Rachel Botsman
speaker
139 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Rachel Botsman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And that's really important for trust, but you don't need to make everything transparent. In fact... really, really trusting cultures, if I went to someone and said, oh, I really like to know what that person earns, or I really like to know the thinking behind your bonus structure, the ultimate sign of trust is they turn around and say, you know what, you actually can't know. And I go, I get that.
I trust you. I trust how you've made that decision. So This call for transparency is often people are desperate almost or hungry to understand how and why you're making decisions. And that's the piece that's often missing from communications in the culture.
Yeah. So this idea of blanket trust, right? Like, so we're going to create a high trust culture or you should trust me. It's how the media talks about trust. It's like the element trust barometer is about to come out and it will be in these like very generalized terms.
But really in your culture and even in yourself, you want to be thinking about what it is that you're asking people to trust you for or to do. And so for me and my work, I'm being trusted to share factual information and research. I'm being trusted to teach people. I'm being trusted to storytell, being trusted slightly to entertain people and give them an experience.
I'm not trusted to touch their bodies. I'm not a surgeon or a doctor. Let's qualify what I meant by that. I'm not a therapist. I'm not going to deal with their relationship issues. So even things that are closer to the context.
And this is really important to understand because what you see in businesses and teams that are really, really trusting and trustworthy is they are very clear about what they do and they are very clear about what they don't do. And they reject things that don't fit within that context that they should be trusted within. And this, I think, is something that you shouldn't be afraid to do.
You shouldn't be afraid to say no. Trust is often in those things we decide not to do or those things that we turn down. That's often where trust is earned, not the things that we continually do.
Right, yeah. I don't think anyone would also come to you and say, I don't trust you. Like we're not that direct. Well, I am direct, but most people are not that direct or open. And it's a real problem because what happens is, you know, that the way that sort of comes out in the first phase, people get very defensive. Like that's the first sign that people are not trusting you.
And then they start to disengage. Like these are the signals. Yeah. So it's, You know, in terms of creating this environment where people feel safe to take risks, to speak the truth, to speak up in a respectful way, it starts with modeling it yourself. I mean, it's such basic 101 advice that people miss. But social mimicry is what forms cultures.
So, you know, even asking leaders to track or get feedback on how many times they say, I don't know. Or do they even say those words, right? Like in a meeting, like how do they demonstrate humility? How do they demonstrate that they are taking a risk? In what ways do they signal their own vulnerability?
And again, this is where I think a lot of people think being vulnerable is talking about your personal life or talking about your kids or your pets or whatever it might be. But that's not really like true vulnerability in the workplace, right? It's like saying...
finding this like really hard or I'm actually quite frightened that I'm going to mess this up or for some reason feel really nervous about this. And I've done this many, many times before. So that's the emotional signaling that is creating that safe environment that you can say these things and there is going to be no, we're not going to see you as weak. There's not going to be any punishment.
There's not going to be any consequence. And then the stakes go up. So when someone makes a mistake, not like a minor mistake because there is to forgive, but they make a mistake. And in some way that mistake hurts your reputation or your company's reputation, loses a customer, loses you money. Like how do you handle those situations? Like they are the deep moments for trust.
Yeah, I mean, there's so much to talk about on this topic, but I think something that often gets missed is if you think about the pandemic and the move to remote hybrid working, we really became dependent on people like verbal signals.
So like the nonverbal signals, the energy you feel when we, if we were in the room together or what I'm doing with my lower body and my hands or the way I walk into a room, you know, all these things, they went right. Like it became when we were speaking even through video, very two dimensional and very controlled. And then through Slack and all these other messaging platforms, all that,
non-verbal stuff went away. And this had huge implications for trust because these are all signals. These are all things that we're knowingly or unknowingly using to decide whether we trust that person or not. So the communication, the channels of communication and styles of communication have had huge impacts on trust.
And I don't think many teams were trained to change their communication styles. They were given all the tools, but they weren't given the behaviors of like, how do you message? How do you check someone's intention? How do you check in with someone? How do you like ping messages without it feeling like that surveillance and that micromanagement? So that's the dynamic that has really shifted.
And we're just starting to understand the impacts of that shift.
You're going to be even worse, right? Let's be clear, right? It's like feeding that beast if you were a micromanager. But, you know, this is slightly controversial to say as well, but Most teams have to get together in person. Most teams cannot function purely remotely. Now, I'm a huge supporter of remote work. I have two children. It fits in with my life. But you have to get together.
Just different things happen. It's like human chemistry. And so... I think what's missing from this whole return to work, which is crazy when you think we're still talking about that three years later, is we haven't been very intentional as to why we're getting together. That goes back to transparency, right?
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