The Ryan Hanley Show
Building TRUST in 2025 What Top Leaders Wish They Knew - Charles Feltman
Mon, 3 Feb 2025
Ryan Hanley talks with Charles Feltman, author of The Thin Book of Trust, a business classic that has sold over 100,000 copies. They dive into what it takes to build trust in leadership and teams, exploring why there’s often a disconnect between leaders and employees. Charles shares practical advice on transparency, the importance of psychological safety, and how admitting “I don’t know” can strengthen trust. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting out, this conversation is packed with insights to help you build stronger, more effective teams. 🎯 Takeaways: 93% of business executives agree that building and maintaining trust improves the bottom line. 86% of executives say they highly trust their employees, but only 60% of employees feel highly trusted. Leaders become less transparent and more autocratic as they ascend, which can erode trust. 💬 Sound Bites: • "Leaders often act as if they know everything, even when they don’t. This damages trust." • "Acknowledging uncertainty and involving your team fosters stronger solutions and trust." • "Leaders should be in service of their team, not just the task." 🔗 Connect and Discover: Website: https://insightcoaching.com/ Book: https://amzn.to/4hfzD4e 📖 Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction and The Role of Leaders in Trust Building 00:03:12 - The Trust Gap: 86% vs. 60% 00:05:07 - Why Leaders Lose Transparency 00:07:33 - The Strength of Admitting “I Don’t Know” 00:10:52 - Autocratic vs. Collaborative Leadership 00:13:25 - The Importance of Disagreement in Teams 00:18:32 - Psychological Safety and Framing Ideas 00:26:54 - In Service Of: Redefining Leadership 00:28:26 - Navigating Layers of Management to Build Trust 00:32:06 - Finding the Right Level of Transparency 00:39:18 - The Evolution of “The Thin Book of Trust” 00:41:42 - Where to Learn More 📌 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗠𝗘 𝗢𝗡: Website: https://go.ryanhanley.com/ Course Page: https://masteroftheclose.com/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ryan-hanley-show/id1480262657 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AZFuTiQsgS9hMQDDdtlOr?si=98432b7806534486 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley
Chapter 1: 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.
Chapter 2: 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.
Chapter 3: 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.
Chapter 4: 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.
Chapter 5: 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.
Chapter 6: 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.
And part of that is that as people move up in an organization, they tend to forget what it was like and what they needed when they were further down in the organization. So they tend to act in ways that can't cut them off from trust of the people they're leading. They tend to be less and less transparent as they move up in the organization.
There's been some pretty good research around this that actually leaders do become, whether it's intentional or not, they become less transparent. and they become often more autocratic, and that damages the trust that they could have earned of the people who report to them, the people further down in the organization that they're attempting to lead. It varies too.
There are some leaders at the top of organizations that are highly trusted, but many of them are not, and it's an unfortunate situation. And there are things that they could do to change that.
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Chapter 7: What is psychological safety and why is it important?
Do you think I really like this idea that we forget like we needed when we're in that position? And do you think that forgetfulness is it ego? Is it stress of the position? Is it preconceived notions on what a leader in this position is supposed to be? Or is it just time away from doing that day to day work or some other factor?
I think it's a combination. I think a big part of it really is the role that we think we're supposed to play at that level. That we're supposed to know everything, right? You know, the leader is supposed to have all the answers. The leader is supposed to not have any doubts, which in effect makes us less transparent.
Leaders at that level really don't want to divulge in any way their insecurity around not knowing. So they act as if they know, even if they don't. And that doesn't go over that well. People lower down in the organization get it anyway. They see it. They're like, what's going on here?
So one of the things that leaders can do is when they genuinely are not sure, when they don't know, acknowledge it. Don't know. We're going to find out. We're going to figure it out. This is new to me. This is a new situation. We've never confronted it. I've never confronted it. But nonetheless, we can learn. We can figure it out. We'll get through it.
So, you know, acknowledging I don't have the answer now. And I do have the capacity to go after it and figure it out.
Yeah, I actually learned this lesson the hard way. I've started a national digital commercial insurance agency back in 2020. And my expertise has come out of the insurance industry. I've been an executive in the insurance industry for a long time. And I started my own insurance agency and built on tech and idea, whatever, all good.
And for the first year and a half, I think one, because I was kind of
early on you play all these different roles so i had my hands in most of the pieces right and as i as the organization started to grow and as you described earlier i stopped having my hands in all the pieces and started focusing more on the things that someone in the in the ceo position needed to focus on i kept pretending as if i was supposed to have all the answers and one day on a call and it was a team call we had i think low 20s at this point in terms of number of people in the organization
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Chapter 8: How can leaders redefine their service to teams?
Someone asked me a question about something that I just had no clue how to solve the problem. And it was not intentional, but I just said, I literally had that kind of reaction. I have no idea how to solve that. Like literally on the call. Right. And I said, I'm, you know, I need one of you to figure it out. Like, I don't know. Like, I literally don't know what the answer to this problem is.
Right. And then we moved on. What woke me up to this idea was I got three emails after that meeting from different team members saying, One, you know, with with solutions, all with individual solutions that we then use to actually come up with what we did. But there was one of the emails that said and it was from I think she was kind of boots on the ground, CSR customer rep.
And she said, I've never been on a call with my boss before and have him say he didn't know the answer to a problem. Thank you. And it was like it was like a gut punch and a light bulb going off at the same exact time. Right. Like I was like, oh, my God, wait a minute. I don't actually need to know everything. That's what all these other humans that I hired are for. Right.
Like they have they have answers to questions, too. And then that like completely changed, you know, how you know how I've operated as a leader since. But it was really an eye opening moment for me that. Like I had been trying to be this thing, as you mentioned, like the role I was supposed to play and I was doing it wrong.
And really the course of our business changed because then all of a sudden I started, well, actually, I don't know that thing over there. I don't know that thing over there. Well, you guys got to start. And then all of a sudden, incredible solutions started coming from places that you wouldn't have otherwise traditionally expected, which which really helped us grow.
So, you know, I can I can be a testament to exactly what you're saying. know i i had actually how we got connected was through one of your team members i had done an episode with an individual who his position was we need more autocratic leadership but almost in like a benevolent dictator kind of way not dictator's wrong word he did not like that word he liked autocratic but like i guess
One, I'd love your take on just that term autocratic in general, especially because the audience would have heard it positioned before. But also, his main point was you need someone making decisions that we've gotten too committee-based. And...
He believed, and this is really where I'm interested in your take, is that an individual making a decision, if using some of the principles of trust that you're describing, you could generate more trust in an organization that way than if it were nine people in a room together. you know, kind of closed off making a decision that it felt more, it felt less tangible was kind of what he was saying.
It didn't, it didn't feel like you could really grab onto something if it were this group of people versus a single individual that they thought was making the decision. Do you think there's a case to be made there? Obviously with the glossing that I've put on the idea?
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