to have people in your life that you don't get along with, or trust has been broken with them, or there's just that grind or that friction that exists whenever you engage with them.

And what Omyra talks about, Dr.

Mansfield, a colleague that she had in one of her jobs, that every time they were in a meeting, they'd get in an argument.

Every time they were trying to figure something out, they seemed to be at odds.

After she and I met, because I recruited her to be the co-author and trained her in the program, and I told her when I trained her, you know, all of this is going to sound like common sense, but common sense isn't common practice, and it'll be a few weeks or maybe even a month before it really kicks in.

And so I got a text one day and it just said, I get it.

And when I called her and we started talking about it, she found herself in a meeting with this person, things start to heat up, and she said, my first thought was, I just don't trust her.

And she said, but the convicting thought that came back based on everything we talked about was, why doesn't she trust me?

And what can I do to change that?

And so she invited her to a conversation and they started talking and they figured out that they were both passionate about the same idea, but saw it from two very different points of view.

And those points of view just prevented them from kind of getting an alignment.

And once they started talking, once they started really engaging with each other, they became fast allies and then advocates for each other's causes.

And what Dr.

Mansfield will tell you if she was sitting here is, had it not been for that relationship, she would not have grown from the director of a hospital to the chief medical officer of that hospital, which is where she is today.

And I say that because an operating system lets you prescribe based on your analysis and recognition, and then the action that you need to take.

And the operating system, because we talk about communication on the show.

So the operating system, would you say that it then improves the way you package your communication?

Absolutely.

So a couple of things that lean in to this.

First and foremost, you build trust from the inside out.

So you hold yourself accountable to the higher standard before you can expect it from others.

Second, as I mentioned before, is you take responsibility for your relationships.

Again, you can't change people or make them do anything, but you can change the dynamic by being responsible for how you engage that relationship.

The third one is that, well, you keep your promises and communicate consistently.

And it's in that second part that we focus a lot on communication because you're going to fail at something, you're going to miss a deadline, and you're going to let people down.

But if you're actively communicating with them and engaging with them, you're going to be able to manage that expectation.

And the last of them is that you're a good steward with the trust that you have.

But even more granular on the communication side, we say that there's four attributes for transformative trust.

Trustworthiness, authenticity, dependability, and influence.

And when you think about particularly the first two, trustworthiness is about how you trust yourself and earning the right to be trusted.

Within that, there's characteristics like integrity, your attitude, your focus, your initiative, things like that.

So even in those first three, integrity, you keep your word, you do what you say, you do the right thing.

Attitude, how you approach a conversation, it says a lot about how people might want to trust you because more than 75% of how people receive information from us comes from our tone of voice and our body language.

That's right, yes.

Very small percentage.

Yeah, a very small percentage is the words.

That's part of the communication.

And then the third element in trustworthiness is focus.

And so focus is active listening, is being engaged with that person.

You're right here, right now.

And then on the authentic relationship side, a couple of the ingredients there that really contribute to communication is clarity.

Clarity of the relationship and what you're trying to achieve together.

And also presence.

You're here, you're now, you're not distracted, you're engaged with that person.

I'd say the third ingredient within authenticity that's important and really opens the communication conversation is respect.

Knowing that in an authentic, real, and meaningful relationship, you can disagree, you can argue, you can fight, you can agree to disagree, but you have to make sure that you show respect in every engagement and interaction that you have.

Because you can say the exact same message, the way you communicate it will depend whether you say it respectfully, and that's how it's going to be received, or you just blurt out, because, oh, I'm very frustrated right now.

They're going to have to understand that this is really, really aggravating me.

So it's the way that you communicate, which then the tone, the respect, it will be received by the other party as well.

Yeah, it has a lot to do with it.

Then you say that to be trusted is different from being trustworthy.

How so?

Trustworthy is, you are worthy of trust.

You now have the opportunity to earn and be trusted.

So trustworthiness has a lot more to do with what you do internally with yourself and the things that you subscribe to, to build your integrity, to keep your attitude in check, to be focused on the right things right now, to take that initiative.

When you do all of those things, you've been keeping promises to yourself, to condition yourself to that.

And when all of those things are in place, then you can be trusted.

And so, trustworthy is a quality that we have that says, you can trust me, you can give me that gift of trust, I won't do anything wrong with it.

And that creates the environment and the opportunity to do that.

Is that what people mean when they say trust is earned?

That means you have proven you can be trusted by being trustworthy.

There you go.

Yeah, you said it better than I could.

Thank you, Roy.

So you develop the trustworthiness as a quality, then people can trust you.

Okay, you got it.

You got it.

Just right, just right.

Thank you.

You hit on something that's important.

Again, the word trust is thrown out and just like trustworthy and trusted.

So it's important to make sure that everybody understands all of the words and what they mean, right?

You know, people ask me all the time, what's the biggest mistake leaders make when it comes to trust?

And I tell them, assuming it.

They assume it's there because they're a leader, because I've been given this job and I have this title, you should trust me.

Humans aren't wired like that.

No.

Especially in this generation, no.

That's right.

That's right.

When you assume it and then you go rolling in there and something goes wrong and you haven't earned trust, then you've squandered that time.

So leaders assume that the trust is automatically due to the position.

Now, you say that you help them improve their well-being.

Is the trust training program the tool that does that?

It sure is.

When you improve the relationship, where trust is the active ingredient for that, you live longer.

People that have high trust relationships in their marriage, stay married longer.

Companies have high trust cultures perform 300% better than those who don't.

And so there's been a lot of studies by Harvard, by universities and others, that showed that when trust is there, the relationships are much stronger, health improves.

Right.

Speaking of personal relationships, have you found that if they sign the trust contract at work, do they then transfer all those qualities into their relationships at home?

Has there been a correlation?

I don't have anything on paper or research that indicates that.

What I can tell you is anecdotal.

And the best illustration I can give you is about two years into the program, we decided that we needed to create an online version for hospital employees because too many people wanted to take it and there weren't enough seats in the class.

This is all before virtual training was a thing.

And so we invited in probably 20, 25 of the people that went through the program.

And when I talked to them, when I interviewed them, when I really unpacked it with them, not one of them started with how it helped them perform at work.

All of them started with how it helped them at home, how it changed the way they worked with their spouse, how it changed the time commitments they were making with their kids, how it impacted the priorities that they had.

At home, and that really warmed my heart because if you're not good at home, you're not good at work and you might fake it for a while, but eventually that starts to eat away at you and can put you in a bad place.

Absolutely, because the same person that you are at home is the one you take to work.

Now, speaking of virtual training, you say that the remote hybrid environment, which has become so common due to COVID, has there been challenges when it comes to having trust because you are now not physically in each other's presence?

Yes, absolutely.

I don't have a study to cite on that, but what I find when I work with teams is one of the first things that they'll bring up is the difficulty of really having that idea of presence I talked about earlier with other people, sitting face to face in the same room over a meal, a cup of coffee, or just a desk, and be able to build that relationship.

And so it becomes even more incumbent on us to prioritize relationship building in the week.

So when you look at your calendar, most people will have all of the meetings and their deadlines and the things that they call important on the calendar.

And I challenge them in the training to put time with two or three coworkers.

Schedule it.

Make sure it's on the calendar.

Don't assume you're going to be able to stop by because you're only in the office two days a week or you don't have that time, but also with your family.

I try to commit to having at least one meaningful conversation with each of my family members every day.

I don't see them all at the same time.

My kids are all adults, but trying to make that time, whether it's even a text message, to just check in and try to get them on a call or otherwise.

And another thing that I live by is the idea that we're not promised tomorrow.

And so if you don't spend time building that, you may not have the next time.

And so embrace it, engage it, and make that presence happen.

Both professionally and personally.

And the thing about relationships, like you said earlier, that what's common sense is not so common.

The thing about relationships is that the very thing that we want, the very outcome of having these wonderful relationships at home and at work, we know exactly what it is that we're looking for, and usually what it would take to get there.

What is it that holds us back?

Well, I'll say two things about that.

And that is, you're absolutely right.

We know what we want.

Oftentimes, we assume that it's the same thing that others want, and it's not.

They may want it differently, right?

So I actually start the training with a story that talks about how all of us have gone through different experiences in life, experienced different trauma, experienced different events, challenges, and those define how we engage other people.

And so when you put 25 people in a room, you have 25 different ideas about how I want to get engaged.

And so part of that responsibility of owning the relationship, if you will, and to be intentional about it, is trying to understand how you want to be talked to or communicated with.

There's a lot of tools, too, that teams can look at, like a Discord and other things, that might help frame that up.

But in the end, it's up to me to communicate and talk to you and understand what your needs are in that communication process.

And hopefully then I've opened it up for you to do the same with me.

I'll tell you a story that I tell in the training.

You know, my wife and I have been married 35 years.

We have four wonderful kids.

I have three sons and a daughter, and the daughter is my youngest.

And when she was five years old, she turned our dining room into a bracelet factory.

Lots of beads all over the floor, very dangerous on the bare feet.

She had made me a bracelet and asked me if I'd wear it, and so I told her I would.

Now it was Memorial Day weekend, so I became officially what's known as show and tell.

So she would show everybody the bracelet, she would tell them all about how she made it, and we had the best time.

Tuesday morning comes around and I get up and I'm going to date myself here because I had to put a suit and tie on to go to work.

Another thing gone with the pandemic, right?

Right.

So I put the bracelet on the dresser and went off to work.

When I got home that night, she's still making bracelets.

Kim and I are making dinner and she comes in the kitchen and she's got another bracelet.

And I think to myself, I've only got so much arm for your cause.

And she says to me, daddy, if you didn't like the other bracelet, will you wear this one?

So she had seen it on my dresser and in her five-year-old mind, her only conclusion was I don't have it on anymore because I don't like it.

So I went back in the bedroom and I put it on and I wear it every day.

So it's this little colored bead bracelet here.

Since she was five, you still have it?

She's 23 now.

And so I wear it for two reasons.

One, because I told her I would.

And two, and what I hope everyone listening takes away from this conversation.

It reminds me every day that every little thing that I say or do is either contributing to or taking away from the trust that people have in me.

And so I've got to keep that in mind, both humility and empathy in my engagement with people and be intentional about everything that I'm saying and doing if I want the trust to be at its highest level.

Intentional, especially with your communication, when you think of how much time we spent just saying things in passing, as you say, and saying, oh yeah, I'm fine, or, oh, you look great, but not, as you said, be present.

That's right.

Yes.

People can see that you're not sincere in your comment or whatever remarks you make, if you just pass by and you don't even look them in the eye.

Those are not deposits, those are withdrawals.

So it's not even neutral.

That's right.

Making small talk.

Any last words of wisdom, Roy?

Anything that I haven't asked you, we're hoping to share today regarding trust.

You have done a fabulous job covering a lot today.

And like I said, if everybody walks away from this lesson and understands that it's about the little things, it's about being humble enough to try and understand people, having the empathy to engage them in a meaningful way and contributing to what they have so that you can set the stage for being a better communicator.

I think we've done our job.

Absolutely.

Words of wisdom from Roy Reid, the author of The Trust Transformation, who helps executives with the transformational power of trust, so they develop high performing and trust cultures.

Thank you very much for being on our show today.

You have taught us so much.

We are really appreciative of your presence.

Absolutely.

Have a great day.

You too.

Thank you.

Before you go, would you like our listeners to reach out to you and where?

Absolutely.

If they go to roywreid.com, that's my website.

There's ways to get in touch with me there and I'd love to talk to them.

Excellent stuff.

roywreid.com.

Thank you, Roy.

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