Building TRUST in 2025: What Leaders Wish They Knew - Charles Feltman
episodePreviously titled “Building TRUST in 2025 What Top Leaders Wish They Knew - Charles Feltman” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
Transcript
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What is the role of leaders in building trust?
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a phenomenal episode for you, a conversation with Charles Felton. He is the author of the business classic, The Thin Book of Trust. This book has sold more than 100,000 copies. And guys, when I bought the book on Amazon, right, and the very first quote is from Brene Brown. I have used his definitions of trust and distrust in every book I've ever written. Yes, the Brene Brown, one of the leaders, one of the absolute gurus, one of the best and deepest thinkers on the idea of trust and leadership and connection and communication. Brene uses Charles definitions of trust and distrust in her books. And that just gives you a little preview on what you're going to get today from Charles Felton. Couldn't be more excited to have him on the show and dig into this topic. My friends, if you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to podcasts or you're watching it on YouTube, please, if you're not subscribe, tell a friend, leave a comment, leave a review.
What is the trust gap between leaders and employees?
I read every comment that comes in. I read every review that comes in. I respond to all of them. I love you guys for taking the time to share your thoughts, your feelings about this show, the work we're doing here to help you get better as a leader, to help you become the person that you were meant to be, that God intended you to be, to hit peak performance. I'm all jacked up today.
in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Why do leaders lose transparency?
to talk about the weather when we meet each other or we're just like not real humans, I guess. I guess that's what it is, right? Like you have to, you're forced to talk about the weather always when you first meet somebody. Yes, yes.
Well, in a funny way, interesting, because our topic is to some degree trust.
How does admitting 'I don't know' strengthen trust?
Do you think that that's something that we've just like has come up through our culture and just literally every business meeting ever, the first time you meet with someone, your first five minutes are talking about where you're from and what the weather is. And then everyone commiserates. And then you kind of like have this moment of awkward silence. And then you go, well, let's talk about what we really came here to talk about. And it's like every conversation, every time it's like built into our DNA.
Well, I think it's more built into our DNA than the cultural, because it's true of anyone I've spoken to all over the world.
What is the difference between autocratic and collaborative leadership?
So to that point, when I was going down the rabbit hole, digging deep into it, there was one stat that's like was right at the top that just caught my attention immediately, which was this disconnect between, you know, 86% of leaders. feel that they're trustworthy yet only 60% of employees or team members actually trust leadership. And like, there's this disconnect between those two things. And that just immediately caught me. And yeah, Where does that come from? I want to dig in and kind of there's so many people in leadership positions more towards even the early side of their career that listen to this show. Right. Tends to be entrepreneurs, people who've who maybe have found leadership positions, but tend to be newer to leadership positions.
And they might not even one be aware that that gap in trust exists. And two, I'd love to take our time together and really work through that. Things we can do as individuals and organizationally to start to bridge that gap.
How can disagreement within teams be beneficial?
Well, let me just say that that little poll that I did, which is unscientific, it was totally informal. It came out of my own curiosity about that. I wanted to see what was going on. And so the leaders that I talked about there, you notice there's a difference between the higher leader, you know, the people at the top, the C-suite and so on. And one's direct managers tend to be trusted more than the top level leadership of a company. And I think part of that is that there is a gap. There's a pretty big gap often between the top leadership and the people who are actually doing the work in the company or even the middle management. There's a pretty big gap.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the role of leaders in building trust?
0:00–1:14
2
What is the trust gap between leaders and employees?
1:14–2:06
3
Why do leaders lose transparency?
2:06–2:21
4
How does admitting 'I don't know' strengthen trust?
2:21–2:53
5
What is the difference between autocratic and collaborative leadership?
2:53–3:56
6
How can disagreement within teams be beneficial?
3:56–5:49
7
What is psychological safety and why is it important?
5:49–8:22
8
How can leaders redefine their service to teams?
8:22–42:37
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