February 20, 2025 • 42 mins
This week, Maria speaks with trust expert Rachel Botsman about her new audiobook How To Trust and Be Trusted. What is trust? Why, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, do we sometimes trust the wrong people? And what can a luxury hotel teach us about how to repair a trust that’s been broken?
And – for Pushkin+ subscribers – Nate and Maria answer a listener question about learning to feel the difference between probabilities.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova and today I am flying solo.
Nate is away, but I am so thrilled to welcome
(00:37):
on Rachel Batsman, who is someone who I met what
is it now, Rachel six or so years ago? Oh yeah,
and we ended up having so much in common, so
many interests in common. Rachel is an amazing writer speaker.
She was the first ever Trust Fellow at Oxford University's
(00:58):
Said Business School. An incredibly impressive woman who now has
a new audio book out called How to Trust and
Be Trusted. Rachel, Welcome to Risky Business, and let's talk
about trust.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm so excited to be here, and I'm so excited
to talk to you in particular about trust and risk
because I don't often get to have this conversation, so
it's a treat.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
It is a trick for me as well. There's a
question that I wanted to start off with, but before
we get into that, I think we should probably lay
the groundwork and give your definition of trust, because I
think it's a beautiful definition and something that will set
the stage nicely.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, it's been one of the hardest challenges actually coming
up with the definition that works across all the different
context that trust functions in. And my definition of trust
is that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. And
the reason why that ties so beautifully with risk is
that the greater the unknown, the greater the answeraint you're,
(02:03):
the higher the risk in any decision, choice or situation,
the more trust that you need. And it's kind of
the antithesis of how a lot of trust theories think
about trust, because they'll say trust is knowing exactly what
to expect or knowing what the outcome is, and that's
(02:24):
always struck me as strange, because if you know how
things are going to turn out, then you don't need
a whole lot of trust.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I'm happy to hear that because it is one of
the important themes right of trust is control and it's
something that really resonated with me as someone who studies
kind of risk and has you know, my PhD, I
studied the illusion of control, kind of the need for
control and how important it is for people to feel
like they're in control of events, in control of the environment.
(02:54):
And so as I was listening to your audiobook, that
actually that was a theme that kept coming up, right,
that one of these major issues in trust is control,
when we have it, when we don't have it, How
we can give it up, to whom we can give
it up when we give it up. I'd love for
you to talk a little bit more about that and
(03:15):
about kind of the risk calculus. How does that decision
making process work when it comes to trust.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
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
(03:46):
during the pandemic, or during a political period of term,
or 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,
(04:07):
so I'm going to go outside. Those things really set
off our control alarms all the way through to recognizing
that when you don't trust someone, you tend to become
more controlling, you tend to become a micromanager, and that
plays out at work big time, in partnerships and relationships,
but also in friendships and as a parent. To make
(04:31):
this roll, I have two children, thirteen and eleven. The
eleven year old can be trusted to do her homework,
she's the girl, and not to make gender stereotypes. Then
not so much. So he has to do it at
the kitchen table with this dot clot with me watching
him or working alongside him. That's very controlling right now.
(04:54):
If I trusted him, he could do upstairs in his
bedroom without me watching him and me not have to
ask him the questions. So control is a sign of
lack of trust in ourselves, in others in the external.
And I'd love your take on this, but one of
the things that worries me is that in the age
(05:15):
that we live in, this illusion of control I think
is sort of going up. So even if you think
about health monitoring, I'm running a marathon a few months
and I cannot believe how much data there is available
to tell me what's going on in my body. And
all of a sudden, there's quite enjoyable thing where I
shouldn't really worry about the outcome. I should just enjoy
(05:38):
the journey. It's like you become a control freak around
this data, and the reality is I'm not in control
as to whether I get injured. I'm not in control
whether it's hot or freezing cold on that day. And
so I feel like this illusion of control, largely created
through technology, is reducing our tolerance to friction. And this
(06:00):
is really a crisis in many ways because you throw
people into situations not of uncertainty, just of malfriction. They
have no patience, they're in tolerant, and I think it's
sort of a hidden issue that isn't being spoken about enough.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's a really important point,
because you do mention in your book. But I think
we are in a time where there is kind of
this crisis of trust, right, trust in so many things,
trust in institutions and expertise in leadership and all of
these different things. But this is the other side of it.
On the other hand, like we do have this then
(06:37):
desire to hyper monitor, which might not necessarily be the
best thing. I actually always tell people, you know, stop
stop wearing those devices, stop monitoring yourself. You know, it's
actually it's not good. It's not healthy, and you're probably
losing more than you gain, especially sleep devices. Don't get
me started, But I think that you're pointing out something
(06:59):
really important, which is that we are becoming in some
ways less tolerant of uncertainty, less tolerant of the unknown.
And there is this relationship. You know, how tolerant you are,
how much you can embrace it, and both how much
you trust and how trustworthy you are right yourself. And
(07:20):
there's something that you said that I found really beautiful.
You said you know, nothing new happens in the node,
which I think is such a lovely thought. So I'd
love to talk a little bit about that and about
how kind of because this is something that I think
a lot about right, how embracing risk, right, embracing uncertainty
can actually be very liberating and can actually help you
(07:43):
make better decisions as opposed to being afraid of it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And I think this idea that nothing new happens in
the non is it's so powerful to think about your
own life as to how much of your life. And
some people really enjoy being in this space and that's fine,
but it's safe and familiar and repetitive, even like when
you get to a certain point in your career and
(08:07):
I started to feel this way, You're like, this is
relatively easy. I'm not really taking risks anymore. And maybe
that fatigue is because I'm not in the unknown enough. Right,
Like I'm going to go into a classroom, I'm going
to get on stage, I'm going to write a piece
and I kind of know how it's going to turn out,
and so that takes effort, and that takes work to
(08:30):
shake that up. So just a personal example, I've I
used I see myself as an artist and I've always
made art, and I was like, right, I'm going to
go back to this because that is a world where
I don't speak that language and I have no connections,
and I am a beginner. I am starting again. I'm
very much in the unknown, and I've found that risk
(08:53):
taking that it's so energizing. Yes, it is frightening, but
you just feel that capacity expanding again. Like it's like
it's more than the curiosity that you have when you're
a child. It's like you can hold more. It's you know.
Keats uses that wonderful phrase of negative capability, and I
(09:14):
think sort of the opposite of risk taking is all
the positive capabilities, right, the skill, the competence and knowledge,
And what we're missing is that negative capability, that ability
to hold much and to be in the unknown. And
to do that you have to take risks. You have
to be a beginner, you have to try new things.
And it's so easy to forget that as especially when
(09:37):
you get later on in life.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, no, I think that's that's crucial, and that's that's
actually how I approach almost all new projects. Right, Is
this something that scares me? Is this something where I
feel uncomfortable? If the answer is yes, great, If the
answer is no, you know, is it really worth it? Right?
You know, you and I have talked about familiarity and
that you know, that was part of your part of
(10:00):
your book on trust, how familiarity breeds trust. But also
you know, it can be a false sense of security.
And I think that's true on all levels, both being
you know, doing something that's just easy and familiar, and
also kind of on on a level of trusting someone
just because they seem familiar. It's something that makes you
(10:20):
feel secure. But that's not necessarily good, right, And that's
not necessarily the correct basis on which to trust, which
I think brings us to kind of one of your points,
one of the lessons from your book, which is, you
know the fact that like who do you trust? Who
don't you trust? Is a bad question, right, and you
have to then say to do what? Yeah, and what
(10:44):
what are you actually basing this on? And it's all
it all has to do with context. Let's talk a
little bit about that and tell us a little bit
about your nanny as well, because it's such a great
illustration of a lot of these themes and brings us
back to you know, who you trust, why you trust them?
Is familiarity good or bad? You know, all risk, all
(11:06):
of these things, risk versus comfort, all of these things.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, and also you know this shift between sort of
what people say and how they say it and all
these things that are happening in society right now. And
so just to sort of talk about a fundamental point
which you mentioned that is often missed, is that trust
is highly contextual. So the reason why I say it's
(11:30):
off the missed is when you look at the way
people talk about trust in the media, or I don't
trust that politician, or I don't trust that platform, or
it's spoken about in very generalized terms, and that is
problematic because blanket trust is a very bad thing. You
don't want to be trusted to do everything. And one
of the ways to improve your own trust skills is
(11:52):
to understand where you are trusted and where you're not,
and that's the trust gap. The nanny story or I
won't tell it all because it's quite long, and so
what happened was when we were around five. My dad
my mum were very busy. They were both entrepreneurs and
they were traveling a lot to America. We live in
(12:14):
the UK, and so they needed to hire a nanny
to look after my brother and I and they hired
this woman. I think I changed her name to Doris
or stick with her, okay, And I'll never forget the
day she walked in our house because she had this
very thick Scottish accent, and my name is Rachel, so
(12:36):
every time she said my name, you know, she rolled
her arms and she had one of those really ruddy
Scottish faces, like like they've been for a long walk
over the highlands and then they're going to have a
nice cup of tea and a biscuit and she was
always baking as well. I remember that. But the day
she walked in, she was wearing a uniform, and the
uniform she was wearing was for the Salvation Army and
(12:59):
she was carrying at tambourine, which I thought was immensely
exciting as a four or five year old. The point was,
that's why my parents hired her, because they told her
my parents. She told my parents that she was belonged
to South Asian Army. They now realize how influential the
Scottish accent was because of course there was no email,
(13:19):
there was no video conferencing. It was all done by phone,
so those trust singles were really important. Well, listeners will
have to listen to the book to hear the whole story.
But she lived with us for nine months and it
turned out she was running a massive drugs ring in
North London and then she disappeared and she used our
(13:43):
family's Volvo Silva Volvo as a getaway card an armed robbery.
I mean, like, so I don't know where if that's
my fascination which rus came from that.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I was like, it's a good origin story, Rachel. You
should have.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Raised it, should raise that orangent story. But I remember
thinking as a child like and even when they found
out she stolen loads of money and she told them
she found it under a tree in a park.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
This is this is one of my favorite details.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah. I remember asking my dad about this and he's like, oh,
these things can happen. And I'm thinking, what in Broomfield Park,
like the magic faraway.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Tree is going to Have you seen the movie Fargo?
You know sometimes you find large amounts of cash by
the side of the road, I swear.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And then they still kept her, and she came on
a holiday with us to Spain. And this is such
a random detail, but I remember she went to the
Queen concert and she loved Freddie Mercury and they were like, wow,
she loves Queen, right, so she must must be But
she was not good. She was very, very bad. So yeah,
so that is a really good example of a bad
(14:49):
trust decision. And I think the part that's stuck in
my head as to why my parents kept her was
it was too much effort someone else.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, aside when he said that, it was you know,
it's one of these things.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
When you said it, I was like, this is so true.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I think the way you phrased it, because I have
it in quotes, and I know it says convenience trump's trust, right,
And that is I think such an important point because
we make decisions all the time based on convenience and
based on lower friction and inertia and being like, it's
just too much effort to do X or y. When
(15:28):
your nanny had more money, she said she found it
under the same tree again, right, this tree just happened
to be a money tree and there was more money
under it. And the fact that you know, if you
think about it logically, right, you're your father's a smart man, entrepreneur,
Like you just have to say, huh, what is going
on in the brain of this incredibly intelligent person. And
(15:51):
it's one of these things where you know, I've written
about con artists a few books back, and you know,
you see these patterns of smart people, people who know better,
and yet they end up in these situations where they
keep trusting, they keep ignoring red flags because it's convenient, right,
And and it also it also says something about you, Right,
(16:15):
you don't want to be the person who left your
kids with a drug dealer, right, So it's easier to
say no, no, she really is trustworthy. Those things aren't true,
even though it's your kids, right, and if there's any
chance that this person is going to be involved in
an armed robbery, get your kids the fuck out of there.
(16:36):
But it's just all of these computing computing things, which
is huge.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And you know, it's funny. Like I was thinking, I
love your book, The Confidence Game, and I was thinking about,
you know, on the chapters and I can't remember which
how you frame it. It's not the road but denal,
like the power of denal, because it's your identity and
that I think it explains so many reasons why people
(17:03):
don't quit and they don't get out of bad decisions,
even when they know the client isn't trustworthy or the
investment isn't good or the nanny isn't like. Why we
can't extricate ourselves from that situations. I think it's just
a fascinating human flaw.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, it really is. It really is. And you know
everything ended well right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Here, you are nice.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, you know the other details of the story are
fascinating and everyone should listen to it. But yeah, it is,
you know, it is a really interesting part of human nature,
right The way that we trust how we make those decisions.
And you know when you when you said Scottish accent
right for the nanny. This is something you and I
have spoken about, which is kind of your your gut feelings,
your your gut instincts, Oh, I like this person based
(17:53):
on what right?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Why?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Why is that the case? And as I've as I've
told you, that is not a good way to make decisions.
You know, my gut said so we're very bad at
figuring out whether the gut is correct or not, and
so asking that question why is crucial over and over
and over.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Now you and can I just say, I don't know
if you find this, but when I challenge, because I
like to believe I'm an intuited person, right, and I'm
still kind of figuring out what that means. I think
it means that I'm good at reading the room and
I'm good at reading energy versus predicting how things are
going to turn out, which I think is what people
think intuition is, right, It's more of a I see
(18:33):
it as more reading the state someone is in and
how engaged they are with you versus what's going to happen.
And when I challenge people to say, look, it's not
the intuition is a bad thing, particularly in situations where
you recognize that pattern. It's the lack of information. So
when you rely on the intuition and you just don't
have enough reliable information, people hate this idea that they're like,
(18:57):
this flies in the face of emotional intelligence, and this,
you know, this is going to slow down decision making
and what do you expect that we're going to get
all this information about people? And how do we know
if the information is really liable? And I find it
really interesting that it sparks something so visceral and deep
in people that they rely on the intuition.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So Heavenly, yeah, people really don't like to hear that.
I find that. I find that as well. And it's
very funny because you know, I play poker as well,
and there are a lot of poker players who are
very mathematical, right, like, very quantitative. They use Solber outputs,
it's all very you know, very precise. And yet when
I say something like you should not trust your gut,
(19:40):
you should not trust they get so upset, right because
even someone's so mathematical to them, it seems like there's
you know, the sixth sense, there's something else that like
that you know has to be has to be there,
And I have to say, well, sometimes your gut is right, right,
but you need to ask, like, what is it based
on where's the information coming from? Do I have expertise
(20:01):
in this right? Is this something that is just unconscious
expertise or is it something that is just a feeling
based on who knows what? Right? And it could be
very good pattern recognition, or it could be bullshit, but
people really do not like to hear that, and it's
it's that's a I think that's such an interesting point
(20:23):
about trust.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And I think it's I'm doing this interesting thing tomorrow
on gen Z. This is the biggest study done in
the UK on how they trust and how they think
about the truth. And one of the things that I've
been thinking about related to this is how much they
not just gen Z, but rely on feelings over facts
to make a decision. And that is so much to
(20:46):
do with sort of the invisible hand of algorithms, So
the vertical nature of fees where you can find things
to validate how you're feeling, not even that day, that moment,
that then becomes the way you make a decision, and
that really frightens me. This idea of feeling your way
through a decision versus looking for reliable information.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's incredibly scary that you know, I think that that
is something that is the opposite of what your whole
book is about about trust, right, and the opposite of
everything that I've tried to do, because feelings are sometimes
integral to a decision, but usually they're incidental. Right. There's
a whole area of psychology that talks about how poor
(21:31):
our decision making ability is when we rely on feelings
because most of the time they have nothing to do
with the decision at hand. And there's even a term
called mood as information when we use kind of the
mood we're in as information when we shouldn't. Right, it's
a it's a major fallacy, and it really influences decisions
in a negative way. Let's talk about something a little
(22:07):
bit more positive, because you you in reviewed some really
interesting people who have used trust in really interesting ways,
and I was, you know, some very inspiring people like
the Spanish teacher ms rad right, who who is Well,
why don't you tell us a little bit about her?
And about this distinction which I think is really really
(22:30):
nice that you make between earning trust and building trust.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, Miss rad Oh, she was. I shouldn't pick favorites,
but it really was incredible. She's was a Teacher of
the Year in Illinois, and I think the thing that
really struck me about her is that she's working in
a pretty tough environment and she's working with often with
children that have never learned how to trust anyone. They've
(22:56):
never learned how to trust a teacher, a parent, a custodian,
a friend, and she feels like she's teaching them Spanish.
But actually the outcome of the year is that they've
learned how to trust someone and that someone trusts them.
And there's so much to the things that she does.
But what I realized, we're listening to listen to it again.
(23:18):
First of all, everything she does is free, like it's
not big gestures, they're really small things. So she makes
sure before the first day of term she knows every
child's first name and last name, and not only that,
she knows their interests. She speaks to the other teachers.
She finds out what they enjoy, where they're struggling, even
(23:39):
where they like to sit in the classroom, and so
you know, when they walk in, they're like, Oh, this
person cares. They took the time to understand all these things.
She works on the premise that she's a giver of trust,
so they don't have it, and so many teachers don't
do this right. Like it's like you have to prove
yourself to me, and that proving yourself to me is
(24:03):
such an old way of thinking about power, which, to
your question, is tied to this distinction between how do
I build trust versus how do I earn trust? When
you say how do I build trust, that is like
I'm going to behave in a certain way and then
I expect you to follow me. I expect you to
do something for me, versus what miss Rad was demonstrating
(24:26):
is that actually, you know, you have to continuously earn trust,
and the best way to do that is to give
it first, and then it becomes this really powerful loop.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah. I think that a lot of bosses and business
leaders should listen to your lesson with miss Rad because
it seems like it would really improve a lot of
office cultures, because you do talk about this about kind
of the flip side. When you do have cultures where
there isn't trust right, where people micromanage, where you feel
(24:57):
like you're you're not being empowered, and then people do
all sorts of shit to you know, when they feel
like that, when they're like, fine, you don't trust me.
You know, you have the example of it Spencer reports, Right, Okay, fine,
like how do I expense this bottle of wine? Like
how do I figure out a way to screw you over?
Because you don't trust me?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And I have actually found that. So my next book
is about cheating. But you find that when you have
these kinds of things and people feel like they can cheat, right,
they feel like and they can feel like they can
do things like take office supplies home, take stuff from
the fridge that was brought from the office and just
take it home, and they don't feel like that's stealing,
even though it is right, that's not why it's therefore,
(25:40):
but they're like, well, you know, if you're if you're
not trusting me, if you're doing all of these things,
then I'm going to act accordingly. And in this classroom,
you see, you know, students who misbehaved and who were
problems students suddenly become leaders and really promising students because
of this trust dynamic shift. And I think that this
(26:02):
is just such a powerful and wonderful lesson that we
can use in a lot of different cultures. Right your school,
even though I think it's incredibly important in the classroom,
but I think it's important as we think about corporate
cultures all the way up. And it's 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
(26:24):
you need to urge, you need to you need to
kind of micro manage and do these kinds of things,
because well, who are they, right, I'm the boss.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, And it's it's it's such an obvious thing to say,
but we take trust for granted until it's gone, and
then it brings out the very worst behaviors, whether that's
cheating or survival. So I had a student she put
this so well because she was saying, like, you know,
why don't want we talk about trust? Do we so
often talk about mistrust or distrust or a lack of trust?
And then she admitted she didn't really understand the difference
(26:54):
between those things, which is interesting in itself mistrust, distrust,
lack of trust. But then she said, you know, do
you know what to me, like when I've been in
a work environment and you can just feel like someone
took the plug out and the trust is seeping out
that organization. She said, you know, you owned a goldfish,
and you can imagine like she's doing this in an
(27:14):
NBA lecture hall. It's about one hundred and twenty students,
and I'm like, yes, I owned a goldfish and it
was called Flash Gordon. I'm trying to give her permission
to tell the story here, and she's like, your goldfish
was called Flash Gordon. I was like, could we get
to the mesophor so. Then she says, you don't only
own a goldfish, and you're not a particularly responsible pet
owner golfish owner, and you don't fill the bowl up,
(27:35):
and gradually, over time the water goes down and you
don't really notice the water going down until one day
you come home. And she did this with actions. The
fish is gold ping like like like it can't breathe,
it's suffocating, and the fish is about to die. And
she said that's what I think happens to trust, is
(27:55):
like it just dissipates until people feel suffocated. So I
think this is It really struck me because the Edelman
Trust Barometer just came out, which bigs feelings about and
gallop at the same time the biggest trust surveys, and
both of them showed that the lowest the highest trust falls.
(28:18):
So the biggest difference in trust points it's not in
politics or media, it's in employees. It's like a ten
point four in employee engagement and trust. And that's that's
very right. It's huge right that you always be with
disengaged and or they are not behaving well, and that
is that is toxic for both sides.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
The equation that is that is concerning. And you talk
about distrust, right, and you and you talk about I
think the goldfish story is a great one. You know,
you talk about kind of the three d's, right, the defensiveness, disengagement, disenchantment,
and how you don't always see those happening. It's very
easy to miss. It's very easy to not have the
(29:00):
communication infrastructure needed to kind of have those cycles not
take place, and then you end up like a gold
being goal fish and you're not quite sure how to
fix it, and then you get a consultant in there,
and you end up refilling the water tank without actually
addressing any of the issues that made the water go
(29:21):
down in the first place. So you know, maybe you
refill the water, but you know that goldfish is not
going to do well.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Why wasn't anyone watching the boat? Why did no one care? Why? Like,
why was no one nourishing these more things? So I
do think it's a really good metaphor to think about
workplace culture.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now, you know, let's turn this positive again. You you've
talked to people who actually have very good workplace culture.
But let's start with a hotel hospitality. You talked to
someone you Jane you right, who's the CEO of the
Dorchester and he well, tell me a little bit about him,
and tell me what you learned from him about trust
(30:15):
and kind of good ways to have that rapport because
he's very good not just a building trust, but at
repairing trust.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, so I'm fascinated by hotels. I don't know about you,
but like, it's not I want to go into hospitality,
but they just I'm always like the theater and how
they run and what goes on behind the scenes. So
for listen, you don't know the Dorors to collection, it's
it's it's some of the nicest hotels in the world,
like it's the bel Air and the Beverly Hills and
(30:42):
that that really fancy one in Paris. The hotels are incredible,
l Maurice Maurice right. And I did get to stay
in one as a work project, which was a real.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Rachel, can I do a work project hotel?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It was so fine. It was one of those trips
where I digressed, but I said to him, I really
don't want to go. And then I got there and
I was like, this is the best work trip ever
because this link to the story. The way they make
people feel at home, and the way they recognize guests
and not in like chocolate on your pillow ways I'd
(31:23):
never experienced, not seen. I'd never experienced that feeling before,
and so I was like, how do they do this?
And they're so good at doing it that they run
a training program where they don't just train their own staff,
they train British Airways, Marks and Spent, all these companies
around the world train on culture because they know how
(31:44):
to do it. And the thing that struck me was that,
first of all, he'd worked in every single department of
the hotel. He'd even like been on the roof or
repaired the air conditioners. You know, he'd been in the
wash and not like for the day, you know how
some of the CEOs do it for an hour like
a rotation. He understood the hotel like a body. He
(32:07):
understood the nervous system, He understood the components, and he
knew how all of this was interconnected and if one
thing went down, how it impacted others. So that was
just like, wow, how many leaders understand the whole ecology
and cultural system of their business. The other thing that
(32:28):
I thought was just incredible was how much he empowered
his team to do the right thing. And you know,
this wasn't like the mised alarm call. He spoke about
a lot because that's a big thing, and that if
they missed an alarm calls. I mean people still use
alarm calls, which I find strange that the personal reception
(32:53):
has the autonomy to book another flight a business class
fight without any kind of approval, regardless of the cost.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, that was absolutely crazy. I was like, well, yeah,
that is the way to remedy it, right, Like if
you make me miss my float because you screwed up up,
then you know, and he says, you know, if it
costs ten thousand dollars, doesn't matter, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And now this is an elite I mean, this is
a privilege, right, this is an incredible hotel where people
a pay an absolute fortune. But the point of the
story was that the apology has to match.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, and I think that Eugenio has a really good
rubric for it, you know. Basically, I think the to me,
the most important point of how you know he speaks
about this is that trust is going to be broken, right,
Like we have this illusion that like, oh, this is
a trustworthy person, this trustworthy institution, trustworthy blah blah blah.
(33:47):
So I can trust a blanket, right, shit goes wrong? Yeah, right,
that's life. It happens all the time. People are going
to break your trust on an individual level and on
an institutional level. How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:03):
How do you repair it? How do you actually make
it so that the trust doesn't go away, right, so
that it becomes stronger. I think that that is the
crucial thing here, Right. It's not like there's this beautiful
thing and you can trust this and you can't trust this.
That is not how it works. It is much more complex.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I think to your point, what's so powerful by his
story is that he says it happens like a hundred
times in a day in a hotel. More like he's
constantly repairing trust. And there is a distinction between those
most moments and what people would call a trust crisis,
you know, so a trust crisis like an AWE spill
Cambridge Analytica, that's how people tend to think of trust
(34:44):
breaking down. And yes, of course those things are going
to hur and there's a lot of repair to be
done there, but it's it's micro moments that often, particularly
if you're in a customer centric or even just an
employee centric company, they're the things that people don't think about,
like how do you empower people to repair those those things?
And then the other key thing tied to risk, which
(35:05):
I thought was really key, is he doesn't want people
to be risk adversed. He doesn't want his employees to
be risk adverse. So it's how does he set the
boundaries and be really clear about expectations so that they
can play and they can delight, and they can do
things still following service protocol. And I think that was
(35:27):
just amazing to learn how they do that.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I think that that is a really crucial point. You
have to empower people to take risks because a lot
of times, you know, trust gets broken and things go wrong,
and people, you know, you've created a culture where they
will be punished, right if they if they go and
do something else. And I think this is actually a
huge organizational problem, at least in the United States. I
(35:54):
don't know if it's the case in the UK as well,
where businesses say, oh, you know, we love risk taking.
You know, we want our employees to be creative and
innovative and blah blah blah. But it didn't work out,
Oh you're fired. Right, What kind of a culture are
you actually creating where you pay lip service to this
but you don't actually inspire that kind of behavior because
(36:14):
people are scared. They know that if you take a
risk and it doesn't work out, that that's not good
for you.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, and it's it's something I mean, I'd love to
ask you these questions because I've often wandered like it's
taking risk of privilege.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, I think that taking risk is a privilege because
you know, I've written about this and I've thought a
lot about this, you know, a really nice way of
thinking about it. Is you know, when you're looking at
all of these classic biases that Danny Kahneman talked about, right,
risk aversion, loss of version, all of these fallacies of
(36:51):
the human mind, right where you prefer the certain outcome
over the gamble, even though the gamble has a higher
expected value, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they become
completely correct and not fallacious if you can't afford to lose. Right,
if you are someone who you know you need this
money to pay the rent, you need this money to
(37:13):
get medicine, even though the risk might actually the expected
value might be like millions, right, and you can get
a sure thing of however much it is, you will
take the shore thing or if the loss right, if
you gamble and you could potentially make a lot, but
you could also lose something that's going to affect your
(37:33):
ability to pay for your for your livelihood. You shouldn't
take that gamble, right, because you should actually take the
sure thing always. And so you see how all of
these quote unquote fallacies can be completely correct depending on
who you are, what risk context you're coming from, and
so absolutely risk taking is a privilege. It means you
(37:54):
can afford to lose. Right, you can afford the risk
of ruin and some people can't. And sometimes you don't
understand why someone doesn't take a risk, and you have
to ask, well, okay, what is it about their background?
And this I think we've come full circles of trust.
What is it about the trust kind of the support
(38:15):
and everything about them that can enable them to take
these sorts of risks And you know, something that you
end with which I think is a good place for
us turned And this is where it's going with trust sleeps,
right and confidence in the unknown. And I think trust
sleeps are also a privilege, but I.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Think so too so a trust sleep is whenever you
take a risk to do something new or to do
something differently in your life. But actually writing the book
made me think about them really differently, because if you
think about going back to wonderful miss rad and it
made me think, you know, trust sleeps are a privilege,
but they're also permission. What made me realize is like
(38:53):
often people go, okay, well you need to provide security,
and you have to provide that's usually financial the way
they think about it. And what she does is she says, actually,
a trust sleep is when the child says the first
word in Spanish, because when you speak in and the
language and there's a risk that everyone is going to
laugh at you in that class, like that's actually taking
(39:15):
a risk, and that what she has to do is
create the comfort and the security that no one's gonna
laugh and there's gonna be no repercussions. And the thing
that they think about is like when those kids say
the first word and everyone sort of looks at them
with admiration, and then they start saying a whole sentence.
That's the permission piece. That's what I mean by like
(39:37):
if you think if listening says going, well, I'm just
not very good at taking risks and I really don't
enjoy them, and I don't even know how to take
a trust leap. Start really small, right because it's forward momentum,
like once you feel it and you're like, oh no,
I'm speaking a whole paragraph in front of the class.
And I think a lot about those children when I'm
trying to encourage people to take trust leaps. They don't
(40:00):
have to be enormous physical feats. They don't have to
be leaving your job and starting a new company. They
don't have to be taking a math bet or leaving
your partner, whatever it may be, and she some of
the most powerful trust leaps are really really small, where
they get higher high, and they give you permission to
discover something else about other people, about yourself, about your community,
(40:26):
or about the world.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Look at us ending on such a powerful and positive
and inspirational note. I think I think that that actually
is such a great message to hand done right, that
these don't have to be huge things, and that everything
about trust you can start small right and build on that.
And I think that that's very empowering. And I hope
that people do listen to your full audiobook because I
(40:50):
think you'll learn a lot. I learned a lot about
the nature of trust and how we can be more
trustworthy and also create more trust in the world, which
I think is crucially important.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, and I can't wait to read more about cheating,
which is always fascinating me. So it's always a delight
and pleasure. And thank you for appearing in the book
as well. You did a joke.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So of course, thank you so much for joining me.
I could always talk to you four hours, and I
appreciate you taking the time to talk about trust and
risk and all of it. Let us know what you
think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky
Business at pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if
(41:31):
you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content
for you. We'll be answering a listener question each week
that's coming up right after the credits.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. Thanks so much
for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova and today I am flying solo.
Nate is away, but I am so thrilled to welcome
(00:37):
on Rachel Batsman, who is someone who I met what
is it now, Rachel six or so years ago? Oh yeah,
and we ended up having so much in common, so
many interests in common. Rachel is an amazing writer speaker.
She was the first ever Trust Fellow at Oxford University's
(00:58):
Said Business School. An incredibly impressive woman who now has
a new audio book out called How to Trust and
Be Trusted. Rachel, Welcome to Risky Business, and let's talk
about trust.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm so excited to be here, and I'm so excited
to talk to you in particular about trust and risk
because I don't often get to have this conversation, so
it's a treat.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
It is a trick for me as well. There's a
question that I wanted to start off with, but before
we get into that, I think we should probably lay
the groundwork and give your definition of trust, because I
think it's a beautiful definition and something that will set
the stage nicely.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, it's been one of the hardest challenges actually coming
up with the definition that works across all the different
context that trust functions in. And my definition of trust
is that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. And
the reason why that ties so beautifully with risk is
that the greater the unknown, the greater the answeraint you're,
(02:03):
the higher the risk in any decision, choice or situation,
the more trust that you need. And it's kind of
the antithesis of how a lot of trust theories think
about trust, because they'll say trust is knowing exactly what
to expect or knowing what the outcome is, and that's
(02:24):
always struck me as strange, because if you know how
things are going to turn out, then you don't need
a whole lot of trust.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I'm happy to hear that because it is one of
the important themes right of trust is control and it's
something that really resonated with me as someone who studies
kind of risk and has you know, my PhD, I
studied the illusion of control, kind of the need for
control and how important it is for people to feel
like they're in control of events, in control of the environment.
(02:54):
And so as I was listening to your audiobook, that
actually that was a theme that kept coming up, right,
that one of these major issues in trust is control,
when we have it, when we don't have it, How
we can give it up, to whom we can give
it up when we give it up. I'd love for
you to talk a little bit more about that and
(03:15):
about kind of the risk calculus. How does that decision
making process work when it comes to trust.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
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
(03:46):
during the pandemic, or during a political period of term,
or 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,
(04:07):
so I'm going to go outside. Those things really set
off our control alarms all the way through to recognizing
that when you don't trust someone, you tend to become
more controlling, you tend to become a micromanager, and that
plays out at work big time, in partnerships and relationships,
but also in friendships and as a parent. To make
(04:31):
this roll, I have two children, thirteen and eleven. The
eleven year old can be trusted to do her homework,
she's the girl, and not to make gender stereotypes. Then
not so much. So he has to do it at
the kitchen table with this dot clot with me watching
him or working alongside him. That's very controlling right now.
(04:54):
If I trusted him, he could do upstairs in his
bedroom without me watching him and me not have to
ask him the questions. So control is a sign of
lack of trust in ourselves, in others in the external.
And I'd love your take on this, but one of
the things that worries me is that in the age
(05:15):
that we live in, this illusion of control I think
is sort of going up. So even if you think
about health monitoring, I'm running a marathon a few months
and I cannot believe how much data there is available
to tell me what's going on in my body. And
all of a sudden, there's quite enjoyable thing where I
shouldn't really worry about the outcome. I should just enjoy
(05:38):
the journey. It's like you become a control freak around
this data, and the reality is I'm not in control
as to whether I get injured. I'm not in control
whether it's hot or freezing cold on that day. And
so I feel like this illusion of control, largely created
through technology, is reducing our tolerance to friction. And this
(06:00):
is really a crisis in many ways because you throw
people into situations not of uncertainty, just of malfriction. They
have no patience, they're in tolerant, and I think it's
sort of a hidden issue that isn't being spoken about enough.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's a really important point,
because you do mention in your book. But I think
we are in a time where there is kind of
this crisis of trust, right, trust in so many things,
trust in institutions and expertise in leadership and all of
these different things. But this is the other side of it.
On the other hand, like we do have this then
(06:37):
desire to hyper monitor, which might not necessarily be the
best thing. I actually always tell people, you know, stop
stop wearing those devices, stop monitoring yourself. You know, it's
actually it's not good. It's not healthy, and you're probably
losing more than you gain, especially sleep devices. Don't get
me started, But I think that you're pointing out something
(06:59):
really important, which is that we are becoming in some
ways less tolerant of uncertainty, less tolerant of the unknown.
And there is this relationship. You know, how tolerant you are,
how much you can embrace it, and both how much
you trust and how trustworthy you are right yourself. And
(07:20):
there's something that you said that I found really beautiful.
You said you know, nothing new happens in the node,
which I think is such a lovely thought. So I'd
love to talk a little bit about that and about
how kind of because this is something that I think
a lot about right, how embracing risk, right, embracing uncertainty
can actually be very liberating and can actually help you
(07:43):
make better decisions as opposed to being afraid of it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And I think this idea that nothing new happens in
the non is it's so powerful to think about your
own life as to how much of your life. And
some people really enjoy being in this space and that's fine,
but it's safe and familiar and repetitive, even like when
you get to a certain point in your career and
(08:07):
I started to feel this way, You're like, this is
relatively easy. I'm not really taking risks anymore. And maybe
that fatigue is because I'm not in the unknown enough. Right,
Like I'm going to go into a classroom, I'm going
to get on stage, I'm going to write a piece
and I kind of know how it's going to turn out,
and so that takes effort, and that takes work to
(08:30):
shake that up. So just a personal example, I've I
used I see myself as an artist and I've always
made art, and I was like, right, I'm going to
go back to this because that is a world where
I don't speak that language and I have no connections,
and I am a beginner. I am starting again. I'm
very much in the unknown, and I've found that risk
(08:53):
taking that it's so energizing. Yes, it is frightening, but
you just feel that capacity expanding again. Like it's like
it's more than the curiosity that you have when you're
a child. It's like you can hold more. It's you know.
Keats uses that wonderful phrase of negative capability, and I
(09:14):
think sort of the opposite of risk taking is all
the positive capabilities, right, the skill, the competence and knowledge,
And what we're missing is that negative capability, that ability
to hold much and to be in the unknown. And
to do that you have to take risks. You have
to be a beginner, you have to try new things.
And it's so easy to forget that as especially when
(09:37):
you get later on in life.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, no, I think that's that's crucial, and that's that's
actually how I approach almost all new projects. Right, Is
this something that scares me? Is this something where I
feel uncomfortable? If the answer is yes, great, If the
answer is no, you know, is it really worth it? Right?
You know, you and I have talked about familiarity and
that you know, that was part of your part of
(10:00):
your book on trust, how familiarity breeds trust. But also
you know, it can be a false sense of security.
And I think that's true on all levels, both being
you know, doing something that's just easy and familiar, and
also kind of on on a level of trusting someone
just because they seem familiar. It's something that makes you
(10:20):
feel secure. But that's not necessarily good, right, And that's
not necessarily the correct basis on which to trust, which
I think brings us to kind of one of your points,
one of the lessons from your book, which is, you
know the fact that like who do you trust? Who
don't you trust? Is a bad question, right, and you
have to then say to do what? Yeah, and what
(10:44):
what are you actually basing this on? And it's all
it all has to do with context. Let's talk a
little bit about that and tell us a little bit
about your nanny as well, because it's such a great
illustration of a lot of these themes and brings us
back to you know, who you trust, why you trust them?
Is familiarity good or bad? You know, all risk, all
(11:06):
of these things, risk versus comfort, all of these things.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, and also you know this shift between sort of
what people say and how they say it and all
these things that are happening in society right now. And
so just to sort of talk about a fundamental point
which you mentioned that is often missed, is that trust
is highly contextual. So the reason why I say it's
(11:30):
off the missed is when you look at the way
people talk about trust in the media, or I don't
trust that politician, or I don't trust that platform, or
it's spoken about in very generalized terms, and that is
problematic because blanket trust is a very bad thing. You
don't want to be trusted to do everything. And one
of the ways to improve your own trust skills is
(11:52):
to understand where you are trusted and where you're not,
and that's the trust gap. The nanny story or I
won't tell it all because it's quite long, and so
what happened was when we were around five. My dad
my mum were very busy. They were both entrepreneurs and
they were traveling a lot to America. We live in
(12:14):
the UK, and so they needed to hire a nanny
to look after my brother and I and they hired
this woman. I think I changed her name to Doris
or stick with her, okay, And I'll never forget the
day she walked in our house because she had this
very thick Scottish accent, and my name is Rachel, so
(12:36):
every time she said my name, you know, she rolled
her arms and she had one of those really ruddy
Scottish faces, like like they've been for a long walk
over the highlands and then they're going to have a
nice cup of tea and a biscuit and she was
always baking as well. I remember that. But the day
she walked in, she was wearing a uniform, and the
uniform she was wearing was for the Salvation Army and
(12:59):
she was carrying at tambourine, which I thought was immensely
exciting as a four or five year old. The point was,
that's why my parents hired her, because they told her
my parents. She told my parents that she was belonged
to South Asian Army. They now realize how influential the
Scottish accent was because of course there was no email,
(13:19):
there was no video conferencing. It was all done by phone,
so those trust singles were really important. Well, listeners will
have to listen to the book to hear the whole story.
But she lived with us for nine months and it
turned out she was running a massive drugs ring in
North London and then she disappeared and she used our
(13:43):
family's Volvo Silva Volvo as a getaway card an armed robbery.
I mean, like, so I don't know where if that's
my fascination which rus came from that.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I was like, it's a good origin story, Rachel. You
should have.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Raised it, should raise that orangent story. But I remember
thinking as a child like and even when they found
out she stolen loads of money and she told them
she found it under a tree in a park.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
This is this is one of my favorite details.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah. I remember asking my dad about this and he's like, oh,
these things can happen. And I'm thinking, what in Broomfield Park,
like the magic faraway.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Tree is going to Have you seen the movie Fargo?
You know sometimes you find large amounts of cash by
the side of the road, I swear.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And then they still kept her, and she came on
a holiday with us to Spain. And this is such
a random detail, but I remember she went to the
Queen concert and she loved Freddie Mercury and they were like, wow,
she loves Queen, right, so she must must be But
she was not good. She was very, very bad. So yeah,
so that is a really good example of a bad
(14:49):
trust decision. And I think the part that's stuck in
my head as to why my parents kept her was
it was too much effort someone else.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, aside when he said that, it was you know,
it's one of these things.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
When you said it, I was like, this is so true.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I think the way you phrased it, because I have
it in quotes, and I know it says convenience trump's trust, right,
And that is I think such an important point because
we make decisions all the time based on convenience and
based on lower friction and inertia and being like, it's
just too much effort to do X or y. When
(15:28):
your nanny had more money, she said she found it
under the same tree again, right, this tree just happened
to be a money tree and there was more money
under it. And the fact that you know, if you
think about it logically, right, you're your father's a smart man, entrepreneur,
Like you just have to say, huh, what is going
on in the brain of this incredibly intelligent person. And
(15:51):
it's one of these things where you know, I've written
about con artists a few books back, and you know,
you see these patterns of smart people, people who know better,
and yet they end up in these situations where they
keep trusting, they keep ignoring red flags because it's convenient, right,
And and it also it also says something about you, Right,
(16:15):
you don't want to be the person who left your
kids with a drug dealer, right, So it's easier to
say no, no, she really is trustworthy. Those things aren't true,
even though it's your kids, right, and if there's any
chance that this person is going to be involved in
an armed robbery, get your kids the fuck out of there.
(16:36):
But it's just all of these computing computing things, which
is huge.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And you know, it's funny. Like I was thinking, I
love your book, The Confidence Game, and I was thinking about,
you know, on the chapters and I can't remember which
how you frame it. It's not the road but denal,
like the power of denal, because it's your identity and
that I think it explains so many reasons why people
(17:03):
don't quit and they don't get out of bad decisions,
even when they know the client isn't trustworthy or the
investment isn't good or the nanny isn't like. Why we
can't extricate ourselves from that situations. I think it's just
a fascinating human flaw.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, it really is. It really is. And you know
everything ended well right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Here, you are nice.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, you know the other details of the story are
fascinating and everyone should listen to it. But yeah, it is,
you know, it is a really interesting part of human nature,
right The way that we trust how we make those decisions.
And you know when you when you said Scottish accent
right for the nanny. This is something you and I
have spoken about, which is kind of your your gut feelings,
your your gut instincts, Oh, I like this person based
(17:53):
on what right?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Why?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Why is that the case? And as I've as I've
told you, that is not a good way to make decisions.
You know, my gut said so we're very bad at
figuring out whether the gut is correct or not, and
so asking that question why is crucial over and over
and over.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Now you and can I just say, I don't know
if you find this, but when I challenge, because I
like to believe I'm an intuited person, right, and I'm
still kind of figuring out what that means. I think
it means that I'm good at reading the room and
I'm good at reading energy versus predicting how things are
going to turn out, which I think is what people
think intuition is, right, It's more of a I see
(18:33):
it as more reading the state someone is in and
how engaged they are with you versus what's going to happen.
And when I challenge people to say, look, it's not
the intuition is a bad thing, particularly in situations where
you recognize that pattern. It's the lack of information. So
when you rely on the intuition and you just don't
have enough reliable information, people hate this idea that they're like,
(18:57):
this flies in the face of emotional intelligence, and this,
you know, this is going to slow down decision making
and what do you expect that we're going to get
all this information about people? And how do we know
if the information is really liable? And I find it
really interesting that it sparks something so visceral and deep
in people that they rely on the intuition.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So Heavenly, yeah, people really don't like to hear that.
I find that. I find that as well. And it's
very funny because you know, I play poker as well,
and there are a lot of poker players who are
very mathematical, right, like, very quantitative. They use Solber outputs,
it's all very you know, very precise. And yet when
I say something like you should not trust your gut,
(19:40):
you should not trust they get so upset, right because
even someone's so mathematical to them, it seems like there's
you know, the sixth sense, there's something else that like
that you know has to be has to be there,
And I have to say, well, sometimes your gut is right, right,
but you need to ask, like, what is it based
on where's the information coming from? Do I have expertise
(20:01):
in this right? Is this something that is just unconscious
expertise or is it something that is just a feeling
based on who knows what? Right? And it could be
very good pattern recognition, or it could be bullshit, but
people really do not like to hear that, and it's
it's that's a I think that's such an interesting point
(20:23):
about trust.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And I think it's I'm doing this interesting thing tomorrow
on gen Z. This is the biggest study done in
the UK on how they trust and how they think
about the truth. And one of the things that I've
been thinking about related to this is how much they
not just gen Z, but rely on feelings over facts
to make a decision. And that is so much to
(20:46):
do with sort of the invisible hand of algorithms, So
the vertical nature of fees where you can find things
to validate how you're feeling, not even that day, that moment,
that then becomes the way you make a decision, and
that really frightens me. This idea of feeling your way
through a decision versus looking for reliable information.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's incredibly scary that you know, I think that that
is something that is the opposite of what your whole
book is about about trust, right, and the opposite of
everything that I've tried to do, because feelings are sometimes
integral to a decision, but usually they're incidental. Right. There's
a whole area of psychology that talks about how poor
(21:31):
our decision making ability is when we rely on feelings
because most of the time they have nothing to do
with the decision at hand. And there's even a term
called mood as information when we use kind of the
mood we're in as information when we shouldn't. Right, it's
a it's a major fallacy, and it really influences decisions
in a negative way. Let's talk about something a little
(22:07):
bit more positive, because you you in reviewed some really
interesting people who have used trust in really interesting ways,
and I was, you know, some very inspiring people like
the Spanish teacher ms rad right, who who is Well,
why don't you tell us a little bit about her?
And about this distinction which I think is really really
(22:30):
nice that you make between earning trust and building trust.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, Miss rad Oh, she was. I shouldn't pick favorites,
but it really was incredible. She's was a Teacher of
the Year in Illinois, and I think the thing that
really struck me about her is that she's working in
a pretty tough environment and she's working with often with
children that have never learned how to trust anyone. They've
(22:56):
never learned how to trust a teacher, a parent, a custodian,
a friend, and she feels like she's teaching them Spanish.
But actually the outcome of the year is that they've
learned how to trust someone and that someone trusts them.
And there's so much to the things that she does.
But what I realized, we're listening to listen to it again.
(23:18):
First of all, everything she does is free, like it's
not big gestures, they're really small things. So she makes
sure before the first day of term she knows every
child's first name and last name, and not only that,
she knows their interests. She speaks to the other teachers.
She finds out what they enjoy, where they're struggling, even
(23:39):
where they like to sit in the classroom, and so
you know, when they walk in, they're like, Oh, this
person cares. They took the time to understand all these things.
She works on the premise that she's a giver of trust,
so they don't have it, and so many teachers don't
do this right. Like it's like you have to prove
yourself to me, and that proving yourself to me is
(24:03):
such an old way of thinking about power, which, to
your question, is tied to this distinction between how do
I build trust versus how do I earn trust? When
you say how do I build trust, that is like
I'm going to behave in a certain way and then
I expect you to follow me. I expect you to
do something for me, versus what miss Rad was demonstrating
(24:26):
is that actually, you know, you have to continuously earn trust,
and the best way to do that is to give
it first, and then it becomes this really powerful loop.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah. I think that a lot of bosses and business
leaders should listen to your lesson with miss Rad because
it seems like it would really improve a lot of
office cultures, because you do talk about this about kind
of the flip side. When you do have cultures where
there isn't trust right, where people micromanage, where you feel
(24:57):
like you're you're not being empowered, and then people do
all sorts of shit to you know, when they feel
like that, when they're like, fine, you don't trust me.
You know, you have the example of it Spencer reports, Right, Okay, fine,
like how do I expense this bottle of wine? Like
how do I figure out a way to screw you over?
Because you don't trust me?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And I have actually found that. So my next book
is about cheating. But you find that when you have
these kinds of things and people feel like they can cheat, right,
they feel like and they can feel like they can
do things like take office supplies home, take stuff from
the fridge that was brought from the office and just
take it home, and they don't feel like that's stealing,
even though it is right, that's not why it's therefore,
(25:40):
but they're like, well, you know, if you're if you're
not trusting me, if you're doing all of these things,
then I'm going to act accordingly. And in this classroom,
you see, you know, students who misbehaved and who were
problems students suddenly become leaders and really promising students because
of this trust dynamic shift. And I think that this
(26:02):
is just such a powerful and wonderful lesson that we
can use in a lot of different cultures. Right your school,
even though I think it's incredibly important in the classroom,
but I think it's important as we think about corporate
cultures all the way up. And it's 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
(26:24):
you need to urge, you need to you need to
kind of micro manage and do these kinds of things,
because well, who are they, right, I'm the boss.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, And it's it's it's such an obvious thing to say,
but we take trust for granted until it's gone, and
then it brings out the very worst behaviors, whether that's
cheating or survival. So I had a student she put
this so well because she was saying, like, you know,
why don't want we talk about trust? Do we so
often talk about mistrust or distrust or a lack of trust?
And then she admitted she didn't really understand the difference
(26:54):
between those things, which is interesting in itself mistrust, distrust,
lack of trust. But then she said, you know, do
you know what to me, like when I've been in
a work environment and you can just feel like someone
took the plug out and the trust is seeping out
that organization. She said, you know, you owned a goldfish,
and you can imagine like she's doing this in an
(27:14):
NBA lecture hall. It's about one hundred and twenty students,
and I'm like, yes, I owned a goldfish and it
was called Flash Gordon. I'm trying to give her permission
to tell the story here, and she's like, your goldfish
was called Flash Gordon. I was like, could we get
to the mesophor so. Then she says, you don't only
own a goldfish, and you're not a particularly responsible pet
owner golfish owner, and you don't fill the bowl up,
(27:35):
and gradually, over time the water goes down and you
don't really notice the water going down until one day
you come home. And she did this with actions. The
fish is gold ping like like like it can't breathe,
it's suffocating, and the fish is about to die. And
she said that's what I think happens to trust, is
(27:55):
like it just dissipates until people feel suffocated. So I
think this is It really struck me because the Edelman
Trust Barometer just came out, which bigs feelings about and
gallop at the same time the biggest trust surveys, and
both of them showed that the lowest the highest trust falls.
(28:18):
So the biggest difference in trust points it's not in
politics or media, it's in employees. It's like a ten
point four in employee engagement and trust. And that's that's
very right. It's huge right that you always be with
disengaged and or they are not behaving well, and that
is that is toxic for both sides.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
The equation that is that is concerning. And you talk
about distrust, right, and you and you talk about I
think the goldfish story is a great one. You know,
you talk about kind of the three d's, right, the defensiveness, disengagement, disenchantment,
and how you don't always see those happening. It's very
easy to miss. It's very easy to not have the
(29:00):
communication infrastructure needed to kind of have those cycles not
take place, and then you end up like a gold
being goal fish and you're not quite sure how to
fix it, and then you get a consultant in there,
and you end up refilling the water tank without actually
addressing any of the issues that made the water go
(29:21):
down in the first place. So you know, maybe you
refill the water, but you know that goldfish is not
going to do well.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Why wasn't anyone watching the boat? Why did no one care? Why? Like,
why was no one nourishing these more things? So I
do think it's a really good metaphor to think about
workplace culture.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now, you know, let's turn this positive again. You you've
talked to people who actually have very good workplace culture.
But let's start with a hotel hospitality. You talked to
someone you Jane you right, who's the CEO of the
Dorchester and he well, tell me a little bit about him,
and tell me what you learned from him about trust
(30:15):
and kind of good ways to have that rapport because
he's very good not just a building trust, but at
repairing trust.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, so I'm fascinated by hotels. I don't know about you,
but like, it's not I want to go into hospitality,
but they just I'm always like the theater and how
they run and what goes on behind the scenes. So
for listen, you don't know the Dorors to collection, it's
it's it's some of the nicest hotels in the world,
like it's the bel Air and the Beverly Hills and
(30:42):
that that really fancy one in Paris. The hotels are incredible,
l Maurice Maurice right. And I did get to stay
in one as a work project, which was a real.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Rachel, can I do a work project hotel?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It was so fine. It was one of those trips
where I digressed, but I said to him, I really
don't want to go. And then I got there and
I was like, this is the best work trip ever
because this link to the story. The way they make
people feel at home, and the way they recognize guests
and not in like chocolate on your pillow ways I'd
(31:23):
never experienced, not seen. I'd never experienced that feeling before,
and so I was like, how do they do this?
And they're so good at doing it that they run
a training program where they don't just train their own staff,
they train British Airways, Marks and Spent, all these companies
around the world train on culture because they know how
(31:44):
to do it. And the thing that struck me was that,
first of all, he'd worked in every single department of
the hotel. He'd even like been on the roof or
repaired the air conditioners. You know, he'd been in the
wash and not like for the day, you know how
some of the CEOs do it for an hour like
a rotation. He understood the hotel like a body. He
(32:07):
understood the nervous system, He understood the components, and he
knew how all of this was interconnected and if one
thing went down, how it impacted others. So that was
just like, wow, how many leaders understand the whole ecology
and cultural system of their business. The other thing that
(32:28):
I thought was just incredible was how much he empowered
his team to do the right thing. And you know,
this wasn't like the mised alarm call. He spoke about
a lot because that's a big thing, and that if
they missed an alarm calls. I mean people still use
alarm calls, which I find strange that the personal reception
(32:53):
has the autonomy to book another flight a business class
fight without any kind of approval, regardless of the cost.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, that was absolutely crazy. I was like, well, yeah,
that is the way to remedy it, right, Like if
you make me miss my float because you screwed up up,
then you know, and he says, you know, if it
costs ten thousand dollars, doesn't matter, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And now this is an elite I mean, this is
a privilege, right, this is an incredible hotel where people
a pay an absolute fortune. But the point of the
story was that the apology has to match.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, and I think that Eugenio has a really good
rubric for it, you know. Basically, I think the to me,
the most important point of how you know he speaks
about this is that trust is going to be broken, right,
Like we have this illusion that like, oh, this is
a trustworthy person, this trustworthy institution, trustworthy blah blah blah.
(33:47):
So I can trust a blanket, right, shit goes wrong? Yeah, right,
that's life. It happens all the time. People are going
to break your trust on an individual level and on
an institutional level. How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:03):
How do you repair it? How do you actually make
it so that the trust doesn't go away, right, so
that it becomes stronger. I think that that is the
crucial thing here, Right. It's not like there's this beautiful
thing and you can trust this and you can't trust this.
That is not how it works. It is much more complex.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I think to your point, what's so powerful by his
story is that he says it happens like a hundred
times in a day in a hotel. More like he's
constantly repairing trust. And there is a distinction between those
most moments and what people would call a trust crisis,
you know, so a trust crisis like an AWE spill
Cambridge Analytica, that's how people tend to think of trust
(34:44):
breaking down. And yes, of course those things are going
to hur and there's a lot of repair to be
done there, but it's it's micro moments that often, particularly
if you're in a customer centric or even just an
employee centric company, they're the things that people don't think about,
like how do you empower people to repair those those things?
And then the other key thing tied to risk, which
(35:05):
I thought was really key, is he doesn't want people
to be risk adversed. He doesn't want his employees to
be risk adverse. So it's how does he set the
boundaries and be really clear about expectations so that they
can play and they can delight, and they can do
things still following service protocol. And I think that was
(35:27):
just amazing to learn how they do that.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I think that that is a really crucial point. You
have to empower people to take risks because a lot
of times, you know, trust gets broken and things go wrong,
and people, you know, you've created a culture where they
will be punished, right if they if they go and
do something else. And I think this is actually a
huge organizational problem, at least in the United States. I
(35:54):
don't know if it's the case in the UK as well,
where businesses say, oh, you know, we love risk taking.
You know, we want our employees to be creative and
innovative and blah blah blah. But it didn't work out,
Oh you're fired. Right, What kind of a culture are
you actually creating where you pay lip service to this
but you don't actually inspire that kind of behavior because
(36:14):
people are scared. They know that if you take a
risk and it doesn't work out, that that's not good
for you.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, and it's it's something I mean, I'd love to
ask you these questions because I've often wandered like it's
taking risk of privilege.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, I think that taking risk is a privilege because
you know, I've written about this and I've thought a
lot about this, you know, a really nice way of
thinking about it. Is you know, when you're looking at
all of these classic biases that Danny Kahneman talked about, right,
risk aversion, loss of version, all of these fallacies of
(36:51):
the human mind, right where you prefer the certain outcome
over the gamble, even though the gamble has a higher
expected value, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they become
completely correct and not fallacious if you can't afford to lose. Right,
if you are someone who you know you need this
money to pay the rent, you need this money to
(37:13):
get medicine, even though the risk might actually the expected
value might be like millions, right, and you can get
a sure thing of however much it is, you will
take the shore thing or if the loss right, if
you gamble and you could potentially make a lot, but
you could also lose something that's going to affect your
(37:33):
ability to pay for your for your livelihood. You shouldn't
take that gamble, right, because you should actually take the
sure thing always. And so you see how all of
these quote unquote fallacies can be completely correct depending on
who you are, what risk context you're coming from, and
so absolutely risk taking is a privilege. It means you
(37:54):
can afford to lose. Right, you can afford the risk
of ruin and some people can't. And sometimes you don't
understand why someone doesn't take a risk, and you have
to ask, well, okay, what is it about their background?
And this I think we've come full circles of trust.
What is it about the trust kind of the support
(38:15):
and everything about them that can enable them to take
these sorts of risks And you know, something that you
end with which I think is a good place for
us turned And this is where it's going with trust sleeps,
right and confidence in the unknown. And I think trust
sleeps are also a privilege, but I.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Think so too so a trust sleep is whenever you
take a risk to do something new or to do
something differently in your life. But actually writing the book
made me think about them really differently, because if you
think about going back to wonderful miss rad and it
made me think, you know, trust sleeps are a privilege,
but they're also permission. What made me realize is like
(38:53):
often people go, okay, well you need to provide security,
and you have to provide that's usually financial the way
they think about it. And what she does is she says, actually,
a trust sleep is when the child says the first
word in Spanish, because when you speak in and the
language and there's a risk that everyone is going to
laugh at you in that class, like that's actually taking
(39:15):
a risk, and that what she has to do is
create the comfort and the security that no one's gonna
laugh and there's gonna be no repercussions. And the thing
that they think about is like when those kids say
the first word and everyone sort of looks at them
with admiration, and then they start saying a whole sentence.
That's the permission piece. That's what I mean by like
(39:37):
if you think if listening says going, well, I'm just
not very good at taking risks and I really don't
enjoy them, and I don't even know how to take
a trust leap. Start really small, right because it's forward momentum,
like once you feel it and you're like, oh no,
I'm speaking a whole paragraph in front of the class.
And I think a lot about those children when I'm
trying to encourage people to take trust leaps. They don't
(40:00):
have to be enormous physical feats. They don't have to
be leaving your job and starting a new company. They
don't have to be taking a math bet or leaving
your partner, whatever it may be, and she some of
the most powerful trust leaps are really really small, where
they get higher high, and they give you permission to
discover something else about other people, about yourself, about your community,
(40:26):
or about the world.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Look at us ending on such a powerful and positive
and inspirational note. I think I think that that actually
is such a great message to hand done right, that
these don't have to be huge things, and that everything
about trust you can start small right and build on that.
And I think that that's very empowering. And I hope
that people do listen to your full audiobook because I
(40:50):
think you'll learn a lot. I learned a lot about
the nature of trust and how we can be more
trustworthy and also create more trust in the world, which
I think is crucially important.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, and I can't wait to read more about cheating,
which is always fascinating me. So it's always a delight
and pleasure. And thank you for appearing in the book
as well. You did a joke.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So of course, thank you so much for joining me.
I could always talk to you four hours, and I
appreciate you taking the time to talk about trust and
risk and all of it. Let us know what you
think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky
Business at pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if
(41:31):
you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content
for you. We'll be answering a listener question each week
that's coming up right after the credits.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. Thanks so much
for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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