The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace with Minda Harts

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Speaker 1 Here's one piece of advice that I've given for years. Build an emergency fund.
Aim to stash away enough to cover at least three months of expenses in case your income suddenly drops.

Speaker 1 Sounds simple, right? But let's be honest, it's not. Saving even one month's worth of living costs can feel impossible.

Speaker 1 Just when you're making progress, that check engine light blinks on and derails your plans. Life already throws enough curveballs.
You don't need your bank adding to the chaos.

Speaker 1 That's why it's so important to choose one that makes savings easy and doesn't nibble away at your hard-earned money with ridiculous fees. QIIME understands that every dollar counts.

Speaker 1 That's why when you set up direct deposit through QIIME, you get access to fee-free features like free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, and more.

Speaker 1 With qualifying direct deposits, you're eligible for free overdraft up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals. To date, QIIME has spotted members over $30 billion.

Speaker 1 Work on your financial goals through QIIME today. Open an account in just two minutes at chime.com slash MNN.
That's chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress.

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Speaker 6 It's time for some Money Rehab.

Speaker 6 Hey, it's Morgan, the executive producer of the show. And I am so excited to share that the guest host of Money Rehab this week is Minda Hartz.

Speaker 6 Minda is a best-selling and award-winning author, workplace advocate, and thought leader in self-advocacy and trust restoration.

Speaker 5 Minda's a big deal.

Speaker 6 Minda was named LinkedIn's number one top voice in the workplace in 2020 and one of Business Insider's top 100 people transforming business in 2022.

Speaker 6 Her books like The Memo, Right Within, and You Are More Than Magic have empowered countless professionals to advocate for themselves and create lasting change in their careers.

Speaker 6 But let me tell you about her next book. Her next book, Talk to Me Nice, The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace, is all about that.

Speaker 6 Strategies to make your work life better through building trust in your teams. And if you're thinking,

Speaker 6 I don't really feel like trust is that big of a deal at work, well, Minda is going to tell you today that not only does trust help teams feel better, but they also operate better.

Speaker 6 And as a result, you can see the effects of trust on a a business's bottom line. So we really should all be taking this seriously.

Speaker 6 And if you're thinking to yourself, I don't think I have trust issues at work, well, you should still listen to this week of episodes because Minda will give you a whole new way to think about trust that will make the trust that you have even stronger.

Speaker 6 Plus, this week she talks to some pretty fascinating people.

Speaker 6 From leadership expert Simon Sinek, who has made trust cool, as evidenced by his 3.9 million followers on Instagram, and Carl Lentz, who was the lead pastor of the church Hillsong, where he was a spiritual advisor to many, including celebrities like Justin Bieber, among others.

Speaker 6 But today, before we get into all of those conversations, I wanted you to get to know Minda. So I interviewed her all about her research on trust and why we should care.

Speaker 6 Oh, and you'll hear in the interview, she says that she's not sure if she can reveal who she's interviewing this week.

Speaker 6 And obviously, I just gave some of those people away, but I just just had to give you a sneak peek. And you know what? Enough with the previews.
Let's just dive in. Here's my conversation with Minda.

Speaker 5 Minda Harts, welcome to Money Rehab.

Speaker 4 Hey, Morgan, happy to be here.

Speaker 5 So happy to be talking to you. You are an author, a speaker, an educator, but take us all back to the days before you built your big career.
Let's go back to when you were little.

Speaker 5 What did you want to be when you grew up?

Speaker 4 I wanted to be so many things, probably like many of us. You know, most of us started out with, you know, teaching because we'd be playing teacher right in the room.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then I moved to a firefighter and then I went to college for dentistry. And so I thought that I would become a dentist.
And then I, the chemistry just took me out. So I just

Speaker 4 moved somewhere else.

Speaker 5 I did not know any

Speaker 5 of this about you. So what did you do next? What was your first job out of college?

Speaker 4 So once I realized that chemistry and me were not a good fit, I decided, I went to my guidance counselor. I was like, I have all these credits.

Speaker 4 What could I get into that I can graduate somewhat on time, right? And it was communications. And so

Speaker 4 I...

Speaker 4 My first job out of college, because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, was an administrative assistant. And so I was doing like executive admin work and that type of thing.

Speaker 4 And then I realized that that probably wasn't it either, but I did like working with people. And I just saw the

Speaker 4 way that some admins were treated in a corporate environment. And I realized that, you know,

Speaker 4 two things can be true at the same time. You could work at the same place and have a different experience as everybody else.
And that kind of got me thinking about.

Speaker 4 what I might end up doing down the line.

Speaker 4 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I also started my first job out of college was also as an executive assistant. And so I can definitely sympathize with probably what you saw there.

Speaker 5 So can you bridge the gap between that time and when you wrote your first book, The Memo, which was and is such a sensation?

Speaker 5 So I'd love to hear kind of what you were doing leading up to that, but also would love to hear you talk about the book and where the mission of the book came from.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, every job that I had once I graduated from college, I was always the only, the only woman in many cases, the only woman of color, the only black woman, the youngest, you know, I sat at a lot of different identities or intersections.

Speaker 4 And when I left my admin role, I ended up getting a consulting role. I guess you'd call that my like big, big salary after I left the admin world.

Speaker 4 And, you know, just the way that I would be in certain rooms with many people that you've seen on Fortune magazine, Forbes magazine, and just the way that people talked about other people as though they weren't in the room, you know, like you're not like those other people, you know, and all those sorts of things that I was just experiencing in a world that I wasn't necessarily thought about in, but I was accepted in.

Speaker 4 And so it really just started to make me think about toxic workplace cultures. And I worked in very toxic environments.
And so I started writing this blog. Now I'm dating myself more than I've seen.

Speaker 4 Writing this blog about my experiences as a woman of color as the only and one of few. And eventually the blog started to become popular.

Speaker 4 We didn't have like the viralness of language back then, but more than just my mom and my brother started to subscribe and other people were saying, wow, that's a similar experience that I'm having.

Speaker 4 And so. My story, which I thought was isolating and was just kind of thing for me, allowed me to

Speaker 4 help other people identify and articulate what they were experiencing too. And then the blog turned into a best-selling book down the line.

Speaker 4 But had you told me when I said I can't do this chemistry anymore, that eventually I'd become a best-selling author, I couldn't have written it better myself.

Speaker 5 What was it? What was it like for you? Because

Speaker 5 I was going to ask you, and then you sort of naturally talked about it, like the

Speaker 5 observing and witnessing toxic workplace culture and being the only, like you said, I can imagine how isolating that must have felt.

Speaker 5 And so before you wrote the blog, was there any sort of like moment where you were talking to a friend or somebody that you met through networking, like a peer, where you had a moment where you thought, oh, it's, it's not just me.

Speaker 5 I'm not the only, period. I'm the only at my company, but every company company has their only.

Speaker 5 And so there needs to be resources for people going through this experience or like best practices because the memo is full of like practical information and resources that people can use when they are in that situation where they're the only specifically women of color.

Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, even if you aren't a woman of color, but you work with them, you know, I wrote the book so that people could also remove barriers for people.

Speaker 4 And so for me, I spent, you know, this 13-year period in corporate America where I wasn't talking about the things that I was experiencing because as many of us women sometimes feel, we have to be strong at the expense of our own well-being, right?

Speaker 4 Grin as you bear it and don't let them see you sweat, all of these certain narratives that we have to uphold.

Speaker 4 And so I didn't feel like I had the agency to talk about those things because the stories that we tell ourselves are just as damning as the stories that we allow other people to tell about you.

Speaker 4 And so when people would say, oh, Minda, that's just Chad being Chad, or you need thick skin, or look with the money that you make. It allows you to go to, you know, travel to Tulum in Tokyo.

Speaker 4 And so I started to internalize that. Well, you know, maybe it's not that bad.
Maybe this is just how it's supposed to be, because look at my life, right?

Speaker 4 But when I started to experience depression, anxiety, panic attacks, I realized that it. there was no paycheck that could make me feel better about that.

Speaker 4 You know, I was one of the top performers and yet experiencing no humanity, dignity, and respect in the workplace.

Speaker 4 And once I started to go to therapy, because that ended up being my soft place to land, my therapist then worked with me to say, you know what, Minda, this is not what the workplace is supposed to look like.

Speaker 4 This is what a toxic workplace looks like. And you do have the power and the agency.
And once I started to be a little more vulnerable, Morgan, I realized that I wasn't just me.

Speaker 4 My story was her story.

Speaker 5 That's so

Speaker 5 that's, that's so amazing. And I am so in awe of people like you who kind of have that revelation wherever it is in therapy or with a friend or reading somebody else's blog.

Speaker 5 And they sort of look at how they can go beyond their own experience. Like, I think a lot of people would be like.

Speaker 5 amazing. So glad I worked that out in therapy.
But that you turned around and thought about the other people who maybe hadn't had that aha moment and how to trigger that for them.

Speaker 5 And I just, I think that's, that's really amazing. And you didn't stop there.
You have continued to think about workplace environments that can be improved, that have room for improvement.

Speaker 5 And your next book, which is out later this year, is called Talk to Me Nice, The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace. And it gives actionable strategies for restoring trust in the workplace.

Speaker 5 And so why was this the next topic that you want to trade about? I know you've written other books in the time between, but why is this the topic for your upcoming book?

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, I get the opportunity to speak at a lot of companies and conferences. And rather I'm talking to women of color or men or young adults.

Speaker 4 One thing always stood out to me was what the core of what people were telling me about their experiences in the workplace is that they didn't trust the people they worked with.

Speaker 4 They were side-eyeing those people, right? So,

Speaker 4 you know, there was a reason why these things were happening, or maybe trust was never there in the workplace.

Speaker 4 And I thought, you know what, I've been writing about this specific topic, but I'm ready to have a crossover album because everybody experiences either enhanced trust or eroded trust.

Speaker 4 Trust is a global language and experience.

Speaker 4 And so I wanted to be able to say, you know, if we have these so-called love languages that have entered into the cultural zeitgeist, what about trust languages?

Speaker 4 What are the languages we need inside the workplace to make the workplace work for everybody or a little bit better?

Speaker 5 And we're going to talk about those languages in just a second.

Speaker 5 But first, I want to think about those people who you were talking to at these conferences and how you connected the dots and found trust as the common denominator between all of these stories.

Speaker 5 Because I think that some people listening who are in a work environment and they know that something's not quite right, but they can't quite place it, they might not see that the symptoms that they're experiencing.

Speaker 5 the root cause is a trust problem. And so can you talk a little bit about what it might look like in a workplace environment if there's a lack of trust? Like, what are those symptoms?

Speaker 5 What might people experience?

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, it's funny, Morgan, when I, you know, I've written, written three books already, and I thought that those were the last. Like, you know, I'm like, it's heavy to write a book.

Speaker 4 I'm like, I don't really think I have anything I want to say anymore. And then at like three o'clock in the morning, this song by Drake called Trust Issues just kept like ringing in my head.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, oh, wait a second. People are experiencing trust issues every day in the workplace.
This is like what people have been telling me about.

Speaker 4 And then I just started to kind of jot things down. And that's kind of how I thought about this.

Speaker 4 But as you said, people would tell me or they'd write me or DM me and say, oh, I don't trust my manager because we just had a layoff and they just act like there was nothing to see here and nothing to do.

Speaker 4 I don't trust them. And I said, well, what's the real reason you don't trust them?

Speaker 4 Yes, they didn't tell you that this layoff was coming and they're not being maybe humanizing the experience of those who might have survivor skill. And I started to unpack that with them.

Speaker 4 And what we found is that really they just wanted some transparency.

Speaker 4 And then I was talking to somebody else and they were saying, oh, I don't trust one of my colleagues because I asked them about something and they never tell me, you know, how I did with the project, what's going on with it.

Speaker 4 And I said, well, is it that you don't trust them or that you need some feedback? Right. So I started to think about what was it that people were actually

Speaker 4 saying but weren't saying.

Speaker 4 And it made me think about these languages that if we had these languages that we already use in our language, in our day-to-day, but use them in a way that gets to removing barriers for people because nobody's going around with a crystal ball in the workplace.

Speaker 4 What does Morgan want today, right? So

Speaker 4 if I could say, you know what? I really appreciate our working relationship, but I need a little more transparency when certain things happen.

Speaker 4 I know you can't tell me everything, but if we can articulate what it is we need, then people can know what good looks like to us.

Speaker 5 That's so useful. And you just gave two of the seven trust languages that you've identified, transparency and feedback.

Speaker 4 What are the other five?

Speaker 5 What are all seven?

Speaker 4 So transparency, follow through, feedback, security, acknowledgement, demonstration, and sensitivity.

Speaker 5 Can you talk a little bit more about those? And like, what might that actually look like or mean in a work environment yes well without giving away too much because i want people yes of course

Speaker 4 but i'll give an example so sensitivity for example recently we've had if you're in the united states you we've had an election right and people who might feel one way about the election results and there might be a group of people who feel another way and then there might be a group who are indifferent right but the reality is when we enter into the workplace we need the language of sensitivity because there are people who feel like this is the best thing and there's people feel like this is their world is ending right and two can be true and both sides all people involved in the workplace need to be sensitive to how their colleagues are experiencing things right and so maybe the best thing to do isn't to wear a certain t-shirt to the one-on-one meeting where you know that the person sitting really good point yeah

Speaker 4 that's not going to help the relationship right and i think if we think about it like i don't expect all of us to flex the language of all seven, but if we're speaking each other's language a little bit more than we were the day before or an hour before, then that person can trust us a little bit.

Speaker 4 Because the reality is, Morgan, that we could have trust at 9 a.m. And one decision will impact that and erode trust by lunchtime, right?

Speaker 4 And so if we're just thinking a little bit more about, Okay, I may not be sensitive to this, but the person I work with, they're going to need a little sensitivity from me.

Speaker 4 And so I just feel like if we're speaking a language that we both can understand, because sensitivity is, again, that's universal, right? We all have a feeling involved in that.

Speaker 4 And I just thought, okay, what if we put some kind of baseline markers for people, for humanity and respect in the workplace? Could we have a less toxic workplace?

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Speaker 5 You have clearly been thinking about this a lot because you came up with seven languages for it.

Speaker 5 Is it because you have had in your own workplace life or your own career, a breakdown of trust? And you can be totally general here.

Speaker 5 i'm not trying to out anyone but is this something is this an experience that you've had yourself and what did that look like as much as you feel comfortable sharing yeah absolutely i think that

Speaker 4 myself there's been times where in my former life i had managers that i wasn't

Speaker 4 sure that I could trust that they had my best interest in mind or that they cared about the trajectory of my career.

Speaker 4 And instead of saying, you know, I don't trust so-and-so, it's like, what is it that I really want from them? Because if I can articulate what it is I need, then

Speaker 4 maybe they can give it to me, right? But if I don't ever have the conversation, then I can't, where are my expectations for someone who doesn't know what I need, right?

Speaker 4 And so I started to kind of create these languages, not knowing that eventually I use them later.

Speaker 4 So for example, one of the things I realized that I needed from a manager in order to feel seen, feel trusted in some capacity. We weren't BFFs, but I needed acknowledgement.

Speaker 4 So if I'm doing all of this work, I don't want you to pretend like, okay, next project. I need you to give me some acknowledgement.

Speaker 4 You know, give me that employee of the month, girl, you know, give me

Speaker 4 something so that I know that you care about the work that I'm doing, that you value the work that I do, right?

Speaker 4 And that keeps us having a more trusting relationship because I'm going to want to do my best work for somebody who acknowledges me and trusts me with the work that I'm doing.

Speaker 4 And so I've had tons of managers who have broken trust and they've never even acknowledged that they made a mistake, right?

Speaker 4 So I don't expect people to be without flaws because we're all flawed in some way, but acknowledge those things when they happen, right? You know,

Speaker 4 again, for me, I just started to think about what, what would I have needed in those moments or what do I need to ask for so that at least I could say, you know what, what gets the best out of me in the workplace is when you acknowledge that I've been the top performer for the last 12 months.

Speaker 4 You know, that helps me do my best. And then you give that person the opportunity to either rise to the occasion or not.

Speaker 4 But either either way, you need to know that because there's some statistic out there, Morgan, around like 80% of people leave their jobs never having a conversation about the conflict, a job that they love.

Speaker 4 We actually have a conversation to find out, could somebody acknowledge me a little bit more than they did in the last 30 days? That's going to help me maybe want to stick around a little bit more.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I can even just tell you from my own experience

Speaker 5 that

Speaker 5 those conversations really can be so impactful beyond the two people who are having the conversation.

Speaker 5 Like, for example, I was at a podcast company before this one where we were going through the process of unionizing and it was the first time in sort of those early meetings where it was just the employees who was kind of talking about what they need from leadership and things like that that I had ever had a conversation.

Speaker 5 about salary transparency with my coworkers.

Speaker 5 And I found out that there was somebody on the team that I was on who had the same job title as me and had been working there longer, but I was getting paid almost double what she was getting paid.

Speaker 4 And it

Speaker 5 made me feel sick. It made me feel terrible.
And she had shared her salary first and it made me not want to say anything because I was like, I feel like the bad guy.

Speaker 5 I have so much privilege that I didn't even realize that I had.

Speaker 5 But I just, I thought like, this is a moment where I need to be transparent because I think it will help her negotiate for a better deal for herself. And I told her how it made me feel.

Speaker 5 I was like, I feel guilty that I'm making this much more than you. And she was like, don't, because I don't want you to make less.
I just want to make more.

Speaker 5 And it was such a useful conversation for everybody on our team because it made everyone feel more comfortable being transparent about how much we were getting paid.

Speaker 5 And it made us all just ask for the same thing and be on the same page from leadership. And so it was a conversation that we had that just had such a bigger impact beyond just the two of us.

Speaker 5 And so I can say that I certainly know that this is really, these things are really important. Building trust is so important.

Speaker 5 You mentioned broken trust and

Speaker 5 you in your book talk about rebuilding trust. And so I think I already know your answer, but is it really possible to rebuild trust once some of it has been lost?

Speaker 4 You know, well, thank you for telling that story about transparency, because if we're talking about it, then somebody else is going to benefit from it too, right? It's just more trust to go around.

Speaker 4 In terms of rebuilding trust, I do think it's possible, right? But people have to be willing to do the work. And I think kind of ownership is like the baseline.

Speaker 4 So if we have made a mistake, I know for me, if somebody does something to me and I trust them initially and then they do some kind of shady move, I would prefer them to come and say, you know, Aminda.

Speaker 4 Sorry, I failed you. Here's what was going on.
You know, no excuses, but this is what it is. And I'm willing to do what it takes to restore however you might feel about me.

Speaker 4 I'm more willing to say, you know what, I'll give that person another chance because I want somebody to give me another chance if I make a mistake and I own my stuff, right?

Speaker 4 And so, but it's one of the other languages, the follow-through. Are you continuously having patterns where we're going back to this thing and I'm and you're always apologizing?

Speaker 4 to me for this thing that's a little bit harder but if we look at is this a one-time thing and now i see that this person's behavior is trying to restore something that was lost.

Speaker 4 And I think we have to, if we want, to consider what it's like to allow somebody to demonstrate what that looks like, right? What's there?

Speaker 4 So I do think there are opportunities in the workplace for, example, managers, if you made a misstep and you made some calls that maybe you shouldn't to say, hey. My bad.

Speaker 4 I made these calls and I'm going to do what I need to do to make sure that we don't see this situation happen again. And if you do see anything that even looks remotely funny, I have an open door.

Speaker 4 Come and talk to me about it. Let's solve this right away.
I'm more willing to say, you know what? I can rock with you as opposed to somebody who's like, nothing to see here.

Speaker 4 See you next week. Yeah, 100, 100%.

Speaker 5 And I think it's so helpful that you.

Speaker 5 break down for people specifically what is helpful in a scenario where there's been broken trust because let's just put it all out there it's really hard to rebuild trust.

Speaker 5 Like, it is so much easier to break trust than it is to rebuild it. And I

Speaker 5 have been thinking about this a lot just in us, you know, talk talking about this and just me sort of kind of absorbing these thoughts about trust and hearing you talk about it so much.

Speaker 5 It reminded me of a conversation that a friend had with me. She was in marriage counseling with her husband, and they were talking about one particular lie that he told.

Speaker 5 And he was like, I don't see what the big deal is. I only lied to you about this once.
And their therapist was like, but when you lie, you don't take away one truth. You take away all of them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, which I always, I always think about. And it really sort of brought home for me the truth of the matter, which is that it is a lot easier to break trust than it is to rebuild it.

Speaker 5 And so I think it's really helpful that you give people these scripts of what what to say and how to take accountability because that's such an important part of the process.

Speaker 5 And it's helpful too, because I think people think of trust as like a maybe a fuzzy, soft type of skill. But you make the case in your book that not only is it critical.

Speaker 5 critical for a business's bottom line, but you also give us a way to think about trust more concretely, like in the seven languages, but you also lay out a trust equation.

Speaker 5 Can you explain what that equation is?

Speaker 4 Yes, you know, trust is so important. It is a business imperative.
The Edelman's trust barometer is coming out soon.

Speaker 4 And, you know, they talk about 50% of your workforce can be retained when trust is there, right? You have over 43% employees are more productive when trust is there.

Speaker 4 So these aren't just, like you said, frills and thrills. This is a business imperative, right? We're getting the cut out of people.

Speaker 4 And so I created the trust equation and it's credibility plus reliability equals transparency divided by self-awareness. Now, that sounds like a chemistry thing, right? So I'm

Speaker 5 going to put this no chemistry though.

Speaker 4 It sounds like a hard equation, but no math involved, okay?

Speaker 4 It's basically just saying, let's say if we're a manager or a colleague on a team and we're evaluating ourselves, where is our credibility in this matter? Are we reliable enough?

Speaker 4 If we have credibility plus reliability,

Speaker 4 then we can have some transparency, right? What's the overall health of your team? And how do you contribute to enhancing it or eroding it?

Speaker 4 So, for example, if gossip is a big deal on the team, are you part of the gossip train? Are you one of those people that are like, you know what?

Speaker 4 When they come to me with this, I've had a great experience with Morgan.

Speaker 4 I don't know what you're talking about in that way, right? You know, all my experiences have been very professional.

Speaker 4 I don't have to engage in that, right?

Speaker 4 What is my role in the trust dynamics? And am I

Speaker 4 flexing my emotional intelligence to say maybe i am a contributor to the erosion of trust on occasions right and so what can i do to uphold my credibility right have some self-awareness when i do when my you know reliability is a little shaky that i'm willing to call it out be transparent and so again it's just owning our role I love how, let me see if I can get it right about what you just said.

Speaker 5 Admitting that you have made a mistake or like admitting that you are a part of a process that is eroding trust, or you are playing a role in the erosion of trust in the workplace feels like such a negative thing.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it potentially is. But the fact that

Speaker 5 you say, Can you flex your emotional intelligence to admit that you're like, it just makes me feel more mature

Speaker 5 if I'm able to do that. And so I just really appreciate how you're helping people think about this.

Speaker 5 And you spoke about the election as sort of a recent example of how trust might

Speaker 5 be eroded in the workplace because you need the sensitivity. This was a, you know, kind of polarizing event for a lot of people potentially.

Speaker 5 Can you talk about

Speaker 5 any other historical or public failure of trust and use the trust equation to explain what went wrong?

Speaker 4 Yeah, since I did use the election and some people, it again, may be happy or triggered. I'm going to like flip it a little and use a cultural

Speaker 4 in our cultural lexicon, the Golden Girls. Okay.

Speaker 4 So one of my favorite shows is The Golden Girls. That's like how I like to decompress, along with RuPaul's Drag Race, which, by the way, loved Alaska.
The episode that you have. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 So when I think about it in this way, I don't know if anybody remembers the episode. It's called Bringing Up Baby.

Speaker 4 And that's where Rose inherits this pig named Baby and insists on caring for it to honor her uncle's will, which promises if she takes care of this pig, then she'll get some inheritance.

Speaker 4 Well, initially, the other girls, you know, in the house, they trusted Rose's judgment because of the history of her being responsible, right?

Speaker 4 But as the pig starts to disrupt the household family, they would, their trust in Rose starts to waver and that becomes a problem, right?

Speaker 4 Because now there's a lack of transparency because Rose didn't fully explain why she has this pig in the first place, what the conditions were of her getting the inheritance.

Speaker 4 And so at some point, Rose had to be self-aware enough to say, you know what, I wasn't transparent with my roommates

Speaker 4 as she didn't consider how this decision would impact others. And when we're in the workplace, sometimes we're making decisions.
And every decision we make is going to impact somebody else.

Speaker 4 It just is. And that's either going to enhance trust or erode trust.
And so Rose thought, I'll bring this pig into the house. It's cute.
It's all good.

Speaker 4 But ultimately, when Rose communicates openly and prioritizes what's best for everybody in the house, she's able to start restoring the trust.

Speaker 4 And it's a great reminder that trust in any relationship, rather with pigs or people or whatever,

Speaker 4 it's built on clear communication, consistent behavior, and understanding how, again, those actions impact others. So I hope that makes sense.

Speaker 5 Yes, no, it did.

Speaker 4 It was very helpful and such a great example.

Speaker 5 So, if I have a two-part question for you, if a listener is hearing you speak and realizing now that they have a trust issue in their workplace, and it's happening because of someone that's senior to them, it's sort of happening top-down, what should they or can they do?

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, I think that, so two things. I often think of this mantra in the the workplace.

Speaker 4 It goes, I say what I mean without saying it mean.

Speaker 4 So I'm thinking about the tone in which I'm going to bring it and I'm going to root what I have to say or what I'm going to ask for in facts and not feelings. So for example, we didn't go into like

Speaker 4 full description of every single trust language, but let's say, for example, you also need acknowledgement, right?

Speaker 4 What would that look like to draft up, you know, some type of script to say, okay, what is it that I really need? So I had this

Speaker 4 project that I've been working on for the last six months. I haven't

Speaker 4 only thing that I receive is, is it done yet? Where are we? But we're not having any back and forth, any dialogue.

Speaker 4 So maybe you would say, you'd go to your manager and say, you know what, I really appreciate the relationship that we have.

Speaker 4 I love that we can be a partner in this way, but I think what I need more of is X, Y, and Z. right?

Speaker 4 We give people the opportunity, even in that, because then we're not coming with defense right well when i do this you do this right and so again we want to approach the conversation with solutions and i feel like the seven trust languages are offering up solutions because those power dynamics are a little off right you can't go to your manager and be like hey bud hey you know hey bro you're not doing this and i don't like when you do this but if we reframe this kind of negativity where I don't feel distrust, because if we say, I don't trust you, then you're not going to get the response that you want.

Speaker 4 But if you say, I actually need a little bit more feedback, or I, you know, is it possible then in this next situation that, you know, we can work on a little more sensitivity because here's what I've experienced in the last department I was in.

Speaker 4 And I just want to give you a little context because that might, you know, can we partner in this way together? And that just feels a little bit better, right? You open up more dialogue.

Speaker 5 That feels like something I could say. Like that feels like something that wouldn't be so uncomfortable or accusatory.
And

Speaker 5 I think I can see a world in which someone is listening and is going through this and is thinking, I just wish that my boss was a better leader so that I didn't have to ask.

Speaker 5 Or I wish that my boss was better at these seven languages so that it isn't something that I would have to ask for. And I would have stepped into an environment where there's already trust.

Speaker 5 But I, and so I understand how in some ways that could feel disappointing that it's something that you have to ask for, but I can also see how it can be empowering and also just sort of like save you from becoming that statistic of somebody who leaves without having a conversation, because it might not be intentional.

Speaker 5 Like the erosion of trust might not be intentional because they maybe have their own, like they need their own languages. Like in the

Speaker 5 love languages, not the trust languages, but the love languages, I think that there's been like a really healthy conversation or trend of having this healthy conversation in couples where being like, my love language is touch or my love language is quality time.

Speaker 5 And people share that theirs might not be the same, but they can at least give their partner what they need.

Speaker 5 And so I think normalizing that in the workplace about what you need from your bosses is a really healthy, helpful thing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree. You hit it on the head, Morgan.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think the problem is, again, we have these expectations for people and they don't always know because their language may not be acknowledgement.

Speaker 4 They could go all year and just leave me alone, right? And there's some people which is fine.

Speaker 4 But I think if you're a manager and you're listening or you aspire to be in a management position these are now something that you can get this book for your team and say let's talk about i may not i'm and i'm going to be transparent i may not speak all seven but out of these one what do you need from me to to do your best work right oh you need me to be more sensitive okay i can manage that that's manageable right or i work on a team with somebody and i'm not giving as much feedback about a shared project that we both hold stake in.

Speaker 4 They're asking me for that and saying, hey, I think you're trying to stab me in the back. It's not what you said, it's how you said it, right?

Speaker 4 And my hope is like you said with the love languages, that the trust languages will be this new way of speaking to each other so that we can at least have better careers and leave better legacies at the end of the day.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. And that leads me perfectly to, I said this was a two-part question.

Speaker 5 My second part of this is for those either aspiring leaders or people who are already in positions of leadership at their work, if they are realizing that they're the problem or that they're the boss and therefore have an increased level of responsibility of the tone and culture of the office, and they recognize that there is a lack of trust or there seems to be some of these symptoms that the diagnosis is eroding trust.

Speaker 5 What should they do?

Speaker 4 Yes, well, they go pre-order the book, but in their consultation,

Speaker 4 they go to,

Speaker 4 you know, I partnered with LinkedIn Learning to do this link, this trust course called Trust Language of Leadership. So I would definitely encourage every leader, every aspiring leader,

Speaker 4 anybody who just wants to be better with building trust with their colleagues to take it. But as another first step, I would say have that self-awareness, right?

Speaker 4 To say, hey, I probably did make some missteps. And to your point, I don't think anybody shows up in the workplace and says, who can I erode trust with today?

Speaker 4 I don't think people are that psychopath, but I'm sure we have one that we can find.

Speaker 4 But I do think that it's just the day-to-day, people are running at 90,000 miles per hour and they just don't have the time to think about how one decision might impact somebody and now trust is gone, right?

Speaker 4 But what I will say is get to know the people on your team because the more that you build relationships with people, you can understand what they need. And leadership is not a one-size-fits-all.

Speaker 4 You might have three people on your team that are your go-to, you trust each other. But what about that person who's maybe an introvert and they're not able to have the conversations, right?

Speaker 4 Or they're not at the break room birthday parties or the the bingo Zooms, you know, what is it that you need to get to know them so that you know what language they need to speak?

Speaker 4 Or what would it look like? I know I wish I would have had it for a manager to say, what do you need from me to do your best work while you're here, right?

Speaker 4 If I've done anything that's impacted you in a negative way, I'm really sorry. Let's start fresh because trust is got to be the main character on this team for productivity.

Speaker 4 If we lean in with that as leaders, even if we make a mistake an hour later, I have more people, more

Speaker 4 buy-in than I did an hour before, because now at least I'm using language that I wasn't using before.

Speaker 5 I am

Speaker 5 so excited about Trust Now. Just hearing you talk about it has made me really hype for this deep dive that you're going to be doing while you're guest hosting Money Rehab this week.

Speaker 5 And this week, you are going to focus on four of the trust languages with some really interesting guests. Can you give listeners a little sneak peek about what they'll hear?

Speaker 4 Ah, yes. We have some.

Speaker 4 This is a real sneak peek because again, the book hasn't come out yet, but we chose four languages that we're going to deep dive into.

Speaker 4 And each guest, I don't know if I'm allowed to say their names yet, Morgan, but each guest is going to tackle a portion of trust that I guarantee you're going to listen to these episodes over and over and over again.

Speaker 5 Before we let you go, when and how can we get our hands on your upcoming book, Talk to Me Nice?

Speaker 4 Well, again, thank you to you. Thank you to Nicole.
I'm so excited to be on this journey this week.

Speaker 4 And you all can go pre-order right now, put Talk to Me Nice by Minda Hartz, wherever you like to buy your books. And it comes out July 23rd this year.

Speaker 1 Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin.
Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.
Do you need some Money Rehab?

Speaker 1 And let's be honest, we all do.

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No, seriously, thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.