How To Be the Kind of Leader People Trust With Simon Sinek

I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some Money Rehab.
Hey, Money Rehab fam. I'm Minda Hartz.
And if you've heard yesterday's episode, you know that I'm guest hosting for Nicole this week while she's out on maternity leave. My new book, Talk to Me Nice, comes out this summer, and it's all about the seven trust languages that can transform our workplaces.
So this week is all about trust, building and repairing it. In each episode, I'm zooming into one of the languages of trust with a special guest.
Today, we're focusing on follow-through, that crucial bridge between

saying and doing. My guest knows a thing or two about turning vision into action.
His TED Talk

on Start With Why has been viewed over 60 million times, and he's been teaching leaders how to

create environments where people operate at their natural best. Simon Sinek is an unshakable

optimist and founder of The Optimism Company. Let's welcome him to the show.
Simon, welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks for having me.
Happy you're here. You often talk about the importance of the infinite game versus the finite game.
Can you first define the difference between the two and then explain how follow-through plays into creating impact versus quick wins? In the mid 1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Karras defined these two types of games, finite games and infinite games.
A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules and an agreed upon objective, football, baseball. If there's a winner, necessarily there has to be

a loser or losers. But more importantly, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Infinite games are different. Infinite games, there are known and unknown players.
So you

don't necessarily know who all the players are, and new players can join the game at any time.

The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want. And the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible.
So we are players in infinite games every day of our lives, whether you know it or not. Nobody will win marriage.
You'll never be number one in marriage. It doesn't exist, right? Nobody will ever win healthcare or education.
You can come in first for the finite amount of time that you're in school where we agree

upon the metrics called grades, but nobody wins education.

Nobody wins career and definitely no such thing as winning business.

But if we listen to the language of so many people, it becomes very clear that they don't

know the game they're playing in.

You hear so many people talk about being number one, being the best, beating their competition. Based on what? Based upon what agreed upon objectives, metrics, and timeframes.
And this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, when we play to win in a game that has no finish line, there are some very predictable and consistent outcomes. The big ones are the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation.
Wow. I think you just broke some hearts, Simon.
You know, somebody's thinking, I'm going to win marriage. You know, it's wrong.
Right. Exactly.
All I have to say is, how's that working out for you? Yeah. So I'm glad you put that into context.
And you hit on something that's really important to me, which is trust in the workplace. And I know that you teach people and leaders how to be someone people can trust.
What's the secret? So, I mean, everybody knows how to do this stuff, right? This is the funny thing about trust. First of all, let's be crystal clear.
Trust is a feeling. You can't order someone to trust you, right? It doesn't work.
You can't instruct someone, tell someone, you can trust me, trust me. It doesn't work that way.

A trust is a feeling, and that feeling is produced naturally when, as human beings, we recognize that the people who are trying to build our trust are open and honest with us, that they consider our needs, our feelings, our desires, that they wouldn't sacrifice us to protect their own short-term selfish interests. We know how to do this.
We know how to make friends. We know how to build relationships.
You know, if people keep secrets, if people are shady, if people aren't upfront, if people don't take accountability, you're allowed to screw up. You just have to say sorry and admit the thing that you did that made somebody, you know, suffer or feel a certain way.
And if we do this, we build trust. Some people are willing to give trust sooner than others.
There's no right speed to do it. Some are quick, some are slow, but we have to be consistent in doing all of these very normal human things in order to build trust.
It's always funny to me that people think that it's different at work than it is in any other kind of relationship. That's true.
It's funny. I often say, if I expect trust in my romantic relationship, why wouldn't I expect that from my colleague or my manager? I mean, this is a deal breaker in my love life, right? Why not my career? And look, I understand that all of these relationship dynamics are not the same.
There's the formal hierarchy in a work relationship. I would say there's not necessarily a formal hierarchy in personal relationships, but it depends on your relationships.
Sometimes there's definitely a boss in that relationship. That is true.
There are rules. Exactly.
There are rules. But the point is, even though the places in which the relationships exist and the dynamics may be different, it's still human beings attempting to feel psychologically safe with other human beings.
Yeah, perfect. It made me think about follow through.
And I think sometimes in the workplace, that's where trust is eroded.

So I'm curious, how can a leader be consistent with follow through when they're trying to build better relationships with their team?

I mean, I love the way you phrased that, which is, you know, how can a leader be consistent

and follow through?

The answer is be consistent and follow through.

What's important to acknowledge when we talk about consistency is really there's two dynamics. There's intensity and there's consistency, right? Intensity tends to be just that short, easily measured, you know, fixed in time.
So let's like going to the dentist. Like I can make an appointment to go to the dentist.
I know I have to go twice a year. I know pretty much what's going to happen.
And it's an intense experience. And it's a beginning, the middle, and it's end, and it's over.
And to be healthy, to have healthy teeth and healthy gums, you have to go to the dentist twice a year, right? But if that's all you did, all your teeth would fall out. The intensity is not enough.
The consistency is what keeps your teeth healthy. You have to brush your teeth every single day for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening.
Now, what does brushing your teeth for two minutes do? It does absolutely nothing unless you do it all the time. But what if I'm tired and I don't feel like brushing my teeth and I want to go to bed? Can I do that? Yes, you can.
Well, how many nights can I take off? I don't know and neither does any dentist, right? And so it's the same in human dynamics. You can't repair trust with intensity alone.
Like you can't screw up and violate someone's trust and then simply buy them flowers and everything's good. You can't simply get down and say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and everything's fine.
Those are intense experiences. You still may need to do those things, but it's the little things that by themselves actually do very little, but done over time, demonstrate that you can repair any kind of broken trust if you need to.
So for example, you take any kind of relationship, let's take a business really a work relationship where you're kind of shady, and don't tell somebody about a client because you want to get the commission and you guys share all the time. And there's one time you didn't because you got a little greedy that month.
Right. And your friend is like WTF.
We share everything. And we know that sometimes I win a little more and sometimes you win a little more, but we help each other out and it all evens out in the wash.
WTF. like now you're just putting yourself ahead of me.
I can't trust you anymore. Right.
And sending them one client, you know, that month doesn't fix it. It's going to have to be a going back to the way it was, and you're going to have to amp it up a little bit.
You're going to have to sort of even be more vulnerable and show even more stuff and give away even more to rebuild that trust and then do it consistently. And it may take a week.
It may take a month. It may take longer.
There's no right amount of time for trust to be restored for a couple of reasons. One is it depends on the violation, but it also depends on the other person.
That person may have had this happen every single time. So now they just don't trust anybody.
Right? So, and to have these honest conversations, What can I do to restore trust? What specifically do you need from me to restore trust? Like, you have to have that conversation. It's an uncomfortable conversation.
You can't be defensive. Sometimes the person knows and sometimes the person doesn't know.
And we take accountability. I screwed up.
I am sorry. I got greedy.
And you're absolutely right. I violated the trust that you and I had built.
And if I were in your position, I would feel the same way. I did that.
You can't be like, well, I had a busy month and I've got bills. Excuses don't work.
Accountability works. That's the first step in rebuilding trust is accountability.
That's the chef's kiss. And I think that's the hardest, one of the hardest thing is owning it, owning this stuff, right? When it's happened.
Saying you're sorry doesn't mean you're wrong. Saying you're sorry means you recognize that your words or your actions cause some sort of negative effect in somebody else's life, even if it's just hurting their feelings, right? The minute you add the word, but after I'm sorry, literally grammatically, what but does is it negates the thing before it.
I'm sorry, but literally means I'm not sorry. Sorry with an excuse like sorry, but you know what that's, you know, it's like what's going on.
No. And the analogy I give is if you're in the airport with your wheelie bag heading to the gate, you accidentally run over someone's foot, you're going to turn around to them and you're going to be like, I'm so sorry.
Why? Because it's your wheelie bag. Clearly you didn't do it on purpose, right? But it's your wheelie bag.
Now, can you imagine if you ran over someone's foot and you just stood there and they look at you and go, you ran over my foot. And you say, I didn't do it on purpose.
A fight would ensue, right? And so all we're saying is that your words and your actions are the wheelie bag. It's okay if you didn't intend it.
It happened. And so you have to take accountability for your words and your actions, even if you didn't intend it.
That's just called, you know, sort of normal functioning society. Just like you would immediately apologize for your wheelie bag, you immediately have to apologize for your words and actions if they cause someone discomfort or pain.
I love that, Simon, because essentially it's like the intent versus the impact. Yeah, I didn't mean to roll over your toes, but I did hurt your toes.
And it's so common, right? People like, you know, people like, why didn't you apologize? Like, well, I didn't mean to do it. I understand that, but you still did it.
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, you touched on something before, but the psychological safety.
And I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit about how does follow through impact psychological safety in the workplace or the lack of. So follow through is about expectations, right? Yes.
So we set expectations and are we fulfilling those expectations? And follow through, the ability to fulfill the expectations that you set are some of the steps that you take to build trust. Also being clear about when you can't follow through.
So the thing that I struggle with the most, my personal life and my professional life, which is I'm trying to make it work for everybody. So five friends say to me, are you free on Saturday? I don't want to say no to anybody.
So I make five plans. You're from nine to 11.
You're from 1130, right? And of course, that's not how it works. I end up running late.
There ends up being traffic. I end up missing one.
I end up pushing the others. And now I've got three pissed off people, right? In other words, my follow through sucked there.
And so sometimes the discipline to manage expectations is to simply say, I cannot do that. I won't agree to it.
So can I see you Saturday? No, no, because I will let you down. The odds are too high.
Or, hey, Simon, will you do my taxes for me? No, no, I will not. It will not go well.
You will go to jail if I do your taxes. Right.
And so I think follow through is is only partially the execution, which is the obvious part. Do the thing you say you're going to do.
But it's also managing expectations and giving people heads up before you let them down, because part of follow through is not just the actual doing of it. It's letting people know that they need a backup plan.
Like, hey, I know I said I could do this for you by Thursday. It's Tuesday now.
I can already see I'm not gonna get to it. I would argue that that's a successful follow through because you can work with somebody or allow them to figure out a backup plan.
So communication and expectation setting, I think, helps people follow through more or not just simply fulfilling the actions. Because I'd rather somebody tell me they're not going to do a good job than do a half-assed job.
But, hey, I did it on time, quote, unquote. Right.
I followed through. I followed through.
I'm like, yeah, technically, yes. Technically.

Yeah. No, I love that because I mean, listen, as leaders, as colleagues, as managers, the market's going to change.
The raise that you thought was you were going to give somebody is not going to happen. Your intention may be that, but you still have to communicate to maintain what trust hopefully was there.
Right. And sometimes, look, we're all guilty of it.

Like, hey, at the end of this year, you're definitely going to get a raise.

But the numbers aren't working out. We can't afford a raise.
And I said, I know I said I'd give you a raise. And I feel awful.
But let me show you the numbers. Now, where it gets dangerous is when we and this break psychological safety is when leaders keep things for themselves.
Right? Like, listen, I'm not going to give you your bonus, but you should see mine, right? And so we see that one of the reasons companies break trust with employees, it's actually really interesting if you're into this kind of stuff, if you're a nerd like me, there's actually an anthropological constant, there's an anthropological reason we have leaders. This is why, quote unquote, leaderless movements or leaderless organizations don't work, right? Which is actually violates our anthropology.
So if we go back many thousands of years, early Homo sapien, where so we've been farming only for about 10 to 12,000 years, right? That's it. But prior to that, we lived in populations that were rarely bigger than about 150.
This is where Dunbar's number come from, if you're into that kind of stuff. Anyway, we lived in these populations, about 150, 200 people.
And, you know, we all have to kind of work together and help each other out because it's dangerous, right? And these are austere times. So the hunter gatherers go out and they get food.
And we're all pretty hungry. When you're living with 150, 200 people, and you bring food back to the tribe, who eats first? If you're the guy who's built like a football player, you can shove your way to the front of the line.
But if you're the quote unquote artist of the family, you're going to get an elbow in the face. Now, this is a bad system for cooperation because if you punched me in the face this afternoon, the odds are pretty high I'm not going to wake you and alert you to danger tonight.
Right? And so we evolved into hierarchical animals. We're constantly assessing and judging each other who's higher in whatever the pecking order is.
And every different group and every different tribe has different standards, right? And in companies, we have a formal pecking order, right? There's a leadership, there's a structure, there's a hierarchy, right? And if you're higher in the hierarchy, you get special treatment, right? So in the tribes, go back way when, if we assess that you were the alpha in the tribe, we stepped back and allowed you to eat first. So leaders, alphas got first choice of meat and first choice of mate.
And I may not get to eat first, but I definitely get food and I don't get an elbow in the face. Good system.
And that system is alive and well today. Like we don't have a single problem that somebody higher in the system makes a higher salary than me.
I may think they're an idiot. But no one is morally offended that somebody more senior makes a higher salary gets a better parking space or a corner office.
It offends no one. Right.
However, the group is not stupid. We don't give first choice of meat and first choice of mate.
We don't give all these perks to our alphas, to our leaders for free. There's a deep-seated social contract that when danger threatens the tribe, the people who are actually better fed, the people who are actually smarter, actually stronger, there's an expectation that they are going to be the ones that will rush towards the danger to protect the rest of us.
That's why we gave first choice of mate, because we want to keep your genes in the gene pool in case you die. We're not stupid.
And this is where things get haywire in the modern world, right? We don't have a problem that somebody more senior makes a lot more money than me. That's fine.
I got no problem with that. The problem is that when danger threatens the tribe, when we have a bad economy or a bad quarter or something happens, and then we use mass layoffs so that the leaders can protect their bonuses, that's when we have problems of trust.
What we want to see is that our leaders will make a short-term sacrifice to protect our interests,

not sacrifice our lives to protect their short-term interests.

And it literally goes against our very anthropology,

our very nature as human beings.

That's where you have huge, huge trust issues

inside organizations.

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You know, as you were talking, it's making me think about your book, Leaders Eat Last. And essentially what you're talking about is, you know, how do great leaders prioritize their people? And I'm just curious for those who are like, oh, that happened so many thousands of years ago, Simon, but what about today, right? We see it each and every day, we're seeing it, get back to work.
What advice would you give to our leaders on how they can prioritize their people and make sure that they're keeping trust as the main character? So, I mean, we have to be very careful, right? And you're 100% right. And what starts to happen is we start to conflate all these

different things that are happening, which is you're not prioritizing me. You're violating

my boundaries. I want to work from home.
And what the leaders are saying is, look,

here are the rules of the tribe. The rules of the tribe are, we want you at work five days a week.

If you don't like the rules of our tribe, you will do much better at a different tribe.

Right. But if you're OK with the rules of our tribe, welcome and we will take care of you and you will take care of us.

And this is why the best organizations are values based organizations.

Basically, values based organizations say is if you share our values, then we will make a deal and look out for each other. If you violate our values and you prove yourself to be uncoachable, then we will politely ask you to go work at another company.
And as we as employees say, hey, leaders, values are not just things we write on the walls. Values are things that we expect you to uphold as well.
And if you violate the values, then I have the right to leave. And I also have the right to raise my hand and ask what's going on.
We assume good intent always. We assume good intent.
And so we want to work in values-based organizations where the leaders and the people, because those are the rules of the tribe.

So in this modern day and age, what we very often see, unfortunately, is money prioritized over people. And you can look at, I mean, insurance is the big topic right now, you know, after the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and you and I live in Los Angeles.
Yes. And insurance is a thing, right? This is what we're all talking about now.
I experienced it, having it one day and not having it the next. So you're going to start seeing these questions, right? So when a company announces record profits, and then refuses to pay out on a policy, we start raising our hand and saying, hold on, what's the point of having insurance? And if they start prioritizing their shareholders over their customers, then we get to raise our hand and say, hold on, what's going on? And it's okay for a company to say, hey, shareholders, we made no profit this month because we had to take care of Los Angeles, but our finances are strong and this is an anomaly, right? Like, it doesn't make sense how you should have maximum profit when we have a huge tragedy like this.
So you're going to start seeing these stories play out, you know, and we'll see whether the insurance companies can prove themselves to be trustworthy or untrustworthy. Are they prioritizing their short-term interests with our well-being, or are they prioritizing our well-being to protect their short-term interests? We'll soon find out.
Great leaders understand this. And we've seen great leaders.
One of my favorite great leaders, Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry Waymiller. During the 2008 recession, where companies like his were laying off people all over the place, Bob Chapman made a public announcement to his company that says no one will get laid off.
However, we're going to ask people to take four weeks of unpaid leave. He said, better we should all suffer a little than anyone should have to suffer a lot.
Yeah. And so you start to see, it doesn't mean you can't try and save money, but doing it at the sacrifice of someone's livelihood is a last resort, a first choice that's the mic drop right there i hope everybody's listening pass this episode along to others because i think as we continue to move into i know people say the future of work we are in the future of work in my opinion so take these gems and let's keep trust again the main character we may not be able to give all the, but we still can humanize the workplace because I think we're going to need a little bit of that.
What did you say, Simon? Look, you know, we have to be very careful, you know, which is this form of capitalism we have right now is not the capitalism that made America great. This is not the capitalism that Adam Smith wrote about.
This is not the capitalism that Thomas Jefferson was enthralled with. This form of capitalism is relatively recent, and it's born out of the philosophies of an economist named Milton Friedman.
He theorized that the responsibility of business is to maximize profit within the bounds of the rules. In other words, if you follow the law, maximize profit.
What about ethics? That's a very low standard. You know, we see CEOs dragged in front of Congress all the time for doing horrible things, right? Some drug company raises the price of an essential drug that they have the patent on a thousand percent, you know, and they always say the same thing.
We broke no laws. No, you didn't.
But you're an ass, right? Like we all know that it's obvious. The ethical standard is pretty low,

right? And so this form of capitalism, this definition of the responsibility of business

was embraced in the 1980s and 90s. And that's where you started to see the rise of things

like mass layoffs. Do you know that mass layoffs on an annualized basis didn't exist in the United

States prior to the 1980s? It was existential only. Like the company's going out of business, we got to lay off, you know, 20% of the workforce.
Now it's like, we didn't, we missed our profits. We didn't make as much, we're profitable, just as not as much as we wanted to.
So you get to lose your job. That didn't exist.
The concept of shareholder supremacy and short-termism, it's all relatively recent. And so we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Capitalism we like, this version of capitalism we don't like. And I think you're right, which is we talk about the future of work.
I think the great irony is the future of work is actually to go back to a time before Milton Friedman, where capitalism was devoted to building great companies and taking care of customers. And if you did that, the shareholder would benefit.
Shareholder came third, not first. Thank you for the distinction, because I think that's very important.
And I know that we've dug a little deep, which I love, and we're going to go a little deeper. But first, we're going to play a little game that I call finish the follow through.
And I'll start with a common workplace scenario.

And you let me know how we should end it for maximum trust building.

Are you ready?

No, this is very intimidating, but let's get it to my.

You got this.

Okay.

First scenario is a leader announces a new bold initiative.

That's a good scenario.

So some people have a high risk tolerance in the company. They're probably a minority.
And most people have a lower risk tolerance. In other words, fear.
And when a company or CEO announces a bold new initiative, what most people hear is, how is this going to affect me? Am I at risk? And the reason we get pushback or sabotage for quote unquote bold new initiatives, it's not because people disagree, it's because they're afraid, right? People fear sudden change. And so bold initiatives have to be built, not announced.
You don't want to make it like a, you know, where it's like a wait for it, wait for it.

Ta-da! No, that's a very bad way to do bold initiatives. What you want to do is tell a story over a period of time.
Like, look how well we're doing here. This is very exciting.
I think we're good at this. And you get to the point where everybody's starting to think, we could probably push this a little harder.
And the day you announce it, everybody's like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, totally.
We've been kind of going down this road, you know? And so it might be bold relative to a few months ago, but it's not bold relative to yesterday. And I think that's really important.
Because remember, the bold new initiative initiative was born slowly it wasn't like a bunch of executives sat in a room the day before and said you know what we should do? announce it tomorrow what happened was it was months and somebody made an offhand comment and somebody goes you know I was thinking about what you said last night that's really interesting I wonder if we could dot dot dot in other words it took time to get to the bold initiative and then we just announce it to everybody. So you got to bring people on the journey.
That's how you do follow through for bold new initiatives. I love that.
I was actually triggered listening to you talk because I thought about a manager that I had back in the day where they just pile us all in the break room, right? And then do the thing. Great news for the company.
And the problem is when there's uncertainty, there's fear. And when there's fear, there's resistance.
Now you're accused of not being a team player. Now you're accused of not caring about the company.
Now you're accused of being a bad employee. And it's none of those things.
It's just fear. Fear and uncertainty is all it is.
And this is why a lot of change management is nonsense. You come in and do a deck about how important this change is.
It's not bringing people along on the journey and letting them come to that conclusion themselves. It's announcing to people and then pretending that it won't be so bad.
You know, being honest and be realistic, but bringing people on the journey are super, super important. I love that.
So you're good at this game, Simon. I got a couple more for you.
The next one is a company promises work-life balance. Let's define what work-life balance means, right? It doesn't mean I work a lot of hours and now I need to go do a bunch of yoga.
Like the thing that makes me laugh all the time when companies say, you know, we work hard and play hard. I mean, both of those sound very unhealthy.
Work smart, play always, is what I say. And so when we treat it like a scale, and like we have to take deposits and credits on both sides, it doesn't really work.
And it's not based on how hard you work. Working hard for something you don't believe in is called stress.
Working hard for something you love is called passion. But in both cases, you're working hard.
Only in one of those does it feel worth it. Now, there's a difference between recharging your batteries and protecting your health.
Like if you've been burning the candle on both ends, yes, you need a vacation. And a vacation means turning off your email, turning off your cell phone, right? Because if you're on email on vacation, you're just telecommuting from a beach.
That's not a vacation. And so absolutely, when we talk about the balance, which is like recharge your batteries.
But for me, work-life balance is I feel safe at home. I feel like psychologically at home, and I feel psychologically safe at work.
And so my life feels in balance. I feel like the sacrifices I make on both sides are worth it.
And it's never perfect. There's always going to be some sort of sacrifice somewhere.
You can't please everybody all the time. But you're able to manage it, and you feel supported at home, and you feel supported at work.
You feel you're in balance when you can say to your loved ones at home, hey, family, I'm going to take a business trip. I love you all, but I got to do this.
I know I'm going to miss, you know, Friday night sushi night, but I love you all and I got to do this. And then at work, you say, hey, listen, my kid is super sick at home.
I'm going to work from home today. This is the balancing.
And at home, they go, go ahead, mom, dad, you know, have a great business trip. Where at work, they go, totally understand.
Go ahead and work from home today. And you feel supported from the other.
I think that's what balance is. Hold onto your wallets.
Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.
That's a good reframing because I think, like you said, sometimes people get it a little misconstrued. And I like that.
It's not work hard player. Sometimes it gets out of balance.
You know, so for example, if somebody works on a Saturday, all a leader has to do is say, hey, thank you so much for working on Saturday. Why don't you take a day of the week off so I can give you back that day from your weekend back in balance? I love that.
So here's our last one. And this one's a little, well, I say a little more hard, but I know that you got it, is a team member raises concerns about belonging.
Okay. Number one, curiosity, right? I think very often in these circumstances, we leap to judgment and it's hard because we're all judgmental bastards, right? Yes.
Every single one of us, even the ones who say I'm not judgmental, I judge them. So we're all a little judgy and we have to work hard.
It's a skill, just takes practice to try hard to replace the judgment with curiosity. So first we have to understand what belonging means to them, right? When somebody says, I don't feel like I belong here, what they're saying is I don't feel psychologically safe here.
Or they're saying, I'm not sure I share the values. Or they're saying, I don't feel seen or heard here.
You know, all I know is something is not right. And the problem is when we don't feel like something fits, even we, the ones who don't feel like we belong, sometimes we don't know what the reason is.
So we lash out and we're judgy and we're accusatory that you did this and you, but really I'm just uncomfortable and I don't really know why myself. And so we want curiosity and communication on both sides.
So if somebody doesn't feel like they belong, what I want them to do is raise their hands and say, can I have an uncomfortable conversation with you? I've been dealing with this for a little bit. I thought it was me.
I thought I had a bad night's sleep. It's been going on for a while.
And can I just talk it out with you? Which is, I don't know if I belong here. I'm struggling for these reasons.
And this is the story I'm telling myself. And I'm afraid of this story because I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm going off of it.
The person they're talking to from work doesn't correct them. They're trying to understand that.
They're trying to see where they can help. They're trying to see what parts are true and what parts are not true.
But the difficult part is sometimes, especially if you're dealing in a small business, an entrepreneurial venture, and the person you're talking to is the owner, it's so easy to get super defensive. And in almost all of these circumstances, what we see is a breakdown in communication.
And what ends up happening, the reason it gets escalated is because somebody handles the communication badly or somebody responds to the communication badly. And it's kind of like a fight with a loved one,

right? Like the number of fights that I had with my girlfriend that went like this, well, you started it. No, you started it.
Well, here's the thing that you did that started it. Okay.
And I remember I was having a fight with my girlfriend and I literally interrupted this fight as we were trying to tell each other who started this fight that we were both in. And I said, look, here's what I know for a fact.
One of us definitely started this. And I know we have a different opinion as to who, right? One of us definitely started this.
But here's the other thing I know. The other person definitely poured gasoline on it, right? So all I know is we are where we are because we contributed to where we are.
So let's just start there. And you can say that at work too.
You'd be like, I think that I have handled this badly. Can I have a do-over? And again, that goes right back to the beginning of our conversation of accountability.
My wheelie bag, my words, my reaction, my defensiveness, my judgment before my curiosity made this worse. I recognize that.
I am sorry. Can we start again? But I think belonging is a tricky one because sometimes it's really actually a belonging problem.
And sometimes it's just a I'm not sure problem and I'm looking to grasp to what it might be and I sometimes latch on to belonging but it might just be that I don't feel seen or heard or it might be that I just don't feel valued it's one that requires unpacking and you know the way that you unpack that was so practical and and I appreciate that because I think it allows people to see themselves that okay we're we're going to make mistakes like the old Facebook line. It's complicated, right? Once we acknowledge that, then that helps kind of restore trust when it's shaky.
Remember, it is human beings in a relationship with human beings, right? Yeah. Most people are good.
There are a few bastards in the world, but most people are good, right?

But what most people lack are human skills, right? Like cats don't have to work very hard to be cats. They're naturally good at being cats, right? Human beings, weirdly enough, are not born being good at human.
we actually have to study and learn things like listening, how to have difficult conversations, how to resolve conflict, right? Like how to have an effective confrontation. We are not born with these skills.
We have to practice and learn these skills in order to have better relationships. It takes a lot of work to be a good human being.
It really does. And I'm glad that we have people like you on the planet, Simon, that help us be a little bit better than we started.
So I love that. See, I would add you to game night.
You did such a great job on that. So I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into your thought process, because you've been doing this work and research for a long time.
And I'm curious, how has your understanding of follow through evolved through your work with different organizations? Well, I think it goes

back to what we were saying before, right? Which is, you know, I think most people finish at the

superficial, which is follow through is say the thing you're going to do. Yeah.
I mean, I fail to

follow through on things all the time. And sometimes I'm embarrassed and ashamed.
And so I

Thank you. I mean, I fail to follow through on things all the time.
And sometimes I'm embarrassed and ashamed. And so I hide it or I'm not upfront or I sort of hedge it and be like, well, I kind of did it, you know.
And what I've learned about follow through is that really it's about managing expectations.

And it's okay to say no.

It's okay to miss a deadline.

It's okay to fail.

As long as you give ample notice, and this is the important part, ask for help. And I think the missing part, which is so difficult and so vulnerable for a lot of people, which is I'm struggling here.
And sometimes we realize I don't have a process. Sometimes we realize I'm the wrong person.
Sometimes we realize I said yes when I should have said no. Sometimes we realize I'm just stressed.
I'm just overworked and I just, I can't do it. Sometimes we realize I got stuff going on at home and I'm so distracted.
Sometimes I got a bad night's sleep. Like there's so many reasons why we don't follow through that what I have learned is that the better the communication and the more comfortable we get asking for help, the irony is you'll get all the credit for all the follow through.
I love that. That's a great way to look at it.
And I was also thinking, you know, so many people are listening and you don't have to be a leader entitled to lead inside your workplace. I hope everybody will think through that as well.
But what's one thing everybody can do tomorrow to strengthen their follow through game? So you're 100% right, which is the definition of a leader is the awesome responsibility. A leader accepts the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise, right? Now, a position of leadership and being a leader are not the same thing.
You can have a position of leadership, which gives you rank and authority, but it doesn't mean we will follow you. It definitely doesn't mean we'll trust you.
You and I both know many people who don't have a position of leadership, but they've made the choice to look after the person to the left of them and make the choice to look after the person to the right of them. And we trust them and follow them anywhere.
They are the leader. And so the first thing to do is be the leader you wish you had.
And every great leader I've ever met, regardless of their position or rank, every single one of them considers themselves a student of leadership. None of them think of themselves as experts.
And if you're a student of leadership, that means you listen to podcasts. It means you read books.
It means you read articles. It means you have conversations with your friends or your mentors about these topics constantly.
You're constantly in a learning mode. And so if you want to be a leader, you've got to study and be the leader you wish you had.
Take yourself on starting tomorrow. I could be a better listener.
I need to learn how to be more curious. I need to learn how to better communicate.
I need to learn how to have an effective confrontation. I need to learn how to have difficult conversations.
You've got to take yourself on. Plenty, plenty of resources and very smart people out there who can help you.
Absolutely. And, you know, that leads me to another question.
In a world where trust can feel scarce at times, like we're trying to figure out where it is, where we lost it, if it was ever there, what gives you optimism about our ability to rebuild it? At the end of the day, it's what we want, right? When we don't have it, what we feel is lonely. And we know there's a loneliness epidemic right now.
And you can't, it's hard. But we know that trust matters.
We know that friends matter. We know that colleagues matter.
We know that relationships matter. And the more that we can say, I don't know, or I need help, the more that we can put ourselves out there.
And the irony about trust is that you don't actually build trust by offering help. You build trust by asking for it.
And the more that we can ask for help, for difficult things or easy things, for work things or personal things, for things that there are clear answers to, and for things that there are not clear answers to, the more that we can do that, the more that we build trust, the more that we feel like we belong, the more that we feel cared for, seen and heard and understood. That's beautiful.
Very, very beautiful. And here at Money Rehab, we always end the show with a money tip.
So Simon, we're going to have a little different twist on it since we've been talking about trust as the currency. But if you could share a practical tip on the business imperative of consistent trust and follow through.
I'm going to sound like a broken record. You know, I think great companies recognize that 100% of customers are people, 100% of employees are people, 100% of investors are people.
And if you don't understand people, you don't understand business. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.
I'm your host, host nicole lapin money rehab's executive producer is morgan lavoy our researcher is emily holmes do you need some money rehab and let's be honest we all do so email us your money questions money rehab at money news network.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me and follow us on Instagram at money news and TikTok at money news network for exclusive

video content and lastly thank you no seriously thank you thank you for listening and for investing