Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: I got so much positive feedback this week about the podcast. I want to thank you for letting me know that you enjoy this. So I'm going to keep it up and I have some new ideas on how to make this even more interesting. But right now, I just spent two and a half days in Europe, right in the middle of the Ukraine situation and all the changes going on in the US and talk to many, many Europeans about not only all the things going on in HR and AI and L and D and so forth, but their feelings about the US Political situation. And so what I want to not talk about is politics, but I want to talk about what I have learned from this process, which is frankly, somewhat frightening for those of us that are Americans at the bottom of all of the political arguing that's going on between left and right. The Doge layoffs in the federal government, the Frustra experience that Trump is having with Ukraine and all of the tariff wars that are being proposed against Canada, Mexico and other non US Countries is the one issue that I think is the most important of all, which is trust. Because what you really see when you talk to Europeans and others is this sad and sort of unhappy sense of that we can no longer trust the United States system to be reliable and continuous partner in our economies and our lives. Now, you know, you can say that's trust in the US System, trust in the president, trust in the Supreme Court, trust in the legislature. I mean, we have many pieces to our system that are untrustworthy from the external perspective. And if you read the Edelman Trust Barometer, you can see that the Supreme Court, the legislator, legislature, local government, NGOs and the press are all suffering from very low levels of trust. And business leaders are also suffering from lower levels of trust now. So this isn't all caused by Donald Trump, although he has a lot to do with it. It's many, many aspects of our society, which may be a massive global recovery from the stress of the pandemic that we have not shaken off. But what might be happening is the reason we don't trust these institutions and these leaders is because there is a new game being played here, a new world order in a sense that we don't understand yet. But the leaders are uncertain and feel worried about their positions. And so alliances are changing and behaviors are changing and things that we would have considered sacrosanct in our political systems simply no longer are. Now, if you think about what happens in a company, it's exactly the same situation, situation. Every pressure that we now feel in the economy and the political systems is similar to pressures that go on inside of organizations. Competition, regulatory change, economic change, customer tastes, new technologies, workforce challenges, regulations. These are external factors that affect our company's abilities to succeed. And we don't affect them. We have to live with them. In fact, we have to adapt to them. This is why business is so challenging, is because there are dozens and dozens of things that can interrupt your success at any point in time, and you have to kind of stay ahead of them. And organizationally, for all of us in hr, we have to find a way to get the people in the company at all levels to move in the same direction that we think we want the whole company to go. And that means every job, every role, first line, all the way up to senior level, have to be aligned and trained and skilled and working in the right direction so that we can move the company in the direction it needs to go. And it may change regularly now. I mean, I was spending a lot of time with Philips, for example, which is one of the royal companies in the Netherlands, a very, very highly esteemed company that's had, you know, quite a bit of transitional difficulties moving into the healthcare equipment business. And their culture is very, very strong. But the transformation to healthcare, as I talked to with a lot of the HR leaders, is very difficult, from lighting and other industrial products for a lot of reasons. Not just the technology, but also the level of regulation and the level of quality needed. So if you don't have a sense of trust in your company and your team and your leadership, these things don't go well. And unfortunately, because of the nature of leadership and sometimes the personality of leaders and the pressure on leaders and the psychology of leadership, leaders are not always honest. The latest version of the Edelman Trust Barometer surprisingly found that more than 2/3 of workers do not trust the CEOs of their own companies. To tell the truth. That is a really sad trend to me. I hope it turns around, because what it means is that the people in the company who we either lead or direct or support may not really do or believe what the CEO says. So how do you lead and transform and grow your company when people don't believe you're telling the truth? Now, in politics, it's become fairly normalized to not tell the truth, unfortunately. And so we have all sorts of fact checking and press and media and other people to try to sort out the future, the truth inside of a company. There's nothing like this. The information that comes from the CFO's office or the CEOs or others is what it is. There's no fact checking in press to validate it. So any loss of trust that you have as a leader is going to really have negative effects. And because employees are working at the company and putting their livelihood into the hands of their managers and their organizations, they may or may not tell you how they feel about some strategy or initiative that they don't support or believe in because it might hurt them. Now, some people do speak up, and some companies are very good at that, but some companies are not. That's how situations like Boeing tend to happen. I mean, a lot of people, I'm sure, knew what was going on at Boeing, but they couldn't get their voice into the right ears. So let's talk about trust. I've thought about this a lot over the years. I've written about it. I've read lots of books on it and talked to lots of people about it. Trust essentially comes down to three things. It's not as complicated as it seems. Number one is, are you truthful and authentic? We all have very good sixth senses about other people. We usually can tell when someone is lying or exaggerating or faking it. We certainly can validate when someone tells us something that turns out to be untrue later. And we tend to trust people who are themselves. I mean, there are some people that are good actors, and obviously, you know, Hollywood's filled with people like that, but most of us are not. Most of us are pretty transparent. And when we communicate or talk or meet people in our organizations, they size us up just like they do every other person in their life. And they come to a quick conclusion about, is this leader someone I would follow? Is this leader someone I respect? Is this leader someone who I believe in? And is this a person that I can trust? And if you decide to exaggerate or bend the truth or try to be somebody you're not, you're going to lose that first element of trust. And that's why all these silly articles are being written about Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders pretending to be cage fighters or whatever it is they're doing, because not because people care that much about their personal lives, but it affects their reliability as a leader and their level of trust. So I personally have found in my business career and the many companies I've talked to that the most authentic people are usually the most successful because they know what their limitations are. They're not trying to hide them. They're not trying to be someone they're not. And People will follow them because they trust them. So that is not as easy as it sounds. Leadership is a very stressful role and sometimes very demanding and tiring and exhausting. But honesty and authenticity is number one. Number two is to have a sense of ethics and values. And this is where I think the Trump administration is failing. It is not clear to me, at least, what values they are based on, you know, punishing Canada and Mexico, Panama and so forth. You know, that those are not American values, certainly the way I was raised. And I think this idea that everything is transactional and any deal that makes money for the United States is good really bothers a lot of people, because it's not clear what the moral and ethical value system is in the American government right now. And in a company, this is exactly the same situation. You're going to have many, many situations regularly where a customer or a partner or a competitor or something happens that is threatening or damaging, or there's a mistake and you have to recover and you have a bunch of options. And there is usually an ethical value based option and there is a pragmatic option. And sometimes they're not the same option. And if it gets down to somebody lying or cheating or doing something illegal, you know, it's going to damage your company's brand. So, you know, and my experience in my own career is that companies that are built on values, you know, like Disney or IBM or even Boeing or Intel, companies that have fallen aside in their performance, their original values that made them what they are, usually remain forever. They remanifest themselves in new ways with new technologies and new products, but the concepts remain. You know, for example, Philips is an innovative technology company. You know, the question for them has been where do they apply that culture and that value system into what markets? Not are they an engineering culture or not? They, I don't think they've changed that. They've just changed where they use it. Having a set of values and living by them and using them and reminding people of them all the time, over and over and over. And by the way, being number one in your market is not a value statement. That is a performance statement. That is an outcome, not an input. So if you think your quote, unquote strategy is to be the number one in the market, no, that is your business objective. You need to have a value system and a set of ethics that bring people to you and draw people to you with a sense of trust. You know, I suppose if you're a monopolist and you own a market, you can do whatever you want. And that's maybe a little bit about what's going on in Washington right now, but that's very rare, and very, very few companies have that situation for long. So, you know, if you look at Apple, for example, with all the technologies they've developed over the years, they still do believe in privacy. They still do believe in security. They still do believe in personal productivity, in beauty, in deep levels of engineering. You know, I kind of know what their values are. I can tell. And when those values are clear, your customers trust you, your employees trust you, your business partners trust you. In the world, things happen way faster, decisions are made much more quickly, people get on board, and the company performs better. Okay, the third aspect to trust is something that's a little bit different, but I think it's something that you'll probably agree with me on, and that is listening. We tend to trust people that care and pay attention to us. A an autocrat addicted, an arrogant CEO is not somebody we feel close to necessarily, and probably not someone we trust because we don't believe that they're paying attention to our needs. And I think one of the things that creates trust is an awareness and a knowledge that the person that we're working with pays attention to what's going on around them and that they are making decisions in a holistic way with good information. If they become dogmatic, if they stop listening, if they believe they know the answer to every question and they're not allowing other people to participate in that, we tend to not trust them. Maybe they're right. I mean, you know, maybe Elon Musk is right about many of the things he's doing, but because he's so dogmatic about certain things, I think a lot of people are fed up. And that's true in the business world, too. And so great leaders that I've met over the years listen a lot more than they talk. In fact, one of the things I've noticed as I've, you know, evolved in my career and had the opportunity to work with more senior people is some of the most powerful senior executives that I've met over the years are actually not people who talk a lot. They're people who listen a lot. And I think the way they operate is not only through communication and inspiration and strategy and motivation and all that, but they try to assimilate situations completely before they make a decision. And so this idea of listening is massive, because in a company, I mean, it's very hard in politics because there's so many different voices. But in a company. You have frontline people, you have staff people, you have mid level managers, you have so many sources, you know, obviously direct customer input, stakeholders, partners. You have so many sources of information about your organization and your business that if you do a good job as a leader in listening to that information, which is hard because nobody has enough time to listen all day, you're going to end up being a very highly respected, trusted leader in your company and people will follow you. And when you make mistakes, which happens of course, because you're listening, because you're ethical, because you're authentic, you're probably gonna, you know, deal with them openly and just fix them and not turn them into weaknesses. And, you know, the more I listen to what's going on in Washington and all the podcasts and all the Twitter feeds and all the videos and all this arguments about the speech and Congress and on and on, the more I realize that this whole concept of trust has just been really damaged in the United States. And when I meet with all these people in Europe, many of whom I've known for years and years and years, you know, they're, they're, they seem somewhat saddened by the situation that's happened in the United States because they do trust the American people, but they don't necessarily trust the American system. And that's true in our companies too. I, you know, you guys know this. I believe that everybody in your company is intending to do exactly the right thing and work as hard as they possibly can. But they need to be trained, they need alignment, they need support, they need direction, they need tools, education, skills, et cetera. They need to be treated fairly. Those sort of existential, trust related things are central and core to your success in the transformational economy we're in today. And I think we're all going to have an opportunity to sort of talk about this and think about it because of the really interesting political environment that we're living through in this particular period of time. Okay, that's it for now. That's 20 minutes. I hope you found this interesting. I just felt like I had to get this off my chest because of what's been going on here. And we'll go back to some other tech topics in my next episode.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Sa Ra.
