Trust Builders: Leadership That Creates Change with Amy Holloway (305)

0:01I wish and I hope that my work in some little bitty way helps shift the focus back on our local communities and the great work that's happening every single day and the local leaders who want so badly to make their places better places and how actually doable that is at that local level. I hope it also just gives people some inspiration to know that it is achievable. It's entirely achievable. And there's actually tactical things that can be done to make places better places. It's not just this like weird amorphous thing. It's tactical, it's strategic, and it's achievable. Every individual in a community has a role to play in that.

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2:04Hey everyone, welcome back to Therapist Uncensored. Most of us, when we think about the concept of trust, we apply it to our closest relationships, our partners, our family members, our friends. Today's guest thinks about trust at a scale of entire communities. And what she's discovered might change the way you think about almost every group you belong to, your neighborhood, your workplace, your city. Amy Holloway is a strategic planner and facilitator. And what that means in practice is this. A city calls, a county, a group of leaders come to her because something is stuck. Leaders aren't aligned.

2:42The community is not moving forward. and her job is to come in from the outside, figure out what's actually going on beneath the surface and then get people in the room together to find a path forward. No simple feat. But Amy's been doing this for over 30 years as the founder of Avalanche Consulting, as National Director of Economic Development at Ernst & Young and now for her own firm, AHA. And she also currently serves as practitioner in residence at Harvard Kennedy School. And after working with more than 200 communities across America, Amy kept seeing the same pattern. Two cities, nearly identical on paper, same resources, same industries, really similar demographics, and yet completely different outcomes.

3:32One thriving and one stuck. Why? What is the ingredient that makes such a difference here? And after years of experience and seeing these patterns and working with people, she really came to some deep conclusions. And to confirm her experience, she decided to interview local leaders and communities all across the country. And what she found became a number one bestselling book, Trust Builders, The Key to Thriving Communities. So the title gives away the answer. What it doesn't give away is how. How does trust get built and broken? And that's what we're going to dig into today. So Amy also happens to live in Asheville, North Carolina, which means she personally watched Hurricane Helene devastate her own community and then got the call to help rebuild it.

4:23So her hands-on experience and expertise in this area runs so deep. I feel really honored to have her on the show and to get her take on things that really made a difference in the way that I look at my own community and relationships. So I also want to, by the way, tell you that Amy happens to be a really good friend of mine and of Sue's. So what this means is I'm going to push her a little today. We're going to have some fun. I'm looking forward to it. All right, Amy. Hi. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the show. Hey, friend. How are you? I'm good. This is going to be fun. It is going to be so much fun.

5:00Let's start this way. I want to tell you a little bit about the listeners today that you're going to be talking to because it's probably a little different than the rooms you typically walk into, my guess is. So our listeners are therapists, they're coaches, they're lifelong learners. They're from many different fields, but most of them dedicated to learning how to help build more secure relationships, whether that's within themselves, their partnerships, their families, or organizations and communities, because they're of all different kind of fields. But I think what joins us in commonality is our motivation, thinking that relationships are the core to everything.

5:43And right now it's particularly present for a lot of us because we are either quietly or not so quietly really distressed about what's happening in our communities, whether it's locally or in our country or world. How we've become so messed up and divided. And is there a way back to each other? You know, so. Big question. It's true. So that's why I thought, who better to bring in this conversation than someone with over 30 years of experience walking into communities all over this country, sitting with the people leading them and figuring out what's working and what isn't. And this focused on how to make communities stronger.

6:30So you're here to bring us the answers. What do you think of that? Yeah, I love it. I love it. And hello to your audience. It's great to be with a kind of a new group of people and different ways of thinking. So thanks for this opportunity. Well, let's start right there. Let's start with your work over the 30 years, because I think from what I understand, it's what's motivated this brilliant book that you've come out with about how to build communities. So let's start with the work. What happens? So when you get called by a community, what's going on? What's the situation? Why has somebody picked up the phone to call you?

7:05Great question and great place to start. I think I'm a strategist for community leaders. And I get hired by sometimes it's local governments, sometimes it's chambers of commerce, economic development groups, leadership groups, just these people in a community that have some role to play in shaping the community and creating a better future for that place. And I get called when something's not going right in that community. It could be that they're losing jobs or they're losing people, their population is declining, or they've had some kind of major trauma that they're trying to get over. Or it could just be, this is often the case, that they have a lot of different leaders, think public sector, private sector, education leaders, nonprofit leaders, and they're all going in different directions.

7:55So their precious resources and their time and their team members are kind of spread too thinly and they're not making the kind of impact that they want to make. So that's when I come in. I come in to kind of assess the situation and help them come up with a game plan to get people on the same page and address whatever the challenge or opportunity is. It makes complete sense. I'm sitting here thinking people go, how do you do couples therapy? You know, two different people in the room with different agendas. And I'm thinking, oh my God, you walk into a room. It's so funny. I do. I consider myself like, I don't feel great about saying this because I'm talking to such like a national specialist, but sometimes I do feel like a therapist more than anything else, just listening to these leaders and helping them see what they have in common with each other, even if it's just something really simple, like we want this place to be better than it is now.

8:50Well, how often do you find when somebody makes the call and you come in, that you're walking into room and everybody's super glad to see you and ready to follow your lead? Or do you find like, what's the different experiences, you know, as you come in? Do you feel like, oh my God, people are welcoming you? Or do you think, oh, this person on the left is glad I'm here, but the person on the right is shooting me darts? I mean, what's your experience? I mean, it is all over the place. I mean, as you can imagine, sometimes like I'm working with a client right now where they are ready to improve. They feel like they've been an underdog and all the leaders have come together and they said, we need to get the strategic plan done.

9:28I love those experiences. That's great for me. Like I get to go into this community and they're all fired up and they're ready to take action and they're willing to kind of push the boundaries. Fantastic. But I've also worked in places where it's just one or two local leaders who see the issue at hand. Everyone might not agree that they need a plan. Sometimes these plans could feel threatening to people, as you can imagine, that I'm going to challenge the status quo. or I might point out a fault in the community that people haven't been really willing to speak about in the past. So it's all over the board, but I work with whatever I get and try to do the best I can.

10:11Is there a sense that you have when, let me ask it a different way. When you walk in, do you start to get a gut sense that this is going to be a more successful experience for some than others? And if so, I see you nodding. So yes, so it does. So how do you know, like, what's the thing you see when you go in that said, we're going to be able to roll up our sleeves and really be productive here. And those that you see going, oof, this is going to be an uphill battle. Sure. Yeah. I could tell from the get go. Well, like anyone going into a new room of people, you can get the vibe from people pretty quickly.

10:51I can observe certain behaviors, right? Like in the very first meeting that I go into, I can look around the room at those leaders and tell, you know, what their relationships are like, you know, simple stuff. Are they laughing together? Are they sharing stories? Are they, you know, hanging out together? Or do these people look like they hardly ever see each other? Or even body language, you know, crossing their arms or not sitting next to each other. There's a lot of those little clues that I get almost immediately. And I think, you know, like you said, I've done this for 30 years, and I've worked with over 200 places, I probably interacted with more than 20 ,000 people in my career, like I'll interact with, I don't know, two or 300 people in each place I work in.

11:34So after those three decades of work, I can get a pretty good read on the room, right? Right. So a lot of the things you're talking about is what I would be seeing in a couple session, arms crossed, whether they're listening, whether they spend time together. And I wouldn't have thought about this at a community level, right? Because it seems like what we focus on community is who is the one with the answers, the smartest people. Let's look and find them. And if somebody has all the answers, that's who we're going to follow, right? We just want the answers. And what you're doing, you're coming in and you're looking for all this undercurrent, it sounds like.

12:11Like, are people listening to each other? Are they smiling, laughing? So there's this something, it's not just in the statistics, you know, it's in the people is what you're saying. It's in the people. I mean, of course we look at data. I mean, I'm an economist by background, so I look at data a lot. But it boils down to those leaders and their relationship with each other. And to your point, too, I think if you're a normal person and you're not in an economic or community development, you might tend to follow that most visible or that most vocal leader. Do you think about like in Austin, the mayor or someone like that, just super visible.

12:51But in my world, looking around a community, there are often dozens of people involved with making progress happen. It could be, oh gosh, I mean, I could list so many, but it could be, you know, a local entrepreneur, a CEO of a major company, the community college president, some school superintendent, a teacher group, United Way. I mean, if you think about just the fabric of a community, there are a lot of different leaders involved in making progress happen. And the more aligned they are in like sharing a vision for what they want their community to be or aligning their goals and even walking in step by making sure that their actions are strategically planned, the more impactful they can all be.

13:37So one of the things you're doing when you go in is kind of assessing all the community resources there from a place of maybe things that have been under-recognized, strengths that haven't been seen, resources that are there, and trying to bring the people to the table together in a collaborative way to work together. Exactly. I could joke, like you could write my marketing copy for me. It's so refreshing to hear someone who isn't in this every single day describing what I do. But yes, that's exactly right. Looking for maybe undervalued or kind of invisible strengths in these communities and also looking for challenging things that they aren't doing all that well that they could improve upon.

14:25I wonder, it makes me think about, and we'll continue to talk about like just the comparison in the communities. and yet you've been really effective, obviously. You've been called in over and over and over again. You've been called in in Asheville, a place that we both love dearly after the hurricane. So we're going to talk about that. I really, really want to hear more if you're open to that. But people trust you. You've developed a trust to come in and to bring people together at times when it's really hard. So that's the expertise I want to hear about that is personally in my vision yours.

15:02Like when you come in, a lot of people, when they're running their own organization, they have their own personal needs, their fears, their protection of their own spots, right? If I'm running this community center and you're running this, we might have competing needs for resources. We have leaders who might be self-protective and going into these meetings only fighting for what their piece of the pie is, I imagine. Oh, that never happens. No, never. I can't imagine. No one ever puts their personal agendas first. Never happens in couples therapy either at all. But what I'm wondering is like, how do you go about that when you start seeing the differences and yet you know, I'm going to help you improve this community if I could get both of these leaders not out just for themselves, which is hard, right?

15:54when we have scarce resources or we believe we do. We tend to, as humans, want to grab them. But your job is to come in there and help people recognize that grabbing your own resources is not going to be for the bigger goal. How do you do that? What things do you look for and what strategies have you found effective for those listeners out there who are in their own communities going, oh my God, I keep trying to do this. But right. I mean, well, I think for your listeners too, I mean, think about, as you're listening to this, you might think about your own community where you live, your neighborhood, your city, right?

16:28The region that you're in, the state that you're in. And, you know, thinking about your community through this lens could be very interesting. I mean, applying their skills as therapists to kind of larger relationships with other community leaders could be a very interesting exercise for them. So I just want to say that. I have to say, first of all, I do a lot of listening. My planning processes are typically six to eight months long. And more than half of that process is me just listening to people. You know, again, I could be engaging 200 or 300 people. I go into rooms with them. You know, I ask them questions to kind of uncover what they value, what their hopes and expectations are for their communities, what's important to them personally and to their organizations.

17:18And as I'm listening, I'm listening for shared themes. And I don't know why I always use this term, and it's probably not even the right way to use it because I'm not a math person, but I always think of it in terms of like the least common denominator. What can we find? What is one thing that all of these people can agree to that aligns with their organizational missions or their personal agendas. And often I'll give you examples. I mean, I worked in one community, major metro in the US. I'm not going to say where because I don't want to poo-poo on anybody. But going into that community, I recognized that there was a huge level of mistrust among their leaders.

17:55I mean, it was just kind of ugly when you walked in the room the first time, you know, it's like a punch in the gut to see it. Your nervous system could feel it, right? You could feel it, right? We talk about that through like neuroception. You walk in and you can feel the vibe and it It really is contagious, isn't it? It totally, yeah. Like it's gut feeling, this physical feeling from that group of leaders. And there were a lot of them. There were probably 50 people in the room. And they also have a very diverse population. So they had communities that didn't speak the same language. I mean, it was just, there was a lot of stuff going on in this place, right?

18:28But through really listening to them and spending that one-on-one time with them, I heard over and over again that the thing that every single person cared about more than anything else was having really high quality education for their kids. That's kind of the center of the Venn diagram. Like everyone could agree to that. And so I start there. If this is our goal, and they even called it one community, one goal at the end of it, and that was their goal for the whole plan was centered around creating a place that offered the best education possible from, I would say like neonatal, if that's possible, all the way up through high school and college.

19:07and that really brought those leaders together. And they still, that was probably 15 years ago and they still have that goal for their community. They're still working on it. You're in this room, you walk in and I think about just how often I'm having conversations with people about like people having different political views and they're sitting around the Thanksgiving table and all you can do is feel the alarm. And what you're saying is really striking. Like all these different people, different agendas, There's lots of diversity in the room. So everybody has some threat and some, like it's really hard, especially, I guess, if the community has not been trustworthy and you've been the recipient of a lot of negativity.

19:46And what you're saying is you don't do the how first. You don't say you're wrong. You found the one common denominator. We're not saying how we're going to get the best education. We're not going to, whether it's vouchers or public or whatever, you're saying, can we all agree on this thing? That's the starting point. I love it. And then what you did is you centered the whole plan around that. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly. And you started seeing these bonds form among leaders that hadn't typically worked together in the past, maybe had differing opinions on things. And I wish I could say the name of the community, but the contrast between where they were 15 years ago and where they are now is just absolutely incredible.

20:30They've come so far. Now they're seeing kind of internationally as this destination for very well-educated entrepreneurial people. It's just been transformative. But it started with that one thing that they could all agree to. And then once they agree, we're going to go like, so we have this agreement. And even as you say it, right, I can just feel my nervous system relaxing in the room because now you've said something I highly value. And where everyone in here that I thought was threatening to me is agreeing. So I feel a little safer and I'm sure it took a little while to find the one thing.

21:06And then once you have the one thing, are there a few, I don't want to make you walk through your whole year's process with the city, but could you name a few more things of where you go once you get that agreement so that other people thinking about, okay, I can find that common thing in this organization and I could get everybody to agree, then what? So then, and you said this earlier, but I do want to emphasize this is so good. The how is what comes at the end of these planning processes, right? You start with the why are we doing this? Why is it important to us? So in that community's case, the why was we want to create a community with the best education possible so that not just taking care of our own family members, but we create an environment where great businesses want to be that create great jobs that give the people that we have here better opportunities.

21:54to like elevate through their career and gain wealth and all that. So it sounds simple, but it's very compelling to these leaders. The second step in these processes is for me to start thinking about how that plays out for each individual leader. So for the education community, they formed what they called an academic leaders council. I've never seen this in another community. I mean, I love this idea so much and I've told everyone about it and not, I haven't had any takers yet, but the school superintendent, the community college president, and the presidents of all seven of their universities came together and formed this thing called Academic Leaders Council.

22:34And so they started making joint decisions on where to invest money in the education system. So instead of two colleges investing in the exact same software programming thing, program, one of them said, well, why don't you do that while I'm going to invest in this program over here related to, you know, manufacturing or whatever. So they had a shared goal, but they would divide the resources and share. Yeah, didn't make sense for them to duplicate efforts. So they had their kind of pathway. And that was an alignment with a pathway for, you know, area employers who were charged with creating more apprenticeships and internships and getting more involved in the schools there.

23:17So you know, that was another pathway. And then there were some pathways around helping people who'd fallen out of the workforce, who had major barriers to overcome. You think about childcare or healthcare or transportation, there was a whole pathway for the nonprofit sector to get involved to just make it easier for people to get back up on their feet. And so you can see this, all these little pathways, but they're all heading the exact same direction. They were just kind of the how was different for each leadership organization. and they could see how them working together benefited them as individuals but also related to the common goal and so what I keep hearing you emphasize is the common goal is a deep motivator for opening up and opening up in my language the nervous system to say wait I can trust you more because you and I on the same page going the same goal so now I will share my resources.

24:11Because we have this common goal to go for, I don't just think about tightening my fist. Right, exactly. And it creates this flywheel effect, and where, you know, they have small wins, that improves trust even more. And then they're starting to like, okay, what if we pool our resources around this thing, instead of spreading it out like peanut butter, and then you know, that things start happening a little bit faster. And over time, you get this really great effect within a community. But I say over time, I mean, these things do not happen overnight, right? I mean, it's, it's sometimes decades.

24:47I mean, even look at Austin's trajectory, which, you know, we both love Austin so much. Austin success did not happen overnight. It was, you know, it started in the 80s and continues today. So. And you consulted on Austin's development at some point, didn't you? Yeah, recently. Yeah, I did a strategy for Austin about two years ago. It was fun to come back to my hometown. Yeah. Yeah. So from that place, when you talk about years, I imagine just human nature. If I'm out there thinking, I'm listening to you, Amy, and I'm like, okay, I'm working in this organization or I'm working in this nonprofit that I want to be more effective in the community.

25:30And I don't have an Amy to come talk to me and listen, right? How would you suggest that maybe if you were a piece of that cog in a community and you want to develop more of a common experience, do you have any suggestion for the nonprofit leader or for the head of the organization or maybe mid-management? Do you have any particular recommendations? That gets to the heart of the research that I've been working on for the last few years around how to build trust tactically. So very tactically, how do these local leaders build trust with one another? Because foundationally, that trust has to be there for the progress to take place.

26:16And I think, you know, I've interviewed, you know, more than 30 local leaders around the country, rural communities, major metros, East Coast, West Coast, everywhere. I wanted to explore that topic of trust building and then tactically what that looks like. So if the nonprofit leader wants to say, hey, guys, we could do better, we can make this place a better place. What's the first thing that they do? And my research, first of all, kind of discovered that that culture of trust starts with individual relationships. So you don't start here up at the top and saying, hey, guys, we need a better culture of trust.

26:52It often starts with two leaders who need to form a closer relationship or two leaders who just don't get along. And even though the project is super important to the community, they just could never work together well enough to make something happen. And then that kind of radiates up to, I would say, institutional trust. I have a lot of examples of where those two leaders in the community aren't getting along. And that means that their staff members aren't getting along. So their organizations stop meeting with each other as they should, or there's weird little infighting stuff that happens. I try to stay very optimistic and positive in my work, but the reality is this is really hard work.

27:35It's like couples therapy, but you're talking about dozens and dozens of people who don't report to each other every day. They don't share staff members. I mean, gets kind of complex as you can imagine. Oh God, I can just, I mean, I'm just having, like I already had a great deal of respect for what you do, Amy, but it's been so much fun to like drop down and really learn. And one of the things I'm thinking about is how to keep the motivation because so often we feel threatened. We just walk away from the table or we just imagine, well, those people are evil and they won't listen to me. So I can't do anything about it.

28:09It's really easy to get stuck in our own process and blame others or feel helpless and hopeless. And I see that that's something that you really, really have to deal with and yet stay hopeful, but you have to stay hopeful and you have to stay in and you have to know how to continue to bring them to the table. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm, um, one of my jobs is just to bring hope to these communities. I mean, thinking about too, and you know, what happened during COVID and the economy shut down. And I get kind of emotional when I think about what those years look like. I mean, from a personal perspective, all of us really struggled.

28:51I, there wasn't a single person that didn't struggle through that. I love not having to travel. Like I have to travel every week. That was kind of nice to have a break from that. But my life as a strategist involved coaching a lot of these communities through what to do. And sometimes crises like that bring people together and kind of help them set aside their differences. Like I said, it's pretty complex. And I'd say if you're a local leader and you're interested in forming stronger bonds that will help, it's directly correlated, right? The bonds that you create with other local leaders will help not only your community become more prosperous, but it will actually help you execute on your own mission as an organization.

29:38So if your organization is charged with improving education outcomes, not to harp on education, or helping people get lifted up out of poverty, or name so many different missions for nonprofit organizations, for example, the stronger bonds you have with your local communities, your local community leaders, and the better you all work together to kind of elevate the community as a whole, it's going to make it easier for you and your organization to achieve your own organizational and personal career goals. So staying mission focused when it's really hard, instead of giving yourself a pass to say it's impossible, are blaming, you have to keep hope and you have to keep the meaning and initiative so that you feel the motivation, especially if you're the leader in conflict with some other leader to say, I need to really be motivated to get over myself if I really believe in the longer mission, the long haul, right?

30:39Right. If you're just kind of playing to someone's selfish motives, that's the play right there is that reaching out across the aisle or having that difficult conversation with someone that you haven't seen eye to eye with in the past is really critical to you being able to achieve your own goals as personally or as an organization. But on the positive side, and you would be amazed, and this is what I want to celebrate here too. When I go into communities, I would say 90 % of those leaders are doing it for the good of the community. And they're doing it every day. They're setting aside their personal agendas because they believe in having a stronger community and creating a place that helps everyone succeed.

31:26So there's a lot of unselfish motives that are taking place as well. That is so heartening to hear that you go and you talk and you can feel the underlying motives, even if you're differing on how to, or you're getting protective of your own organization, if I'm protecting my organizations because I care about it and I care about the people and I don't want to lose it. But I just imagine that your experience is 90 % of the leaders are really out to try to make something different and better in their community. And believing in that, I don't know, it could really set a different aspect of then constantly thinking that there's this selfish motive, which is very promoted in our world of looking at leaders is primarily self-gained oriented because there's plenty of them, right?

32:15But you're also saying there is a lot of trust, but we need to elect leaders that have certain characteristics or put leaders in charge of our organization that have certain characteristics that can actually help your community be successful. Yeah, exactly. You know, it hurts my heart to think about the bad behavior happening at the national level right now. It actually makes me kind of sick to look at it because so much of the attention is focused on the national level and horrible, terrible things happening every day. That is so mind-blowing. I mean, we can go, I don't want to get political here, but I wish and I hope that my work in some little bitty way helps shift the focus back on our local communities and the great work that's happening every single day and the local leaders who want so badly to make their places better places and how actually doable that is at that local level.

33:19I hope it also just gives people some inspiration to know that it is achievable. It's entirely achievable and there's actually tactical things that can be done to make places better places. It's not just this like weird amorphous thing. It's tactical, it's strategic, and it's achievable. Every individual in a community has a role to play in that. Yeah, I think that's one reason why I'm so excited to have you on our show, because I think it is really easy to get activated into a hopeless despair, and then to kind of, in all sorts of ways, disengage. We talk, and Sue and I, in one chapter of our book where we talk about building community, we talk about leaders, and we didn't have the depth of knowledge you have about interviewing all of these leaders, which we're going to come back to, but the biggest thing is that if we get stirred in our worst selves of feeling hopeless and afraid and scared, we shut down, we give up hope, and then we look for something that's simple and something like a simple answer to a complex problem.

34:31You know what I'm saying? This is the one thing we need to do. And we look for authoritarian leaders that just say, y 'all just relax. I got you. And when we look for that, it is one of the most toxic things we can do. And when I looked at your list of what you found in your book about what makes a community work, it's not just a list of these are great characteristics to have and we like it when we have leaders this way. You really highlight that you have found two communities having very similar resources, very similar all sorts of things and have very different outcomes based on the type of leadership you have.

35:12And that is relevant to our country as well as it is to our small communities. So could we jump to that? I would really like it if you could share, oh my God, you interviewed, and this was through the Harvard business, right? You interviewed all of these well-functioning, people you respect after doing all of the work you've done as being the kind of leader that makes change. Right, yeah. Tell us about this and tell us about what you found. Again, I've been doing this for 30 years and I've worked in all these different places and in small places, you know, suburbs, major metros, states. I mean, just worked at a lot of different scales.

35:50And over all those years of spending time with local leaders in more than 200 different places, I would observe that two places could look nearly identical on paper. And by that, I mean, you know, there's similar size, They have similar educational attainment. They could have similar assets, like they both had an airport and both have a university, both located in the Midwest, whatever that is. On paper, they would look really similar. But one place would be doing much better economically than the other. You know, one place could be, you know, one of the top 10 fastest growing metros or whatever ranking that would be.

36:28And the other one was struggling to stay afloat or was starting to lose population or just kind of declining economically. And I would always wonder, like, what's the difference? You know, why is one doing so much better than the other? Why is one trajectory going up and the other one's going down? And I started to really focus on that in my interaction with these local leaders and came to my own little conclusion, just watching all of these communities at work. that the difference between high performing communities and those that aren't boils down to the level of trust among their local leaders.

37:09And a few years ago, and I was fortunate to have a little bit of downtime, I would say, after just working, working, working as hard as I could for 30 years, I just had a little break and I decided to test this theory out by interviewing local leaders around the country who I deeply admire, people I've worked with, or I've seen in action, or I admire their community, and just kind of test it out and ask them the question, is, is, am I essentially, am I off my rocker? Is this is kind of this crazy notion or is there something to it? And so for about nine months, I just interviewed these local leaders, you know, spent time with each one of them and had conversations around trust, first of all, is it an advantage for communities to have high levels of trust?

37:56And how does that then parlay into economic and community development? And then second, tactically, what do you do to strengthen trust in your community? Or what do other leaders in your community do to strengthen trust? And those interviews, they've validated my premise. I mean, every single person I interviewed said, yes, it's a, it's a major factor, if not the most important factor in community development and creating a high achieving community. That felt pretty good, actually. I bet it did that your gut was, is what you were experiencing, right? And when you would want, we were talking earlier, you walk into a room and if you could feel that nobody trusted each other, your job was a lot harder.

38:40It wasn't the specifics. It's like these people are not working together. They're working against one another. And if we don't have trust, we can't open up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that it translates so deeply into, you know, I think as therapists, we're always talking about trust and relationships, et cetera. And of course, many of them are business individuals and they think, oh, that's just related to the relationship, but in the business world, and that's not really true, right? It's like we will all function much more even. You're pointing out that it's even economically going to make a difference in the community.

39:23Yeah. Yeah. It shows up in the numbers. It's not just a mental health feel good thing to trust. It's like if you don't build trust, economically, it's going to erode what you're trying to do. Yes. There's a correlation between economic performance and the level of trust in a community. And I could totally geek out on this. And I want to, like, I think my next work on this topic is going to be trying to correlate that so that I've got some numbers behind this. But just on my own kind of playing around with this topic, I thought about the communities that I believe have the highest levels of trust in the country, just ones I've worked with that I've observed this high level of trust.

40:02And I've looked at their economic performance. I'm talking about economic performances like GDP, job growth, population growth, other things that just kind of indicate how healthy an economy is. And there's a direct correlation. The ones that I believe have a high level of trust are also performing much better than ones that I see as not having a high level of trust. Well, one could argue that if one's having economic prosperity, then it is then going to be more relaxed to trust. Like, are they trusting more because they have economic prosperity versus the other way around? I don't believe that.

40:38I think what you're really looking at is even when you start, and neither one of them are doing well when you come in, those that you can feel and build trust then seem to take off. Is that what you're saying? That they then can build the economic growth? Yeah, yeah. At first I was thinking, like, this could be a chicken and egg thing. Like, it's just, right, which one comes first? But I am absolutely convinced it starts with trust. And I talked earlier about that flywheel effect, but definitely to your point, as communities become more prosperous, the trust levels tend to increase because people see kind of shared wins.

41:19They're able to celebrate those shared wins and say, oh my gosh, did you see that? Like I started to trust this person more. We started to form this stronger relationship, me and this other community leader or other group. and we've had this level of success that we didn't have before. Let's keep it up. There's a whole other kind of wing of this about whole cultures of communities and how different cities have different cultures and how trust building could start to transition over time. As in my world, I watch leadership structures becoming more distributed. There used to be, you know, five or 10 leaders in a community that everyone looked at and said, those are the leaders.

41:58But now it's much more distributed and you could have, you know, younger leaders do things differently than older leaders. So there's a lot of dynamics at play, but just simplified trust makes a huge difference in economic and community development. And I think that can sound simple, and yet it's so powerful because it comes back to the hopefulness, right? Like, oh, wait, even if we are really struggling, if we were to build a sense of community and trust, it is much more highly predictive then that we can make the changes that we're wanting than if we keep promoting those things that alienate one another.

42:36Right. Amy, one of the things you came in, so it's not just somebody calling you in for the long-term plan. You also get called in sometimes for crisis and a crisis that's so near to dear to both of our hearts is what happened to Asheville and the surrounding areas with the hurricane several years ago. And they called you in to help. What was that like? And what went well? What was hard? It was the first time in my career where I was living in a community that not only suffered a crisis, but also where I was put in a role of responsibility for helping the community kind of strategize out of the crisis.

43:11So this was 2024. Hurricane Helene hit the Asheville area in late September that year. I had been working with the Chamber of Commerce and a group of local leaders here on a five-year economic and community development strategy. And we were halfway through that process. The timing was just really something. I'll just say it was really something, but we were halfway through that process when the hurricane hit. and we decided to pivot the strategic planning process. We already had a big group of leaders involved in that strategic planning process. We decided to pivot and make it a five-year economic recovery plan for helping our economy get back up on its feet after the hurricane.

43:54And so within, because we'd already had that momentum built within a few months, in January of 2025, we were able to roll out that Hurricane Helena economic recovery strategy and that's still guiding how leaders are working to recover today. You've been here. You've seen how much progress they've made. And it is absolutely amazing. I've worked with other communities that have been hit by wildfires, by hurricanes. I mean, you name it. But this place, and I do believe it was because the level of trust among leaders and the camaraderie that they already had made it possible for them to move a lot faster than in other places where those relationships may not be as strong and you're kind of forced to form relationships.

44:39In your book, this is one thing that I was struck by. You had a list of trust breakers. And so when I think, we're thinking not only about if we are a leader or if we are working in an organization, how to build trust. Even if we're not, we're electing leaders. We are in charge of, at least at this moment, electing our leaders. And so we need to know what to look for in a leader as well, right? Or if we're going to put somebody in the head of our nonprofit organization, we want to look for these characteristics. We don't just want to look for intellectual knowledge and history because you could get to a moment of success in a really divisive way, or you can get to your success in a way that has these markers.

45:28they're going to help your whole system. And so when I read your, the part where you were talking about, these are the things that these leaders that you interviewed in your book, I thought it was so powerful. Could you talk a little bit about what are the things that people were observing that are the trust breakers? Like if these are existing, it's really hard for a community to be successful of any kind, including our country. Right. It's a 260 page book. And there's only one page in the book that I call Trust Breaker because I just, I didn't want to dwell on that because we've all experienced it.

46:02I mean, it's so interesting too that these individual characteristics, you think about the dynamic between you and your spouse or you and your family members, and then a little bit bigger, you and the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis. Those personality characteristics don't change, whether you're working with your kid or another manager at your company or a community leader. If you're someone that's reliable, I think you're going to be reliable at home as well as reliable with other community leaders. So I want to say that because the trust-breaking behaviors that I list in the book, which there's probably more out there, but I think I list like 10 of them, not showing up when you say that you're going to show up, not attending certain meetings if certain leaders are going to be there gossiping, bad-mouthing people.

46:55Pointing fingers when mistakes happen. That sounds pretty familiar to the leadership we're currently experiencing all over the place. I think so, right? Yeah. Excluding people. Excluding people. Excluding people you disagree with. That actually is going to be an indicator that you are not going to have a community in the long run that's going to be successful. Exactly. Dismissing other feelings. That was another one I think you named. Dismissing others' feelings. No, your point's taken though that if you're doing those things at work, you're likely doing them at home is what I think I think. I'm gut checking that with you, Anne, because that's not my area of expertise.

47:35I'm not a therapist. I'm kind of at the 30 ,000 foot level. But yeah, I would suspect that it radiates upwards. And the people that I interviewed reinforced that. We talked a lot about their own personality characteristics. And in the book, I call them trust strengths. But let's focus on those, the trust building practices are the strengths, right? They're kind of the opposite of the trust breakers. Yeah. But yeah, I list eight of them in the book. And these are things that I, I checked in with every single person I interviewed, I asked them to talk about their leadership strengths. We explored aspects of their own personalities that make them strong leaders and actually enable them to build trust with other leaders in their community.

48:21And it came down to eight different trust strengths. In fact, the book, I included a little test that someone can take to assess their own trust strength. It's even available online. It's free. It's just, I thought it would be fun for people to think about their personalities in terms of their abilities to build trust with others. For example, my top strength is active listening. I do that really well. It's what I've done for a living for 30 years. But other leaders I interviewed, some of them identified more with being an authentic leader, that who they are at home is the same person they are at work, is the same person they are with their friends, are out in the community.

49:06Competency was a trust strength. Also, if you think about, you know, someone showing up to a meeting or a conversation, and they just know their stuff, and they're learning new stuff all the time. And they're the people that you go to in a community, if you're wanting to make change in an arena, but you need more information about it, these people are there for you. Reliability, you know, showing up when you say you're going to show up, doing what you say you're going to do. This came up in almost every interview I did. I was surprised at how many people talked about how someone not following up, think about just something simple, like they were told that they would receive an email the next day with some kind of information and they never got the email.

49:50You know, it's just, it sounds so super simple, but that lack of follow-up happens all the time. And every time it happens, it erodes trust a little bit. So a number of my interviewees talked about how they were really proud that they were reliable or that they were, another one was being very transparent with information. People would receive information or look at research or whatever they were doing and see it was bad news. It was kind of scary news to share with someone else. And instead of sharing it, they just kept it to themselves. And that also erodes trust, right? If you're not being transparent with information.

50:31Empathy is one. Having integrity. Something we talked about a little earlier, Ann was respecting differences or being inclusive. I would categorize those two things together. Rather, if you're a community leader and you're making a decision about a new project, like you're going to construct a new building or put in a new road or build a new school or something like that. Making sure that you're really reaching out to the community and gathering a variety of perspectives, not just talking to the same old people that are always in the room. That actually ends up making projects a lot stronger in the end and helps reinforce trust.

51:10Well, you're gaining a bunch of other resources. So somebody knows that you're taking the time to care. That really shows care, doesn't it? It shows care. And it lends creativity at the end of the day, like more perspectives kind of broaden the horizon. And I think lends projects to more creative approaches. Wow. Yeah. We think of that in the process of good leadership that we, as groups we tend to have a lot of common thinking and that that limits creativity if we if we just divide by our commonalities and we don't allow diversity then we have a lot more group think which limits our creative thinking and even our intellectual functioning actually so that really makes sense that that would fall yeah yeah wow so that's such an honor that you got to interview and that you were so respected to be able to sit down with all these leaders and for them to open up to you like that and to share.

52:09And that's what's in your book is like you really get to the heart of it with these interviews of all these leaders all over. So I just so highly recommend anyone out there trying to find the way in their own organization, frankly their own family, but like in their own community to really listen to those that are out there being successful, talking about the ways you could really make a difference with hope. Out of all those interviews, you interviewed for months and months and months. What was the thing that most surprised you? I went into the interviews not knowing what to expect. Again, these are people that I've admired.

52:48It was a luxury. I'm telling you, it was a luxury to be able to sit down with them and talk about character and leadership instead of what I normally talk to them about, which is this more fact finding and learning about their community. So it was just one of the best experiences of my career. I have to say that first and foremost. And then the thing that surprised me the most, Ann, was the consistency in their responses. Whether I was talking to Deborah in Hutchinson, Kansas, or Mira in Chicago, or Andre in Jacksonville, I mean, all these leaders from all over the country. And when I got into specifics with them, what specifically do you do to build trust with others?

53:31Their answers were remarkably similar. And that gave me this really nice sense of hope. The tactics that they're using are relatively simple. They're things that anyone can do. Anybody can do these things, I'm telling you. but it takes intentionality. It does take a little time. It doesn't cost money. It's just recognizing that trust building is very important to community progress and committing some time to doing it personally and encouraging your own staff members or board members or other community partners to do the same. That sounds like such an experience. And that is the feeling I get in in reading your book.

54:14Like it, it's very hopeful and it's not just like, it's hopeful and it is also motivating because even though you're seeing trust in leadership, we're talking about the leadership in all of us. And we're talking about like building community is about having hope that your organization or your group or your neighborhood by joining with others is really, really going to make a difference. And so the hopefulness is what we need right now that I was just really inspired by. Yeah. I'm glad that you got that feeling as you read it. It was my hope to make it a hopeful book. My hope was in hope here because I really wanted to celebrate the very good things that are happening in local communities everywhere.

55:00And I want to empower people that you don't have to be an elected official or a fancy position somewhere in your community to build trust with others and affect change. It could be within your neighborhood, your block. It could be within the arts organization that you like to participate in, your PTA, right? Your faith-based organization. Whatever it is that you're involved with, building trust is going to help that organization or that group make progress. And it's within everyone's power to do so. I love that. So how do people find you, Amy? How do people find the worksheet you were talking about so they could do their own little assessment and how would they find your book?

55:39Yeah, yeah. There's a website. So trustbuildersbook.com, all one word, trustbuildersbook.com. And right at the top, you have links to purchasing on Amazon or if you want to support independent bookstores, there's a link to buy from independent stores. There's also a link to that Trust Strengths Assessment, that online tool. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to do. I promise there's nothing weird and salesy in it either. Like you just take the assessment and it gives you your top trust strength. It's that simple. It's not going to ask you to pay 99 cents to get it emailed to you. It's just there.

56:15So anyone who wants to take it can take it. And hopefully it'll spark some conversation. Maybe other people on your team take that assessment too. And you talk about the findings and what that means for you guys as a team. And then how to become a more effective group within your own community. The links will be in our show notes and the link to her book as well. Check it out. So thank you so much. It's been so much fun to talk with you. It's so fun. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you gained as much as I did out of this conversation. Hey, send it on. Rate, review, and pass it on so other people can be inspired.

56:52We are all about spreading security in the community, and this is a powerful way and message to keep sending. So send it to other people. All right. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you around the bed.

57:11Therapist Uncensored is Anne Kelly and Sue Marriott. This podcast is edited by Jack Anderson.