This week, we talk to the leading expert on Trust, David Horsager. He has been working on researching how trust can be quantified and impact the culture of a business for over a decade. He explains to us what the pillars of trust are and how they impact an organization’s ability to be productive and cost effective.
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I’m Bekkah! And I’m Ruthie and today’s episode is “How Trust Impacts Your Business.” David Horsager is with us today! Thank you so much for being here with us!
David: Thank you so much! Great to be here.
Bekkah: Oh! We are super looking forward to this for sure! Tell us what do you do?
David: Great question, next question! *All laugh* I run Trust Edge Leadership Institute. Our mission is developing trusted leaders and organizations around the world. We work with everything from global governments to pro-sports teams to companies to cities and whatnot. We basically serve our clients in three big ways. I speak about 100 times a year at different conferences to kind of inspire a shift of thinking around trust. Then we have a consulting piece where we measure trust in organizations and close gaps.
We’ve been fortunate that people have said save the millions of dollars when they see the gap around our framework of trust and are able to close it. That’s a deep consulting piece. Then the biggest part of what we do is certifying either independent coaches or certifying learning folks, corporate trainers, inside of companies to drive high-performing teams and cultures on trust. That gives them access to an amazing platform, mentoring, and our community from around the world.
We have certified folks, certified coaches in Uganda, Kenya, Indonesia, Amsterdam, Quebec, and Kyrgyzstan. Basically, we help them to drive these high-performing cultures of trust whether they’re serving companies or if they’re serving their company. That’s what we do! The whole mission is developing trusted leaders and organizations and when we do that we think we help them the most.
Ruthie: Wow! You said that so fast! “Developing trusted leaders and organizations!”
David: Yeah! Why not?
Why Do You Work With Businesses and Leaders to Develop Trust?
Ruthie: That’s awesome! That’s so cool. Okay, so why do you do that?
David: Well, if you go back to my graduate work, I had to tell my kids when I moved back here with that I started my first company back in the 1900s! Oh, there was a time! But in 1999, I moved back to Minnesota. I’d been director of a youth and family organization. I’d worked for the biggest, Christian, sports camp in the country and developed some leadership curriculum there and whatnot.
I came back and was speaking and training and I started to think of some of the organizations I was working with they’re like, “We have a leadership problem.” And I was looking and thought, “Boy, that looks like a trust problem!” “Oh! We got a sales problem.” “Oh! That looks like a trust problem.” So I started to see that the real root issue was always trust and so that led to my graduate work. Back then very few people especially in business and leadership were researching trust and how it affected the bottom line.
I believe now everything of value is built on trust. I believe trust affects the bottom line more than anything else. With this passion we started using it in companies. It worked! That grew the passion. The research grew the passion. We now do a big study on trust and leadership every year called “The Trust Outlook” and that’s grown the passion because we keep seeing this.
Our framework was just revalidated by an outside university last year as The Way Trust Is Built Globally. That kind of created the passion but probably one of the reasons I’m so passionate about this is this work changed me. It changed how I parent. It changed me as a husband. I think it changed my work.
I believe, of course, God’s been saying a lot about trust before I ever started, so there’s faith inspiration to all this work but there’s also this passion because I see that when people increase trust, they increase the outcome. They start to solve the outcome that they were hoping for. In our case, my first part of my research showed how when trust goes up costs go down, time goes down, attrition goes down, retention goes up!
The problem in many organizations that’s why I wrote the new book “Trusted Leader” is they aren’t solving the real issue or the root issue. When they see this framework and see trust differently they actually start to solve the real issue.
Tell Us About The Trusted Leader Book
Bekkah: You mentioned a couple things that I want to jump on. Okay, we’re going to come back to your story a little bit because I want to hear that but you just said you have a new book coming out and I know that we’re going I actually read your first book in prep for this so went through that one. Tell us about this new one that’s coming out because I want to hear that first.
David: Well, the first book came out of my grad work. It’s 360 pages or whatever. It was 200 more pages until I had to cut out a couple hundred pages because of the publisher and agent whatever. That’s an evergreen book. A lot of it is the core of what I believe but you can imagine over a decade ago we’ve learned a lot about trust. “The Trusted Leader” I actually have a copy in my hand now it doesn’t come out until March 30th but they just sent the pre-published copies and we’re excited about that.
Ruthie: Wow! Looks fancy!
David: Yes, it’s even got the cool design that we love to do in our books and the feel is really cool. The tactical feel we’re big on having it feel and be excellent. Anyway, basically, we heard a few things.
Number one, our research that we do every year, our Trust Outlook, kept saying the number one reason people want to work for an organization over being paid more, over a more fun work environment with a ping pong table, over more autonomy – the number one reason was they want to work for leaders they trust.
Why Transparency and Trust in Business Are Not The Same Thing
David: What we started to find is people either want to be trusted leaders or they want to follow trusted leaders so what does that look like? The first half of the book this time is a story, a parable, that shifts thinking around trust. Part of it is based on a true story of a boardroom moment where probably the most junior person is willing, to be honest, and it changes everything for this organization, by asking one simple question.
Anyway, that parable kind of shifts thinking and shows how trust isn’t what everybody thinks. People think, “Oh! It’s transparency!” Well, some kids are so transparent on social media, I don’t trust them for a second. It’s also confidentiality or “it takes a long time to build trust.” Well, actually that’s not true in some cases, like 9-11! Complete strangers trusted each other in a moment if they’re running in the same direction.
They’re shifting thinking around trust and showing how it matters more than ever and how we have an unbelievable opportunity, especially in a crisis. We can build trust faster than ever. That’s the first half. In the second half, we go into those same eight pillar framework that’s based on research but we give takeaways leaders can use tomorrow morning that we’ve learned since that first book came out.
The spa method of appreciation comes under the compassion pillar and the “How, how, how method”. People have used that method to triple sales in 90 days. I used it to lose 52 pounds in five months back in 2011 and keep it off. Some of these strategies help build these eight pillars of the trust framework. The new ones, they’re in the new book, “Trusted Leader”.
How Did You Start Your Entrepreneurship Journey into Trust?
Bekkah: Okay, so let’s back it up, really far up because for a lot of our listeners, this is probably the first time they’ve heard you. Tell us how you got here because, for reference for you guys that are listening, I actually had a conversation with David probably like over five years ago. He took the time to just talk to me while I was in college saying, “If you just want to put the work in, this is the best time in your life to risk if you’re going to take an opportunity.”
He told me a little bit about his story and his struggle of where he came from deciding to start a business and pursue this data research. I think that that’s incredible. I really would love to have you share that with us because just seeing how you can take an intangible element and then say, “This works, and here’s the data to prove that this will be a numbers game now of cost savings.” How did you come to that point and how did you say, “Yeah, I’m gonna do this finally”?
David: Well, there are a few questions in this story, right? I mean you can go back to growing up on a little, bean farm in North-Central Minnesota in one of the poorest counties in Minnesota and learning to work. Learning to sacrifice and being the youngest of six kids, growing up under amazing leaders in my parents. I was fortunate for that. You can learn from good leaders. You can learn from bad ones.
I went to college and then went on staff with the organization I was talking about. Then Lisa and I decided to move back to Minnesota and start our first company. I think faith in God’s grace to do it, I think a belief that we were supposed to start this, and I don’t know what all, but basically what happened was we took every penny we had we threw it into this business at the time 1999, we found a place to live for about half the price of any apartment. I still remember about $350. It was the basement of 86-year-old Clara Miller’s home in Fridley, Minnesota.
Ruthie: *laughs* Yikes!!
David: No bathroom, no kitchen, no windows thankfully we didn’t know it was illegal to live in a windowless basement in Minnesota.
Ruthie: Sounds like you were living in a pit.
David: We lived there for two years. It came complete with black mold so that was good *Ruthie laughs* but we lived there for two years. By that October, we had a dollar forty to our name. Eighty cents in the home account, sixty cents in the business account and that’s how we started. We threw everything we had into it. We’d work till 11 at night, making calls, learning, whatever and I figured back then if I could make $700 a month we could pay all of our urgent bills.
But that was the way we started. When you talk about entrepreneurism, I’ve seen this data several times. The number one regret of older people is actually not that they would have spent more time with their kids, though that’s a really good thing. Not that they would have done some of these things people say that they wish they would have taken more risks. Sometimes we just think, “What really do we have to lose? What do we have to gain by trying?”
I failed several times. I lost everything in a different company right before one of our kids was born. I mean I’ve done some things that way. Now, fortunately, things are much different and they never would be how they are without those risks.
Anyway, that was a little bit of how we started. It was gritty and we were passionate about it. We were together on it. Thankfully, we didn’t have the four kids yet but that’s kind of how we started. I remember my taxes that year, I think the income was two thousand dollars or something but anyway.
What Does Successful Trust Look Like in a Team?
Ruthie: Okay, so clearly you’ve really learned a lot since then and have done so many cool things with trust and all these things that you’re talking about how specifically have you seen this success of trust on a team?
David: Well, you can see it, I mean, think about this, and the cost of trust. Take someone you trust, how long does that take to write him a text? *plurp* Done! Now try to text someone you don’t trust. “Oh! How should I say this? Ooh! How should I say that. Oh! I better delete that! They might do this. They might say that.” The skepticism and suspicion which is the opposite of trust goes up.
If I can take a team and we can increase trust in the way that stops the politics or slows it, that stops the second-guessing, that gets everyone aligned to the same thing, I mean everything changes! But the most important thing is speed and cost. Because everything gets faster when you have a team that’s high trust. You don’t have all the double-checking and everything else. I mean that’s the simple answer. There’s a lot more we could say.
How Do You Teach People Trust?
Ruthie: How do you teach people trust then? That seems like a lofty task.
David: Yeah, it’s all we do. There are two sides to that. One I have to get buy-in, that’s where the research came in. The first thing we have to do is show the case for trust and what that means here. It doesn’t matter whether I’m dealing with corruption issues in East Africa or something with a pro sports team or a company, they have to see that this will make our life better here.
When I can show the case for trust, “Hey, they’re going to lose millions of dollars if they don’t do this or they get buy in” or if teams could perform better, speed would go up, and cost would go down, attrition would go down, and all that kind of stuff. First is the case. They have to see that trust is the root issue and it always is. Without ego, I hope, but a whole lot of passion and research I can show that it’s never a leadership issue.
The reason you follow the leader or not is trust. It’s not a sales issue. The reason you buy or not is trust. The only way to amplify a marketing message is to increase trust in the message. The only way to increase learning in a classroom is increase trust in the teacher, the content, or the psychological safety of the room. Diversity issues of our day we’re solving many of them the wrong way. The biggest Harvard study would show diversity on its own, pits people against each other unless you increase trust! Then, and only then, can you get the great benefits that come with diversity.
They have to shift thinking around trust first and that gets some buying because they say, “Oh, I didn’t think of it that way. Oh! I see how that could affect us! I see how really how that could help us.” So that’s first. The second half of what we get paid to do is this whole helping them gain a common language around the eight pillar framework which is how trust is built.
What Are The Eight Pillars of Trust?
These eight pillars, globally even though we contextualize for different environments, understanding this eight pillar framework. I think I better share these eight pillars because I think without this we don’t have a framework.
Ruthie: Yeah, please do. I’d love that.
David: Well, there’s new takeaways and I could talk about these eight for a day each. This gives a little life to understanding how we solve. These eight pillars are what came out of the research, they didn’t come out as pillars that hold up this great advantage. They just come out as research funnels. The eight pillars of trust, relatively co-equal. It doesn’t mean number one is more important but here they are.
- Clarity. People trust the clear and they mistrust or distrust the amDbiguous or the overly complex. Whenever I over-complexity something beyond what is needed, I lose clarity which loses trust. Clarity is trusted. Most people think they’re clear when they’re not. Even marketing and branding experts think they are and they’re not. It’s incredibly difficult to be clear on the level I’m talking about that gains trust but that’s what’s necessary.
- Compassion. We trust those that care beyond themselves. It’s hard to follow a leader or be accountable to someone if we don’t feel like they care at all about us, compassion.
- Character. We all knew this one. Honesty’s important, of course, but it’s not everything because number four is competency.
- Competency. This is why I might trust Rebekkah to take my kids to the ball game and not trust her to give me a root canal, because of competency. You have to be competent in the area. If you’re still leading the way you were 20 years ago, I don’t trust you. If you’re selling the way you were 10 years ago, I don’t trust you. If you’re teaching my kids and you’re teaching the same way you were five years ago I probably don’t trust you. We’ve got to stay fresh and relevant and capable.
- Commitment. We trust those that stay committed in the face of adversity. Take anybody in history, Mandela. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, or Joan of Arc and you’ll find someone that was trusted because they were committed to something beyond themselves often to death.
- Connection. Basically, the finding here and even though these are all C words for memory they kind of encompasses the meaning of that research funnel. Connection actually another C-word “collaboration” came out of this funnel but we trust those that are willing to connect and collaborate. Each of these pillars are counter forces. So in a company, if I see siloing, I know we’ve got a counterforce to that connection pillar.
- Contribution. The number one word that came out of this research funnel was “results”. You’ve got to contribute results. You can’t just have compassion and character, you won’t be trusted. But you can’t just get results without compassion and character either, you won’t be trusted, so you have got to have all eight. This is why I might go in for an amputation let’s say and the surgeon cuts off the wrong leg might be the most compassionate surgeon ever but we got the wrong result and don’t trust them.
- Consistency. We trust whatever you do consistently. Good or bad if you’re late all the time I will in fact trust you to be late. Consistency is the only way to build a brand. It’s the only way to build a reputation. That was a quick glimpse, now under each of these, there are ways that we build consistency in a brand organization.
There are ways we increase clarity in expectations or in alignment or in vision but it’s worth understanding. This is what we’re going against because you can actually solve every organizational leadership issue against these eight. This doesn’t mean I know how to do it or it’s easy. If you can frame it or understand the language. As an example, “Oh, we’ve got an engagement issue.” No, you don’t. You have a trust issue. “We’ve got an NPS or Net Promoter Score Issue.” No, the only way to increase referrals is to increase trust. Or see people say to me, “Well, you like C’s, David, isn’t it ever a communication issue?”
Of course, the truth is it never is at the core a communication issue. You look at the pillars, clear communication is trusted, unclear communication is not trusted. Compassionate is, hateful communication is not trusted. Consistent is and inconsistent is not, so when you can define it against these you actually start to solve the real issue which is what we love helping people do. Then under the eight pillars, tools they can use to actually build that pillar. That’s what we do. You’ve got to get buy-in but then it’s giving them these tools in a way they can use them, that will help them.
How to Measure The Level of Trust in a Business Culture
Bekkah: Okay, so how do you measure the level of trust in a business culture.
David: Well, I created six different ways we measure trust in organizations and individuals. Everything from a simple self-assessment all the way up to an enterprise trust index built on a mix of my graduate work and 30 years of Accenture data and validated questions. If I was taking an organization, I would use that ETI and we would survey the organization or many people from the organization. That would show where we have gaps and we would equip them with tools to close the gap and build trust.
Bekkah: You’re mentioning a lot of different things. Let’s dig back into that. You just said that you built these models, based on research. When you first started it and you were thought this is an idea in your head, did you feel a little bit crazy or did you think, “This is going to work.” And how did you go about finding the ways to structure that so you could build something that other people considered a trustworthy index.
David: Well, I think there are several parts to that. I think, first of all, finding out what builds trust, that’s the eight pillars. We can run through them or talk about them – everything is built on that. Whether it’s every one of the indexes. Whether I’m looking at behaviors for me personally or I’m looking at behaviors in an organization, it comes back to those eight pillars of trust which you can find in “Trust Edge”, you can find them also in a “Trusted Leader” but we can talk about those but once we had that, then it’s also asking for help and learning.
I remember my first meeting with the guy that wrote the book on 360 Gap Analysis and building my first “Trust Edge 360: A Way to Measure Trust in 360 Degrees Around a Leader” against the eight pillars and that person helped me with that. Then I said, “Well, we want to measure trust in organizations.” So I met with David Dutzman on how you actually do this. They create out in California all these big measuring tools. They had access to all this Accenture data and having him help me.
I had this research around how trust is built. Basically, an umbrella, but then for different tools and ways of coaching now I’ve worked with others to create our whole coaching platform and other ways we measure trust but also how we give tools to coaches so they can apply it in their domain. Part of that’s with experience too.
Now we’ve used it in police reform and business and sales and leadership but basically, when you’re talking about the assessments, I’m going to experts and having help learning how do you make validated assessments based on what I’m finding about trust or have found.
Bekkah: It kind of goes back to it’s important to have the scientific method because I think especially I find with more common Youtubers and other things they say, “I spent like maybe 20 minutes on research and here’s the data!” but the reality is that if you start with your conclusions without actually using the scientific method that’s actually the opposite of forming a hypothesis and proving it.
David: Well, and I think more and more as you see the social media light and all the noise in social media, more and more people that are going to win at least in learning and development and consulting there’s going to be a bias toward people that have done real primary research. I think motivational speakers are less and less being hired compared to experts. I mean look at a TED talk.
There are few motivational speakers. There are only experts, generally, is what they want and that’s the same with other means. People actually want help that will help them. The most motivating idea is not someone that maybe climbed Mount Everest because I’m not going to do that.
The most motivating idea is an idea I can use tomorrow morning to help me with my problem.
Ruthie: Put the t-shirt! That was good. Another question I had was what are the biggest areas that people can really struggle to create trust.
David: Well, there’s no shortage of places to build trust. I mean sometimes it’s building trust with themselves even.
Bekkah: Okay, so we’ve gone through so many different things really quickly because you’re probably one of our most speedy talkers.
David: You can’t go 1.5 times. I know I listen to all my podcasts on 1.5 or 2 but yeah I just take that out of the equation.
Bekkah: I hear you I did listen to you on 1.5 in your book, just so you know.
David: Alright! Good! Well, they forced me! Those publishers forced you to slow down, this is going international!
Does Team Diversity Decrease Functionality or Progress Without Trust?
Bekkah: Okay, I did want to note something that you said, and then Ruthie wants to add a couple of things too but I thought it was really interesting in your book and then you also commented on it today that you said that with diversity it actually decreases functionality or progress unless there’s trust there. Is that is that accurate?
David: That’s correct. Now, please hear me. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in diversity. There are many great studies that show the value of diversity. It’s immense. I’m part of the National Association of Corporate Directors. We’re seeing on boards that are diverse they have so much value and mitigation of risk and all these things.
The problem is people focus on diversity without building trust and that’s where that Harvard Putnam Research would show diversity on its own can pit people against each other so you have to have a commonality. It turns out we don’t care what we look like or certain types of diversity if we’re both aiming our gun in the same direction in battle, right? Do we have to have what is our commonality? What are we building trust on?
We can have the value of diversity but we only get it if we increase trust in teams and organizations and people because if we just have differences without trust you’ve really have done a negative.
Bekkah: Well, we wanted to thank you so much for being with us today. I know we’re going so through so many things so fast.
Ruthie: I was just blown away the whole time about just how influential you’ve been in Bekkah’s life. Honestly, you were saying different things and I was like. “Oh! Bekkah, tells me that all the time! Oh! That’s, that’s where she got that from?” little things that keep going up and I was like, “Wow! this has really affected her life and I can see that not in just the words that she says and the thing she tells me but the way that she literally lives her life.” So this is really cool just because I know that she’s looked up to you for a long time and this is really special for both of us so thank you for being with us.
David: Thank you for what all that you guys are doing! It’s good stuff.
Bekkah: Yeah! Well, we are gonna transition into our gawk portion.
David: Well, I’ll tell you something quickly. I have one that I would tell you in person that is so funny some of the things I’ve done from stage in front of thousands of people that have been accidental and you know that’s another story but by the way, I think we have for your group some special gifts too like $1,500 worth of stuff if I think. It’s trustedleaderbook.com/businesstalk.
Ruthie: Wow!
Bekkah: Alright!
David: People go to trustedleaderbook.com/businesstalk then if you get the book or anything. You can get a free assessment and you can get the like 72 video masterclass and some other things. I believe Gabe’s put that together for you or is before this goes live and that’s just a gift to you from us and thanks for having us on. Otherwise, you can find out all kinds of stuff about us at trustededge.com or my name if you can spell it.
