Help Yourself!
Czech Pastries at Buc-ee's and the Art of Building Trust
Have you ever thought about the role trust plays in every facet of our lives, or the pivotal role of a road trip destination in shaping your journey? This episode unravels the intriguing concept of trust, from personal relationships to professional environments. We also take you on a virtual sojourn to Bucky's, a gas station that promises more than just fuel - scrumptious full restaurant offerings, spotless restrooms, and the irresistible aroma of fresh baked goodies, including the Texas-modified Czech pastry, coloches.
The journey doesn't end here. We pull back the curtain on the essentials of building trust in work relationships and share insights on giving and receiving constructive criticism, drawing from our experiences in the Toastmasters environment. Ever tried an enchilada soda or a jalapeno beer? We bring you a taste test from Bucky's exotic beverage menu and much more.
As we wrap up, we delve into the essence of transparency, trust, and effective communication in the professional world. Harness the power of micromanaging to get to know your new team members and build trust. Discover the art of active listening and why it's a game-changer in professional settings. If you're curious about the quirkiest soda flavors or eager to navigate the complexities of trust in relationships, you're in for a treat. Join us for this enlightening episode!
Have you ever thought about the role trust plays in every facet of our lives, or the pivotal role of a road trip destination in shaping your journey? This episode unravels the intriguing concept of trust, from personal relationships to professional environments. We also take you on a virtual sojourn to Bucky's, a gas station that promises more than just fuel - scrumptious full restaurant offerings, spotless restrooms, and the irresistible aroma of fresh baked goodies, including the Texas-modified Czech pastry, coloches.
The journey doesn't end here. We pull back the curtain on the essentials of building trust in work relationships and share insights on giving and receiving constructive criticism, drawing from our experiences in the Toastmasters environment. Ever tried an enchilada soda or a jalapeno beer? We bring you a taste test from Bucky's exotic beverage menu and much more.
As we wrap up, we delve into the essence of transparency, trust, and effective communication in the professional world. Harness the power of micromanaging to get to know your new team members and build trust. Discover the art of active listening and why it's a game-changer in professional settings. If you're curious about the quirkiest soda flavors or eager to navigate the complexities of trust in relationships, you're in for a treat. Join us for this enlightening episode!
Welcome to Help Yourself. Food and Philosophy with Brian and Nick. I'm Nick and I'm Brian. Some are born trustworthy, some achieve trustworthiness and some have trustworthiness thrust upon them. Shakespeare almost said that I tweaked it yeah, which eating Brian.
Speaker 2:That's from a true a true, a true, a true quote, hound. I don't know why I said that. Anyway, true a true quote, hound. I was trying to say true quote and it came. Anyway, you doing some, some mashups there Technically not really mashup, but a modification of trust to suit your needs. I bet you there's a word in the English language for that too, some kind of weird word that you're like oh yeah, that's a geliquely or something you know, and it's a anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, it is now Thanks for calling that term a jewel.
Speaker 2:A jewel like we do like Willie and adjusted to suit your needs Exactly. I'm going to start dropping that into a conversation, all right.
Speaker 1:What am I eating?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I know, in the last episode I did, I regaled you with the tale of my having crab, but the this episode, so this is again.
Speaker 1:these are all vacation stories because I your crab shake, bringing the boys to the yard Right, exactly so we.
Speaker 2:you'll be on a road trip going from one place to the other. You find places to stop, but the big thing down here and I know this is actually going to be not to dox you too much, but there's going to be one opening up nearer by you that's going to be the largest one of these in the world, by the way is oh no, is Bucky's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I think, isn't that one already open? I don't know, I haven't been out to your neck of the woods. But okay, I'm pretty sure that, if it's not, it's being built right now.
Speaker 2:But anyway, that's that's become in our last few road trips, as for many people, that has become our, one of our destinations, and part of the reason why, though. I mean it sounds stupid that you're like you're going to go to a gas station, but if you haven't been to a Bucky's, it is like the largest gas station you've ever been to a Walmart, a full restaurant. The restrooms are always clean, they have doors that go all the way down to the floor, so you're not sitting in a stall with your feet dangling out or anything like that, and they're always kept clean and everything else. It's just. It's just a very pleasant experience for going to a gas station.
Speaker 1:So I just imagine the bathroom attendant going in after every single person.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, yeah, exactly, we got to freshen up in here, you know it feels like that because they are, I mean the, the bathrooms are very, they're very I don't know just clean all the time. You know what I mean. So anyway, so we went there, got, we got. We went there to go get food, to use the facilities and do a little shopping, whatever, and also fill up to take the gas, because we were at the beginning of our you know, our reign and man, they have got like a full restaurant in there that has everything, I mean anything you could think of and it's all the other thing about is it's all like fresh baked there.
Speaker 2:It's not, you know, like they had. I bought a little thing of cinnamon glazed pecans, that they literally take regular pecans and have them in these little swirly machines and then they put the ingredients in and it bakes and like, warms them up and glazes them right there and then they put them in these little paper triangle things or cone shaped things to sell to you and man. It's incredible. So I bought that. I had a, a collage I don't know exactly how to pronounce this a lot she collage, thank you. So CHE is all of its pronounced collage, collage. So is that what? I didn't even know what it was or what like. Is that from a certain like, is that like a Greek thing or something? Or is that like something? What is that?
Speaker 1:Is it come from Texas Like a made up thing?
Speaker 2:like.
Speaker 1:They're like oh, we're gonna call these collages, right it's yeah, it looks like there's one from Czech and Slavic, but that's a pastry. Yeah, in the United States the letter s is often added to the end of the word collage to form the word collages. It's a double plural. Okay, because the E at the end makes it plural.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I got this collage, that is a collage. It's basically like a bun around a sausage of some kind and it was like, in essence, a hot dog. This one was a jalapeno cheese, colache and.
Speaker 1:Right and I didn't know what I was see Texas. Okay, well, I didn't put meat in, it makes it Texas. Oh, got it. The Czech version looks like it's like just bread or Fruit, like it's like a pastry like, yeah you know, like a cheese Danish or a fruit Danish, but I'm putting jalapenos and meat and it makes it Texas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, I will say I'm now a Colache fan. I had one of those and man, it was really really good. It felt it was like Good sausage and it was spicy and it was yeah, it was. I was actually very enjoyable and it for me it's like something that is not on par for you. Buying it at what is ostensibly a gas station, right? I mean, you're yeah, and I know that they're not necessarily a gas station. It's like a lot more into it.
Speaker 1:But and I trusted. I trusted the person who told me how to pronounce it wrongly. I'm looking that up to okay. And well check version is Coloc, like it's just Coloc, okay, and and then it's, I guess, coloc, uh, if it's plural, okay, but then again, all this stuff being Americanized, we call it what we want. Yes which are kind of like.
Speaker 2:Well, kind of like they. Just a person that was in loxley Alabama that I said when I said Colache, I would like a jalapeno sausage Colache. They did not correct me, so so I don't know if that was correct or not, but the point is just, I said it how I said it.
Speaker 1:Nobody knows how to pronounce it, nobody knows what's inside it. It's right. It's sort of trust that it's gonna be tasty yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so they. They did that, they dropping in a paper bag. They put it in a little. It's probably not called a microwave in their thing, but it was basically a microwave. They heated up for like 30 seconds or so, so it was nice and warm and it was good and I ate that while. And the other thing that's good about it is it's a really good one-handed driving food because it's just it's got a bun all the way around it, so stuff isn't dripping out of it, it's, you know, it was like self-contained.
Speaker 1:It's called dough, it's not.
Speaker 2:yeah, a bun Well, whatever.
Speaker 2:Anyway it was good and it had good level of stuff, had a good level of spiciness to it and the sausage was like I felt like a quality sausage. It wasn't like just like, oh, there's a hot dog inside this, it was, you know. It tasted like it had a good, good, decent sausage in there. So so, yeah. So I got that and my family got other things to eat while they were driving down the road and and oh, I did get a picture with with Bucky while I was in there, because my wife wanted to take a picture with the family with Bucky. So Statue.
Speaker 2:It's just no, no it was a guy in a suit. It was like an actual, live, live action Bucky.
Speaker 1:That's right. People will say it's like it's like Disney, the Walmart had a. Yeah, it is yes. The only thing is missing is like, just like rides.
Speaker 2:There's, there's no rides. But I mean, man, they could add that easy.
Speaker 1:So they got the people watching part down though.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it is crazy.
Speaker 1:Huge variety of clientele.
Speaker 2:I've been in.
Speaker 1:And social economic standing, and well, I've been in them all hours.
Speaker 2:Like I've been in at 11 o'clock or midnight and I've been in that one I was in and like 10 o'clock in the morning and same level of business both times. It was it's insane capacity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it literally you're trying to dodge people while you're walking around in there. It's not like there's a dead of night time, like in the midnight, where you're no, it's like People will be, like no, I'll plan my trip out so that I'll hit the Bucky's and I'll hit the next Bucky's and I'll hit the next Bucky's, you know, because they're about 300, 400 miles apart, which is probably about the length of a tank of gas, right? So pretty smart Of them trying to, you know, make that happen. So so yeah, that's my Bucky's experience. I have Brian's beverage corner. I've got my water here in my Normal thing. I've got a little tiny bit of my Protein coffee, almost done with it, but the big piece de resistance, I don't know that even means. Anyway, you're gonna look it up for me, look up what that means, to make sure I didn't say anything completely wrong anyway. So so in the last episode I talked about, I've talked about balls, the energy drink, and and today we're talking about sausages.
Speaker 2:So this was so at that same place that I went to while I was on vacation, where I picked up a bunch of cool drinks. There were all these Lester fixin's drinks. I don't you ever heard of them, but they do quite a he does quite a bit quite a variety of different drinks. So let's see, and the catchphrase is y'all get your fixin's, okay, but if you look in the, if you look in the your camera, you'll see what soda that I'm gonna drink here.
Speaker 1:The color is Natural.
Speaker 2:I'm used to mountain dew like I would say mountain dew colors natural but and by the way, I have not tasted this, so just so for the audience to know, I this is Lester fixin's In a bottle and it's enchilada soda, and I have not tasted this yet. I just opened it a few minutes ago.
Speaker 2:Oh, dear, so this is gonna be a live on air taste test and see, I'm actually a little bit afraid but also a little bit excited. So let's, let's see what happens here. Hold on a second. Oh, wow, oh, it actually does taste like enchiladas. It tastes a little bit, it tastes a little bit sweet, but it like the first flavor that you get is enchilada sauce in a soda form. So it's like, literally, and it's a little spicy too. It's like a little Like there's a little back of the throat tickle, like you know, of the spiciness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna drink this whole thing or not. I might sip on it a couple other times to see if the flavor changes, but Interesting. So yeah, that was that's. My adventure today is trying to see how this is gonna go. But they did have a bunch of other ones, and I may do a couple other ones on future episodes. But the, you know they had to deal pickle and they had like all these other ones. But then the other thing is, I don't know if you've ever they they have. You know those like the jelly beans that were Harry Potter, like the they had that game where you could play where it was like summer bad every flavor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, they had some flavors that were like literally like one was like bar flavored soda and I'm like I'm not brave enough for that, and one was dirt. It's a dirt soda, like dirt flavored soda, and I'm like I don't even know what that is. I mean, I know what that is, but do I really want to subject myself to that? And so I just letting the audience know I will only go to a certain extent for the podcast. So it's a lot of soda and maybe some others coming up in the future episodes are gonna be where I draw the line there was a Beer my sister got and they couldn't finish it and they're like hey, nick, you try it.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm like spicy stuff. It was a some kind of jalapeno beer really was the flavor that was mentioned on there, but it tasted like spicy pickle juice Really like a third of the way down forcing it it was yeah. It was like lime. It tasted more like lime and pickle juice. Wow was somehow spicy, which I guess is the jalapeno part. Yeah, it was that seems very, it was misguided yeah, it's misguided Onto your piece to the resistance.
Speaker 2:Yeah you.
Speaker 1:Yes, you used it right and no, I don't like it.
Speaker 2:Like never, ever, do that again on the spot, gas it, it looked.
Speaker 1:The literal translation is piece of resistance, as you might write. Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of imagination right knowledge of French to guess that, but it means the most important piece or feature. Okay, got it. And it's usually regarding a dish or a colleague of food, so you used it properly and no, I don't like it.
Speaker 2:All right, well, on that note. What are you eating, oh?
Speaker 1:Well, okay, you got me beat. Um, I see I had. I'm still running off of breakfast from Starbucks. So that was the the egg white and red pepper Egg bites which are a little spicy, you know kind of spicy eggs, spicy egg snack.
Speaker 1:Really good, as well as half of a chocolate croissant. Dory got to enjoy the other half Awesome. And because there wasn't enough cheese in that mix, then I also got a little bit of string cheese, so kind of a very disorbitant. Also, as part of my Starbucks adventure, got the Nitro Cold Brew with just a smidge of sweet cream.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Trying to taper that down, keep that down, as we've discussed before, and that's where I got my name tag that I took off you might have from our previous episode.
Speaker 2:It was good stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that you want some of the coffee.
Speaker 2:That sounds good. The Nitro Cold Brew is always good for a long time. And there was something I was going to say about the egg bites. Man, the egg bites are really good. I had those recently and I hadn't had them for a long time. And of course I didn't get the pepper one, I got the Gruyere and bacon, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the bacon.
Speaker 2:Little bit higher in calories and no vegetables in them, so probably a little bit less healthy. I would say. And I don't know that those are egg whites. I think those ones were more yellow in color but it might have been the cheese in them, but anyway, yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1:the ones that I had are egg whites. Yeah, I didn't get them because they're egg whites. I wanted the red pepper and that's how it? Comes.
Speaker 2:I need to make some more of those. I need to make some more of those because I have a silicone mold thing that you can make egg drops in the Instant Pot and it really is super easy and you can put whatever toppings or whatever else. For instance, those ones, the pepper ones, that Starbucks don't have any cheese in them, but if you wanted to do red and green and yellow peppers and then a little bit of cheese in there as well, then you could doctor them up. However, your most custom way is so yeah, well, that's good, sounds gourmet. It's super individualized and gourmet, right, but you want to get into our topic? We've been talking about trust. In our last episode, we talked about trust and the basics of trust and the concept of trust and the definitions of trust as well, as we went down the path of the trust that you put in people that you might be don't have a relationship with per se.
Speaker 2:You might have an interaction with them, but you're trying to just walk through life and I got all crazy with the death in that. So what we sort of wanted to go into more so in this episode and correct me if I'm wrong, I think we wanted to go into this is more like the working type of relationships that we have and longer term relationships. I think that's what we were going to talk about, was that? Am I wrong in that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think yeah, we could go either way. You want to talk about personal long term or professional long term relationships.
Speaker 2:Maybe let's start with the professional. Many of the articles that I pulled up when I first was doing basic research on this, I had to actually force the search engine to give me articles about personal, because almost everyone was like how to develop or how to make sure that there's trust in the work environment or things like that, which is a different thing than I think in a personal. On a personal aspect, even though in many times, many times, you're spending more time with those people at work than you do are with your loved ones if you're working a lot of hours, or at least equal I think really, the first place that I was going to talk about was just the difference in what we talked about in the last episode versus this episode in terms of like, now you're shifting almost your belief of, hey, now I'm going to be given the opportunity to build a rapport or build a level of trust with this person because I'm going to be interacting with them over time, regardless of, as we talked about in the last episode, where your trust level start, whether you start as a skeptical person and you say, hey, you got to earn my trust, or whether you start as a trusting person and then that people have an opportunity to lose your trust. I feel like, in this case, everyone is under the assumption that, hey, this is a relationship that I'm going to have and so it's going to work better. Going back to our baseline of this podcast, which is self-help relationships work better when they have trust in them. It may be a trust between the two people, it may be different on both sides of that equation, but it's a working relationship and those relationships are going to work better and be more productive if there's a level of trust.
Speaker 2:Maybe we can start there with. Since we already have the definitional things out of the way, how about you start with so you being somewhat of a leader in your company and you be having at least a team of people that you're working with and some levels in charge of and you're guiding down the path? How do you deal with that? How do you deal with people that come in, people that maybe have a different level of trust than you? How do you build trust and rapport with the people you're working with? Wow?
Speaker 1:that's a huge. Yeah, I was just like ready hey ready Go.
Speaker 1:Let's see. I would start off by offering that one of my favorite topics I'm sure this belongs on the bingo card would be that difference or concept of between kind versus wicked learning environments. I would say that this lands neatly into the wicked learning environment where it's more complicated. It's not wicked in terms of moral, but just wicked in terms of jagged and highly variable, highly varied situations, multiple factors at play. This is a quick.
Speaker 1:For instance, one of the key factors in whether or not I can trust any one employee over another would be their tenure and or work history. How much time have they spent in this role or a role like it? Can I trust that they know what I'm talking about? Can I trust that they know how easy or hard something is? Have they done something like this before? Yeah or not? And how much like it have they done it to be able to give an estimate of whether they can do it at all, whether they can do it quickly it's easier, hard, that kind of stuff. Whether they'll need help. So, even if they tell me that they don't need help, if I know that they've not done it before or, coming back to history with me, if they've told me before they don't need help, but more often than not they do need help. I'm probably going to go ahead and plan for them needing help.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, I trust they don't know what they're talking about. It's not distrust, yeah. It's just they haven't yet learned something that I've observed. You know for the. So it. Yeah, there's a lot here and I've really only scratched the topic.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll yeah, those are some of the things that play here.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll just interrupt you there and like, because some of the things you mentioned were things that I saw in some of the articles that I read, and one of them is, you know, talking about that person's behavior and you know, have they modeled a certain behavior that indicates they can be trusted? And that's exactly what you're saying hey, how long has this person been in this role or in a role like it? And so I'm going to look at that and I'm going to say well, my assumption and again, this is another thing we talked about in the last is an assumption. My assumption is if you've worked in this role for five years, here's your base level of knowledge. So I trust that you have that, I trust that you have learned those things.
Speaker 2:That doesn't always pan out, you probably. You know, sometimes people don't get the lessons. They've been working in a role for quite some time and nobody's ever pointed out to them like, hey, you, you need to know about this. If you're in this role like this is something you should be well versed in, right, right and it's like do they have five years of experience or do they have one year of experience?
Speaker 1:They've lived five times Right, Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well and how effective was their previous manager or their previous supervisor, because an effective supervisor is going to point things out, just like we do in Toastmasters. You're going to say, hey, here, let me evaluate your performance and give you potential ways that you might be able to improve that. You're doing a lot of things good, but here's how you could be better, right, and so I think that's the. You know that doesn't, but I will say even that, like we talk about, that's a level of trust too. Like you have to feel like that that person's going to take that evaluation in the right way, and I think that's what we provide at Toastmasters is a very well at your workplace.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily the environment of Toastmasters. Like we all walk into the door of Toastmasters saying help me get better and don't beat me up too much. You know what I mean, unless I ask for it, like us that we've been there for a long time. We say, hey, don't, don't pull your punches. Like tell me exactly what I'm doing, because I want to be better and I've been doing this for X amount of years, and so tell me exactly like I'm not going to take it personally.
Speaker 2:I want to get better, whereas you got to sort of temper that in the but that's because there's been a level of trust that's been developed there between those people and so, same thing, it's like you wouldn't necessarily do that. Hey, I've seen, you've been working, you've been working for me for one week and let me tell you everything you're doing wrong, right, that that may be premature, for that it may not. I mean, the person might just be somebody that's like, hey, I can take evaluation, I love constructive criticism, let's go. But if they're not, then it could go horribly wrong, and that's because the level of trust hasn't been built up Right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, one thing I've noticed to myself lately In terms of like work relationships. I have experienced a betrayal of trust In terms of responsiveness to email and email from enough individuals that I have learned to hate email.
Speaker 2:I don't trust email.
Speaker 1:Like I have had a lot of work relationships, I don't trust email. I hate writing email because I know that the probability of them reading it Period is low. If they do read it, the probability of them misreading something is high.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And it takes me three hours to draft an email. So it has the tone I'm going for, when I could just have a conversation with somebody and have the tone in my voice and have that over in 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right and get immediate feedback from their response to my inquiry or comment or whatever, right. So it's like I don't. I don't trust people to read email by and large, so I have a hard time writing it because I want to. If I'm writing an email, I want to be heard and then when I get an email, that's very long I don't trust that they've put enough thought into it. To be brief, you know, like like it's just, it's very frustrating that it's yeah. So that's one area where I've learned, like not learned. I can't say I've learned consciously. I learned subconsciously and I've only now realized why I've learned to hate email In a sense of retroactively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I feel like.
Speaker 2:I'm on that same boat, but I feel like that is something that you make an evaluation of is hey, and this is like maybe. I mean, maybe this touches on trust, but also it just touches on communication. In that how, what's the most effective way for me to send this message? Is it email? Because many messages, the most effective and most efficient way for me to do it is email, but there's a lot of communications that are better. You know that really shouldn't ever be an email. They should be in person. That I mean, you've heard we've all heard the stories of like people hey, I broke up with my girlfriend via text or whatever you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like yeah like that's you know, and that can be for a number of reasons, but the point yeah exactly Exactly, but you know the.
Speaker 2:I think what you touched on to me is like. Getting back to the idea of trust, though, is, when you're sending out an email, you know you. Unless you know, like, for instance, when you send me an email, or when you send me a text, like I've been around you for a long time, so like I can read, I can, I'm not reading things into that text per se, you know. I'm just saying, yeah, I've been around you for a long time, and this is what your question you're asking like and that's straight-up question is not like there's nothing reading. Yeah, I'm not taking it personally or anything else. That's whereas you know, but that's because we have a level of trust, and so like, until you can Guarantee that the relationship of the you know between you and the person you're sending the email to, has a level where they aren't gonna misunderstand, misinterpret, read into anything else, then that it's probably better not to have that communication via email Until you, until you know how that person works. You know what I mean, and so, um, you know that you.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you were setting this up, if you're already aware of it or what, but uh, that reminds me of a skit by key and peel where they're texting to each other. Yes, I think I was wrong. Yes, I'm gonna put a link, I'm gonna send the link to you and we need that is the best I love.
Speaker 2:I love that I've watched that numerous times and I laugh every single time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. It speaks to this so perfectly like exactly. It's very short too. I think the it's only a few minutes, like three minutes. I'm sure the censored version is less than a minute. Yeah, yeah, the censored version is almost three minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, the uncensored version has some choice language, but but, yeah, but, but I think all yeah and it's. It does illustrate the point is that you're texting and one person has it has a complete impression of yeah, you know, just, I mean I'll let them watch the watch the thing, but it's just miss miscommunication at its finest and most funny presentation. So but, but, yeah, I think also too, you know, it's interesting for Like as an example. So, like my work compared to your work, like you're, you know you're, you're with a team of people, you're gonna be able to spend some time with those people.
Speaker 2:And for me, I think that and I don't do this consciously, this, the way that I'm gonna say this, it sounds like I Always, at least I always feel like I'm like sound, sounding like a kind of a Sales, kind of salesperson or shister, kind of like. You know, I'm intentionally I don't know just like a person, like intentionally trying to like Build trust, to try to get somebody to buy something. And that's not what I'm trying to say here. What I'm trying to say is that in certain levels you have to, the skill set is building trust, a higher level of trust, relatively quickly meaning hey, this is the first time I've met you and we're 15 minutes into an hour-long meeting. What is your impression of me? Right?
Speaker 2:and and they have to be. They don't have to trust me as a person, but they have to trust that I can Effectively accomplish their goal. I can draft the trust. Get it trust.
Speaker 1:We're talking about trust or trust anyway.
Speaker 2:That I can draft their will or their trust or their powers of attorney or, on some levels, that I can manage their money, which is a longer-term relationship that I'm gonna be able to develop over time. But many times, if I'm doing somebody's legal work, it's not a long-term relationship, it's a relationship that's for, you know, a couple of months, and then they might not talk to me for a year or two or they may never talk. I've clients that I've, that I've drafted their documents for that. It's been over well over a decade. Actually, I just did an estate plan for somebody who I drafted in 2008 their original thing and they came back and now their kids are all grown and they needed to change some of their documents because, because their circumstances have changed and so so I don't have really, or so I had to reestablish that relationship, even though they called me and said, hey, are you still doing this work?
Speaker 2:But I also have to. I have to present myself in a way that gives them reassurance, you know, that gives them a Faith or a, you know, a feeling that they can rely on me to do the work. That Right, right, and so that's a different skill set then. Hey, I'm gonna be working with you for years and years and years potentially. And so, like I said, I don't do it intentionally to try to as a salesy kind of way, but I definitely want the to present myself in a way that says look, I understand, I can, I'm a hundred percent Confident that I can help you with what you're doing, but I need to talk to you about your circumstances and figure out what you need to get done, and I will make sure that the legal side of it is taken care of. And I think I can't say that everyone feels that way about me. You know, like I've met with people who I can tell you know that they're just like mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Maybe not necessarily, but I don't take it personally, but I think I've met with people that are Generally just trusting of attorneys. That you know, it's just a sort of a standard thing of like, yeah, you know, this guy's a lawyer and some people don't trust lawyers, you know.
Speaker 1:They're coming to the interaction, giving you a negative trust balance right, Right exactly account? Yeah, you can't. You don't have enough First impression material to cover that balance, that negative balance. You know that's right. It's not that you're untrustworthy, it's just they needed a lot more assurance than you are prepared to give them.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah but I think that's a, like I said, I think that's a different skill set of and since we're on the topic of just building trust, basically is in the professional environment. I think that's a lot of what we're doing is Either building trust with a client, building trust with it. Now, I'm sure your company has a sales force, you know, of some kind, that is out there. They're the front lines talking to people that are going to be using your services and those people do have to like try to gain Someone's trust at some point so that they can get their foot in the door and potentially have that person partake in your services, you know yeah, I think there's also like the job interviews, first day in the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got to Give a good first impression. You almost have to Virtue signal a bit and give people reasonable you know, basically earn the benefit of any doubt that you're trustworthy, that you're professional, that you're competent, you know your stuff and you're willing to perform that stuff in exchange for a salary. You know.
Speaker 2:Well, and I will say that a couple of different and this is hopefully maybe like, maybe dovetailing into a little bit of a slightly different take on this is many of the articles that I read that were sometime in the last, you know, 10 to 15 years all were pointing to the fact that trust is generally diminishing among people, which is weird. This particular one says and this doesn't cite anything, but it says research shows that only 49% of employees trust their senior management and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information. So you know, doesn't necessarily mean I guess they're distrusting, but that you know, in terms of a corporate environment, you certainly would love it if all of your workforce trusted that your CEO was a. You know what your CEO said was true, right, or that at least I could trust that right.
Speaker 1:Right, I can act on that information.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and, and part of the reason I do that is because this article was by Steven M R Covey, so but but one of the things that they talked about this, this article actually is entitled how the best leaders build trust, and it actually has basically 13 behaviors, which, again, what we talked about before. What we're talking about is trust is to some extent, a behavior. You know. You build trust by behaving in a certain way. Right, so I can run through these real quick. So the the 13 are talk straight. They're only two word things, so it's pretty quick. So talk straight. Demonstrate respect, create transparency, right wrongs, show loyalty, deliver results, get better, confront reality, clarify expectation, practice accountability, extend first, keep commitments and extend trust. I listen first sounds a lot like one of the seven habits, Steven. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yeah, so I think I was trying to keep up. I could. I only was able to like write down every other one because you were so quick. That's okay.
Speaker 2:No, that's okay. I mean you can forward me the link and put that in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, but I think I think that's one of the ways like getting back to like the professional environment is how do you build trust? Is you got to act trustworthy? And the question is that's different for each person. So I can say that I do many of these things in my you know, definitely straight talk, demonstrate respect and create transparency. Those first three that are on there. I try to be as as transparent as possible when I'm talking with clients about how much does this cost? What am I going to be doing for you? What you know? What does this give you an expectation of what this process looks like? What's the timeline for this process? When will you have your state planning done? You know things like that, and so I think that gives people a level of like. Okay, I get like the thumbnail sketch here, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that you know. As, as Nick Seger once said, bozos quote themselves. That's something I've often said at work, either talking about ourselves or talking about other teams is that transparency builds trust.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right, right, like if, if I can see how you work, then I can trust that you'll do that again. I can trust that's how you work and I'll just trust that. That if you say you'll do something I've seen you do, I will very much trust you Right, like the next time that opportunity to the thing to be done can be done. And and I've often, I guess, warned people on my team when they first start and I do my best to follow this I'll probably follow up with them to see how well I've been doing at this. But whenever I hire someone new, like I'm kind of open with them, like at first it's going to feel like I'm micromanaging you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I want to know like every day, like what you're working on. I'll close you order. I guess I kind of still do that now, but like I'll, I'll want like a one-on-one conversation with them every day.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and kind of an end of day review, because I want to see how they think, I want to see how they work, I want to know what they're really good at and maybe what they're not so good at, so that way I only have to pester them about things that they may not be good at, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or if they're working on something I know they're great at, then I can back off and stay out of their way, right and that. So that basically is to say, at first I'm going to be a micromanager because I need that transparency, I need that depth of knowledge about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, but then once we've kind of reached cruising altitude, I can back off the throttle. I don't need to know every little thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, again, I know what you'll take care of without my intervention or what you might occasionally need me to follow up on, just to make sure you're not falling prey to bad habits or whatnot. But everybody's different, right, so some people are much more independent, some people aren't, and I don't know that. Even if I've gone through the interview process like it doesn't mean I know them very well, right, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know if that's, but I think that micromanagement is an expression of a lack of trust. Whether it's immediate, short-term, like I'm talking about, that I think is somewhat healthy, or a very an inept manager, an insecure manager demonstrating micromanager behavior, even trustworthy colleagues, that's really just a word for not trusting your people is micromanagement.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way to sum it up, I think the other one that I wanted to mention, that I think that many managers don't do, is the listen first one, the one that I mentioned. That sounds like one of the seven habits right. I think there's a lot of managers who talk and there's not a lot of managers who listen effectively, like listen in a. What is that? Listen like active listen, right Is.
Speaker 1:I'm listening.
Speaker 2:I'm not hearing what you're saying. I'm listening to what you're saying and I know that's a weird, like cliche, distinction, but yeah but, it is.
Speaker 2:it is a valid point. That's what. That's what we do in Toastmasters too. Is you know we talk about? Hey, are you in our, in our club? We talk about, you know, having, like, we ask questions about have you been listening, actively listening to the meeting? Like, have you been? Did you listen to the people giving speeches? Did you listen to what the joke was? Did you listen to? So we have this little game, we play a little bit where we say, like, what was this person, what did this person say when they talked about their quote or anything else like that, and and I think that's, I think it's a learned skill and I don't think that it's taught in schools. I don't think listening is is necessarily taught in a way that is hey, let me make sure you heard what I was saying. You know is I'm going to say this stuff and it's your job to listen, but nobody teaches you how to actively listen, and so, yeah, so anyway, I think that there's.
Speaker 1:That's one of me. The first betrayals of trust that we learn as kids is that you can talk and people might not listen right Like right when mom, mom, mom mom, mom.
Speaker 1:Mom, you know that we desperately want to be heard and people depending, depending on personality, right, everybody learns the lesson that you won't always be heard, but I think the way people respond to that has to do with personality. So someone who's say a challenger will demand to talk until they feel heard, right, and maybe even talk some more just in case they weren't heard, whereas an introvert learns not to talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Unless they have to be heard right Like the less is more kind of approach. Others might explain it a thousand different ways and go into all the details and tell somebody says we get it, brian, you can stop now.
Speaker 2:I knew you were going that. I knew you were going to say that Like right. When you said that, I'm like oh, here it comes, here it comes.
Speaker 1:And for confession I do the same thing, Like I think all of us step into those different sort of roles, right or approaches to needing to be heard or feel heard.
Speaker 2:Or I've heard you too hard. No, no, no.
Speaker 1:We're all like this.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to me because I've had actually a recent experience with someone who was basically told I mean just flat out told me like I don't need you explain this to me, I'm hiring you to do a job, and this is the tone that they were using, by the way, and I got the message very effectively and quickly. I was like, okay, I'll give you just the information that you want. I'm not going to give, I'm not going to embellish, I'm not going to try to anticipate any questions that you might have. I'm going to give you the facts and that's all. And that was my interaction with that person. But that's exactly what you say. It's like you know, because I try to do that, I try to anticipate questions that people might have, or you know things like that, so that if they already trust you, you don't need to be transparent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's right. You can just tell them what it is and they're like okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:They trust the black box.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:They know what it's supposed to do. They don't need the details.
Speaker 2:Well, this particular person. I think it was because they said their initial statement was I do this all the time, I don't need you to explain it to me, so here, just give me the information I need. So I was like okay, you do it all the time and guess what happened, got messed up, anyway.
Speaker 1:The names are changed to protect the innocent. Yeah, exactly, the names are mentioned in this anyway. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's good for, like I said, our working relations. We're going to do one more episode of this trust stuff and that's going to be our bonus episode and we'll get a little personal with it Personal trust levels. Why do we have to talk softly when we're I don't know All right. Circle variety Next time. Yeah, exactly At the end of these episodes I just say next time. I don't say see you or hear you or anything, all right, bye.
Speaker 1:I'll be the next time.