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- Rebellious Thoughts #80 - 🤘 I trust that you will trust
Rebellious Thoughts #80 - 🤘 I trust that you will trust
By Gus Balbontin
Edition #80
Hey!
As always, I promise to provoke you in less than 5 min once a week so that you can stay adaptable and on top of your game.
Alright, here we go:
Trust is something that we learn to build over time.
In business and life the default is “don’t trust” and the exception is “trust”.
Most businesses I work with run and operate without trust - not with it.
Even though we think that trust is in place, it’s not.
The business often runs on a handful of trusted relationships and a shitload of processes and KPIs and Gantt charts and ERP systems!
It’s like trust doesn’t exist, then over a period of time and an accumulation of interactions, you have now arrived at somewhat trusting someone.
I say somewhat because it’s rare to find 100% trust amongst everyone in a team, let alone a business like I mentioned above.
If and when you find it, it’s incredible as it normally leads to amazing performance, relationships and culture!
But it’s rare.
We think trust is someone delivering to our expectations - or someone doing what I want them to do the way I want them to do it.
We think trust is someone doing something right.
Here is an alternative view:
Don’t trust they will do it right, trust instead that they will do it wrong, trust that they will fail. Because they will.
Trust that when they fail they will recover. And that they are clever enough to learn.
Trust that they will get better and better at failing and recovering.
Trust that they will be vulnerable and transparent and honest.
Trust that they will act with good intentions, that when they fuck up, they will ask for help.
But don’t trust that they will get it right or do it like you want them to, because you will be disappointed.
We misplace trust and allocate it incorrectly - we trust the wrong things and then feel disappointed and perpetuate the behaviour.
That time I got emotional seeing Jordy and Hannah ❤️ when we met, we assumed trust with each other instantly.
Learning to assume trust is difficult.
It’s soo against everything we have learnt and it’s counterintuitive to the way we run businesses. I reckon every process we put in place to run our businesses often has 20-30% of added complexity due to mistrust.
Think about it - the intention is to make things efficient and replicable and effective but we end up with more complexity than required to “catch” those that we can’t trust.
This is not to say that building simple processes to help people take action is not important to run businesses - if you leave things too vague, it can create anxiety and pain. But holy shit we go too far!
If that wasn’t the case, why is it that most businesses have a process to request and approve leave? Wouldn’t it be simpler and more trustworthy to say to people take whatever you need? Talk to your customers, colleagues, friends, figure it out - be an adult and sort it, I trust you.
I know you are going to think of some financial reason as to why! Hahah - don’t do it. Stop. Think instead how you can make it happen - trust me ;-)
So I leave you with this - what’s your default? Would you be more successful? Happier? More effective? Faster? If as an individual or as a business had more trust? Even more A assumed trust? What would it take to just trust someone 100%?
CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK:
What if you assumed more trust?
Give it a try.
Love
Gus
Ps: Of course if someone breaks your trust more than once, you are completely in the right to call it and take action accordingly - you don’t want to enable dysfunction - but if this is the exception, not the rule, perhaps extending 100% trust to everyone will get you better results? Topic for another newsletter…
Below is the podcast I recently recorded, just in case you missed it - it’s fun to relax and dive into topics I can’t during keynotes - have a listen, tell me what you think!
Recommendations:
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