ReThinking: Fixing the trust crisis with Rachel Botsman

Summary

Podcast Summary: Worklife with Adam Grant – "Fixing the Trust Crisis with Rachel Botsman"

Episode Information:

• Title: Fixing the Trust Crisis with Rachel Botsman
• Host: Adam Grant
• Guest: Rachel Botsman
• Release Date: January 14, 2025

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Introduction (02:14 - 03:19)

Adam Grant opens the episode by introducing Rachel Botsman, a renowned thought leader on trust. He highlights her extensive work, including her popular TED talks and her new audiobook, How to Trust and Be Trusted. Grant emphasizes the timeliness of Botsman's insights, especially in a world grappling with a pervasive trust crisis across various institutions.

Notable Quote:

“Rachel Botsman, my favorite thought leader on trust. She teaches at Oxford... you’ll never see your job the same way again.”
— Adam Grant [02:20]

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Understanding Trust (03:19 - 06:21)

Botsman challenges common misconceptions about trust, starting with the belief that transparency inherently leads to increased trust. She argues that trust is more accurately defined as a confident relationship with the unknown, contrasting it with the notion that trust equates to predictability.

Notable Quote:

“Trust is a belief and that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. Trust is the opposite of knowing what to expect.”
— Rachel Botsman [05:22]

Grant shares his personal experiences where his inherent trust allows him to take risks, such as investing in startups or helping strangers without feeling significant personal risk.

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Trust and Risk (06:21 - 10:16)

The conversation delves into how trust varies with different levels of risk. Botsman explains that people are more willing to trust when the potential loss is minimal, but trust becomes more complex as the stakes increase. She introduces the concept of a "trust pause," advocating for deliberate consideration in high-stakes situations to avoid impulsive decisions driven by desperation or pressure.

Notable Quote:

“If you don't have that trust and there is that uncertainty, things really start to break down.”
— Rachel Botsman [06:58]

Grant references studies showing that highly trusting individuals are better at detecting deceit, suggesting that trust fosters a more nuanced understanding of human behavior.

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Contextual Trust (10:16 - 16:02)

Botsman emphasizes the importance of context in trust. She illustrates this with the example of Amazon, where trust is high regarding the company's reliability and competence in logistics but low in areas like employee treatment and tax practices. This differentiation underscores that trust is not monolithic but varies across different domains of behavior and performance.

Notable Quote:

“Context is everything. Asking someone what you trust them to do and what you don't trust them to do is a really powerful differentiator.”
— Rachel Botsman [10:47]

Botsman critiques generalized trust metrics, arguing that they lack the necessary context to be meaningful and effective.

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Character Components of Trust (16:02 - 24:13)

The discussion shifts to the psychological dimensions of trust, specifically focusing on the character elements of benevolence (referred to as care) and integrity. Botsman distinguishes between competence and reliability, viewing them as separate facets essential for building trust.

Notable Quote:

“Trust is not transparency. It's integrity and reliability. There’s nothing more important than following through on your commitments.”
— Rachel Botsman [34:10]

Grant and Botsman explore how empathy differs from care, with Botsman advocating for an active form of care that moves beyond passive understanding to tangible support and action.

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Transparency vs. Trust (28:20 - 34:23)

Botsman critiques the overemphasis on transparency as a panacea for trust issues. She argues that while transparency involves information disclosure, it does not necessarily address the underlying causes of distrust, such as misaligned incentives or lack of accountability. Instead, Botsman advocates for rebuilding trust through local, community-focused efforts that prioritize meaningful interactions and accountability.

Notable Quote:

“Secrecy isn't the enemy of trust, it's deception. Transparency becomes surveillance when it’s not addressing the root issues.”
— Rachel Botsman [32:57]

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Repairing Trust (34:23 - 37:08)

The conversation moves to strategies for repairing broken trust. Botsman emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes rather than applying temporary fixes like increased transparency. She advocates for open, honest conversations that acknowledge past breaches and seek to understand differing perspectives, fostering genuine reconciliation and rebuilding of trust.

Notable Quote:

“There are solutions to a trust crisis that don't need to call for transparency in a relationship. It requires an uncomfortable conversation around why you don't trust that person.”
— Rachel Botsman [34:33]

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Trust in Professional Settings (37:08 - 44:29)

Botsman discusses the dynamics of trust in professional environments, highlighting the significance of integrity over other traits. She suggests that trust is built through consistent reliability and principled actions rather than superficial qualities like charisma or empathy. The dialogue touches on the complexities of trust within large organizations versus individual relationships.

Notable Quote:

“Trust really only becomes useful when you put it in context.”
— Rachel Botsman [10:47]

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Final Thoughts and Takeaways (44:29 - 47:31)

As the episode concludes, Botsman and Grant reflect on the multifaceted nature of trust. Grant summarizes the key insights, emphasizing that integrity and reliability are foundational to trust, while transparency alone is insufficient. Botsman reiterates the need for context-specific trust-building measures and the importance of addressing underlying systemic issues to foster genuine trust.

Notable Quote:

“The key to trust is not transparency. It's integrity and reliability. There's nothing more important than following through on your commitments and making it clear that people can count on you when it counts most.”
— Adam Grant [47:07]

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Conclusion

This episode of Worklife with Adam Grant offers a deep dive into the complexities of trust with Rachel Botsman, challenging conventional wisdom and providing actionable insights for individuals and organizations alike. By emphasizing the importance of context, integrity, and reliability, Botsman provides a nuanced framework for understanding and rebuilding trust in various facets of life and work.

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Notable Quotes Recap

1. Adam Grant [02:20]:

   “Rachel Botsman, my favorite thought leader on trust. She teaches at Oxford... you’ll never see your job the same way again.”

2. Rachel Botsman [05:22]:

   “Trust is a belief and that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. Trust is the opposite of knowing what to expect.”

3. Rachel Botsman [06:58]:

   “If you don't have that trust and there is that uncertainty, things really start to break down.”

4. Rachel Botsman [10:47]:

   “Context is everything. Asking someone what you trust them to do and what you don't trust them to do is a really powerful differentiator.”

5. Rachel Botsman [34:10]:

   “Trust is not transparency. It's integrity and reliability. There’s nothing more important than following through on your commitments.”

6. Rachel Botsman [32:57]:

   “Secrecy isn't the enemy of trust, it's deception. Transparency becomes surveillance when it’s not addressing the root issues.”

7. Adam Grant [47:07]:

   “The key to trust is not transparency. It's integrity and reliability. There's nothing more important than following through on your commitments and making it clear that people can count on you when it counts most.”

---

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the discussions on trust, its complexities, and strategies for fostering it effectively.

Transcript

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[Madison H.]

Away is a good time to have a conversation about trust.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking my Podcast on the Science of what Makes Us Tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. My guest today is Rachel Botsman, my favorite thought leader on trust. She teaches at Oxford. Her TED talks have millions of views and she regularly motivates me to rethink my views.

[Madison H.]

If I could blow up a misconception about trust, it would be that transparency leads to more trust. If you make that value in your organization, I would seriously question, like, what are you promising?

[Adam Grant]

Rachel is a dynamic speaker and a relentlessly curious conversationalist. She's the host of a new audiobook, how to Trust and Be Trusted. It's perfectly timed to a moment when so many people and institutions are facing a crisis of trust.

[Madison H.]

There are a lot of misconceptions about trust out there, so let's start to blow some up by doing a quick exercise together. I'd now like you to think about three people in your life. It could be a friend, a family member, a work colleague, someone famous. It really doesn't matter. Now, what I want you to think about is who do you trust the most of those three people? Who do you really trust? I know it's a bit odd to think about, but nobody's going to know, not even me.

[Adam Grant]

Rachel Botsman, do you have trust issues?

[Madison H.]

Do I have trust issues?

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Madison H.]

I think everyone has trust issues in different contexts. I find it very easy to trust myself around creative risks and financial risks weirdly, but find it quite tricky to take physical risks. So I think trust issues doesn't have to look like relationships that you struggle with or that it's difficult to make friends. I think a lot of trust issues stem from your relationship with risk and look really different in different people. So from a young age, I was really interested in how people selected friends in bullies, in the. The relationships between adults and children and how that power dynamic worked. Bad boyfriends broke my trust, but that's. We're not going there, so that's a different story.

[Adam Grant]

I think that might also be a universal human experience.

[Madison H.]

And good for you as well.

[Adam Grant]

Maybe.

[Madison H.]

Maybe.

[Adam Grant]

I really like your definition of trust. And it's different from, I think, how most people think about trust. Describe it for me.

[Madison H.]

So the way I define trust is that it's a belief and that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. There's more definitions of trust than there are of love. A lot of trust definitions, they define it as knowing what to expect, knowing what the outcome is. And I think trust is the opposite of that. That's why trust and uncertainty are so intrinsically linked. If you have high trust, you can navigate uncertainty. You can be really comfortable with the unknown. And the reason why. When I started to see trust through that lens, it really started to reframe everything because I started to Understand why there was a relationship between high trust cultures and innovation, why there was a relationship between high trust families and openness, why there was a relationship between people that deeply trusted one another and could disagree. It's because of that confidence in the unknown.

[Adam Grant]

As a relatively trusting person, I've done things when it comes to, you know, whether it's helping a stranger who reaches out for an introduction or advice, or, you know, taking a gamble on someone I don't know that well who has a startup idea and investing in it. Those have never felt like risky decisions to me because I'm confident that even the worst case scenario is not going to hurt me in a meaningful way. And I think that that captures for me the lived experience of saying, yeah, I trust that even if this person wants to take advantage of me, I can protect myself against that.

[Madison H.]

You can trust people when the worst outcome is actually pretty low risk to you, whether that's physical risk or financial risk. But more trust is required when that risk level goes up. Which is why, you know, in times of uncertainty, in times of chaos, when there's lots of unknowns, that's when you need more trust in your life. And it's when you don't have that trust and there is that uncertainty that things really start to break down.

[Adam Grant]

One of my favorite studies of trust asked the question of whether people who are highly trusting are Pollyannas. This is Carter and Weber, I think, are the authors. They show that people who tend to trust others more are actually better at detecting lies because they get lied to more often. But they also see the full range of what human beings are capable of. If you are, if you are somebody who doesn't trust others, you're constantly guarded and you don't get to see the full spectrum. Whereas if you are trusting, you get to see people who are kind and honest and you get to see people who are deceitful and manipulative. And observing that, I guess that complexity and that variety helps you get more attuned to what is trustworthy and what isn't. And I'd love to hear you riff on that a little bit.

[Madison H.]

And I think in that study they tested in interview context, right, as well, that people were better tuning into trust signals so they could detect when someone was lying or slightly embellishing the truth. Which I think is really interesting, that once you open yourself up, and this is where I think the vulnerability piece comes in with trust, like once you allow yourself to be exposed to different situations and different people, you become a better read as to whether Someone is telling the truth or whether someone is lying versus being really guarded and shut down. I think there is a difference between giving your trust away too easily and people who make fast trust decisions. So this is something I've personally had to learn, that I have gained so much in life by being a trusting person. I would say the positives far outweigh the negatives, both professionally and personally. I think it makes me a better friend, I think it makes me a better parent, a better teacher, all those things. But what I used to do is make very quick decisions in high stakes environments. And that is something where I think we need to recognize that we need to slow down, that we don't have enough information to make a decision about this person. You may have seen a study on this, but poor hiring decisions that were made due to speed and the damage that caused. There must be a high correlation where people went with intuition or they did those terrible reference checks where you're just reinforcing what you know. So I think this idea of knowing, I call it a trust pause, but being really conscious of when in your life you make a quick decision and what really drives that. So for me it's when I'm under pressure. I really need to fill a gap, I'm a little bit desperate that drives the poor decision making.

[Adam Grant]

This goes to something else that you've highlighted that I've found really helpful, which is to be a little more nuanced about what do I trust someone to do? I keep thinking about this with Elon Musk. I trust him a lot more on hardware than software, even before he bought Twitter. He's very good at building rockets and electric cars. I don't think he knows that much about programming, let alone managing a tool for people to communicate and share information.

[Madison H.]

I have many pet peeves around trust, but the generalized way we talk about trust in the world today is just not helpful. So context is everything. Asking someone what you trust them to do and what you don't trust them to do is a really powerful differentiator. And like you said, there's people you might not describe as trustworthy, like Elon Musk, but they are very competent at certain things. So trust really only becomes useful when you put it in context. Which is why when you see, with all due respect, these trust barometers and these surveys or companies that try and measure trust in a very general generalized way, I question their usefulness because it's missing context if you bring it down into a personal level. Context has also really helped me in terms of Understanding narrative. So sometimes when you think there's a breakdown of trust, it's because you don't understand the context or the narrative around the other person, what their intention, what their motive is. And if you actually ask that question, you realize that they didn't intend to do any harm. There was just something going on in their life.

[Adam Grant]

This speaks to so many different levels of trust. It's true for people, it's true for organizations. I think you've used an example of Amazon and your trust in them and your distrust in them. Walk me through that one, because I found that illuminating.

[Madison H.]

So I do this thing sometimes when I'm speaking to audiences and I ask the audience to clap for the brand that they trust the most. And 99% of people clap for Amazon. And the reason why, when you ask the audience, is they start talking about how well, you know, Amazon delivered the packages on time, and it's really easy to return these things. And then I say, well, is that convenience or is that trust? And there's a pause and then you say, well, do you trust that Amazon treats all their employees fairly, or do you trust that they pay their fair share of taxes? And it's a completely different conversation. It sounds so obvious when you say it, but I think it is a real shift in the way you think about trust, because I know I've been skiing with you and I don't trust your sense of direction, and that is.

[Adam Grant]

Neither do I.

[Madison H.]

But that is really useful to know, right? I mean, I find it refreshing because I can trust you with so many things and you're so competent, but the fact that you have no sense of direction, but that's really useful to know, right? If you know those things about people and that if you can really own those things and say, don't trust me to drive you. I'm a really bad driver. Don't trust me for directions. And sometimes I don't think we're honest enough about that. So this idea of context and trust really is key.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, you definitely shouldn't ever trust me for directions anywhere, including to places I've been to many times. But I think that a lot of people struggle with this. I think they struggle with it in part because they only are thinking about trust in the domain in which a promise has been made or where they've had a chance to observe the behavior, right? So in the Amazon context, I can trust Amazon because that's what they stand for, reliable, fast customer service. And that customer obsession is something they deliver on over and over and over again. And I'm not thinking about maybe the more character related elements of trust.

[Madison H.]

I'm not a fan of everything Amazon does, but I think it's very smart in terms of brand strategy and even culture strategy is that they are very clear about what they are and they're very clear about what they're not. And you know, if you talk to Amazon leadership team, they won't really talk about sustainability and they're quite comfortable with that because their brand proposition is purely built around the capability side of trust. It's purely built around competence and especially reliability. Like that is the number one trait. And this is where I think a lot of brands and companies and cultures go wrong, is they make it too complicated. They try and think that they have to be everything, all these dimensions of trust.

[Adam Grant]

In psychology, I was trained to think about the character element as having a benevolence component and an integrity component. Where the benevolence is, I have good intentions toward you, I care about your interests, and integrity is I have good principles and you can count on me to basically walk my talk.

[Madison H.]

Yeah, I mean, integrity. I've always found the idea of alignment really useful, like visually useful. So like if you imagine two lines, right, and when they are lined up, you've got shared interests, you've got shared motives, you've got really importantly shared intentions and expectations, right. That leads to integrity. It's interesting, you use benevolence, I use empathy. And I'd love to understand like how you think about those two things differently. Empathy, I think, is a really tricky one that many organizations are struggling with, like what it means to be empathetic and whether that empathy just extends in a professional context or where that line is around being empathetic to what's going on in someone's life. So that is really interesting in terms of leadership and the character side of trust, how that trait is changing.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I think I've become less enthusiastic about empathy over time, in part because of Paul Bloom's research showing that you don't have to feel other people's feelings to be concerned about their feelings. And sometimes feeling others feelings actually leads to biased and distorted decision making. When you prioritize the people you empathize with over those that you don't, which tends to mean you favor your in group and you don't show enough compassion for your out group. Um, it also means that sometimes you get overloaded by empathic concern and you end up managing your own sort of like pain and distress as opposed to reaching out to the person who's suffering. So I think. I think if I were to get rid of all the jargon, I would just say we're looking for care and integrity as the two dimensions of character.

[Madison H.]

I love care and caring because it's active. Right? To me, when you. You say you care about someone, you have to move from that state of just listening to support and action. And sometimes that's missing. When we about empathy.

[Adam Grant]

One of the things that I've found troubling over probably the past decade is whenever I've done surveys asking people how much do they trust their manager or their CEO, I found when I measure the care and integrity components, they correlate so highly that they're basically redundant. And so if you think that your boss is caring, you also think they have integrity and vice versa. And I think for me, that's a massive halo effect. The people who are kind to you are not always honest with you.

[Rachel Botsman]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

And the people who are candid with you don't always care about you. And I think we're too quick to lump those two qualities together and assume they go hand in hand.

[Madison H.]

You can care about someone and not necessarily be on their side. You can be a kind and charismatic person, but not be willing to put your neck out for people. I mean, that's another kind people. And charismatic people are often really concerned about their reputation. So stepping out that zone and really backing someone is key. I know you shouldn't pick traits, but I do think the deepest trait is integrity. If I don't believe someone has integrity, I cannot trust them, even if they score ridiculously high on the other things. So I'm always looking for that trait first. And again, I think it's something can really change how you show up in life and at work. Even thinking about those questions, like, how do you figure out someone's interests and motives? It has got me thinking that the caring or the empathy trait can have a louder signal. I think it's often more visible and easier to display, whereas the integrity piece takes more time and information, which is maybe why we get them conflated.

[Adam Grant]

I'm thinking about the now pretty vast literature on integrity testing in interviewing and hiring, and how a lot of it really is anchored in the idea that, to your point, you can't ask people directly, do you have integrity? Who's gonna say no to that question?

[Madison H.]

I'd love someone if they did. And then I'd be like, whoa, you've got integrity. If you said no to the question, yeah.

[Adam Grant]

And maybe that's proof that honesty and integrity can Diverge totally. I can count on you to tell me the truth, but not to do what you say you're gonna do. One of the workarounds for that is you ask people to predict others integrity. And in general, people who are suspicious about other people's principles are generally doing it because they tend to project their own lack of integrity onto others. And so people who think others are thieves, for example, are more likely to steal themselves.

[Madison H.]

So what's your favorite integrity question? Because even the question also, like, why do you want this job? That's not a great deep integrity question. Like, is there one that you find that is really revealing?

[Adam Grant]

The one that I like most is to ask what's wrong with our interview process. You've been through it, now tell us how to fix it. And I'm looking for whether the person is willing to stand up for a principle they believe in, even if it might be uncomfortable or potentially jeopardize their ability to get the job.

[Madison H.]

It's such a great question because also the way they think about design, the way they think about systems, the way they think about culture, the way they think about what's been missed about them. I love that. That's brilliant.

[Adam Grant]

It's also a learning opportunity, right? A long time ago, a lot of organizations figured out that if they wanted to serve their customers better, they should ask their customers what they wanted and what they thought of the quality of the service they were getting. Same thing here. If you want to create a better interview experience, why would you not ask people what that was like and how you can improve it?

[Madison H.]

I've often wondered about the merit of making someone really angry.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, what?

[Madison H.]

In an interview, Like, I've never seen it as a technique, but like, if you could make someone really angry or frustrated and how they responded to that situation. Oh, like we stay in one temperature, one emotion. That's where I'm getting at. In interviews, how much can you see of a person, how much they really reveal when they're in that one emotional temperature? Whereas if you go to the hotter emotions like jealousy and anger and frustration, I really don't know how you do this in a responsible way, but it's something that's really intrigued me that I think you'd get to their motivations and who they are as a person.

[Adam Grant]

I actually have been in some ways thinking about the opposite. Too many interviews are basically showing us how you perform under anxiety. And in most jobs, for most people, your baseline is not going to be extreme nervousness. And so that's not necessarily a representation of your best performance. And so what I'm always trying to do is figure out how do we dial down the anxiety so that people can can relax and put their best foot forward. I think your approach might be more palatable to say, look, you're going to feel some strong negative emotions. Why don't we convert some of the anxiety into frustration? It's a more active emotion. It tends to, to lead people to feel stronger and then let's see if they can stand up for themselves in a way that's still respectful.

[Madison H.]

I don't think it's just happening in education. You see it in the workplace as well. This idea of a comfortable culture and this ties back to trust. Right there is this conflation that high trust means comfort and it's the opposite of that. Like it's those relationships where you have high trust that you can cope with that conflict, you can cope with that discomfort and that disagreement. So how can we bring that into environment so that it comes back into the classroom, it comes back into the workplace that the first challenge, people are not taking it personally and walking away and getting defensive.

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[Adam Grant]

You have this great distinction that I think is utterly overlooked in the entire field of trust research, which is we shouldn't just look. Look at capability as unidimensional. You say there's a competence component and a reliability component. And I think we tend to lump them together. Talk to me about the virtue of splitting them apart.

[Madison H.]

I see them as so different. They're like two children. They're just different makeup. That's how different I see them. So the competence piece is the easiest to understand. And competence really is whether you have the skills, the knowledge, the resources, the experience, and even the time to do what you say you're going to do. So can you follow through? Do you actually know where your skill gaps are and do you have the humility to relay those? So that's competency. We work on that from a really young age. So you look at most education, you look at most training and development. It's built around that competency piece. Reliability is totally different. So you can have people who are highly competent and then really unreliable. And reliability has a very strong relationship to time and our respect for time. Are you someone that runs late? Are you someone that reschedules at the last minute? You know those people that you always get the email from like, I'm sorry, I'm really busy. I'm going to have to reschedule again. And then this one I find quite tricky. Are you consistent in your behaviors over time? And the reason why I find that one quite tricky is because we all show up in different ways, right, on different days. So how we feel and how we behave on a Monday is going to be different to a Thursday. But there is consistency in expectations. What people can expect, how you're going to show up, that is really, really important to trust.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I have a little bit of a problem with the way that you're talking about this because I am reliably late.

[Madison H.]

You are.

[Adam Grant]

But you know you can rely on me to show up. And you know that responsiveness is one of my core values. And I think that's what people care about. It's not whether you can count on me to be on time. You know that if you add five to 10 minutes, I will be there. And you also know that whenever you need me, I'm gonna be available and helpful. Isn't that what matters?

[Madison H.]

But you're consistent. So do you know what I mean? Like, it's a consistent expectation. And then when you do show up, it's the erratic behavior that is the issue. So not knowing how someone's going to show up my pet peeve. I think more and more people are just not replying to email. They open it like five times and then they don't reply, just reply. Like just say you're not interested or close the loop, whatever it may be. That is all tied to this trait of reliability.

[Adam Grant]

Look, I don't think we should all face pressure to be responding rapidly to everybody who reaches out. I think that's a recipe for just letting your inbox control your life. But I also think ghosting someone electronically should be considered. Unless it's like a stranger spamming you, it should be considered as rude as passing someone in the hallway and not saying hi to them.

[Madison H.]

And potentially even worse because sometimes I think when people have made an outreach to me and you can tell it's not necessarily someone I know, they've taken a risk there, right? And you can tell when someone's really invested the time to think about the email and the outreach to the email. So to not reply is really disrespectful. But I also think like what might that do to them? What might they think about their idea or their project through the non response versus just being really honest that it's not something you're interested in, it's not something that you're experienced with. But here's a recommendation or here's something you might want to read and then that person feels seen and heard, which ultimately I think is what most people want. At the end of the day, I.

[Adam Grant]

Want to talk about the crisis of trust that we're facing in the world. I think that from all the polls and surveys that I've read, it does look like we're at or near historic lows on trust in the media and journalists, on trust in government, on trust in science and scientists. And I think these major institutions are the bedrock of democratic society. And I'd love to hear your perspective on how we think about why that's happening and what we do about it.

[Madison H.]

The decline of institutional trust is probably now a 25 year trend, but rapidly accelerated over the last two years, particularly in military, judges, law, certain professions. And so much of it is tied around information and trust and information as well. And not knowing what information to trust, I wrote a book like six years ago now that was called who can you trust? And it charted this shift from what I called institutional trust to distributed trust. And it was really about this idea that for the last 150 years we had designed these systems and the leaders within them that were really top down and hierarchical and we expected people to look up and be very deferential to the people at the top. And the argument was that what technology inherently wants to do is to take that power and trust and distribute it through networks and platforms and marketplaces. Which is why you see people saying that they trust their peers on social media more than a traditional news outlet. And I still think that idea is right, but I think I've missed something really big. So from a design perspective, one of the things I'm generally interested in is whether trust can scale and that these systems have just got too big, too bureaucratic, that you cannot find any smallness within bigness, or whether these systems are now so disconnected from our emotional needs that they feel irrelevant. The complexity and the size is a huge part of the problem. And so I'm a huge believer that we have to start to find smallness within bigness. We have to revive trust at a local level, really repair the fabric of communities and the things that people can touch and see when they leave the house. And once we feel like the things working close to our lives and our homes are working, that then starts to transcend upwards into these larger institutions. So it's this top down approach to fixing trust that is not going to get us anywhere.

[Adam Grant]

This speaks to one of the most profound points that you've made about trust for me, which is about transparency. I think, particularly with government and with media I see constantly calls for, well, too many things are happening behind closed doors. We can't be in the room where it happened. So we need these institutions to be more transparent and that's the only way we can trust them. And you say, not so fast.

[Madison H.]

You know, you have to go back to the definition of trust, which is that trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. So what are we doing when we call for transparency? We're calling for visibility. We want to see inside things. We want to understand essentially it's information disclosure, right? We want to know what's going on. And it's not that I'm saying transparency is a bad thing. I think transparency can be highly effective when it's a tool to help people understand the context around a decision. So gender pay, right. We need that information disclosed so that you can drive some kind of accountability and change. But it's when transparency is more like a Jackson Pollock painting or a hose, right? You're just going to spray it everywhere and you don't even know what you're trying to illuminate or bring to the surface. And if you speak to people in HR or Governance or regulation. Transparency often just leads to a culture of compliance and paperwork.

[Adam Grant]

Bureaucracy 101.

[Madison H.]

One of the most powerful conversation I had around this was actually with a major bank during the financial crisis where someone said, seniors said, look, everyone's calling for transparency. Everyone says that I should share everything that's going on. If I share everything that's going on, I'm going to create blind panic, which is going to make a lot of people's lives a lot worse. I need the trust that I am going to share the right information at the right time. That's why you've put me in this role. And ultimately, I think that is one of the most powerful expressions of trust. Secrecy isn't the enemy of trust, it's deception. And often with transparency, you're trying to reveal secrets, which doesn't get to the systemic issues of what caused the deception in the first place.

[Adam Grant]

Say that again. Secrecy is not the enemy of trust. Deception is.

[Madison H.]

We've entered this culture where transparency has become surveillance. And I even see this in parenting, where the tracking, right, oh, it's for safety. I like to know. You like to know where they are. And I'm like, yeah, but when does that become surveillance and monitoring? And so the intention behind transparency might be good, but how it's experienced by the other person can be completely different.

[Adam Grant]

It makes me think a little bit about what is transparency if it's not the solution to our trust problems. It's often a sign of trust problems when people call for transparency. It's a clear message saying, I do not trust you, therefore I need to look under the hood like, I don't trust you, therefore I need your phone password.

[Madison H.]

I don't trust you, so you need to come into the office. I don't trust you, so I need to know exactly what work you're doing. I don't trust you, so you need to sit in front of me and do your homework. Once you see it, it's everywhere.

[Adam Grant]

It allows us to proceed with a relationship because we have more information, but it doesn't solve the underlying trust problem.

[Madison H.]

Yeah. And I think it's a very tempting stopgap because it can make things feel better. Right. But nothing really changes underneath in the relationship or the system or the culture.

[Adam Grant]

So what do we do then? When you have breached someone's trust by deceiving them or letting them down and failing to deliver on one of one of your promises, what do you do to repair it?

[Madison H.]

Well, I think actually before we get at the institutional level, you have to look at incentives and you have to look at accountability. Those two things are often at the root cause of some kind of trust crisis. That people have been incentivized to demonstrate the wrong behavior or practice the wrong values, and they haven't been held accountable for those actions. There are solutions to a trust crisis that don't need to call for trans in a relationship. It requires an uncomfortable conversation around why you don't trust that person. Which is the rub of it, right? Like you have to say, the reason why I need to track you or the reason why I need to know what you're spending is because you did this in the past. And now that has made me skeptical or second guess or. And letting that other person explain why they did that and moving on from it can really fix the trust issues. But what we often do is we go to the solution or the band aid without that. What was that moment of disconnect on both sides where the trust really started to break down?

[Adam Grant]

Rachel, do you actually do this? Do you sit down with someone and say, I don't trust you?

[Madison H.]

I would never use those words, but.

[Adam Grant]

I do it because I actually, I find the candor refreshing as I. As I hear you say it out loud.

[Madison H.]

You're making me sound like someone who makes people walk into interviews and makes them anxious and frustrated.

[Adam Grant]

I'm making you. Your words, not mine.

[Madison H.]

I am a very candid person, and I hope I've noticed over the years.

[Adam Grant]

Don't ever do a British accent again. Adam.

[Madison H.]

No, no, definitely don't. I am. I do have those conversations with people who are really close to me. My immediate family, my parents, my sibling, my children, my husband. That circle is pretty small. And some colleagues that I've worked with for a long time. So I will say I experienced this. This was my observation. Now you tell me your side of the story. And again, there's usually some disconnect in the narrative that I formed or there's dots that I've joined that are very different from how they see the situation.

[Adam Grant]

That is very consistent with what I learned when I went through conflict mediation training, which was to say, here's what my experience has been. Tell me your perspective, because I'm sure there's information I'm missing and I don't live in your head.

[Madison H.]

And also saying, I don't want to track you, I don't want to watch what you're spending. I don't want to have that relationship. So really expressing that something is at stake, that you're going to lose something with this person if we don't fix this is really powerful.

[Adam Grant]

Thinking about how direct and candid you are, I'm struck by that as maybe an accelerator for you to figure out who's trustworthy and who isn't and in what ways. Because I think the way that you're direct with people, it leads them to put their guard down a little bit and feel that they can be more forthcoming with you. And I think that means you get sort of a less performed, more authentic version of other people showing up for you.

[Madison H.]

Yeah, sometimes I think I can be too direct. I've had that feedback.

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[Madison H.]

In the past, I think.

[Adam Grant]

That'S gender bias, but go on.

[Madison H.]

Yeah, it's funny. I've always wondered, why do powerful people want to be around me? I've asked this question so many times, right? They can get counsel and advice from whoever they want, like why did they drop their guard? It's not oversharing. It's not like being too direct with them. But There is something about the candor that. That leads to a very honest dynamic pretty quickly. I mean, this is so important. Like, when you give feedback and sometimes you are a rare person in their life that's not trying to sell them something, doesn't want anything from them, doesn't need them to approve what you're saying. And, like, that's what I think they're looking for.

[Adam Grant]

I want to make sure we get to a lightning round. Are you ready?

[Madison H.]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

Tell me about the worst advice you've ever gotten.

[Madison H.]

I've received terrible advice around public speaking that I should use humor to connect with an audience when I open.

[Adam Grant]

So risky. If it lands, it's great. If it doesn't, it's a disaster and really hard to recover.

[Madison H.]

And humor is harder for women. Right. And so if you go out there and you're trying to be funny, it's kind of like people who look for trust, Right. You're trying to seek a response. And I realized pretty quickly that the magical moments that happen, whether in a classroom or on a stage, is when you've got that resonance, Right? And that resonance cannot be planned or it cannot be contrived, and it rises up, and you feel that energy, and you feel that connection. And so it's funny. Those first few moments of wherever I'm doing something public, I don't overthink them anymore. Like, I really go out there and just settle and let the audience know that this is gonna be fun. They're gonna feel something. They are okay with me, and then I go from there.

[Adam Grant]

I relate to the uncertainty and the tension of getting on stage and wanting to know that the audience is with me and wanting to feel that connection and knowing that the audible sound of laughter is gonna create that. And you don't get that kind of immediate feedback with an inspiring moment. People don't stand up and clap. Right. I think a lot of this as a speaker is just getting over the desire for immediate feedback.

[Madison H.]

Totally. Right. And also finding a different mechanism that works for you. So I ask the audience a question, and then I hear lots of different responses. And I'm pretty good at rifting off that things. And humor comes from that because you can tie them all together really naturally. But knowing that that's my mechanic, to create the energy and create the connection, has really changed things.

[Adam Grant]

I'm gonna have to try more of this, as I notice half my opening jokes bomb. What's the best advice you've ever gotten?

[Madison H.]

I had a boss pretty early on in my career that said that I was going to struggle to work in large organizations and the culture of whatever I was working on would be the most important thing.

[Adam Grant]

That's easy to see. Why?

[Madison H.]

Probably too direct.

[Adam Grant]

I was going to say too creative, but both Tell me something you've rethought lately.

[Madison H.]

I mean, we're speaking like right after the election and this might sound so obvious, but I'd never thought that hope isn't an emotion.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, it sounds like you've been reading some CR Snider.

[Madison H.]

No, I haven't been reading that. But I always thought that hope was an emotion that pulled people forwards and I've realized now that it's not. It's more like a compass or a promise. So that when you campaign purely around the emotion of hope versus a campaign that is built around emotions that push against the louder, more negative emotions will cut through.

[Adam Grant]

Give me, Rachel, a hot take. An unpopular opinion that you are excited to defend.

[Madison H.]

I think you should live your life by seasonal time and rhythms. I think clock time is one of the worst inventions. I really do not like the modern day notion of productivity. Even the idea that a human being should be at their most productive and their most efficient is really problematic to me.

[Adam Grant]

What's the question you have?

[Madison H.]

For me it's a question I get asked a lot which is what's the difference between confidence, faith and trust? And it's a tricky one to answer.

[Adam Grant]

So interesting. I'm the wrong person to ask about faith for sure. Like I don't have faith in anything that can't be verified full stop. I also don't doubt anything that can't be falsified. But that is another conversation I think. On the one hand your intuition is right from the evidence I'm familiar with which says that it's much easier to build trust one on one even than it is in a group setting. And so one of the mistakes that I see people make all the time is they try to do team trust falls and forget that. Yeah, you may trust the group overall to do a few things, but ultimately it's your relationship with each person in the group that determines the confident relationship they have with the unknown. I think that's a reminder that we need to spend much more time in dyads as opposed to just in groups. On the other hand, there are things that we would all trust groups to do and large groups to do that we would never put in the hands of single individuals. There's a part of me that thinks actually it's the largest organizations that are able to be the most Trustworthy, and maybe it's the in between. That's an uncanny valley. We can trust individuals. We can trust huge organizations that have high reliability practices. And it's the messy middle where we run into a lot of trouble.

[Madison H.]

That's super interesting.

[Adam Grant]

You told me you don't trust me to navigate anywhere, especially when skiing. What else do you trust me and not trust me for?

[Madison H.]

I trust you 100% with your generosity and your ability to give advice, and I don't say that to many people.

[Adam Grant]

What do you not trust me for is what I really want to know.

[Madison H.]

I'm not sure I would trust you to give me advice on creative things. And I mean this in the nicest way. Like visual things that are in their infancy or things that don't have hard evidence or data but that are quite organic and evolving and are going to have to go through, like, multiple iterations. I wouldn't come to you for feedback on that because I'm not sure it's how your mind works.

[Adam Grant]

It's definitely not. I'm glad you know that because I would just end up, like, ruining the vision.

[Madison H.]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

With my linear thinking and my desire to anchor the image in a study. I think the takeaway for me from this conversation is that my right brain cannot be trusted because it doesn't exist.

[Madison H.]

Slightly extreme, but probably, like, my right brain can be trusted, but my left brain can be a little wobbly at times.

[Adam Grant]

That's part of why it's always interesting to talk to you. Rachel, I trust you more than anyone when it comes to helping me think more clearly and more accurately about trust. And I've learned a ton from you about it, and today is no exception. Thank you.

[Madison H.]

I really appreciate that. Thanks. Thanks.

[Adam Grant]

My biggest takeaway from Rachel is that the key to trust is not transparency. It's integrity and reliability. There's nothing more important than following through on your commitments and making it clear that people can count on you when it counts most. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley, Ma and Asia Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale sue and Alison Layton Brown. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winning, Samaya Adams, Roxanne hi, Lash Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington. Roger, what else do you trust me and not trust me for?

[Madison H.]

Are you looking for compliments, Adam Grant?

[Adam Grant]

No, I'm actually trying to find out what else I need to get better at because directions are hopeless.

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[Madison H.]

Com.