621: Rachel Botsman - Being Comfortable with Uncertainty, Giving Trust Before It's Earned, Being on Time, Giving Great Keynotes, & How To Trust and Be Trusted

0:00Very skilled leaders are very comfortable with uncertainty. They can be in the unknown. They don't need to be highly scheduled and know the outcome of everything. It's those leaders that actually have high negative capability and positive capability that often accelerate really fast through their careers. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company that builds world-class technical teams for clients around the globe. If you need help with your applications, infrastructure, or data layer, Insight Global's team of technical experts can build custom or manage services to deliver the outcomes you desire.

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1:38Text HAWK to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. So good. Rachel Botsman has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She's written three books. What's Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted. Her TED Talks have amassed over 5 million views, and she teaches at Oxford University's Business School, where she created pioneering courses on trust in the digital age. During our conversation, we discussed the most powerful lessons she's learned from her public speaking career, including all of her TED Talks. And Rachel shares the most effective way for a new leader to build trust.

2:26So good. And then she went deep on the interview process within companies and how we can get better at hiring leaders who have high character combined with competence and the ability to grow. Wow. I love this conversation. Please enjoy Rachel Botsman. To start, I'm curious. When you think about the leaders you know and the ones you've studied that have earned trust, they're trustworthy and trust-willing people, what are some of the commonalities among those people?

3:11it's a good question it's a question i'm often asked and the number one trait i would say is integrity they lead with integrity they are very clear about their interests and their intentions and motives they're very clear about how those align with their team and they're very clear about the decisions they make, but equally they understand the decisions they don't make. So the things they choose not to do are as important because in some way, if they chose to make that product or they chose to do that business model or they chose just to make a tiny bit of a pricing change that maybe people wouldn't notice or a policy change that was on page three, they would know and it wouldn't be serving the best interests of their client, the customer, the public.

4:07So integrity is number one. It's like their moral compass and their decision-making compass. It's very hard to be trustworthy without integrity. It's the one trait where it's a non-negotiable, whereas empathy is slightly different. There are some leaders who struggle with empathy and they're still trustworthy. They're still really supported and often adored by their teams. The obvious one, and we forget this sometimes, is they are highly capable. So it's not confidence and charisma. They really do have the experience, the skills, the expertise, and they're very good with their time to do what they say they're going to do.

4:56So these leaders that are very confident and charismatic, panic, they reach a certain point where you realize there's a gap between that and their capabilities. So it feels like they have this high level of character, right? Good character skills. They don't lie to themselves. They follow through on their word, both to themselves and to others. And then they're highly capable, high levels of competence with what they're doing. So I sense that those are two of the most important and you get into it in your most recent audio book as well. Can you go deeper on, let's say somebody's newer, they're taking over a team or they got promoted or maybe they got hired to a different company and they're in like a VP level.

5:43So they skipped some steps and didn't just work their way up within a company. How does a person like that speed up the process to earn trust from their new team? Yeah. Yeah. Can I just go back one step? I think this is quite helpful. I don't usually like those two by two matrix, but in this instance, it is helpful. So if you imagine capability and character, most people would say, well, leaders and high performing people are always high capability and high character. And it's not true. Now, obviously you don't want low capability and low character, but high capability and low character, they're the assholes.

6:22They are the people you do not want on your team. And that's the mistake a lot of people make. What we often see in hiring and development is your leaders come from the high character developing their capability. There's still expansion there. And when I talk about capability, this is quite important. And this actually links to your next question. I mean, positive capabilities. So it's how we think about capability in terms of doing stuff. And then what we also call negative capability, which is kind of a tricky concept to get your head around, but imagine it like a container and it's the space that it can hold and very skilled leaders.

7:04and this answers your question, when you're rising up in an organization, they have that capacity to hold space. They are very comfortable with uncertainty. They can be in the unknown. They don't need to be like highly scheduled and know the outcome of everything can be really, really prescriptive. It's those leaders that actually have high negative capability and positive capability that often accelerate really fast through their careers. So if you're sort of rising up through the ranks, there's two things that are actually quite important that seem slightly at odds with one another. The first is demonstrating your ability to be able to take risks and to be confident in the unknown.

7:44So are you someone that's just going to follow instructions and you're going to be a really good doer and implementer, but you're not really going to spot new opportunities. You're not really going to critique or question decisions that the organization is making, you're not really going to generate energy or friction, right? You're going to stay, if you're in a good organization, you're probably not going to get to the top, but it's those ones where you feel that energy and that charge and that healthy kind of challenge and push, that is a real accelerator. And with that, this is really, really important.

8:16You have to be confident with humility. That is the rocket fuel when you're going up through an organization. So the ability to say, I don't know, the ability to admit that you don't understand something, the willingness and openness to be curious and to learn new things and to be a total beginner at something. So it's that willingness to take risks and be in the unknown combined with that confidence of humility where you often see this accelerated leadership path. It's hard to find those people. I feel like a good interview question, I don't know why this popped in my mind, but I feel like a good interview question, if you are hiring a leader, maybe they're outside of your organization, so you haven't got a chance to know them over the years, would be share examples of times when you've put yourself in the position to be a beginner.

9:07right learn something new signed up for the triathlon tried to speak a second language tried to do something that you were an amateur at that you were really bad at and you were okay to look stupid to not know how to do it and then you you progress through that i feel like that seems to be a good quality in someone who has the confidence to go try it and do it and they're comfortable enough within their own skin to get embarrassed or to look like a complete amateur around other people or or for those who who may judge them but i think that's that that that that peanut butter and chocolate right of confidence and humility seems to be like a really good attribute and a leader totally and um it's also very revealing of ego like yes are you willing to be a beginner at something and start again most adults are not comfortable doing that and and equally like how long did you stick with it um right oh I tried the piano it wasn't for me I tried to learn any oh it wasn't for me it was too hard why how did you push through that like those questions are fantastic and and understanding why you've given up on something as well I think is is really good the other really good interview question is what's something you've unlearned as an adult um so i'll give it there's two things i had to unlearn one was swimming so this is i was a competitive sprinter as a swimmer and i wanted to do long distance open sea swimming and they're very different like you have to completely change your stroke and the deconstruction when you've been really good at something and then someone says you're really bad at that now and they show you recordings.

10:52That is, it's really hard to take and really hard to adapt. And then my cadence, I've had to change the cadence and the way I speak because my cadence in the classroom is slightly too fast versus on the stage and learning how to adapt and to slow down in those environments is an unlearning process. I can't help myself. I got to drill down on that second one. How do you, as someone who speaks on stages and help others who speaks on stages, when we get nervous or even just get excited about the moment, there's 500 people out there. I'm with you. There are times when I start going fast because I'm juiced up, I'm amped up, and I go, oh, you know, you just go, go, go, go, go.

11:34How have you unlearned what seems like your natural style of going fast to adjust your cadence, to know when to go fast, to when to pause, when to use silence, when to go slow? How have you unlearned and relearned the right way to do that? It's very physiological. so it's actually being I know there are certain things I should and should not do before I go on stage and being quite strict about those I should not be in a green room with other people because what's happening I'm actually not a nervous speaker and you're absorbing their nerves and their noise and I don't know a good conversation you've ever had in a green room like it they're all like so you're giving out their energy and you're absorbing their energy like that is is one.

12:26Another one is I can't sit there for long periods of time. The rooms are often cold. You know what you have to wear on stage because you've got the lights. You're often dressed for a slightly different temperature. These may sound like really silly things, but they're really important. I walk quite slowly to the stage and I really feel every footstep before I go on the stage. And then I just simply take a breath and look at the audience and smile and have this moment where I, in my head, I say, I'm okay. It's going to be okay. And like this beat before you begin is, is really, really powerful.

13:05I often also, I really don't plan the first five minutes. I know where I'm going, but you're leaving enough space to really adapt to what's going on in that moment. I never tell a joke. I never try to be funny. That will increase your speed as well. and I often ask the audience a question and the question it's such an underutilized thing in public speaking the question is doing two things one you're forming a connection and the audience are actually doing the work in that moment you're slowing yourself down because you have this pause in between and they're giving you material right and that's the moment you can be funny and you can bounce off things and I found that question is the key to creating resonance and resonance is like magic for for you to find that right cadence it's when you feel that disconnect from the audience and you're trying to pull them in because it's not quite going the way you want it like that's when people speed up or they look down or they get really really stiff so it's those things and then you just feel your whole body relax because the audience is with you what type of questions do you ask really simple questions so i talk about trust so i will ask them if i say the word trust what comes to mind don't overthink it okay what word comes up and you just randomly pick people you don't even ask them to raise their hand and people come out the weirdest things like I have to say you're like it's not really hard question but and sometimes you hear the same things and then it's amazing when you hear like some people like I was giving a talk last night and this woman had like a fully formed incredible explanation of trust and self-agency and control and you were like have you done a PhD in this like it was like and even the audience had this moment of like I never knew she was so smart and articulate like and that's magic in itself So that's just one example of the question.

15:10I like that. I like making it more of a conversation, less of a lecture. It feels good, especially for someone who actually gives lectures at times. I couldn't help but look at your TED Talk and then you followed up and you've had millions and millions of views of TED Talks. And so if we can go on the speaking thing for one more question, and then maybe we'll shift to some trust stuff. You wrote things that you've learned about public speaking. Show up to give. And I like these three bullet points. Share your expertise, but don't seek approval. Share your stories, but don't look for validation.

15:43Share your passion, but don't perform for the applause. Okay. Can you go into each of those? Because again, selfishly as a speaker, this really piqued my curiosity. And there are leaders from all over the world who give quarterly business reviews, that do town halls with their teams, that are trying to share the vision with their teams as they're building their startup that are listening to this. So I feel like this is very important from a communication perspective and you're one of the masters at it. Could you get into each of those three? Sure. Give me the top one. I should say, actually, I'm actually, this is a craft I've spent 15 years.

16:20It's public speaking is hard work. It's a craft. So I'll go, I'll go by each one. Okay. Yeah. Go in by each one. Okay. So the first one is share your expertise, but don't seek approval. What do you mean by that? Yeah, that's where you're like, you're, they're trying to validate your intelligent or that, you know, your stuff or that you're the best at this. So, and this is where the next one comes in that you are there to give, you are not trying to prove anything. You are literally taking all the knowledge that you have accumulated, all your observations, all the research you've done, and you're joining dots and you are there to help them think differently with a lens that you have that maybe they don't have.

17:07And so the biggest compliment, you know, I'm not a speaker that does like self-help stuff or so for those speakers, they'll say like, oh, they moved them. They felt something. The biggest compliment for me is when I meet someone three years later and they're like, I hear you in my head and I can never make a decision again. Or when I'm hiring something, I hear you in my head. And that's the compliment, right? Because somehow you've passed something on that isn't for you. It's for them. So that's what I mean by those first two. And the giving is also, you cannot sell, you know, you cannot, I hate speakers when you, their first slide is their book or that's tied to the expertise as well.

17:46It's their credentials, or they go through their resume. No one cares, right? But on that stage for a reason, you don't need to tell people you're the milk monitor. And then consultants also do that where in the back of their mind, they're trying to sell a service. So that all goes up into those one or two, which happens so often. It's painful. Yeah. I actually had a, the company I was speaking for a couple of weeks ago, they go, Hey, it was in Boston and they go just, you know, we hired you, We want you to do your thing. With that said, do not under any circumstances mention a book, a podcast, a newsletter, any type of service that may be seen or felt as selling something.

18:32If you do, you are done. And I was like, okay, I appreciate you telling me that was not going to be a part of it anyway, but it is nice when someone's like, I hope you need to tell everybody that though. And I wish more people gave that advice of just do your thing, but going up there, like selling or even handouts with all of that marketing stuff gives you a bad, a bad feeling as you're leaving the room. Yeah. And people do it in the opening and then they do it in the close. So even the thanks slide is thanks. It's like taking the best moment at the end of theater and doing a promo, like you wouldn't do it.

19:07Right. So if that audience likes you, they're going to buy the book. They're going to listen to your show. They're going to sign up to your newsletter. They'll find you in this day and age. It's not that hard. It's an easy trap and it's very tempting to do. And I would stay well away from it. Yeah. Okay. I want to get into your book, How to Trust and Be Trusted. And let's first talk about your choice of how to publish this book. I remember when I first heard about it, I was talking with your team. I was like, oh, I want to read this. This is cool. I like this topic. And I go, I can't read it. Where is And you chose to work with Malcolm Gladwell's company, Pushkin, and read it.

19:42You did a beautiful job. You have an amazing voice. Accent doesn't hurt. I'm not going to lie. And to put this book out, what made you want to work with them and do it as an audio book? So with them, it's easy. They are probably the best. They are the masters. And honestly, I had just heard Malcolm do Paul Simon's book, which if you haven't listened to it, it's what audio should be. It's written for audio. It's just beautiful production. And I thought, I want to make something like that. So I literally just emailed them, which is, you know, if you take a risk, sometimes it works. So it was first of a challenge for me because I've never written scripted audio, which is very different from podcasting.

20:27So to learn how to do that, an opportunity to work with their team. But mainly it was really thinking about what is the experience with this book? It's very different from the other books that I've worked on and another book I'm hoping to do, which will again be print, which are about big societal changes. This is me with listeners. This is me like a toolkit. This is me trying to prompt listeners to think about patterns of behavior and think about choices they make and decisions they make. And for them to have a moment where they go oh well maybe not oh shit but I've never joined that dot before or I've never been conscious of that or I've never been aware that the reason why I do this is because of this and audio is a very powerful way to do that through people's is you can you can do exercises with people which I do in the book you can pause with people and so I was slightly wary of the category before I went on this experience.

21:28And then I'm now a huge believer if you're writing a book that really is about learning and change and self-reflection, audio is an incredible category to sort of curate that experience with the listener. It's a very intimate thing. You're in somebody's ears. It's just you and them. They may be driving or working out or walking their dog or doing the dishes and just you and them, you really can build. And, you know, we felt this with podcasting over the years, right? You really can build this deep parasocial relationship with others when you're in their ears and because then they can't hear anything else, right?

22:12So they're focused in just you and them. And I like that style. Obviously, I've done it for a decade now and not necessarily, I mean, I've read all my books as well in addition to writing them. But I like this idea of it being audio only in the intimate relationship it can build with your reader slash listener. Totally, totally. And I think it's still a slight, it's a very nascent category, right? There are audio books, the majority, 95 % of audio books that are books that are read, not written to be listened. And there's still only about 5 % of the market that are written for audio. So it's a bit like writing a play that then gets made into a film.

22:53It wasn't meant to live in that format versus intentionally going, no, this is a play script. So yeah, it's interesting how people respect it slightly differently, which is really interesting where they're like, so when are you going to write your next rule book? And you're like, I swear I've had that question. Really? If anything, it's probably harder, isn't it? It's more time consuming because yeah, you've got production and all these things on the top of it that you just don't think about. So yeah. So I, I don't know if it's tied to a lack of tangibility or whether because people are listening to so many podcasts and so much music, they put it in the same category of value.

23:35Like it's a very interesting thing. Hmm. Okay. I want to surface a thesis that I first talked with Paulina Pompliano about a few years ago when it comes to trust. We both are consistent people. She publishes her newsletter at the same time on the same day and has for years. This podcast comes out Sunday night, seven o 'clock Eastern and for a decade every Sunday with zero misses, no misses. And what I think we both gathered and others have too, and I want to hear your thinking to go deeper on this, is that consistency is an amazing way to build trust, whether it's with an audience, whether it's with your husband or wife or your kids, especially consistently showing up, right?

24:25Consistency seems to be this magic elixir to build trust. Can you give me your perspective on that yeah so with you're right and you're wrong and i'll try and explain why so i'll go with where you're right so it consists i don't know if you read james clear's brilliant book atomic habits have you ever read atomic habits yes so there's a line where he is talking about habits and he says intensity makes a great story but it's consistency that leads to progress it's such a good line in that book. And that is very true for trust. So, you know, people who they show up in big ways, they buy the big gift, they give the big speech, they host the big leadership day.

25:11And then for the rest of the quarter, or even the entire year, they're really inconsistent in the way that they show up, you never quite know what you're going to get. That's really bad for trust. But to your point whether it's a child an employee a student that consistency which has a very very strong relationship to time so you mentioned the podcast always comes out on a Sunday my newsletter always comes out on a Monday we underestimate consistency in time so people who are just always a little bit late or people who reschedule at the last minute and it's about them or they always overrun on meetings this it's that lack of respect for time can be really damaging to trust because it leads to the other person saying you do you really care about me as much as your own time so the consistency piece is really important but trust in itself the way i define trust is a confident relationship with the unknown so this is where there's this like paradox because if you know exactly what to expect.

26:21If you know what the outcome is, you don't actually need a lot of trust. So when you're consistent over time, what you're actually doing is you're reducing the cognitive load. You're reducing the need for trust. Do you mean like you don't even need to think about, do I trust that Ryan's going to drop a show on Sunday because it's going to come out? You don't even think about that decision. So trust in itself becomes lower, but trust in the person is increased. Slightly conceptual, but you want to imagine it like a kind of like a barometer that what you're doing is you're pulling the amount of trust.

27:00When you reduce the unknown, when you know what to expect, you're reducing the amount of trust that's required. So, but doesn't that mean that they trust you so much that they don't even think about it? It's just the default mode that, which I would argue is probably the spot you want to be in? Totally. It's totally the spot you want to be in. So am I missing something? Because you said you're right and you're wrong. And maybe I'm not smart enough to realize, but part of my wrong, I guess. So it's very deep trust in the person, right? And if you didn't bring something out, they wouldn't even need to know the reason why.

27:34Like that's the important piece, right? They would trust there is some reason because you've been so consistent to this point. The bit that's slightly wrong is that it's not, how can I explain this? The trust in the moment is lower. So the trust on a Sunday that something is going to come out is lower because you expect that to happen. Yep. Okay. It's like a product that you've used over and over and over again, and you know the outcome of that product. That requires less trust than, say, putting on glasses with virtual reality or using AI to diagnose something with health. That is a new situation.

28:11You don't know what the outcome is, so it requires more trust. Got you. Okay. let's talk about time and being on time okay i am think of the nicest way to put this i hate it when people are late hate it with a passion it's one of the few times i feel like i get very judgy of others and i don't like judging other people but if i'm being honest i do in those moments especially the ones that are regularly three minutes, four minutes, one minute late to our meetings. Whatever, whatever, or even worse, the leaders who start meetings late because there's... Now, with that said, I am not a busy senior executive at a Fortune 500 company.

28:57I used to be, right? And I'd like to think I never was late then either, but the schedules for a lot of them are insane. They are in meetings back to back to back. Sometimes it's out of their control if they're with the CEO or other things like that. They're with customers. I do try to have a little bit of understanding at times, but the ones who are regularly late almost every time, I just hate it so much. I can't explain how much I hate it. Have you figured out why? Well, okay. Growing up, I played sports and my football coaches especially in high school and college you had to be like 5 10 15 minutes early to everything practice meetings weight room like everything everything so it's been drilled in my head since I was in like middle school through post-collegiate playing days that if you're late you are a saboteur you're hurting the team you're selfish you're only about you you're putting yourself above the team and so like it's ingrained in my mind if you're late you're putting yourself above me.

30:02You're putting yourself above the team. You're a selfish individual, and I don't want to be with selfish people. So I think that's where it comes from. And so I try to always be early, right? Early to everything, a little bit early. But I do have to arrange my calendar in a way that I can't be back to back to back because if I am, then I won't be able to be early. So that's the problem here. That's the thing I deal with. I'm just curious when you hear me be a judgmental person here in the moment, which again, I don't love. What do you think of those who are perpetually late and how that damages trust and what they could do to then regain some of that trust and not always be late.

30:40Yeah. So it's a really difficult one because when I see the schedules of some leaders, I don't actually, I don't think I could get through a week. No. It's like there's no off, there's no space, there's no oxygen. So this is said with a great deal of empathy of as to how their life is scheduled. But if you are someone where there is wiggle room and there is gaps, you know, first of all, don't a practical thing. Don't put things back to back. Just don't do it. Right. Like always say there's a half an hour gap between things. I mean, it's so basic that it's obvious. Right. I've said this, but they always say it's easy for you to say it's not.

31:21It's he's like, I have more. A lot of them say I have more meetings, more time that people want of me than than I already have. And I'm back to back starting eight o 'clock and finishing at six. And I'm just like, God, that's when I say I'm with you. So I think some of it is people rolling their eyes when they hear you and me who are able to do that. Yeah. Say, well, yeah, easy for you. Impossible for me, given all of the people. I don't know if that's just an excuse, but that is what I hear when I give that type of advice. The first thing I would say, so let's start with the leaders that are scheduled to the hill.