Dave Stahoviak (3:55)

What was it like after that happened? I mean, a tough conversation, of course, but then the weeks and months after that, what was the environment like amongst your team?

Minda Hartz (4:05)

I think that obviously, I'm sure there was still some anxieties, but I think that instead of waiting for a shoe to drop, they all ready kind of knew what the shoe looked like, you know, in a sense. And we all kind of knew that because just as they weren't experiencing increases, some of the income that I was getting, I wasn't even paying myself because I wanted to make sure that they were okay. That was really important to me. And we just continued to have those conversations. I would check in a little more frequently than I might have in the past. And then I also was trying to create incentivizing opportunities to where, okay, I'm not able to give you this merit increase this year, but if you help think about some new ideas or pitch to certain organizations, then I'll give you a certain percentage. So I was really trying to be thoughtful in terms of how do I continue to build trust even during tough times.

Dave Stahoviak (4:58)

You always bring so much of yourself into your work. And you write in the book. When I was in high school, there was this popular saying, you ain't gotta lie to kick it back. Then it meant you didn't have to perpetrate as someone that you're not, and you didn't have to flex like you have a certain status so other people would befriend you or think you're cool. The same applies in the workplace. You ain't Gotta lie about what's happening. The employees can handle the truth. I think about those words. And a lot of leaders, I think, don't feel like they're not being truthful. They assume either consciously or unconsciously, that sometimes withholding or shielding some information or context that they think that they're helping. And it's just a dangerous path for us to go down, isn't it?

Minda Hartz (5:51)

It's very dangerous. I also think what's important about transparency is also admitting when you don't have all the information or you can't give everybody all of the information that's also being transparent to say, hey, these things are happening. I know you've seen that we're laying off certain individuals. I know that reorgs are taking place and I don't have any more information to give. But I do have an open door. And if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. But to pretend that there's nothing to see here or to pretend that people don't have questions, I think that's the slippery slope. Right. Because transparency isn't just, I'm going to tell you what's happening A to Z. It's also saying, hey, I can't provide this information right now, but I need you to trust in me that when I have information that's necessary for you, I'm going to let you know. And that eases people's tension just a little bit to say, okay, now I can just breathe a little more for another hour. Right. Knowing that you see me. You're humanizing my experience.

Dave Stahoviak (6:49)

You know, as you said that, I was thinking about the distinction between us and how we often think about transparency. At least I often do. And I often hear leaders using this language of like, transparency is like saying whatever there is to be said about whatever information that there is. And yes, of course it is that. And to what you said, it's also transparency about what information isn't there, what news there isn't, what decisions have not yet been made. And I think sometimes we assume that, okay, if I don't have any information to give, I'm not going to say anything, or maybe I'm just going to say something really generic and yet being really clear about where the blank spots are actually also really helpful, sometimes even more helpful than the information itself.

Minda Hartz (7:41)

Absolutely. I mean, because then people have a little more information. We're not pretending that there's no fire that they're seeing. You know, the smoke is in the air. And so I think again, as leaders, as colleagues, it's Our duty to demonstrate transparency. Because the reality is if we're not transparent on either side of the coin, then we're eroding trust. Right? And at a time like this where we want people to be productive and we want them to be transparent with us, we have to demonstrate and role model what good looks like.

Dave Stahoviak (8:15)

And that leads to such a critical word. You surface so much in your work right now, which is reciprocity. And you mentioned this in the book. There's, there's this unwritten rule. I mean some places it is actually written, but there's sort of this unwritten rule that like you're going to show up and be present in the workplace, that if you're working from home, you're doing the work of the organization during the time you're supposed to be doing it, you're not going to steal things from the organization. Like we have sort of these like just base assumptions. And yet when I think about the word reciprocity, sometimes we just don't have that same context of transparency on the side of leaders and managers, do we?

Minda Hartz (8:56)

We don't. It's almost like a one sided relationship. And when we're talking about trust, trust is a two way street. So if we expect our staff or direct reports to be transparent with when they can't meet a deadline or they weren't able to hop on the zoom at the particular time or whatever the case may be, or they need a little more extra pto, we want them to be transparent and have clarity with us and be honest. So why wouldn't we want to provide that too? And I think honesty equals honesty, right? Transparency begets transparency. And so I think again, we have to role model what a new type of workplace looks like. We talk a lot, Dave, about the future of work and we talk about AI. But what's just as important is that human element. And part of that is having conversations. And again, even when it's hard, because I know a lot of us are conflict averse, so we don't even want to talk about anything remotely uncomfortable, but let's normalize being transparent. So that's the norm.

Dave Stahoviak (9:59)

Indeed. And it's also the way that, I mean if we really, even if we set aside all of the good people practices that we're going to talk about even more as this conversation goes on, if we purely look at it from the just competitive nature of organizations and businesses competing for resources and places in the marketplace, I think about AI and like how much that's leveled the playing field on so much access to Information, data entry level work in many cases, or work that interns would have been doing. The differentiator more and more is going to be the people elements, the trust elements. That's going to be, I think, even more important than it has been all this time because all the other things are going to be harder to compete on.

Minda Hartz (10:49)

Absolutely. I mean, you nailed it. And I think that's what people want. We want a workplace where I know that sometimes trust may be eroded unintentionally, but we at least want to be able to trust that our managers have our best interests in mind.

Dave Stahoviak (11:04)

You wrote a sentence in the book that I highlighted, and it says, well, actually it's two sentences. It's crucial to emphasize that transparency isn't synonymous with office gossip or speculation. It's about building trust and reducing ambiguity by providing clear, honest and timely information. And I thought about those three words and I'd love to examine both of them, or all three of them, actually, because those three. There's so much there of just starting with clarity on things. And I think about, especially in the context of clarity, roles, responsibilities, and expectations for people. And this comes up a lot. It's interesting to me, even at the senior manager, director, executive level, how often I talk to folks that feel like they have clarity in their role. That's a great starting point for transparency, isn't it?

Minda Hartz (12:02)

It is. I mean, I think we both. I know for me, I'll speak for me is I have worked jobs and I wasn't really sure what my job function was, right. Like, I got hired for one thing, but the expectation was another. And I think a lot of this lack of transparency is that we don't all have clarity and then we don't have the language to articulate, hey, I was hired as a programmer, but now I'm doing hr. Can we talk about what that looks like? And if the function has changed, can we talk about that? Can we have some clarity around that? But I think the scary part in the workplace is often the power dynamics. Right. Like, I'm fearful to maybe ask my manager about the clarity in which I'm uncertain about. Right. And then as a manager, we're like, we just want them to do the thing. So I'm not going to break it up. So I think again, there's. It's less maybe about trust issue and more of a communication crisis.

Dave Stahoviak (12:57)

Yeah, indeed. And as you were saying that, I was thinking how often it will come up in a conversation when one of our members is navigating a difficult situation with an employee or a manager, and we'll end up having a conversation about, okay, let's start with the job description. What's your job description? What's their job description? And of course there's always other duties as assigned job descriptions changed. But it's, it is interesting to me how often the job description doesn't exist. Like it's literally not written down anywhere, at least even as a starting point, much less how it may have morphed or changed. And I think about what a great opportunity for building trust, which I don't think we often think about that in the context of job descriptions, but boy, what a great place to start. If you don't already do that in your organization or you're not doing that for your team, or even if the organization isn't doing it as a whole, at least as a starting point for your team and your direct reports.

Minda Hartz (13:54)

Right. It's these small demonstrations of trust. Right. And transparency. Recently a friend of mine had started interviewing for a new position and on the job description it said hybrid work environment. And then once she got hired, they're like, no, we're not doing hybrid. And even in that moment, right, for about four months she didn't bring it up, but she kept kind of complaining to me about the fact that she can't trust because now we're here five days a week. And I said, you know, in order for you to do your best work and be productive, you should ask about that. Right. Maybe there's a two days a week that can be a talking point. But I think again, we kind of ruminate on these situations where we create this narrative, like, I can't trust this manager, I can't trust this company. But if we give ourselves permission to have a certain conversation, then we might get the answers. And maybe it's not necessarily trust wasn't necessarily the issue, but it's lack of follow through or something else underneath the hood.

Dave Stahoviak (14:56)

Yeah. Or someone for a very reasonable reason, in their own mind, in a leadership role, made a change to a policy or a job description, but never really updated anyone or never really communicated that. And again, it's one of those things like I don't think people mean poorly or mean to leave that impression. But like your friend, boy, it all of a sudden you're like, wait, what happened? I got hired for this role. It even says this in the job description. And then all of a sudden I'm doing something differently and no one ever explained it.

Minda Hartz (15:27)

Exactly. And just to drill down into that. So this whole time she's thinking, oh, you know, I don't know if I could stay here because they've already started eroding my trust. And I said, well you, you know, have a conversation, find out. And she ended up having a conversation. And, and the scenario that she created in her mind based off of her experience wasn't actually the case. The person who wrote the job description was no longer there and nobody knew that they were supposed to be hybrid. So it was all of this miscommunication. But when we initiate conversations that invite transparency in, then they were able to have a two way conversation. And I think oftentimes in the workplace it's just again closing this expectation gap. She had an expectation of her employer and they had no idea what that was. Right?

Dave Stahoviak (16:13)

Yeah. And actually couldn't have known given the situation. I mean it just comes right back to that clarity. And especially I think about it from there's of course investment in both sides in any relationship and when the one of the people in that relationship has power and control, I think it's the onus is on that person, especially if they're the leader manager, to take the first step and to open up the door for clarity and expectations. And that's where if this isn't clear in your organization, if there's not job descriptions, if there's not clarity in some way of like what that looks like, what an, what an interesting opportunity to open up, especially right now when like there's so much change happening in the world. So helpful to just begin there as a starting point.

Minda Hartz (17:00)

Right. And these are things that we could do today. Right? You don't need a million dollar initiative to do this. These are demonstrations of trust that we can implement right now.

Dave Stahoviak (17:09)

Yeah, indeed. Okay, so one of those other three words was honesty. And I was thinking about it because literally an hour before we are having this conversation, I got an email from the employee development department in our state saying and the headline was, are you thinking of laying off people? Which they're of course sending out. Because a lot of people are running into that reality in organizations with the economy changing right now. And I think about that in the context of honesty because there are times that we're all in roles as leaders where we have access to information about something that's coming, for example, a layoff and we can't really talk about it. And so there's an aspect of that where it butts up against a bit on transparency. And I'm curious, like when you are either if you've been in that situation or when you're advising organizations on how to navigate that. How do you bridge that gap between knowing that there's something coming and yet not quite being able to say something but wanting to?

Minda Hartz (18:20)

Right. I mean, if you're a good leader, then you want to make sure that your people are taken care of. You want to have their back. Right? But to your point, sometimes our hands are tied with some of the information that we can provide. But I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier is, okay, I know that this is coming and this might impact a few different people on my team in different ways. What can I do as a leader to empower them to maybe upskill in the meantime, provide maybe LinkedIn learning premium memberships? You know, what can I do? What coaching can I provide to. To provide more tools in their toolkit so when this does come, they are better suited to navigate this. And I think there's certain things that we can do to prepare. We don't have to bury our head in the sand. We don't have to give them a blueprint of a countdown calendar, but we can again, remember that they're human first and employee second. And there are certain things that we can do or resources we can provide to make sure that they are prepared for when those storms come. And I think that as a leader, part of our job is to be a coach. And if people stay in that position or they move on, we should still be providing them with tools that they can do their best work wherever they might land.

Dave Stahoviak (19:35)

And the beauty of it is that's a great thing to be doing even when times are great. Right. Like all the things you just said, the investment in coaching and upskilling. And I think one of the things that's so nice about that is you can do that very genuinely and say, this is important for us to be doing as a team, for our organization, for your career, regardless. And yes, there may be another reason down the road why I'm doing this now, but that doesn't need to be shared. But the other pieces are so critical.

Minda Hartz (20:09)

They're crucial to the success of the team. And again, I think that the team members can be like, okay, now I see why we were doing this. I appreciate that. Instead of, you know, we're doing all these team building activities and we're doing the trust falls and then next thing you know, somebody's laid off and then nobody talks about it, right? And then those people are sitting there with survivors killed like, wait a second, I know you had to have known this before today at 8am Right. And again, we may not be able to say all the things, but we can humanize the people's experiences a little bit better. And I think as leaders, it's part of our job description, even if it is unwritten.

Dave Stahoviak (20:51)

Indeed. Timeliness, the third word in that sentence from earlier. And I had a situation years ago where I was in line for a promotion and my manager at the time sat down with me and we were talking about just long term planning and he said, oh, you're next in line for the next position that opens up. And I thought, cool, right? And then about a month or two later, we sat down for another conversation and someone else had just gotten promoted in the organization into that spot in the organization. And I remember bringing it up with him because I was so confused because it just didn't. He'd always been very truthful and forthright with me on everything. And I asked him like, oh, you had mentioned this and this person got promoted. And he said, oh, well, she was the next one in line. And I think he didn't remember telling me two months before something really different. And even to this day, like when I reflect on the situation, I don't think he was trying to be untruthful or manipulative or anything because we had a very great relationship outside of that one interaction. And yet something had changed at some point either in me and her, the strategy of the organization, and he totally forgot and the timeliness of that just never got communicated. And I think about that situation now and looking back of while I still had trust with him overall, I no longer had trust in the context of career movement and next steps because the timeliness piece fell through. And it's one of those things. The reason I mention is because the context of timeliness, I don't think it would ever have even come up on his radar screen. But because of the gap of information, it impacted me in a really substantial way at the time. And I still remember it 20, 25 years later.

Minda Hartz (22:50)

Yeah, I think that's a great example of timeliness. Right? Because one definition of transparency is a practice of information sharing. And if you don't provide that information in a timely manner, then we're not being transparent. Right. Because to have that conversation a year after and the whole time you kind of wondered what happened and then maybe they share it with you. It's nice to have the information, but it would have been helpful 12 months ago, you know, So I think again, us being timely, I had a manager in my former life, we were about to have A layoff and some around of furloughs. And he was the manager that was going to tell you, this is what's coming. And he put his neck out there for us. He let us know six months before the layoffs were coming. And that was very timely. Right, because that gave each and every one of us on his team agency to be able to say, okay, am I going to stay here? Am I going to start saving? And that was timely. Had he told us that the day before they were coming, we just wouldn't have been able to prepare for, you know, like Game of Thrones. He let us know winter was coming, but had he told us the day before, the morning before the layoffs, that wouldn't have been timely.

Dave Stahoviak (24:01)

I'm always reminded from the Difficult Conversations book the message that intent does not equal impact. And often we do intend well, and yet when we don't think about what you just said, the timeliness of information and the proactiveness and the honesty that what lands with people is often something very different, sometimes the exact opposite of what we intend. And speaking of your career, you mentioned Chuck in your book, and you have mentioned him in other books too, of being someone who was really great at this on Follow Through. And I'm wondering if you could share just how he showed up for you on Follow through that's worked so well in your career.

Minda Hartz (24:44)

Yes. Shout out to Chuck. I'm going to make sure I send him this recording. But I met Chuck early in my career as a consultant and we met at a networking event. Long story short, I had only been in my career maybe like five years or so at that time, and I told him about my future aspirations and he was very well connected in the industry we were in. And he told me the day that we met, I'm really impressed with you. If there's anything I could do to be helpful, let me know. And eventually I reached out to him and said, you know, I'd like to apply for this position, but I don't have the exact amount of years of experience. And he said, well, I know somebody there and I believe that you can do the job, so send me your information, apply for it, and I will reach out to this person. And he followed through every step of the way he reached out to the person at this company. Within a few months, I had an interview. And just every step along the way, even when it was time to, he didn't just stop there by helping me get the interview, but once I started to interview, we went over how to negotiate my Salary Right when it was time for other things to take place, he was always there to follow through on the things that he said. He said from day one, dave, I am committed to making sure you have a successful career. And at every stage of that, he always showed up. And follow through is just such a great trust language. And it's something that could have easily been eroded in our relationship for him to say he wanted to help me. And then, you know how we all maybe sometimes do, you email a bunch of times and you never hear back. Right. He didn't do that. And to this day, decades later, he's still one of the people that I trust the most to have my back.

Dave Stahoviak (26:33)

Thank you for sharing that, and I'm so glad you did, because I think a lot of us think of ourselves as Chuck of we say, I am that person, I want to be, and I am that person. I am the kind of person that when someone asks for support, I. I'm going to give it. I'm going to espouse that. I'm going to say that in conversation. And then when the time actually comes to make the connection, send a letter, help out, speak up when that person isn't present. It's not that consciously people make a different decision sometimes, I think, but it's just don't get around to it. They haven't thought through actually the time and effort that it would take of making that commitment. And I know I have done that before, as much as I've tried not to. I've said, oh, I'm do this, I'll support you. And then I've dropped the ball on following through on something. And I'm curious, like, when you see people who actually do follow through on what they say they're going to do, which is a smaller minority, of course, what is it that they do that's different as a practice, and how do they make that happen? Consistently?

Minda Hartz (27:45)

You hit it on the head. I mean, follow through is being consistent at the lowest common denominator. It's keeping our word. Right. And I think, again to your point, nobody says intentionally, hey, I want to just keep eroding trust with you by not following through. But life happens and situations occur, and sometimes we don't follow through. But I think what helps with it is also kind of like we talked about with transparency, when we're not able to follow through, we say that. Right. I thought I was able to make the connection. I apologize. It's been months. I want to acknowledge that and allow me to make that introduction by the End of the day or I thought that I could and now I'm not in a position to do that. That's also following through. And I think if we get in a practice of keeping our word, rather it turns out the way that the other party wants it to or not, we're still keeping trust as the center because to pretend again to sweep it under the rug and then continuously say let me know if I can help you, but never actually demonstrating the help. We're severing a relationship that might have been built on trust. And I think trust isn't just a one time event, it's a lifestyle. And that's what I appreciated about Chuck. It wasn't just the one and done, which sometimes that's all we need. But he was committed to me and my career. And I think that each and every one of us can start to take an X ray on our follow through game because there's somebody on the other end of that who is waiting on us. And because we want to keep our word, let's make sure that we're flexing that muscle each and every day.

Dave Stahoviak (29:23)

Yeah, indeed. And I think a lot of us get into, especially in this listening community, people are helpful coach, like want to be supportive and sometimes will say more than they really have the capacity to do. And one of the mental tricks I've been experimenting with over the last couple years and it seems to help is when I'm about to make an offer to help someone or support them is I think to myself, if I needed to do the work that's going to be involved in that today, would I still make this commitment or this offer? Like if I needed to step aside and spend 20 or 30 minutes making the connection this afternoon that maybe I'm promising in six months, would I still do it? And I find that that helps catch me sometimes of then not offering to help or support because that's actually better than me saying something that sounds good in the moment and I'm not going to remember six months later, but boy, the person who I said it to is sure going to remember that I didn't do kind of coming back to my manager from all those years ago. He has no memory of that, but 25 years later I still remember. And I know that I've played that role and the dynamic on the other side too. And so it's just been a helpful mindset shift to help me prevent a little bit of that.

Minda Hartz (30:44)

Absolutely. And the reality is most of the time I probably say 8 out of 10 times the person on the other end is probably not going to tell us, hey, Minda, you didn't follow through, right? There's those few who will. And then we keep seeing them and still not saying anything about it because it's not top of mind. Meanwhile, the trust that they once had in us is kind of eroding. Maybe not to a large degree, but they're still thinking about it. And so I think again, thinking through and being intentional about how we're engaging with people again, even if you can't fulfill the commitment, saying that and articulating that is also following through.

Dave Stahoviak (31:22)

When I read the memo years ago, you did such a brilliant job of capturing what this dynamic is like in organizations when trust isn't there on the side of the employee, the person who doesn't have as much power, and I think of the progression of just your career since then, of now both being the person who is now leading an organization on the other side, and also now speaking, advising so many organizations on doing this better from a leadership management standpoint. And I'm curious, when you think about trust and having both of these perspectives and having really gone in deep on both sides of this coin in this dynamic, what, if anything, have you changed your mind on? On it.

Minda Hartz (32:10)

What I've come to learn is that trust isn't just about creating it ourself. It's about making sure that every decision that we make is enhancing trust instead of eroding trust. And sometimes we enter the office at 9am and we might say something or shoot out an email without thinking. And by 9:15, trust is gone. Right? I used to think that trust wasn't able to be repaired. But what I've changed my mind about is that by demonstrating one of these seven languages that I write about in the book, I believe that we can rebuild trust. We can make trust great again. Because when trust is broken, it doesn't just impact productivity, it impacts people. And I'm really getting back to the center of reminding ourselves and humanizing every person's experience because we don't have a crystal ball to say, what does my colleague need from me to make sure trust is present. So we have to have these conversations. And so I believe that we can have better conversations rooted in trust. And when we do make a mistake, then we can course correct. Because again, when trust is present, we're more productive in the workplace, less burnout, and we'll have retained more of our great employees.

Dave Stahoviak (33:26)

As you mentioned, transparency, just one of the seven languages for trust in the book. So much more there I Hope folks will go grab talk to me. Nice the seven Trust Languages for a better Workplace Minda, always a pleasure to be in your work. Thank you so much for your time.

Minda Hartz (33:42)

Thank you Dave.

Dave Stahoviak (33:50)

If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I'd recommend one of them is episode 539, the Path toward trusting Relationships. Edgar Schein and Peter Schein were my guests on that episode. We talked about their framework, how to think about relationships that move towards trust. Of course that's essential for transparency. They have a wonderful roadmap to follow in thinking about building those relationships where trust is at the center. Episode 539 for that also recommended episode 655 how to help difficult conversations go better Sheila Heen, one of the co authors of the book Difficult Conversations, which many of us have used for years and years, walks us through the process for helping difficult conversations to go just a bit better, how to begin the mindset to bring and of course so much of transparency is about the willingness and the ability to lean in on those difficult conversations. Again, that's episode 655. And then finally episode 708 preparing for a conversation with someone you don't trust. Charles Feltman was my guest on that episode and we talked about the reality that almost all of us face as leaders on a somewhat regular basis is we are going to need to have a conversation, sometimes a difficult one, with someone we don't have a lot of trust with, how to actually start and approach that conversation and prepare for it. Episode 7 Away Charles has wonderful suggestions for us on where to begin all of those episodes. Of course you can find on the coaching4leaders.com website and I'm inviting you today to set up your free membership@coaching4leaders.com it's going to give you access to the entire library of episodes I've aired since 2011, searchable by topic. You can access all of the episodes on all the podcast apps. They're all freely available, the entire library. However, on the apps like Spotify and Apple podcasts, you can't search by topic very easily, and so we've made it even easier on the website to be able to find what you're looking for through the free membership plus several other key benefits. One of them is the free suite of audio courses that are available on the website. And one of those audio courses is 10 Ways to Empower the people you lead. I walk you through in that course some of the key lessons to take the most immediate practical actions to become a better leader. It is one of the about dozen of the audio courses that are available inside of the free membership. For free access to all of that, just go over to coaching4leaders.com and you'll be able to set up your free membership. Are you a talent development or human resources leader that's looking for a coach for an internal client? We have partnered with some of the top coaches in the world, including a number of past podcast guests. If you'd like us to help make an introduction to the coach you're seeking right now, go over to our Expert partners page@coachingforleaders.com partners. Tell us what you're seeking in a coach and we'll help you to make the connection that is right for you and your organization. Again, coaching4leaders.com partners that's also the best place to go if you're looking for an expert partner on any kind of topic. We can hopefully make the introduction for you. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday, I'm glad to welcome Sabina Nawaz to the show. We're going to be talking about the problem leaders have with authenticity closely related to this topic today. Join me for that conversation with Sabina and hope you have a great weekend.