The TRUST Show

This is the second of a four-episode series addressing how you can tell if you can, and should, trust someone, in whatever relationship you are with them. In the first episode, I explained that you need to first decide what you need to trust them with, and how much you need to trust them, because trust is contextual and continuous. The decision to trust is based on the components of my relative tr...

It is very important to know who you can trust. Trusting someone you should trust is the best. Not trusting someone you shouldn’t trust is, well a waste of time. Not trusting someone you should trust is causing damage to you, to them, and to the organization. But trusting someone you shouldn’t trust is, well, right down dangerous and could have devastating consequences. So, how do you decide if yo...

My work in The Book of Trust, The Trust Show, the Trust Habits workshops, my keynotes, and almost everything I do revolves around how to be more trusted. But, how do you know if you are trusted or not? Most people will not simply tell you that they don’t trust you. The main reason is that they don’t trust your reaction when they say that. But those may be people you really want, or need, to be tru...

This episode is the second part of a two-part series. The first part (the previous episode) explained what strategy is, and the first two steps: determining where you are, and where you want to go. This second part episode will cover the next 5 steps: determining the boundaries for the strategy, developing a simple-rules strategy, executing the strategy, telling when you arrived at your destinatio...

The Human Resources function, and the Human Resources department, like any other department or business unit within the company, is a business. It’s a business that deals with the most important part of the company: its people. It’s not a profit center for the company, at least not a direct one. At the same time, not all departments in the company generate profits. But just like any other business...

It seems we are always in election season. We just had the mid-term elections in November, we are about to enter local elections in Texas for city councils, school district boards, community college boards, and more. Soon we will start the primaries, then the presidential elections. We’re always in election season. But how do you decide who to vote for? I will assume that you only vote for candida...

... And then, Chris Rock points to Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith's wife, and says “Jada, I love you, GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see it.” The audience laughs (maybe uncomfortably, but maybe not). The camera turns to Will Smith and his wife. He is laughing, but she is rolling her eyes. It takes 12 more seconds before Will Smith shows up on the stage and slaps Chris Rock in the face. This episode is n...

Employee engagement is essential to companies. It affects many things in the company culture as well as company performance. But it has also declined in the past several years. Because of that, many companies conduct employee engagement surveys. However, before you set off to conduct an employee engagement survey, there are a few things I want you to know and consider, because you may end up not r...

Employee engagement is essential to companies. It affects many things in the company culture as well as company performance. But it has also declined in the past several years. Because of that, many companies conduct employee engagement surveys. However, before you set off to conduct an employee engagement survey, there are a few things I want you to know and consider, because you may end up not r...

Customers are willing to pay a 30% premium when they buy from companies they trust. With the continuously increasing new customer acquisition cost, keeping loyal customers has significant financial value to the company. Customers are loyal when they trust the company, and not only loyal—they recommend the company to other customers. There are five variables that have a significant impact on the tr...

ChatGPT took the world by storm. Then, one day, I was asked this question: how could you tell, as a college professor, if your students are cheating by using ChatGPT, and how would you be able to prevent it? I can’t tell you how many different thoughts came to mind simultaneously. I decided to conduct a LinkedIn poll and ask people in the education field what they thought of ChatGPT in the classro...

ChatGPT took the world by storm. Then, one day, I was asked this question: how could you tell, as a college professor, if your students are cheating by using ChatGPT, and how would you be able to prevent it? I can’t tell you how many different thoughts came to mind simultaneously. I decided to conduct a LinkedIn poll and ask people in the education field what they thought of ChatGPT in the classro...

We didn’t ask for the COVID-19 pandemic. We didn’t ask to work from home. But, in March 2020, it was forced upon us. At the time, it didn’t look like there was going to be an end to it, and that this was becoming “the new normal.” We are now out of the pandemic. Many companies have gone back to work at the office, but we also learned the benefits from working from home, both for the company and it...

You have heard the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, more recently, chat GPT. The simplest definition of AI is “the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and learn.” Chat GPT is “a large, pre-trained language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, which uses deep learning techniques to process an...

Last week we witnessed the process of selecting the house speaker in the U.S. Congress. This position is the second in order of succession for the Presidency. I’m not going to offer any political commentary except to say one thing. The process was not a consensus focus, trying to get as many supporters out of the entire house with its 435 members, but rather to get to 218. Just enough to be more t...

If you work in a company with more than 10 employees, you did. If you worked in a company with functional units with more than one person in each, you did. If you work in a company with multiple business units, you did. In this episode, I will explain what are the negative consequences of those silos, what causes them, and how to break silos down. Obviously, it is all about trust.

This episode will answer one simple question: what do I have to do this year to move the needle (upward) on the level of trust in my organization? Over the years, I have developed a process, which this year will be complete. It is made of four phases: launching the process (showing that the company is committed to building trust), helping the HR department (or whoever will champion the process) be...

It’s just about that time, and you are starting to think about your new year’s resolutions. You are ready to make the commitment, but you might also be ready to give it up by the end of January. The reason you are not sticking with a resolution is that you are not trying to form a new habit that will allow you to achieve that resolution. “Losing 10 pounds” is not enough. Developing the right habit...

Trust is important everywhere and in every relationship, personal and professional. Still, I’ll admit that most questions and requests I get about trust are in the organizational setting. Most of the keynotes and workshops I delivered were to organizations, mainly companies, worried about the low levels of trust they experience. Trust is needed in every organization, but it is needed in multiple p...

American Corporate Culture is obsessed with leadership. Everyone simply must be a leader. If you are not striving to become a leader, then something must be wrong with you. Even if you are not a leader, not in a leadership position, we will redefine the word leader to claim that you are, in fact, a leader. Just so that you feel good. This episode will first address the reasons we are obsessed with...

Every year at this time, you are looking towards the next year, setting your priorities. This year, focus on building your trustworthiness. The more trustworthy you are, the more people will trust you, and the more you will enjoy your work and professional life. Being trusted is a great feeling. And all it takes is forming one new habit that will eliminate one old behavior that is holding you back...

The common wisdom is that communication is one of the foundations or pillars of trust. But the relationship between trust and communication is actually reciprocal. On one hand, we tend to trust people who communicate with us with transparency. Who tells us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? We trust people who tell us what we need to hear, and not necessarily what they think we...

I know that today’s episode will sound a little bit like a commercial, and to some extent, it is, but I would still encourage you to listen to it because it is a commercial for something you might be interested in. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t even be developing this program (this is my most extensive program yet) if I didn’t think you would get a lot of value from it. I’m doing it now, because...

Do you talk about your salary with coworkers? Is it OK to discuss salary? A survey shows that 42% of Gen-Z employees will share salary information with a coworker (compared to 19% of Baby Boomers). Another survey shows that 63% of employees prefer to work at a company that discloses pay information, but only 19% of the companies do that. This episode will answer a few questions: can you keep salar...

In my 2018 survey, I asked about, among other types of roles, the most important quality you have in a salesperson trying to sell you something. Trustworthiness was the most important quality in salespeople 76.7% of the time, more than in any of the five other relationships and roles (the average was 61.2%). But, I never asked about the trustworthiness of the customer. Should you, as a customer, b...